Page 38 - the NOISE June 2016

the mountain bike, northern arizona,
Tand one famous Race
story by kyle boggs Ken Lane “Cosmic” Ray Elson Miles
he mountain bike was never invented, no precise moment when it came into existence.
It also enabled Flagstaffians the possibility of commuting by bicycle all year, throughout the winter. Mr. Miles remembers, “all of a sudden it was cool that you could do this.”
Mr. Brutti resisted the label “mountain biker.”“I’m a cyclist. I love bikes. I ride a road bike; I ride a touring bike; I ride a mountain bike,” he said. “There are all kinds of different aspects to the bike culture, and it’s all good. All bikes are good. Some people put down hipsters, saying ‘they are all about having pink wheels and green hair’ and what not. Hey fine, as long as they’re on a bike. Whatever,” he said.
There are many details that converge in Flagstaff to make mountain biking exceptional. Mr. Lane said, “I think that what makes Flagstaff so great for mountain biking is that you don’t ever have to put your bike on the car. No matter where you live in this town, you can be out on a trail within a couple of miles, maybe even less. There are great towns that have great mountain biking, but there are few with this great of access to mountain biking,” he said. “Once you get out of town on a bike, it goes forever. you can go 100 miles in any direction, and just be riding dirt roads and trails.”
Mr. Miles agreed.“The nice thing about Northern Arizona I think for a lot of people is that you can go some place and you can be alone, and you feel like it’s all yours,” he said. I mean that’s maybe a possessive way of looking at it, but I mean, you don’t have to be concerned about other people.”
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t controversy within cycling communities in Northern Arizona. “There is a lot of underground trail building going on. In Sedona, it’s become a huge problem,” Mr. Lane said, but stopped short of saying it’s a problem in Flagstaff. Mr. Miles said that the erosion caused by the existence of one road — such as Elden Lookout — didn’t compare to bikes on a trail. “Horses are actually much harder on the trails than the bicycles,” he said. “But they’re grandfathered in; we are not.”
Mr. Lane said there is a controversy right now in Flagstaff, and elsewhere, about downhill bikers, and gravity riders (those who shuttle up in a car and ride down) that has divided cyclists. “There is a small camp of people who want to get gravity riders eliminated from the forest
because they think they’re doing all the damage, which is a crock of sh*t, really,” he said.
Mr. Miles said there is obviously more wear and tear on the trails because of an “incredible explosion” in outdoor recreation. “Not just bicyclists, but horseback riders, and motorcyclists, and ATVs, hikers, everything you can think of,” he said. “They’re just out there in force and everything is going to start showing more wear.”
It was clear that Messrs. Lane, Miles, and Brutti simply want to see more people on bicycles. Mr. Brutti recalled riding to Coconino Community College with his daughter the day before, and seeing a new three-tier parking garage. “Everyone is learning how to be a grown up and that means they’re driving their cars into a parking lot, and in a few years they will be driving into a big parking lot where they work and they will be successful drones, making their money and keeping the whole car economy going,” he said. Mr. Miles similarly griped about the new parking garages at Northern Arizona University. “They’re the tallest buildings on campus,” he said.
As an owner of a bike shop, Mr. Lane recognized how the mountain bike has more recently influenced bicycle design for commuting more comfortably in urban environments. “Mountain bike technology has gone into city bikes and commuter bikes, which is really a big direction that the whole industry is going now,” he said. “And that is really a good thing if we’re going to get people to really ride bikes. A high end road bike or a high end mountain bike does not replace a car,” he said. “Nobody’s saving the environment by riding those bikes, but if you can get the technology to build better, faster easier, safer, more comfortable commuter bikes, you might get a few people out of their cars and actually help the world.”
** This article is based from an interview conducted on September 16, 2012.
| Kyle Boggs has his mountain bike ready for the summer ride.
kyle@thenoise.us
Rather, it “came along,” according to longtime Flagstaff cyclist, trail mapmaker, and early pioneer of the mountain bike, “Cosmic” Ray Brutti. Today, Flagstaff is one of a handful of mountain biking destinations in the country. Elson Miles, owner of BiciMundo neighborhood bike shop, and Ken Lane, owner of Absolute Bikes, joined Mr. Brutti to reminisce over the evolution of the mountain bike, Flagstaff, environmental ethics, and a 1982 bike race down an unpaved Snowbowl Road. Mr. Miles made tea, and the morning sun was bright in his backyard.
“The first roads were paved for bicycles, not for cars,” said Mr. Lane. “And so bicycles evolved toward being lighter and faster for riding on roads, until the 1970s, when people started saying, ‘maybe we can ride these bikes off road’ and they started to evolve back the other way,” he said.
Mr. Brutti’s first experience riding off-road was at Buffalo Park. “It was a 20 or 24 inch wheel bike with a two speed kickback hub,” a hub designed to change gears when the rider quickly reverses pedaling direction. Mr. Lane said his first off-road bike was something he “pieced together with 24 inch tires on a 10-speed frame. Mr. Miles recalled his first off-road bike in Flagstaff. “I had this old Schwinn Varsity. I replaced the fork with a $6 newspaper boy fork, and we realized we could take a six-foot long 2x4 and open up the rear triangle and cram in a larger wheel, then we put BMX handlebars on it,” he said. “It was heavy.”
Makeshift mountain bikes such as these were endearingly referred to as “klunkers.” Some of them had wheels taken off cruisers, motorcycle brake calipers and cables, or cantilever brakes taken from tandem bicycles. In the spring of 1982, other klunker riders joined Mr. Brutti, Mr. Lane, and Mr. Miles for a race down Snowbowl Road. Dubbed the “first-ever Arizona Mountain Bomber Classic,” the then unpaved road was graded with dirt and gravel, with some potholes. It was chosen because it was close enough for them to find some folks with pickup trucks to take them and their bikes up the windy road.
While Mr. Miles saved a newspaper article that covered the race titled “Some Bomber Bikies Buzz the Bowl,” the event resurfaced for a 2011 documentary detailing Flagstaff’s contributions to early mountain biking, Changing Gears: Flagstaff and the Mountain Bike. Mr. Miles, surprised people are still talking about the race, said he always wanted to be a road racer, but “road racing requires a lot of skill and tactics,” he said. “This was just us drinking beer, getting stoned, and flying down a hill.” Mr. Miles won the race, covering the distance in 11 minutes and 52 seconds flat.
Between the klunkers of old and the full suspension mountain bikes today, there continues to be a lot of technological advancement. “you have so much more control,” said Mr. Lane. “you can come into a rocky section on the verge of control and just let the bike take over,” he said. Mr. Brutti agreed. “Just relax and let the bike do it,” he said.
With advancements came much more expensive bikes, which surprised Mr. Miles in the early 1990s. “When I sold Cosmic in ‘92, I took a Specialized Stumpjumper, which was just a rigid mountain bike. And that retailed, I think at $1,200, and I was blown away that a bicycle sold for
over a $1,000. Now a $1,200 bike is like an average price,” he said.
Mr. Lane agreed and disagreed. “The range is now $400 to $10,000,” he laughed. In the early
days, the range was like $600 to $1,200, so the bottom hasn’t changed much. The bicycle has actually got a little cheaper and a lot more expensive,” he said.
“Bikes have gotten a hundred times better,” added Mr. Brutti.
Mr. Lane agreed. “A $500 bike today is infinitely better than $1,000 bike of 20 years ago.”
More than just a fast ride down a steep hill, the mountain bike created both recreational and practical possibilities that didn’t exist before, getting more and more people into the forest that might not otherwise be there. Mr. Lane said that for him the mountain bike was about freedom, and getting away from cars. “Rather than hiking you can cover much more distance. In a couple hours, you can cover 20 miles, he said. “I can remember riding a road bike on 89A back in the early 80s looking over into the forest and thinking, ‘if I can just be out there, it would be so much better.’ So that’s what it did for me,” he said. “It took me off the road, away from cars, and into the forest.”
38 • JUNE 2016 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us
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