The Magic Mountain

Father and son attempt mountain biking for the first time

“Hey, you want to go biking?” I asked my son, one unseasonably warm winter day.

“Where?” he demanded, eyeing me suspiciously.

“Well, we could go to the park. Or we could take the bike trail…”

He sighed. “Papa, no offense, but I don’t want to bike on those. They’re a little bit — boring?”

“Okay. Where would you want to bike?”

“I sorta want to bike on dirt.”

“Oh. You mean — mountain biking?”

“Yeah, mountain biking,” said my seven-year-old, as if I had finally guessed the correct answer he’d already known.

“Well, we could try some, uh, mountain biking…”

“Okay,” he said.

“Let me just, uh, find out where we can, uh, do that,” I said.

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

And I left the room, to go consult the Internet. Because the truth was, I had no idea where to go mountain biking in Rhode Island — or anywhere else, for that matter. Because somehow, I’ve never actually gone mountain biking.

This is absurd, of course. I grew up in Vermont, which has some of the most beloved MTB trails in…