No Mountains Mountain Biking

Ever since we made the move to the east coast in May, I have been waging a war within myself. The battles have been between two sides, mostly. One of the sides is the side I have known for quite some time - the side that likes to go out on two wheels, find singletrack, get lost, get muddy, and get happy. The other side is the side I don't know as well, although I have been forming strong ties to it as of late - the side that prefers skinny tires to fat, single-file to singletrack, and shaved to hairy.

The fact is that the mountain biking in Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania just isn't as good as it is in Utah. Doesn't take a skilled deductive logician to figure that one out. I mean, there are no mountains. And that which the locals refer to as mountains are foothills at best with no scenic vistas to renew the soul and invigorate the burning calves after a long climb. Nope. None of that. What you see when you mountain bike at my new local trails are trees, and lots of them. Don't get me wrong, I am all-for trees and all of their oxygen-producting photosynthesis, but riding through a never-ending supply of maples doesn't have the same impact on me as seeing the majestic limestone face of Mt Timpanogos or the anticline of Provo canyon. Not to mention these trails range from sea level to 500 ft above it, not exactly topographically thrilling.

So to combat the boredom my first few months of mountain biking brought, I turned to the skinny tires. I have to say, I am impressed! Now, the roads out here are a mess - but a beautiful mess. The twist and turn and wind and bend, taking you through fields and forests and covered bridges and along side rivers, streams, the Chesapeake, and even the Atlantic. Again, for the most part the roads stay pretty flat and work in some rolling hills, but if you ride long enough you can claim some good climbs.

Road biking here in the mid-Atlantic is winning me over. But I never set out to be a roadie. I only bought my road bike to train for mountain biking when the trails were too wet or snow-covered. Thus the war within - do I give in and shave my legs, thereby becoming a self-proclaimed road cyclist? Or do I push through it and try to find the good in the "mountain" biking around my new dwelling place? I'm not quite ready to give up mountain biking, and I don't think I'm quite ready to bust out the smooth legs yet either (at least partly because I kind of like how the wind feels blowing through my long leg hairs). So I guess I will keep doing both, and the war will wage on, maybe even lasting a decade or more - but who would want to stay in a war for that long?

So, for now, I will keep riding skinny and fat tires, and just try to find more places like this one, that I rode through at Fairhill Natural Resource Management Area in Maryland on Monday. Not a bad view, not a bad ride.