Just found my first 'MTB' online!

Back in the 80s when MTBs were first getting used I bought a bike with the money I made from my Saturday job in the butchers (many stories in that but now is not the time) that I thought was the future. It served me well until I eventually upgraded to a Raleigh Magnum at which point it was px'ed with the shop that I first bought it from.

Now I found this not a million miles away from where I lived with the same rear rack as I had put on and the same white brake cable so I'm pretty sure this was my one (wasn't exactly a common bike so that adds weight to it).

What was amazing was the fact that this was a really 'ahead of it's time' bike, just check out the features:

-700c (29er) wheels
-Riser Bars
-Short stem
-Sloping TT
-Truss forks
-Gripshift
-Internal rear gears

Seriously cool and proof that we knew a thing or two in the UK about off road bikes

Big question - am I going to bid on it......

not sure if it would look nice next to your collection .

Big question - am I going to bid on it......

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I should bloody hope so!

Big question - am I going to bid on it......

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If it's your old bike.........it would be rude not to!

It has got loads of memories tied up in it: flying down box hill knowing full well that the side pulls wouldn't stop me, being allowed to cycle the 15 miles to school for the first time, my fisrt decent stack (see box hill/brake comment), the cool ska/2 tone paint job at the time that I was really into Madness. But will it be like seeing an ex for the first time in 20 years only to find that sex kitten has become a mangy cat. Are memories best left at that? Added to which it is a pile of poo, just look at the thing!

buy it you know you want to

clockworkgazz":3th3mfpj said:

buy it you know you want to

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I know, sad ins't it

it's not sad, it's history.......mind you that can be viewed as

good

Aldous Huxley:
The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.


or bad

Henry Ford:
History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.

I like the first.

If I ever come across my first MTB, I will jump at it just for the memories in it, even the frame will do, as every scratch and dent I know what caused them. But the the Vindec, I remember that that thing and hankered after one with my propensity for trashing road inspired bikes, althouth at the time it did look like a cross between a BMX and a real bike.

I will know my old frame, because of an acid etched number in the seat tube, a number that goes the depth of the metal, it cannot be filed out, and the etch if I remember can be picked up with UV light. Oh, and there is a note in the frame, down the seat tube.

Buy it and clean it