Caught the MTB bug in about '88 when a lovely old friend kindly gave me his old MTB when he bought a 21" Saracen Tuff-Trax. Gawd knows what it was but it had the weird triangle stem/ handle bars that just kept breakin. Had 15 gears though and 1.75" tyres, so don't take the micky! Bought myself a rather lovely Alpine Stars MTB in '91, after a couple o years on John's old Tuff Trax. Really FAT ally frame & rigid forks, XT throughout, weighed about 25lbs in the end. I did a helluvva lotta miles on that beast, like 300-450 on a normal week! 200 miles to work n back (20miles there, 20 home, 5 days - do the math) but was also heavy into training, so another 200 miles a week was pretty simple. Got in with a mad crowd of MTB'ers as all of us practically lived at Cycleland, Chatham. So we'd meet on wednesday evenings for 30 mile thrash, and again Sundays forra 50-80mile all day session.
The Alpinestar eventually got nicked, having clocked about thousands of miles, and I just stuck with my roadie forra few years. Had a neat little Marin Nail Trail in the late 90's, again tricked it out with full XT n stuff, weighed about 24lb when (again) she got nicked in Rochester :( Rode a Scott Scale 40 from 2006-2009, which I left pretty stock as nothing busted! July 2009 - Got a Trek 8000 on the Cycle2Work scheme, so far had it 3 days & totally love it. Back to a lightweight racer again @ 24lb, it's super responsive. Had a session at Bedgebury yesterday & can't wait to get out on her again. Even washed it when we got home!
That's about all for now, just thought I'd better add some MTB history, now the site's all Bike Friendly
ps: Images to the left are 1024x768 wallpapers I've grabbed from around the net. Enjoy but please host yourself, don't steal my bandwidth or I'll just ban your site. UNLESS you sign the guestbook & let me know where the image is being used. I'll go check it out & won't ban ya :) I'll add some MTB wallpapers soon.
pps: a bit about me & snowboardin on Read More, if yer interested.
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