The Greatest Joy in Mountain Bicycling

I am sitting, alone, in my friend Jaclyn’s tiny 2nd-floor bike shop. I have just bid adieu to the techs, who are headed home after a full day of answering the eternal question “ Is bike mechanics hard? ” Downstairs, in the parking lot, I hear my friends Meg & Steve unloading all their gear, and Steve’s hardtail, for a video I am helping them with. Tonight, it will be some two-and-a-half hours of installing and chatting rigid forks and 29-Plus setups at 24 frames per second. The time will ride by quickly.

I should head down and help them lug their stuff up but first to overcome this internal heaviness. I have been experiencing it frequently of late, a sort of anticipatory nostalgia. The pale realization that someday I’ll be looking back on this time, right now, as the point in my life when I had the most value to share – with my kid, with my friends, with my community – and lament that I did not find a way to do more with the opportunity of this cognizance.

Sat in the shop, next to my RSD suspension-corrected rigid fork and a massively CushCored nearly extinct 3” Bontrager tire , I’m lost in this famous quote by the ancient Master Oogway, “ Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present. ” Focus.

Maybe it is a byproduct of being a parent – yielding the star-billing in my narrative – but I love playing a supporting role in other folks’ impressive projects. There is so much joy to be unearthed in helping to build and maintain, and then ride, their trails. Superb stories to be earned turning wrenches in their shops. Riders to entertain, inspire, and interact with writing for their re-start-up mostly web-based magazines. Helping fresh faces, whether they are six or sixty, to kindle a love for riding trails on humankind’s most beautiful machine is delightful. Finding joy, friendship, and family in the forest is wonderful. Building a good life, outside of riding bicycles, founded in those mountain bike relationships is magnificent.

Like most people reading this, I live in an urban society that trades accountability for anonymity and distinctiveness for deniability. The sheer mass of human action means that most of the little things we do, social or antisocial, that affect our fellow travelers are no more measurable than tears falling into the rain. Unfortunately, too many people choose to use these circumstances to ignore the teachings of the good book. That is, of course, Robert Fulghum’s All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten .

Mountain biking’s chief appeal then – beyond the adrenaline, exercise, tech-nerdiness, and simply being in nature – is as a generally, genuinely, friendly, and supportive opt-in micro-society. Or maybe it would be more honest to call it a buy-in micro-society. That said, I truly believe that we, the bike industry, weaponize comparison to sell luxury machines when in honesty the best aspects of the activity can be enjoyed on a truly tight budget. I say that while recognizing my culpability and the challenges many folks, in some of the richest countries in the world, have in accessing nature, never mind food and shelter, which makes this preeminent pastime an impossibility for them.

And, yes, agree, this is just one man’s experience and when it comes to mountain biking, I have every privilege imaginable. I grew up with my mom taking me hiking and camping and teaching me I belonged in the forest. I live a twenty-minute pedal, on my one-speed, from some of the best mountain bike trails in the world. I have had the treasure required to own many excellent mountain bicycles, including the sweet custom Waltworks hardtail I am most often riding today.

Recognizing those genuine refutations, the key to mountain biking as a societal experience is the obvious dividends returned on whatever energy is invested. Small themes: I enjoy it when other trail users say hello to me, so I say hello to other trail users. Big themes: I want to ride more awesome trails, so I help my friends dig and I buy memberships or find other ways to support the trail organizations that advocate for where I ride. Massive themes: I want to exist in a society where people help each other, so I am quick to lend my experience or a tool on the trail if someone is hurt or needs a hand.

Chasing my daughter up and down trails on two wheels, I am fully relaxing into the knowledge that she will be smoother, and therefore faster, than me in both directions in no time at all. It is amazing. Up out of the saddle, hammering on her hardtail. Balanced between her wheels driving downhill into root-filled corners. I remind her, probably too often, that all I hope to get out of my years of riding with her is years of her riding with me. I would not trade anything for these days in the woods together.

I shared with her years back that the secret to truly falling in love with mountain biking is learning to love climbing a bike. And she is proof there is some truth in the idea – a secret if not the secret –because she’s certainly hooked. But whether it’s grinding a grannie gear or experiencing the joys of all three options (sitting, standing, & walking) on my single speed, as much of my heart is filled by going up, down, and across trails on a mountain bike, there’s more to all of this than just bouncing around single track on two wheels.

Rather than just a series of rides, this is all one big adventure and everyone digging, wrenching, and riding – past, present, and future – is on it. The greatest joy in mountain biking is to share your joy in mountain biking, whatever form that takes for you.