We All Start Somewhere A Mountain Bike Journey Begins by a Dumpster
Within a week of showing up in Bellingham, Washington in 2012, it was made very clear to me that I needed a mountain bike.
I had moved for a five-month internship at a local magazine—I was barely 21 and on the kind of early-20s tear that can only result from being raised in a rural town with eight churches and little space for trouble. That summer opened a lot of doors for me, but mountain biking was admittedly not one of them.
My colleagues at the magazine were the first people to encourage me to try mountain biking. I had about $300 to my name, part of what I’d saved prior to leaving Michigan for the internship; obviously this wouldn’t get me far in Bellingham, even in 2012. The first of the month was fast approaching, and while the questionable $250-a-month room I’d found on Craigslist wouldn’t completely break the bank, I wasn’t in a position to be taking up new hobbies.
I didn’t have a car, so I began applying for jobs within walking distance or a quick bus ride of my rundown rental—none of which wanted to hire me because I’d admitted that I would only be around for a few months. I started scouring online listings for odd jobs weeding garden boxes, which did help me earn a little money until I realized that I didn’t really know how to differentiate between weeds and plants that people paid for.
Desperation set in and I ended up at the mall. Hollister offered me a job but required that I purchase three new outfits before starting work—spending a paycheck I hadn’t even seen on clothes I didn’t even like was an obvious deal breaker. I eventually convinced Orange Julius to hire me, having lied to the hiring manager by saying I had no plans to leave Bellingham and that I was committed to hawking strawberry banana smoothies for the foreseeable future. When I got my first paycheck three weeks later—just over $300—I immediately went to Craigslist to find myself a mountain bike.
A simple road bike was what I needed, but the guys at my internship recommended I get a mountain bike, and I come from a place where a bike is a bike. So, when my search turned up a $100, nearly 10-year-old Specialized Stumpjumper—a legit-enough sounding model, I remember thinking—I jumped on the opportunity.
I exchanged a few emails with the seller, which were suspiciously curt. The next day, I met him in, of all places, the mall parking lot behind Target. I was working that day anyway, so this seemed like a reasonable place to convene. I found him at the back of the lot, standing on a curb near the dumpsters, the nearby fence littered with wind-blown plastic bags and fast-food wrappers.
In my elder wisdom, I see now that I missed truly innumerable red flags in this situation, not least of which was our meeting location. The seller appeared to be a 14-year-old kid, with an Eastern European accent and a shy, awkward demeanor. I asked to take the Stumpjumper for a test ride despite having no idea what I was evaluating for. After confirming that the bike moved and had brakes, I handed him the $100 bill that I had spent 13 hours making smoothies to procure. I rode off thinking I’d really hit it big.
My first stop was a bike shop—maintenance is so important, after all! When I asked them to look at it, two salespeople exchanged concerned glances before pointing out the part of the frame that had been spraypainted black. I’d figured this was just an unfortunate aesthetic choice on the part of the 14-year-old. My Midwestern naiveté cannot be overstated here.
“This bike is stolen,” one said, in a tone both serious and sympathetic of my obliviousness.
They recommended I take the bike to the police. I held off for a few days because I genuinely needed a means to get around town, but I did eventually turn it in. The next day, I brought it into the magazine office, not yet understanding how embarrassing this thing was.
“Nice kickstand,” someone said, laughing until they realized I didn’t get the joke. It finally began to dawn on me just how much of a piece of shit the stolen Stumpjumper was, but it was also my only mode of transportation, so it’d have to do.
I did start mountain biking the fall after my internship, using a borrowed commuter bike with slightly burlier tires than a road bike, which I think the kids would now call a gravel bike. The next spring, my dad (a plumber and HVAC technician) bartered a water heater installation for a six-year-old Santa Cruz Blur from the only guy in Indian River, Michigan who identified as a mountain biker.
My dad soon realized that the Blur was too small for him, meaning it was perfect for me. I initiated a hostile takeover of the bike by bringing it with me back to college. He eventually stopped asking about it.
That was in 2013. I kept that bike until I moved back to Bellingham in 2018. This time, I was more capable of taking on new hobbies, but not to the tune of spending a few thousand dollars on a mountain bike.
The crew of friends I fell into upon my return was made up of a bunch of mountain bikers. My introduction to biking “out West” was characterized by a year spent trying to keep up with people on bikes that had a decade’s worth of advancement in technology and geometry over my Santa Cruz. On one ride, a friend of a friend mentioned that his mom owned the same bike 10 years ago. It took me far too long to interpret this as a bad thing.
I can’t adequately express just how unequipped I was for mountain biking in Bellingham, but it’s probably helpful to mention how little biking I was actually doing; I was walking, butt sliding, or holding on for dear life down steep, rooty loamers that I now know to be some of the rowdier trails in the area.
In 2019, I sold the Santa Cruz mom bike and got myself a proper upgrade: a 2016 Kona Process, procured through a homie deal from a friend. My bike equity was building. In 2022, I bought a used 2020 carbon Evil Offering off a friend who I’d initially met through my internship 10 years prior. Finally, a proper bike that was as close to new as I’d ever had, the antithesis of the Stumpjumper covered in black spray paint—and it only took a decade to get here.
Spending my hard-earned smoothie money on that Specialized next to the Target dumpster was a pretty unconventional way to start biking, but it was a start, nonetheless. And while I’m definitely unqualified to give life or bike advice, what I will say is this: If you’re anything like me—which is to say criminally oblivious—I assure you that it doesn’t matter where you start, where you find yourself along the way, or how many times your friends have to wait for you as you fight for your life on trails that are well beyond your current ability level.
You don’t need the newest or best, but what you will need is more than $100 and a better understanding of bikes than what I can claim to have had in 2012. And while we’re at it—maybe lose the kickstand.
