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in Praise

summer shuttles When a day’s WorTh of Turns have already Been earned I By Bad vlad There’s an age-old IdIom ThaT goes something like, “To climb is human, to descend divine.” or at least that’s what we at Bike occasionally tell ourselves when we get the itch to break out the big bikes and head straight for something fast and steep. don’t get us wrong: We’re everyday mountain bikers, and we spend most of our time riding trail 042 I

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and all-mountain bikes on dusty southern California singletrack, grunting up climbs and then bombing the descents. I think it’s safe to say that all of us even enjoy climbing, but we’d be lying if we said we didn’t enjoy descending even more.

We find no shame in this. after all, pain and pleasure are two sides of the same coin.

But every now and then, when we flip that

coin and it lands pleasure-side up, we know what that means: It’s time to sling those dualcrown delights over the tailgate, jump in the truck and head east into the ortega mountains of south orange County. such fits of spontaneous hedonism would tend to happen the morning after we’ve somehow met a hideous deadline, when we still have gravity-fueled “Buzz” photos: anthony smith

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in praise

images floating around in our heads. It’s only natural, and we can’t apologize for our behavior. We know who our friends are, and speed is one of them. speaking of our buddy speed, he also plays a deciding role in our music selection for the drive into the mountains. of course it’s always something fast and heavy, but if a dispute arises over the choice of bands or metal eras, we know we can always rely on slayer (r.I.P. Jeff hanneman) to keep the force and tempo going from the top of the run all the way to the bottom. given the debt of gratitude many of us owe to the speed-metal stalwarts, we were devastated over the recent death of slayer’s founding guitarist and prolific songwriter, Jeff hanneman. so 044 I

to your sober boss the day after the concert.

But, like a thrash-metal performance, there was no shortage of jumping, screaming and moshing with the local flora and fauna all the way down.

Though getting to the bottom of a blistering descent can always be a drag, we knew that there would be several encores before it was all over. and the reason why was because we were the band. not everyone lives near a bike park, where lifts can take you up to the top of the mountain as many times as you want. not everyone likes to ride steep, rocky trails at speeds that make your vision blur. and not everyone has a bike with more than five inches of travel. But, then again, not everyone listens to slayer.

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we solemnly loaded up the truck and drove into the ortegas for a commemorative shred session. as we wound our way up and over the highdesert cordillera, the bar-chord driven, anti-war anthems seemed to blend seamlessly into the barren backdrop.

There could hardly have been a more fitting tribute than this. When we arrived at the top of the trailhead, we gazed absently at the glistening waters of lake elsinore several miles in the distance before lowering our full-faces and rolling into the trail, which immediately begins with a beefy rock-roller into a nice drop—the riding equivalent to the double bass-driven intro to “raining Blood.” What went down after this was like trying to describe a Clash of the Titans show

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