Ryan Cleek: getting meditative on bikes
An MTB documentarian reflects on crashes and life and art
Imagine going to live on a mountaintop by yourself, forever. You build a home that no one will ever visit. Still, you invest the time and effort to shape the space in which you’ll spend your days.
The wood, the plates, the pillow — all magnificent. Curated to your taste.
This is the essence of great art. We make it for no other purpose than creating our version of the beautiful, bringing all of ourself to every project, whatever its parameters and constraints. Consider it an offering, a devotional act. We do the best, as we see the best — with our own taste. No one else’s.
We create our art so we may inhabit it ourselves.
Rick Rubin — The Creative Act: A Way of Being
He’d ridden it thousands of times before. He felt good. The lines came easy; the flow followed. Until it didn’t. Something happened and suddenly the flow — the effortless flow he’d worked for months to achieve — bucked him forward while in midair. He held on, not just to the bar, but to the hope this moment wouldn’t destroy it all.
Ryan Cleek was about to crash his YT Tues Pro DH bike. Hard.
PROFILE
Ryan Cleek
Age: 46
Residence: Reno, NV
Occupation: Self-employed
Family: Girlfriend and girlfriend’s dog.
As a 20-something intern at a book publishing company, Cleek skipped lunch with coworkers to surreptitiously send an email to Mountain Bike Action. Little did he know that email would change his life.
Cleek graduated from Butler University in Indianapolis (his hometown) with a degree in journalism. Naturally, the magazine gig was a fit. It also fit his lifestyle as a budding mountain biker. At the time, he’d just started getting into mountain biking — riding local trails solo, before he had any friends who also dabbled in the sport. It reminded him of his BMX days. Just without the stress. He had raced BMX all over the country from a young age. At 15, he was done.
“I was so burned out. It was only pressure, no fun,” he said. “I didn’t enjoy it. And I didn’t think I’d touch a bike again.”
At 18, he hurt his knee during his last high school football game as a senior. He tore all the ligaments and the meniscus. Couple years later, he turned on the TV one day and flipped to ESPN, which just so happened to be covering the 1997 World Cup MTB Downhill Slalom.
He recognized a man he used to race against in BMX.
“He’s the same age as me, maybe I’m six months older. I thought, ‘I could probably do that.’ Now, I mean I could have never guessed my life would revolve around the sport,” he said.
Cleek ended up working for MBA for 11 years, primarily as a writer and photographer covering some of mountain biking’s largest events around the globe. He lived in L.A., loved his life, worked to develop the craft that would later move him to Reno to risk it all on his own.
In 2003, so three years into the mag gig, he started a feature-length documentary film with his friends/roommates/coworkers, Brian Reid and Derek Hoffman. They called it “Downhill Speed” and it featured BMX racer Eric Carter, Johnny Waddell and Orlando Martinez.
The DVD came out in 2005. It received moderate success, but it introduced Cleek to a form of journalism he enjoyed and that would later serve him. By 2011, he was ready for a change.
“I was done with the magazine. There was nowhere to go vertically,” he said.
So he got a job working for Specialized as its in-house creative producer. It was at this gig he worked on “Reach for the Sky,” a full-length documentary about professional freeride mountain biker Cam Zink.
According to a story published in Mountain Flyer’s most recent issue, Cleek edited the entire movie from his kitchen table from October 2014 to October 2015. He had left Specialized due to a family emergency and desire to finish the film.
It won Best Documentary at the L.A. Film Fest and Red Bull licensed it to stream it exclusively on Red Bull TV for three years. But it was eventually shelved by Red Bull because of Zink’s sponsorship with Monster, the energy drink’s rival.
During those three years, he worked freelance and promoted the movie — but he needed consistent pay. He landed a job with BMC, a job he held for two years and where he developed a plan to launch his own production company.
In 2020, he did it. He moved to Reno and launched his own production company, Ryan Cleek Studios. Days later, the world shut down and canceled all his projects.
In November 2022, Cleek got a new knee. He had it with the pain and plateauing. The surgery went well and so did the recovery. He committed to strength training six days a week so he could be competitive in downhill MTB again, a sport he felt he could never really get to a level he knew he could achieve. Too much pain in the knee. Too little strength for all those years.
Six days a week, he hit the gym. His routine: wake up at 5 a.m., do some administrative work at the desk until around 8 a.m. Then, he’d go for a ride. Reno is close to dream riding near Lake Tahoe. Basically in his backyard. He’d ride for about two hours before coming back home to do some desk work until around 4 p.m.
“Then, I’d go to the gym. And that’s been the routine all summer,” he said. “Just to get back, to really see how I could do with two legs for the first time. And I saw a lot of success.”
After experiencing a good start of the season, Cleek determined to race Northwest Cup in Washington — a race he’d competed in about a decade ago.
A day before the race, he took a practice lap at Northstar Bike Park on a loop he’d ridding a thousand times before. The something that bucked him forward midair was his 29-inch wheel that tapped his butt, knocking his balance.
When he hit the ground, he fractured his pelvis and broke four transverse processes, those wing-looking things on your vertebrae. He also broke some ribs.
All that work to get to a spot where he could compete at a level that felt good — gone. For now, at least.
“I’ve already set a goal,” he tells me.
He wants to race Bootleg Canyon, a downhill race just south of Las Vegas in January.
“It’s circled on my calendar,” he says.
Whether it’s a skipped lunch, a career shift, moving to Reno, a pandemic, or broken bones — Cleek’s weathered the storm. But he’s here for it. Because riding a mountain bike is about taking risks and riding out the good and bad consequences.
When I asked Cleek to define the ineffable joys of riding a bike, his answer made me think about the interconnectedness of riding bikes and life. About how mountain biking, in a way, found him. Gave him a voice and a platform for expression. It gave him the tools for which to build his home atop a mountain.
“It’s an under-appreciated form of mindfulness.” He said climbing on the bike is when he deals with all the “bullshit: budgets and scheduling, all those issues.”
“And I’m sweating and it’s hot. It’s almost like an intentional suffer fest. And it’s a chance for me to think through … like a dialog section on a film project, and I’m not sure what the next scene is. And sometimes it just comes to me when I’m riding.
“And then when your descending over gnarly stuff at speed … and having a clear mind to everything around you? That’s how, like, I look at meditation.”
And so it all comes full circle. The universe gives to him the pastime of mountain biking; he gives back by capturing those meditative moments with a camera.
Home.
Thanks for reading today, cycopaths. Check out Cleek’s work here.