Mountain Biking Adventure Travel - Misery Loves Company (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine May 2003

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The Hard Way
Misery Loves Company (Cont.)

BARE LEGS AND ARMS hanging out the van windows and the CD player blaring Jerk with a Bomb and energy drinks rolling across the floorboards and homemade brownies and bags of beef jerky sailing from lap to lap.

Like a hundred other mountain-bike teams from around the West, Big Daddy Meats (the name of the local butcher in Laramie that sponsored us with four pounds of beef jerky) is on a late-August pilgrimage to California to race the 24 Hours of Tahoe, one of the toughest all-day, all-night cycling events in the country.

"You're joking!" I've just learned that Pat Fleming, my noble teammate, signed us up for the expert class.

"Wasn't fair to do anything else," says Pat. "We aren't pros, but we aren't really just sport riders, either."

Pat, 30, lean and unassuming, is a Ph.D. student in mathematics at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. He's been bike racing and skateboarding for years. He happens to have a sprained ankle—wrapped in a brace—that won't heal because he won't stop riding.

"Ach, you bicycled across Siberia," Nat tells me. He blows his nose like a trumpet. "You'll be fine."

Nat Dyck, 30, six foot four with moose legs, a Laramie-based carpenter and cross-country ski instructor, laconic but glib, is our most experienced rider. He's been racing for eight years. This will be his fifth 24-hour race. He and Pat were part of a team that rode single-speeds in the 24 Hours of Moab last year. He happens to have the flu.

"I'm betting on broken bones," says my younger brother Dan, "even with our new überbikes."

Dan, 38, did a couple of mountain-bike races back when they were still riding penny-farthings. Since then, he's gotten married and had two kids. He happens to have asthma so bad he breathes like a fat man.

I trail-tested a half-dozen bikes before deciding on the Trek Fuel 100, the Land Rover of bicycles. A ZR9000 alloy frame with OCLV carbon-fiber seat and chainstays; full suspension, a Rock Shox SID Race fork, and Fox Float RC rear shock; Bontrager Lite tubeless tires, Bontrager Lite crank; Shimano XT/XTR nine-speed shifting. The Fuel 100 is so light and responsive, so fast and forgiving, riding it gives you delusions of grandeur. You actually think you can race.

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