Riding Shotgun: A Coffee Mug's Tale

Yeah, I've been here before. Hot coffee filling me up at 6 AM, steam rising from my rim, and watching Stacy run around like a chicken with her head cut off, trying to get ready for this trip. The idea of her being on time is a complete joke, but today she's extra determined. She just wants to make sure that she has all the equipment for the bike. She's made six trips to the garage already, and I'm only halfway empty.

I can hear her yelling from the bedroom, her voice muffled because she's got her helmet on for some reason. "Oh my God, where are my riding pants?" She's tearing through drawers, throwing stuff everywhere. Five minutes later, she's in the kitchen, opens the pantry – the pantry! – looking for riding pants. I'm sitting here on the counter thinking, lady, your pants aren't hiding behind the cereal boxes.

And then, the shoe situation. How does someone misplace their right shoe? Just the right one? Not both shoes. Not the left one. The right one specifically.

She's hopping around on one foot, wearing the left shoe, checking under the couch, in the bathroom, even opening the refrigerator like maybe she put her shoe in there next to the milk. I've been her coffee mug for three years now, and I've seen some things, but this is peak Stacy chaos.

 

Needless to say, she was an hour late getting on the road. An hour. They were supposed to leave at 7 AM to go pick up Judy because they're planning to ride Snowshoe Bike Park for the first time. Not just the first time to Snowshoe – Judy's been there before – but Stacy's first time, and she's been talking about it for months. Every morning, while I'm filled with coffee, she's watching YouTube videos of Snowshoe trails, talking to herself about line choices and features.

But before we can even think about leaving, there's the ritual. The bike cleaning ritual. She's got her carbon Yeti 575 sitting in the bike stand in the garage, and it's already clean, but it needs to be cleaner. This bike is her baby. Beautiful machine, I gotta say. Even from my perspective as a coffee mug, I can appreciate it. Sun Regal Black Label grips, black Flag pedals. She's got Race Face cranks on there. She just converted it to a 1x10 drivetrain using – and she loves telling anyone who will listen about this – a Shimano XT rear derailleur and a narrow-wide chainring up front. "Simpler, cleaner, less to go wrong," she says to the bike, like it's going to talk back.

I love sitting on the counter while she cleans it, details it. She's got her little brushes, her chain cleaner, her special bike soap. She's wiping down every tube, checking every bolt, spinning the wheels to make sure they're true. She's obsessed with those wheels. Stock setup, but she babies them like they're made of glass. Meanwhile, I'm getting cold, my coffee getting that weird skin on top that happens when you ignore your beverage for forty-five minutes because you're busy cleaning a bike that's already spotless.

Finally, we are all loaded up. The Yeti is strapped onto the roof rack, all the gear is crammed in the back of her Toyota 4Runner, and I'm secure in the cup holder. I'm on the dash now. We are on our way to go pick up Judy.

Yep, they're outside Ann Arbor right now. Judy lives in some little town I can never remember the name of. Something about having to extend the trip comes up in conversation – apparently, there's some storm system coming through, but they figure they can ride around it. I don't know the full details, but driving from Michigan to West Virginia is no joke, hence why Stacy's already on her second cup of coffee. First cup was me, back at the house. Second cup is a Yeti Rambler tumbler in the other cup holder. I try not to be jealous, but that thing keeps coffee hot for like six hours. It's basically cheating.

The drive is long. Really long. Eight hours if you're lucky, longer if you hit traffic around Pittsburgh. They talk the whole way. Judy's brought her bike too – an Ibis Ripmo, beautiful bike, 29-inch wheels with Industry Nine hubs. You can hear those hubs from a mile away, that angry bee sound. She's got SRAM Code brakes, the whole bike is basically a work of art. She and Stacy have this ongoing trash-talk thing about their bikes. Stacy claims 27.5-inch wheels are more playful, more fun in the tight stuff. Judy swears by the 29ers, says they roll over everything like a monster truck. They argue about it for an hour somewhere in Pennsylvania.

Sunday evening, we arrive. I get taken up into the room. I get set on the counter in this very small efficiency unit, somebody's condo they're renting for the weekend. Beautiful place up here in Snowshoe. You can see the mountain from the balcony, the lift towers, the trails cutting through the trees. The fall colors are just starting to turn, and the temperature's perfect – cool enough that you need a light jacket in the morning, but warm enough to ride in short sleeves by afternoon.

They're sitting in the hot tub right now. Well, Stacy and Judy are in the hot tub. I'm up here on the counter, filled with hot chamomile tea this time. Nice, relaxing first night. They're talking about tomorrow's ride plan. They want to hit Ball Hooter first, then work their way over to Western Territory, maybe session some of the jump lines. Stacy's nervous – I can hear it in her voice even from up here. This is her first real bike park experience. She's ridden plenty of trails back in Michigan, but Snowshoe is different. It's steep, it's technical, it's got big features.

Tomorrow morning comes. They're out the door by 8 AM. I get left behind – I'm not allowed on the mountain. Too much risk of me getting knocked over, broken, destroyed. So I sit on the counter all day, waiting. Staring at the wall. Listening to the distant sound of the ski lift running, carrying bikes and riders up the mountain.

They come back around 4 PM, both of them absolutely buzzing with energy. Stacy's talking a mile a minute about the runs they did, the features they hit, the lines they cleaned. Her bike is covered in mud, there's a new scrape on the downtube, but she's grinning ear to ear. Judy's bike is even dirtier. They both crack beers, sit on the balcony, and replay every run, every corner, every rock garden.

"One more," Judy says. "We've got time for one more run."

Stacy looks at her watch. It's almost 5 PM. The lifts stop running at 6.

"Skyline?" Judy suggests.

Stacy hesitates. Skyline is the famous trail at Snowshoe. The one in all the videos. The one with the steep chutes, the off-camber roots, the rock faces that look like they belong in a Red Bull Rampage highlight reel. It's expert-level terrain.

"I don't know," Stacy says.

"Come on," Judy pushes. "You've been riding great all day. You're ready."

And that's how it happens. They finish their beers, suit back up, and head out for one last run.

I don't see what happens next. I'm stuck on the counter, waiting. But I hear about it later, piece it together from phone conversations and the frantic energy when they come bursting back through the door.

Stacy comes walking in with Judy draped over her shoulder. Judy gets thrown on the couch. Lots of commotion now. Judy's pants are off – they had to cut them off, apparently. All I can hear is screaming and crying, and what I put together from the phone conversation with the urgent care clinic is this:

Judy talked Stacy into doing that one last run down Skyline. The famous trail out here at Snowshoe. And something about Judy not taking the right line – she went left when she should have gone right, got too much speed going into a tight corner, and as punishment, God himself reached out, grabbed her by the legs, and slammed her against a tree.

The big joke – if you can call it that – is that she hit the tree so hard that there was bark embedded in the stanchions of her RockShox fork. Bark. In her fork. Her beautiful Ibis Ripmo with the Industry Nine wheels and the SRAM Code brakes, the bike she loves more than most people, that whole front end is trashed. The wheel's taco'd, the fork is bent, there's a crack in the frame near the head tube. It's done. Finished.

All I hear over the next hour is Stacy trash-talking, but it's nervous trash-talk, the kind you do when you're scared but trying to keep things light. "You hit that tree like you were trying to give it a hug!" "I thought you said 29ers roll over everything!" But she's also on the phone with Judy's husband, trying to explain what happened. She's icing Judy's leg, helping her get comfortable, running out to get pain meds from the pharmacy.

Judy's alive. She's laying on the couch, propped up with pillows, her leg elevated. The trip's over for her. One day of riding, one spectacular crash, and now she's got to figure out how to get home. They're leaving tomorrow instead of Tuesday. But it's a couple weeks later when I see the full damage.

I see the picture on Stacy's phone when she opens it up to show someone. Judy's whole right side is black. Not bruised. Black. Like someone took a paint roller and covered her from sternum to calf in dark purple and black bruises. She's completely bruised, the kind of bruising that makes you wince just looking at it. And she's going to need knee surgery from this crash. The impact tore something – MCL, maybe? I'm not a doctor, I'm a coffee mug. But it's bad. Really bad.

Wow.

But here's the thing about mountain bikers: they're insane. In the best possible way. Two weeks after that crash, after Judy's scheduled for surgery, after she's posted pictures of her bruises on Instagram with captions like "Snowshoe: 1, Judy: 0," I'm sitting on the counter this morning watching Stacy put new valves in her wheels. She's already planning the next trip.

"It's going to be a good day," she says to herself, to me, to no one. "We're going to go ride."

And you know what? I believe her. Because that's what they do. They crash, they bruise, they break bikes and bones, and then they get back up and do it again. It's madness. Beautiful, adrenaline-fueled madness.

I'm just a coffee mug. I sit on counters. I hold hot beverages. I watch this chaos unfold from my ceramic perspective. But I've learned something being Stacy's mug: mountain biking isn't really about the bikes, or the trails, or even the riding. It's about that feeling. That feeling of being alive, of pushing limits, of challenging yourself against terrain that doesn't care if you make it or not.

Judy's going to be okay. She'll have her surgery, she'll heal, and she'll be back on a bike. Probably on a new Ibis, because that Ripmo is toast. And Stacy? She's already watched the Skyline video twelve more times, studying the line, figuring out where Judy went wrong, planning how she'll ride it next time.

Yep. We're going to ride.

Me? I'm just along for the ride, keeping the coffee hot and watching the show. And honestly? I wouldn't want it any other way.