Looking back over that golden era facebook page and started feeling so nostalgic for the mid nineties, very dusty in the office.

Key things:
Mint Sauce cartoons stuck on my bedroom wall
Kula Shaker K
Animal watch straps /t-shirts
South Downs chalk in the summer, in particular one bridleway off the back of Butser and the old bomb holes at Buriton
X-lite races at Matchams park.

Whats your key mtb nostalgia?

Riding on the South Downs for hours at a time and never seeing another mountain bike and being stared at by walkers in disbelief rather than being scowled at in disapprovement. Circa 1986

Fully rigid bikes with old school steep geometry and rubbish tyres making relatively benign trails seem very tricky indeed *. Strangely quite nostalgic for that. And Onza Ules grips. In yellow.

* Good example that comes to mind was early CyB. I think it was on the section down to the road crossing. There were a few slippy steps in the trail followed by a sharp bend. God knows how many times I came off on that. Sure now it probably wouldn’t even register as being an obstacle!

20mm axles
Panaracer
Coloured braided brake hoses
150mm bikes that weighed 33lb plus
36 hole rims and hubs

The only thing that was better back then was the fact you could ride cheeky without anyone realising it was cheeky.

Other than that I don’t think nostalgia is what it used to be.

– Full-page adverts for Animal watches in MBUK, featuring Adele Croxon in white/black/orange race-gear.
– Pace one-piece stems.
– Anodised bottle-cage bolts.
– Primalwear jerseys with a tree-frog on them

Cutting your 620mm bars down to 590 then adding bar ends & wondering why the handling got “twitchy”

Buying a judy xc with 63mm of travel but really wanting a DH with 80mm!

Wearing a smoke & dart down to the casing as you used them for everything, not conditions specific tyre swapfest we have now

And Onza Ules grips. In yellow

Yep.

Not to mention purple anodized brake boosters.

Clear grips with MBUK stickers underneath

Fully rigid bikes with old school steep geometry and rubbish tyres making relatively benign trails seem very tricky indee

This is a big part of why CX has got popular recently IMO. People with crap trails on their doorstep using inappropriate bikes to make them interesting.

For me it’s the lack of complexity of it all. No bike or tyre choice, no trail centres, you just rode your bike on local trails.

Kona Scratch and Sniff.
Mojo cable straddle.
Club Roost.
DCD.

Etto Helmets
John Tomac
Tim Gould
Allsop Freeride
Triangular frame bags
Cosmic trail gear
Onza Porcupines
Pace everything

Oakley stickers
Hanging around at LBS eating cake & fettling
Smashing pumpkins
Going everywhere by bike
Being a bit crap, but it didn’t matter
You either liked the ride of a Kona, Spesh, or Cannondale and just got on with it* – none of this mind numbing level of variables that you can buy into now , that really make sod all difference!

*Blagging swaps for an XT mech/X-Lite bar ends etc aside 🙂

Crud Catchers
Luminous Yellow Magura HS33s
Tioga DH 2.3s
Mavic 121 rims
Marzocchi Z1 Bams
X Lite “fly” stem
THe original DMR trailstar
Square taper cranks with coke can shims
Running one tyre inside another for extra puncture resistance
Those riser bars with a bolt on brace across the middle (can’t remember the brand)
Downhill races in Grizedale forest

Going everywhere by bike

😀

The GCSE exam leave glory days. Cycling for what seemed like miles to sit around eating sweets and drinking pop before cycling miles back home. Never actually did any proper riding.

Cutting your 620mm bars down to 590 then adding bar ends & wondering why the handling got “twitchy”

even back in the early 2000’s you’d struggle to find flat bars 600mm+

back in the day 580mm was wide and you cut them to a race length of 540mm for added excitement.

Cycling to Coniston lake with a ramp strapped to your back so you can spend an afternoon jumping off the pier/trying to stop your bike from sinking.

20mm axles
Panaracer
Coloured braided brake hoses

Still got those on my SS.

This is a big part of why CX has got popular recently IMO. People with crap trails on their doorstep using inappropriate bikes to make them interesting.

This. +lots. They’re good fun though.

The yellow and white paint and red graphics on my first ever mountain bike, a 1988 Raleigh Maverick. Lusting after a pair of Farmer John tyres. Eating dried bananas and drinking Complan on Polaris events.

The GCSE exam leave glory days. Cycling for what seemed like miles to sit around eating sweets and drinking pop before cycling miles back home. Never actually did any proper riding

Haha this rings a lot of bells, cycle for miles on road, stop in village shop and fill rucksack with wham bars, head for small patch of woods and repeatedly session small jump and gorge on sugar.

My body from the 90’s

even back in the early 2000’s

Hahaha! That’s not old school!

Orange Clockwork fully rigid
Onza HO-TI pedals
Trans alp saddle
Purple bling (coming back!!)
Bright Lycra
Smoke & Dart tyres
Hair (had some then!)
Canti Brakes
Crap 1″ Headsets & Quill Stems

How to avoid nostalgia- I still own my 90s mtb, it wasn’t bad at all in 92, in 2015 it’s complete shit. (though, the exage hubs will never die). Dead on arrival, the 90s revival

Onza Chill Pills

Buying a judy xc with 63mm of travel but really wanting a DH with 80mm!

Really wanted a pair of yellow Judy SL’s. Somehow ended up with Girvin forks that weighed a tonne and spoiled the geo (still in the back of my shed somewhere.)

If we’re talking nostalgia… and I apologies for this in advance… Paolo Pezzo’s boobies (I was quite young at the time 😳 )

Rox T-shirts; “Gravity. I fought the law, but the law won” was a particular fave 😉

If we’re talking nostalgia… and I apologies for this in advance… Paolo Pezzo’s boobies (I was quite young at the time )

😀

Paolo Pezzo’s gold plated Gary Fisher after she won the olympics…..

Rob Warner throwing coke cans and plastic bags out of his van window is probably one of the best scenes in any mountain biking film produced.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_A2exFmvn0[/video]

@Northwind – I too still own my 90s MTB – ’98 M2. Still have quite a lot of stuff mentioned above ^ if not on the bike then in the shed – 580mm flat bars, frame bags (yellow Specialized one), it had Judy T2s with 63mm travel but has a bit more now. I get on fine with it (bar the tyre clearance and lack of rear disc).

and a ’93 Kilaeua in SS guise..

🙂

ramblers asking about your bike with genuine interest

doing everything on just one bike

britain being crap at cycling

oh, and on topic —
power strips ? (bridging the gap from toe straps and SPDs)
sharks fin to stop chainsuck
anodised stuff – still have the bottle cages (OK) and bolts (hm)
Minoura ? accessory bar, clamps on to bars for lights, computer..
change of tyre when they wear out..

ramblers asking about your bike with genuine interest
doing everything on just one bike

With a fat bike, these things need not be consigned to nostalgia

Those riser bars with a bolt on brace across the middle (can’t remember the brand)

Club roost?

Club roost?

Yeh, I think that was them. That’s what initially came to mind. But then they did some that had a welded brace aswell I think?

Sachs Wavey shifters……..

Jesus, a whole load of the stuff up there is still on my bikes, and there’s a whole load more I’ve not even caught up with yet. 150mm bikes? My nostalgia is just about managing not to spunk an entire year’s student loan on some Mag21 SLs at Newnham Park.

I remember crap tyres, crap brakes, crap shifters, watching Tomac on the Pipeline, purple bits, having the time to clean bikes properly, the invention of the Camelbak, shoes that were purple and green and yellow and blue, a hopelessly ineffective Bula jacket (still got it), grey tyre rubber, the Onza Octopus, brake booster horseshoes, proper mad-ass custom paintjobs, dowhilling at night with a Petzl Zoom, using cubes of jelly as ride food, wading for half the night through waist-deep snow on Dartmoor carrying the bike slowly back to a Jamaica ginger cake in the car somewhere near the Princetown beacon, and buying a pair of Oakley Sub Zeros. Happy days.

the gullibility of consumers buying utter rubbish and their doe-eyed acceptance of mediocrity.

Newnham Park itself!
Great memories there trying to do the 2nd river crossing and getting totally submerged + loosing my bike as the china clay pits had turned the water white!

I love the kit we have now, I’ve no desire to go back but because the 90’s was when I got into it I just can’t help being very nostalgic for the period. In no particular order.

Onza grips

Club Roost finishing kit (once swapped a suspension stem for a blue club roost riser bar, I knew I was winning when I made the trade. Bars are still fitted to my old GT in the garage)

Primary colours. I wanted everything in red or yellow.

Craving Rock Shox forks then getting Quadra 21R’s and realising they didn’t much work.

Jason McRoy’s death.

Steve Peat, Rob Warner, Will Longdon and others.

Lusting after a GT LTS or STS.

Wanting a Kona more than the GT that I (or more accurately my parents) could afford.

Loving my Marin hardtail (a ’94 or ’95 Hawk Hill) despite the fact it was about ten sizes too big for me. It had matching purple bar ends so who gave a stuff what size it was.

All brakes were crap. Even people with expensive brakes thought they were crap.

The invention of the V-Brake was a game changer.

Making some really great friends but not sticking with it when cars and driving became part of life.

Daves Chain Devices

Crud Catchers

Rox T-Shirts

Mint Sauce

Being involved in something that was about to get even bigger but living in a small rural village with seemingly no way to access it.

Paolo Pezzo indeed.

Wishing I’d spent even more time on the bike when in reality I spent most of my teenage years on the bike anyway.

Might have had the bikes, had a few tools and a helmet but in general lacked any wet weather kit of any use so as a teen I was a total fair weather biker, unlike now whereas I’ll go out in anything.

Sure there’s a few other things but those spring to mind. I wouldn’t want to go back, but those were good riding years with much fun but the truth is now I can access more trails, amazing kit and see way more than I could between 94 and 2000 when I did the bulk of my MTBing before returning to it a few years ago.