Ray's Indoor Mountain Biking

Unique to Cleveland is Ray's Indoor Mountain Biking. Mountain bikers and BMXers come from all over the world for a chance to ride in this renovated warehouse. The building shuts down during the summer so the planners can change up the course, that and the building is brick so it gets nice and hot. Traveler's can rent bikes for $10/day, get hotel deals at the Holiday Inn, even find a shuttle to take you from hotel to riding. All in all, if you like to ride, you have no excuse!!

Racing buddy and Redbird Challenge race coordinator, Matt Stewart, invited me on a roadtrip to Cleveland to check the place out. Matt has been to Ray's before and vouched for the quality of riding. I scheduled that weekend off, got the bike ready and drove to Chicago to meet up with Matt and his brother in law, Max Zuniga. My brother, Christian, met us up there after dinner Saturday night and was able to share in this place. Cincinnati's not too far away, so I think he'll be back before too long...

Saying that you can ride your bike indoors at this place is an understatement. When we pulled up to the warehouse, I wasn't sure if I was going to have to unload meat on the loading dock, or ride my bike. We stepped inside and saw people whizzing around and launching themselves into the air, not just adults, but 10yr olds with no sense of fear too. Because this was December, and the place isn't really insulated in any way, it did at least feel like a meat locker.

After gettings situated, we took a tour of the warehouse on our bikes and warmed up in the beginner section, getting our muscles ready. The craftmanship that went into this place blows my mind. There are 103,000sq ft in this place. Absolutely huge. There are ramps leading up to catwalks hanging over the warehouse floor. The street section that lets free-riders do what they do best (spin their bikes around really fast, etc), an expert section with weight triggered elevators that drop you 5ft back down to ground level, opening up to a 2x4 that you have to balance and steer your bike on.

The biggest section of Ray's is in the picture to the right. Essentially a balance playground, you get to choose from riding on beams of wood no wider than 4in, to riding up a see-saw designed to jolt you from your pedals. All of these routes are designed to twist and turn, pitch and dive, play tricks on your momentum, etc. Riding slowly over these hones your skills and makes it more fun when you're out in the woods, but sometimes it's more fun to pedal fast over a see-saw and hear the loud BANG! as it spits you out the other side.

We also got a little brave in the foam pit, and I will admit, it took me a little while to warm up to the idea hurdling myself into the air and trying to do a full 360, but you land in foam...and foam doesn't hurt, it just tastes like...well, foam. Asking the locals some technique questions, I tried to do my first 360 on a bike ever. I quickly found out that a person's shins CAN bend the metal water bottle holders on the frame of a bike if you don't try to move. This hurts, but you're in Cleveland, away from any loved ones willing to give you sympathy. Life goes on. Max has the best pictures from this section. He wasn't able to master the getting in the air part of the ramp, but he kept trying and trying, so we have to give some credit where credit is due.


A pump track is a series of rolling humps that you push and pull your bike over. Doing this at the right time will let you finish the track without doing any pedaling whatsoever. We got to be pretty good at it, even able to catch a little bit of air here and there, but not without a few crashes and sending each other into the sidewalls. Surprisingly enough though, the entire weekend went by, falling on/off wooden platforms, crashing into barriers, I didn't get a single splinter; blisters yes, splinters no.