I

have lost count of the thousands of miles I’ve spent in the saddle, from daily Brooklyn commutes to cresting glacier passes in Alaska, hammering down rock gardens in the Catskill Mountains of Upstate NY, fat biking on the ocean beaches of Fire Island to navigating Red Rock step-downs (and step-ups) in Sedona.

But none of these places will ever replace the moment I got that final push from my father as I made my first ride down the driveway on my sister’s hand-me-down banana seat bike. It was both exhilarating and terrifying. Hearing him coaching me on, “When you tip to one side, turn your wheel towards that side!” I peddled, I wobbled and I rolled straight towards my little daredevil self and tasted the independence, the adventures, moments of catching air and inevitably the miscalculations and chin stitches to come.

T

he MTB FLOW STATE Light Painting project is an attempt to visually describe how cyclists experience different terrains and distances as a convergence of physical endurance and agility, natural elements of dirt, trees, sun and wind and the high-tech gear that allows riders to not only ride over rocks and roots, but use them as gravity amplifiers.

And I wanted to speak from the perspective of being a woman in the sport and a relative early adaptor of mountain biking in the mid-90s. I was curious what the experiences were of other women in different parts of the world and of different ages and activity backgrounds.

I collected interviews with several women riders, one of whom grew up in Australia and now lives in Bend, Oregon.

I have grand plans to do a much more involved Light Painting video shoot with a cable system running through the trees along a winding trail so I can capture and transpose real-time video with Light Painting videos. Stay tuned…