Editor’s note: this article originally appeared in the February 5, 2026, Singletracks email newsletter. It’s free to sign up, and you’ll receive links to the week’s top articles plus original content just like this in your inbox each week.
Tucked between a concrete bike path, a dog park, and a community garden, there’s a rather unremarkable city park. Mostly covered in grass and English ivy, the 3.8-acre park is nothing more than a glorified retention pond.
A couple of months ago, an anonymous dad placed a few homemade wooden ramps around the park. Cobbled together with scrap wood, every ramp was less than 18 inches tall. Fortunately, the park’s natural bowl-like shape provides riders with a perfect run-in, and the ramps were just the right height for bikers of any age to give them a try.
Weeks went by, and to everyone’s surprise, the ramps were still there. As winter began to thaw and the earliest buds of spring appeared on the tree branches reaching down from above, more features started to emerge from the dirt. Now there are pimple-like gap jumps; a tight berm that requires a bar-dragging lean to maintain speed for the next feature; and steep drop-ins from the bike path that are no longer than two 29ers parked end-to-end.
Bike playgrounds like this aren’t unusual, but what struck me about this one is how organically it developed. The kids sculpting the fresh dirt features have likely never met the man who built the wooden ramps, but they’ve clearly made good use of them. Even though this isn’t a mountain town where everyone rides bikes, a handful of local kids have been both inspired and empowered to spend more time riding. To build something. To be part of a community. It’s proof that having fun on bikes is wildly contagious.
Eventually, a larger wooden ramp was added to the park. This one requires riders to carry a bit more speed than the others, and it even came with a message written in Sharpie.
“If you can’t hit the landing, don’t move the ramp. Get better.”
Sage advice from one generation to the next.
Sign up for the free Singletracks newsletter to get more exclusive content like this delivered via email each week.
0 Comments