We Took Matt Mountain Biking and His Kids Were Astonished!

In this video I'll be taking a friend mountain biking who doesn't really go mountain biking, and that will be Matt for Matt's Off Road Recovery. He invited me to be part of his off road games and I did his thing, the off road thing. I competed with Rudy, his son, to navigate an off road course, and now it's time for Matt to do our thing because we're going to take him mountain biking. But first I have to go on a reconnaissance ride and make sure I'm not leading him on like a death march. This ride is pretty epic so we're gonna ride out to the most ridiculous view you've seen and then it's basically like a mixture of slick rock and dirt skate park on the way back. That sounds like right up my alley. Yeah you're gonna love it. So we're gonna test out the black trail. That's the difficult trail. We're not really sure how black it is. Usually on rocks there's multiple lines. I don't think it's gonna be a problem for Matt, but we're gonna ride it first to make sure. You know if you haven't ridden something like this I think the hardest part is the gear changes because you start going downhill and then it just jumps right back uphill again. Mountain biking tends to favor the bold and coordinated, but in taking new mountain bikers out on rides I've noticed it's the little things that cause them the most grief. Things like quick gear changes or pedal strikes. Matt is mechanically inclined and probably not scared of all that much, and so I had few worries about him picking up the basics. Still I wanted to familiarize myself with Gooseberry Mesa so we could avoid a frustrating experience. I've seen in Matt's videos that his kids mountain bike competitively, and so I saw this as my one chance to get him hooked so he could share yet another activity with them. It goes this way. It isn't—it's confusing enough to be a proper desert trail. I think that first trail would have just been frustrating, but this— It's doable. It's a blue trail and it's got features and things that are going to challenge him, but it's—it's fun though. He didn't put me on the easiest trail. It was a little spicy, and so I think it's only right—we returned the favor. He threw you right into the mix. Yeah. Despite all these thoughtful insights and planning, nothing could have prepared us for what would transpire when we finally got Matt out on the trail. And here we are. It's beautiful morning, and look who's here. So you've gone mountain biking, right? I've gone a couple times with my kids. We did Church Rock once. Okay. It's not that I don't like it, I just can't keep up. I think we got that covered, so check this out. Compared to the mountain bike you were on in like 1993, it's a little bit different. Yeah, that one would have been a huffy. It's super capable. You could ride this on anything. This lever over here, you know what that does? Is this the seat post? That's the seat post. That's your dropper seat post. Because you rode BMX a little bit, right? Yeah. Okay, so you know that you have to be standing up and moving the bike around. Sometimes you're going to want this out of your way, and sometimes you're going to want to be sitting on it. And we got you a helmet and some shoes. So why don't we put those on, and we'll show you how to use the bike. All right, awesome. The best part is he does ride in cowboy boots. Oh man, that actually fits. Yeah. This is the shape of my head. I'm sure it's a nice tech jersey, but I don't think it works for you, honestly. As you probably already know, you don't want to shift gears when you're pedaling really hard. Underpower, right? That's double, double important on the e-bike because it'll just snap the chain right off. It translates into transfer cases. You turn it on right here by holding the button, and then you can have a little bit of assist or a lot of assist just by pressing negative or positive. So do I have to push here? Yeah, you just push that power button. I've only heard stories of this. I have never seen him bunny hop a bike. I've heard stories of him on his bike and everything. I've seen the physical damage. This is crazy. I'm excited. I was 80 yards away from the jump, and he's like, dude, this is the most air anybody's ever been catching today. And I remember hitting the jump, and it was a smooth, beautiful jump. Set me off level, but I'm just looking at kids looking up at me like this. I bet you I'm 25 feet in the air. Did you have a plan? No. I'm just bloody and dusty, and everybody just comes over, and the bell rings, lunch is over, and I'm abandoned. I'm just left there in the parking lot by myself. Based on your history, I think Matt's going to kill it today. It's been decades. You're going to go over the cattle gate while you're doing a selfie? Yeah! So this is the practice loop. There's tons of space on either side. They have these white dots, and you follow the white dots. And it's really easy to lose them, but the way she goes. As it turns out, Matt had some experience on a BMX bike. Not the competitive kind of experience, the use your BMX for transportation and hit random jumps around the neighborhood kind of experience. And I can relate to that. That was a bonus line. I thought you saw the light off to the side, and I was like hey I'm gonna take this bonus line. We've all done it. Like going off that thing Colin did, if I knew how it handled, I would have been able to do it. To get the front end up is different than a BMX. You gotta push down on the suspension, pull back, and you'll get it. So there's this little undercut over here, and we're thinking we could go really fast and kind of pop up it. What do you think? I got it if I got it. Oh my goodness. Colin, you gonna do it? I gotta represent for more. Yeah, I think I'm out. So as we make our way through the trail, we're going to keep finding fun little challenges. I think we're going to get Matt to do a couple of them. This one was, this one's kind of spicy. Wait a second. He's got this. Yeah. That was steeper than I was thinking. Where are you going? Yeah. That's not easy. How come I can't get him to do this stuff? Oh no. Oh my God. That is vertical. I'm pushing my thumb throttle. Nine out of 10 mountain bikers would not try this. It is completely vertical. So it's like a tribal's move, right? You're getting all this momentum kind of launching off of here and then letting your back tire kick you over. And Matt was like, yeah, I got that. And he did. He just, he caught himself at the top and thank goodness it's slick rock. This is going to be a good day. I think you, I think we'll have to start here. So is this thing right here? Okay. Most people are not, most people hike up this, like guaranteed. I've watched them. Yeah. Everybody here hiked up it. You got to guess at it, pull up and then get, get cranking. Oh my goodness. Seth put the power down. The initial lift is key to throw your weight up and then it's pretty good traction. All right. I wrote a wheelie up, but how are wheelied up it? How am I going to write down this? I would take that line right there. Oh, you were close. Clean enough. Yeah. Let's move on. That's impressive. You even tried it. This is extreme difficulty, but honestly it's not. It's just, if you mess up, you can't mess up. Okay. It's high stakes. It's high stakes. None of us are going to be trying bonus lines. Based on Matt's own comments, we knew an E mountain bike with pedal assist would be the way to go. It works and rides like a normal mountain bike, but it makes you feel like you're 20 years younger. Yeah, right there where Eric is. That is not worth it. Yeah. I didn't tell you to do it. We saw a guy almost fall off the cliff yesterday. It fell this way, arm hanging off. I thought he was shaky legs when he got out of there. He was laughing it off. Like, Oh, I'll be damned. I couldn't see him and I thought he was already gone. Yeah. I was out on that point and I could see that he was still there. That's one of my least favorite places to go because there's no reason they should be there. And it's just not a good place to be. So what do you do? You just back them up until you can't back them up. The road's a little bit of a camp so that when they drive up it and then get stuck and try to back down, they end up slipping off. So we have to get in front of them, drive up to the top, the highest worst place, and then we can turn. I say there's no place to turn around, but you can turn around. It's just like the steep angles you were on. It's not a big deal because you're not a mile from the bottom. Right. That's what that is. You're like, wow, we were at a 38 degree angle or something like that. It's not awesome. An off road recovery could range from yanking a camper out of the sand to actually rescuing someone. So it tends to filter out the worrisome and attract the adventurous. To that end, Matt's utter failure to resist the abyss starts to make sense. To a large degree, Eric Porter has the very same ailment. A few years ago in Sedona, he did like 14 laps on the white line. It's not a death wish. It's an addiction to feeling alive. I think I'm going to watch him and then I'm going to try it. All right, I'm dropping in. That's an abrupt slam. Pretty abrupt. Coming down is kind of tricky. Hey Matt, it's just abrupt. Like you got to lift the front wheel and kind of. Man, I don't know. I can tell that you didn't have quite the speed. More speed and you got that. Should I try it one more time? Like so compressed? No, no, you try it another time. Another time. You never try it one more time. Bone down, but man up. This is a tough down. You got to pull up right at the bottom. Get back, dad. It's harder going down than up. Okay, what do I got to do? Got to go slow and stay on your brakes and keep way back. So just like modulate into it and the last second pull back. Arm straight and lay back and just roll down. Get way back. You got it. Now let off. There you go. This is awesome. He is sending it. That's the kind of guy we get in trouble with actually. Had he fallen short by another two inches, Matt would have been tangled up in all sorts of bike. So from there, we kept a close eye on him, knowing that if we even glanced at something the wrong way, Matt might try to ride it. Do you want to watch this do it first and see how it looks? We're like officially recommending against this, but if you are set on this, your safest bet, relatively speaking, would be to follow Eric's line exactly. Okay. All right. Smooth as anything. Look, I know what you're thinking, but this rock roll goes away from the 1000 foot cliff, and it was clear to us at this point that Matt had no problem riding in a straight line. And for what it's worth, Eric Porter and I have an impeccable track record of not falling off of cliffs. You're slaying it. You hear that? I'm slaying it. We can ride real stuff, you know? Like this is legit. Even with pedal assist, it was impressive how fast Matt was going, given the nature of the terrain that he had never ridden before. But his suspension seemed a little too plush for his slightly aggressive tendencies, and so he stopped to give it a few tweaks. This would be an incredibly difficult video, like a lot of work, but it would be fun to get everything anybody suggested and then weigh it. He did not take the same line you did. I did a little jump right here you didn't do. Oh, phone down. You've been walking out with the screen. I wanna, I wanna do some jump. Yeah, what's the damage so far? It's got some scratches. I'm not doing a good job keeping out of the trees. If we would have gotten you gloves, would you have worn them? No. I kind of figured that. But I did use this helmet today. Yeah. I used it pretty good. All good? I don't think we did any, uh, like... I think it stopped you from some scratches. I don't see any fail marks on it. And how are you doing on battery? Man, this thing's got endless battery. This whole time my kids have been giving me a hard time. They're like, you're not even in shape to do this. I'm like, I know. And I've been telling people, I'm like, I'm gonna go see what happens, but I already know. But I was wrong. I've got a mountain bike at home. I don't ride it because I'm too old and fat. This one I'm gonna ride. If you guys go riding with him, do not challenge him to do anything. Because he probably will. I think he shocked me and Carter both today. That was impressive, that. The previous week at the Offroad Games, I did their thing. And I get it now. I get why people love offroading. And it took several days of being engulfed in their world to truly understand what it was all about. And based on Matt's smiles, his enthusiasm, and his bloodthirsty line choices, it's clear that we return the favor in the exact same way. And that's perhaps my favorite part about being a mountain biker, creating new ones. If you haven't seen my perspective of the Offroad Games, you should check it out. Also, this video was available two weeks ago on Substack ad-free, along with an article providing additional context. In fact, there are two videos up right now that you haven't seen yet, along with articles written by some of the most interesting voices in mountain biking. Thank you Specialized for helping make this a reality. I wasn't paid by Specialized to use this bike. I didn't sign anything. There are just some big Matt fans over there, and they were eager to make this happen. Thank you guys for joining me today on this very fun and memorable ride. I hope you were at the edge of your seat. I hope you learned something. And if you didn't, I hope you were at least entertained. Thanks for riding with us today, and I'll see you next time.