I’m a city boy now, or at least I’m a country boy who lives in the city. I grew up riding my bike over dirt trails, up impossibly steep inclines, and through tangled thickets unfit for two-wheeled travel. Recently, however, bike riding is done on side streets where I can encounter the least motorized traffic.

Not too long ago, my friend Rick told me about the bike trail not too terribly far from our house. My first reaction was to openly mock my friend for several reasons.

1) The absurdity of getting into his car and driving 15 minutes to ride his bike
2) The goofy looking contraption attached to the back of his car to transport his bicycle to the trail
3) I’m just that kind of friend who enjoys mocking his other friends
4) The very notion of riding a mountain bike 200 miles from the nearest lump that could possibly be considered a mountain

After some gruff talk questioning my manhood, Rick convinced me to give it a try. And it… was… fantastic! I had no idea this kind of trail existed in the heart of Florida. It turns out, they’re all over, if you just know to look.

DeSoto trail is terrific. There are nice, flat, paved trails for beginners, which is about what I expected. But there are also trails that require borderline masochism to ride. Steep inclines, followed quickly by equally steep drop-offs pepper the course. Roots jut out at unsafe angles here and there. The whole trail is a circle, or more accurately, it starts and ends at the same place. To call the circuitous, meandering five mile path a circle would be a grave insult to my 9th grade geometry teacher.

The moral of the story is that outdoor adventure is never that far away, the fear of injury is an inherent part of the joy of mountain biking, and that I can still mock Rick for the goofy bicycle carrier permanently affixed to the back of his Taurus station wagon.

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