Mountain Biking on a Kickbike Cross Max?

This question was put to the Yahoo! kickbiking mail-list recently:

Wish you were here?

After a few super days XC skiing in Alpe di Siusi, back to Bergamo: rode xc #kickbike on 711 trail to Colle dei Roccoli pic.twitter.com/f4sk43HF

— Matteo Luzzana (@MLuzzana) January 6, 2013

The Humvee of scooters

The Kaz-USA all-terrain scooter

The High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV), commonly known as the Humvee, is a four-wheel drive military automobile produced by AM General^. Similarly, the Kaz-USA Scooter is a single-foot drive civilian footbike that’s also ready to go most anywhere. They’re hand-made in California – huge, unique and the toughest push scooters around.

Need to kick on the beach? You can do it on a stepcross, but only right where the loose sand meets the ocean; there’s about a foot-wide strip of packed wet sand there that’s navigable by even a “street” footbike. But if you want to blast through the dune out onto the beach and back and forth, a Kaz might be just the thing.

They make heavy-duty, really fat-tired scooters from all-terrain dog-scooters to “duallies” like those trucks with four rear drive-wheels, not to mention utility scooters that actually have a wagon attached, complete with a front disc-brake for when you’re carrying bricks down a hill.

They’re available at a Yahoo! store and some from Amazon. (I’m surrounded by sand on a barrier island. Hmmm.) Hat tip to Trottinette Magazine.

Offroad rocky downhill mountain scootering

It’s always fun kicking it with Bob Schutz.

Downhill footbikng on some rocky trails in Ramapo Mt. State Forest in Oakland, NJ. It is a 1.5 mile run starting at the Van Slyke Castle ruins, descending on a gravel road for about .9 mile and then a rocky steep trail for the remaining .6 of a mile.

And it looks like he’s scooting on a small-wheel high-deck bike; a perfect use for bikes like these. My AW Footbike stepcross bike has a high setting for the rear fork that works great in the woods.

The back-door man

For a lark I took my stepcross to my local woods to spectate a 5k footrace. A lot of the runners were impressed by the bike, especially a girl who had injured herself, when I told her that a lot of runners “my age,” who were tired of injuries, were becoming scooterers.

On the other hand I saw the same kind of community I used to enjoy in my bicycle-racing days.

Can a footbike outrun a goat-man?

A nearby newspaper has an article on a little yellow house in the woods where I like to ride my “stepcross” scooter. I’ve noticed the cabin along a dirt road there; apparently local legend has a goat-man living in it – that was news to the owner.