''Yeah," said my friend Eric Pandiscio. ''We'd heard about the great riding."
We asked the man where he was from.
''Ottawa," he said.
Funny, he had traveled father than we had. He even had to clear customs to ride his bike in Vermont.
Why had he driven from Canada for these trails?
''The singletrack," he said. ''I love the singletrack here."
Ah, singletrack. For mountain bikers, the word is magic. Off-road cyclists seek these narrow, shoulder-width biking paths like skiers seek fresh powder. They relish the thrill of riding a tight track through the woods, across open fields, or along mountain ridges. Not all singletrack is the same, however. The smooth singletrack of Kingdom Trails is, according to one publication, ''the stuff that dreams are made of."
That's why we were here. Of our group, two Boston friends and I had ridden Kingdom Trails several times. Over the last few years, I had promoted the variety (trails are well marked as either easy, intermediate, or expert), the quality, the smoothness of Kingdom Trails to my biking friends with the understatement of Donald Trump. Based on my exhortations, one friend mockingly refers to Kingdom Trails as the ''magic kingdom." Now, three other riding buddies had joined us for a day to see what the fuss was all about.
I was confident they would enjoy themselves. Mountain Bike magazine named Kingdom Trails one of the 50 best trails in America, citing terrain that delivers ''grins as wide as the sky." The International Mountain Biking Association named the system one of its 32 ''epic" rides in the country. A writer in Dirt Rag magazine touted Kingdom Trails as the ''best mountain biking in the country," celebrating the ''rolling, rocking, ripping singletrack."
Despite this, the success of the trip was not assured. Pandiscio, 42, a math education professor, had mountain biked all over the country, and had precise, exacting standards. John Gaise, 37, is a lawyer, and everyone knows those guys are hard to please. (The rest of the group was Eric's brother, Curt, 44, ahigh school assistant principal; Jared Baker, 30, a software product manager; and Ed Calnan, 34, a sales manager.)
