It was 30 years ago today

[M-Power]

I'm picking up fag butts :facepalm:...it all makes so much sense...what a sub zero thread

 

[superstar1]

Don't know what all the fuss is about, when I was a teen during the 70's I was doing the same thing and so was everyone in the area where I lived in Lancs.
Why do the Yanks get the credit as the originators of the mountain bike thing?

 

[incorrigible]

Re:

beautiful and historic pictures ! great !
(What is he smoking in the first picture !)

Little known aspect of mountain bike development. Before you could race the bikes, you had to have a reason to own them.

One of the attractions back in the day was he fact that you could go places where you knew no one was going to come along and bother you, no matter what you were doing.

A frisbee was essential on those rides. You could use it to throw and catch, or you could turn it over for a convenient surface for other purposes.

BITD, a frisbee was also a convenient way to pass a lit doob to your buddy from a distance. Just tuck it under the rim and fling it, and the centrifugal force would hold it against the rim during flight.............um......or so I hear

 

[highlandsflyer]

I am sure C.K. meant as a plate for your sandwiches.

 

[highlandsflyer]

Don't know what all the fuss is about, when I was a teen during the 70's I was doing the same thing and so was everyone in the area where I lived in Lancs.
Why do the Yanks get the credit as the originators of the mountain bike thing?

I used to question the need for the facepalm emoticon..

:facepalm: :facepalm: :facepalm: :facepalm: :facepalm:

 

[M-Power]

Its cool that a rare period of collective enlightenment resulted in a whole new branch of the bicycle evolutionary tree.

 

[mkaavin]

When I look at these old pictures and read about the story behind them, I am immediately reminded of the feeling of freedom that I felt back in the early 90's when me and my friends were out riding in much the same way.

It's all coming back to me now in a way that I haven't remembered it in a long time. Feeling free is what it was all about and I suddenly miss that feeling a lot.....

 

[legrandefromage]

Yes. In the mid to late eighties, trails were empty around me. I was on my own until my mates parents bought them their first bikes a few years later into the 1990's (Orange Clockwork x2, Saracen Trekker Hydrotech) against my rather humble Claud Butler.

Reading Charlie Kelly's input in one of the 80's MTB books (the one with the Cranes on the cover) you get the idea of how fewer people there were in the world at that time too.

 

[captaincosmic]

I was a youngster doing off road riding on the farm on my Raleigh chopper
My mates all road specials with fatter tyres and bullhorn bars
We didn't however organise races or go on to develop these into brilliant packages with all the development that went into producing the bikes we then bought in the late eighties when we fell in love again.
Cheers you guys for not giving up

 

[Repack Rider]

Why do the Yanks get the credit as the originators of the mountain bike thing?

Because we came up with the idea of downhill racing before you did.

Because we didn't stop at re-purposing old machinery for downhill racing. We started building bikes from scratch, designed around the use we put them to.

Because a couple of us rented a garage to build bikes in and told the world we were selling something called "MountainBikes," ridiculously expensive, hand built bikes that sold faster than we could make them.

Because every major bicycle company started making bikes exactly like the ones we first built in that garage, and the design took over the industry.

Because the form of racing we invented is now a world championship sport.

Thanks for asking.