Bike rides have long been a family fun activity staple, consisting mostly of easy rides on paved sidewalks through suburbia. The Thursday Night Bike Rides hosted by the Magic City MTB Group, take the fun of those suburban rides and throw in some nature, exciting challenge trails and group camaraderie.

“We’ve got kids that are 6 years old, 10 years old, all the way to 85-year-old riders too, some nights. We ride for about an hour and everyone has a good time,” said Carson Schell, one of the central organizers of the Magic City MTB group and Thursday Night Bike Rides at the Bison Plant Trail.

One of the younger riders in the group, Hunter Schultz, started riding with his dad last summer. Hunter’s mom, Danielle Schultz, joined him and his father on their family rides this summer.

Hunter, 12, said his favorite thing about mountain biking is the adventure. He loves riding on the challenge trails, which are trails designed to test a riders skill with inclines, declines, turns and various natural obstacles such as roots, rocks and ledges.

Audin Rhodes/MDN Riders make a final push up a steep incline during the Magic City MTB Group’s Thursday Night Bike Ride. The Thursday bike rides are held year-round in sunshine or snow but are occasionally canceled due to heavy rains, thunderstorms and low air index quality from wildfire smoke.

“It’s nice to be out here and clear your mind. You can’t be worried about anything else really because you’re on the trail,” said Danielle Shultz.

The best thing about mountain biking for Kenny Pixler is being outside. Pixler has lived in Minot his entire life and has been doing the Thursday Night Bike Rides with the group for about three years.

“Mountain biking is important to me because it’s something I really got into after I quit smoking. So health is why it’s important to me – trying to stay healthy and not get into that lethargic, staying-at-home-all-the-time mindset,” Pixler said.

Pixler prefers hot weather for mountain biking but the group rides year-round.

“We ride all winter,” Schell said about the Thursday Night Bike Rides. “If it gets too cold, we just break out the big, fat tire bikes. We groom the trails, and a lot of these riders ride all winter long.”

Audin Rhodes/MDN Mountain bikers race to the finish line during the Thursday Night Bike Ride time trials. The time trials occur once a month before the regular Thursday Night Bike Ride begins.

Schell and his father, Rory, bought a groomer for the trails and groom all of the challenge trails all winter long for fat tire biking.

Additionally, it was Schell, his father and the Magic City MTB Group members who built all of the challenge trails at the Bison Plant Trail to begin with.

After the trails were built, Schell went through and charted the trails with his GPS so a map of the trail routes could be installed at the Bison Plant Trail via a collaboration with the Minot Parks and Recreation department and a local image rendering business.

Schell said the local MTB group was formed to make approaching the Minot Parks and Recreation Department easier in regard to mountain biking interests such as trail building and trail maintenance.

The Thursday Night Bike Ride and Wednesday Night Road Ride were formerly both known as “Val’s Ride,” in reference to Schell and his father’s family business, but the rides have since been renamed.

Schell said his father, Rory, his mother ,Janelle, and his sister, Sysnie Reiter, are all still very much involved with both the business and the Magic City MTB Group as well as facilitating the group rides.

“Once a month we even do our ‘Corndog Ride,’ where we actually make homemade corn dogs. Amy, one of our local riders, helps make them and we hand out 50 to 150 corn dogs so it’s pretty fun,” Schell said.

“It brings people together, it’s camaraderie. It’s fun. It’s a way to meet new people too,” Pixler said about mountain biking in the group. “It helps you better yourself. If one guy is pushing, you’re going to want to push that much harder.

“We do a group ride on Wednesday nights for road riding too, which is also fun. That’s a little more challenging because there’s a lot of guys out there that are fast – really fast,” Pixler said.

The Wednesday Night Road Rides are for road biking and the Thursday Night Bike Rides are for mountain biking.

The Wednesday Night Road Rides were started by Rory Schell close to 30 years ago and the Thursday Night Mountain Bike Rides were started by the Schell family in 2012 shortly after the Souris River flood of 2011.

“Recently – probably in the last three to four years – we’ve been converting the mountain bikers to road bikers and road bikers to mountain bikers. Everyone’s doing both so it’s been fun,” Carson Schell said. “Road bikers are generally focused on being fast and are all about cardio. And mountain bikers a lot of times are more focused on having a good time.”

Schell said it’s typical for bikers to have preferred terrain. Schell prefers mountain biking whereas his father prefers road riding. Schell said both biking cultures and group rides have their advantages, with the mountain biking group perhaps being a bit more accessible to families and bikers of all ages.

“When riders get older, they might have families and Wednesday nights are hard to ride on the road because we go out on the highway and you see vehicles. This Wednesday we did close to 30 miles,” Schell said.

For the mountain bike ride on Thursdays, riders bike the trails for an hour and are presented with waters and electrolyte drinks from Schell and his family when the hour ends.

“There’s two and a half miles of the main trail and there’s four and a half miles of the single track mountain bike trail,” Schell said. “We have a joke at the end that if you’re not at the truck by 8, you’re late.”

Pixler said it’s important to have safety equipment on while doing any type of biking.

“If you’re just starting out, ride with someone. Have a person or a buddy with you just in case. Especially if you’re riding around cars because sometimes drivers don’t make the right decision or they don’t see you,” he said.

“Carson (Schell) always says you only get one brain,” Pixler said. “When people are buying bikes and they say, ‘No, we don’t want a helmet,’ remember, you only get one brain.”