I pull up to the dirt parking lot at Terwillegar Park in Edmonton, where I meet a married couple and their Dalmatian.
It's a beautifully sunny evening. A mild breeze cuts the July heat.
I'm here to try some mountain biking. The sport has made local headlines enough and I want to learn what it's all about.
Brady Van Keulen, ride leader for St. Albert Bike Association (SABA) mountain bike group, shakes my hand and introduces me to the two other newbies joining today's introductory session, while his wife Lauren outfits 'Luce' – short for Lucy – with her booties and doggy trail pack.
We're about to hit the trails and I'm nervous.
The last time I went trail riding was in Ottawa when the front tire of my decade-old, Canadian-Tire-bought Carrera Cascade became the sacrificial lamb to a very mild gravel decline, on an even milder leisure trail.
Not super promising, as we're about to tackle a series of dirt packed single tracks intricately braided with roots and embossed with rocks, stumps, logs – you name it.
We start off slow. Brady and Lauren gauge our comfort levels before showing us the good stuff.
On a more technical part of the trail, we encounter a steep drop, cushioned by a jumble of roots and rocks. I stick the landing, but the pedal unfortunately sticks my shin.
The bruises are still there a week and a half later, when I meet the pair, and four other riders, at a bike skills park in Devon.
Intricate labyrinth
Two quick lefts from downtown Devon – down the street from the flower-basket lined shops and quaint restaurants, lays the Riverview Bike Park.
It takes about 30 minutes behind a steering wheel to get there from St. Albert and is the closest place SABA members can go to test their skills before hitting the trails.
An intricate labyrinth of wooden drops, bridges, dirt jumps, teeter-totters and flow trails, the skills park is meant to simulate the natural obstacles and technical features encountered by cyclists on cross-country and free-ride trails.
According to Brady, this type of recreational amenity has become increasingly popular, with new parks popping up across Alberta at brake-pumping speeds.
Devon's was the first and most technical park to be built in the provincial capital region. The second and only other skills park is in Strathcona.
St. Albert has one in the works. But its Riel location was not chosen without contention.
Originally planned to enhance the usage of Liberton Park, the city was forced to find another home for the grassroots project after residents of the Lacombe neighbourhood strongly voiced their opposition.
While legitimate concerns over access to washrooms, lack of parking and the change in the dynamic and the esthetic of the park were brought up, unfounded arguments that the skills park would lead to an increase in vandalism and other illegal activities – namely drug use – were also thrown around, effectively villainizing cyclists for their choice in recreation.
Brady recalls a man standing up at a town hall meeting and saying: "I don't want people like you in my backyard."
He tells me this and I immediately start sizing him up: a full sleeve, tattoos that poke out from under his neckline and gauged ears.
Lauren, with a tattoo on her forearm, a lip ring and two-toned blond and black hair might not look like your typical engineer, but who am I to judge?
"There's just so much negativity – people think that bikers are just going to vandalize, drink, litter and make noise. They don't realize they're just out here to get active and have fun. They're doing what they love," says Doreen Brenholen.
Her two sons, Cameron and Andrew Brenholen, developed a passion for cycling from the back of mom's bike trailer and are SABA regulars.
I watch Andrew, the younger of the two boys at 13, tackle a series of advanced jumps.
While Cameron and Brady throw around words like pedal bob and pinned, I watch in awe as he soars through the air, touches down briefly and takes off again. He's been perfecting this skill since the age of two, when he and Cameron, now 16, would set up plywood jumps on the driveway and mark their landings with chalk.
"The road rashes they had," says Doreen, shaking her head.
But these tricks aren't just for kids. Turns out that Lauren and Brady are more representative of the sport's demographic, with the average age of those purchasing a mountain bike at 28 and many who continue to ride into their sunset years.
"We're typically the young guys," says Brady. "We did a big trip to Rossland, B.C., which is a bike mecca and everyone who passed us was in their 50s and 60s."
The nice thing is that the sport can be as extreme or as relaxed as you want it to be Lauren tells me and everyone is very supportive regardless your level of experience.
While Brady and his fellow SABA ride leader Allan Hobbs have been biking for more than a decade, Lauren started a little over a year ago. But when she rides with the guys, she never feels like she's slowing them down.
"The nice thing is they'll go on greener trails with me if there's no one else, because they can still have fun by jumping the hills instead of rolling over them," says Lauren.
As Allan says it's really all about the simple joy of being on the trail. And the freedom of being suspended in the air. And the adrenaline rush from going down a huge mountain and not dying.
For me it would have to be the sense of community I get from spending even just a few hours with SABA.
As previously stated, I'm completely out of my element – and more appropriately dressed to hit up St. A's famous famers' market than a series of whoop-de-doos – when I arrive in Devon that morning. But Brady and Lauren are so welcoming, and their encouragement so infectious that I cannot help but give it a try.
Before I steer Lauren's bike towards one of three different-sized drops in the skills park, she gives me a few pointers to avoid going "ass-over-teakettle."
"If you go at it with enough speed and confidence, you keep your head up and you don't lean forward that's not going to happen," she says.
Keeping that in mind I make a few successful runs, before it's time to move on to the bigger stuff.
I embarrass myself a little bit on the dirt jumps, when I don't quite pedal fast enough uphill and nearly find myself rubber up.
I laugh it off. Lauren smiles and doesn't say a word.
No biggie. I'm still learning and so is she.
Quick glossary of useful bike terms (as they come up in the story)
Flow trail: Flow means that one turn leads into the next and every descent leads into the next ride to create a rhythm. The trail can also mix in natural and man-made obstacles.
Technical trail features and natural obstacles: Natural obstacles are objects that add challenge by impeding travel. Examples include: rocks, roots, logs, holes, ledges, drop-offs. Technical Trail Features are objects that have been introduced to the trail to add technical challenge. Examples include: rocks, logs, elevated bridges, teeter-totters, jumps, drop-offs. Both are evaluated by height and avoidability and combined with trail width, tread surface and trail grade to determine a trail's difficulty rating.
Pedal bob: When a rider exerts the suspensions while pedalling, causing an ongoing cycle of compression and rebound that decreases pedalling efficiency.
Pinned: A term taken from motocross to describe a bike that is at its maximum RPM.
Green: A green circle trail is rated as easy. Trail difficulty ratings are an evaluation of trail width, tread surface, grade, technical features and natural obstacles. Much like downhill and cross-country skiing, mountain bike trails are rated as follows: a White Circle is easiest, Green Circle is easy, Blue Square is more difficult, Black Diamond is very difficult and Double Black Diamond is extremely difficult.
Whoop-de-doos: a series of up-and-down bumps, suitable for jumping.
Rubber up: when your tires are facing upwards and not down towards the ground like they're supposed to. In other words: to flip.
