Tony Eberts

Steelheader News Editor

Mountain biking is a quite new sport. At least it's new when compared with my old carcass. I admire these immensely strong and incredibly light machines, but I will never ride one. They're just plain intimidating, and they make me think of how simple and limited bikes used to be.

Once upon a time when the world was young and I was a kid, a bicycle was pretty well a bicycle, which is a term that means something like "two circles" or, ideally, "two wheels." There was just enough steel frame to hold the two wheels together, and there was an uncomfortable bit of a seat and a couple of pedals and a chain to move the thing.

There were no gears on my basic model, and I'd never even heard of such things. I don't believe titanium had been invented yet. The brakes on my basic CCM applied to the hub of the rear wheel and would heat up alarmingly if used too heavily. It was red, with white fenders and chain guard and chrome trim. It was beautiful, but pretty heavy for its size.

Once a high school pal of mine (he had a basic CCM too) and I rode and pushed our bikes a couple of miles up a steep old logging road just to coast back down. We figured the speed would be exhilarating, but nothing we couldn't handle. We were wrong.

We made it around the first couple of switchbacks but by the time the third came along our brakes had sort of burned out and we had reached a speed just short of supersonic. I went headfirst into a soft clay bank. My friend managed to flop his bike on its side so they did about a 50-yard slide down the road. He accumulated enough gravel to make sitting down an emotional experience for a week afterward, but was able to come to my rescue.

It took the strength of us both to pull my head out of the mud. I remember that it made a loud popping sound, like the cork coming out of a giant bottle of champagne. My ears never completely matched after that. We walked down the rest of the way, not daring to mount our slightly damaged machines until the ground was clearly level.

When I learned to drive, bicycles were no longer an important part of my life until the days of teaching my kids to ride the things. About that time I was introduced to the wonders of multi-speed gears, but we never got together.

Then, a few years ago, my interest was briefly aroused by a classified ad in one of those seedy Vancouver newspapers.

"Found: Pink woman's bike," it read, "Vanc., West Side. Owner identify (phone number)."

Now it just happens that pink women are my favorite kind. I have admired them since I was just a gangly pre-teen. I have adored a few. I married the best one I could find. This is not to say I have anything against brown or biege or freckled women, whom I also admire. It probably has to do with the first girl I dated, early in high school; she was pink--at least as far as I could discover.

But I still wonder about that ad. How did this particular pink woman lose her bike? After all, it's not like dropping an earring or leaving sunglasses at a bar or something. Did she walk home without realizing her bicycle wasn't with her? More--how did the finder of the bike know its owner was pink? Were they ever reunited?

It's a mystery almost as intriguing as those wonderful wheeled creations that today's sportsfolk whiz down mountainsides. Steep old logging roads are boringly easy to them; they fly through the bush and drop down 45-degree slopes dotted with logs and boulders.

And I can but say good luck to them--and to pink women everywhere.