Does it count as a fall?

One day while awaiting my turn at the crag, I was telling my climbing friends that I had a new nervousness about biking. I've been mountain biking with a better rider for the past two summers, and it was only on our last ride together that I'd stayed upright on my bike the whole time. Now that I knew what it was like not to fall, I didn't want to fall again.

I recounted that, prior to that amazing ride where I stayed on two wheels the whole time, I'd been riding a narrow single track trail when I came to a puddle. I moved my bike to the right to avoid the puddle. My handlebars hit a tree which toppled my bicycle and me sideways in slow motion completely into the very puddle I was trying to avoid. My friends told me that the fall didn't count.

I then described a ride earlier in the season. We'd been cycling for an hour and came to a steep pitch which was unrideable. The plan was to carry our bikes up the hill, remount and ride away. My friend easily reached the top. Midway up, I lost my footing and slid on my knees back down the hill with my bicycle, straight into a patch of thorny wild rose bushes. Laughing, my climbing friends decided that fall didn't count either because I was walking up a hill. I wasn't cycling.

I think my climbing friends are kind but wrong. Those were falls and they count. In figure skating competitions, a fall on a jump counts but a fall when just stroking may or may not count. If a skater falls by catching an edge on uneven ice, there is no automatic deduction, however if the judges feel the integrity of the movement was compromised, they can reflect the fall in the score. To my mind, this isn't right. A fall is a fall. If you're doing something challenging and you fall, so be it. If you're doing something easy and you fall, it is still a fall. There are no good falls and there are no bad falls. All falls count and what you do when you get up is what matters.