Tag Archives: Mountain Biking

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Ray’s Indoor Mountain Bike Park

photo OK, so I am going into church this morning with my family, and my 18 year old son Jack and my wife Janet both comment on the length of my khaki pants. “Hey, where’s the flood dad?” ” Gee honey, those babies need a rest. I will cut them off for you.” Now in Chris Crowley’s wonderful book “Younger Next Year” http://www.youngernextyear.com he says that your clothes are not cool anymore, man, and you need to buy some new clothes. He is right but I draw the line in the sand with my khaki pants, stone washed shirts and hiking shoes. This is what I like to wear, and this is what I am wearing. But I guess they better be the right length. I already embarass my kid enough so I need to be aware that although I am the 58 year old kid, I can’t be the 58 year old dweeb with the flood pants. At the same time, it is a dilemma. I love to ski and ride my mountain bike and I keep in pretty good shape so that I can continue to do all of this stuff for a long time, just like the book says. But I can’t be seen in a snap back hat, sagging shorts, Adam Levine tatts on the forearms, or the thinly sliced, marrowless, ham bones pressed into my earlobes. I won’t be seen with the earbuds blasting Wiz Khalifa. No, I am hardwired with The New Riders, The Flying Burrito Brothers, The Byrds, Jerry and Mick. Sorry but there are lines in the sand that dictate that physically I can still sort of hang on the slopes and trails, but culturally, I am over the proverbial hill. I lost music with “Money is for Nothing and Your Chicks for Free”

So putting in reverse a little bit to last year, I find myself with my two friends JR Ellis and Patrick Heffernan at Ray’s Indoor Mountain Bike Park in Cleveland. I work with JR and ride mountain bikes with him and Patrick is my winter buddy as he is a snowboarder while I ski, and we also mountain bike together. Patrick is a year older than me although you would never know his age by his amazing athletic ability and his love for the outdoors. He and I feed off of each other and he is one of those guys my age who I really like for many reasons. But, our common goal is to stay fit and do fun things until they spread our ashes in the wind out west some day. In the picture above, Patrick is on the left and JR (the youngster at 40) is on the right with yours truly smiling as usual in the middle. The reason I am smiling is that Rays is a totally cool place where you can ride indoors in the winter. This facility is in an old warehouse in Cleveland. http://www.raysmtb.com The owners have painstakingly built a cross country course that utilizes two floors. They have a beginner course with obstacles that you can try and ride. They have a sport course and an expert course. The kids that work there and ride there are very nice even though I have socks older than all of them. I have never been called “dude” so many times in all of my life but always with a friendly and respectful tone.

So, JR, Patrick and I start on the cross country course and get warmed up and get used to riding on ramps and alley ways in an old warehouse. Pretty cool if you ask me. After we get a good lather on, we decide to go to the beginner course but most of that is fairly simple in that we ride a lot of that stuff outdoors already. We quickly go to the “sport” course where I encounter my first teeter totter. Now I immediately have a flashback of riding a teeter totter on the old Berkely Hills playground with my AMF Roadmaster bike with the baseball cards flapping in the spokes. I rode up the teeter totter on that playground and crashed on the other side more times than I care to remember but 50 years later, here I am doing it again at Rays. We took the big one first and then the more narrow ones and in a very child like way, we were proud of our ability to ride the teeter totters, the ramps, the jumps, and all of the other obstacles in the sport area. We even got some nods of approval from the younger set who saw us as kind of an anomoly seeing that we were probably older than their dads. Laughing, we moved to the expert room where we successfully navigated similar, but more difficult obstacles, and left the real hairy ones to the “dudes” with the youthful bravado and the BMX bikes. But, for a couple of older “dudes” we were pretty “rad” and were “stoked” to do well and have the stamina to ride this place for over two hours. Believe me, it took me back to that old playground and I wished that I had those old Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cards flapping in the spokes of my 29er mountain bike. “Hey Pat- grow up man” “Why should we?” Patrick and I always say “we may age chronologically but we will never mature.” We say that with tongue and cheek but in many ways it is true. JR just laughs at us and enjoys the scene. He is the most fit but he enjoys hanging with the old guys making a spectacle of themselves.

As we said goodbye to our new compadres and the nice kids that work there, everyone always is encouraging you to come back soon. We did and will be back as many times as we can because it is just so much fun. We now have one in Pittsburgh in Homestead that has 57,000 square feet of space and has been crafted by a real enthusiast, Harry Geyer. I don’t know Harry but I am anxious to meet him and try his new local spot,The Wheel Mill. I am sure that Patrick and JR will join me as we attempt their ramps and obstacles with the same enthusiasm as we run Ray’s MTB Park. I kind of laugh at myself with all of this and think just how long I will be doing this crazy stuff. Hopefully for a long time. “Peace out man” HAHA. Thanks for reading

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Risk versus Reward- Part 2

03jack395.2IMG00162 If you look at an earlier post, you will see the picture above of Corbett’s Couloir at Jackson Hole, Wyoming. This is a very famous ski run where the conditions dictate the severity of the descent. Sometimes it is full of snow and no issue, other times it is rock hard, very steep, and with rock walls all around, you have to really consider the first couple of turns. Now I referred to the situation of risk versus reward in cases like this especially for a 58 year old kid. Equipment, technique, and experience keep me in the game. But in some instances, we need to evaluate whether the reward is worth the risk of meeting the rock walls head on compounded with a slide for life? Most times, experience and mojo win out but there have been times when I have said…………nah………..not today. I remember having a bad feeling at Alta, Utah with my friend Eric Durfee as we traversed above a cliff area. We know Alta pretty well but this was new to us and as we went further accross the area, I had this eerie feeling that if we went down, we would not be in a good place. As it turns out, we turned back and when we looked at it from the chair on the next run, Eric said to me that had we continued, we would have faced an 800 foot drop and most likely would not have been able to climb back up the area to safety. Sometimes, you have to go with your gut!

Now if you look at the next picture, you will see another condideration that I have faced when mountain biking out west. There are big cats out there who are rather fickle in their approach to humans. Most often they avoid us but sometimes, we may look appealing around their feeding time. I have a T-shirt which says,” Bears like me………I taste like chicken.” Bears are one thing and black bears generally avoid you but I am not so sure about the feline 150# muscular killing machines that roam the ledges of the American West. Again- it is a risk versus rewards situation in that you would love to ride some of the remote trails in the region but when these signs appear at trailside, you pay attention. I either ride with someone or I ride trails that are fairly well populated. A couple of years ago, a group of us entered a trail running race called the Colorado Relay. It was a 24 hour team relay that went from Georgetown, Colorado accross 4 passes and ended up in Carbondale. We all had to do some night laps with headlamps and I don’t mind saying that I thought of this sign during the remote evening runs. Fortunately, there were enough other runners to make it relatively safe, but nonetheless, it was a risk versus rewards consideration at the very least.

Rattlesnakes are another risk versus rewards consideration when hiking, or mountain biking in the west. As the signs usually say, they are members of the community and to be aware of their presence. We are to respect them but there are trails where you just can’t help but run into them. I have given them a wide berth and I never get close to them. They don’t like me and really want to avoid me, and the last thing I want to do is bother them. You have to be aware if you venture into snake country. Beautiful rewards of great vistas but the risk is ever present.

Bottom line here is that common sense is a value that I have developed over my 58 years of adventure. My experience tells me that I can handle challenges on the slopes and trails but common sense tells me that sometimes the risk is not worth the reward. I have to work, I have to live to ski or ride another day. Sometimes that ultra steep rocky descent on a mountain bike may be great bragging rights in the bar at night. But the peril of a broken collar bone or worse may be a consideration especially to a 58 year old adventurer. Don’t get me wrong, I still like challenges and adventure but I have learned to temper my zeal with common sense and look to the bigger picture. My wife and son are always glad that I return in one piece. I like the challenge of skiing steeper terrain and riding for exercise. I leave the hucking to the younger generation. I am amazed by what I see these days on You Tube. There is a lot of bravado and perilous decisions that make the videos and the rewards are often just the fact that they can be seen by thousands on You Tube. What is done on a mountain bike and on a pair of skis these days is really amazing considering I thought a back flip by Wayne Wong when I was a kid was out of this world. Now they are flipping off of 80 foot cliffs and skiing away from it. They are jumping the same types of distances on long travel bikes, landing it and riding away. Unreal. Not for me. I am a kid at heart…..but nonetheless a 58 year old kid who knows better. Thanks for reading and have fun but use good judgement.

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The Month of Mud

DSC_0099-Lphoto So I buy myself a mountain bike right around the time that I was first married. The technology in the 80s was primitive compared to today but nonetheless, I was riding a steel frame, straight fork(shocks for mountain bikes were not invented yet), cantilever front brake and “U” brake for the rear wheel. The worst invention of all time seeing that the “U” brake caught all the mud, sticks, leaves, gum wrappers, and anything else it could suck up on a ride. I was in virgin territory in the woods of North Park with my new mountain bike.

Fast forward, the competitive juices started to flow again and the next thing you know, I am in a series of local mountain bike races called” The Month of Mud.” Now my friend Gary Bywaters started this frivolity and all of us local road riders and racers got involved and it was off to the races with a sport and competition that would keep me occupied up until the present time. None of us knew what we were doing in those days and the following is a synopsis of the flavor of “Mud”

The Brothers Grimm Venue- this was a track of land that had home made trails near the airport with a stream crossing that became a nemesis to many of us. As we watched Jay Humphreys fly through the stream, we were all inspired until I dropped my front wheel in a hole and catapulted over the handlebars, face first into the creek. Soaked to the bone is not the way to continue a race in 40 degree weather but I persevered along with the other poor saps who shared a similar fate

Trax Farms- By had us riding through the pumpkin patch with a climb that had us all jostling for position so that we wouldnt be sent off into the rotting pumpkins and cow patties. It was here that Joe Papp got his indoctrination to bike racing. Joe has achieved some notoriety as a road racer and some not so good publicity in the performance enhancing drug scandals. But suffice to say, after his mom dropped him off, the old guys took him under our wing and jump started him.

Knob Hill Park- this swamp of an area out north of Pittsburgh was notorious for soaking us to the bone in very cold conditions. By thought it would be funny to place pink flamingos along the course which drew some laughs from the crowd but didn’t serve any more than a reminder that this venue was anyting but tropical. During one race, I got lost and took a bunch of guys and Diane Blackburn, the women’s champ with me. The guys were cool as we made our way back to the course but Diane ripped me from head to toe. I gradually got to know her better but she was frightening on that day.

Brady’s Run- this place always was cold and had a real steep climb in the beginning. Sidebar- I was jostling for position on the first climb and squeezed Matt Eaton, the National Road Racing Champion off the trail and down into the woods in a heap. I felt terrible as Matt was new to mountain biking. I apologized later and Matt being the gracious soul that he is with his British upbringing, told me not to think a thing about it. I remember during the incident looking to my left at Larry Lynch after my misplaced elbow sent Matt flying and saying” National Road Champion………..HE GONE!!!” This crazy place always got snow which sent a lot of us over the bars on this off camber downhill that we lovingly called the “Descent of Death”. Any precipitation at all would turn this trail into a slick, slimy path of destruction.

For all of this trouble, mud, cold, snow and freezing conditions during the fall, By would have a rousing awards celebration with awards of the highest quality. First place was usually an apple. Second place was a bannana, and in third you were usually awarded a rock. If you were looking for good prizes in the late 80’s and the seminal years of the Month of Mud, you were in trouble. In following years, By would take some of his old race walking trophies and turn them into series champion trophies. Once you wiped the cob webs off of them, they were actually a decent memento of all the sweat, grime, broken chains, flat tires, snow, freezing rain that was the Month of Mud. Lots of racers of note got their start in the MOM. Gunnar Shogren- who eventually rode professionally for GT showed up from West Virginia. He would bring Rob Acciavatti and Susan Haywood with him. Sue was young and eventually rode professionally for Trek. Another kid would show up from Lancaster and slay all in his jeans and bike jersey. He was Mennonite and didn’t let anyone see his legs because that would not be modest. How things changed from those days for Floyd Landis who won the Tour De France only to be stripped of his title for taking testosterone as a performance enhancer. Yes, Floyd got his start in Western Pa with the Month of Mud and Jim Sota’s race series at Hidden Valley Resort called the Fat Tire Stampede and Fat Tire Fallout.

Local heroes also got their start at the Month of Mud races. Tim Sweeney, Barry Jeffries, Scott Root, EJ Sigety, Jonathan Moran, Chuck Grenlee, Sam Dyke from West Virginia, and a host of others who went on to race at NORBA events and other regional battlefields. Even John Humphreys, Larry Lynch, John O’Toole, Bob Bannon and yours truly battled it out in the veteran’s division back then. We had a blast heckling each other each week only to vie for the coveted apple in our age group.

Today the Month of Mud is a well organized series.  http://www.monthofmud.com   The hard work of Gary Bywaters in the early days spawned a wonderful series that is now sponsored by bike shops and manufacturers supplying the bike industry. The prize pool has significantly improved( no offense By). But as I see the younger, fit, lycra clad generation battling it out these days, I think back to the good old days when a bunch of young kids and older guys peddled and pushed their way to local glory on the trails of Sunday morning. A lot of us are still at it. We may not be racing any more but we love to ride our mountain bikes. Pleasant rides in the woods, no cars, nobody running you off the road and throwing chipped ham sandwiches at you and calling you names( yes- that happened to me. The sandwich had mayonnaise on it too!!) Go out and ride. Thanks for reading.