Ray's Indoor MTB Park - Cleveland, Ohio

Nov 15, 2004

We came, we rode, we smiled.
It somehow seems appropriate that it was while making the 350-kilometre trek from my home in Niagara Falls, Ontario to an indoor mountain biking park in Cleveland, Ohio that I drove through my first snowfall of the season. It is, after all, the nasty winter climate that made Ray Petro decide to open [L=http://www.raysmtb.com]Ray’s Indoor MTB Park[/L], a 66,000 square foot North Shore-style playground in an old warehouse in West Cleveland.

Petro is a 38-year-old construction business owner who left a life of drinking, drugs and partying behind eight years ago in favour of a new addiction - biking.

“In 1997 I was going to be 30 and I decided the life of my 20s was going to kill me, so I thought ‘I’ve got to find something else to do’,” he said. “I was sitting in a bar and a guy was reading Mountain Bike Action.”

“That first summer, I was obsessed with it. I was the local bike shop’s best customer. I was like a kid in a candy store, but now I could afford to buy whatever I wanted. “Then fall comes and I’m flipping out. The weather turned nasty and I started getting into this funk,” he said. So Petro decided to take matters into his own hands. After years of planning, he decided to launch Ray’s Indoor MTB Park.


The first order of business was finding a location, and when a real estate agent showed him the 66,000 square foot brick building where Ray’s is now located, it was love at first site. The building couldn’t be any more perfect for what he needed. With massive glass windows on the roof, the building needs no lighting during the day as the natural light pours in to give the whole place a very outdoor feeling about it. Of course that feeling is also helped along by the fact there are hundreds of pine trees painting on the walls, artificial trees all over the three courses and massive amounts of rocks, logs and wood making up the various stunts and obstacles.


Petro took possession of the warehouse in August and immediately went to work – first bringing the long-empty building up to par, and then on the construction of the stunts. “There was a tremendous amount of work to do on the building because it was in really bad shape. It took us six weeks to get the building in shape,” he said. “I’ve been here everyday since Aug. 25 and I still run the construction business during the day. So it has been like having two full-time jobs.”

The stunts themselves were all built by a handful of dedicated volunteers who spent countless hours designing, building and test riding everything. “All I do is feed them, keep them in nails and wood and tools and they just show up. It’s amazing. They want to see it work because they want some place to go,” said Petro. The riding area is split into five main sections – beginner, sport and expert courses, as well as a trials area and a quarter-mile outer riding loop.

The building also has change rooms, washrooms, a huge indoor area to park your ride while you’re taking a rest, vending machines and more.
We visited the park on Nov. 8, about three weeks before the official open house to show Ray’s to the general public, but things were already looking nearly finished. Pricing for the park will be $9 US per day for riders who have purchased a $79 US season membership, which essentially just covers the extremely high insurance of this type of business. Non-members will pay $15 US. Is it worth it? After riding the various courses for nearly six hours, I can say it’s absolutely worth it.

BEGINNER COURSE:

Even for those of you who have no fear of gravity, the beginner course is a great way to warm up. It starts off with three small A-frames which lead to a long and bumpy log field. From here it’s up and over a rounded a-frame, then over a mini roller coaster. Next you hit a small berm, a pair of low wooden bridges, another berm, a low skinny, a nice wide teeter totter and then across another log field. Next up is a slightly higher wooden bridge with a turn on it and the option of taking an easy roll off or a skinnier log that can be wheelie-dropped. From here you ride through a rock garden, then across one last fairly long skinny wooden bridge and out the exit.
The nice thing with the beginner area is everything is no higher than about a foot and a half off the ground. So it’s safe for everyone, but still fun for more experienced riders because of how fast you can ride everything and launch off even the smaller stunts. The ground itself in the warehouse is not nearly as slippery as one would expect from a factory-type building. The floor is actually cracked and scuffed up considerably, giving lots of grip even at high speed.


SPORT COURSE

The average rider will find the sport area the perfect place to ride a tonne of challenging wooden obstacles while getting a workout at the same time. Despite the warehouse being flat, there are so many obstacles built into the courses that by the end of each run you’re definitely feeling it.

The sport area starts out with a long 2’ high box jump followed by a long sweeping berm. From here you go up onto the second-longest stunt of the course which starts with an up-down-up right handed bridge to a fairly wide log roll to a series of roller coasters. Next up is another long box jump, a fast right-handed berm and then a high box jump that (like all the jumps in the park) can easily be rolled. From here we have a super-fun off-camber elevated bridge that leads to an elevated teeter. The teeter drops you onto a figure-8 bridge, which leads to two more jumpable A-frames and then another berm. Next up is a high step up that can either be rolled or jumped, with a fun ramp or roll-down off the end.

The sport course then finishes off with the longest set of obstacles in the park. (Taking a deep breath) It’s a right-handed low-bridge to a skinny, to a low teeter, to a series of sharp elevated S-turns with very narrow shortcut options, to a wide suspension bridge to an elevated (YES elevated) berm, to a pair of challenging rock gardens, to a skinny suspension bridge, to a left-handed turning bridge, to an elevated teeter, to another challenging rock garden. Now if you can make it through the entire sport course without stopping and without putting a foot down then you’re a better man than I, and you’re definitely ready for the expert course.



EXPERT COURSE

Although this section of the park was still under construction when we visited Ray’s, much of the expert-level stunts were in place and rideable (just not necessarily by me). Here’s what was in place so far:

After coming off the sport course, you ride up onto a high platform and then roll back down the other side to give you lots of speed for a three-pack of large box jumps. These can all be rolled for those of us riding big-heavy bikes or just not skilled enough to get any serious hang-time.

As soon you finish the third box jump, you roll into the park’s signature stunt, a 12’ high berm that is actually egg-shaped, so it inverts beyond vertical near the top. It’s well designed so that experienced riders can fly through the berm at full-speed near the top, or learning riders can take it slower near the bottom.


From here, you hit two more box jumps and then up onto another small platform which leads to an elevated log crossing and then to an elevated double teeter totter. This drops you back down to the ground and then up onto a fairly low spider-web style skinny with different options of widths. Next up is a long turning set of skinny ladder bridges with various changes in elevation. They spit you out onto the park’s gnarliest rock garden and then a quick right hander takes you into my personal favorite stunt of the park, an elevated slider where you roll onto it, hit your brakes and then a platform rolls you down to another bridge.

From here you ride up a steep pitch and then can ride either a steep roll down or a split right-turn skinny with one four-inch wide path for your front tire and another for your rear tire. Both options connect back up again and set you up for a 3’ wheelie drop.
That was it for the extreme course for now, but even as we rode Monday, work was almost done on a turning teeter similar to the one planned at Whistler. You ride up on it and as it tips down, it also turns to the right side, meaning good balance and trackstanding ability is a must. By the time the park opens in two weeks, the whole extreme course will be completed and flowing like the other two courses.


The really fantastic thing about the way the entire park has been designed is how much flow there is. You could do a lap around the outer loop (with a few stunts out there to warm up) then hit the beginner, sport and expert all in one continuous loop. It would end up being more than a kilometre full of stunts and obstacles and you would definitely be tired by the end of it.

Because of the nature of the park, Petro wants to keep it more for riders 16 and over, though there will likely be some designated times for younger riders. If you’re there with a parent, younger riders will be permitted, as long as you adhere to the rule of no BMX bikes. You must have a mountain bike in good working order with a minimum of 24” wheels. Modified trials bikes are also permitted.
So you like what you see?

The good news is Ray’s is holding an open house Nov. 20 and 21 from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. This will be only to introduce people to the course, so no riding will be allowed except from a handful of demo riders. There will be registrations accepted during the weekend with a $10 discount offered on the season membership.

The park will open to riders on Friday, Nov. 26, the day after the American Thanksgiving.

Web site: www.raysmtb.com


For anyone in Southern Ontario, a bus trip is being planned from St. Catharines to Cleveland on Saturday, Dec. 18. For $95 (Canadian) you get a ride on a full-size coach bus (with bike videos playing on the way down and back), entry to the park, lunch on the bus going down there and pizza for dinner at the park. There will also be a time-trial race on your choice of the three courses and a handful of draw prizes.

For more information, email bikerider@cogeco.ca