Not my 911 vs. My Mountain Bike

If a road bike is the suburban midlife cliché, the mountain bike is its wilder and slightly unhinged cousin (likely missing a few teeth). Lycra still makes an appearance, but this time it comes with gloves, pads, and a helmet that might have you feeling a bit more motocross than midlife would suggest is reasonable. For me, the temptation wasn’t Sunday group rides, it was the lure of trails, jumps, and bugs in the teeth. So I bought a Norco full-suspension mountain bike, because the road bike effort went SO well, seems like I should do this too, for science!

Step 1: Get a Bike… kinda

A proper MTB isn’t cheap, but I convinced myself that if I was able to cobble something together, I could get started and evolve. Of course, the real enthusiasts will tell you it takes $8K–$12K to be “serious” (there’s that foreshadowing again). So I decided to get a ‘bargain’ and buy a Norco full suspension ‘weapon’ from a police auction. Everyone I knew looked at the listing and said “what a bargain, that’s so cheap” which gave me a very (very) false sense of security.

Cost: $800 (after fees)

Step 2: Get the gear.

Unlike road cycling, mountain biking practically requires you to fall. So add a full-face helmet, pads, gloves, and tools. Suddenly, the Porsche’s leather seats and airbags start to look like a bargain.

Bonus points - the bike was missing a LOT more than I anticipated. Wheels, levers, derailleurs and more (so much more) I made an effort to source a bunch of parts to try and save some $$ but what I couldn’t source just got added to my bill from my local bike mechanic…

Cost: $2,200

Total investment: $3,000

The Reality Check.

Here’s the thing: flying downhill is incredible. There is a lot of gravity here on the Gold Coast. The speed, the dust, the chaos, it’s everything midlife needs. But for every ten minutes of adrenaline, there’s an hour of pedalling or pushing uphill, fixing flats, or brushing off dirt after hitting the deck. And the crashes? They hurt a lot more at 46 than they did at 16. After taking the bike out twice (yes, I wasn’t a one and done, it was a ‘let’s try that again’ level of bravery). I decided to quite while I was ahead.

Flash back to when I was having my quarter-life crisis - I did a bit of cross-country racing and managed to break a collarbone during the night stint of a 24hr race. It was anything but graceful and I should have learned my lesson. Flying down the hill again had me feeling all kinds of nervous and certainly every year of my 46 on this planet, it didn’t seem to be worth it.

The Lesson.

Mountain biking can deliver genuine thrills, but it also highlights the hard truth: some clichés have the real capacity to hurt you. The Porsche may break down and bleed cash, but at least it doesn’t throw you into a tree. Midlife crisis hobbies that flirt with gravity should probably come with a warning label.

Porsche vs. Mountain Bike

Winner: Porsche*

Looser: Mountain Bike

*Again, full disclosure: I don’t yet own the Porsche. But based on bruises alone, biking in general now feels like a loser.