“When I’m feeling my best, when I’m in the flow state, the bike goes away. It feels like I’m flying. The best races I won—and did the best in—were easy; I was relaxed, I was in the flow state; it was like water.”
Simon Bosman, a much respected race champion and Sedona mountain biking legend, and I were talking at a table in his large front yard, in the Camp Verde river corridor, with large cottonwoods shading us overhead and a pack of dogs racing the yard and begging for the orange ball to be thrown. I had parked near his new enterprise—a neighborhood honor‑system farm stand—that has become very popular. I asked him about his origins and early Sedona adventures, as the dogs sniffed me. Surely I smelled like cat.
"When I came to Sedona, I was struggling. I had recently arrived from Africa.Although home life was really cool, my school life—I went to boarding school—was really hard and very violent. We had a civil war going on at the same time. I knew a lot of people who had died, people I went to school with.
I went to one of the clubhouses in a small farming community, and you could see how the side of the clubhouse was strafed with machine guns. It’s the kind of environment I grew up in. It’s stressful. It’s weird how you get used to things when it’s always around you. For me, I had to unwind that when I got here.
I got in trouble when I first got here—I almost got deported the first year for fighting. I had all this pent‑up anger inside of me. Rama helped me a lot. He was very passive. We would talk about stuff—his hippie‑like outlook on life, very laid back, nothing riled him. I think I saw him angry one time. He never lost his temper. Maybe I should try that."
Rama Jon Gogan opened the first mountain bike store in Sedona, Mountain Bike Heaven, back in the mid 80s, when he met Simon. It was a small messy place filled with character, bikes, boxes, bike parts and a rotating group of local riders, Rama their de facto leader. It was far more than a bike shop; it was a warm and inviting place to ride with your friends, hang out, and feel at home. Even us non bikers were welcomed.
"I was super aggro inside, which in a way helped my mountain biking. It was a way for me to get that shit out of me; I would ride really hard. I would make myself scared."
:Now he is hiding the orange ball as the dog pack surrounds the table.
"Some of the earliest trails that we would ride that I remember and I'm talking 40 years ago, in the 80s, by out by Cockscomb and there were some old 4 by 4 roads out there," Simon explained. "The easiest ways to get around were in the arroyos and we would ride up and down.. we would see animal trails that veered off and we would just ride those, the more we rode them they would become our trail and the trails just happened. A lot of the Secret Trails area ( what they called Adobe Jack now) were built by just riding our bikes. They got adopted in the last 10-15 years, they started turning them into Forest Service Trails. Very few were not used.The greater portion were used and adopted."
As far as what happened with the trails in Sedona, a lot of the trails have been built illegally. The people were just making the trails. It all changed when Jennifer Burns came along. I really like Jennifer. I trust her, she’s a nice person. She was doing her job and I She was doing her job and I appreciate that. Without Jennifer I believe the trails wouldn’t be like they are right now. Instead of looking at the mountain bikers as the enemy—that’s what we all felt like: the Forest Service hated us, the early 25 years ago. We felt like in the eyes of the Forest Service we were actually pariahs, and we kind of liked that. We were having fun and doing what made us happy and we just rode—rode our bikes and carried our bikes—hike a bike. I don’t want to exaggerate but in the early days a good ¼ of the ride would be hike a bike.”
Hearing Simon talk about “hike a bike” brought back a memory for me. My only mountain biking experience in Sedona was around 1989, when my former partner was a mountain biker who rode with Rama One day there was a ride to the cliffs above the Verde Valley School to see the Jackson Brown and Indigo Girls concert free without any crowds. Free was a big incentive. Far more suited to flat‑pavement biking than to a crazy non‑trail and climb, I was soon reduced to a whimpering, crying mass under a large boulder, until one of the gang came to my rescue to carry my bike up the rocks. It was a moment of humiliation that left a lasting residue. Only now do I learn this was a normal and expected part of Sedona mountain biking in the early days.
Trails were limited, very limited, and we were exploring. We would figure out areas and sometimes we would come back the other way; sometimes if we couldn’t ride it before by climbing it, we could ride it more down, and the more we did that, it would become a trail. That’s what happened with a lot of the trails. We would ride over the logs, which is why the Sedona riders became so good at technical riding. The original trails were not easy, at all. A lot of the trails we initially created through riding have, just with use over the years, they become easier; they become wider over the years, and as they got adopted they made them wider and built little ramps and stuff. Whatever, there are two schools of thought on that. You’re dumbing it down—that used to bother me. But as time went by I was like, you can be upset or you can embrace it; it’s just progress. I like the trails; there is almost always a harder line, you can choose, you can go around the easier part, if that’s what you want.