Ray’s Indoor Mountain Bike Park, Cleveland, Ohio

With our friend Ray Petro slowly recovering from a bad mountain bike crash that has left him unable to walk  (please keep him in your prayers), we thought this might be a good time to take a look at the indoor mountain bike park that Ray created over 10 years ago.  A carpenter by trade, Ray hated the prospect of not being able to ride his mountain bike during the winter months, so he got his friends to help him build what is probably the best indoor mountain bike park in the world—Ray’s Indoor Mountain Bike Park (a.k.a. Ray’s MTB)— in a long-abandoned parachute factory in Cleveland, Ohio. We visited the park in January of 2009, when we shot this photo, and were extremely impressed. It was a super-fun place to ride, whether you were a cross-country rider, a dirt jumper, a BMX half-pipe rider, or an everyday mountain biker who wanted to ride fun trails with climbs, descents, rocks, logs, banked turns, teeter-totters, log crossings, a funky elevator, a pump track, and a variety of other features. We loved riding at the park so much that we were more than happy to hang out and ride there all day long, doing loops throughout the park, testing ourselves on the skills sections, or taking a break and getting a bite to eat while hanging out and talking with the other riders. Giant pro rider Jeff Lensosky once told us that Ray’s Indoor Mountain Bike Park was his favorite place to ride in the world. Our photographer felt the same way. Ray’s MTB is a blast. Photo: John Ker/Mountain Bike Action