part 4
IT'S ALL DOWNHILL FROM HERE
Folks, we have an image problem.
What happened to the left wingers and the pot smokers? Who in lycra gives a shit about world peace or the environment anymore?
Mountain bike racing began as loosely organized communal celebrations of freedom and love for two-wheeled, human-powered, environmently friendly machines, put together by folks who didn't give a shit who won the race or if they made any money on the sport at all. What mountain bike racing has become is frankly disturbing, degrading into huge mass events with no real communal value. The airwaves have been filled with long distance torture tests, and environmentally insensitive flopping contests. The old slogan, "Love the ride" has become "Look at me, Mommy."
The sell out is almost complete. The bikes are just props. It is really about oil. The message is get wired, get tired, get drunk and drive home across three states. As long as there are people who buy singlespeed, titanium replica cruiser bikes for the price of a small car, or want an audience for a forty foot drop into an endangered wildlife habitat, there will be a market for Mercedes, BMWs, Volvos, Red Bull, Vodka and Budweiser.
Bike advocacy groups have become like organized religions, seeking to expand their range and conquer the Earth. And, while the races make a ton of money destroying public lands for fat promoters that don't even ride a bicycle, some geeks proclaim themselves pundits and put the sell-outs in the fucking Mountain Bike Hall of Fame. To get this boring-to-watch sport on the television we call it "extreme." A slow plodding slog on a wide road to a feed stand is formatted into reality television, and when we watch the stuff they call mountain biking on the FOX Network, they throw a few pot smoking, XTC popping, Red Bull guzzling, babbling misfits in front of the camera to have no point whatsoever.
War in Iraq? Fossil fuel pollution and global warming? Who gives a shit?
Remember those first Olympic mountain biking competitions in stagnant slo-mo, creeping along, selling Paola Pezzo's cleavage because that was all that was worth watching? Remember those TV bike cops jumping over cars, hanging over the handlebars like postmodern Lone Rangers, blasting bad guys with carbon fiber service revolvers? If they were in Marin in 1978, they'd be busting the guys that raced Repack.
Lest we forget, the downhill race called Repack and the media coverage it drew, emerged beside punk music. Pot smoking misfits distracted by the destruction of the rainforests and the assassinations of George Moscone and Harvey Milk, duked it out for bragging rights on rattling contraptions weighing over 50 pounds with fading, smoking brakes, . . . and they really had fun. It was obvious. I look at races today and the people seem so desperate, so spiritually dead, . . . and since there are fewer and fewer wolves (those who ride in a small pack) and mountain lions (those who ride alone), the sheep are breeding at an alarming rate.
Because some of the wolves I used to ride with scared the hell out of the bourquoise in Sausalito, you can't even ride singletrack in Marin anymore. On the trails they still LET you ride, there are cops in the bushes with radar guns making sure you don't have too much fun. Some Marin trails are now designated ONE WAY. You ride up and signs say BICYCLE ROUTE, but come back down and it says NO BICYCLING. Because many of these trails have no legal way DOWN, you are trapped into a decision to break the law or get off and walk. If you live in Marin, you know the drill. Fuck it. Go faster so they cannot catch you. Don't make eye contact.
Marin. Let's dig a hole and throw some dirt on it.
It is starting to smell funny.
THE GOSPEL
The good news is ALL about the EQUIPMENT. It is so good for us these days that folks are confused by the options. The market is flooded with choices, good ones and bad ones. The market is also flooded with lies and sleazy marketing tactics. The fact is that lots of stuff works fine. Some stuff works wonders. The trick is to sort it all out.
We have four bar, swing link, MacPherson srut, parallel beam, low forward pivot, high pivot, scissor link, Lawill link, Horst Link, Instant Center, and many permutations and linkage combinations. Mostly the missing link is MADE IN AMERICA. There are still guys who build bikes in-house, the small companies who fight to survive, like Moots and Ventana, sill pumping out the goods after all these years. They don't fight, as bigger companies and greedy wannabes do, to bury the competition and buy a Porsche. True mountain bike artists build bikes as a constant celebration of the perfect machine. Having such a range of choice in suspension frames is a luxury, people. Enjoy it, but BUY AMERICAN, and buy stuff that is MADE IN AMERICA by the company that has its name on the bike. Don't be fooled by the stickers, either. A lot of those frames that say MADE IN AMERICA are not. Santa Cruz is a good example--cut and tacked in China, then shipped to a Chinese owned plant in the United States to be welded and painted (so they can say, "Made in America" and fly the flag. Specialized, too, is now made in China. As is Trek, Kestrel, and all the big boys. Even if they have an American plant, the only way they can compete at this point in time (their idea of competing, as with all of corporate America, is how much money you make) is to go to China. China will own us by the year 2015. They have our number and the pigs in our government seem unaware that they are at war with us. Maybe they are paid off. I am NOT kidding. The future is more grim than you can imagine. I just hope rich people taste as good as they say they do.
So, why by American? Here is the right reason:
It is the small independent builder that innovates. It is the dope smoking MIT graduate or beer-drinking garage engineer that comes up with the magic formula. With no support for their efforts, vultures with dad's money cull the unprepared from the gene pool, buying or stealing their ideas, then call it "business." Vultures sometimes build good bikes, too, but they are not building them out of love of the sport and the machine. They are building bikes for love of money. Money is the root of all evil. No shit. If the builder is a Mormon, lives in house that looks like a five million dollar trailer, and his barbie doll wife drives a Mercedes, then you should know that your money is not going into engineering. It is going into a piggy lifestyle.
CONCLUSIONS NOT CONCLUDED
My life has been shaped by a love of dirt cycling. This fact cannot be denied when you realize that I finally retreated to gnarly and surreal Moab, Utah, the best mountain biking destination on Earth to create Dreamride LLC, the best mountain bike fantasy provider in the Solar System.
On a recent ride, after being passed by a couple of out-of-control hooting testosterone bozos on a tight singletrack, a client yelled in horror, "Are those guys us?!"
"Yes, they are," I replied, "But, we don't have to be them."
For better or for worse, inspite of the mass of brainless, inconsiderate idiots who now own and ride mountain bikes, I continue to ride, guide, and design and build bikes for a living, but at this point I insist that anyone who rides with me leave the "real" world behind. Remember, the Greek root of the word "real" is the same root for the word "royal"--so "real" literally means "what the king says is true." The King is an idiot. Reality is retarded when our king is retarded.
Yes, the cost of my personal guide services has risen over the years as time on the bike grows shorter, but I don't do this for money. If I did, I would hire a flock of idiots to guide for us and stay home to count the money like Scrooge McDuck. For me it is about teaching, about living, about the natural world. Sometimes a bike trip with me means an inipi or a snorkel dive to a sea wreck or a day with a Navajo or Hawaiian medicine woman or a steel guitar, but one thing is always there: Spirit! I want to ride with those who live the dream. That means that my most important job is to get the dreamers away from the creeps. To that end, Dreamride runs away or turns away more clients than we accept. We do this instinctively now. We do it for US, and US means you and me, the dreamers. There are things we call "magic words" that point to disrespect and we know those words well. If you show up in the morning with a sour puss, you are riding with someone else, unless of course I can make you smile. A smile in the morning and a lingering sense of humor in the face of a world gone wrong, go a long way toward making a bike ride more than enjoyable. Hell, enjoyable is just the start. I, personally, am looking for magic--not slight of hand, but actual magic. And because I have been practicing this, I find magic daily. I practice recalling and recreating a time when we all had a chance--a time when doors and minds were left open and no one had anything that could not be given away to someone else who needs it more. I practice riding the frontier, where man meets wilderness on a bicycle, WITH RESPECT. If you show disrepect, I try to find a way to show you how every action has a reaction that effects every living thing eventually. In this part of the world it is fairly easy to find awesome landscapes of bizarre stone and incredible, technical riding. What I can take you to that is not so easy to find, are Native American elders and teachers, knowledge and practices of spiders and birds, and the blessing ways of coyotes and badgers. If the sorry state of humanity is on your nerves, it may take a second or as long as a week, but if you truly who want it, I can stop the world for you, if you dream about it. It is up to you to either get off or go back with a fresh outlook. It is not the choice you make that is important, it is knowing that there is a choice to make, moment to moment, and an effect that lasts for eternity.
Simply put and without the sound of new age thinking, which I deplore, in my own way, and for those who take or make the time to read the WHOLE THING, I am trying to maintain, share, and expand upon that deja vu rush I got the first time I rode a bicycle off-road as a grown man in Golden Gate Park, remembering what it was like to be a kid again, . . . at least up until the point where I smashed my nuts.
part 5
DREAMRIDE TAKES OVER ~ WHERE OTHERS FEAR TO TREAD
In 2004 Dreamride began offering its version of long travel cross country bikes based on repeated Moab-testing of other designs. The DREAMRIDE FULLY is based on a Ventana four bar rear suspension and a different philosophy of geometry and design, directly from my own experience. Each Fully is handbuilt by Sherwood Gibson himself, designed and fitted for the individual client during a long consultation. The Fully is the best example of a suspension bike you can find as of model year 2007, no shit. I didn't design it to be anything else. It has been called, "The Ducati of mountain bikes." Guiding in Moab was its inspiration and continues to be its proving ground. I couldn't find a single bike that worked right for this job, so the Fully was an act of necessity, rather than monetary gain. In 2005, the DREAMRIDE MUTANT took over the All Mountain and Freeride category with another variation of a Ventana rear end along with a refined and very rugged front triangle. Advancements in damper technology reduced weight and allowed the use of air as the springs, front and rear, on both models (the Mutant still uses a coil spring in one fork leg). The Mutant was an instant hit with very large riders who appreciate the adjustable wheelbase rear section, allowing perfect fit for riders up to 7' tall. The Mutant is my favorite guiding rig, though I cannot use it all the time because I can actually kill someone who is trying to follow me as I maintain a speed that is efficient enough not to wipe my legs out. Going slow on a Mutant is not what it is built for. Surprisingly, I can ride a 34 pound Mutant for a longer stretch on time without fatique, as long as the terrain is rough, sandy and steep rolling. It works like a charm, and has inspired other companies to follow suit in the long travel fray. No one else builds a bike like the Mutant, though. Why? Because the geometry is a secret formula that has not been publicized. You won't see one in a magazine because I won't give them one to try.
In 2006 Dreamride began production of a rigid titanium mountain bike with 29 inch wheels. And here we have the place where this tale wraps back onto itself. The DREAMRIDE WHITE RIM 29ER is the bike that takes us back to square one. With the White Rim we are going from 6" of suspension travel to 0" of suspension travel in a single leap. The White Rim is the bike that those Marinites wanted in the first place. It's larger wheels, using road bike rims, roll over small bumps as if they are not there. It has been called, "Simple, reliable, and timeless." At 21 pounds, it makes square one feel VERY round. 29 inch wheeled bikes are in their infancy (as of late 2006), so it is more than difficult to find a good production bike with reliable wheel componentry, so the White Rim uses Mavic "Asphalt" road rims to enable me to build strong enough wheels to be able to sell it and stand behind its performance and reliability. The bike industry jumps on a fad with all its force, but seems incapable of making the fad strong enough to take that weight. In the future, if the "fad" truly takes hold and 29 inch wheels are perfected, we may see a revolution in the downhill ranks. The bigger wheels, if we manage to see heavier rims and spokes, and the suspension components to match, could take downhill racing to a new level.
We love 69! In late 2006 Dreamride released the White Rim 69er, a modification of the White Rim 29er, substituting a 26" rear wheel for the 9er rear. The design returns to accurate gearing and offers far more snap in acceleration than dual 29" wheels. The design worked so well that in 2008 we created the F-69, a redesigned Dreamride Fully that accepts a 29" front wheel and 26" rear wheel. 5" of travel up front and 6" in the rear give this bike's unique abilities lots of leg room. The prototype became a revolution--each consecutive ride became more and more a revelation. The F-69 works so well that it has become the bike to ride if you want the unfair advantage, something I need at the age of 60 to compete with the 30-somethings. After all these years, this is truly the ultimate mountain bike, a gift for the future of the sport. The big front wheel rolls over trail obstacles and debris, while the smaller rear wheel offers quick acceleration when the trail starts to go up. The F-69 doesn't need to sit on your face to make you smile!
This is the hysterical moment--a fitting place to end the story. History is made like this--no shocking innovation, just a smart reconfiguration of what we have had in our possession for well over 100 years. The F-69 doesn't look like a giant roach clip and it is not made of toxic crap. It doesn't need flash, because it is a flash. There will be no fanfare, no huge article in a magazine to declare victory for the little guy. No advertising necessary! I am happy just to ride one. I don't want everyone to have one because my advantage will be lost. At the age of 60, I can say that the F-69 is the pinnacle of my life on a bicycle. Now to just enjoy riding it for as long as I can.
MORE OPINION, FACTS AND SENSIBLE BABBLE
SUSPENSION RANT | 29ER RANT | WEIGHT RANT
"This is a different type of guide book. This little gem has attitude. It's also packed with useful information for anyone planning a mountain bike trip to Moab, Utah. It is 300 pages filled with detailed descriptions of over 40 top Moab trails." ~ Mountain Bike Action
"Bridgers praises Moab, and he's set down some great dope on more than 40 major trails." ~ Outside Magazine.
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"Big, heavy, and opinionated." ~ The New York Times
"It's in incredibly bad taste. There are people who would like to see (the author) high-tail it out of town." ~ Julie Mueller, former head of Moab Chamber of Commerce -- we ran HER out of town!
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