2016-07-06
Mountain biking is a universal language. No matter where you are in the world, bikers love the same things—big berms, good tech, loam, perfect jumps. Good trails are good trails, no matter where you are. Whether someone is speaking English or German or Italian or any other language, any rider can watch any other rider describe a good trail and need no translation. Everyone uses the same hand motions and swooping sounds to describe fast berms, they bob their heads or shake their hands a bit when talking about the tech, and 2-stroke dirt bike sound effects always indicate pinning it through ruts, sand, or breaking bumps. Ear-to-ear smiles mean that you’re about to ride something well worth the pedal…
A couple years ago, Jen and I met Jasmin (the person, not to be confused with our dog) in Whistler. She was a German living in her van in the parking lot, working a job at a bike shop and riding as much as she possibly could. We knew right away that she was our people. Giving us an open invitation to fly to Europe and join her for a couple weeks pretty much guaranteed that we would be buying a ticket at some point.
To be clear, neither Jen or I really had two weeks to spare for a trip like this, but I can imagine nothing worse in life than letting opportunities pass by, so we just got the ticket and committed ourselves. I was pretty much worthless from jet lag for about 48 hours after we arrived, and by the time I really knew where I was, we had gone from the Munich airport to Jasmin’s house in Wörgl, Austria to the small town of Latsch in the Vinschgau region of the Italian Alps.
It was like going to bed and waking up in Narnia. Vinschgau is mountain biking paradise. You can either get a shuttle or bike up a single-lane paved mountain road for 5000 feet or so. Either way you start the ride with a stop at an alpine hut where you can buy coffee or beer or home-cooked pastries or whatever you want. Once you’re appropriately full, you drop in on some amazing single track, pass some cows, pass a castle or two, and eventually finish at the bar in Latsch where all the mountain bikers gather at the end of the day. It’s there where you see table after table describing what they rode. The words are different, but it’s all the same. Everyone there loves what they’re there for.
