Hello America! | Part #3 – Goodbye Germany
The best way to describe Steffen is as a bit of a mountain bike fanatic. Growing up in the 80s, he spent his teenage years riding the hiking paths around the Black Forest, Lake Garda and in the Tyrolean Alps in particular. Excessive climbing was obligatory back then, with bike parks and kindly lift operators unheard of. Despite being called XC, it really only had one objective: shredding the best trails imaginable. For Steffen, mountain bikes were his escape from society, a chance to reevaluate the essentials.
Parallel to studying history and American studies in Berlin came a sort of biking melancholy that revolved around the lack of hills. Fortunately, DIY guiding in the Alps became a viable alternative, as did the concept of turning your passion into a career! In 2006 the start-up fahrrad.de coincidentally started looking for someone with mountain biking knowledge. And the past seven years have seen Steffen experience everything from sales, to shop management right through to VOTEC brand manager at Germany’s largest bicycle distributer.
But the bike fell victim to work all too frequently, so Steffen decided to get back to his roots! After leaving, there was more time to escape and enduros couldn’t more suited to Steffen. One single bike for everything! His marriage to Caroline, the American, took him stateside in 2014 to the East Coast of America. From there he’s reporting on his experiences on two wheels in the New World.
Goodbye Germany
Where was I supposed to find decent trails to ride in this hellhole? The entire East coast of the USA struck me as a complete no man’s land and I was dismayed by the distinct lack of any distinguishable hills.
Emigrating and starting from scratch, it all sounds so exciting and brave. But leaving your home, your family and your friends behind and tossing yourself headfirst into a foreign culture isn’t to everyone’s taste. When it became common knowledge that I’d be moving to America, I was treated with respect.
Honesty, I’d never really been a big fan of this huge, contradictory, fast-food-guzzling, weapon-producing and gun-slinging country. Of course, I love American mountain bikes, a good old BBQ and half my life has revolved around skateboards and hardcore music. But to seriously start a life in this country and leave Germany for the foreseeable future? That’s pretty heavy… although isn’t that the kind of thing you do for your better half? A sort of death grip through a rock garden, you could say. Close your eyes and breathe, who knows.
It was certainly exciting, I mean, such a life-changing event isn’t something you undertake every day. In August 2014 I was sat on the plane, soaring over the ocean toward America. With no real life plan and no fixed job, I was both skeptical and eager. Pretty much straight from the alter and with my North Carolina lady by my side, we headed into the unknown – well, unknown to me at least, the East Coast, the heart of America’s nerve centre, Washington D.C. Everything we owned, bikes and SUV included, were in a rusty 40 foot container, sailing over the Atlantic below us.
You don’t see the wood for the concrete
Alongside the unavoidable climate and culture shock (highlights include the abnormal sticky heat and the subsequent icy air conditioning, the almost daily gunfire and school shootings in the D.C. Area), and the infinite longing for German bread and beer, I struggled to work out just where I’d be able to find cool trails amongst this Moloch. Surrounded by flat land and no distinguishable mountains, the entire East coast of the USA struck me as no man’s land. A blank space on the world map when it came to riding. Colorado, California and the West of the USA have reputations for being hotspots for riders; they’re places where mountain biking was born, with Ibis, Specialized, Intense and Santa Cruz hailing from the West Coast, places where riding on slick rocks can be fun. But the East Coast? Nope, I’d never heard much about it. I began to worry: could you even go riding in Virginia?
We live in ‘America’s Next Great City’, namely Tysons Corner, VA. It’s one of these super modern districts on the edge of the big city. Think dull office and hotel buildings, giant shopping malls, chain restaurants and junctions with almost every singly highway from the capital. Two decades ago, town planners appear to have forgotten pavements, parks and play areas. And don’t even ask about cycle paths. This is infrastructure optimized for cars. Rush hour welcomes queue after queue, road rage reigns and red lights hold you hostage for up to five minutes. However… Tysons is a relatively safe city, thanks to the gated communities, these closed-off residential areas with video cameras surveying the land behind the high fences. After 8pm, there’s no noise on the streets and the rental prices are slightly less crazy than in downtown.
It’s easy to forget where you are given the concrete and highways that surround you. When we first landed in America, I was convinced it was the end of mountain biking as I knew it. Farewell, lovely home trails, adieu post-work ride. Would mountain biking become a weekend hobby or just fade to become a far-flung memory? It was a depressing thought after more than 25 years on nobbly tyres and mud. Had I made a stupid decision to leave the beautiful Swabian Alps, the shadowy Black Forest and the trails on the Kalmit behind me? I couldn’t bear to think of my mountains and those ancient mountain huts in Tyrol’s Oberinntal with the view over Serfaus’ new bike park.
Don’t judge a book by its cover!
What on earth led me to move to a big city – and worse, a big city on America’s East coast? Without trails there’s something lacking… Homesickness set in, leaving me with a nagging unease of being in the wrong place. Had I made the right decision? I began to regret crossing the Atlantic and landing in this desolate, trail-dead place. With no friends and no trails to turn to, Google maps and the Internet became my closest (and only) friends. Nights were spent fervently trawling internet forums, trail registers and maps in search of a much-needed fix, which for me would take the form of a trail to ride.
And it soon dawned on me that this place wasn’t quite so terrible and bleak. Even in the huge metropolis of Washington D.C, there’s a sprawling network of trails that stretch for kilometres. Admittedly, there’s little climbing to do and they’re very much XC-orientated, but they’re still creative and more than worth riding, or so said the online reports. My mood improved, although the confirmation of the lack of Alpine descents was a shame. Further research led me towards the West, and just an hour’s drive away lay the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. Not exactly high mountains, but as they stretch over 2,400 kilometres from North to South, this never-ending landscape was the light at the end of the tunnel for me. I then stumbled across the mountains on the East Coast, those in Harrisonburg, VA, Snowshow, WV and Asheville, NC. They might be a few hours’ drive away, but for the US that’s nothing… my first taste of euphoria started to take shape!
I could hardly wait for our bikes to hit US shores. But the container took a while; US customs got suspicious and stalled our delivery in Baltimore. By the end of September it had made it safely to us, but no sooner had it arrived then the Jet stream from Alaska brought damp and cold air towards Virginia, which saw a bitter winter with snow and frost. Temperatures plummeted to minus 20 for weeks. This was the state of the first few months in my new home, and it didn’t even involve a single metre of trail riding. Shit happens.
This article is part of a series called ‘Hello America!’ – where two riders from opposite ends of the worlds coincidentally moved to each others home towns and started riding each others trails! Take a trip to the rest of the series: Introduction | Freiburg
Words & Photos: Steffen Gronegger
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