Rubber Side Up

Becoming Endo Royalty.

- Kristin Butcher

I AM THE ENDO QUEEN.

In what would become a familiar pattern of hurtling myself toward the ground face-first with my rear tire reaching for the sky, I greeted the first of many, many endos on my inaugural mountain bike ride nearly 20 years ago.

Elastomer suspension forks were still the bee’s knees, as was just about anything anodized, but we were still a few fateful years away from the marketing seasons when fenders and full-suspension bikes went together like fanny packs and shirtless dudes.

But I didn’t know any of that at the time. I was just another high-school kid who missed racing bikes around the neighborhood. With my borrowed helmet listing to one side, I took off into the muggy North Florida trails that would change my life.

Over on the ‘hilly’ side of the park, mounds of sand were held in place by twisted palms that would be right at home in the pages of a Dr. Seuss book. I pushed my bike to the top of the mountain-sized molehill and eyed a sliver of silver trail pouring straight down the hill. With my front wheel too far forward and my helmet too far backward, my feet searched for the pedals. Though the descent was impossibly short, even by Florida standards, it was long enough that, for an instant, I wasn’t a high-school kid anymore. I wasn’t thinking about college or friends or the AP test on Monday. Instead, I was 6 with pigtails and tearing down the sloped driveway on my Big Wheel, holding out for the perfect moment to yank the side brake and let ‘er spin.