So, Potato Man, a carbon Trek now is it?
Let me tell thee a story of Marvel!
I've posted here about my first 'real' MTB, but never the Story of my second, version 2.5.
I believe it was 96 that I'd just got my first part time job at the age of 16 (yeah, I'm a lot younger than a lot of you
) and saved my pennies
hard for many months to purchase my next bike, from Merlin Cycles (the mail order company). T'was a fine beast; Basic alloy frame and rigid forks, but some of you may remember they managed to get pretty decent bits on them including hope wheels, xt grouppo etc.
Stonking bike, raced XC (badly) and downhill (V. badly) on it.
About a year later, I was in my LBS, and glanced up at the framesets they had hung from the ceiling. Among them was a Trek 8700 in all it's purple goodness!
It was the 1994 model, second hand, £250. It took me a few more months to save for it.
Superb bike, and totally indestructable, as this was the late 90s and it soon became my jump bike. I sold it a few years later, complete with the original fork, a mint set of original Judy XCs and a set of england cartridges for about £75!!!
I miss it.