Bend's Two Wheel Trailblazers: The Evolution of Mountain Biking in Central Oregon

Speaker 1: 0:31

So my wife and I opened Hutch's Bicycle Store on 3rd Street in 1981 and that was before mountain bikes were even a thing. And then from that point in the 80s it mushroomed out into something bigger than I would have imagined. Arbry Butte had not been developed at that point and Brooks Resources allowed bike riders to ride Arbry Butte like do a hill, climb up to the top where the towers are and follow the deer trails and that was kind of our. That was the beginning of the trail system. When Brooks Resources decided that they were going to develop Arbry Butte, the community needed to come up with an ultimate plan. Obviously they were a little bummed that ah well, we can't ride right up here. But the fun thing about this is that Bend has developed a trail system that is really like no other. It really actually has the some of the best trails in the nation.

Speaker 1: 1:46

Right here in Little Old Bend, oregon, we were just it was kind of the hub. The bike shop was the hub for communication back then. This is before the internet, this is before cell phones. This is where you would go to get updated information on trails that were being developed or that you know. Well, what did that trail ride last night. We're thinking about going there tonight after work, and so it was a good, a good opportunity for information to flow between riders. It has been a lifelong pursuit of mine in the bicycle business at Hutch's Bicycles, and it's been a pleasure. And it hasn't been about how many bikes did you sell in that period of time. It's been about how many good people have we talked with or enabled to get on a bike or back on a bike after years and years of not riding bikes. This is Jim Lewis. I own Hutch's Bicycles in in Bend, oregon.

Speaker 5: 3:14

I recently read that sometimes in life, the best path forward is the one that is yet to exist, because we are in the process of building it. In the late 1970s and early 80s, a community of adventurous central Oregonians began to form around rumors of like-minded individuals in Northern California and Colorado who were reported to be experimenting with a different type of bicycle with a different purpose on a different type of terrain. Over the next several years, early models of what has evolved into the modern-day mountain bike started showing up in central Oregon. Many were modified steel bikes from the 50s and 60s with oversized tires and recycled motorcycle parts, and some were early production models from local frame builders and established bike brands, many of which are still in business today.

Speaker 5: 4:09

On episode 50 of Bend Magazine's the Circling Podcast, hear from just some of those in our community who have contributed to the sport of mountain biking on a local, national and global level. Learn about the relationship that local riders formed with the United States Forest Service and the development of the Fills Trail System, a user-built and maintained trail network that offers hundreds of miles of some of the best single track riding in the country. Join me as I chat with local legend and early mountain bike adventurer Dennis Heeter, founder of one of the oldest mountain bike clubs in the Pacific Northwest, the Black Rock Riders. Dennis and his crew were well-known around Bend for their multi-day wilderness rides, cruiser crawls and bar-to-bar rallies. Dennis and I are joined by mountain bike hall of famer master, trail builder and former pro rider, paul Thomasburg, who has and continues to dedicate much of his life to the sport of mountain biking through product innovation and development, with over 30 years of working closely with industry giant Shimano. Throughout the episode we hear from local bike shop owners, event directors, leaders from Central Oregon Trail Alliance and previous Bend mayor, mountain bike hall of famer, coda co-founder and author, mr Bob Woodward, dennis, paul, bob and everyone who participated in the making of this episode. Thank you for your time and an even bigger thank you for quite literally building a path that so many of us have been able to follow.

Speaker 5: 5:50

The circling podcast can be found on Patreon. Visit our page and learn how a percentage of your financial support will support local nonprofits and the continued growth of local community podcasting. Become a member and learn about this unique opportunity at patreoncom. Forward slash the circling podcast. I'd like to say a special thank you to you, the listener. What started as an experiment with local podcasting has developed into a wonderful relationship with Oregon media and countless new friendships here in Central Oregon. I appreciate everyone who has contributed to the first 50 episodes and look forward to the next 50. Lastly, remember to stay tuned after the show credits to hear from Dennis, paul and Bob as they contribute to our blank canvas community art project that explores the magic found in art embedded with meaning.

Speaker 5: 6:49

I know you guys have told your story many, many, many times over the years and a variety of different ways. You guys have all lived incredibly interesting lives. You guys all have unique relationships with your bike. You guys all have contributed in phenomenal ways to the area and the evolution of mountain biking and the community and the growth and the lifestyle and the industry, and I mean in many ways. Mountain biking is, in my opinion, the common thread that has really brought a lot of people here but also expose them to the outdoors, sometimes in their in their first way, because it's so accessible. So if you guys don't have any questions, we can kind of just dive in.

Speaker 6: 7:29

Okay, well, dennis Heater, I'm kind of the organizer of the Black Rock Riders. We all started out back in the late 70s, got into it because I couldn't throw my dirt bike over a barbed wire fence, so we decided bicycles were the way to go. They'd go anywhere dirt bike would, with a little more energy. Through the years I met Paul Thomas Berg through. Well, eventually, after we'd ridden trails all over the place and done a lot of riding, they started mountain bike racing and that's how I met Paul.

Speaker 7: 8:03

Yeah, yeah, I'm Paul. I'm Paul Thomas Berg and I moved here in 1989 and I was doing a lot of mountain biking from starting in the 70s, like 1976. Although we didn't call them out bikes, but we were building these bikes that had 15 speeds and you know a bunch of handmade parts on them and mostly old Schwinn frames that were modified, you know, to improve the strength of them. But anyway, we got kicked out of all these places to ride down there, so both public and private, and anyway, as time went on, I ended up becoming a professional mountain bike racer and was looking for a place where I could afford to live, and then that's how I ended up in Bend in in 89. And, dennis, you grew up in Gilcrest.

Speaker 6: 9:01

Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, my parents had a sporting goods store down there at Crescent, the Little Dishutes Sporting Goods. It's not there anymore. It burned down years ago, but this was back in the 50s. And.

Speaker 6: 9:13

I used to take my old Schwinn cruiser bike that I had when I was a kid and we'd ride out the wiki up and back to go fishing that sort of thing. But see, when I was a junior in high school my parents sent me back down to Southern California to hang out with my aunt and uncle and I finished high school there and that's where I got drafted and went to Vietnam and that's where I really got into. I could say that's my first mountain bike. When I got to Vietnam they send everybody to a place called Camp Bearcat and it's probably a two or three square mile bunkered bob wired compound where we they put everybody when they first get there and then they send you to different towns and villages from there. But I bought a bicycle from a kid there for 10 bucks and I'd ride the perimeter out there every chance I got I got. There's a picture here at the Historical Museum of me and my bicycle and my little buddy that sold me the bike. It's kind of cool. That was in 1967.

Speaker 5: 10:12

Around that time, kind of the late 60s, early 70s, people were starting to experiment with riding some of these old News Boy kind of steel frame single speed bikes, putting bigger tires on them and it wasn't very long before we discovered, well, let's put some derailers on these things.

Speaker 6: 10:29

And then we went. We did put drum brakes on them, you know. We tried to make them as much of road worthy as we could but they're still we were out there in a dirt.

Speaker 6: 10:40

We even went to you know the tie down pedals on them. I think one of my first bikes that I had that we actually did a lot of riding on was a Schwinn varsity and we took a two by four and spread the heated up the rear dropouts and chainstays and spread them out so we could put a big fat tire on them. And that was probably one of my first main mountain bikes that had gears on it and had big fat tires.

Speaker 5: 11:10

Yeah, just out of curiosity, what role did your bike play for you when you came back from the war and you were kind of integrating back into society, were you getting on your bike a lot?

Speaker 6: 11:23

Now you know it took me a while after that because I got into dirt bikes. Okay.

Speaker 6: 11:28

Yeah, and my parents and my whole family, my brother and I and my mom and dad, we all rode dirt bikes, yeah. And then here in the I'd say I'm calling it late seventies, I decided it was time to get a bicycle, because I've heard about these bikes that people were riding down the dirt. I go well, I could throw one of those over a fence. So I go a lot more places than I've been, right you know, with a dirt bike, because it's pretty tough throwing a 250, 300 pound dirt bike over a fence.

Speaker 5: 11:58

Why do you guys like riding bikes? What made you fall in love with it back in the day?

Speaker 6: 12:02

I think it's exploration to go where no one has ever been before. You know we we went on all the wilderness trails. This is before it was considered a no-no. You know, you couldn't ride a dirt bike on all these wilderness trails but they hadn't really made an official rule that you couldn't ride a bicycle. It was unheard of a bicycle so they didn't know how to act at first. So we got away with riding every wilderness trail there is. We used to ride. Phil put on this ride. We used to do the three sisters. It was a 50 some odd mile single track ride around all three sisters. It took from early in the morning, like a dawn, until after dark before we got back and we get six or eight or 10 of us together and go do that One of the greatest rides I think I've ever done, and we have Phil to thank for that one.

Speaker 7: 12:53

Yeah, I mean, I can totally relate to that. I was still in California and we rode a lot of wilderness. I moved to tall city in 1969, 70. And we used to ride in the wilderness there, you know, and then later on became a mountain bike. I was living in Davis, California, but we used to go ride the wilderness areas in the Sierras and we were out one day on this ride and there were crazy rides that were doing like 60 miles of backcountry in a day or more and we met these hikers out. This was up by Castle Castle Peak and there's a regs.

Speaker 7: 13:38

No, no, no, Castle Peak in the Sierras, anyway, and then there's this lake. But anyway we met these guys like kind of halfway around and they're like where are you guys, where'd you start and where are you going? And they were just, they were just like mind blown and so we told them where we started and then we're going to get back there and they're like, yeah, we're going to end up there. We're like six days, that's a six day trip for us, you know. And so they were just blown away that we were going to be able to do that in a day. You know, and it was really cool, you know, and I think there's a lot of history that gets swept under the carpet kind of during the process of, you know, some Mount Hood wilderness proposal.

Speaker 7: 14:18

More recently, I took the time to study a bunch of the stuff on the House and Senate floor, the debate about the wilderness, you know, about the wilderness act itself and within those, you know, during the formation of that bill, there was a lot of stuff on the House and Senate floor and it really related a lot to recreation and in fact bicycles were not included in the act itself but discussed on the House and Senate floor about a form of recreation and just like today, you know it's a really messy thing, but there's this concept that somehow bikes were excluded but in fact bikes weren't excluded and that's actually for surface interpretation of a law. So it's actually never been taken to the Supreme Court, probably will never be taken to the Supreme Court. I don't even know if it's appropriate for bikes necessarily to be there or not. However, there's still jet boats allowed on certain rivers. There's still airplane landing places in the middle wilderness. You know there's still mining claims that have access to them in the middle wilderness. So you know, it's kind of interesting. In the act itself talks about historical forms of recreation and that's an argument we used when we were negotiating the Mount Hood wilderness proposal. You know. Again, that's one of the reasons I got here.

Speaker 7: 15:49

So we got kicked out of the wilderness, we got kicked out of Point Rays National Seashore, we got kicked out of Mount Tam and before that, before any of those, we rode all kinds of miles of private land up and then we would get permission. You know, we'd usually get brandished by people. People would show up with guns and be like, get the F out of here. And we'd be like, hey, man, we're not going to go near your cabin, we just want to ride our bikes. And they're like all right, don't go near the cabin, you can ride your bikes up here. But you know, kind of that private land was the first stuff that went away, because there was like five of us and there was 10 of us. And then you know, all of a sudden people are like OK, this has got to stop.

Speaker 7: 16:30

You know can't have these people riding all over the property?

Speaker 1: 16:33

Yeah.

Speaker 5: 16:34

And so, then again, that's one of the things that led me up here, and yeah, and when you got here in 89, you know, I mean eight, nine years prior to that, you had individuals like Phil McLassen. You had Bob Woodward. I mean, dennis, these are your, your buddies. I mean you've known them for the better part of what? 40, 50 years. Yeah, yeah, I mean, and you guys were instrumental to the early trail network in Central Oregon and I'm sure many people have read the story. But in the effort of offering other people in the community who have built a built a life around mountain biking in some way, shape or form, I've gotten in touch with a couple of people and recorded some messages that they had. So the first person we're going to hear from is Dan McGarregal at Pine Mountain Sport.

Speaker 8: 17:28

Oh, Dan Sort of cast the characters there. I always tell people that the view is pretty good for as we stand on the shoulders of giants. So you know when you throw out those names, you know when you talk about Bob and Phil and you know and and and Paul, you know you're really talking about three people that not only put the hours in on the trail but also put in the county Countless hours as far as getting approval working for a service, establishing CODA. You know these guys really laid the groundwork on lots of fronts aside from actually putting trails in, putting trails in that without that work we're not here. You know I always tip my hat and, you know, bow my head a little bit whenever I talk with those guys and from lucky enough to consider, consider them friends.

Speaker 8: 18:21

You know I realize the impact that they made on this community long ago and how that impact continues to ultimately just make Ben what it is. They're really a group of very easygoing guys that you know realize very quickly that well, you know that they that Ben had an opportunity to, you know, identify itself as not just an outdoor mecca but, quite honestly, the focus on on trails and and what it could do for the community, not just as far as recreation goes but, quite honestly, as far as helping shaping the character of of even beyond, ben you know, getting an essential Oregon. So a lot of reasons why people move here is because they say, oh, the trails are right near town, something that we can't, you know, maybe we're used to, but we should never take it for granted.

Speaker 6: 19:55

Well, it was a lot different back in the day when I started I think I'm about 10 years ahead of everybody when we started riding, nobody even hiked the trails. We'd go all day long in the wilderness and not see a single soul, and there'd be five or six of us. So it's a lot different situation back in the early 80s, late 70s like that. And what people we did run across, like Paul said there, they were just shocked. They said, wow, what a great way to get around out here. We could cover a lot more ground and see some pretty cool places in a day, or even go camping on your bike, and that was quite different back then when I listened to Dan there and what I heard was how really the role that a trail system played and the evolution of a community.

Speaker 5: 20:49

I mean, you know, and it is, it's easy for us to have been here a long time to take it for granted, but it is incredibly unique. I mean, what are your guys's thoughts on how that, how the trail system around here, has shaped, you know, central Oregon in 2024?

Speaker 6: 21:05

Well, you know, the trails started out as deer trails, animal trails. We used to cut our handlebars back to like 20 inches wide so you could get between the trees, and we just rode those animal trails until they became wider and better and they became mountain bike trails after a while, because more and more people started riding mountain bikes. But at first everything was either it was either a wilderness or a hiking trail that was already established, and been established by horses and hikers for, you know, 50 hundred years. I don't know how long.

Speaker 6: 21:39

But then when we got into it, we started riding animal trails and that's where the trail systems really started for mountain biking. I think here in Central Oregon Most of the trails that we have out there are filled with trails. They're all animal trails, Right.

Speaker 5: 21:54

Yeah, and there's. There's well documented stories of, of you know, bob and Phil finding that first animal trail off a logging road and going out and rewriting it, and rewriting it, and then that growing in popularity and other people such as yourself, paul, I mean you're been instrumental to a ton of trail builds around here.

Speaker 6: 22:15

He used to have this bike that he bought for me a dirt bike and he'd go up there with tools and stuff like that and make the trail a little better make it a little wider, and that's how how some of those trails got to be as nice as they are today.

Speaker 7: 22:27

Yeah, yeah, over over time, you know, and I think you know, my experience was again, that was well first of all, yeah, I mean just hanging out with those guys.

Speaker 7: 22:40

So when I first got up here you know it's always it's a little anti California now, but back then it was way anti California, and so if you didn't get your plates changed right away, you got a lot of stink eye in this town and I mean a lot like it was a bad deal and so.

Speaker 7: 22:58

But I went into the bike shop and I'm like, you know, I moved up here to get organized, got it. You know, I'm not bringing my baggage up here, I just came up here to get organized, you know. And I also, you know, in that first year, walked into the Forest Service office and I said, you know, I don't know what it takes, but where I came from, we got kicked out of everywhere and I don't want that to happen, you know. And then I, in that same year was I ran into these guys and we ride Black Rock Trail and Dennis was always, you know, he had a lot of mantras, but some of which were like it's all downhill, right, so we do this like five hour ride, right, and it's never all downhill.

Speaker 7: 23:38

It's a ride way down to all the way to the Columbia River one day, practically. And then we're back up down to Antelope, where the Rajneeshees ended up, and, like all these crazy rides, horse Heaven, mine and you know, and all these all archeological sites Dennis would find he's always on this quest to find some other crazy archeological find, and so this is, I think, something that's lost in modern mountain biking. But is this sort of sense of adventure? You know, people don't do five hour bike rides anymore. You know People want to go, you know, hit fills for a couple hours after work, or an hour, or go hit whoops for an hour or whatever you know. And so we all came up from this very different reality of, you know, doing 60 mile an hour. That's a 60 mile backcountry ride, you know, or whatever we could pull off, you know. And but I think, going back to your question about the community and all that, you know it's interesting.

Speaker 7: 24:42

When Obama was president, his one of his interior department secretaries showed up here and she's like what, how do you do this? How can we take this as an economic template for somewhere else? And I'm like, well, you can't do that unless you have enthusiastic people that are bike riders because it was this, it's this thing that to, and whether it starts out as animal trails or ultimately becoming like in Bend and a lot of places, more and more purpose built trails. But we we luckily in Bend we have that base which started out. A lot of these trail systems were built to be sort of like these long, never ending kind of rides. Right, so we have both. You can do like 120 mile rides from Phil's trailhead. You could do 120 miles of single track without basically not crossing the same trail twice.

Speaker 1: 25:38

Right.

Speaker 7: 25:38

Yeah, so we have both and but anyway, I think it had a huge impact and I, you know it's. It's a pleasure to hear Dan say that I remember when he first became a mechanic at Hutch's bicycles and, you know, go way back with these guys, so it's kind of cool. And you know, I think another guy that maybe a little bit of an unsung hero here hasn't been mentioned yet is Don Leet, who, who started Sunnyside and he was there in all of those the early first coat of meeting and was there helping, you know, when we were building quote unquote Phil's trail which was, you know, really originally was Phil's, jim's and Paul's trail. But you know that was just the began, the very beginning of stuff, you know.

Speaker 5: 26:22

Yeah, I'm scheduled to get together with Don next week.

Speaker 7: 26:25

Oh, cool, awesome yeah.

Speaker 5: 26:28

He's. He sold me my first mountain bike and and bend.

Speaker 7: 26:32

Nice yeah.

Speaker 5: 26:33

A long time ago. Speaking of which, you know, you bring up some, some shops, you know let's, let's talk about all bike shops and bend Just to give people a little bit of a history in terms of the evolution of the mountain bike.

Speaker 6: 26:47

you know, and and you guys jump in at any point in time you know, I think for the listener, where it was probably the first bike shop in in Bend then, Carson Ciclary also over on Greenwood. Yeah. And then came, then came.

Speaker 1: 27:05

Century cycles. Yeah.

Speaker 6: 27:07

And from Century cycles came speed research. Who actually built bikes?

Speaker 5: 27:14

Yeah.

Speaker 6: 27:14

Yeah, they made the outback bicycle and that. That came from a dirt bike mentality and that's what. That's how he started designing that first outback bicycle Right.

Speaker 5: 27:30

My understanding is, you know, mountain biking was very heavily early influenced in Marin County, California. Oh yeah. I mean guys up in the mountains riding, is that correct?

Speaker 7: 27:42

I don't. I don't think so.

Speaker 5: 27:43

You don't think so.

Speaker 7: 27:44

No, I think from a historical perspective, like there was all these bicycles all over the world before there was any pavement anywhere.

Speaker 5: 27:53

Right, you know, and so I, I, I'm talking about like kind of the early evolution of of of frame specific builds, like with Joe Breeze and Tom Ritchie and, you know, some of Gary Fisher and some of these early guys down there that were were, you know, innovating the next level of frame. I'm going to push, I'm going to push on you a little, please dude. So those guys Tom.

Speaker 7: 28:19

Ritchie and and Gary Fisher. Both came from a road racing background, you know, and those guys were awesome in their own right. But I've seen bikes that are built hand built in the Eastern United States. Okay, and they only had 20 inch wheels, but they're fully suspended mountain bikes built in the 1800s Whoa.

Speaker 7: 28:40

Yeah, and these are all hand built, Like this one off, like people building mountain bikes back in the way back day you know, and then for me, you know, like when I grew up doing this, uh well, a very different perspective, because I, well, I grew up in Davis which was weird and I never knew the Marin guys until like the late seventies, early eighties, and so I was kind of doing my own thing and I'd already figured out that I wanted way bigger tires. So I had like 18 inch motorcycle tire rim with a 3.0 tire on the rear and was using double casing tires in the front and I was basically building these sort of rigid free ride bike kind of deal, you know. But all the other guys there was a lot of orientation that was really coming from the roadside, you know, yeah.

Speaker 6: 29:30

I think Paul built the first fat bike yeah.

Speaker 7: 29:32

It was called the trail weight.

Speaker 5: 29:34

That's what he called it it was pretty cool and you had a teacher in high school that was pretty influential and encouraging you to kind of um, explore your passion and cycle or building bike frames rather than like auto shop you were sharing with me. Yeah, Talk a little bit about that.

Speaker 7: 29:50

Yeah, it was a unique situation and it was that that teacher's name was Dave Egoff and he was technically my math teacher, but he also did auto shop class and and he you know I was a wayward child and anyway he was they were trying to get me involved with anything that I would just go to school for, and so he offered me he's like, look, anything you can do to bikes that the bike shop can't or won't do.

Speaker 7: 30:40

Then you have to do the innovation and complete it and then write a report about it. You know, and uh, and that at that time, like basically I'd gotten kicked out of almost every shop in town, so I would go in there and just wanted parts for free. I wanted to look through their drawers for a particular thing and literally the motorcycle shop kicked me out. And then there was two other pretty good shops in town that kicked me out, and then this one shop finally just decided I was going to be you know what they call the grom now, or whatever, or, and uh, uh, let me into the bowels of the shop, you know, and they had a frame builder there and uh, so that worked out really good.

Speaker 6: 31:19

So then I had this like uh, ability to bring these little projects into into class and get credit for it, you know you know, bend had a frame builder, a bicycle builder, here way long before the mountain biking scene happened before, before speed and research. I think his name was Keith Lippi and he built road bikes and that he was here in Bend.

Speaker 1: 31:43

Yeah.

Speaker 6: 31:44

So he Bend's been bicycle oriented for a long, long time, Long time.

Speaker 5: 31:49

Yeah, I bought my first road bike from Century Cycle. It wasn't too much later than that they went out of business. So, yeah, yeah, In terms of a timeline, you know, early 80s, mid 80s, starting to, you know, develop trail systems. Here, you know, I think Phil's got kind of ridden in an 85 and and Coda, which came on to kind of be the, what I think of is like the bridge between mountain biking and the forest service and and many ways, and again, correct me if I'm wrong that developed in 92. So you're talking about six, seven years of people kind of under the radar, just out, building trails, growing the sport, innovating the technology, building the community, you know, and and then, um, we're going to hear from Dan again and and his recollection and Paul, you had mentioned it around when he kind of first moved to town and and, uh, he had this to share around that timeframe when, when Coda was was coming in to be.

Speaker 8: 32:50

So, um, as far as I can go back, and albeit, I got here in the mid 90s, 95, I really got into the cycling scene and Ben in 96. And most of these guys were just guys that came around Hutch's West side and you know, at the time, you know, sunny side was in town, web wasn't quite open. We were getting open, century cycles was open, Um, but Hutch's West side was, was my first, my second job in bed and I really didn't realize like what kind of a community that they had going through that shop at that time. Um, so you know, I met Dennis Heeter, met Bob, met Paul, and they had really started, you know, following up on the groundwork that that Gary Bonnaker had laid in of putting in trails and they were using. They were either taking existing motorbike trails or using motorbikes that originally cut in trails. But they also recognized that that was only going to go so far. You know, none of these trails were sanctioned. They were obviously out on Forest Service property and they quickly realized that they could go and build trails but without them being authorized and without the Forest Service buy-in, they had no ground to literally stand on.

Speaker 8: 34:09

So, you know, coda got founded in the mid 90s, um, hutch's West side, if I remember correctly, was actually the place where Coda used to store all their tools before they had a place to store them. And you know it was five, seven, 10, 15 guys and people to head out and building trails. Um, you know, they quickly started building the relationship with the Forest Service to realize that they needed some organization. They needed an organization and to be organized in order to make the trail network sustainable and, overall, make it legal. So they did.

Speaker 8: 34:47

They went through that process of establishing Coda, building relationships with Forest Service, getting approval for trails, you know. Then you get into fundraising and volunteer hours. You know it was a lot to take on for volunteers but fortunately they were able to get it established. And not only do that, but I think the thing for me that was quite honestly one of the more respectable things is that when it was time for for when Coda had become something else, when it had developed into the started to develop into the organization that it is today, the founding members realized that they needed to get out of the way. And you know that really talks to me about the selflessness of of these folks and understanding that the organization that they founded, quite honestly, was bigger than any of them, or even bigger than than all of them combined.

Speaker 5: 35:52

You guys remember that time frame.

Speaker 6: 35:55

Well, I just remember when we all started riding, there was no Coda, there was no trailer organizations and we were considered pretty much right at the beginning there. We were considered rebels and we built a lot of trails that weren't even on the Forest Services radar. And I think because it was so popular, this trail building and all this, it came around so quickly. The Forest Service kind of had to jump on board and say, well, ok, we're going to agree with this or we're going to have a big war here, right?

Speaker 7: 36:26

Yeah, you were pretty instrumental yeah definitely remember that era and again, I think history's a lot more interesting. I tend to, I don't know. I like history, but when we look at all the stuff out there not all of it, there's a few locally there were some trails that were established and they decided they would build this trail up to the. There's a few trails that have historically been built. But realistically, when you look at Central Oregon as a whole, or a lot of places as a whole, a lot of those historic trails are all user built and all the stuff out by Smith Rocks.

Speaker 7: 37:10

The origin of all that trail system out there was all user built by this old horse race. That was a 50 mile horse race and I mean they took all the sketchiest stuff out. That was. I mean, it's insane. On bike Some of it was really really steep and you're like man, there's no way I would ride a horse up or down this thing. You're just looking at it going. That's crazy. But anyway, it's just interesting how that. You know that is like, well, we're the rebels until you're the majority and so, and there was never any again. When I moved up here I really wanted to work with the Forest Service because I just didn't want to get kicked out of it. It was like you know the old science skateboarding is a crime and I'm like you know, mountain biking is not a crime. You know, we just want to ride our bikes, and I think the other thing that's interesting is that you know one of the things I did early on, when I moved up here and we got Kodagon, which was in this in 1991, was when Koda started.

Speaker 7: 38:08

It didn't become a 501 3C until a couple, two, three years after that. But when what I did was I got the forest plan and read it and the first thing I noticed was number one the forest plan was already overdue. There's still not a new forest plan in place yet. That's when I moved here and we're still operating on the same forest plan. And in that forest plan it basically spells out that the Forest Service needs to accommodate what the public wants to do for recreation. You know that's their job is to do that. And so there's part of the Forest Service. It's, you know, agricultural, it's USDA and it's based on let's, let's collect lumber, you know, and so there's a lot of it in there, and there was a lot of this other stuff in there, and but we would go down and I would sight line and verse and be like, hey, this is what it says that you need to be doing here. And the other thing is that this is this. This forest plan is already overdue and in this forest plan it's really clear that you didn't that the anticipation of the level of recreation, of bike, recreational bike, mountain bike use, is not as underrepresented in this plan. You know we need to, and so these are the things that that help those guys. And then they do know it's their job.

Speaker 7: 39:27

And I it's been interesting and I'm less affiliated now directly with the leadership, but at one time was, you know, watched all the various different leaderships in the Forest Service and different management styles, and I think they all realized that they were going to have to, like Dennis said, to come along for the ride, you know. But at the same time we weren't ever trying to put anything in their face, but the reality was in the forest plan there wasn't anything and as far as I know, there still isn't that says you can't ride through the trail and across the forest anywhere you want unless it's posted that you can't ride there. Okay, you can't cut branches, you can't dig in the dirt, but you can ride your bike, you know, and I'm not recommending that. Look, we can see that there's a limit to just everybody riding all over all the time, you know. But but that's where all these trails came from originally and it wasn't like we were out there trying to break the law or build illegal trails or whatever. We were just riding our bikes, right.

Speaker 6: 40:33

Yeah, this is still going on, especially as you should know more than.

Speaker 5: 40:37

I do Keep that mic in front of your. Keep that mic there.

Speaker 6: 40:39

You should know more than I do, paul, that Klein Butte is the new frontier right now. It has become, from nobody going there, basically a couple of riders to 50, 60 people showing up at a trailhead. Now that's not even official trailhead yet their forest services got little red flags around the parking lot there off of Bar Road. Yeah, and they are. They are going to build a trailhead there to accommodate this, this new, this new bunch of people that are showing up the ride there.

Speaker 5: 41:12

Yeah Well, do accommodate our population, you know, I mean it's a huge population now, compared to what it was 20 years, 30, 40, 50 years ago. Absolutely, and I would imagine you guys back in the day would rarely see anybody and if you if you did, you knew them. You know now there's like tens of thousands of people that ride these trails.

Speaker 6: 41:32

This, this one particular place I'm talking about. We used to call it the hole in the fence and you never see anybody out there hiking or biking or anything. And it was a lot of nice trails. They were horse trails and animal trails. And now you go there and it's got a forest service gate and they're they're signage up about horses and bikes and everything Okay To ride there and it's it's amazing how many cars you see at this, this gate. Now.

Speaker 6: 42:01

It's off a Klein Falls road on the on the hall road that goes into the gravel pit there at Klein Butte.

Speaker 5: 42:09

I don't think we could tell kind of this story of of Central Oregon mountain biking without you talking a little bit about the black rock gang.

Speaker 6: 42:16

Yeah, and we, we all started out as a just wanted somebody to ride with, you know, and then, I don't know, I guess I got the idea, well, maybe we should be kind of official. So I had some shirts made up and we started doing rides and before I knew it, we were getting more and more people that wanted to get together on these rides. You know, and I've gotten together, you know, 50 or a hundred people down to Drake Park to go for a poker run and I'd go around to all the bike bike shops and get some prizes together and we give those away at the at the end of the ride and stuff like that. We, we, we had some pretty good times. It was great to get that many people to get a ride like that.

Speaker 5: 42:53

Yeah, I've seen a lot of old pictures of that. Where'd the name come from? What's black rock? What's it reference?

Speaker 6: 42:59

I used to belong to a trail riding club of which was all dirt bikes and they were called the lava rock riders. Okay. And that kind of gave me the idea. And then, as we, as we've been riding through the years, we've noticed pretty much everything around here is black rock. So, why, not.

Speaker 5: 43:18

Yeah makes sense, Obvious yeah.

Speaker 6: 43:21

It sounded good, and that's what we are.

Speaker 5: 43:23

Yeah, yeah, you're kind of. You're kind of famous for your multi-day wilderness rides. One of my favorite events that I've done around here is that high cascade 100 that Mike Ripley puts on, just because you know when you're out there for 10, 11 hours, you know you. Just it's a completely different experience.

Speaker 6: 43:45

We had a lot of monster rides back in the early days. They seem to be pretty much all day rides. You know we've done the Rogue River and the Amquau River and you know we've ridden along the Deschutes and. Cricket River. You know, like Paul said, clear up to the Columbia.

Speaker 5: 44:00

Yeah.

Speaker 6: 44:01

Yeah, see they were. I don't know, for some reason or other, I was younger then. That probably made a difference.

Speaker 7: 44:08

I think those trails, a lot of those trails, are way more ridden now and sort of grooved in, like a lot of those trails used to be a lot more technical and just they were more overgrown and really narrow and you know a lot of those places. You just couldn't see the exposure that's actually there, you know. Yeah.

Speaker 5: 44:29

Yeah, and a lot of the you know. The reason why they're so well maintained, it seems like to me has to do with the number of people that actually have gotten involved in terms of volunteer and stewardship around here, much of which is, you know, the continued efforts of what you guys started. Back in the day I was able to get in touch with Emmy Andrews, who's the current executive director at Coda, and, for people that don't know, coda stands for Centro-Oregon Trail Alliance and I thought it would be fun to hear kind of the updated stats of Coda compared to where it came from in 92. Hey, everyone.

Speaker 2: 45:13

This is Emmy Andrews. I am the executive director of Coda. I started, I became Coda's first ever employee in 2021. And today Coda has five employees and a budget of $775,000 in 2024. We're logging over 18,000 volunteer work hours per year now and taking care of 600 miles of trail from Madras down to Lopine and Culta Flake and, you know, west, from Sisters all the way out into the Ojiko Mountains in the east. So, yeah, we just owe all these guys such a huge debt of gratitude. I doubt they ever thought that Coda would be what it is today and that the trail would mean so much to the culture of Centro-Oregon and to the quality of life of people like me and so many others. So we just really thank you guys for your work and your passion and happy to carry it on and keep it getting bigger and better.

Speaker 5: 46:26

It's funny thing that's a big budget compared to 1992, huh yeah. Almost a million dollars.

Speaker 7: 46:32

Wow, yeah, you know I want to. I just really quickly want to speak to one of the reasons that I think Coda was so successful early on. So, number one it was impossible for us to collect anything close to that kind of money back then. Number one, the money wasn't in town, okay. But number two was and I was really strongly driven by this which is that we use that word stewardship, you know.

Speaker 7: 46:57

And so when we formed that and I forget where we were exactly, but when we first formed Coda, I was in that meeting and the first ever, like the formation meeting and founding meeting, I guess you would call it. But in that meeting it was really a thing that we didn't want money to be involved, that we wanted to do the work and that the focus wasn't going to be try, start this organization that was going to collect money and do this or that. That really the focus was we're going to go build a bunch of really cool trails and get them approved, and so that. And I totally respect where Coda is now 100% and I get that. But I think there's still this element of Coda that because that the history, the base of Coda, was really about stewardship and getting people out there, teaching them how to build trail and doing the work themselves. You know, like, if you want it, then build it. You know, do it. Yeah, and we had a.

Speaker 7: 48:04

You know, I think Marvellane comes into the conversation here. He's a long like one of the Forest Service, you know, on the ground, land manager, recreation manager guy, and I man. I certainly want to give kudos to John Schubert too, who's an unsung trail hero in this, this neck of the woods, but Forest Service guy for many, many years and taught me so many fundamentals about trail building and maintenance. It was amazing, these guys, you know, once they realized we're all going to work together, then there were some super influential people, but you know, marve was just one of those guys that was, you know, one of the managers that was going to get stuff done you know, we're going to figure out how to do it, you know.

Speaker 5: 48:48

Yeah, I listen to those stats that Emmy says and, granted, I don't have your personal experience and investment, I mean you put a lot of hours in the trails around here in your life, you know. So I listen to that and it's pretty impressive the amount of you know volunteer hours that go on annually and their annual budget and you know. But is it its best version of itself right now, koda?

Speaker 7: 49:14

Yeah, I mean you know I think that you said earlier about people getting out of the way. You know, and I've been involved in not just Central Oregon Trail Alliance but other nonprofits you know, and when new people come in and they have energy, it's incumbent that you. You know, lead follower, get the F out of the way. And you know I think that that's been my take on. You know new people come in and different things happen and you know the history of Koda is interesting. It's not all, it wasn't all pleasure. There's always the stuff that's going on behind the scenes, you know, and people making decisions without you know, getting the whole board on, and you know just stuff that happens, that like anything, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5: 50:04

And everything has layers to the story.

Speaker 7: 50:06

Yeah, and I mean, you know, at one time you know it's interesting, because the entire Koda was so cross country focused that they didn't want to have any, you know, jumps or jump parks or aggressive downhill trails or anything like that. And I understand a lot about the dirt here and the nature of the environment and it's not really the best place to have super aggressive trails because of the type of dirt we have, you know. But I mean, I was racing downhill already when I moved here. You know I was one of the top guys in the world at one point, you know, and so I. So I was kind of the the, the outlier, the pusher of that element of Koda for a long time, you know. And finally this new guy came in and he was going to build all this crazy stuff and jumps and everything. And I just took him aside one day. He was doing, you know, the SORDA trail, you know. So he was building SORDA trails.

Speaker 5: 51:03

Yeah, sorta, yeah, which? Which that stands for Society of Rebel Trail Alliance, something I don't know.

Speaker 7: 51:11

Like it's just, it's just like you know, and so I, I. It was pretty funny. I'll tell the story because it's hilarious. I'm not going to use any names, but the guy's out there, and he's out there, and him and his buddy, they have all this timber on their shoulder and I'm riding by on this kind of cross country-ish trail and I just stop and and, and they stop, they freeze, like I'm not going to see them, and they're just standing there, and so I just wait, like the, the, the, the, the, it's like a minute, and I go, hey, what do you guys do? And they're like oh, and I'm like, oh, yeah, I already saw your trail up there, yeah, and I'm like I don't know, but you don't really understand anything about water management and and that was going on. So anyway, long story, long story short, I corraled this guy up and I'm like you should come to Coda meeting, and so, anyway, that guy goes to the first Coda meeting. I'm like I think he should be the first free ride director, and then. So I was like you know, and then the, but the, the.

Speaker 7: 52:05

The crazy thing was is then, you know, you put people in this position and they have all this glory and all this idea, and then they run head first into government bureaucracy, you know, and they're just like oh my God, I don't know if I could do it. You know, and we've seen this a bunch of a bunch of times over the history of Coda, you know, primeville, people came on. There were some new people that came to Primeville and same story this couple came in and they were really wanting to do this stuff. And I'm like you should come to the meeting, you know, and then come to the meeting, okay, we're on the board, we're going to support you. So there you go. All you have to do is keep going and and and deal with the bureaucracy of it. But then they, you know, this is how this is part of what has has happened over the years. You know, very interesting stuff.

Speaker 5: 52:52

For sure, and and and a lot of ways. To me it speaks to all the more reason why you need an organization like Coda, you know, and and all of it to, I mean, every organization that I've ever been a part of. Everything has its its layers of complexity. It's real life, right, and people like to like to romanticize this stuff. Like this is all always being easy and fun, and I mean that's rarely the case for anything. Dennis, you're kind of known for your love of single speeds.

Speaker 6: 53:23

Yeah, yeah, I got five of them, yeah.

Speaker 5: 53:26

Talk a little bit about that man. How do you, how do you first, you know, did you ride a single speed go to a geared bike and then go back to a single speed, like it?

Speaker 6: 53:34

comes to back in the day when we first started racing we used to do whiskey town downhill and revenge of the Siskius and the Cascade cruise. There was a couple of people there that was riding. They were riding single streets and that would be Bob Woodward and David Gray, and and then I was thought, oh man, I want to be tough like those guys. And then we had a race over at the coast one time called the boss 100, and I have five miles into the ride and I tore my derailleur off and I had to finish the other 95 miles as a single speed and I said this is the way to go.

Speaker 5: 54:11

It's ever since then yeah, did you get lucky, and what gear ratio you were in.

Speaker 6: 54:17

You know, I just had to pick a sprocket in the back and I picked a four. What do I have? A 48 up front, which is pretty high. So I was pretty tall geared but luckily most of the climbs were were climbable.

Speaker 5: 54:31

Yeah, you know you bring up a good point Like until you start getting up into the higher elevation. A lot of the you know in my opinion has always been really enjoy about mountain bike riding in central Oregon. Is is kind of the undulating terrain where you don't have to have real, real low gears. You know, I mean when I was growing up in Idaho it was like you were in the lowest gear possible spinning your way up a dirt road where and it was, and you know with a with a higher gearing ratio comes higher speeds and more flow, and you can very much feel that in the way you design the trails here.

Speaker 6: 55:06

You know a lot of single speed is getting off and and hiking your bike. And we really kind of like to do that a lot too. You know, there's nothing like shoulder in your bike and run it up a hill.

Speaker 5: 55:16

Yeah, yeah, I know, I I the very first time I did the high cascade 100 on that, that climb out of lava lake. My I kept breaking my chain and ultimately I just had to, to you know, run like hike, run up that climb out of that. That's a hard climb to you, man.

Speaker 7: 55:36

Edison, lava Edison, yeah, lava Edison.

Speaker 5: 55:39

Yeah, yeah, you're familiar with that. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, in fact, you know, I I know you're familiar with that because Ripley was telling me about this here.

Speaker 9: 55:51

Like Thomas Berg, I went out on a build with him over on that. Or you wanted to work on Edison lava trail because that was kind of his adopted trail, like the one that no one wanted in the middle of nowhere right. So from Edison over to lava lake and we went out there one time in the summer before high cascade and we moved this rock and we had the position to this ride, but it was like two hours it was getting dark. It was going to get dark. Thomas Berg, just obsessive on nailing it. Like you know, he built how to traverse and you can tell how that trail moves. That's how Paul rides, really nice and flowy, big power, you know, kept keeping speed.

Speaker 9: 56:30

So you know, really super passionate person and Shimano skunk you knew that you can fall, that Ripley says that you never met a rock, that you didn't like fall in love with Anybody with a Bob trailer and has like pants on and fully like loaded down Bob trailer with chains on stuff and you want to try to keep up with Paul climbing like rock, rocks and NAR, good luck, you don't have to have anything in tow. My apologies would match that shit. It was like really, and even in Marathon Nationals back I think it was the first year Paul was turning 50, and he made me design the course so it would go up funner the technical way, like the downhill routes, before it was labeled as that Directional or suggested directional. I don't believe it had that, even though it was built as a primary use downhill trail. But Paul made me not go up the climbing routes, he made me take it up to stupid hard spots. So all the psycho climbers you know he'd have maybe a chance and he won the national championships in Marathon.

Speaker 2: 57:43

So yeah, geez.

Speaker 5: 57:47

He's fun to banter with man Mike Ripley. There's not a whole lot of guys like him.

Speaker 7: 57:52

Yeah, I love that guy. He's a, he used to be a racer. There's this guy that we both know. I don't know why I'm blanking on his name right now, but over in the mud, but he the guy that started the mud slinger race, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 7: 58:08

Oh, why am I blanking on his name right now? Anyway, he's still riding strong, I know that, and but Ripley used to be a racer over there. So yeah, I go way back with with Mike Ripley and I don't remember that part about but Nationals, but, but I did win that race because I rode the log ride backwards up the climbing section.

Speaker 5: 58:30

At fun on funner On funner yeah.

Speaker 7: 58:33

And and that was really that there was a battle for first place. This guy and I had been going back and forth the whole entire race and it was. It was a good race for me, but yeah.

Speaker 5: 58:42

Yeah, I mean racing around here has evolved over the years. I mean, dennis, you had mentioned what I think is the very first race, which was the Cascade Cruise in 1983.

Speaker 6: 58:53

Yeah.

Speaker 5: 58:54

You know. I mean, it's only a matter of time when before people start getting into a new sport and then the level of competition drives.

Speaker 6: 59:03

It started out as just a ride, and I think 1988 or 81. And then I think it was, like you say, 83, when it actually became a race.

Speaker 5: 59:13

Yeah, do you remember?

Speaker 6: 59:14

who won that first event? John Tomak, I don't know. Yeah, was it you?

Speaker 5: 59:20

Paul, no, no, I started at bachelor, ended in Chevron Park.

Speaker 6: 59:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was reading about it. That was pretty epic yeah.

Speaker 5: 59:30

Yeah, and then you have. You know all the different races that have, you know, gone on over the years, pickett's Charge, and you know all the different races that Mike puts on the 24 and you know 2018,.

Speaker 6: 59:44

We had the world championship, segal Speed Right yeah, 700 riders.

Speaker 5: 59:48

Yeah, that was awesome and you know, and then so yeah, the evolution of mountain bike racing. And then you get into the Enduro stuff and the more kind of like downhill time stuff and now with bachelor and all of their mountain bike options up there, I mean clearly it's been a massive influence on our community and continues to be. And for many people it's not only their personal passion but professionally you know whether it's people who have opened bike stores or frame builders or shit man, you could argue that there's probably a fair amount of you know micro brew companies in this town that started because of the community of people that came in from mountain biking.

Speaker 7: 1:00:38

I think Gary Fish deserves some credit Historically. So the owner I think he's still the owner of Tishitsbury. Yeah. You know, for 18 years we did Ben's Big Fat Tour and that was the one sponsor that we had the whole entire 18 years. That guy was happy to take care of our tour and promote biking and he I think he saw the writing on the wall. You know what was happening in town and what was inspiring people to to go you know, do something healthy, not just drink beer and get fat you know, like he was on the good side of that thing and also he, I think over the years we got a lot of other sponsors.

Speaker 7: 1:01:19

but early on in Coda and when we're trying to figure out trail days, you know, whenever you have food and beer, then there's some incentive for people to put a half a day of work in, or you know, the people I used to always say don't go with me if you want to get to the, to the food and beer early. I'm not the guy you want to go with, because I'm going to keep you out there most of the day we're going to actually do some work, but anyway you quit drinking.

Speaker 5: 1:01:46

Yeah, I did.

Speaker 7: 1:01:47

That's been 20 years now, which was kind of crazy. I used to drink at the shoots brewery for free. Yeah, I did. I spent like years going to that place. I knew all the people there, the managers, and I just never, I'd never, I couldn't pay for a beer, which wasn't really great I guess in the long, but it really wasn't, you know, had anything to do with it. I also worked, spent a lot of time still work for Shimano doing product development, and that culture is very much at the time when I started, 30 years ago, very much a drinking business culture. So you know, work hard all day and then talk business at night over beverages.

Speaker 7: 1:02:31

you know, and, but anyway, I'm happy to be where I am today.

Speaker 5: 1:02:37

It's a great place to be. Yeah, and if I asked you personal questions, just say so and I'll edit it out of here. But because I quit drinking about three and a half years ago, good for you. And you know I worked in, I work in healthcare as a profession. So I remember in medical school studying epidemiology and just you know disease amounts of population. You know, and over the years I've often thought about you know, some of these unique mountain towns like Bend or you know where, where alcohol consumption is. So it's so part of like the cultural kind of part of the community. Now you go out and you do damn near anything and, or at least five, 10 years ago, everybody would go have a couple beers afterwards and I think that's always been the case. I mean, I'm sure back before micro brews you guys were popping in Kors, lights or hams or whatever it was, dennis.

Speaker 7: 1:03:37

Triple grand bargain.

Speaker 5: 1:03:39

Yeah.

Speaker 6: 1:03:40

You know, but we used to carry a bottle of tequila with us on on saddlebag rides Right.

Speaker 5: 1:03:46

Which, which I think most young people, most adventurous young people to this day, can relate with. And then my thought is, in any population, over time, you're going to have that group of people that has either genetic predisposition or family history or whatever of of alcohol use. And I just noticed with myself, I mean it became, you know, when you're drinking high alcohol content beverages for long, you know, over time to for some people that's going to develop some, some degree of unhealthy habits, right, not to mention, the older you get, the more shitty it is for you. But yeah, so I was curious about it because you've been you've been sober 20 years, yeah, and you had mentioned, like the role AA has played in your life.

Speaker 7: 1:04:35

Yep, yeah, I'm a member of AA and I don't. You know, I don't really discuss a lot about that in my public life. I reach out to other people. You know it's an interesting program. You know the 12th step talks about as a result of these steps. You know we had a spiritual enlightenment, basically, and you know that was my experience. I don't, you know, I have a lot of other spiritual practices in my life and they're ongoing. I'm not really a religious guy, but I do stuff. I went to yoga right before I showed up here. That's one of my practices that I try to stay out of my head for part of the time, yeah.

Speaker 7: 1:05:20

You know, and for me you know, it just wasn't a healthy thing anymore. I started smoking weed when I was eight years old. You know I'm not embarrassed to say that and it's always fascinating. My grandson's six and a half years old now and I remember really clearly when my kids were eight and I went, oh my God. And I remember when I took my eight year AA coin and. I'm like now. I'm sober longer than I've ever been in my life and I was over 41.

Speaker 7: 1:05:57

I got sober so, so it was like that's a crazy thing you know and and and sobriety is different than what people make it out to be. You know, and look for a while, it's really hard. You know it's really hard. You live in this town. You know all that great beer out there and I mean, let's just be honest, like the only other place in the world that's sort of like this is probably like Amsterdam or whatever. You know it's like, what place has that much good beer and good weed and good everything? It's just like crazy. It's just kind of crazy, you know, but at some point it just becomes too much, you know.

Speaker 5: 1:06:30

Yeah, I think for some people you're absolutely right. You know, I think you're, I know you are. Yeah, Uh, what else boys? Anything we didn't talk about that we should, and I mean, this conversation's kind of been all over the place. Let's talk more.

Speaker 7: 1:06:43

Well, yeah, I want to just touch back on going, you know, riding to the top of uh lava butte in the middle of the night and shooting fireworks off and then riding riding down the deer trail that comes off the front side of the.

Speaker 7: 1:07:03

There was this old deer trail that comes right down through the pummel and we would ride down that old deer trail in the moonlight, without lights. You know, and you know that was we used to call night riding. The night riding that, I know, has nothing to do with lights on your bike. Like we rode all over in the moonlight, you know, and uh, so that was a night ride. That was, though. Those are real night rides, yeah, and there was a few tumbles and spills and things that happened in the middle of the night.

Speaker 6: 1:07:32

We did a total eclipse of the moon night ride once out by a Crooked River Ranch. We rode down to steelhead falls this bright, shiny mood. We got down there and the moon went away and then the clouds rolled in and nobody had a light and we were literally crawling on our hands and knees to find the trail to get back to the truck. It was like two o'clock in the morning before we found the truck. It was pretty scary actually.

Speaker 5: 1:08:01

Talk a little bit about your relationship with Shimano, because you've been with them for a long time.

Speaker 7: 1:08:06

Yeah, it's been, uh, it's been an amazing, amazing, uh, it's been an amazing ride. So, uh, I don't know, I was just at the right place at the right time and again, I had that. That goes back to my high school days and so I was racing and I had some uh, uh opportunities, you know. Uh, I had some sponsorship and Shimano was one of my sponsors and they're like okay, we'll give you, you know, if you get first, second or third. So it was very top heavy and at that time it was. It was hard to be a top three. That was uh for me. I was never, uh, you know, one of the top three guys. I just I was kind of pack filler. I had a lot of top five finishes, you know, and I won a couple of big races, but a couple, you know, and um and uh, um, uh and um, um, uh, um, um, um, uh, um, um, uh, um, um.

Speaker 7: 1:08:52

But then this guy approached me and I've been doing like some kind of development stuff from them. But Wayne Stettin approached me and he goes hey, we want you to write a report once a month and we're going to give you some money to help out your expenses for your racing career and that was good. I had some other sponsorship going on. I'm like that sounds like a totally awesome, because I was already kind of doing that work for him anyway and they were just trying to figure out a way where they could get me money and get consistent monthly feedback from me.

Speaker 7: 1:09:22

And so that's where that started and that was 1990, you know, and so it's a long time and I've been through so all the iterations of XTR and then you know, my last seven years, almost eight years now, has been almost 100% e-bike focused, which has been really interesting because I've done a lot of work on the mechanical side and now I don't understand it that well, but I have to understand it well enough to you know all the we're doing, all this firmware stuff and auto shifting stuff and I'm working on and I like brakes right now, and so it's really been.

Speaker 7: 1:10:00

It's really been an amazing, amazing ride, you know so, and it's been just super fortunate, super grateful for those people wouldn't be here, and it's just. It's been interesting because the guys in Japan is so different the work culture in Japan, and it's better than it used to be, but it's still such a driven like work culture, wise, just very different than American. But I work for this Japanese company and technically I'm an outside guy. You know I'm an independent contractor, but I've been working with them for a long time.

Speaker 5: 1:10:34

Yeah, 34 years.

Speaker 7: 1:10:36

And the crazy thing is is that in Japan there's this element that doesn't exist the same way in the United States. So what I mean by that is, as you progress in your career in Japan, like I, these young engineers, they have just so much respect for me, you know, and they're not like, they're not all absorbed into their own ideas about whatever they're working on. They're really curious about what they can get from the old guy, you know, and that's a lot different than a lot of the culture in the. United. States yeah.

Speaker 7: 1:11:12

And just culturally, just I love it. Like when I first went over there, like you could leave a $5,000 downhill bike outside on the sidewalk in front of the hotel and the only person freaked out about it would be the hotel owner and he'd be like, ah, you left your bike outside, I brought it in it's behind the desk, don't do that. And you're like, yeah, but it's just, it's just so different, it's just so there's still this level of respect, that Anyway. So I love the culture and I've learned so much from those guys and it's just very different the way they operate.

Speaker 5: 1:11:49

Yeah, in business. Yeah, they're an interesting company, you know, I hear Shimano, for me I immediately think of cycling componentry. But then you go back and you read about the history of that company. I mean, it was founded as an iron company, you know, and they made their first cycling product was the freewheel, you know, and like the freewheel hub, I think, was it, the hub 333.

Speaker 7: 1:12:16

No, it's a little like a screw on. Yeah, triple 3 freewheel.

Speaker 5: 1:12:20

And it's just you know. I mean, and you start thinking about that time in the 20s and the role of the bicycle and the evolution of, like direct drive. You know fixed gear, single speeds, to the ability to coast and where that evolved into, you know, drum brakes, and I mean, it's just you know, bikes get overlooked, man.

Speaker 9: 1:12:40

Yeah.

Speaker 5: 1:12:41

And it's a really cool history of innovation. When you start looking at modern day bikes and now and now you talk about Shimano going from the you know a freewheel to being an industry leader and like e-bike componentry and technology, and I mean, dude, it's, it's insane the amount of growth that's in innovation that's going on.

Speaker 7: 1:13:02

Yeah, it's. It's been super fascinating and I want to just throw that back to so where Shimano's based out of Sakai City. So long before Shimano, that city had a metallurgical history, so it's not like a fluke that Shimano ended up coming from that place. So they used to make some of the best samurai, so it's or the best samurai swords in the world there. Really.

Speaker 7: 1:13:26

And then they were exported all around the world and then they also for a time made some of the best guns in the world, and so this is some of the metallurgical history about that, where Shimano comes from. That it kind of like. To me it's fascinating. Again, I love history, so I'll go in there. And and Shimano has an amazing museum in Japan. It's. It's a one of the best museums bike museums I've ever been to, and then there's stuff that's on display and then they also have the basement. So as a guy like me, I can like no, no, no, I want to go see the basement.

Speaker 7: 1:13:57

Let's go see all the other stuff that isn't on display right now and and I just love that stuff, have a bunch of old books about that and, and you know, like the real history of bikes is just way before, there's so many ideas that we recycle, you know, over and over again. And and that's you know history. So I try not to, you know, make myself that important when you really realize that you, just you know recycling a lot of ideas. So the ability to refine those ideas where we are technologically now is amazing.

Speaker 7: 1:14:28

You know, like it's just so far, like the ability, the concept of suspension has been around for like a long time, hundreds of years. The, the manifestation of the suspension like we have today is, you know, improved, you know, every year it's getting better, better, better. You know, and in same way with drive trains and the motors and braking systems and you know, exponentially improvements via technology.

Speaker 5: 1:14:56

Yeah, I mean, like you've seen a lot of innovation there, man, is there anything that you thought was going to pop in cycling that ended up kind of being a bust that comes back?

Speaker 7: 1:15:07

Man, I don't, I don't know. Biopace, biopace, yeah, that was it. That was never really. Some people loved it yeah.

Speaker 5: 1:15:15

What is it?

Speaker 7: 1:15:15

Oh, it's just biopace chainring. Dennis is making a joke because it was like you know, but you know it's so funny. Dennis brought that up. I have this one guy and he's actually was for service guy Steve, not Hayden, anyway, I forgot his name. But he called me up one day and he goes hey man, I got this old Dior XT but it's got a biopace ring on it and I love that and I just happened to have like almost brand new one that I gave him and he was so stoked he's just like oh my God, I love that, but it was kind of like an oval ring and there's actually still guys that are using oval rings out there today. There's still a few people that make oval rings, you know, and, and I think for me there's stuff that I thought was going to happen way quicker than it did you know, and I was innovative early on.

Speaker 7: 1:16:07

Like I said, I had that thing going on in high school and work with this bike shop and do all this stuff. But you know, I'd be known to a lot of people. I was like one of the first people to ever do bike tires tubeless, you know, and I did that in the 80s and 1980s was when I did it, but I never told anybody or showed anybody to it. But I did a race on the technology in the 90s and there's a few, very few people. One of the guys I showed a long time ago was John Tomak. I'm like hey, check this out man. But anyway, the you know that was something that took way longer to really get mainstream than I thought it should have taken, you know, because it just had a lot of immediate advantages, you know where do you get the original idea to run your tires tubeless?

Speaker 7: 1:16:50

Yeah, I don't. I don't remember what the motivation was. I think at that time it was. I think my original motivation was just to have it really be super lightweight, so like what would be the equivalent of a sew up tire for a mountain bike. And there, you know, we went through that phase there. So we did, there was some soaps and mountain bikes, but they're not that effective, you know. And so it would be what it was about the weight. I think when I first did that.

Speaker 7: 1:17:19

But immediately I was like, oh wait, it rides way more supple and there isn't this tension between the tube, like there's places where you want the tire to be really soft and there's places where you want it to be really stiff. So when you have a tubeless tire, the tube is not interfering in where you want that flex. And I still think, you know, tires are way. They're continuously getting better, better, better. But because it's about where they're putting the material and the stiffness of those materials in the sidewall compared to the casing. And of course this is all dependent on where you're riding. You know, if you're riding super burly, rocky stuff, not only does the sidewall have to be cut, resistant, but also the surface of the tread. You know so. But yeah, that was one, and I actually got a patent, a tubeless tire patent that Shimano helped me invent.

Speaker 7: 1:18:12

And then there's some stuff again I think you know we're seeing it on the market now and just stuff that I think has taken a long time to get to develop, and one of those is centrally mounted transmissions. You know so. You know what other, what other vehicle can you ride where, during a normal riding what I would consider normal riding you can literally remove the transmission from the bike. You know, like, without crashing. You know what other vehicle is that possible in? You know, like it's not like that's. It's just sometimes there's these problems that people will ignore on purpose. Or, you know, you talk to people like, oh well, I can I never hit my head, I can I never hit my derailleur because I automatically move my bike around it. Well, why? Why would you want to have to move your bike around anything? You know why would that? Anyway, these are just observations that it were 20 years ago, plus for me, you know like just like okay.

Speaker 7: 1:19:10

So the future of the market's changing. There's some interesting stuff out there and you know I and the interesting thing for me that really the most interesting thing that is, I think from outside people that understand the life of a tester is that I love it and it's way better for my job the stronger the competition is. So right now SRAM is really competitive. They they're making a lot of really good stuff and and you know I don't know, I'm not. I don't have any ego attached into who's better or not or why. I just get to analyze their product and I don't spend a lot of time on the competitors product, my ideas to make you know our stuff as good as it can be. That's, that's what I try to focus on. But you also have to understand what's going on in the market, you know and so when the competitors are really strong.

Speaker 7: 1:20:00

That's when you know Shimano is a giant there. They're like the biggest company in the bicycle industry and they can do anything they want to do. Literally they can do anything they want to do, but they got to want to do it and so they know how to make money. They know how to dominate giant segments much more than these other little companies that can make really cool stuff, but they're they're really their market capacities limited. You know, I mean the people that are competitive with Shimano are the organizations like Bosch. You know company like Bosch, like look at what they do. They do refrigerators and you know they do this and that they make motors. They're there. That's a kind of like super strong competitor yeah.

Speaker 7: 1:20:46

And. But anyway, I just always find it interesting because and then I'll just end on one little note because always people are like, well, what do you? You know, what does it take to be a good tester? And I'm like, okay, just take the best stuff that we make, or the best stuff that SRAM makes, even whatever. Just take the best stuff in the world. Now tell me the 10 things you can do to make it better Immediately. Like what would make this way better from the? Take it from the top level, and then how do you make that way better? You know that's, that's that's where you know innovation and tech. You know how to incorporate that technology so we can do that.

Speaker 7: 1:21:23

That next improvement and I'm really focused, you know, and there's all these, you know, unique sales points or whatever. What are we going to tell the customer? You know, on the inside is a lot different than the marketing side. Like I don't work for marketing, you know, I'm working for the, the really core development side of things. You know, and it's not like, what are we going to tell people? How does it? What do we say in the magazine? You know, like, what is the? No, we're not. That's not really what we're trying to do really always. For me, the goals always been to make better bikes and I think you know the one thing that's kept me around with Shimano as long as I've been around, you know, I've always thought, like you know, who knows, maybe they're going to fire me next year. I mean, I don't know. Like I got told a long time ago, they're like when you turn 60, they're probably going to put you out to pasture. It's just Japanese, don't take it personally.

Speaker 5: 1:22:15

How old are you now?

Speaker 7: 1:22:17

I'm, I'll be, I'm 61, I'll be 62 in July, yeah so, but it's, it's fascinating and right now, like I realized that we have this whole new, whole new skunk development team, like the test riders in North America and a couple guys I work with in Europe and you know, even now the people that are my direct kind of managers in Japan they realize there's a lot of benefit to have somebody around that's been doing it for 30 years, you know, to hang out with the younger, with the younger test riders and and spend time, you know, discussing future development.

Speaker 5: 1:22:58

Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, it's really cool. It's turned into a career man.

Speaker 10: 1:23:06

Yeah, it's amazing.

Speaker 5: 1:23:08

Yeah, Pretty amazing. Dennis, what did you do for a career man?

Speaker 6: 1:23:13

I'm totally retired now. I was a truck driver. Pretty much most of my life Started in Vietnam.

Speaker 5: 1:23:19

Yeah.

Speaker 6: 1:23:21

Came back from Vietnam and went to school for a couple of years, studied and worked for the Forest Service, majored in geology and paleontology and ended up driving truck oil truck for 22 years 24 years excuse me. Yeah. Yeah, so now I just ride my bike. Yeah, that's my job, yeah, I love it Every day?

Speaker 5: 1:23:45

Do you get out every day Pretty much.

Speaker 6: 1:23:47

Because it's cold. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5: 1:23:52

What do you guys have like what? What are you excited about? What's on? What's on the horizon?

Speaker 6: 1:23:58

Don't have any big rides planned. Uh, got to go to uh Nevada for uh uh a big ride this uh this spring. Usually go there first or second week of May to the place called Virgin Valley. We had a big get together there a couple of years ago, the Virgin Valley rally. We had the donkey downhill and it got together all the old black rock gang and it was really great.

Speaker 5: 1:24:23

How many guys are still riding from that original crew?

Speaker 6: 1:24:28

Probably eight or ten that I could just take off, right off the top of my head, that are still pretty active.

Speaker 6: 1:24:33

Yeah out of how many. There was over a hundred people at one time, and I've recently tried to get the club recognized again. I've bought like six dozen t-shirts and given almost all of them away to riders that used to ride with us through the years Off and on the museum here the Historical Museum has made a pretty big deal out of the black rock riders. We've been sort of recognized again and it's made it kind of fun to see a lot of old faces and get them back out of the trail again.

Speaker 5: 1:25:13

Yeah man, I'm glad we got to have this conversation. Thanks for the stuff you guys have done for mountain biking, the trail system, the community it's a massive part of where we live and it has been for a long time. But it's even more so now With the popularity of people wanting to get outdoors and the influence and for better or worse access that social media promotes the stuff and the way things have been done in this community. I'm really thankful that the trajectory and kind of the best practices whether it's trail stewardship or just community building was set in motion by you guys, Because if it was, you know, and over the years it's gone through revisions and it's made itself better, but it seems like in a healthy spot right now is our community gets bigger. So thanks for what you've done and what you're doing and thanks for taking some time today and I guess, if there's nothing else, it's a good spot to end it.

Speaker 7: 1:26:25

Yeah, well, thank, thank you, Adam, and I want to thank Dennis for all the good times way back then. I I have a lot of fund memories of those and I was. Hopefully you hear this, phil, but I was sad that you weren't here. Bob and yeah, it's kind of funny. So this guy, dennis heater and used to be Bob Woodward to but Phil and Don Lee. The most common place I will find those guys is on some random trail, somewhere, that's usually where I see them.

Speaker 7: 1:27:02

You know, that's why I run into those guys. Why cuz we're still out bike riding on some obscure little trail somewhere, you know, oh cool.

Speaker 5: 1:27:12

Yeah, that's, it's amazing. I mean that that's the most value thing about this. Valuable thing about this is the friends that you make. You know I can say the same thing about snowboarding or other sports. It you know when, when it's a common thread throughout your life and it makes up a big part of your story arc, of your life. It's the relationships you build are all along the way. I mean the most. You know and we're you know things, times going by, this is a history that you know. I'm glad that it's been recorded in a lot of different ways, but I learned a lot to during the preparation for this episode and so, like I said, thanks again. Can we put?

Speaker 7: 1:27:52

just put a quick plug for the historical society. Yeah yeah, I mean, if you guys, if you didn't come and see this Down at the, is it been historical society, right?

Speaker 5: 1:28:04

Yeah, the been historical museum, yeah.

Speaker 7: 1:28:07

Yeah, and there's a great a little History of mountain biking in Bend, oregon, and it's a really good, it's really well done. So please come down and check it out. And and I'm just saying that I I wanted to duck out of that because all these guys Were here way before me and so I ducked out of that one, but it's really, really nice, it's a really nice deal here above and beyond the call of duty here to keep the History of mountain biking.

Speaker 5: 1:28:36

Yeah, I mean everywhere from the old clunker bikes right, yeah. To you know, the first dump jumper which I think that thing sold from when I was reading, like 750 bucks Talking about a reboot before there was houses on it speed and research.

Speaker 7: 1:28:51

Speed and research. Whiskey town. There's a whiskey town trophy right there, like there's all a bunch of really.

Speaker 5: 1:28:57

Original trail like ideas. It's, yeah, it's, it's phenomenal.

Speaker 6: 1:29:02

I I stop at trailhead sometimes and tell people have you been to the historical museum yet? And they go oh, I heard about it when you need to go there, yeah and some people have said oh yeah, I finally went there and it was really great.

Speaker 5: 1:29:17

All right guys. See you on the trail, yeah hope, so All right you, mr Bob Woodward.

Speaker 10: 1:29:27

Yeah, well, basically as a kid who lives in Colorado and not remote, but you know, out in the sticks a bit and Access to the outdoors is really important. There's actually a nature center between our house and my grade school so I'd walk through it every day and that Experience plus, my uncle was very active in getting us kids out To do different things like skiing, hike and camp and everything like that. So he was a huge influence, you know. But my uncle's anything guy. He was a spy during World War two, but he was you spoke German. He was a law graduate. He was practicing law in Illinois and he went to Europe and they enlisted him as a spy and he came out Fascinating career. He's got great. He had great stories. He kept us fascinating.

Speaker 10: 1:30:23

We were kids but my dad was the marketing guy and he liked the outdoor activities a lot when he had time but he traveled Extensively so it didn't get much time to do it. So we did it our own art. We had a lot of neighbor kids who did stuff. So we kind of all grew up the same culture. What we moved here really focused for the skiing, no question about it, and being because at that time I did summer camps for ski technique, summer camps with us ski team members and Olympians and so forth, and we attracted, started track people from all over the country to come here. But I had started the kayak in California and I brought that with me and was really instrumental in getting that started. A great story that I got a call from one of the kayak companies one day. They and the guy said we have a lot of seconds, we both, both of the little Flemishes in them, not really bad, but you know, just more cosmetic anything. Do you want it? I said what's the price to give you price? We shipped a whole car Truckload of boats up here. We got this in one fell swoop, got the whitewater paddling Community get started. Well, I think it.

Speaker 10: 1:31:44

You know, in my case my Family likes to get involved in any way they could in different activities when we were growing up. But when I went to college I got very involved and that big deal over with me was students for Kennedy I really worked my butt off. Or JFK, and that really changed my whole life, whole vision, because he preached about getting back to the community and working with the community. You know, going house to house, talking to people going to rallies. All that really affected me. So we my wife is the same way and she basically we did we sat down and said you know, we wanted, what we want to do is live in a place where it's small enough that we can have an effect on the community, you know, be integral part of the community and the movement of the community, and Just not be somebody who comes and takes. But some of you comes and gives. And so we, we started out right from the beginning, trying to get involved through any way we could In band and band activity.

Speaker 10: 1:32:48

What happened was I you know, I get an old twin and there are five or six of us Gary Bonnaker, of course, one of the originals, and and we were all riding around all the beauty. And I ran into Dennis one time on our reboot and we, I talked to him and Finally was a motorcycle guy At heart and I asked him I said, because you helped me with my downhill technique, because you know how to do it, and so he said sure, I'll help you. And so we started to ride together. He's helping me with down and I learned a lot and proved he got better. So I, dennis, became a friend Still on the other hand, his. But his wife I knew and she told me oh, by the way, my husband's Just got a bike. He bought up one of the bikes from the Rosh Nishis when they were decamping out of Antelope North here and I was going to do riding through Drake Park one day and I saw a guy on a bike. I like my Lush wind type food and I rode up to him and it was still. We introduced each other, we started riding together the next day and that went on for years. Well, here's the way I look at it.

Speaker 10: 1:34:05

The real instigator at Dennis was the we call him the Mary prankster of the mountain bikers, early guys. He put together poker rides, fun rides, long distance rides, overnight rides. He was just great. And you know we did all these adventures, whether it be just around town with our Cruise. We just, as a cruiser, crawl downtown with the old bikes and get dressed up and have party in Drake Park, stuff like that to the overnight with, you know, heavy packs and Flat tires and all the rest of it. But Dennis was an instigator and Phil was just a great. You know, steady, great mechanic, knew a lot about bikes. He loved to use up to ride anytime, so it's a big.

Speaker 10: 1:34:55

The key to me was exploring we. We didn't ride for speed or for thrills, we rode for exploring, just to see the countryside, get away from it all. It was just a great way to do it and we all fell in love with it. For me it's always been. At the end of the hard work is a relief in you, that sense of Relaxation and you just feel good about doing something hard. It makes you make you feel good. That's simply what it was. It's me mentally clear. She got you clear the air mentally.

Speaker 2: 1:35:31

You sleep better everything you eat better everything seems to work in conjunction.

Speaker 10: 1:35:37

You make you happier, but at the root of it is, you know, some hard effort to get to that. For me that one of the critical moments of my life was in 1974. I Was invited to go to Norway and I got to Norway and I was completely blown away by the population. People were such good shapes, so many people ski. I see grandmothers on the trails and you know all that I just made me say this is the kind of life I want to be. But you're involved, your vigorous, your active and your mentally clears you up, and then you have mental challenges that come easier. Well, you don't understand people like me. One thing that really helped was the 60s, you know, when I was a. You can't believe this, but I was a computer sales rep in the early days of the tech revolution and I was making a lots of money, had an unhappy marriage and the whole thing was a. Marriage fell apart and the 60s happened and it was just you know it's refreshing you could do whatever you wanted to do. So I went from, you know, making a couple hundred grand a year to working as a ski mechanic at a shop in Berkeley in like a six-month period, completely change and then started to write. All that stuff happened but there was a more creative atmosphere generally. Well, I think one of the hardest things is for Creative people or at least people want to be creative to touch, to get in touch with that.

Speaker 10: 1:37:17

I was in Norway on that trip in 74. Coming back on the plane from Oslo to Chicago. The guy sitting next to me in his seat and the airplane said you tell some great stories. Here's a name of an editor and you wrote down the guy's name and a piece of paper had it to me, said Contacts this guy. I think he might be interested in some of your work. Well, I didn't have any work, but I contacted the guys that sent me a couple of ideas. I did. I wrote two articles for him and the rest.

Speaker 10: 1:37:47

I started to change my life at that time from retail to being being a creative type and I'd always been into photography as the kid, as a, particularly in high school, and it just revealed together. The minute I got my first article ever printed in a magazine I. It just completely changed my life. I got a photo assignment in Australia and with the manufacturer of Footwear and they wanted to fly me down and spend a month taking Images all over the country that related to their footwear line, which was very popular in the museum in Australia, and they wanted to introduce this here. And at the last minute they called me and said we can't make it there. We have a big legal problem coming up with copyrighted, with some patent infringement or whatever. So we're going to pay you your Fees and we were going to pay you anyway and thank you for being my friend. Thank you for being ready to go with this. We may do it in the future.

Speaker 10: 1:38:56

I took the money and blog the mountain bike some chopper sport at Century cycles that started it. Well, I think it offers stability, guessing chance to a vehicle to get away from the everyday. Do you know, do something like I can ride down the river trail now and it's just enough away from home and enough out in the open and Fresh air and all that good stuff, just to get away from it, the routine, for just a bit and Also to test yourself. For a lot of us it was, you know, we race because we want to see how we could do, how it's stacked up, how we did it mostly ourselves with it, and how we did against our peers and and had and didn't have fun. People come at it now, you know they figured they get a big $15,000 bike or whatever it, and that makes this scene and what we did.

Speaker 10: 1:39:52

When we started it was like a tribe, tribal thing, you know, and we, we just had fun with it. It wasn't about the bike you had or the clothes you had or anything like that, it was just that you were there and you were having fun and you're, you know, it was just people bonding and it wasn't about gear or Technical, how fast you were, anything like that, it was just about who you were. Now I gotta leave you some words of wisdom ready for these. These are words to live by. Old age is creeping up and I'm losing my youth. I look in the mirror and it tells me the truth and that's why I sing the blues, mr BB King. Oh man, no problem, man, yeah, bye, bye, bye. I remember when I was a bad time.

Speaker 5: 1:41:05

Hey, thanks for listening to Ben magazine's the circling podcast. Make sure to pick up our March April edition, where you can find a Fantastic article written by local cycling legend, carl Decker, that tells even more of the Phil's trail system story. And visit been magazine calm and learn about all the outdoor Adventures in our area, as well as upcoming featured community events, local artists profiles, our dining guide and more. Our theme song was written by Carl Perkins and performed by Aaron Colbaker and Aaron Zerflu of the errands. We love mail, so please send us comments, questions or art to the circling podcast at been magazinecom. Support the circling podcast by becoming a member on patreon at patreoncom Forward. Slash the circling podcast and learn how your financial contribution will help support local nonprofits while also supporting local podcasting. Follow us on Instagram at the circling podcast to learn more about past, current and upcoming episodes. Please subscribe to the circling podcast on all major podcast platforms and leave us a review. It really does help.

Speaker 5: 1:42:20

I'd like to say a special thank you to the Deschutes historical museum and all of those who participated in the making of this episode, as it wouldn't be the same without your contribution, and I appreciate your trust. Make sure to check out central Oregon trail alliance at Cota mtbcom and learn how you can get involved to help develop, protect and enhance the central Oregon mountain bike experience through trail stewardship, advocacy, collaboration and education. Make sure to visit the mountain bike exhibit at the Deschutes historical museum it's amazing. Support your local bike shops for all your cycling needs and don't forget to stay tuned after the show credit for Dennis Paul and Bob's Contribution to the circling podcast community art project and visit mark jamic com to learn more about Subliminal story art embedded with me. Lastly, if you know someone who you think would enjoy today's episode, please share it with them today. Hey, thanks for your time. Central Oregon, go, get outside. I'll see you out there and remember the health of our community relies on us.

Speaker 10: 1:43:40

Hi, this is Bob Woodward, retired writer and photographer, and my feeling about community is people getting together for the common good, whether it be trails, art and politics, whatever, just getting together and moving ahead.

Speaker 1: 1:43:57

I Would have to say. Adventure is a big one for me. Shared Experience, hey, this is Paul Thomas Berg, and this is what community means to me.

Speaker 3: 1:44:10

We're trying to trying to, you know, not let the old guys be forgotten, and this is my way of contributing. Some of our slogans are you know, pavement sucks dirt, dirt or die. And the other one is it's dry and dusty, that's all downhill. That was usually a lie. That was usually a lie both of the time. It was all uphill.