Canada's gravity warriors - BBC News
A pair of Toyota pickup trucks stand silent as bicycles are lifted from their beds. The trucks are part chairlift, part toolbox, part duffel bag and part beast of burden. If you walk into the aftermarket section of any major motor show in North America, you would spot gleaming, full-size pickups with cartoonishly large wheels and improbable lift kits. The trucks in these damp woods, however – smaller and significantly dirtier – are the antithesis of those glossy, preening leviathans. Having unloaded the bikes and set off down a short section of road, knobby tires buzzing like angry hornets on the tarmac, the riders duck between the trees down a double-black-diamond trail. The course is a whip-crack of granite, mud and cedar, with the wooden sections made ice-slick by the unshakeable damp. It is a dangerous business, this downhill riding, with cyclists risking broken collar bones, compressed vertebrae, concussions and contusions. Here the threat of a heavy, murderous paw is replaced by the spectacularly unyielding nature of an 80ft Douglas fir, but the game is the same: the brotherhood of the ride, the skill, the danger. Source: www.bbc.com
