Mountain Biking CAN Save The World

While eating cereal this morning, I listened closely, between crunches, to an NPR story (yes, I'm an NPR junkie) about the Iran/US issues. One the one hand, a pro-Iranian reporter discussed the greatness of the Iranian population. On the other side of the table was a European diplomat who talked about the failure of the Iranian government to support its people. After listening to the dialogue for couple of minutes, a thought popped into my head: why can't everyone mountain bike?

I don't know why this came to my mind, but it did.

I looked up Iranian mountain biking and after finding a couple of sites and reviewing the information the riding looks pretty good.

The first site I followed was Araz.org. They appear to be mostly a guiding service. Their list of rides page seemed pretty cool. I mean who would doesn't want to ride to the Caspian sea. It sounds awesome! There's an awesome forum post on mtbr.com about a XC race. Terrain pictures are included in the post. There is a great site devoted to adventurer Tom Hermansson Snickars who rode across Asia. He actually rode right through Iran. His website is really amazing!

So, I wonder, if we all combined our pedals and rode the trails in Iran and flooded the country with tourist dollars would the conflict end? If someone has enough food on the table and a little extra to spend at the market would they really want to destroy the Americans visiting for a little bit of riding. You don't usually kill your customers?

It was good to see that mountain biking is an interest pursued in Iran. I hope the government will spend more time focusing on developing their Olympic team to beat the world instead of Nuclear arms to destroy it. I guess, the same should go for the US, as well. With this thinking, I think it is fair to say that YES, MOUNTAIN BIKING CAN SAVE THE WORLD!

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