Butt Fat

Sam’s writing had me from the first sentences and he was a contender for the title. He’s nonchalant yet observant and he writes with an engaging and humorous humility. This is also a great story to tell mountain bikers, topped with a strong title.

Thanks for telling us your story Sam!

-Cam McRae

One day in 2017, while craning around awkwardly in front of the mirror, I noticed it. Extra flesh around the hips. Just making itself at home like an unwanted guest. My derrière was expanding, but oddly, just that part. The rest of me was hovering around the usual 7% body fat. Which is not a win. When you’re built like a scarecrow, lopsided shifts in dimensions and proportions are just that much more pronounced. You’d think I would have noticed earlier, but I can get feverishly caught in the throes of whatever I’m deeming as a must-do and not see the most obvious things occurring around me. In this case, an army of lard trying to colonize my hindquarters. But in my defense, I don’t have eyes in the back of my head. I do get it, it’s natural to add weight as you add years, but it’s kinda alarming when you have a thin frame, like a P.O.W. in a B movie, and add a big ass. It’s also not a good look in prison.

My physique has been more or less the same since high school–slender, wiry, and athletic. Imagine a langur monkey, but shaven. It’s not something to vaunt, but it was a redeeming physical feature that I could fall back on. Hey, I may not have nice teeth or great hair or a straight nose, but at least I don’t have to worry whether my man boobs look good. And I naively thought it was gonna be that way forever. It’s not that I like being skinny. I’d love some muscle and to look good. Or at least normal. So yeah, I’m ashamed to say it was all sparked by shame. I wish I was a person of quality and turned my life around for lofty reasons—for health, longevity, to be a better partner, to be a stronger future father. But no, it was vanity, and that trunk chunk had to go. Something radical had to be done. No more spending my days on my ass in front of the laptop working all day for months at a time. Actions had to be taken. Paradigms shifted, mountains moved.

I’ve never been one to go to the gym. Machines just don’t suit me. Crowds don’t suit me. Being indoors absolutely sucks. Unless it’s basketball. You have to change, leave the house, get in the car, that whole thing. And pay money to perform strange discrete movements under overly bright fluorescent lighting surrounded by a pantheon of god-like specimens tossing massive mounds of iron up and down. Up and down. Like Sisyphus pushing that rock up that hill. Over and over. Making you realize that it’s not a story about futility. It’s how gods are made. Gyms are literally temples of mythical, godlike bodies. Especially here in LA. And they aren’t for lazy mortals like me.

I also hate running. It’s not that I’m bad at it. I was on my high school cross-country team for one season and was pretty good at it. I just don’t have an iota of motivation for it. I only tried out for the team because I lost a foolish bet. That was the last time I made a bet. I’d start getting butterflies two days before race day and every time I crossed the finish line, it was straight into the bushes to puke out those butterflies. What I didn’t expect was that running on a team would make me run out of character, way above my limit. The team was top-ranked, and while I wasn’t the fastest, my times figured into the final result. And losing was not an option. So I ran my guts out, even though every organ, muscle group, ligament and joint was scream-praying, shrieking for me to stop. I imagine that’s what it must feel like to be demon-possessed. I didn’t know I could run that fast. I didn’t wanna know. And I never wanna run that fast again. Ever. That one season probably took seasons off my life.

Now basketball would’ve been perfect. Heavenly even. Jog around, toss up some 3s, pretend to play some d. God I love that game. I played on the team in high school, intramurals in college, and pickup ball for almost 20 years after that. It’s easy. It’s low-bar. There are courts everywhere. You can even play in street clothes. It’s not like running. You can take plays off. And most of all, it’s fun. So fun, you don’t even see it as exercise. But one day my knees said adios, we’re done. So now I just hit the court once in a while and shoot around trying to be Steph Curry.

And there was no way I was gonna change up my diet. That would’ve been the fastest way to kill me. Snuffing out my will to live. I like my steak, lobster, carnitas, ribs, prime rib, pasta, burgers, fish and chips… a diet would be a dealbreaker. Plus my fitness sucked. I was getting old and weak.

So I realized it had to be exercise and it had to be fun, otherwise I wouldn’t do it. Growing desperate and saggier back there, I got amountain bike. Now, I’ve always loved bikes. I had a tricycle when I was two years old that I sent down the stairs. A shitty Walmart bmx with a wobbly stem in elementary school that I blame for my poor jumping skills to this day. In college I had a Cannondale with slicks that I used to dart through Chicago traffic rain or shine or snow. When I moved back to Tokyo after college, I had a dirt jump bike with a killer custom paint job and brainless geometry that I used for commuting, stairs, and unimpressive jumps. In short, I love bikes. Pedal-powered or motorized. I’ve rented rip-your-arm off crotchrockets in Thailand, done cross-country rides in Vietnam with Russian Minsk’s, rode up active volcanoes on dirtbikes in Indonesia, and crossed the Himalayas on Royal Enfields. And in LA I had a scrambler for the canyons. Bikes have always given me that feeling You know the one.

So I’m not sure why it took an eternity for me to take up mountain biking. I mean, it’s LA. Mountains are everywhere. And you can ride all year. My only explanation? Stupidity. For my vain assault against butt bloat, I chose a basic Commencal hardtail. Cuz it was cheapish. And felt like the right kind of bike for how I imagined I would ride-basic. Amazing bike, by the way. Great geo, really capable. Maybe a little too stiff overall, but definitely a dangerous tool for kickstarting fresh addictions. I had low expectations, my goals were simple: Make an effort, wake up those lungs, soak up some nature, be less weak. And, fingers crossed, burn that fat.

I didn’t have much experience on dirt. Much less steep dirt. And I was also unsure if I’d be a safe bike handler on loose terrain. As much as I loved bikes, love, talent and experience are all very different things. But goddam, was I blown away.

After the first ride, I didn’t do it for exercise. It wasn’t that I was instantly riding well and in a groove, it was that glow inside. Kind of like what I imagine a monk feels after meditation for 20 years. Happiness as a descriptor doesn’t even come close. It’s like you’re feeling the aliveness of every cell in your body. A sense of ease, well-being, harmony, depth and bliss. Kinda like how I felt lying on the sand that day, marveling at how golden the light, how blue the sky, how salty and sweet the ocean air, lungs still heaving after my dad had nearly drowned, and I had almost drowned trying to save him. Yeah so I guess what I’m saying is, basically MTB = NDEs.

Not really, but there is something profound and true about danger that wakes a person up. And what we do is definitely dangerous. Every time we drop in we need to expect the unexpected. A little mistake or mechanical can have monumental consequences. Perhaps our quest for convenience and instant gratification has made our lives so easy, convenient and predictable that we live on auto-pilot too much of the time. We need uncertainty, we need consequences, we need our fate, good or bad, in our hands. Or maybe the act of balancing bikes over rock, dirt, roots and leaves has a way of restoring whatever imbalances we have in our lives. Whatever it is, riding showed me that everything was all right and was gonna be alright.

I would go out and do these long rides. Just slowly winching myself up and up, away from the noise of the city and the clutter of my mind. Seeing deer and quail and all that high desert foliage, and the occasional mountain lion cub. Then at some point I’d stop. Have a little sit in the sun. Feeling aches, but feeling light and radiant and just what happy should feel like. Then I’d point my wheels downhill and enter that flow, the way a stream finds its way back to the sea. Darting and dodging trees, doubling roots, learning where and when to pump or squash. Sprinting the flat sections. Smiling at the universe and feeling the universe smile back at me.

I started to progress bit by bit. Pump tracks, jumplines, bike parks. Gnarlier stuff. Technical stuff. And after some big wipeouts and mild concussions, I realized I was possibly a little underbiked. A hardtail with a short wheelbase and entry level fork on loose, dry SoCal chunk + an untalented rider was not a smart equation. So after a few years, during the bike shortage of the pandemic, I luckily ended up with a Santa Cruz Nomad. Which was a gamechanger, and probably a lifesaver too.

And here I am, 8 years into my mountain biking journey and stoked as ever. I don’t know how I compare to other riders, and I don’t really care to know. I go at my own pace, however slow or fast I want. No pressure, just flow. No thoughts, no banter, just the sound of the wind, and tires on terrain. And the absolute freedom to just be me. As it should be. It took me a long time to find mountain biking, but I’m here now. And I guess I have my ass to thank for that.

Sam is a hermit from LA who recently to Tokyo. He prefers trains to planes, steak to cake, smoke signals to WiFi signals…