Mountain biking is so dumb.

 

Yeah, that was me. I said that, partly because I think it's true, but mostly to get the goat of Mike and Ian, two of my favorite mountain bikers who were in the room when I said it.

I've always been a roadie, you see. Even when I owned a mountain bike and rode it, the smile on my face was mostly forced; there to mask the grimace underneath. Mountain biking looks fun, but it's so ... bumpy and dirty. Ew! Yucky. Tires slide. Trees and bushes reach out and poke, ticks and poison ivy are standing by just waiting to attack. And there are bugs. Lots and lots of bugs.

When I was racing road in college, I decided to give the mountain biking thing a try. Mike, Ian, Tom, Kenny  and basically everyone else on the planet really loved it. I don't remember how I got my first bike, but it was a year-old Specialized aluminum Stumpjumper hard tail. It had a pretty light "metal matrix" frame. It might have been the fancy and very racy S-Works model. We built it up with a decent set of components, I bought shoes,  pedals, and a Camelbak, and off we went into the beautiful mountain sides of San Luis Obispo.

And it was fucking terrible! Sure the bike was light-weight and it looked super cool. But it was also hard as a rock, like federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison. The suspension fork was hard and rubbery. The seat was also hard and rubbery. Every ride on it made me wonder why anyone would want to do this. There were roots and ruts strategically placed to suck the fun out of every ride, and there were even more bugs than I thought. So many bugs!

And to make it even worse, I found mountain biking to be  EITHER steep uphill OR steep downhill. But the thing about that is: I was a terrible climber (compared to all my awesomely talented cycling buddies like Mike an Ian, who seemed to have been born not from a womb so much as an altitude tent) so I got dropped on all the climbs. And the only thing that I was worse at than climbing? Descending! So I would get dropped on the climbs AND the descents!

Thankfully that bike was stolen out of my garage not too long after the first ride. Here's how much more popular mountain biking was than road riding at that time: the thieves didn't steal my Dura-Ace laden Kestrel 200Sci which was parked right next to it. What a bunch of self-mutilating morons.

About two years later it was time to graduate from college, and finish my road racing career. I was pretty burnt out on road riding, and by this time the latest and greatest mountain bikes had dual suspension. It seemed a bit excessive to me, but Mike and Ian convinced me to give it a shot. And it seemed like the kind of thing that would prevent the bike from trying to insert itself into my rectum. I got a screaming deal on a Specialized Stumpjumper FSR XC.

I barely finished test riding it in the parking lot when Mike snatched it away tossed the stock tiresreplaced them with some wider, cushier downhill tires (this was before downhill tires turned into fucking motorcycle tires).

Back at home Ian sat me on the bike and pumped up the rear shock to the appropriate level, and off we went. And holy motherfucking shit, it was a revelation. Suddenly, the bike wasn't trying to eject me from planet earth like a bull on Red Bull. The rear suspension did indeed take the hit out of all the bumps, roots, and ruts, the tires gripped nicely instead if ricocheting off of every little pebble. It didn’t change the bug situation, but I actually sorta kinda started to enjoy being out there on a mountain bike.

I was still living in San Luis Obispo at the time, which will always be a fabulous, beautiful, perfect place to ride both mountain and road, and I was surrounded by several mountain biking friends. I bought full fingered gloves and my own shock pump. We went on epic night rides through muted moonlit forests. And yet mountain biking never really set my heart on fire. Maybe I was burnt out on cycling in general after all that road racing. Maybe it was all that dirty dirt, and the fact that every damn ride I did really was uphill both ways.

Eventually I moved to the Bay Area (also fab for riding) where I sold my mountain bike to my friend Brian. Then I loaned the ol' road bike to Ian to take to Australia. I took a long cycling hiatus.

Fast forward to today - I've moved to Switzerland and started riding road again. I bought a fancy new road bike and have been riding once or twice per week. The hills around the mountains are a welcome change to the unending flatness of northern Germany. Road riding is celebrated here, and the mountain biking is supposed to be some of the best in Europe. And guess what I've had the urge to do! Yeah, that was me who said Mountain biking is so dumb. But now I'm in Switzerland and it seems I'm going to have to eat those words (and a lot more cheese).

I started poking around the bike shops here, beginning the investigation into mountain biking's current state of affairs. And I’ve found that it’s reached rather impressive technical heights. Everything is lighter and more solidly made. The bikes are turning into well-integrated cycling units, as opposed to a frame with a bunch of rattly crap hanging off of it. Specialized bikes basically have active suspension. It’s mechanically active, but with the rise of Di2 and power meters and wireless cycle computers that can all talk to one another, you just know that eventually the suspension is gonna wanna get in on the action.

So yeah, the bikes are better than ever before. But now there’s a thousand categories of bike to choose from. I remember when there was one category: mountain bike. Then two - with and without front suspension. Then there were hard tails and soft tails. But now, it’s Cross Country, Trail, Singletrack Trail, Technical Trail, All mountain, Gravity, Recreational, Race, Sport, Gravity, and Dual Sport.

Then the web sites asks me what kind of rider do I want to be and what kind of riding I want to do. Well obviously I want to ride cross country on a trail with some technical singletrack across all types of mountains, with occasional use of gravity for my own recreational purposes while feeling very sporty. But no racing, and only one sport at a time. So that narrows it down, I guess. Also sixteen inches of travel seems a bit excessive.

Price is a good way to narrow down the field though. I set myself a limit of 4000 Swiss Francs. Ideally that’ll cover the bike, shoes, and pedals. I’ve begun the investigation at several local bike shops. The good news is you can get a hell of a bike for 4000 Francs, and all the shops will let you take a bike for the weekend to try on the local trails. And I can go with my pal Pablo who lives nearby.

So far, these are looking promising:

Price Marathon

Specialized Epic

Specialized Stumpjumper

Canyon

The Santa Cruz Superlight also looks intriguing. But for some reason its price doubles on the plane ride over. I guess it flies first class or something.

And I guess mountain biking is looking a lot less dumb than it used to.