{"id":382488,"date":"2026-01-02T00:24:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T00:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/382488\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T00:24:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T00:24:14","slug":"all-my-friends-ride-mountain-bikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/382488\/","title":{"rendered":"All my friends ride mountain bikes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>All photos courtesy Anne Lassere<\/p>\n

Any opinions expressed in this article belong to the author alone and do not necessarily represent the opinions of Singletracks.com.<\/p>\n

I pressed my back against the tree trunk, hoping it was enough to hide me from their view \u2014 whoever was approaching with the click of spinning freehubs. I glanced at my companion-in-arms, Liz, who\u2019d taken cover behind a laurel bush. She gave a slight nod. Every muscle in my body tensed as the bikes came into view. The riders were chatty, oblivious, foolishly vulnerable. I reached into my bra, where I kept my ammunition: raw eggs.<\/p>\n

Liz gave a mighty yell and jumped into the trail. I followed her lead, hurling yolk-filled grenades at our opponents.<\/p>\n

\u201cRetreat! Retreat!\u201d They turned tail and pedaled away. We high-fived. We had defended our team with valor. It was the Fall Classic \u2014 an annual alley-cat race. It\u2019s a day filled with nonsensical tasks and ridiculous antics on mountain bikes. The best part is that all my friends are there.<\/p>\n

I have a lot of close friends. Some are younger than me, some are older. Richard, for example, is more than 20 years my senior. I witnessed his first and only tattoo \u2014 a bicycle on his upper arm \u2014 during a ride where we were dressed in leather and bandanas as a \u201cbiker gang.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We like costumes. Richard and I wore matching elf onesies for our holiday lights ride last year. Come to think of it, on the list of things that mountain bikers like, costumes are up there with stickers, trail beers, and discussing the friction coefficients of wet versus dry chain lube.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t see my friends who don\u2019t ride bikes anymore. What are they even doing? I\u2019ve completely forgotten how normal people spend their weekends. Wine tasting? Trivia nights? I have no idea. If an activity doesn\u2019t require a helmet, it\u2019s not worth my time.<\/p>\n

My bike friends and I like to play outside, even when the temperatures are horrendous. One night, in the woods, we declared ourselves lost. That wasn\u2019t unusual. I pried my water bottle from its frosted cage and held it in the beam of my helmet light.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s frozen!\u201d I said with a laugh.<\/p>\n

\u201cMine is too!\u201d my friend Tyler said. His shoes were wrapped in plastic grocery bags for added insulation, and they made a swooshing sound every time he pedaled.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere\u2019s a bit of courage.\u201d Someone to my left passed me a miniature bottle of Fireball Whiskey. It was not frozen. We all turned off our lights and took a moment to just be in the dark woods with our breath coming out in clouds. We tilted our faces toward the branches. A shooting star lit up the sky, and we gasped in unison.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s these magical moments that I will cherish forever, brought to me by mountain biking. It\u2019s mountain biking that puts me deep in the woods after dark. It\u2019s mountain biking that gives me a profound sense of accomplishment in building my skills. And it\u2019s mountain biking that gives me my friends.<\/p>\n

My friends are doctors, lawyers, farmers, and artists; all driven in their own way, all strong, but most importantly, they\u2019re all kind. See, mountain biking breeds a culture of care. We ride together, we explore together, we build trails together, and we crash together. And even when we\u2019re off our bikes, we take care of each other. I didn\u2019t have to cook my own meals for two whole months after a major accident last year. My community fed me.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing like chasing your friend\u2019s wheel in a party train through the trees at top speed. The wind on your face, split-second decision making, feeling like a total sender. It\u2019s still fun even when it doesn\u2019t work out.<\/p>\n

At the top of a muddy tech chute, Sam turned and said, \u201cLet\u2019s Blue Angel this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHeck yeah,\u201d Lee said. He went first, then slipped out immediately. Sam ran over him. When Lee stood up, a perfect muddy tread pattern from Sam\u2019s tire crossed the back of his jersey. We all cracked up.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to explain this kind of thing to someone who doesn\u2019t ride bikes: the pride you feel when you walk into a store with a dirt-splattered face, the hilarity that ensues when you get caught in a rain storm and you\u2019re slipping and sliding all over the place, how you feel the joy of a little kid when you hit that jump just right. When I try to explain these things to normal people, they just respond with blank stares.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou liked how you kept falling over?\u201d they\u2019d say. \u201cI don\u2019t understand why you take those kinds of risks.\u201d And I want to say to them, \u201cWell, I don\u2019t understand why your clothes are so clean, or why your hair isn\u2019t frazzled, or why you aren\u2019t bored to death right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be real. Mountain biking is not a reasonable sport, but it\u2019s the most fun I\u2019ve ever had. I didn\u2019t know what \u201cstoke\u201d was until I got behind a suspension fork and pointed it downhill. Because of mountain biking, I\u2019m not normal anymore. Instead, my life is filled with mud and grease and bear sightings, wild orchids in the spring, trailside berries in the summer, waking up in tents, and hiding bruises at my day job.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not normal anymore, and that\u2019s okay. That\u2019s fantastic. Because at any given moment, I can call up one of my friends and ask: \u201cWanna go out and play?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All photos courtesy Anne Lassere Any opinions expressed in this article belong to the author alone and do…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[3304,1331,6594,417,24878,68896,686,49,48,635,1911,24887,1178,24879,24877,23417,44,35800,24886,82,39],"class_list":["post-382488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-all","tag-article","tag-articles","tag-bike","tag-bike-blog","tag-bikes","tag-blog","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-friends","tag-mountain","tag-mountain-bike","tag-mountain-biking","tag-mtb","tag-my","tag-news","tag-ride","tag-singletracks","tag-sports","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}