007

On the rare occasions I’m just flipping through channels, looking for something to watch on TV, I am a complete and total sucker for James Bond movies. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen all of them, but that never deters me from watching them again. Even if it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a particular movie, and I don’t remember quite how it unfolds, I can still predict what will happen. The plots are so formulaic, it’s really hard to be surprised. I don’t care. I still like watching them.

I don’t know exactly what the appeal of James Bond is. Perhaps it’s that he does things as if they’re perfectly natural that the rest of us would never dream of doing to begin with. For instance, the other night I was watching The Man with the Golden Gun (which is, by the way, perhaps the worst Bond movie ever, and only partly because it stars the second-worst Bond ever, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton being the only actor given the role who was less-suited to it).

Bond, in typical fashion, had his field agent, Goodnight (love the names), in the room with him, about to get it on. Then the villainess knocks on the door, so Goodnight hides initially under the covers, then in the closet, while Bond engages in a seductive chess match with the villainess, eventually getting it on with her while Goodnight patiently waits her turn in the closet before finally falling asleep. Later in the movie, of course, Goodnight gets her turn, which she enthusiastically takes, despite having sat in the closet listening as Bond, well, does what Bond does so often.

If he’s as good as he’s supposed to be, I can’t imagine it being a quiet endeavor, either.

Bond is similarly calm and confident when invading the villain’s lair. He hardly ever breaks in; he usually comes in through the front door. Once arrived, he acts as if he’s supposed to be there. Moreover, the villains treat him as if he’s supposed to be there, in some instances even giving him a change of clothes or inviting him to dine.

The point of all this—lest you think my going on and on about James Bond were nothing more than gratuitous fictional hero worship—is that there’s something to be learned from this approach that can be applied to mountain biking.

The Pinebrook trail system, which I had never ridden until Monday, is technically a private network for the exclusive use of Pinebrook residents. Which is probably one of the reasons I had never ridden it. But trails need users, or they become grown over and eventually disappear. And I can’t imagine the residents are using those trails sufficiently to keep them in good shape.

Alex is the James Bond of the Pinebrook trail system. He just drives up there, parks in the parking lot as if he were a resident and had every right to be there, and rides the trails. Nobody has ever questioned him about this, because why would they? If you act like you belong, why would anyone think otherwise?

It’s a brilliant approach. I wonder if I could board a chairlift from the Ski Patrol line or fly a commercial airliner to New York using this technique. Catch me if you can.