Pedro’s Mountain Bike Festival
Lanesboro, MA, July 16-18, 2004

By Patrick Totty

Mountain biking started in the 1970s on the slopes of Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County, CA, just north of San Francisco. Daring bicyclists, looking for something more thrilling than spins along frontage roads and less tedious than rides on heavily trafficked boulevards, began experimenting with hurtling down Mt. Tam’s steep slopes atop clunky old bikes they’d equipped with fat tires and heavy suspension. 

Word of the infant sport’s thrills quickly got out, and mountain biking soon became a popular international pastime. It caught on especially well with people in New England, which is the U.S. region most analogous to Northern California – psychically, if not geographically. People in both places love their region’s felicitous meeting of land and sea, jealously protect their forests and mountainsides, and head outdoors as much as they can. 

That’s why mountain bikers who fell in love with the sport in California will find a compatible landscape during the Pedro’s Mountain Bike Festival, July 16-18. The festival, now in its 10^th year, takes place in western Massachusetts’ Berkshire Mountains, a landscape of forested slopes that will evoke memories of Mt. Tam’s wooded flanks. 

Pedro’s started out as a goof, a get-together of mountain biking chums and their families for a day or two of picnicking, game playing, schmoozing and bike riding. Word got out that the fest was a hoot, and the number of attendees picked up over the years. 

These days the festival is a bit more organized than when it started. Activities still include the game playing and hanging out, but also biking events that range from puffball circuits for novices to a 50-mile cross-country grind for the hardcore. 

“Pedrosfest,” as its organizers affectionately call it, draws mountain biking enthusiasts from all over the world. To see what the hoopla is all about, visit the festival’s excellent web site at: www.pedrosfest.com/PF_newendland/index.cfm