He’d wheeled two other bikes out from behind the trailer. They weren’t BMXs, which was okay with me, since they only have one gear and if you’re out of shape I think you need a lot of gears. I wondered what else was back there. I bet it was all adventure stuff, like trampolines with no safety nets, slingshots and slacklines, dirt bikes and snowboards, and probably outlawed fireworks.

The bike had knobby tires and was pretty comfortable when I sat on it.

“Do you need to adjust the seat?” asked Ben.

“No,” I said, because I was too embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know if the height was right.

“Thought we’d take mountain bikes. No need for downhill bikes if we’re just going to the gorge.”

“How many bikes do you have?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I dunno. Between all of us, maybe eighteen or twenty?”

“Oh,” I said, because what else do you say to something like that. For some reason I felt luckier than I’d ever felt before. Even more than when my dad won that huge championship game before he retired and the newspapers took pictures of him and us.

Ben got on his bike, which was bigger than his BMX, hit a dirt jump, got some major air, and we pedaled away. I felt free. No one could see who I was, and anything could happen. It was awesome, even when I got tired, which I did after about ten minutes because I think I game too much.

But I tried to keep up. We went past the school and Ben jumped his bike down some stairs, only he called it “gapping,” and then we rode past a few big stores on the edge of town and onto the main highway out of town. That felt pretty dangerous even though it’s just two lanes. Cars zoomed past and a few times the wind nearly knocked me over. Ben did tricks the whole time. The guy never just rides straight. Maybe that’s why he’s so good.

We turned onto a side road that was paved at first and then turned to dirt. It went up over a low hill, more of a lump, really, and then down. Ben stopped his bike on a bridge that crossed a narrow river way below.

“Is this the gorge?” I asked.