Recent content by Repack Rider

A series of modified Schwinns from 1974-1977. Breezer #2 in 1978. A series of Ritcheys from 1979 to 1983. American Breezer 1986

For clarification, the parts list to the left of the photo of the "Woodsie" bike are the specs for the 1981 Ritchey/MountainBike, not the Woodsie bike..

I was invited to participate in the 45th anniversary of the 1978 ride from Crested Butte to Aspen in Colorado, over 12,700' Pearl Pass. Here is the famous photograph. (I'm fourth from the left.) I don't own an e-bike, but I told the organizers I would need one for the ride, since I live at...

I was that the Fillmore West when Carlos auditioned for Bill Graham in 1969. Later, as the roadie for another Bay Area band, the Sons of Champlin, I worked on a lot of shows with his band.

Two years ago VeloPress took my book, Fat Tire Flyer: Repack and the Birth of Mountain Biking out of print. That made it collectible and the price went up over 10X.. Now I am back in print. The new publisher is Terran Empire Publishing. The price has gone up, but the good news is that my...

After two years in limbo, my book, Fat Tire Flyer: Repack and the Birth of Mountain Biking, is back in print. The new publisher is Terran Empire Publishing. The price has gone up, but the good news is that my royalty went up even more. New format is slightly smaller than the old one, but the...

My friend Jim Sullivan won the US Veterans National Championship in 1989 with a pig valve in his heart. It's still there, and he swears it was his secret weapon.

I wrote the article. Also available here.

Here is my article in the RSF club newsletter from the '80s.

The first time I took a balloon tire (tyre) bike on a dirt trail as an adult, was in 1973 when a friend called the house that Gary Fisher and I shared and said, "Hey remember when we were kids [in the 1950s] and rode our bikes on trails? Let's take your [balloon tire] town bikes out on a trail."...

With the evolution of the bikes and riders, "Repack" would be considered tame by modern DH standards. Strava lets you do your own timing. The fact remains, that no one on a modern DH bike has beaten times set on that course by men on modified 1930's cruisers.

People rode bicycles on dirt roads since the inception of the bicycle. There were groups like the Rough-Stuff Fellowship (Gary Fisher and I were members) who rode on bridle paths and trails. Cyclocrossers rode all kinds of rough terrain. Post-war kids in France and England had versions of...

The modern mountain bike arose in one place and time. A lot of people claim to be part of that process, who were not. I often wonder why no one thought of it before we did. Our inspiration was putting a modern racing bicycle next to a 40-year old modified Schwinn, and observing that there were...

I have finished scanning every page of every issue of the first mountain bike magazine, which I edited from 1980 to 1987. You can see them here. For a random sampling of the other vintage mountain bike literature in the Mountain Bike Legacy Archive, click this.