Initially intended to showcase the abilitites of the IBIS Cycles Ripmo AF 2, this video was never offically published. In fact, this is the only place on the web that it resides. I often make videos just for the fullfilment of making them, but have trouble publishing them so no one ever sees them. I think that partially has to do with self-confidence. "Who would wanna see inside the mind of some random 19-year-old kid? What do I have to contribute?" These questions still run through my head. However, I'm slowly starting to love myself more and see the value in spreading my creativity into the world.
The computer that held all of the raw footage and project files for this video was broken, and the data was lost. Luckily, this rough draft, half-color graded and rough around the edges, was collecting virtual dust in my google drive.
Since a young age, the age where you don't quite "get it" yet, an age where you're hardly conscious of the many human conditions, an age when you've never tried wrapping your head very far around anything at all, my main goals, interests, hobbies, and outlets all fell within riding mountain bikes. It's great in many ways to be so dedicated to something, in fact, no one did anything incredible without being irrationally into something. Whether your happy or sad, or your angry and need to clear your head, you go ride. When life's not going so well, improvement starts with riding more and healing your soul first. When things are going great, its because you've been riding so much. Riding is what all of your focus goes into, and everything else is closer to an afterthought, besides family of course.
Then you get a little older, and a little faster and start jumping a little higher. You start to feel like riding bikes is what your meant to do. You feel like your purpose in life is just to ride bikes, get better, and then what? You start realizing that happiness cannot be chased forever, and thats no way to live. So maybe you need meaning, and your life needs to mean something. But your life is just riding bikes. What does that mean? A human being on a contraption riding down a hill as fast as they can, and with as much style as possible. So what?
Your injuries never completely heal anymore. The old ankle injury always starts burning in a familiar pain when you crash trying that new trick that takes a lot of crashing to get down. Getting better means falling a lot. Your progression as a rider is a tower that just got a roof put over it. Eventually you really get hurt. The crash hurts pretty badly but is far outweighed by the dreadful fear of not riding. A busy week that doesn't allow time for a ride causes volatile emotions, rough nights sleeping, and harmful, depressive thoughts. Try multiple months.
Without the sport that you live for, you don't feel alive anymore. Falling into a deep depression, you find that you never developed the skills to make sense of your emotions or process complicated thoughts. Normally, you'd just go on a ride anyway. You were getting so fast that you could outrun stupid brian problems. You don't even know who you are without a bike. Without the one thing that you sought meaning from, your completely lost.