MTB Weirdness as a Scene
Ouch…
I went to a really nice popular mt-bike trail system yesterday
for the first time in a longtime. Fort Custer in Battle Creek, Michigan.
What a lovely place with miles of natural beauty. Like 10 miles square
it seems like. Gorgeous trails, too.
But man what an ambivalent vibe there.
Maybe it’s coz I haven’t been around it in awhile.
Maybe it was just the closeness of the scene to such perfect natural beauty.
It was weird.
100 new SUV’s in the parking lot. 100 fullydecked dudes and dudettes.
Identical with tiny variations on the sweet sus carbon ride, camelback,
darthvader shades and stares, tattoo. Pure clonage. Not a race. Just me
dropping in on a trail on a nice day.
Man did my cohorts blast. I couldn’t keep up with the blastage at first.
But then I haven’t mtbiked in years and it was a borrowed deptstore ride….
There were total bermshots and flier-bangers. Like a rollercoaster ride
singletrack thru rocks roots narrow treeshots.
The youngsters complained of actual pain and fatigue about 1/2hr in.
Kids. They slowed and started making painful looking mistakes,
roaches, boinks. Poor things. But we were still blasting.
We’d stop and wait for others at crosstrails. Dozens of fullysuited
blasters grooved on thru, in their respective trances and zones.
I did just fine without toeclips, bikeshorts, bikeshoes, shades, water, sus,
ti, computer, gloves,jersey…even helmet. My 50-yr-old uncle was
there, too, with a beat up old Giant clunker…that was nice to see.
Maybe it was the tech that was buggin me? —But I did switch
rides with a sus bike and it sure was nice, more thrillin’…altho
the owner said he had to bring it in for some tuning. I never brought
a bike in for anything other than torchwork. What kind of tradeoff
would hi tech be? Clicky clicky boing boing.
Now, I crossposted to misc and racing coz my cohorts weren’t racers
but they were blasting at a fine Sport pace. They said they did it for
the pure thrill. But it was also competitive. But mainly thrill. They
were jonesin’. It was weird to see. To be tempted by.
I almost felt like we all were violating this patch of beauty. Using it.
To just totally get off on. There was a feeling of ISOLATION from each
other and the nature…we were using it as an object instead of really
being there. Due to the pursuit of the thrill factor. How to use nature
like a drug. How to ride like a drug. Ouch. I could tell I was getting
into the wild slalom sections, getting better at it, dialing in. Oooo,
wouldn’t it be nice to be FULLY DIALED. Seamless harmony. Pure blast.
I sure could probably spend a lot of time and money chasing THAT.
For sport it seems like maybe a more manmade environment is better.
A velodrome at its purest. Roads for hammerfests for those who
can’t resist. But bashing in nature seemed kinda odd. The groovy
bermed trails ridden to almost an asphalt finish out in the
quiet woods. “Dude, this tree is in a way bad place for this corner.”
Cut it? It was a little weird to check out the birds and butterflies at the
rest spots.
When I said “This is neat, it’s a great way for bikers to get away from
the cars, that’s probably why so many love it” I got stared at. —It’s
just the thrill dude. All the lovely mellow 2-tracks that crossed the
singletrack, I said “Now there’s some nice trails for easy riding”—more
looks like I’m crazy. Sure I can get sucked into dialing on the tense
stuff until it smoothes out as much as anyone can. But it seems like
there’s a whole lot more to cycling than that. Would I still see that
if I took the plunge? I get tempted to kick all their butts on a
one-speed then stop and tell everyone to just slow down.
Thrills aren’t where it’s at. I don’t really know why though.
Maybe all that ‘driving to ride’ had something to do with
the weirdness, too… Hard to pin it down…
