One question comes to mind when you watch someone trials riding, that peculiar biking discipline that eschews pedaling a bike in favor of hopping it from one seemingly impossible location to the next? Like from the ground to the top of a four-foot-high wooden spool?

How exactly do you get started? Like pole vaulting, trials riding would seem to require a significant leap of faith.

"You start with a simple track stand," explains Chris Slydel, who has been trials riding for the last five of his 46 years. With that, he does what to many cyclists is impossible: Atop his bike he gets it to stand motionless.

"Then you go to this," he says, rearing into a wheelie position and holding it motionless for as long as he cares.

From there, obviously, it's a cinch to make your bike hop on its back tire from atop a wooden spool to the razor-thin tops of a series of plywood sandwich boards to parallel 4x4s.

"I'm an ex-mountain biker who decided to do something more interesting," says Slydel, explaining how he found himself in this curious niche of the biking world, a niche you'll be able check out at Saturday's Fat Tire Festival at Lake Crabtree County Park.

In its third year, the festival has grown to include the annual Take A Kid Mountain Biking Day, with lessons and a guided group ride, and the Curse of the Crab, a six-hour endurance race that begins at 3 p.m. and ends under the lights (the light strapped to each mountain biker's helmet). In between, there'll be live music (Bus Stop Eddy, Big Fat Gap, Chuck Campion and the Big Tippers), demos, exhibitors, "Pixie Cross" (a short course race for which costumes are encouraged) and those trials riders.

Slydel, Derek Keller and Pat Lundergan gave a sneak peak at the stunts they'll perform at last Saturday's grand opening of the Briar Chapel development, which included the debut of a mountain bike trail network. The three took turns bouncing from one feature to the next.

"You can start out on a regular mountain bike," says Slydel. That would be for the basics: a track stand, a wheelie. From there, you need a specialized bike to withstand the pounding.

Trials bikes resemble mountain bikes with one noticeable exception: no seat. Also unlike a mountain bike, they have only one gear, no suspension and big, flat tires.

One other difference: The brakes. Hydraulic disc brakes are common, necessary to help a bike's tires stop on a dime.

"There's no messing around," says Slydel. "It needs to stop."

Indeed, the difference between an immediate stop and a sliding stop could mean the difference between staying atop a bridge railing and slipping over the edge. Despite the precision, strength and nerve required for trials riding, the riders insist it's no big deal.

"It's just another skill set of cycling," says Lundergan.

Lundgren is just as cavalier when discussing the prospect of injury.

"The worst I've ever gotten was a broken tailbone," says Lundergan, whose shins bear the scars of numerous encounters with his bike's spiky pedals.

"That was from a miscalculated six-foot jump."

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