Free rider. My source of inspiration.

“There are certain ways you've got to act to be a real mountain biker, Pete Richardson couldn't care less.”

                                                    Free Rider.

In the early evening gloom of a late-October Vermont day, at the peak of a narrow, switchbacked singletrack climb, Pete Richardson leans against the handlebar of his decade-old Specialized Rockhopper, and draws on a Malboro Light.
As usual, he is waiting.
Waiting for night to displace the day, waiting until the last possible moment to flick the switch on his early-generation Niterider and waiting for his riding companions to pick their way up the steep, root-infested hill, where they'll find him sitting patiently, smoking and listening to the sounds of the evening woods.

Pete sighs, and draws softly on his cigarette, sucking smoke gently into his lungs, letting it expand his chest like an inflating tyre.
He paws through a small fanny pack worn backward, hanging across his stomach, and extracts a Snickers bar.
Cigarette dangling from his lips, eyes squinting from the lazy, sky-bound smoke, he unwraps the peanut-y confection and brings it to his mouth with his left hand while removing the Malboro with his right.
For a second -maybe less- his hands meet in the near-dark.
A chocolate bar, a cigarette and chapped, calloused hands.

Pete Richardson is a mountain biker. And a redneck. And he knows it.
“By all means I'm a redneck,” he cackles [he likes to cackle].
“Course, there's all sorts of diff'rent rednecks. I s'pose you'd call me a good-natured redneck.”
Again, the cackle. It's true: He is good-natured. When your chain breaks, it will be Pete who presses it back together. When your stomach grumbles, Pete will be the first to offer food. When a trail is closed, Pete will be the one to soothe the landowner. That's just Pete.

He says “Ain't” a lot. He uses words like “wicked,” and “reckon,” and phrases like “ass high on a ten-foot Indian.”
He calls women “darlin' “ and “sweet-heart” and doesn't understand why they aren't flattered.
He eats bacon and eggs for breakfast almost every day.
He brings plastic bags full of cold chicken-fried steak on rides. The fat congeals and sticks to the inside of the bag. He licks it out.

One by one, his riding companions reach the summit, and one by one, Pete greets them: “It's 'bout time. I ain't up here for my health, ya' know.”
He extinguishes his half-smoked cigarette against the paint-peeled top tube of his bike and carefully returns the charred remainder to its crumpled pack.
He shoves one weathered hiking boot into a toe clip [he scoffs at SPDs, calling them “stupid pedal death”], flicks the switch on his faltering light, pulls on his leather work gloves and pushes off into a dimly lit circle of early night.

How many riders like Pete are there in the sport of mountain biking?
To read the magazines or look at the ads you wouldn't think there are any.
You'd think mountain biking is populated solely by the cool and young and hip—dutiful consumers who thrive on the latest look, the newest thing. But there are lots of Pete Richardsons out there.
You probably have seen them—maybe you are one.
You don't see many on the race circuit [Shaun Palmer and the retired Bob Roll notwithstanding],
partly because these riders have better things to do with 35 bucks, but mostly because their definition of “fun” does not include riding multiple loops, dragging eyeballs and tongue behind.
You won't find them at most festivals—it's partly the money issue again, and partly because the notion of driving long distances to ride their bikes makes little sense to them.
But throughout America—especially rural America—they are out there.
They might be wearing jeans, or neon-yellow Pearl Izumi shorts they bought on closeout from Nashbar eight years ago. They might be wearing a helmet—or they might not.
They might be riding an old hardtail with thumbshifters and a seven-speed cassette, or they might have traded in their dirt bike for 27 gears and five inches front and rear.
Fact is, it matters little to them what they ride, so long as it gets them down the trail.
And it matters even less what other people think of them. “I'm happy being me,” says Pete.
“And I really don't give a hoot about what other people want to be either.”

Across the table, Pete Richardson sits, all greasy fingers and shit-eating grin, putting into plain words the most basic tenet of the American ideal: The freedom to do our own thing, and the wisdom to allow others to do theirs.
Mountain bikers love to talk about freedom: the freedom to be who they are, to ride fast and alone and without constraint. But we're quick to judge when that freedom is expressed in oddball ways, even in our own sport.
We judge other riders by the bikes they own, the clothes they wear, how fast or slow they ride, whether or not they shave their legs or ride clipless pedals.
Pete couldn't care less. He dangles two strips of bacon—charred, fat-streaked, dripping—from his fingers. He folds them both into his mouth , chews noisily and cackles: “What the hell's the matter with grease, anyway?”

Much of what Pete says is said entirely for his own amusement. He talks in short, spiky exclamations that dispense with standard, polite banter.
“A lot about being who I am is 'bout speaking your piece, whether it needs to be said or not. Sometimes I open my mouth when it should be kept shut.”
He opens it now, tips his head back and drops in another slice of bacon.

Pete rides like he speaks, running wide open when common sense begs him to shut it down.
Things break, parts on both bike and body. Pete's acceptance of this is absolute. That he will get hurt in the woods--either on a bike in the summer, or on skis in the winter—is a fact of his life, as plain and true as night following day. When it happens, he good-naturedly welcomes the injury into his life, and folds himself around it until it heals.
The type of rider he is doesn't protect him from getting hurt, but it seems to keep him from wallowing in self-pity and anxiety.
Is it surprising that Pete is almost always the strongest, most technically adept rider in these sizable group rides of his peers, bike shop employees, insurance salesmen and high school students?
It shouldn't be. True, his living habits would make the Surgeon General queasy.
But this is a man reared in a culture that values bravado above all.
This is a man reared on the two-stroke exhaust fumes and twitchy woods handling of high-strung dirt bikes. This is a man who has made his reputation by going faster, farther, higher, longer.

Pete has been a mountain biker since he started riding in the early 8O's with his brother Mike, on a first or maybe second generation Rockhopper. He's owned a string of Rockhoppers since, the most recent being a late 8O's model that finally cracked at the chainstay after 1O years of abuse.
Rumour has it he cried when it happened.
Mike doesn't ride much anymore—he's a serious horsepower junkie—but for 15-odd years the brothers explored four-wheeler trails, cut singletrack and generally raised muddy hell together in the forests and fields surrounding their hometown of Barre, Vermont.
Pete hopes his brother will start riding again. “He's getting a gut.” says Pete disgustedly, shaking his head.

Truth be told, Pete's mellowed a little himself. He no longer rides off the roof of his car, for instance [maybe because he finally has a car that's worth more than his bike], and spending time with his son has taken priority over day-in, day-out epics.
These days, he rides most often with his friend Tony Berby, a barrel-chested, bellowing man of unshakable good cheer, who drinks light beer before and after rides.
Pete still manages to roust the troops on occasion, and few things make him happier than seeing his old riding pals back on their bikes.
“It's a fountain of youth,” says Pete. “It keeps me away from beer. [This, of course, is not entirely true. In all actuality, it's not even partly true.] I want something more than nestling at the TV and sucking down a six-pack of Bud. I'll ride my bike 'til I crap.” Most likely he means die.

Is Pete a real redneck? Is he a real mountain biker? Damn the labels. Riding with Pete and Tony and the rag-tag assemblage he invariably coaxes away from throttles and football is like passing through a looking glass to a world where the hype and customs of our sport have not so much been ignored as dismissed from the outset.
But what is “cool” and what is truly important are two very different things.
That Pete and other riders like him honor the latter and not the former is not rebellion. Nor is it arrogance. It is simply another way to ride, another way to experience the freedom of knobby tires on a rocky path.

By Ben Hewitt