Birthday Fun at Ray's

We packed up Strawberry (pronounced "straw-bear") for the big town of Cleveland. Destined for Ray's MTB Indoor Park we had bikes and party goods packed into the truck as well as me, Tim, Craig, Marco, and Andy as the driver. I had been looking forward to this birthday celebration for about a month. Andy did a fine job of driving the vehicle although Tim was jabbing and tickling Andy with anything he could find from the back seat. We arrived at our half-price room under the green and
yellow sign of the Holiday Inn.

From there we rode bikes into the community of Lakewood for a round or three of beers before calling it a night. The next morning we headed to Ray's about 9 a.m. to get there when they opened. After getting a big hug from a 50-ish-year-old flight attendant from North Carolina in the hotel lobby we were on our way to the mountain bike playland. Twenty bucks and a waiver was all it took to get us on the floor at Ray's, and we even got free demo bikes. A lot of oohs and ahhs at first and about an hour to get to know where all the entrances and exits to the jumps, stunt lines, bmx bowl, vert ramps, teeter-totters, boulder gardens, and all the rest of the man-made bicycle obstacles.

The place was amazing with more awesomeness than you can imagine. There is riding for all abilities and multiple disciplines. We rode for about 4-5 hours with a pizza break in the middle. Highlights included: Craig biting his rear tire in the foam pit, a sweatshirt in the front wheel endo by Andy. Even when the riding seemed to get tired we just stopped and looked at all the hot or not-so-hot moves that the other riders were pulling off.

Overall it was a great time and we plan to visit Rays MTB Indoor Park in the near future.

—Joey Boyle , Dec. 16, 2007

Click on the thumbnail images below for larger images and captions.

Return to top of page