I don’t want to knock america’s adventure place (even if they do have a slick new website) but Afganistan is where it’s at for extreme mountain biking!

Since the invention of the motion picture camera, when man finally had the opportunity to put the works of Mellville and Bradbury in motion, the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains have been the set for hundreds of movies and TV shows. The most awesome of which have been the SciFi classics cause we all know we feel like we’re on another world in places like the Alabama Hills, the Buttermilks or rolling down the surreal depths of Saline Valley.

From Tom Mix, Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry and the Lone Ranger to Jean Luc Picard and now Tony Stark in the new movie Iron Man, It’s not just a place for fulfilling your own outdoor hardman fantasies, though it does pretty damn well with those. This is not a review of Iron Man, except to say I liked it (read: was entertained) but I always love to see the East Side on film!

Ok, so when I was in the Theater I was POSITIVE that Tony Stark got Blowed up on Buttermilk Road right near the Tungsten Hills, but looking back @ the trailer I’m not so sure. My Mom said that a few months back they were @ the Alabama Hills and there was some filming going on. But still, most Jeep commercials are filmed @ the Buttermilks… Check out the opening sequence in this trailer for Iron Man, where somewhere on the East Side is standing in for the Afgani mountains:

Oh, we roasted the hell out of some schmoes…

And here’s the bike I helped my sister RozyT build with parts from Gris and Tongaroo!

We camped @ Y Boulder for the first time in YEARS! It was RAD.

Here’s ths whole video:

-M