Beautiful Colorado By Bike

The tubing is fat, a bigger diameter than on road bikes in Colorado Mountain Biking Trails. On the inexpensive mountain bikes, it's made of carbon steel; on the expensive ones, chrome-molybdenum steel or special aluminum alloys, thin-walled for lightness, but with splines-alloy slivers-bonded to their insides for strength.

The most expensive bikes that part in Colorado Mountain Biking Trails have the best strength-to-weight ratio, will take the most abuse and have their delicate inner mechanisms sealed more effectively against grit.

One reason for the burgeoning interest in the bikes is that "most riders are interested in the upright position," Lew said. "They've spent years on a conventional road-type bike with drop handlebars and the long reach and their backs got sore and their necks got sore. That kind of bike is great comfortwise if you're on a long, long ride, but if you're going on a leisurely ride around the lakes or a few miles, they're not interested in that kind of position."

He said he sees a typical noncompetition urban rider "as getting out of your apartment, you ride around the lakes, stop . . . and lock the bike up, get something to eat, and then ride home at a much slower rate." For comfort, this is the way to go, he said.

"The other type of rider . . . used to run but he's had too many injuries. He still wants to spend the energy and he doesn't want to get all his exercise at tennis, so we recommend a road bike," Lew said, although the ex-runner will burn more calories on a mountain bike because it's a less efficient smooth-surface transport.

Doug Connell, a hydrologist who used to commute 4 miles a day on one, acknowledged that "it's not a bike you can ride 40 miles." But the first time he ever got on one, he said, he found himself riding in a stream bed.

That's the point of it all for the off-road people. As Morlock, the avid bicyclist, said: "It's not just downhill. Downhill is a payoff for all the energy you spend on uphill. It's a test of both strength and endurance. But when I'm in the woods, I move at a pretty slow pace. It's like a stroll." Through the miracle of mountain bike technology, it is now possible to pedal the entire length of a grueling World War II battle march through the jungles of New Guinea.

Mountain Biking