Mountain bike oasis created in Cleveland

0 Comments | USA TODAY, January, 2005 | by Sal Ruibal

Ray Petro got fed up trying to ride his mountain bike in Cleveland's wintry conditions, so he took the mountains indoors.

The result is Ray's MTB Indoor Park, a 66,000-square-foot playground that gives snow-challenged riders an opportunity to hone their skills on a remarkable structure that looks more like a wooden roller coaster than an Alpine trail.

"Way back in the fall of 1996, I got frustrated with the bad riding conditions here," he says. "So I started looking for a big, clean place with low rent."

He finally found such a place -- a vacant building in the Walford Industrial Park near Lake Erie -- in September and began laying the groundwork for his dream.

"I thought about trucking in a lot of dirt, but soon discovered that it would be a lot...