Get off the Couch - Part 1

Visiting the site and thinking about getting into riding? Find the sport overwhelming and don't know where to start? Let Pinkbike help you get off the couch and onto the trail with this new series of articles written by an aspiring rider. In this issue: Time to Get off the Couch!

Your First Ride Since…?

We used to build ramps, and when they were successfully negotiated, they were called jumps. I would head out in the neighborhood after school on my leaden Raleigh 'Red Baron' BMX (pops wouldn't spring for a cool bike like a Factory Kuahara, GT, or Mongoose) and meet up with friends, to assemble those aforementioned accidents waiting to happen. We would spend hours cruising around the 'hood, repeatedly launching our steeds off the devices, their crude construction usually being a sheet of plywood nailed to a piece of firewood or anything else suitable that we could steal from the old man's garage.

Reeking neighborhood havoc wasn't the only thing that my wheels were good for, and my bike and I soon turned into a revenue generating team. I was now capable of distributing junk mail at lightening speed to the people whose car tires I helped pop when I left the nail extruding ramp out over night.

Later on in life, I out grew my BMX and graduated to the latest trend. A mountain bike. At the time, fifteen speed road bikes and BMX's were falling out of favor and stores were stuffing the shelves with mountain bikes almost as fast as parents flocked under pressure from their whining kids to buy them one. I don't think anyone knew what to do with them really, certainly no one I knew thought to throw themselves down the side of a mountain on one. But they were cool, so I like the rest of the kids, had to have one. Mine was a Zellers 18 speed Venture. It's frame big, heavy and butt ugly brown.

My bike and I would really go places, and in high school it was a serious precursor to car ownership. I used it to get me to school and back, and in the evening to get me to my part-time job. I would ride approximately thirty kilometres a day, as my friends cruised by in their AMC Pacers and other early domestic throwbacks purchased shortly after some under paid, life-risking sucker at the department of motor vehicles granted them a license.

High School came to an end and with it came in a new era of transportation, I had to break down, and like my friends with wealthier parents, get a set of fossil fuel burning wheels to get around with. And so I abandoned my pedal powered cruiser in the garage and started driving. My bike riding days were over, or at least I thought.

During the past few years that I have been hanging around the Pinkbike crew, I have been inspired by how much the sport of mountain biking has evolved. I found it hard to take it all that seriously though, and I couldn't help but suffer from sticker shock when I heard about how the rate of inflation that has affected bikes since my days of riding my Zeller's special. Besides, I haven't ridden a bike it about ten years, there's no way I could posses the skill or 'nards required to ride the stunts pictured in the Pinkbike videos. The pedal jockeys featured clearly require some level of mental insanity that I prided myself in not having in my early adulthood.

My view of all this changed however when I traveled out to Calgary to help the Pinkbike crew throw the First Annual Frozen Foot Festival. Manning the video camera, I got to witness first hand and up close the skill of the riders, professional and amateur, young and old, local and from out of town as they fearlessly threw themselves down the hill at Canada Olympic Park on runs usually reserved for snowboarders and skiers. In amongst the age and skill scale I determined there might in fact be a place for a rusty rider like myself.

Watching the participants huck themselves over the table at COP before seven hundred plus spectators set something off in me, perhaps it was the desire to regain the freedom of cruising around on my bike. So after ten years I found a new use for the simple machine that helped me deliver papers and get to school. That use is strictly for fun, and with that in mind and Mastercard in hand, I visited the boys at Calgary Cycle and purchased a Santa Cruz Bullit outfitted with a Boxxer front fork, Hayes discs, 321 Mavic rims, and a Raceface bottom bracket. A bike that currently holds more potential than I do, hopefully that will change.

The reason for writing this series of articles you ask? To put it simply, to help get people off the couch and back on a bike. The fact is that there are so many people out there like me who have decided that mountain biking was too expensive or was to be abandoned with their earlier youth. That simply isn't true; I admit that my Bullit is probably a bike that most won't purchase as their first rig due to its price, but the selection of rides at your local bike shop can satisfy any budget or style. After all, how much does it cost you to go skiing for a season? At least you don't require a season's lift pass to go riding. (Well not most places ) Try trials riding in town, the admission fee is much less than a puke pass to the local amusement park. Even if you figure all balls out downhill riding will void your life insurance policy, getting out there and riding cross-country allows you to gain exercise and see things from a perspective not offered by other forms of travel. Who knows where riding will take you, so get off the couch and share the ride!

In the next issue: Selecting and Building Your Ride

Editors Note: Russ Day is a rider living out in Chilliwack, BC, Canada. You can find him rippin up the trails on Vedder Mountain and the surrounding areas, honing his skills and confidence, and enjoying the sport that so many have come to love. Thanks for taking the time and writing the sweet article and hope to see more soon.

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