July 2005
Ruebanawi

Near Death

I’ve been a cyclist for a long time. Whether on the mountain-bike or on the road machine there isn’t much else in life that ‘turns my crank’ as much as pedaling a bike. I love cycling because it epitomizes the potential for self-definition. But I want to be clear about why this is so. It isn’t the pure pleasure of cycling I love. By pleasure, I refer to sensations such as that zen-like feeling of caning through single-track in the rainforest or a screaming 80km/h descent down the backside of Batu Dam.

However, pardon me if I say that you don’t get the kind of deep-self definition I have in mind from such pleasure. Rather, I love cycling because only it can generate the kind of inside-out pain that leads to the breaking of boundaries. And with that breaking through comes clarity of perspective.

A check of my past installments on this site reveals two things that might support the notion that I’m a masochist. I love climbing. More than that, I love long, steep, technical climbs. And I love data—distance, gradient, heart rate, cadence, wattage. I like knowing what it will take out of me to climb and to climb on the rivet if I can. Climbing is ‘pure’ pain because it is purifying pain. The data helps push the limits and provides a tangible marker of that limit. It is all part of planned suffering. So I say from my perverse vantage point.
Given this background, what I’m about to say fits with my lopsided appreciation of cycling—that the pain of it is worth more than its pleasure—that climbing is better than descending. I want to say that having a near death experience on a bike can be good.

Recently, I was struck by a lorry while descending Genting Sempah. It happened in a split second. The lorry was on the wrong side of the road and we collided as I negotiated a blind corner on the descent heading towards the Orang Asli Hospital. What I took from the crash is clarity of perspective. Just the bare fact of being alive is important. And the promise that someday I’ll be turning that crank again reminds me of life’s potential.

It should not need a truck or a near death experience to learn this lesson. But sometimes a close shave with a Volvo truck hauling a forty foot trailer in the confines of a narrow S-bend is an effective a teacher as one can find. So this time, the redefinition of self I have in mind involves the shattering of a significant self-imposed boundary that hasn’t anything to do with my lactate threshold—taking my bare existence for granted.

Crashing isn’t always bad.

-Ruebanawi