Back to my roots - back into mountain biking!

So after a long hiatus from the mountain bike world, I am back in. I started my 'grownup' bicycle riding in 1981 with the purchase of a mountain bike. I had just graduated from High School and was totally into my car ('70 Ford Mustang Fastback), cruising northern California towns on weekend nights, and flipping pizzas to make living. At that point, I had likely not been on a bicycle since I got my license to drive and all of a sudden - what would become the biggest revolution to bicycling, mountain biking came onto the scene. It all started in Northern California in Marin County with the founding fathers Tom Ritchey, Gary Fisher, Joe Breeze and Charlie Kelly modifying old klunker bicycles to be able to be ridden over dirt roads and trails. So, I got the mountain bike bug.

These guys came up with the Repack Road Down Hill Race (the first ever mountain bike race) and the race was so named because the route was so steep (1300 feet in less than 2.1 miles) that at the end of a race, the coaster brakes were so blazing hot, they had cooked the grease out of the rear hub and the hub needed to be repacked!

Here is a pick of  a rider (George Newman) coming down Repack in 1976. See the bike? Old klunker, modified for dirt. This started the entire mountain bike world we have today!

If you want more history on Repack Road - here is a link.

Repack Road History

Here is a magazine cover from 2009 with Charlie Kelly, Gary Fisher and Joe Breeze... GODFATHERS of DIRT!

Please check out these links for a good history of how these guys and mountain biking got started in Marin county on Repack Road. Good stuff!

Mountain Bike Hall of Fame

Charlie Kelly website

So... my first bike was a 1981 Bianchi Grizzly. Mine did have a seat however.

In 1982 I moved up the ladder a bit and bought a Specialized Stumpjumper frameset and transferred the components from the Grizz to the Stumper.

I road this beautiful machine for about 4 years and then for some reason wanted an aluminum mountain bike since that seemed to be all the rage at the time. So I bought a Cannondale.

Pretty cheesy color scheme! Mine was a nice baby blue actually.

So, I had this aluminum fascination going on and it seemed quite exotic and I loved the big tubes look. So, my next bike was again al-yoo-mineeum and I bought a Klein Pinnacle! Oh man Klein was the bomb for me back then.

I had the Klein for about 10 years, well into the period where front suspension was becoming common place and 'hard tails' were de rigueur! So I sold the Klein and needed to jump into the next phase and it indeed was a hard tail... a Rocky Mountain Vertex.

I rode that bike up until about 2006 and never really felt very comfortable on it. It just felt a little twitchy. So, I sold it and moved into the road bike phase of my by-pedal hobby.

So, fast forward to 2013 and this is the new machine in my stable.

Its a full suspension 29er XC machine from the venerable mountain bike builder Santa Cruz!

So after the road bike-slash-touring season wraps up and I do the Vines to Bitterroots tour... I'll kick off my summer of XC riding! Yes!