KB and I were at dinner Saturday night with a couple of friends. As things tend to do, the Alliance was brought up and the question was, once again, raised as to what the Alliance was. This is nothing new, I know, but there was a comment that made me a think a little bit. It was asked if whether it was ok to talk about or if it was some kind of secret.
As usual, I felt like I was on the spot which meant my brain was going a million miles an hour and my mouth was stuck somewhere else. I was able to say, that no, it was in fact not a secret, it was more that it just was what it was.
I still have no answer.
Yesterday, I took a new Casey Anderson, not the one that gave us such memorable quotes as, “There is nothing erotic about corporate fascism.” No, not that one, one that lives here and rides mountain bikes. Yup, that one. I took him out to Little Creek as he had never before ridden that trail. He too, asked about the Alliance and the why, what, who that is involved with that. I feel like I did a bit better explaining things this time, maybe it was because I wasn’t completely blown from not being able to sleep the night before and I hadn’t already worked 10 hours, or maybe one prepared me for the other.
Regardless, here is my latest and best, to this point, attempt at explaining what it is we do here.
History: To know what we are, we need to know from whence we came
In 2002, Cannondale bicycles attempted to copyright the word “Freeride.” Whilst there lawsuits were being litigated in varied legal avenues, they were issuing cease and desist orders to companies that may have created a “freeride” bike and that they were trying to market as such. This kind of threw a monkey wrench into the jumping in the air side of the bicycle industry. This was the same time that the whole downhill scene was really come into its own.
Different companies were forced to find different names for their bikes. The most memorable of these was the Rocky Mountain Froride team. This consisted of Wade Simmons, Richey Schley and Brett Tippie who would rip around on downhill bikes wearing “fro” wigs. They were featured in many videos and at one point Schley was claimed to be the most photographed athlete of all time.
Bike magazine was at the forefront of this new style of riding featuring the above riders in countless photographs. During this time, they issued a survey to determine what we should call this new style of riding seeing that the word that everyone had been using was caught up in legal spaces and didn’t seem like it was coming out any time soon. There were many words thrown out, such unheard of things as, Mountain Biking, Slope Style and the number two spot went to Mooseknuckling.
Everyone that was anyone, or namely the original four, loved this. We were also a bunch of broke bike shop employees who were out to get some free stuff. We wanted a media pass for Interbike and the idea of starting a Southern Utah bicycle news center was hatched and then it pretty much died the same day as we never did anything with it. The name, Mooseknuckler News.
A couple of years later and I was back in the states and again working at Red Rock. Sir Gurr and I were in the throws of trying to get some bicycle advocacy going in Southern Utah. We started some petitions, some poor guy got hit and killed on 700 East and pretty soon advocacy in SG was being talked about everywhere. We started to form an organization, we even sent out newsletters, super official. We named our group the Mooseknuckler Cycling Alliance, because we knew that no one would ever forget what the name of our group was called. Within a few months we had amassed a few hundred email addresses and gotten press in Cycling Utah, The Spectrum and a few other publications about our efforts and what was happening on this side of our homely state.
It was about this time that we made our way to Interbike again. We ended up at a party/dinner with a bunch of Canadians. The fact that we had started an advocacy group in SG came up and with that, the name. This caught their attention as they loved the idea and more importantly the name. As we discussed how we came up with the name, they were more than enthused. According to this group of Canadians, they had been the impetus for getting Mooseknuckling into the top three of that survey. They promised to buy a jersey if we ever made one.
I wonder what they would think of my prototype.
At this point, we had a festival. Sir Gurr got the Tour de St. George going and things were rolling along nicely. I left to further my education in the Polar North and essentially walked away from the Alliance. Sir Gurr kept things going for a good chunk of time until it was painfully obvious that he was the only one actually working on anything. There were a lot of people with ideas and complaints, but no one who really wanted to do anything. That in conjunction with the fact that he was purchasing Red Rock and his time was limited, the Alliance was more or less shuttered.
In reality, it just went underground.
I ended up back in SG after attempting to ride my way to South America and somehow save my failing marriage. I was a bit of a mess and needed an outlet. Gurr still owned and technically does own the url mooseknuckleralliance.org. As he had more or less shuttered it as an advocacy group, he offered it to me and helped me get it set up as a wordpress blog. And at this point was when the Alliance took on its current state.
The Blog: The underground nature of the Alliance
My musings, wanderings and thoughts aren’t exactly within the mainstream patterns of Southern Utah. Thus when the Alliance became my face on the interwebs, it kind of went underground. It quickly became a group of misfits that truly believed that the bicycle could change the world. And it was at this point that people kind of figured out what a Mooseknuckle was.
You see, not only had the Alliance been featured in many mainstream publications, we were for a bit kind of that chatter when it came to cycling in Utah. Then slowly people began to understand that there was more to our name. There was a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor involved with our odd and memorable name. You see the term mooseknuckle refers to the form the male genitalia takes on when jammed into tight clothing, such as lycra. The Canadians called XC riders Mooseknucklers because they wore tight clothing, there idea of calling Freeriders Mooseknucklers was kind of a jab at the whole cycling industry and the ruckus nature of people who huck.
So what is the Alliance?
The Alliance is more or less that. A group of people who like to poke fun at anything that is being taken a little too seriously and who strongly believe that the world would be a much better place if we all took the time to ride instead of drive, in whatever form that happens to be. It’s not a secret. It’s not some form of male ego driven club that only the elite can join. Quite frankly, it’s not a club. You can’t join because I won’t take your money for fees. You become part of the Alliance by partaking in our ruckus ways and riding with us. Nothing else required.
And that’s how we feel the world should be.
Peace. Love. and Revolution.
