For some reason, a lot of people who want a bicycle go for a mountain bike, even though they know too well they’ll be using it for commuting to work and for quiet rides in the park 98 percent of the time.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it’s the same process of thought that led to the proliferation of SUVs as of late. You don’t really need that vehicle’s capabilities, but it’s nice to have them, just in case. Plus, nobody can say they’re not versatile.
The same goes for the mountain bikes. They offer that cozy all-round package that no other type of bike does, and if you switch their tires with a model made for road use, you’ve got yourself a decent commuting bike that can easily be transformed back to its off-road-capable state.
Then again, not all urban commutes are the same, so in some cases, a mountain bike may be just what you need. Say you live in a town built on top of a hill, and you’re late for work. Your house is up at the top, while your office - where your unfriendly boss is already checking his watch - is down at the bottom. You hop onto your MTB, but you’re well aware that if you stick to the streets and the traffic rules, you’ll just be arriving there in time to clear your desk. So you do what Marcelo Gutierrez did in the clip below.
No, really, don’t do what he did. This type of urban mountain biking competitions are both great and insane. Going down a flight of stairs on your bike, at speed, with dozens of people separated by just a ribbon. Seriously, what could go wrong?
It’s probably the video with the most open fracture opportunities per second I have ever seen. You watch Marcelo Gutierrez reach the end, and only then you realize you haven’t breathed for the past two minutes or so. There’s just so much skill and so much risk-taking that we simply have to get our hands off the keyboard and clap while nodding approvingly.
His run is so smooth, you feel like the GoPro has a servo self-balancing shake reduction mechanism, which it obviously doesn’t. He jumps over several curbs, but we don’t even notice. It’s all an uninterrupted flowing movement from start to end, a remarkable run that deserves all the credit. We hope his boss thought so too.
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