Ramblings, Goings-On & Such

These two Gary Fisher riders are getting married, but not before they perform at the Super Bowl.

Mountain biking has finally earned a spot at the Super Bowl; Kona wants you to freeride with a conscience; and (here’s the warm and fuzzy ending) thousands of cyclists ride to make our world a better place.

Chris & Hannah: Truly a Match for Janet’s Nipple? The Super Bowl (for all you non-‘Mericans reading this column) is about as close a thing as the United States gets to a nationally-sanctioned religious event. It’s that special day when our country pulls together, abandons its many petty divisions, and unites in a grand effort to re-divide itself into just two, massive groups—bent solely upon destroying each others’ dream.

In plain-speak, the Eagles will be playing the Patriots next week.

Super Bowl XXXIX will be especially memorable to cycling fans around the world, not simply because it will be the first Super Bowl ever with a staggering (yes, count them!) four “X”s in its title, but because it’ll be the first Super Bowl to prominently feature mountain bikes.

Yes, when the Eagles of Philadelphia and the Patriots of New England face off in the glorious city of Jacksonville, two professional mountain bikers will jump their bikes—pulling back flips and Super Mans—in an effort to break America’s vicious cycle (play AYSO soccer at age 7, maybe play a sport in high school, graduate, get fat, get married, get fatter, watch football from couch while eating chicken wings, die prematurely of heart disease or diabetes, but not before producing off-spring that will do the same).

Here’s the deal: Shands HealthCare is holding a big shindig—the “Shands Super 5k Family Day”. The Family Day will serve as the kick off (yet more football parlance) for a week-long celebration leading up to Sunday’s big event. Gary Fisher riders, Chris Duncan and Hannah Steffens, will perform a mountain biking demonstration that they, and the organizers, hope will inspire attendees to abandon their sofas for bikes.

Garrett Hall of Shands HealthCare explains, “We hope that Chris and Hannah send a message that recreational cycling as well as jumping, when done safely, will contribute to the participants’ overall health and wellness. We hope that Chris and Hannah inspire young people to adopt cycling as a sport now, and continue cycling as they grow older.”

Duncan, a former X-Games stud, sums up his and Hannah’s motivation for participating in the Super Bowl kick off event, “Football is great as a spectator sport, but most people stop participating when they become adults. That is the great thing about mountain biking, you can do it your whole life. I’m excited about this venue because we get to introduce mountain biking and bike jumping to a whole new audience. Hannah and I love teaching people about the sport and hope to turn parents and kids onto bikes.”

Freeing Freeriding Just a couple of years ago only a handful of companies offered freeride bikes. Now almost every major bicycle supplier has at least one long-travel dual suspension bike and a couple dirt-jumping hardtails in their line up. While many bike companies have rushed to offer long-travel bikes to the public, only a select few seem to actually be putting any resources into ensuring that people who buy their freeride bikes, actually ride them in a conscientious manner.

At the bowl-a-thon. Is it wrong that I spent 10 minutes trying to read her tattoo?

If you sell somebody a six or eight-inch travel bike, there ought to be some authorized trail or stunt park where you can ride that bike to its limits, right? Well, in most parts of the United States, that’s still not the case. The industry sells the bikes, but if you simply start building dirt jumps, ladder bridges and the like on your local trail, you’re probably going to get the trail shut down for all mountain bikers.

This isn’t a rant against freeriding or the bike industry. Rather, it’s just a statement of fact: if we want freeriding (and mountain biking in general) to flourish, we’ve got to build our trails so that they last, so that they don’t destroy the environment and so that they don’t attract unnecessary amounts of attention from lawyers. The first step in this process is getting authorization to build the trails in the first place. Enter the Kona/IMBA Freeride Grant program.

For the second year in a row, Kona Bicycles is offering (through a joint program with IMBA) a number of grants to help folks get out and build authorized freeride trails on public lands. The grants can be used for a variety of purposes, including gaining land manager approval, addressing liability concerns, trail and stunt construction, trailhead kiosks and signs, and freeride organization building.

At this past Interbike show, Kona held its annual Buck-A-Bowl fundraiser. More than 500 people from the bike industry stormed the 70 lanes at the Orleans Casino. In the end, much malted beverage was consumed and an impressive $11,000 was raised to help you get your freeride on—the right way. Check out the IMBA website for details on how to apply for the grants. At the time of this posting, IMBA was still configuring the application process, so just keep logging on to www.imba.com/resources/grants/kona_fr_grant.html

Riding for a Reason 2005 marks the 14th year of the American Diabetes Association’s Tour de Cure. The Tour, in a nutshell, is an annual series of fundraising rides. Last year the Tour de Cure raised seven million dollars to help support the American Diabetes Association’s mission of preventing and curing diabetes, and improving the lives of the over 18 million Americans who suffer from this disease. Diabetes is currently the fifth-leading cause of death by disease in America.

This year, there will be over 82 separate Tour de Cure rides in 39 states. While the nature of the event varies to some degree from city to city, the basic recipe is as follows: each rider raises a minimum of $100 and then ride an either 100, 50, 25 or 10-mile route.

True, it’s not often that we use Bike Magazine or this website as a platform to promote this kind of event, because honestly, charity rides just aren’t as sexy and exciting as, say, Monster Park or the Red Bull Rampage. Plus, anyone who has done a charity ride (and I’ve done plenty) knows that many of the other event attendees will be riding slow; will not grasp the meaning of “On your left!”; and, finally, will insist on wearing the most angry, fluorescent tights that they could steal from Steven Tyler’s personal wardrobe.

Given all of the above, why would any “serious” cyclist do a charity ride? Because, most of us ride the other 364 days of the year for ourselves alone. We ditch responsibility, our spouses and the occasional Friday at work, in favor of mountain biking’s adrenaline rush. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you can ride for a different reason, for just one day of the year….well, you get the gist of where I’m going with this. I’m feeling like Sally Struthers right now and that’s not a good thing….So, if you’re interested in the Tour de Cure, go to www.diabetes.org/tour