Getting Down and Dirty with Eric Porter
Josh Campbell: It seems like you do everything from slope style to downhill to enduro. But what is your favorite type or discipline of riding?
Eric Porter: I think if I could only do one for the rest of my life, it would have to be just trail riding. That’s what I grew up doing and when I was 12 years old, I got my first mountain bike and that was like my freedom. I was lucky enough to live within riding distance of some trails and I just didn’t even hardly know what mountain biking was but I had this mountain bike and there were these trails so I went riding on them every day. I do love all the types of riding and I spend my time pretty equally between dirt jump and downhill and cross-country and everything basically. But it all comes back to getting out in the woods and trail riding.
JC: Do you think your son, Milo will sort of follow in your footsteps since is in such a mountain bike friendly environment?
EP: I’m not pushing him into it for sure because if he does, I want it to be something that he feels like is his own doing and just like it was for me, it was my sport and what I liked to do with my free time so I want it to come from that if he does want to do it. But he’s four and a half right now and we ride bikes together every single day whether it’s on the pump track in the back yard or on some cross-country trails. So we’re already riding together every day so it’s pretty cool. It’s one of his favorite things to do.
JC: I saw that you’re running the Manitou Dorado inverted fork on your downhill bike.
How do you like it? EP: I love it. It almost feels like it has more travel than it does. You’ll get to the bottom of the run and you’ll look at the little O-ring and you will have used all of your travel and have no idea that you did it. You’ll never feel a hard bottom out. It has a specific control in there that only controls the last inch of travel. The inverted fork is a great idea. It keeps all the oil on the seals all the time. There’s a reason that every dirt bike has them.
JC: In your film “I Ride Gravity,” you were talking about riding in your back yard. Was that actually your back yard?
EP: Yea, it’s literally my back yard. I’ve got a big jump section where the roll in starts on top of my two story garage and its basically 5 jumps in a row there. They have wood lips with dirt landings but they’re built very trails/dirt jump style as in there’s rollers in between all of them and a couple of them are hips and there’s some transfers. So it doesn’t feel like you’re riding a typical wood lipped contest style set-up, it feels like you’re at the trails or something. It’s low maintenance. We actually have a pump track too and last summer, Matt Beringer, the pro BMX-er was moving and they had to get rid of all of the water slides at his house, so he gave those to me so I decided to incorporate them into my pump track. And on top of that, my next-door neighbor works for SRAM, so he’s in the bike industry as well and he’s one of my best friends too. He has a pump track in his back yard too, so we used the water slides to connect the two pump tracks. So it’s like a bobsled run.
JC: When you’re not on your bike, what do you like to do?
EP: In the summer, I enjoy fly-fishing. That’s definitely my “slow speed sport,” I can’t really get into golf. Something about just being in the river, I guess it just goes back to being out in the woods and being away from buildings and traffic that I just love. I spend more of my time fishing than I do catching, I don’t have a ton of time to dedicate to getting really good at it, but I definitely love it
JC: I noticed that you’re sponsored by Clif. They sent us the new flavors of Mojo bars to review. Have you gotten a chance to try those?
EP: That dark chocolate cherry almond flavor is absolutely unreal! My wife is gluten free and it seems like a ton of people are these days and the Mojo bars are all gluten free now, which is really cool for people who eat a gluten free diet.
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