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I was out riding my hybrid one winter in the mid-nineties and took a shortcut to The Hunter Lodge down a very muddy Haydon Drove. I ended up dragging my bike by one handle bar! I got chatting to some cyclists in the pub and one of them said "I think you need a mountain bike".
August(ish) 2010.
Signed up for D2D with some 'mates' last year and figured I would need a bike... the Giant Revel got me through my first Winter Series, various other races and the Singletrack Weekender this year 🙂
I now also run a '08 Kona Dawg Primo, that will continue to get a kicking racing and pushing the boundaries in 2012.
Never been happier 😀
When I was 24, had a heavy Pergeot mtb when I was 12ish during the 90s which didn't go offroad much, and on my 24th birthday saw a Mongoose Switchback rigid mtb with a tange frame advertised for 80pounds in the local paper, and bought it a day or two later and got into cycling upto Stanage Pole on it and along tracks nearby, and my parents bought me a Kona Cidnercone a ocuple of years later as a combined b'day and xmas present, from me being indecisive about presents.
Am currently building up a Cotic Soul hardtail after my alloy Kona frame broke around the seatpost tube at the tope of the seatstays and seat tube.
Used to be into climbing untill injury, so mtbing give's me a buzz doing something else. I love getting out to my favorite spots and having some tranquility before enjoying the ride back home again, the mixture of a buzz from riding and tranquility from the countryside is hard to beat, and on later in the day rides the ride back home for tea is nearly always filled with anticipation.
i can remember MBUK starting up and thinking "its about time!"
Got a Raleigh Amazon for xmas '91 to replace my bmx, then was in a newsagents with a friend in Inverness and he suggested I buy a mountain bike mag seeing as I now had an mtb, so I bought the January 1992 MBUK and that was that as they say. Beer, weed and women took over for a few years when i was a student and then got back into it after a messy break up about five years ago, still lovin' it
I can still remember the cover of that MBUK! I think it is still in my parents attic with the following 5 or so years worth of issues.
Excluding the traditional gents Raleighs that we cut about and added m/c bars to etc and the thing that I made with NSU moped suspensions forks and a Chooper back wheel (my jump bike) my first experience of mtb's was turning up at college in Bangor in'83 to find some one with a Dawes Ranger. We were riding the Welsh hills before the Crane brothers. (but the buggers beat us to the 3000's in one go as we were to lazy to rush). Rough stuffing on the road bikes was also the thing to do. My next mtb came from Sian Roberts at Biecs Betws in 89.
Started end of 82/ beginning of 83 came back from the Falklands and bought a Stumpy - I did not see another MTB for nearly two years. I (sadly) still have the first edition of MBUK.
But started riding off road about early 70s, we would build the strongest bikes up we could from any bits we could find, called them Quarry Bikes which usually broke in early jumping sessions!,
I remember the Rangers and the Highpeak.
I've just always ridden bikes, I lived close to the fields so always ended up off road, so have pretty much always been a mountain biker.
I can remember when MBUK put People like Barrie Clarke on the cover and still have the issue when the new XT groupset was released with the revolutionary V brakes.
5 years ago when I left my career as a semi pro skier and rugby player in the RAF I started having to work for a living and stopped all the sport. I got a wee bit beefy and during a drunken discussion about how to get fit for an upcoming ski holiday my pal suggested I buy a bike. I haven't looked back since. I love it.
I started riding about 88 when i got a raleigh marauder it weighed around 4 tonnes so i ended up getting into downhill obviously
over the years rode every discipline from bmx to xc racing and love all of it around the late 90s there were 20 or more of us riding and now due to kids work etc im the only one left riding regularly and i still love it i dont see why anything should stop you doing what you love,,
i must be an addict
Summer 1993 or 1994 bought half a secondhand bike from Fred baker cycles in Brizzle and first ride was in Coombe Dingle (I think). My local shop cyclemart had not long moved from their first shop to another larger place and I got friendly with those guys who in turn 'made' me try a race which I sucked at! A year or so later I bought a secondhand Marin Rocky Ridgeoff the mechanic coated in xt/xtr trickery and some manitou twos and that's when racing and riding got serious for me