Great! Someone Still Riding A Real Bike!

Patrick
Crossing the Bözingenberg in the early spring.
Crossing the Bözingenberg in the early spring.

In the last couple of months, I have put 543 kilometers onto my Stooge MK5. For the last two years, I wasn’t able to mountain bike as much. Now that I have spent more time on trails again, something strange has been happening with regular frequency. Hikers comment about the fact that I’m riding with my muscle-power only. I have been mountain biking since the mid-eighties, and while I rarely had a negative encounter with a hiker, most of the time I met a hiker, we briefly exchanged a quick "hello" or "good day." That was usually it. Now, I’m regularly applauded for riding without the assistance of a motor. Yesterday, for instance, someone remarked: “Oh great, someone still riding a real bike!”

Descending from Plagne.
Descending from Plagne.
Above les Roches de Plagne.
Les Roches.
Crossing the Bözingenberg.
Bözingenberg.
Crocus on the Bözingenberg.
Crocus.
Descending the Bözingenberg.
Bözingenberg downhill.

It left a grin on my face for the rest of an extremely tough climb. A real bike. So, in the eyes of that hiker, an eBike isn’t a real bike. It still has me thinking. Much may have to do with the fact that a human-powered mountain biker isn’t much faster than a hiker when a trail points upwards. An eBiker, by contrast, flies by with a greatly elevated speed. I don’t know what is going on here. I only observe that hikers have become much friendlier to a human-powered biker like myself ever since they have to share the trails with motorized bikes.

Climbing the Romontberg.
Romontberg climb.
Descending from Plagne.
Plagne downhill.
Bözingenberg trail.
Bözingenberg.
Climbing the Bettlachberg.
Bettlachberg.
On the way to the Schauenburg.
Schauenburg.

Offtrail.guru isn’t getting updated as frequently as I would like to, but sometimes there are other priorities in life. That’s just how it is. If I have more time to ride, shoot photos, and share them here, I’d like to bring a drone along on my cycling adventures again. I got my feet wet with one in 2017. In those five years, drones have become a whole lot better and a whole lot more reliable. But as long as I can’t dedicate any time to such a high-tech toy, I’ll keep following the drone market without actually pulling out my wallet to get one.

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Patrick

Offtrail Riding

Sometimes a bike comes along that totally changes the way you have been going about things. I started mountain biking in the mid-80s and have been practicing that sport very much the same way ever since. Sure, bikes got better, gained suspension and more gears, then in my case lost both while living in California. In 2006, 26" David was kicked off the trails by 29" Goliath, but none of that dramatically changed how and where I was riding.

In 2012 I decided that I wanted a fat-bike. I had been riding my 29er single-speed bikes in the winter and carried them a lot through deep snow. A fat bike would have me carry the bike a little less, so was my thinking. Most of the time I jump into a new bike category by buying an affordable big-brand production bike first. Not this time. I had Kris Henry of 44 Bikes build me a rigid steel fat bike. Construction started in the fall of 2012 and my first ride on my all-blue Big Boy happened at the beginning of March 2013.

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