XC same as Trails?
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cee look up John Toamc he did ride Dh with drops and a disc wheel . LOL it looks very rad .0
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Nokia. riiiiight.
There's also photos of French riders riding what are basically old fashioned supercross tracks on pushbikes too, dating back very very far.
On top of that, a crazy old inventor guy who used to live oposite me (who is now sadly passed away) was blown away when he saw my first pair of suspension forks.
He hurried back inside to get some very very worm out old plans for a bicycle with suspension that he'd drawn up, and was thinking of making (he was an engineer) before he got drafter into the army.0 -
Sorry should have said Nokian 700C balloon tyres over 28 only 650C tyres came in big enough for dirt use apart from tyres made by Nokian for snow riding in the 1960's / 70's which were imposable to get in the USA at that time as they had no importers .
But the whole point of this is that a general purpose of a mountain bike is to get you cross country in as a efficient way as possible. All the first off road bicycles created had that goal in mind be it the clunkers from marin county or the lone genius in his shed .0 -
i remeber seeing a programme called kick start when i was a kid, surely that's where mtb came from
or was it bmx beat with andy ruffle?
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Never heard of "cruiser" bikes then? Not all bikes are specific roadies, or MTBs.NatoED wrote:Sorry should have said Nokian 700C balloon tyres over 28 only 650C tyres came in big enough for dirt use apart from tyres made by Nokian for snow riding in the 1960's / 70's which were imposable to get in the USA at that time
And, erm, motorcycle wheels.0 -
i used to ride my chopper bike in the seventies off road does that count as a cross country bike anthem x with many upgrades0
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look up Geoff Apps who was building dedicated off road bikes in the late 60's and was selling complete bikes before the mid 70's using 700C wheels with snow tyres. these were not bodged together cruiser bikes but dedicated off road bikes with different geometry to road bikes or any thing else out there.
He was helping garry fisher and tom ritchley get their first mtb's right when they were making the first frames in the late 70's . If you ever watched Klunkers you will hear mr fisher say that they wanted the 700c wheels after they tried out a cyclo cross bike and found it better than the schwin cruisers they were using at the time but ccouldn't get hold of the Nokian tyres they need . They did try a set that Geoff Apps had sent but didn't have the money to invest in the expensive import duties they would need to pay.
Tom and garry then decided to use the 550C wheel that the cruisers used as they had plenty of fat tyres available for them in the USA. If the fatter 700c or even 650C tyres had been available to them back then 550C (or 26inch) wheels would never have been used.0 -
Geoff Apps bikes were very different in design to the US based bulder who became the mainstream. On of the main reasons XC defined mountain biking was that the UCI was the world governing body for all cycle sport and in the 80s brought their road racing mentality to MTB racing which translated to XC rather than DH.
Of course, things have moved on a lot since then.0 -
oh yeah and that's my whole point true mountain biking is riding your bike across the country side . Free ride , trail , single track is just new ways of saying XC0
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I've lost the will to live0
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why is that then?0
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Cause you're the world's most epic muppet.0
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really why is that? And Nokia did make tyres. They became nokian0
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i think the term xc has been mixed up over the years, people nowadays seem to think it means you race, where as to old school riders know it just means you ride across country, a trail was what we called a walk when in the scouts my uncle called it trails riding when he rode on his motorbike anthem x with many upgrades0
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Cloudy the Youff of today eigh. I'm starting to feel like I'm old now and i'm only 29 . Been riding for over 16 years so that probably explains my out look. Plus i'm not suckered into the marketing crap shoved about. I think Mint sauce had it right when the whole "free ride" thing came about when a guy rode past him on a chicken and he just scoffed "free range riders !"0
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nice one natoed im a cross country mountain biker always have been always wil,l im 42 now why would i call it anything else, really does make me laugh when people try to make out that cross country riding is only about racing, its about getting out in the countryside and trying to link up as many pubs as you can, then laughing when your too drunk to ride anthem x with many upgrades0
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don't forget the cake...... fruit cake got to have fruit cake . My local pub would see me ride past and have a bottle on Mans brown Ale and a piece of fruit cake too.0
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Not keen on labels but when rides are being arranged people use them, talking about doing XC and I need to know what they mean as what I don't like is what a lot of people define as XC. i.e. mostly fireroads, bridleways & tow paths, flat non-technical trails, lots of climbs, lots of distance.
I just like mucking about off road somewhere. Be it designed singletrack, natural trails, rocks, descents, or a scrap of dirt, whatever. The mission for be isn't to do miles and a route that goes across country. I ride in the country or town or whatever with no plan, just so long as it's off road and off anything remotely resembling roads (fireroads). Anything pointing downward is good. Up bad, but has to be done to get to the good stuff. In the main, anything that isn't boring. Racing isn't my thing either, dull as dishwater and I have no need or intention to prove my fitness.0 -
That post was a great read 0
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Please please please watch this DVD
http://www.klunkerz.com
It traces the history of mountain biking. There's guys doing downhill faster than you'd ever go on your five inch full susser on fully ridgid frames made of tubes and superglue0 -
yeehaamcgee wrote:The first real use of mountain bikes as we know them was for racing the repack. That's where the founders of the mountain biking company started, and it's what the first "mountain bikes" were made for.
I like this what came first, But I think Yee gets it here, DH and generally being hooligans off road on bikes came before XC.
But ont he whole I'm gonna agree with Yee for the whole thread for the first time ever.0 -
Problem is The DVD points out that the term mountain bike was first used in the 1960's and was applied to a geared bike that went not just downhill but across country .
The klunkers used the term after hearing the lecturer use it to describe the bike he built. Alos note that Geoff Apps had designed an All terrain touring bike back in the mid 60's that had internal gears and 700c wheels designed from the ground up for pure off road use.
Last year he was put into the MTB hall of fame in Marin as a pioneer of MTBing in Europe before Garry fisher and co had started to build klunkers . Mr fisher even says this . Geoff is an incredible designer that even now is making awesome spoke cutting machines and bike frame designs.0 -
It still doesn't change my fundamental thinking that it's all "mountain biking" - and any sub-classifications are just that, various aspects of MTB.0
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I'd say cross country is more about leaving your front door and riding the countryside.
Trail riding is more about technical skills and man-made obstacles in my opinion.
To be honest though, the line between the two is pretty blurred and if you're having fun anyway, what does it matter?Big guy; small air!0 -
Just to muddy the waters further; I think that Mountain biking as a general term is silly.
Most of us don't spend a great deal of our leisure time up mountains.0 -
Even the 2012 Olympics won't be actually going up a mountain. All they've got is a slight minor hill overlooking an oil refinery in Essex.
The road race has more of a hill to climb than the MTB!0 -
Quite. Not only doing it wrong, doing it wrong in the wrong place.
And for all I know, doing it at the wrong time.0 -
Who cares what its called so long as you enjoy it?
If I'm sat in my saddle and I'm goin fast, away from the rest of the world, I couldn't give a flying fudge what its called. In fact, im gonna start calling it scrogbogging.
Right, i'm away for a good scrogbog, catch you all later.0
