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.

This is it, the Birthplace of Mountain Biking, on Pine Mountain (not Mount Tam, sorry Wiki) near Fairfax, California in bucolic Marin County. Read all about it:

The first downhill time-trial race took place in Fairfax, California on October 21, 1976 on a fireroad now referred to as Repack Road, due to the need to repack hub bearings after a descent (the hub brakes used at the time would overheat, causing the grease within the hub to break down). Ten riders descended 1300 feet of Repack in about 5 minutes; the winner, Alan Bonds, was also the only one to make it to the finish line. The first bikes used for descending were known as “clunkers” or “paperboy bikes”: coaster brake cruisers using balloon tires first imported to America by Ignatz Schwinn. By 1979, two organizers and competitors of the Repack downhill, Charlie Kelley and Gary Fisher founded the company which named the sport, MountainBikes.

It looked like this. Gary Fisher, the Founding Father of Mountain Bikes, still holds the speed record with a time 4:22. (He also caught 36 in a single lunch break, but that’s another story.)

So, here it is. From top left to right middle, above the Meadow Club Golf Course and Lakes Bon Tempe and Alpine. Click to enlarge. Or, see a bird’s eye view if you prefer.