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First bike was a purple specialized rockhopper in 92/3 bought from m steels in Newcastle, had a soft spot for specialized ever since. Moved to Arizona and took bike with me but bought a Marin pine mountain with a manitou m4 fork in 96. Happy simple days exploring everywhere. Still got the pine mountain frame, bit tatty but free to a good home ( and now in Kent ) ...
Panaracer Fire XC Pros
as still fitted to MrsIHN's bike...
It was all about the accessorising....
Coloured bolts, everything from brake cable hangers to x-lite crank caps, bar ends...
Now I'm all just ride it & keep everything pretty much as stock, no customization.
1993 I got my mum to drive me to Cycle Care in High Wycombe, test rode a Kona Lava Dome then slammed £540 of hard earned paper round money on the sales counter. My mums face was a picture. I will never forget that feeling of walking out of the door with the bike. I felt EPIC! I still own it.
Grew up on the edge of the Lakes and after BMX's and a couple of mail-order Hi-Ten steel BSOs that I ran into the ground, my parents realised I was seriosuly getting into biking and bought me my first 'proper' MTB - the grey & yellow Marin Palisades!
Main memory is going far further than the other kids in my village did, mainly a couple of villages over - 8-10 mile round trip - because there was a girl there I fancied. Never did get anywhere with her, but hey ho.
Other main memory is giving myself RSI in both wrists riding down Dash Falls descent on the Skiddaw Round...
Getting one of these for my 16th birthday (except the 1994 model in black):
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This was way cooler than my mate's Trek because his new MTB was rigid whereas this had the whopping total of 1" of elastomer travel (in summer, it dropped to about 1/4" in winter). Remember ragging it round the local woods and the park after school. So much more fun and capable than the basic audax style bike I'd had before.
I seemed to have the Mountain Bikes Maintenance and Repair book by Brant Richards & John Stevenson on near permanent loan from the library and I'd walk the long way round from school once a month to go to the newsagents and buy the latest MBUK. Also remember having a lot of Rox clothing!
Great thread 👍
Started doing longer off-road trips in the early 80s on my BMX when I realised that stunts and tricks were not my forte. By 1986 I got my first ATB/MTB, a 5 speed Raleigh Maverick with sidepull brakes. I have joked often that with those brakes, the centre ridge tyres and steel rims the braking off-road felt like an option I’d forgotten to tick the box of.
My next was a Dawes Ascent but despite a heady 15 gears and cantis it was also WAY too big! So by 1990 the sale of the Dawes and saving meant a real proper MTB arrived, a Fisher Celerity. That Fisher went through various guises including Gripshift, flexstem, bar ends and even singlespeed.
Great times and after my big bike theft last summer I’m currently reliving that time period on a 1997 Kona Fire Mountain 😎
Mint Sauce stickers on my pink onZa bar ends.
Coloured bolts, everything from brake cable hangers to x-lite crank caps, bar ends…
Now I’m all just ride it & keep everything pretty much as stock, no customization.
Very true. Every single thing on my early bikes was agonised over and changed. My current bike is stock apart from grips and a new BB. Not even changed the tyres yet.
Was thinking about it this afternoon, went from Spesh Rock Combo -> Claud Butler Kylami -> Kona Cinder Cone -> Spesh FSR XC -> Orange Sub5 -> Orange P7 -> Whyte T-130 S
Which is only 7 bikes over 31 years. Must try harder!
Ha, the opposite of this for me -
Being hugely unfit and overweight and struggling to ride up anything approaching a decent hill until I realised that the 28:38:48 and an 11:28 cassette that my cheapo Carrera came with weren’t really helping
Being in my early mid 20's and coming from a running background and road cycling (not competitive) I remember being able to get up anything all day long with that gearing, now I struggle with the wide range we have these days.
Riding rigid and and not feeling beat up (youth). Getting a Flexstem and thinking it was brilliant. Bar ends. Getting 2.1 tyres - ZMax's and thinking they were huge. Spending ages trying to toe-in canti brakes so they didn't squeal. Drooling over 'trick' bits in the local shop - Heffs in West Drayton. Waiting excitedly for the next issue of MBUK to hit the shops to see the latest kit. Getting Quadra 21R's and thinking they were brilliant. Just riding all day, and the next day. Riding anywhere and nobody minded. Riding and not seeing many people let alone another MTBer - my local trails are rammed these days ... happy days.
Back in 1987, as a teenager, travelling down to Shockwave in Nottingham to buy a Marin Bear Valley. Bought one after all the hype in the windsurfing mags.
Most of the importers then were the same companies that were importing windsurfing kit. Some of them fell by the wayside but most of them are still big players.
First ride was up and over Cutgate and back. Some of the rides we did looking back were mad.
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Tour of Jersey 1990
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COSMIC TOP TUBE PADS!!!!!
They may still be in the back of the loft. 😅
Along with the matching frame bag
Can't find a pic but we "mountain biked" even when we all had BMXs, then I got a Raleigh Marauder (with 18 speed SIS, bitches!) and then a carrera krakatoa with a rather lovely steel tange frame, mountain exage all over it, er, and a flexstem.
TBH even with my rosetinted glasses on, it was really pretty crap, but we had a great time anyway. Coming back to mountain biking 20 years later it was just totally different.
The bug bit for me at about 10/11 years old, so the start of the 90s.
A cheap "ATB" for Christmas one year- Universal Hill Street Cruiser, 2*5 Shimano Tourney.
Then a few years later another budget bike butt this time with 300gs, "piano keys" due to the shifters being black and white.
I scrimped save and saved to get a British Eagle ZFX two in British racing green. Reynolds 531 frame and tange forks, I remember upgrading parts to LX/XT and being chuffed to bits! And cutting bars down to what I imagine would be 500mm ish with daft long stems. That's the bike that I started p proper off road/lakes riding on. No proper gear, coz upgrades were cooler than having clothes. Heading out in the depths of winter with two pairs of tracky bottoms on and a woolly hat under your helmet!
83-86 was BMX.
I lived & breathed it. I was actually quite good at it. 😁
I’ve still got a chrome 92’ GT Performer with black coaster brake Tuff 2’s.
The kids laugh out loud when I fetch it out.
About 91, bought a Raleigh Dakota. It was miles too big. And crap. Eventually bought a cheap steel frame set to replace it. (The Dakota frame is encased in concrete on a drive in Rugeley). Ran that till I bought a British Racing Green Timberline. My brother still has it. Repainted silver with yellow Quadras, to look like a 95’ Zaskar with yellow Judy’s. 🙂 (God, what was I thinking...).
He’s promised to pass it back when he’s done with it. I can feel a restoration coming on...
And night riding, with Ever Ready lights. A full moon would see me out over Cannock Chase. This was a decade before the Follow the Dog was born. Happy days.
Fondest memory of those halcyon days...oddly enough a ride with my brother. I flatted & we stuffed the tyre with undergrowth to get us home. 🙂
Aah the 90s.. has to be racing at the Malverns classic in the 90s...
@Stevied "Bending the forks on my Raleigh Avanti on a large drop. Then replacing it with a team issue Dynatech Pro. Loved that bike…"
Classic - i had a Raleigh Massif and bent the forks on a fence. Got them replaced, then kept busting rear hubs so go a Dynatech Diablo LX - bloody loved that bike. Frame got damaged and Raleigh replaced it, but then it was nicked out of my garage. Got an M-Trax replacement through insurance which i took to Uni in London ... where it got nicked. Got replaced on insurance by another M-Trax, which i leant to my B-in-Law ... and it got nicked. Went without a bike for a long time after that, then got back into MTB a few years ago.
What I remember most about the '90s though was poring over MTBUK etc, agog at all that fluoro, bar-ends, flex-stems and imagining when i'd be old enough to take a bike somewhere with actual mountains! Lincolnshire wasn't too special.
Aah the 90s.. has to be racing at the Malverns classic in the 90s…
Think I still have my Mycycles shirt from the first event.
I was into riding miles and racing on my bmx with mates in the 80's. In the mid eighties I got a Peugot atb for my birthday new and rode that in urban environments to school and back etc. Then gave up riding about 1990. Returned in year 2000 and been riding since - so I missed the 90's. Spent them driving and raving so not all was lost.
I also did alot of body buuilding in the 1990's.
The 90s was basically my thirties, so marriage, children and work (career?). Ran a Stumpjumper, acquired in 87 (still have) the whole decade, it didn’t really go out of date. Brief forays with Maguras, a flexistem, and Answer elastomer forks (still have all of them!). Not like now when every three years and a bike and all its components become ‘dinosaurs’! Finished the 90s in 99 buying a state of the art Merlin with sus forks 100mm and V brakes because we still didn’t trust discs and hydraulics. Strangely the Merlin seems more dated than the 80s Stumpjumper now.
Nineties riding for me was lots of bridle paths, singletrack, ridge rides, long long rides. In my memory as ‘Mint Sauce’ like days and rides, good memories. Don’t remember feeling endangered ... also rode all weathers (not so many bikes out in the wet now). Riding now is often lots short tracks and back up the hill again, with the odd one I need ‘brace myself’ for. Can’t tell you how much it’s changed!
First shot on an MTB was riding my friend's Muddy Fox Courier downhill through a foot of snow in the Necropolis, winter 1987.
Holywell Dene
Whoa... roots. Do you remember the bombhole? 😎
Riding miles between various spots built on mine waste and along coast paths and going to Cornwall Mountain Bike Club Races with mates who could persuade their parents to take them to prove who was the fastest.
I may have been the last to get suspension, but went big with Marzocchi Z1 BAMs.
I was reminiscing with a mate the other day as we span up another fire road between sections of DH singletrack, that way back in the 'day' (early-mid 90s) our riding was the other way round - attempting to climb short 'technical' climbs and bombing it down fire roads.
Sold my Raleigh ultra burner sat in the garage to fund my sunburst red escort xr3i I thought I was done with bikes. Promptly lost my job. When my spoilt mate let me ride his 1990 team Marin (the one with the grey teflon paint and pink forks/stem) to the job centre I was hooked again, haven't looked back. Wish use kept the xr3i though...
After BMX, my first 'MTB' was a Raleigh Mustang:
Then I started racing XC in my teens on one of these:
After about 6 months, I upgraded the Raleigh Peak with a Rockshox Quadra.
I snapped an X-Lite bar-end on a downhill section of a race on Bodmin Moor. Trust me, that was classed as downhill (for XC) at the time.
X-Lite felt sorry for a young teen 'champ in the making' and replaced them both sent me some stickers.
My first decent bike was a KHS Montana pro. I could not believe how good it was for the price. The bars were as narrow as they could be.
All summer holidays were spent down Danbury common. It only had 1 bomb hole then, we called it the island.
Danbury and what they do now scares me 30 years later.
Last year I found the same bike for £20 it rides as good as I remember.