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Dear Reader,
It all started in rural North Carolina in the 50's. When I was in the second grade my dad gave me a Schwinn cruiser with 24 inch wheels. It was my Rosebud. It took forty years to bloom into Dreamride. There have been many switchbacks and obstacles along the way, but this is how fine art mixes with a passion for cycling:
In 1973 while exercising my first true independence as a painter/songwriter in Amsterdam, I got my first experience guiding, pedaling up the Amstel River with stoned American tourists in tow, cruising through the Red Light District back when it was quaint and relatively safe. I continued this tradition while working as a professional musician, luthier and art teacher in San Francisco, where Miki and I raised our kids. We were among the very first mountain bikers in San Francisco, if not the very first. We didn't see any others when we first started riding off road in Gold Gate Park, the Presidio and Lands End. Cops would stop us on our cobbed up cruisers and ask us, "What is that you are riding?" In the mid-80's I finished a graduate degree in fine art film at the San Francisco Art Institute and went into a career in academia. I made one promise to myself: Any place I worked would have great mountain biking.
In 1991, while running the Rocky Mountain Film Center and teaching film production at the University of Colorado at Boulder, I began to document the stories of elders in and around Moab, Utah. It began as an excuse to go on mountain bike trips while teaching a class on the subject at the RMFC. Every month or so I'd hire a student intern with a mountain bike and spend up to two weeks in Moab living on free food and lodging at local establishments looking for exposure in the film. The tapes rest in storage, 200 hours of interviews and matching footage, unedited, a rare document of a time gone by and a place that has changed so much that it really doesn't exist anymore. Many of the subjects have passed away, and most others are slipping from us---crusty cowboys, western artists, western film professionals, western musicians, western poets, politicians, and local characters. From the work on this documentary I grew to love Moab in ways no one but the elders of this town understand, but during the process of making the film I was hired to start-up a technical film school for the University of North Carolina, my "dream job." I moved my family away from a wonderful home outside of Estes Park to Leesburg, North Carolina, a hell on Earth. We rented a trailer at the back of a tobacco field next to the Caswell County Hunting Grounds, the best place to hunt turkeys on the east coast, and certainly one of the best unknown mountain biking spots in the state.
In less than a year the film school had a campus, curriculum was written, equipment purchased, teachers hired, and a singletrack wound around the 350 arce plantation where a Canadian film company built huge sound stages to take advantage of the cheap labor force of rural North Carolina and the newly educated film technicians I was training. But . . . slowly, I began to fully recognize that I was east of Denver. Culture shock set in. I missed Moab most of all. It was under my skin.
In Yanceyville I had secured donation of several historic buildings on the beautiful town square, acquired promises of huge amounts of money to restore them, and was offered bribes to swing business the way of the Canadian film company. I was in the process of writing grant applications to restore/modify the town square into a movie-set-slash-film-school-slash-production-facility. It was a wonderful creative project with a lot of support from desperate wealthy people scattered throughout the region, but racist, depressed, and chemically toxic rural North Carolina began to effect the health and safety of our family and pets. It was time to go back west where people are, how-you-say? Friendlier? Happier? Healthier? And, there was the possibility to get another position teaching for a college in California. I had the inside track because I knew other teachers there and my recommendations were just what they were looking for. I needed only to wait six months. I looked forward to staying in Moab the entire time. So, broke and depressed, we left Yanceyville, North Carolina, and headed for Utah, the "Right Wing Place to Be."
The punchline is: We are still in Moab because the Moab Post Office misplaced job application materials sent to me via General Delivery from North Carolina. It turned out the papers were under the front counter with "URGENT!" written on the box, but found only after the job application deadline passed. We were stuck here, fish out of water, so we began to swim in the canyons and surf the rock.
I have to thank the Hollywood film industry, and MacGillivray Films in particular for a particularly good location scouting job working on the IMAX "Everest" film. That project had me in the air and on my bike for six months solid. Having a private plane and helicopter, then a Jeep and a bike was the best way to get a truly deep understanding for what is out there. This experience, and my experience with grant writing for film schools and projects, made land use permits for Dreamride quite methodic and effective.
Lin Ottinger deserves thanks. I had spent a lot of time with him while working on the interviews. Miki and I needed real work in Moab just after we moved here, so we both took jobs with Lin Ottinger Land Tours and at Lin's Moab Rock Shop. I guided 4WD supported hiking trips on the White Rim along with the seventy-year-old Ottinger. Meanwhile, Miki ran Lin's Moab Rock Shop. Within a month we started Dreamride, as a film services company, specializing in mountain biking stunts and location scouting and permitting. I landed another movie job and got exposure for the business on Good Morning America and in the film, "The Treasure of Dos Santos." It was a logical step after my work in Boulder where I worked with and provided equipment for mountain bike film and video productions, among many other kinds of film and video projects. In retrospect, it was a cockeyed idea. Mountain bike stunts were rare in big budget films, but the idea worked just long enough to support our move into guided mountain bike rides and high end equipment.
Meanwhile, Lin Ottinger provided a library of information (truth, weird western stories, lies and damn lies) on local history, natural science, tour industry basics, Moab geology and geography, and a grasp of obscure areas and special trails around Moab, unknown to all but the most adventuresome. It was Lin who opened our eyes to the idea of offering bike day tour series on trails he made as a prospector in the 50's, 60's and 70's. It was Lin who told us to stay small, who pointed out that big dinosaurs die off, but the smallest of them are still flying around. Being small means being capable of offering personal, detailed services. It allows us to turn on a dime when bad weather pops up or an opportunity arises. There are plenty of Brontosaur tour companies lumbering along on overused trails in a mass of 15 to 30 people (sometimes more) with gas powered sag wagons and tons of cheap gear, screwing up the peace and quiet of every campground they visit and widening every trail they ride on.
With study and consideration, and my experience guiding students, friends and colleagues on bikes since the mid 70's, we focused on very small groups--REALLY small groups of no more than four riders and a guide. In order to make the rides more enjoyable and safer we found that each group needed to be skills-specific. This way every person gets the most out of the experience and no one is ganged up on simply because they cannot keep up. With these methods we provide a higher level of challenge and safety for mature, experienced and skilled riders, and novices alike.
After 13 years in operation, the Bureau of Land Management considers Dreamride the best example of a mountain bike tour company, the only company with a clean environmental record over 13 years of operation. No other company can say that, even after a year of operation! Mostly this has to do with our guides, who are mature and very experienced. We leave little trace of our passing and try to make each trip environmentally positive by doing routine maintenance on the very trails we ride. We don't camp. Those Kokopelli and White Rim camping tours offer about 20 miles of riding a day with the rest of your time gabbing around the campsite. Those campsites, by the way, are contaminated with human feces and debris. The stories I have been told by BLM staff about the big tour companies in Moab would make you wonder why they are still here. Frankly, we would rather ride hard, get in a jet tub and sleep in a comfy bed, then get up the next morning and do it again, so that is exactly what we provide. If we don't enjoy something, we don't offer it. Where would you rather be after a hard ride? A bed or a sleeping bag? A shower in a fine hotel or a squat over a smelly pit toilet?
Over the years we have streamlined operations to get you directly to the heart of mountain biking. This means solid, safe, equipment, designed for the rugged trails in Moab. Other tour companies lobbied to knock the obstacles down on trails like Gemini Bridges so that they could haul up to 75 novices when they get tired and head for the bus/sag wagon. Lin Ottinger pioneered that trail in the 60's and now it is a county road thanks to tour companies who wanted to take massive groups on the ride. Meanwhile we built our own routes away from crowds, and built equipment that could take even a novice easily over rough trail, making the need for an "easy trail" in Moab unnecessary. From the start, as part of the film stunt service, I was co-designing full suspension bikes with select mountain bike manufacturers. This eventually led to DREAMRIDE BIKES and authorized dealerships for what I consider to be the best in-house frame manufacturers in the world, MOOTS, VENTANA, LYNSKEY, LAND SHARK and the legendary DARIO PEGORETTI. I build the bikes myself and guide and organize BIKE PURCHASE COMBO VACATIONS personally.
In 2004 we purchased a unique commercial property in Moab, a small split level home built by a miner on a hill above the Bullock Park Wetlands Preserve in a cul de sac one block west of Main Street. We are located in the center of town, just feet from the best lodgings in town and within easy walking distance to downtown shops and restaurants. We turned the home into a unique lodging for special clients and guides, and attached a 600 square foot studio. The grounds provide a mountain bike skills course, parking, a sweatlodge/firepit and a place to BBQ and hangout next to the most prolific wildlife area in valley and beyond. A singletrack leads from our door into a network dirt trails. The paved Mill Creek Bikeway just behind the shop leads to the base of Sand Flats Road and the Slickrock Bike Trail. Dirt trails west give us access to classics like Amassa Back and Moab Rim Trail. This special location allows us to serve guests in a very quiet, relaxed and comfortable setting and facilitates RIDES FROM TOWN. Even when town is crowded, there is peace at the end of our street.
A Northern Dineh film student once told me, "Great Spirit provides food, water, clothing and shelter. The one true gift we offer each other is understanding." When the endorphines kick in at the top of the hill and the moment freezes, you realize what Dreamride does is get you to a place where you remember how precious and mysterious the world is. We have prepared you with respect and concern for your safety, as well as the safety of the natural flora and fauna. It may be the sun reflecting on rain-soaked slickrock against a steel gray sky. It may be a talking raven. It may be a perfect double rainbow, or a pastel sunrise, or both at once. It could be the way the bike lands off a rock ledge, or it could be all of these things. Our clients and guides call it the "Dreamride Moment."
Below is a most recent testimonial (May 25th of 2009) from a client a native of Singapore, an extremely talented rider who originally called Dreamride asking for a guided ride on the Porcupine Rim Trail. He ended up with an Elite ride series with Lee as his guide. This is what Dreamride does for people who show respect for Lee's abilities, concern for the environment, and honesty about their skills and fitness:
"I had the honor of having Lee Bridgers himself (founder of Dreamride) guide me on some of the best (and little-known: who wants to see hundreds of other riders out on the trail? That just the spoils the magic of it...) trails out in Moab. All I can say is WOW - it proved to be an adventure of a lifetime that went WAY beyond my expectations.
Click on STORIES for a free sample of stories and articles by Lee Bridgers.
For more information on charter trips to other places, click on LOCATIONS AND SERVICES.
Our guides are not your run-of-the-mill variety college dropouts looking to slack their way through life without a real job. Dreamride guides are NOT trained to clean chemical toilets or drive the sag wagon. Dreamride guides really ride and are educated professionals who have more to offer than simple conversation and an energy bar. Click on MOAB GUIDES for brief bios.
Click on
GET THE GUIDEBOOK
"There are trail guides; and then there's the real deal." ~ Bike Magazine
"This guide is setting a new standard for guidebooks. Lee Bridgers' first-hand accounts give the reader a sense that they have some behind-the-scenes information about Moab." ~ Brian Fiske, Senior Editor of Mountain Bike Magazine
Lee Bridgers' Moab guidebook is available in bookstores around the world. To order a signed copy from Dreamride call 1-888-MOABUTAH.
~Lee Bridgers
"I was looking for a no-frills, genuine, 'hardcore' mountain bike experience in what has been heralded as the mecca of mountain biking; I got all that and much more. Highly-personalized rides, lessons in geology and wildlife, historical tidbits and awareness of the natural environment: it was all part of the package. Many unthoughtful and ignorant mountain bikers have been guilty of upsetting the balance of Moab's extremely fragile ecosystem, and if this continues, we may not in future be able to enjoy the trails that we so enjoy today. Lee teaches us how not to be such a mountain biker.
"Indeed an adrenaline-filled, breathtaking, epic adventure that also appeals to one's soul and conscience. Highly recommended. You CANNOT find a better guide elsewhere, period." ~ Shing Ee Tan," May 25, 2009 ~ Feel free to contact Shing, if it might help you to understand the unique aspects of what we offer.
press and pictures
Dreamride has been featured on television and in a number of publications and magazines worldwide, such as MOUNTAIN BIKE, MOUNTAIN BIKING, DIRT RAG, MOUNTAIN BIKE ACTION, THE NEW YORK TIMES, ABC'S GOOD MORNING AMERICA, STUFF, SHAPE, MAX, MAXIM, SUNSET, and AUSTRAILIAN WAY. Below is a small sample of press clippings, along with slideshows of various tours and events.
"I learned a ton about biking, as well as about the area, during three days of riding with Dreamride, which leads clinics and tours. Having spotters gave me the courage to try routes that were more difficult than I'd normally attempt. During the breathtaking descent back, I found myself riding down ledges I wouldn't have gone anywhere near just two days earlier." ~ Sunset Magazine, October 2002
"Dreamride specializes in smaller groups, they'll even take out one rider. They have a reputation for taking riders way off the beaten path and into interesting technical areas and even out to petroglyphs." ~ Mountain Biking Magazine
"One of America's most prestigious mountain bike schools." ~ Qantas Australian Way Magazine
"Moab's world famous MTB school. The world's premier MTB tour company." ~ Max Magazine
"Dreamride's unique custom tours focus on pure mountain biking and hiking, solitude, wilderness, challenge, bizarre rock formations, photography, natural and local history and archeaology." "The guys at Dreamride are fanatics who offer vacations for hardcore riders demanding the best. Unlike other tour companies that offer hundreds of vacations or corral 30 riders per trip, Dreamride offers highly personalized vacations for groups of five, and that includes the guide!" "One of America's top tour companies." ~ Mountain Bike Action Magazine.
Dreamride's Moab SKILLS CAMPS, stunt demonstrations, and four wheel drive trips were featured on ABC's Good Morning America. "Just like Lee said I would, I dreamt about it." ~ Kevin Newman
for Moab sample.
Click on for Hawaii sample.
Click on for skills camp sample.
Click on for photography vacation.
This guidebook was written primarily for our guests. Purchase one prior to your vacation with Dreamride and use its environmental, safety and local history information to enrich the experience. Bring it with you and have the author sign your copy.
Call 1 (888) MOAB UTAH in the states.
If you are calling from foreign shores the number is 435-259-6419.
FAX number is 435-259-8196.
or write to:
DreamrideP.O. Box 1137
Moab, UT 84532
For email contact information click on:
CURRENT DREAMRIDE EMAIL ADDRESS
