Father, son and trail building

Versione Italiana

Maintain, dig, care, respect, speak, enjoy, ride, eat… And repeat in sequence, this is the spirit of mountain bike pioneers

Imagine this scene: early morning, father and son get out from their house, open garage, load fishing or camping tools and stuff, mom on the porch hands a bag of marshmallows and… time to go for a father-son weekend, an American movie classic.

Now rewind, back to the very beginning of the scene and imagine it like this: father and son get out from the house, open the garage, take shovel, pick, axe, wood axis, chain saw, nails, screws, gloves, protective glasses and mountain bikes, load everything on the truck and… time to go for some trail building!

Another American movie scene, not that classic this time!

A dreamlike vision for us, pioneers style mountain bike lovers; one of those shoot that we never imagine to see, not often by the way, but here it is, served on a silver tray!
These pictures were sent to me by Dale Rowley from Division26Clothing, a U.S. clothes brand.
Dale is a mountain bike passionate, a passion that he’s trying to hand down to his son James, an almost ten years old boy made in USA which, together with dad, shares many passions and interests… like we see in movies!

Is it a nice image or not for whom, like us, love mountain bike and trail building?

Finally in Italy as well, we see fathers and sons riding mtb side by side on trails or on cycling path or in line on roads (in most of the cases, luckily, N/A). It might take some more time before we’ll see them on trails working together like Dale and James but when that time will come, it will be the time in which mountain bike “vision” in Italy might be changed or might be back to the origins… It will be an epochal turning-point, because we will not have only amateur bikers in tight bibs and jersey anxious to win a “salami” at a local race, but we will have as well tons of riders in plaid shirt or t-shirts, shorts, work gloves, shovels, picks, rakes and chain saw working on trails maintenance maybe together with their sons, in order to give to the community trails where to ride or maybe to use for themselves and spend a Sunday outdoor in the woods, grill with friends, live and… hand down it; because mountain biking is not just obsessive competition (in general sport is not just competition, N/A), but it should be a moment of relax, to discard the stress from the working week and improve the quality of our living.