How I fell in love

With mountain biking.

It was in college I became enamored with mountain biking.

I remember sitting at my desk at the house I lived in with three other dudes. It was a four-bedroom, one bathroom Cape Cod with two stories. I lived on the main level, in a small room next to the bathroom.

It was a Friday evening when I got distracted from studying. I was browsing videos, mindlessly, on Youtube and somehow stumbled on Red Bull Rampage 2012. Before clicking, I had never been exposed to that kind of riding. Something magical happened to me when I watched those guys snake their way down the red buttes of Virgin, Utah. It was mesmerizing.

It was like I opened Pandora’s Box that night. I remember having dinner plans and being late because I couldn’t stop watching. When I got there, I told everyone about what I had just watched and how I was going to start doing “real” mountain biking.

I didn’t have the language then, but I was stoked.

I had a 26-inch full suspension Walmart Mongoose bike at that point — a bike my dad bought for me on a whim one day after he realized I had outgrown, and outridden, my kid bike. So the next day I went out to the nearest trail I could find and I started jumping every root and rock I found. I rode as often as I could. I didn’t track my rides. I just pedaled until I couldn’t anymore.

And then the front brake went out. I tried fixing it myself and failed. I think I bought the wrong part. I didn’t have money. So I rode for a while without a front brake.

By the time I graduated college, I had a road bike. I still got out to the trails whenever I could, but the road bike provided a way to go farther and a community. (Mountain biking isn’t the default around here because Ohio isn’t very mountainous.)

So today’s post is to pay my respect to Red Bull Rampage, which is set for Friday, Oct. 21. You can bet your butt I’ll watch it and most likely be late (or absent) to whatever else is planned for the day.

Here’s a little sneak peek into what Red Bull Rampage is all about, if you’ve never experienced it before. This video dropped earlier this month and it features Brandon Semenuk, a 31-year-old Canadian freerider who has won the competition four times — the most wins of anyone since Rampage started in 2001. (The dude is a freak. He was 17 when he won his first Rampage in 2008.) With multiple wins in various freeride competitions, he’s considered to be one of the best slopestyle/freeride mountain bikers in history.

Enjoy.

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P.S. Thanks to everyone who voted for their favorite Weekly Cyco Gallery bike. The one with the most votes went to Mike Jarosick’s pic of the blue Lombardo leaning up against a wall in Ireland. I’ll catch up with him and get the story behind that photo and include it in a blurb with WCG vol. 2, dropping Friday, Oct. 21 around lunch time.

P.P.S. I will still publish a newsletter on Wednesdays. The WCG is something new I hope to continue. So now all you cycopaths get to hear from me three times a week. Lucky you!