BHS Mountain Biking, a prevalent sport at Berkeley High has recently faced allegations of being a "cult", adhering to the cult definitions. According to the Oxford Dictionary, a "cult" is "a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister." Mountain bikers at BHS are without a shadow of a doubt, in a cult, use made-up words, worship calf gains and a mysterious figure known as "Steezus Christ." Moreover, they try to recruit individuals using manipulation techniques. "It'll be fun," they'11 propose, "it'll be all downhill!" But instead, mountain biking entails hours of agony, broken collarbones, concussions, and being impaled by protruding branches. They can easily be spotted by Carhartt jeans and carabiners with absurd keychains- not to be mistaken with the iconic fashion of "granola gays" . We stumbled across a member within the hallowed ground of the Codornices' backwoods. We attempted to interview the member, who reported unintelligible dialogue consisting of fake words such as shralp, scrub, braap, steez, whip, send, knack-knack, stoppie, endo, and many others. We managed to snag an interview with Ruby Leaverton, a senior in AC who explained, "send is a rad way of saying 'going down a hill with no fear' [and a] stoppie is basically when you stop at an interaction and the back wheels lift up." Following this, we inquired about what the culture of mountain biking engenders (i.e whether it is uplifting, competitive...) Leaverton, impassioned, stated, "rad environment for all types of peeps".
When we asked her to elaborate, she replied "pretty fucking baller", and proceeded to spend 20 minutes to find out how many gears her bike had (11-49 gears). Following this, we inquired about accessories and sustenance commonly used for races and practice. Apparently, one can attach Nerf darts to the spokes of the bicycle in order to elevate "flair". During races, participants will often bring GU pouches for on-the-go energy, sometimes using the "lick em and stick em" method to attach energy gummies to the handles. Beyond reasonable doubt, these gummies can withstand the precarious terrain and immense wind.