The San Francisco Citizen

Only in Marin! That’s right, Marin County, the birthplace of mountain biking, and home to nuclear-tipped missiles, endangered deer, and marauding mountain lions (nee cougars), can’t abide you people building your own single-track MTB trails.

Michael Philip More is getting a ten-day jail sentence for illegally building a quarter-mile trail at the end of Robinhood Drive in San Rafael.    

Click to expand:

Possible path of the trail, the white line is a quarter-mile long

Does Michael More wish there were more singletrack MTB trails in Marin? Given that MTBers are mostly confined to fire roads in Marin County, signs point to yes.

What’s the funniest line in this article from San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer Dan Giesin - Single-minded cyclists have old-school cool 

“We’re shedding new light on an old tradition,”

“You feel like a purist,”

“You don’t need all those fancy gears.”

Too many gears can actually spoil the ride.

“…we single-speeders…”

“They are such a cool group,”

“It’s kind of a counter-culture,”

“There is that underground element: a little bit different, a little bit dangerous.”

This is called starting your own league, so it’s the same old thing. These people aren’t really dangerous either. They’re just having fun on bikes, nothing wrong with that. But you can have fun on bikes with or without gears, right?

There’s probably a more extreme element of fixed gear MTB-ers out there. The photo below clearly shows the typical non-fixed, freewheeling setup:

simondbarnes via Flickr

It’s the same crowd that’s attracted to fixed gear city bikes that find single-speed mountain bikes appealing.

And arthroscopic surgery is becoming cheaper and cheaper these days, so you should get in on this fun as well.