Bike Tribes

by Mike Magnuson

  What the rest of the cycling world wants from roadies is a bigger, warmer heart. We can hear the response, too: “What the hell are you talking about? I have a huge heart!”

  the Fast MTB Racer: FRANK

  Ultra lean.

  Mutton-chop sideburns.

  Fearless expression that could be construed as a smile.

  THOSE WHO CHASE EACH OTHER IN THE WOODS

  Under the red roof of a portable tent, Frank is pedaling on a road bike affixed to a stationary bicycle trainer.

  He has a couple of folding camping chairs in the tent, too, along with two Hardtail mountain bikes and some tools and a bike stand and a cooler. Frank is in his thirties, skinny, with muttonchop sideburns and a way of always looking like he’s smiling even when he’s not smiling. He clearly loves life and has not one ironic bone in his body.

  Near him, a kid in his early twenties—also skinny—is pointing a digital camcorder at Frank and conducting an interview. The kid’s name is Ronnie, kind of a celebrity on this mountain bike race series because he puts up a video blog a couple of days after each weekend’s events, along with results and links to pictures and other cool series-related stuff.

  Ronnie is narrating an interview with Frank now: “Frank doesn’t win every time but almost every time.” Frank smiles and rolls his eyes in an aw-shucks way and chuckles and shakes his head and takes a drink from a water bottle.

  Ronnie says, “So I’m just going to come out and ask you this. Do you think you’re the strongest rider in the series?”

  A drop of sweat falls off Frank’s nose, and he watches it disappear into the grass under his front wheel. He says, “Nah. I love racing these courses. I love the people who make this possible. And I’m out here to have fun. Period.”

  Ronnie says, “You’re awesome.”

  Frank keeps pedaling nowhere on his trainer and keeps smiling that smile that’s hard to tell is a smile or not.

  Ronnie says, “I can’t help asking: What are you doing on a road bike?”

  Frank smiles a real smile now and laughs. “This bike? This bike is my baby! I ride it all the time!”

  “A mountain bike racer?” Ronnie asks. “On a road bike?”

  “Most of the time, this is the bike I ride. Like tomorrow? I will be way too toasted and sore to take a mountain bike out on the trail. With the road bike, I can spin easy for a few hours and recover and not worry about concentrating on a technical trail. Know what I mean?”

  the MTB Racer Web-Media Guy: RONNIE

  Dogs off leash: This is what mountain bike racing is all about.

  Kids playing Frisbee.

  Frank shifts to a higher gear and maintains the same pedaling rate, revealing in his face the slightest suggestion of strain.

  Ronnie asks, “You don’t do road races, do you?”

  “No offense to road racers, but road racing is an entirely different situation than riding a road bike during the week to keep fit and recover. Check out the friendly scene here today.” Frank gestures to the cars and trucks and vans that have formed a small groovy village here in the field near this week’s racecourse. People are mingling and talking and checking out each other’s bikes and playing catch with Nerf balls and playing fetch with their dogs. “This is not an uptight scene. Racing bikes is fun in this series. But the roadies? When they race?” Frank pauses and shakes his head.

  Ronnie asks, “What about the roadies?”

  “Ah, nothing. It’s bad karma to speak ill of our fellow cyclists.”

  RONNIE TAKES HIS camera gear from Frank’s warmup tent and heads down the row of vehicles parked on this grassy field, filming as he goes. He stops occasionally to pan over the bikes, the people, the dogs, the kids playing hacky sack. He approaches another tent and wanders in and finds a man and a woman in spandex racing kit stretching on yoga mats. He asks if they would mind being on his video blog this week. They totally know who Ronnie is. Everybody in the series knows who Ronnie is, and Ronnie knows everybody in the series. So the interview is good to go.

  He introduces his interviewees—Henry and Linda. They are in their forties and are very fit and very smiley and very positive.

  Ronnie asks Linda, “How long have you been racing in this series?”

  Linda sits with perfect posture, with her legs straight in front of her, and she bounces them gently at the thigh. “This is my eighth year,” she says.

  “What do you like best about it?”

  “Gosh,” she says. “Can you feel the energy here? Everybody is so into it. So positive about it, too. I’ve tried a lot of other sports before getting into mountain bike racing—I ran, I played volleyball, softball, and so on—but the mountain bikers are by far the coolest people with the best vibe. You can literally feel the awesome vibe here each week.”

  Ronnie asks Henry the same question, and Henry shrugs. “Linda can do all the talking. I agree with everything she says anyway.”

  Ronnie laughs and asks Henry, “So how are you feeling about your race today?”

  “Stoked,” Henry says. Then he gets a more serious look on his face. “Okay, it’s gonna hurt because that’s racing, you know?”

  Ronnie asks, “You fighting for the podium?”

  “Fighting to keep my bike upright is more like it.”

  Linda says, “He crashed in our backyard just this week!”

  They both laugh and Henry points to a bandage on the side of his left leg.

  “Really stupid crash, too,” Henry says. “I was riding a wheelie for Linda—trying to impress her, you know, because she likes that kind of thing.” He elbows her and she smiles. “And I guess the wheelie was so good that I crashed into the flower bed.”

  “The flower bed is trashed, too,” Linda says, “but looks like Henry’s still upright and taking nourishment.”

  the Happy MTB Racer Couple: HENRY and LINDA

  Happy expressions. This is way better than staying home and watching TV!

  Enough bottles to stay hydrated for the entire race season.

  Team flag, just in case someone wonders who they are.

  RONNIE’S LAST STOP on his video tour is his own vehicle, a classic white Chevy Astro van that he only drives to the races because the rest of the time he gets around town via bicycle. He pops open the rear doors and removes his Hardtail mountain bike and sets it up on a stationary trainer and sets up a camera tripod in front of his front wheel and mounts the camcorder on the tripod. Then he climbs into the van and reappears a couple of minutes later in racing kit and mountain bike shoes. He hops on the bike and leans forward and turns on the camera and starts pedaling and speaking into the camera.

  “So here’s my deal this week,” he says. “I’m not going to do my usual sit-back-and-enjoy-the-race deal. Not this week. I’m going to go for it! Because that’s why we’re here, to go for it, right? I won’t win or anything—not unless everybody in the field drops out before the end—but I don’t care. I want to do the best I can today.” He pedals a little harder for dramatic effect, then eases up. “A couple of announcements: big trail maintenance nights this week, Tuesday and Wednesday, in my town. I will totally be there with a strong back and a weak mind! Seriously, if you ride the trails, you owe it to the trails to help maintain them.” He pauses and looks momentarily guilty. “Sorry. I’m off my soapbox now.”

  Ronnie reaches over his handlebar to the camera and turns it off and then begins pedaling with more energy. This is going to be a hard race today. He can’t wait for the starter’s whistle.

  The Mountain Bike Racer

  Like the roadie, the cross-country mountain bike racer is a competitive animal who wants to participate in a legitimate race, sometimes with prize money (though there’s usually not as much prize money as in the road world).

  Also like the roadie, the mountain bike racer tends to be fit and regimented about maintaining fitness, because mountain bike racing is tough and hurly-burly and dangerous, even though probably not so dangerous as road racing, if only because the
speeds aren’t as high.

  We have to dismiss consideration of the professional ranks here, which we don’t do with roadies because even the lowest categories of road racers consider themselves to be professionals. Obviously, on the top end of mountain bike racing, there is ruthless competition and people willing to do just about anything to win. But after that, things mellow out considerably and become, as you might expect in a sport that takes place on dirt, much more down to earth. For the most part, for the rank and file in mountain bike racing—the regulars in the local XC series, the people racing the team 12- and 24-hour events, the people racing the dirt crits—the vibe is much closer to what we find in a triathlon, which is to say the vibe is a form of tipping the hat to each other and appreciating that even though they’re racing against each other, they’re really all racing together.

  Yes, mountain bikers are happy to see each other at the races. They are encouraging to each other. They like each other. And when the time comes for them to head out into the woods with shovels and chainsaws and maintain the local trails, by God, even the strongest of mountain bike racers will be there to pitch in. True, they don’t really ride together in the way that roadies ride together—mountain biking is by necessity a single-file endeavor—but the community sense among mountain bikers is unmatched anywhere else in cycling.

  the Cyclocross Women’s Halloween Racer: Sally

  Smiling, but her eyes are fixed on the first stretch of the course.

  She jokes around like this at the starting line before every race. That’s her game face.

  Where’s the beer?

  WHEN IN DOUBT, CYCLOCROSS

  One drizzly Sunday in late October—the last Sunday in October, in fact—Sally hammers her cyclocross bike down the final 100-meter stretch of the course, the annual Halloween Cross.

  Everybody at the finish line—maybe 30 people—cheers at the top of their voices for Sally, not because she’s winning the race or even finishing in the top 10, but because she is dressed up as the Statue of Liberty, with the face paint and the robes and the rays of ethereal sunlight projecting from her helmet. On her robes and every part of her: grass and mud.

  She hears the cheers everywhere: “Lady Liberty! Way to rock it!”

  She crosses the line and pumps her fist and rolls to a stop off the course where the other ladies from her race are collecting: Mrs. Claus, Pippi Longstocking, Mrs. Grinch, a few cabaret dancers, Little Red Riding Hood. The only woman who has worn regular racing kit for this race, Dolly, the series leader, is nowhere to be seen. She probably won. She always does. Sally is never there to witness Dolly’s victory because she’s always a couple of minutes behind at the end. But who cares? Sally does the best she can each week, and that’s all that matters.

  Sally strikes up a conversation with Mrs. Claus, whose real name is Jane and who looks great in the Mrs. Claus suit with the red leggings under her shorts. Mrs. Claus has mud spattered all over her costume and all over her face, too. In fact, all the costumes and riders at the finish line are spattered with mud and grass and are standing around in the light rain with the same casual attitude as if this were a sunny day in June.

  “Oh my gosh,” Sally says. “That must have been hard racing in that suit.”

  Mrs. Claus says, “I was overheating big-time. Especially on the run-up. Talk about brutal.”

  The run-up was brutal indeed, very muddy, very steep, and very long. Sally was dreading it every lap. She says, “What about the downhill after that? I can’t believe I didn’t biff coming down that thing.”

  Mrs. Claus agrees and asks, “How was it racing in your costume?”

  “Really cold! Especially now!” She points to the goosebumps on her arms and shoulders to prove her point.

  Just now, more cheering erupts from the finish line. The Girl in the Gorilla Suit crosses the line with one hand on her handlebar and the other clutching a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

  Everybody’s laughing and clapping, and the Girl in the Gorilla Suit rolls to a stop and pulls off her mask and her helmet and reveals herself to be Terry, who is usually not in last place. The gorilla suit must have hindered her progress. She takes a huge swig from her Pabst and wipes sweat from her forehead.

  “What’s the point of a Pabst hand-up,” she asks, “if there’s no way to drink it?”

  The rain starts to fall a little harder, and not one person seems to care.

  Another Halloween Racer: MIKE

  Even face paint can’t cover up game face.

  After this race, I’m going to become a poet.

  Mike thinks there might be two laps to go in the Cat 4 open race at Halloween Cross—that’s the beginners’ race—

  and he should know for sure how many laps because the officials have a lap counter you can see when you go through the start-finish line on every lap. But when he went through that area a while ago, he was locked in a duel with Gene Simmons. Or maybe it was Ace Frehley. Who knows? And who cares? Mike was never that into Kiss back in the day. Nevertheless, a guy in a Kiss costume passed Mike at the end of the last lap and said something about rock ‘n’ roll or maybe it was about Detroit Rock City or maybe it was “They call me Doctor Love,” and Mike is not too thrilled with the idea of getting his ass handed to him by a guy in a Kiss outfit.

  Mike’s costume reveals his classical lack of imagination: He is dressed as a middle-aged, out-of-shape cyclocross racer—the costume he wears every weekend in the fall. He wonders, if he were wearing a cool costume—dressed as a cop or a Viking or an Imperial Storm Trooper or a hot chick in a bikini (please, no!)—would the costume change his personality enough to give him the strength and the resolve to chase down Gene Simmons and show him who’s the boss?

  Mike guesses he’ll never know. He’s bombing after Gene Simmons through a fun twisty wooded section of the course, and when Gene approaches a hairpin turn, he slows down and Mike draws near, and by the time Gene sprints out of the other side of the hairpin, he’s dropped Mike just that bit more.

  It’s hopeless. Mike sucks at ’cross. A guy in a costume can whip his butt. Yet here Mike is, like every week, getting passed and chasing after the rock ‘n’ roll of somebody else’s youth. Does this even make sense? Mike thinks it does, in a strange way that he can’t explain adequately to anybody but other ’crossers.

  At one corner, Mike yells, “Gene, you’re killing me!”

  Gene turns his painted face toward Mike and says, “It’s the shoes, man.”

  Indeed Gene has silver Kiss shoes rigged somehow over his mountain bike shoes, and it’s pretty funny. Mike has a laugh about it and falls even farther behind.

  He’s 20 yards behind Gene when they leave the woods and head into an open area in which one of the race teams—most of whom are drinking beer today and not racing—has placed a 10-foot length of 4-by-4 across the course. All these folks are in costumes—werewolves, Abe Lincolns, et cetera—and they’re yelling, “Bunny hop, bunny hop!”

  Gene bunny hops the four-by-four no problem, and everybody hollers with joy. Mike approaches and can hear the chant, and thinks about not doing the bunny hop and then thinks okay, he’ll bunny hop it, and in the indecision, he doesn’t lift his front wheel on time and ends up flying ass over tea kettle and landing hard on the ground. He hears the “Oooh” from everybody watching and gets up, and before he jumps back on his bike, he experiences a moment of profound spatial disorientation.

  Abraham Lincoln is close by. Mr. Lincoln says to Mike, “Don’t let that guy whip your ass. Chase him down!” Mike is stunned and unable to move. Abraham Lincoln? Why did he not say, “Four score and seven years ago”? Why not “A house divided against itself cannot stand”? Why not “In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God”? Why not the soulful gaze into Mike’s eyes, the look of compassion and understanding and wisdom and everything wonderful and true about dear old Honest Abe? Abe yells, “Don’t just stand there! Get your ass back on the bike!”

  Mike snaps out
of it and remounts and chases after Gene Simmons—he’s around the next bend, somewhere beyond the part of the course Mike can see—and it crosses Mike’s mind that he might be hallucinating all of this.

  Cyclocrossers

  Full disclosure: I, Mike Magnuson, author of this book, am a cyclocross racer.

  In this sense, you must take it with the proverbial swig of Belgian Chi-may when I say that cyclocross is the most totally awesome, most totally inclusive, most fun, most kick-ass, most A-I wonderful form of bike racing on the face of God’s green earth! For real! This is my considered opinion, and how the heck could I disagree with myself?

  For those of you who don’t know what cyclocross is (and it is always shocking to learn that not every cyclist knows), it is a form of bicycle racing on twisty mixed-surface courses—grass, mud, sand, gravel—usually between 2 and 3 kilometers per lap, and by rule, the racers are forced to dismount from their bikes each lap and hop over barriers or run up staircases or up hills so steep that it’s quicker to run up them than to try riding up them. Cyclocross is a fall sport, meaning the deeper into the race season, the worse conditions can get (sort of like football is in the grandest of the grassy venues of NFL football). ’cross is at its finest in rain and mud and snow and all manner of correlative slop, and oddly, the lower speeds and softer surfaces that result from these conditions make ’cross a relatively safe form of racing. When riders crash in ’cross, they almost always just pop right back up, unhurt except for pride, and start racing again. It’s slippy. It’s slidy. It’s stupid. It’s pointless. It’s lunacy. And in Belgium, cyclocross is the national equivalent of NASCAR in the United States!