We have a “founding father” if you will and all we want to do is rip the piss out of him and say we wont read his book
Yes folk have have always ridden bikes over rough terrain but he was a player in the sport and the creation of what we all ride today.
The reaction says more about STW, and some folks, than him
It’s a bit embarrassing isn’t it Junkyard?
I only started mountain biking in 1988, but even then, the magazines all talked about Repack with a kind of reverence. The route from that to what I was doing was perfectly clear.
Of course my dad would say that he was riding the same trails on his road bike in the 50s, but it never felt like the same thing to me.
Of all the things we could be chatting about with Charlie Kelly and people just prefer to throw mud! Don’t get it.
Is it not true? Like I say, whatever else you believe or don’t believe, you can trace your mountain bike to the stumpjumper and it came directly from the breezer, this whole industry, and the sport as it is, came from there. That’s kind of a big deal.
Sometimes an idea just has its time, maybe it would have come along by some other means but it wasn’t just the idea of riding offroad- it was the combination of people and events that led to racing, custom frames, then full retail bikes, then mass market, and that was unique. Like Charlie says, lots of people had ridden offroad, but they didn’t leave the mark.
I’m with these quoted chaps and Charlie Kelly. This thread is depressing to me. It kind of sums up the ‘trolliverse’ the internet has become today. The mountain biking I do today started in 1988 when I borrowed my mate’s Hard Rock that he had just bought. A year later I bought a Bear Valley. Over the years my bikes changed but the lineage was there. From Kelly, Fisher, Breeze and Ritchey et al via Sinyard’s Specialized, GT, Yeti. It all leads to the bike and sport I love today.
I remember reading MB Action in 1988 and 1999 and Zapata Espinosa’s editorials. It fired up something in me that’s still burning brightly today.
I have a dream that one day I will partake in a Yeti factory lunchtime ride, do a loop at Moab, ride around Durango, attend the USA Tribemeet and ride Tamalpais. If I bump into Charlie I’ll shake his hand and thank him for what he helped to start.
This video springs to mind (if only):
