I’ve made this claim often. I usually follow it with a disclaimer. I think there were probably several million American boys and girls who did exactly the same thing, invented mountain biking, that is. The thing is, unlike those cool dudes on Mt. Tam, we didn’t know we had something with commercial potential.
It would be fair to say that I invented mountain biking almost as soon as I learned to ride.
My first bicycle learning experience was anything but pleasant. My parents decided that, at age six, I should have a bike. I already had a tricycle, and I loved it. I would zoom around on that thing, having a grand old time. So it was decided that, for my birthday, I would have a bike.
My father is, shall we say, frugal. He saw no reason to go out and buy the kid a new bike. He found a used kid’s bike somewhere. It was a tank. Heavy. It had solid rubber tires. Dad painted it, and… presto! …birthday present. Did I mention it didn’t have training wheels? That monster was my first bike. It would pass into family legend. For each of my siblings, that was the first bike. As each child in the family approached their sixth birthday, the old 18-inch clunker got a new coat of paint, and became the next kid’s “first bike.”
Shortly after I received the birthday bike, the family noticed something. I wasn’t riding it. Of course not. I didn’t have a clue how to do that, and the trike worked fine. Something had to be done.
“Do you want to learn to ride your bike?” Mom asked.
“Yes, Mom,” I replied. (No was never an acceptable answer to this kind of question.)
So, with much promotion, the day came when Dad was to teach me to ride the bike. We spent an extremely unpleasant eternity at this task. Dad would push me down the (unpaved!) driveway, shouting, “Pedal! Pedal!” Then he would let go. Then I would crash. On the gravel. Blood. Pain. Crying. Eventually, Mom interceded. She could not stand seeing her number one son being gradually reduced to ground meat.
The next tactic was to take the trike away. I never noticed it. The blue bike languished. Occasionally, I would use it as a toy in some kind of play. This did not involve attempting to ride the thing.
We lived in hilly country, on a farm. That’s important. The farm had a barn. It was an old style fore-bay barn. Stables below, on the ground floor, and an earthen equipment ramp up to the large doors on the second floor.
I don’t know what possessed me. There was a day when no adults were around. I dragged the bike up the equipment ramp. That ramp had a rise of maybe ten feet, over a run of something like 100 feet, for a slope of around 10%. To me it seemed like Everest. I backed the rear wheel of the bike up against the barn doors, climbed astride, and pushed off.
There was a moment when I thought I had made a serious error. For an instant, it was sheer terror. But then… Nothing bad happened. I went down the slope, and coasted to a stop. It was fun! I did it again.
Gradually, I learned to brake, and to steer. My next move was to try something a bit more challenging. I wanted a longer ride. So, instead of traveling straight, along the drive, I turned and exited our property, onto the gravel road that led up to it. That road went down hill too! And there I was, bucketing and bouncing along, traveling down that road. It seemed like breakneck speed, and I love it!
That was how my mother learned that I could ride. She was coming back from market, driving up the road, when we met. She almost hit me. (Mom never drove any slower than she had to.)
It would be a while before I learned to propel the bike with the pedals. Or rather, it would be a while before I felt any desire to do so. Going up hill on that thing was out of the question, and riding it on flat ground, on gravel, was absolutely not fun.
A couple of years passed. We moved to the city. I got another birthday bike. This was what I refer to as “my first real bike.” It was a Schwinn. It was a real cruiser beast. Gas tank. Headlight. Horn. Baskets. Balloon type 26” tires. Fire engine red. I loved it at once. It became my constant companion. I rode it everywhere, and had many adventures on it.
Now fast forward a few more years. The family had moved again. Back to the Shenandoah Valley. There wasn’t a flat in sight. The old Schwinn was relegated to paper route duty, but I didn’t use it that way for very long. I found other ways to acquire capital. The bike was retired to the basement to gather dust.
There was a lazy summer afternoon, with a couple of friends. We were poking around in the basement. We came across the old Schwinn. By this point it had lost the gas tank, fenders, light, and a lot of the luster.
I don’t remember how the idea was born, but someone said, “We could take our bikes up into the mountains and ride down the fire roads!”
The baskets came off. Tires were pumped. The rusty chain was oiled. The bike was tossed in the back of the pickup. We collected a couple of the other guy’s bikes, and off we went.
Again, there was that moment of sheer terror. I’d pushed off, and rapidly gathered more speed than I’d ever experienced on a bike before. Remember too, this thing had a coaster brake. And that was it! But I did manage to control the beast, and eventually, several miles later, rolled to a stop, unscathed, but greatly excited. My friends had followed. Then we pushed the bikes back up the hill. We managed to make about three runs that afternoon. It was time consuming work going back up, but the ride down was worth it.
Somewhere along there we hit on the idea of bashing our way along trails in the woods. We also grew in number. Before long there were about a dozen of us. Gradually we beat the bikes up so badly that we couldn’t repair them. At the same time, girls and gasoline were calling us. But for a glorious time, during one golden summer, we had been mountain bikers.
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