It's not all about the BIKES!

And that for me is the really cool bit. All the exotica which I could never even hope to get - all of a sudden, if I can find it, I can buy it! (within reason of course )
SLIM - Take your point on nature. My years in the Peaks and Lakes taught me a great love and respect for the outdoors - all through hunting out the next thrill. Constructing jumps and trials etc is to me nothing more than BMXing on bigger wheels. MTBing for me, is about freedom.

Yeah, just in from a cool cruise over my local hills ridden and re-ridden by myslef and friends since the late 80s. Today was one those lovely blue-sky winter days , but flippin cold. Didn't see a soul out there, just rode and enjoyed the trails...Was thinking about the mtb history thing as I was riding , a big area of forstery has been cleared totally altering the mood of the place I was riding through ,some of the views I saw today I'd never ever seen before in like two decades of riding the same ground. Agree with the early 90s stuff / eBay thing--was on board my ultimate bike from back in the day (FAT ti, rigid forks , thumbies and still with toe clips -like my nice warm shoes) , which added to the fun even more .

Agreed that one of the best things about cycling is getting out into the countryside. I'd sooner go out for an hour in really sh**y weather than do an hour on the turbo.

That said if the kids want to spend their days digging dirt jumps then why not? It's far better that they're out riding bikes rather than playing on their megadrives or mugging grannies.

What a great thread,

I've been recently getting back into looking at MBUK at the newsagents (love WHSmith but sadly miss it now I'm in New Zealand), and it really has evolved into a lads mag about bikes without engines..not that evolution is a bad thing, I'm sure my Grandparents would have said the same thing about penny farthings and the new bikes of the 70's/80's and 90's...but all that said, it seems that the days of going out and finding a great ride in nature are limited to the few of us rather than the majority.

Hey, that's fine...means more rides for us eh!

Rich

Hmm what to say.
First up I'll admit I spend a lot of time digging jumps around this time of year. Been doing it for about 10 years. Its a different sport to mountain biking, its like I do 2 or 3 different sports, but all on two wheels
Started jumping on my xc bike and now have two dedicated jump bikes, a bmx and a 24" bike for rougher mtb style jumps.
I still love to get into the hills and do a 30 mile ride as well. Its all riding
For me the thing that bugs me is that people get conned into buying very specific equipment from the outset. Everyone I know started off on their regular bikes and if they enjoyed it as they progressed they bought stronger parts etc, now people seem to turn up on 2k jump bikes without the first clue of how to use them, and they don't need them for the size of jump they start off on.
People don't seem to realise that a normal xc bike is actually quite capable of taken a bit of abuse, as proven BITD when one bike was used for everything.
Here endeth the rant.

I think most bikes now are ugly.


Theres my 2p.

Last night I watched a video that came with an MBUK, probably 1995/96.

Had JMC et al on hardtails. Its not Red Bull rampage stuff but the variety of things they were doing on one bike (as opposed to a pick-up with 6 or 7 different bikes in the back, emblazened with corporate advertizing) sums it all up.

One bike and open countyrside where every track, slope, drop-off, berm, whatever, is just an obstacle to tacke advantage of, be it tearing down really fast of pulling off a cool move, without grading the route, swapping bikes, timing it, scoring points. Really good fun to watch too! And I'll still never be able to do what they did!

Is it me, but it was much more like "playing" when you took your bike out and had fun.

Just read this back - I am one step away from a flat cap, knobbly walking stick and grumpy sneer. The problem with the kids of today....