If It Burns and Crashes, It Must Be a Guy Thing

It was over lunch with a woman friend that a somewhat touchy subject arrived about the same time as the salad. We were talking about this week’s Centerpiece story, and I had just asked my friend if she knew about mountain biking. Since she is a native Southern Californian who has not spent the last 10 years locked in an attic, of course, she had.

“But why are you writing about that ?” she asked. “Everyone knows about mountain biking, what is there to say about it that hasn’t already been said?”

So I told her about night riding, the latest mountain biking fad for adherents who aren’t getting the adrenaline rush they need from their sport. I explained how riders wait until dark, climb to the top of a hill, switch on high-power beams and barrel, kamikaze-style, into the great void.

That’s when things got a bit uncomfortable.

“What is this,” she asked, “some sort of guy thing?”

As an editor, I’m well aware of my responsibilities to be fair-minded, objective and sensitive to issues of race, religion and gender. But as a mother of a son and a daughter, I haven’t failed to notice that one of my children always seems to be crashing, colliding and exploding, while the other one doesn’t. And the exploding one generally is my son.

It now hit me that I was in dangerous territory, so instead of answering my friend’s question I muttered something about nature versus nurture and headed back to the office. I figured I could make it staff writer Pancho Doll’s problem. After all, he’s the story’s author.

“I’m certain there are some women who go night riding but I didn’t come across any of them in the course of reporting this story. It seems to be an overwhelmingly fraternal activity,” Doll said.

“It’s less, I believe, about testosterone and risk behavior and more about the relationship between the Y chromosome and need to buy really expensive gadgets. Most of these guys have bikes built out with the latest exotic materials. The advent of night riding simply means they can blow $300 on another accessory.”

What’s that they say about men, boys and the price of their toys?

“There is a social factor, though,” Doll said. “It starts at an early age. Ever listen to kids just out of training wheels brag about how far from their respective driveways they have ridden? That’s how it starts.

“ ‘I’ve been all the way to the corner,’ says one.

“ ‘Yeah, well I’ve been around the block,’ says the other.

“Same boys, fast forward 25 years, and that’s night riding.

“ ‘I can take this trail without the light,’ says one.

“ ‘I can do it one foot off the pedal,” says the other.

“You get the picture. It’s like those commercials with Larry Bird and Michael Jordan. Off the floor, over the wall, nothing but net.”

And they complain about shopping.