Half a Second

By Michael Schiavone

One half of a second on a Trials bike.

My chain screams as I apply more force than a champion sprinter does on his joints. I can feel, through the soft, bowing 6000 series aluminum crankarms, the rollers and plates wrenching apart from each other, being held in place desperately by the aching, mushroomed pins of my 30 dollar chain.

These deafening sounds only pierce my ears. These sounds scare me. I trust my components. I trust my skills. I don’t trust my doctor. I don’t trust the steel railing, which has never had an individual balance on it, via one small contact patch from the tire of a demented, abused Trials bike.

In the right corner of my eye, mesmerized parents, along with their spellbound children, watch in awe, jaws open, as the seemingly impossible move strikes thoughts of fear into the parents. “Oh god,” I feel them think, “little Johnny better not try that at home.”

In the left corner of my eye I see—no, sense, the security cameras focusing on me. I can feel the security guards looking at me like a hawk watches his prey. I can feel the guards getting up and running to the front door. I need to hurry. I try to hurry through this half-second. This is the longest half-second ever. My bike is screaming at me. The brakes clinch the rim with a destroying death grip. If they slip, and I fall backwards, I will fall 25 feet down. Broken vertebrae hurt. It’s happened before. It will not happen again.

I release the brake and kick the pedals. My tire peels away from the cold steel railing. The chain screams bloody murder. The handlebar torques slightly under the immense amount of pulling that now takes place. Then, silence. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 feet go by. I’m floating through the air. The world stops while I keep moving. Then, I stop. My tire envelopes the adjacent rail as the sidewall crumples around the steel. It feels like my tire is trying to swallow the 2″ diameter railing. The brakes resonate a terrible, hoarse noise as they attempt to crush the rim. I feel the coarse, ground-down rim shred away my soft compound brake pads. They’re working. Thank God.

My weight shifts forward from the momentum. The longest half-second of my life is over. A new one begins. More thoughts and feelings flood my head. More sounds. More adrenaline.