I'll take Riding Bikes for $1000 Alex

What is the dream?

When I was a teenager I wanted to race mountain bikes, though really it started before that. My first job (delivering a local newspaper when I was nine) I got with the sole intention of getting a new mountain bike. A big step up from the secondhand BMX bikes of my youth. I worked a newspaper route for two years before I was able to put up probably only 50% of a rigid GT Timberline in Candy Red. My parents kindly put up the rest of the money as a birthday present.

I got my second job to get a better mountain bike (okay, also to buy a better camera too) a sweet sweet Cannondale F1000. It came with a Lefty fork complete with the first generation of electronic lockout (it housed a 9-Volt battery in the steerer tube!) which made a very satisfying bbzzzrrrrkkk noise when activated. I also worked a LOT in high school, so it was decked in a mix of XTR and XT bits, finishing kit was CODA (Cannondale’s in house brand at the time).

I didn’t ride that bike for three years when I came to school. Eventually I shipped it out to BC, I had heard the mountain biking here was pretty okay. It was stolen before I ever got it to a trail here. I haven’t had a mountain bike since 2009.

Anyways. The Dream™. This bike could be it. It could not be it. I’ve done so much more in racing than the nerdy teenager keen to race mountain bikes had imagined. But here I am still dreaming. I mean, I haven’t even rode the damn thing yet (not really anyways, a helmet-less ride ten minutes into demo forest for photos doesn’t really count does it?), but I sure as hell dreaming of where I’m going to take it.

I’ve got near two weeks off work coming up before I start work on a long show. I’m hoping to ride bikes (I still have another dreamboat of a road bike) nearly every day (cool training camp to prepare for… off season?), and hoping to pull off at least one overnight bike camping trip and see hopefully a few alpine lakes.

Anyways. Long live the dream.