Whilst rad, mountain biking isn’t all gnar, and by presenting it like that, lots of people are missing out an all the easy fun that mountain biking could offer them.
Matty Johnson is a former professional baseball player who now makes mountain biking content for his YouTube channel. He discovered mountain biking five years ago, and in that time has pushed himself to ride harder features.
In this video I will be talking about some misconceptions when It comes to mountain biking and how all the expensive bikes and difficult trails are not what mountain biking is all about.
The topics he covers have a lot of overlap with the agenda of Reframing MTB. What do you think? Is there room for all styles of riding? Do we see enough of ‘just riding along’? Or is it boring to watch, but fun to do? How would you encourage more people to give mountain biking a shot?
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I’m interested as he specifically says it’s his favourite bike for mountains, and I’m intrigued…
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As with most things, not in the slightest. But this is a discussion forum. He said something and I’m discussing it further. Hope that’s ok
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My apologies, it did look like you were intentionally being an arse, but looked back at the context of the post you were querying 👍
@scotroutes – here you go!
Charlie Kelly and Gary Fisher’s business with Tom Ritchey welding the frames:
http://sonic.net/~ckelly/Seekay/mtbikes_company.htm
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Vaguely knowing who epicyclo is I suspect he actually spends a fair bit of time cycling in and up the mountainsÂ
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I live on a mountain. I can’t ride from my house without going down a mountain, or ride home without going up a mountain. It doesn’t really look like Ama Dablam though.
I’m conflicted. Am I lying to myself?Â
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@chiefgrooveguru I think you missed my point 😂
Or you could flip that and argue that what actually matters with riding bikes is what goes on between your ears, not which tyres / shock / pedals etc you’re using. At which point endless reviews are kind of missing the point and just a stage in the relentless commoditisation of everything.Â
Sometimes the ‘purpose’ of writing / journalism is simply to make you think a bit about an activity or process. Maybe to sharpen your sense of wonder. And of course sometimes it’s a bit **** and self-indulgent. But having a purely transactional take on journalism / writing / whatever you want to call it, seems pretty limiting.
On that basis, pretty much every novel ever written would be ‘pure self-indulgent garbage serving no real purpose’ rather than something that shares thoughts, ideas and experiences and expands your inner world. All of which will, of course, be ‘garbage’ to you, as above, riding bikes essentially is about how you experience them rather than the minutiae of what kit you choose to use.
If you have a great weekend riding, you rave about how it felt, looked, smelled or whatever, not about how amazing your brake pads were and, oh, you wouldn’t believe how smoothly my dropper went up and down…
I don’t think it helps when the majority of the MTB media are gravity, bike park, gnar focussed; whether in print or online. I was looking on You Tube recently for a channel that has a fair mix of different MTB riding types – I struggled. MTBR, Downtime, The Ride Podcast all about the DH, Enduro, Gravity side……nothing for real world ‘xc type’ riding. Rob Warner was recently on the Gypsy Podcast, and in 3 hours there was nothing about XC racing……
I hope you noticed I specified ‘easy to carry’ because there’s no way I could actually cycle the whole way over any of the mountains in my area on any bike, let alone that one.I did use that bike on Ben Nevis though.It was quite a few years back in the World Solo 24 Hour Champs. Probably a daft idea to use it when the competition was on full sus & gears, but it was more fun for me. It got me a 2nd place in my age category in the UK 24 Champs which were being held concurrently. It’s pretty well acquainted with Ben Wyvis, the Corrieyairick, and sundry others.The old black bike is a 1948 Rudge and I was trying it out on a lap of the StrathPuffer course which is more like mtb territory. I wouldn’t want to carry that one anywhere. I did a 150km day on it about 5 years ago with about half of that on the HT 550 course so there were a few mountains involved.
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Badly wired dog has point but the need to write about it is what I am on about. Self indulgent twaddle, a bit like all those social media accounts showing the world what you did today.Â
Oh yeah. All groups have a vibe but why try to explain it or even bloody well name it let alone publicise it. I blame the internet!