History

A guy called me the other day. Someone gave him my name. He wanted to talk about the history of Tallahassee mountain bike trails. Shit man. I don’t know anything about Tallahassee mountain bike trails. Actually, I know one thing. If you built one you damn sure don’t get credit for it. It’s an odd situation. I came along late to the game in 1990. I certainly did not build any trails, but the main way trails were built back then was people rode the same path until it became a trail. So, whether we happened upon ephemeral seams between neighborhoods and parks, or were explicitly told to ride a certain path, we were all a part of the process.

My world was smaller then. My world started at the Senator Apartments on Virginia Ave, #69. I rode a 1986 Fuji Palisades road bike. 2 years later, by the time we moved into 247 Lipona St. it was all Check Your Head by the Beastie Boys and mountain bikes and nothing but them ever since. We wore soft Hi-Tec hiking boots strapped into toe-clips, or as Squatch and Hi Tops call them, “toe baskets.” The uniform was cut off Army fatigue shorts, and cotton t-shirts. The entire point of riding was exploration, and a constant progression of skills and “hits” throughout the town. The gazebo on Park Ave, the downhill from Westcott to the union, the bunny hop over the slab behind Fisher Lecture Hall, and the half pipe behind the old Varsity theater, a relic from the clay bed railway that used to run through Tallahassee. Moving from spot to spot we rode homeless camp trails, maybe dropping off or bumming a cigarette from a resident. We rode any in-between space, anything not quite claimed or guarded. The rumor of an actual trail, some discreet flagging to follow, captured our imagination with an enduring obsession to ride it and trample it into a path. The Fern trail, now a standard commuter route from town to Tom Brown Park used to start behind the Winn Dixie on Magnolia. We circled the loading dock conspicuously until the coast was clear to drop in and grind along to the far frontier beyond the Armory.

We had a secret trail behind the other Winn Dixie on Tharpe, built obsessively by our friend Sean behind his house on Alliegood. I never thought of this, but maybe this affiliation with trails is why I favor Winn Dixie over Publix. The first time we rode to the forest from town in search of the Munson Hills trail it was an all day event. Breaking free past Capital Circle felt like I’d ridden to another country. I wore my school backpack crammed with snacks and illicit supplies. We probably took 20 breaks. Now? That’s a 90 minute out and back from the house.

So, when organization and advocacy came to town in the mid 2000’s, I was not into it. I’m still not into it. I didn’t recognize the motivation to ride as exercise, get more riders on the trials, or compete in an organized event. That part of cycling was always there, progressing along its own path towards that day when all the trails became public access issues and land management concerns.

I suffer from an over-developed sense of loyalty honed by movies of the 1980’s like Red Dawn, or Tuff Turf, when all James Spader had in this world was Robert Downey Jr. and his dobermans, Zeus and Apollo. All of these people talking about what to do with “our trails” had nothing to do with their creation. They built an Atlanta Bread Company on top of the Fern trailhead, then John H got busted for reclaiming the line, and he took that like a man, but I didn’t. I’m still mad about it. At 54 I still feel like a doting little brother around the mountain bike pioneers of this town. I think I always will. I hope so. They gave me the world, a view across the handlebars, and the joy of discovering a dumped Maytag washing machine full of buckshot holes, or a deer trail that sneaks you into the back of the Leon Sinks State Park to ride the hiking trail.

Progress came to town and moved in for good. It put down stakes and elected slate after slate of officers. Some of those pioneers lived in both worlds, familiar with the heft of a machete on trespassed land, and the sign-in sheet at the City Focus Group. Those are the real players, code switching with ease like the French Resistance. I tried, but it wasn’t for me. People say if you don’t vote you don’t have a right to complain, but I have news for them, this blog is a digital monument to complaining without requesting permits or rights. You can hate that, but you can’t stop it.

After almost 35 years of mountain biking in this town, some years more fervently than others, not much has changed despite the arrival of progress. Most of our trails are still the ones created by outlaws, yet claimed as a whole by a community that doesn’t remember, or never even consider, how they got there. Anyone with a sense of adventure can still explore and enjoy a ride beyond the land use Master Plan, which is a title out of central casting if ever I heard one.

I look forward to reading this historian’s account, and in our conversation it was clear he was well on the scent, tracking down these legends hiding in plain sight, or sometimes a bit further off the traveled path. I thank the current leadership of the Tallahassee Mountain Bike Association for making this move. It could potentially heal a calcified division that may only exist in my heart, but its there all the same. A blanket amnesty, expunging of records, and keys to the city might be too much to ask for, but the truth is a great place to start.

Juancho