The wedding processional. Photo by
You thought you were crazy about bikes? Last weekend I was party to an intimate, two-wheeled wedding ceremony for a couple of dear friends, Jeny and Ed. They had been trying for a year to figure out the perfect way to tie the knot鈥攆rom the traditional church-and-family route, to a ski getaway in Jackson, to a simple elopement in Hawaii鈥攂ut nothing really spun their wheels until they landed on the idea of a mountain bike marriage.
Understand, these two are serious cyclists. Ed has done some crazy, single-push endurance events, from the Kokopelli Trail to the Moab Rim, all on his fully rigid single-speed . And Jeny is one fast woman; I raced as a coed duo team with her a few years ago, and, despite never having done a 24-hour race, she was faster than most of the men in the two-man category. They even got engaged on a quiet stretch of singletrack at the , a punishing 125-mile race out of Salida, Colorado, in which both were competing.
Fittingly, then, they decided to take advantage of the warm, dry winter we've been having in New Mexico and perform their nuptials in the saddle. So on a crisp weekend afternoon in March, we loaded up the bikes (his an Eriksen, hers a 鈥攂oth 29ers, in case you were worried about marital strife) and headed for the sinuous trails at . For hours, we traced delicate tracks in the bright desert and then stopped to say a few meaningful words on an outcrop overlooking the vast scrubby plateau. We capped off the day with more single track, a wedding cake, and a bottle of at the trailhead picnic area. Honestly, I've never been as content鈥攏or as tired鈥攁fter a wedding.
Anybody out there more committed to bikes than these two? Let's hear it.
–Aaron Gulley
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