Those of you curious about mountain-biking but weary, rent a full
suspension bike to try it. Hardtails demand skill & experience. It'll
be the best thing you ever did for yourself and a whole new world will
open up to you.
Remember, MTBing has many many different offerings, and no MTB trail is
the same nor gives the same experience. That's what's really addicting
to it. No trail offers the same experience, and when you live in a
place like Colorado where like in Morrison (and many other places)
there are at least 40 different trails within 3 miles, on say about 9
different mountains, the diversity in experiencing the art/sport and
nature, is intoxicating with a new aliveness given by each trail.
If you ride Mnt Falcon (Colorado) in the morning, then ride it in the
afternoon, you'll swear it's a different trail entirely. The
enchantment is completey different by the change of time in the day.
If you're scared, again, get that full suspension bike (Trek Fuel is my
suggestion, get at least SRAM X-7 or XT components), and give it a try.
The best thing about MTBing is that it's totally free. You can rent
bikes probably anywhere in the USA where there's trails.
These trails in Wisconsin are attractive because it's a scenic
adventure, not a technical one, not a challenging one. The personal
experience each person has with a MTB or in MTBing, is a choice of many
menu items. Some do it for scenery and never will ride over anything
technical or challenging - this is like Ride-A-Lot
http://www.schnauzers.ws/, of which he is the expert sidewalk rider who
uses a MTB. The trails in Wisconsin are like this, no rock gardens &
stuff, but still all very enjoyable and rewarding. The varietys of
experiences of MTBing is endless. Some do freestyling and never go out
on trails, they're the urban assault guys that can do all those flips &
crazy stuff, no handers and the bikes they're using are fully fledged
MTBs made for trails as well as urban assaults/half-pipes, concrete
jungles.
The whole motive of this post is to get you never-done-it-before MTBers
out on the trails and doing it, or out anywhere and trying it. If you
fear buy full-suspension, they do all the work and make it safe.