Free Ride to Ride Free

By Michael Hermann; 1999, never submitted for publication.

RIDE FREE. Yes! It summons visions of freedom and pure cycling pleasure. FREE RIDE. Oh no, not them. Get those environmentally destructive punks and their god-awful bikes off my trail. What's up with that response? The freeride genre of bicycles is creating a stir in the cycling community. What intrigues me most is those who argue against it, those who see no reason for it to exist and cannot understand why anyone would want to ride such a beastly bicycle. The race crowd use descriptors like heavy and inefficient. The purists question why anyone needs that much suspension. Flatlanders can see no reason for a downhill design because they have no hills, up or down. To me, cycling has always been the pursuit of simple pleasure and personal challenge. I respect all cyclists even though certain genres are not my bag. But why does Freeriding create such a knee jerk reaction even within the ranks of the mountain bike community?

I was amused when I heard the term "Freeride". I've always known riders who built bikes of this style. They called them Bomber bikes, Big Pigs or Heavy Bastards. Loving terms, to be sure, but not exactly a great marketing angle. These bikes were built to explore new ground, they were designed to crash heavily, to ride off vertical drops and to be durable in the face of annihilation. The riders were usually aggressive bike messenger types and came from road, mountain or BMX schooling. This wasn't their only bike, it was merely another steed in the stable, a bike to play on when you didn't want to train that day. A bike to tackle the rock fields that you knew would destroy your racing wheelset. An extra bike that could be broken, and remain broken for weeks if you choose, without resulting in personal downtime. It was purely for Fun.

By demographics, I am not what the Freeride marketing machine caters to. I lack tattoos and don't pierce myself on purpose. My riding partners are 30-40 something who have trophies from the 70's. We rarely race but we often ride. We like high rise bars with more width. We like plush rear suspension. We like triple clamp forks with 100mm of travel. We like riding bicycles that remind us of the motorcycles we grew up on. We like the adrenaline release. It returns some youthfulness and puts a mile-wide grin on our faces. We don't mind taking longer to climb to the summit. We prefer conversation with friends and wives over an aerobic sprint on a 23 pound wonderbike. Our butts appreciate the whole concept of a swingarm and don't mind the weight penalty.

For lack of a better term my bike of choice today is a freeride bike. Yes, its heavy. But I rarely ride centuries anymore. Yes, its durable, so I rarely have to do maintenance. Yes, its fun. It rides up, over and down things that have been locally classified as "unrideable". When I ride my hardtail it feels too light, almost skittish and roadbikelike, and I miss my Bomber. When the group comes to a gnarly, rocky chute with two midpoint ledges we call the gauntlet, most riders dismount. My Bomber Bike smoothes out the roughs like a limo. The big drop is absorbed by plush suspension, saving my knees for more traditional tasks, like yard work.

As I get older I care less about money and more about time. I pay my local bike shop to do repairs I can do myself, but would rather be riding than wrenching. I don't judge the quality of my ride in miles, hours or new parts. My favorite trails are less than two miles long, extremely technical, middle/granny gear singletrack. It's classic Central Pennsylvania terrain. When we reach a section no-one can clean, we might spend an hour trying. One of us perseveres and makes it, resulting in hoots and hollers from the group: the ultimate trophy. Only a full suspension, long travel steed equipped with a low range of gearing could do that. Is it heavy? Yup. Is it inefficient? Maybe. But I suppose I am too, so we make a good match.

When we spin through the neighborhood after dinner we leave the bike paths and find the hidden dirt parks. We watch the next generation launching off the doubles, floating through the rhythm jumps and laughing all the way. They let us try, but we are old, and scared, but we still laugh. They dig the fact that we are adults and we support what they are doing. We dig the fact that they remind us of ourselves when we were building jump ramps and riding Sting Rays. There is a mutual respect. We are all cyclists. We are having fun. This is the spiritual essence of cycling and the soul of freeriding. We are free riders.