Mentors, Proteges, and the Sociological Spreadsheet

Silver City, NM. During the Vietnam War protest era, the educational establishment sprouted new fads, including the one that the students should decide which subjects get studied and which don't. A relatively well-known educator countered at the time that if a teacher has spent decades of his adult life at his job and has learned nothing more than inexperienced children, then that teacher has wasted his life. I agree with that argument and think that it applies just as well to professional travelers and full-time RVers.

Ahh but there is a problem. None of us really likes to listen to free advice from anybody. The minute you start giving advice you are presuming a type of superiority over other people. This is the emotional appeal of nominating yourself as "world improver" and social reformer, a la Ralph Nader or Mayor Bloomberg.

Onto these two counter-currents we can add a third: as we age we might feel a concern for our "legacy." We are forced to acknowledge how puny our individuality is and how short life is. It is consoling to at least partially obviate that puniness by connecting to something larger and more permanent and -- dare I say it -- more noble.

Imagine that society is an Excel spreadsheet, with each person getting their own column. The columns stack up in parallel, to the right, as many as there are people. Now stick within one column, and go down the page. Each row (of that column) represents a different year, memorable experience, or stage of that person's life.

Row Q of Column A thinks it's a lot wiser than Row C of Column A, and isn't afraid to say so. But he'd better not spout off to Row Q of Column B.  That's easy to understand.  But what if Row Q of Column A started offering free advice to Row C of Column B? Would that "cell" of the spreadsheet also resent the advice?

The trouble about advice-giving and advice-taking between people is that we are always confusing comparing rows with comparing columns.
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I want to restrict my spouting off to outdoor activities. One of the biggest missed opportunities for most RVers in the West is mountain biking. Many RVers have mountain bikes bungeed to the back of the rig, but they seldom ride them. Others have tried mountain biking, only to find it unpleasant, and then quickly give it up.

I'd like to suggest that mountain biking wasn't given a fair chance. Perhaps you rented one from a bicycle shop in a tourist area. The shop probably sold you a map or book, with a title like "Top Ten Mountain Bike Rides in the..." Then you went out and found the single-track trail too steep and rocky. The bicycle equipment itself didn't work quite right or fit right. You were always worried about falling. You ended up pushing the bike more than you wanted, and you kept banging your shin against the left pedal. Your conclusion was that mountain biking just wasn't for you.

Finally finding some lush grassland between Prescott and Jerome AZ

You had a typical dysfunctional introduction to the sport. You should:

1. Avoid national parks and other tourist traps that have postcardish -- and therefore excessively vertical -- topographies. The trails there are better for hiking, and besides, they don't allow mountain biking (or anything else that's fun) in national parks. Instead, seek out flatter land a few miles away from the big peaks. Go for plateaus, mesas, grasslands, or ponderosa forests. Typically, there are happy hunting grounds at the border between BLM land and national forests. 
2. Avoid certain geologies. Extremely sharp volcanic rocks are terrible, as is loose sandy locations such as the over-rated red sandstone of Utah. Similarly with decomposed granite. You want dirt trails. Look for grass! Limestone is a good layer to mountain bike on.
3. De-emphasize single tracks, because they are usually too technical. Because they can't make money off of it, the industry under-emphasizes the zillions of miles of dirt/gravel roads in national forests and BLM lands. Cash in on them! You don't need to buy any of those silly "Top Ten This or That" books; just buy a Benchmark or DeLorme atlas for the state.
4. Avoid mountain bike meccas such as Moab UT, Fruita CO, and Crested Butte CO. Develop more appreciation for Montrose, Gunnison, and Monte Vista CO, northern and western New Mexico, and the Mogollon Rim in Arizona. 

Perhaps I was wrong to go into explicit details. The points above are really just manifestations of the Metropolitan Bubble Syndrome and the RV Vacation Syndrome. But those are standard stump speeches that I wanted to spare the reader.

High pastures at 9000 feet -- still actually used for something! -- near Springerville AZ.

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Let us wash our hands of these details and back off to the big picture. Mountain biking in the West is not just a sport, with its puny little pro-s and con-s. It hearkens back to a glorious Past, back to the horse culture of the Plains and the mountainous West. Hiking can't do that. Only mountain biking can. 

The West is no longer very Western. The whole economy is based on health care and retirement housing for wealthy city-slickers who will pay any amount of money for a spectacular view. There is a smallness to a culture that squanders its wealth sitting around in ridiculously large houses and sticking its chest out about how great the view is.

Rather than becoming doomed-and-gloomed by the travesty of the modern West, let's turn it to advantage by visualizing the mountain biker as a modern reincarnation of the horsemen and caballeros of a heroic Past. It's a consolation to a person getting older to renounce the obsession with their own Ego, and to blend their identity with something bigger. Think of the proud prance and arched neck of a beautiful Andalusian horse, as seen in movies [*]. An Idea can be immortal. 

Horses relaxing along the upper Rio Grande, near Creede CO.

[*] I believe it's on an Andalusian that The Bad makes his grand entry, in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, about three minutes into the movie.