Riding With the Guys
by Patty Mooney

It’s 5:30 PM in the winter desert. Night has descended, and with it, a crescent slice of moon, and the bright speck called Venus. I am toasty warm in the front seat of Mike’s White Pathfinder, with Mark pinned into the passenger seat beside me. Mike is at the wheel, careening down the narrow, empty highway back to where Pedro and Chip had parked their cars early in the morning before we’d hit the trail.

We’d left Mike’s vehicle at the bottom so we could conveniently shuttle back to the trailhead. Chris, Pedro and Chip are in the backseat, with Burt crouched in the very back. Four mountain bikes are mounted on the roof rack, with three more bikes slung to a rear rack.

“This is probably the most weight this truck has ever held, right, Mike?” I ask. “Seven people and seven mountain bikes!”

“You got that right,” Mike nods.

Just then his headlights swing toward two golden eyes which immediately spring away. “A coyote,” says Mark, shifting next to me. Silence reigns for five seconds.

“Well, that was a brutal ride,” I say. Chip agrees. “It was a major can of whoop-ass!” “An industrial strength can of whoop-ass!” laughs Chris.

We conquered thirty miles of sand washes with stands of sagebrush and cacti, including cholla – jumping cactus – which loves to adhere to naked skin. Bouldery high-desert mountains flashed by on several thrilling downhill miles. We came upon places where the sand was so soft, the bikes would bog down and then we’d have to get off and wheel them to the crusty side of the jeep trail and continue on. During our lunch break beside the trail I shared my M&M’s – the perfect cool-weather mountain-bike snack.

I love riding with the guys. Their love encourages me on into the wide reaching expanses of Mother Nature, where we are always at our best. I feel so blessed, especially after such a brutal ride as this.

“Got anymore M&M’s?” Chris asks. From his scrunched position in the back of the Pathfinder, Burt wonders, “Are we there yet? This is brutal!”

Patty Mooney has been riding a bicycle since she was seven years old. In 1986, she and her husband, Mark Schulze, discovered the sport of mountain biking while traveling through Canada where a mountain was rated by the amount of headers one was liable to experience while riding down it. Both Mooney and Schulze were hooked and bought a couple of Alpina Sport mountain bikes to ride the local San Diego trails. They married in the mountains on their mountain bikes, then began racing. And then it occurred to the video production duo to begin producing how-to mountain bike videos which were the first of the genre. To learn more about their classic mtb titles, go to New Unique Videos.