It the spring of 1989 I purchased a GT Avalanche through the bike shop I worked for. It had the new 7-speed Shimano Deore group with this brand-new shifting technology called Hyperglide. I’d ridden mountain bikes a few times before, but they were all relatively short rides in small parks. My coworkers told me of the trail network in Shelby Farms and after rising around noon on Sunday, following a gig with my band that lasted until 3 the previous night/morning, I packed my Avalanche into the back seat of my Ford Gran Torino and drove to the park in suburban Memphis, about 4 miles from where I now sit.
By any standard it was a meager trail system with a roughly 8-mile loop and just a couple of minor cut-throughs. I laugh to think of it now, but I recall feeling utterly overwhelmed by two choices. Somehow, I made all the right choices to ride out to the other end of the park. I rode into an area that was more than a pullout but less than a parking lot. A teen stood a short distance from a Chevy El Camino and he watched as I rode into the pan of dirt. The look on his face portrayed the kind of wonder that we reserve for the demented, those who prove themselves dumber than we thought possible. That look was all for me.
I looked at the nearby road then asked the teen what that road was—where I was. He gave me another look, like I was asking what city I was in. As he scrunched up an eye, my mind spun. Was I in the next county? The next state? Was I in Mississippi? Had I thought, simple deduction would have told me I was looking at the road that bordered the eastern edge of the park. No, I was about four miles from my car, ridden largely on a single, flat trail.
Today, such a distance is just the first quarter of the loop I usually do. And that’s after riding 2.5 miles to the trailhead. Put another way, my ride was unremarkable by any objective standard.
But here’s the thing: That ride delivered exactly what all great rides impart. It gave me adventure. It filled me with a sense of wonder—being in the woods had always been fun, but it had never been this fun. My body felt alive. The best part? Mountain biking has rarely failed to recapture that sense of action. When I returned to my car, I felt a shock at how my return to the familiar reinforced my sense of having been on a journey.