[Closed] It was 40 years ago this week

Sgt Pepper taught the band to play?

It was 40 years ago this week
Sgt Pepper rode a mountain… beek?

Where is Scotroutes with his video of mountain bikes many years before this?

Where is Scotroutes with his video of mountain bikes many years before this?

Downhill mtb racing?

Has repack changed from claiming he invented mountain bikes to a more accurate one of the first to codify dh mtb racing?

Nice video, thanks

Bit sad if you were still hippies in 1979 tbh

No doubt Charlie will get his usual kicking on here, but to be fair to the fellas from across the pond -

1. That video looks a lot more like what most of us do on a bike today, than the RSF guys carrying road bikes over hills.

2. Gary Fisher, when asked when it started by the reporter, acknowledged that he didn't really know. Probably a hundred years ago when bikes were invented.

I suspect he may have answered a little less humbly a few years later though..

Nice vid. Looks like really good times were had.

Enjoyed that Repack, thanks.

Has repack changed from claiming he invented mountain bikes to a more accurate one of the first to codify dh mtb racing?

The lineage of the mountainbike industry has its roots with Fisher, Kelly and crew. Not the RSF or any youth who fitted cownhorns.

bedmaker
No doubt Charlie will get his usual kicking on here...

Indeed.

I won't do my usual diatribe on the failure of the British bike industry to encourage offroad riding, but one thing for sure, if it wasn't for Charlie and his mates, we'd still be getting offered bikes like these for offroad activities.

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It would be a nice bike for gravel and RSF though

Brilliant! 🙂

Bit sad if you were still hippies in 1979 tbh

It'd be cool to be a hippy in Marin County now, let alone 40 years ago.

Bit sad if you were still hippies in 1979 tbh

Whereas knocking out a petty diss on an online forum in 2019 is pretty avant garde, yeah? 😉

Has repack changed from claiming he invented mountain bikes to a more accurate one of the first to codify dh mtb racing?

He has never claimed to have invented them. He has posted the history behind where the bikes and sport most know today originated from on a more industrial bases.

It’d be cool to be a hippy in Marin County now, let alone 40 years ago.

We stayed in a motel at Stinson Beach owner by an ex-hippie. He was probably one of the coolest people I’ve ever met. He knew a couple of the Repack guys and pulled out his Gary Fisher Mt Tam (late eighties vintage I think) and he proceeded to say how Garyhad given him the bike new. We chatted about MTB’s for a while and he said he was excited to try and get up Mt Tam again for the first time in many years. He came back to us the next day so excited to tell me that he’d made it up. He was so chuffed!
He explained he’d been a hippy in the 70’s but then got into stocks and shares or something - he was driving an 80’s Cadillac which did 8mpg - mint condition.

If you’ve been MTBing for years and know a bit of the history then a visit to Marin county is essential one day. Just seeing the signs for the classic Marin Bikes names made me glad I went - we went to Muirwoods/Stinson Beach etc.

Has repack changed from claiming he invented mountain bikes to a more accurate one of the first to codify dh mtb racing?

FFS, give it a rest.

Whereas knocking out a petty diss on an online forum in 2019 is pretty avant garde, yeah? 😉

Probably more zeitgeist than avant garde, which would still be better than anachronistic 😉

Blimey i hadn't realised that it was time for Repacks annual I invented the wheel post!

The lineage of the mountainbike industry has its roots with Fisher, Kelly and crew. Not the RSF or any youth who fitted cownhorns.

brant talks sense.

90% on here talk bollocks.

The pettiness from some on here never ceases to amaze me.

Nice work Charlie, how you guys ever got down Repack in about 4 mins is beyond me. I couldn’t get even close!

Drac he certainly did claim exactly that

Is there anything you're not an expert on TJ? I think a celebrity deathmatch with MWS and yourself is in order, to decide the ONE TRUE PEOPLES CHAMPION! 🙂

Cheers Charlie. Keep coming back here 👍 Despite the negative vibes

Does this happen every year, or is it more frequent than that?

90% on here talk bollocks.

That's rather generous of you Ton, I'd have put it a bit higher 🙂

This is great. I like how taking the truck uplift was the default - we've come full circle! 😉

It's like Groundhog Day 😀

Enjoyed that - thanks for posting!!

Cheers Charlie. Keep coming back here 👍 Despite the negative vibes

This times loads. Thanks Charlie.

There's nowt wrong with being a hippy, if more people were hippies the world'd be a much nicer place to live instead of it being all

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Great little vid. Love how they invented the off road bike but also bike uplift.
Can you still ride that track or is it fettered with gates and other obstacles?

Drac he certainly did claim exactly that

Oh please shut up for once.

Cool video

But...

he certainly did claim exactly that

Yes. He certainly did. Many times. On multiple mtb forums. infact every +5 or +10 year aniversary of some claim or other. eventually after many confrontations from folk all over the world who challenged his ridiculous claims Charlie has amended his story to something far closer to the truth.
Did other folk race their mates bikes down hills away from tarmac roads before Charlie and his pals? Of course they did! Is there video evidence? no idea. Possibly.
I personally find Charlie's storys far more enjoyable to hear now they're more truthful and accurate and he's no longer trying to claim him and his pals were doing things on bikes no one else had done previously. Where they took the concept is awesome and I thank them for their part in where bike design has now reached.

Mik knew all this before it even happened.

TJ not accepting change? Who'da thought? 😉

Brant & Drac +1.

What we do and how we do it wouldn’t be the same for a lot of us - without those guys. They made riding bikes off-road practical and into the mainstream. They did something that the RSF didn’t do or probably didn’t even seek to do. I have a lot of respect for the RSF but they were not mountain bikers.

Charlie and his compatriots did so much for most of us - to pretend they didn’t and someone else did is disingenuous.

Thanks for making some of my great times outdoors possible Charlie.

I personally find Charlie’s storys far more enjoyable to hear now they’re more truthful and accurate and he’s no longer trying to claim him and his pals were doing things on bikes no one else had done previously. Where they took the concept is awesome and I thank them for their part in where bike design has now reached.

+1

There can be no definative inventor of the mountain bike, it evolved.

That said, the guys involved in the whole Repack thing did go on to lead bikes in the direction of what many of us ride today.

I have ridge bikes I go out for days at a time on, a HT I rag around my local woods and a big old FS I tear down bloody great hills on.

I ****ing love every one of them and rarely ever don't enjoy a ride.

So I'm grateful for the development of bikes in general, for any and every discipline.

Coming on here and pissing on people's chips says more about you than them.

Sun's out, I'm off for a ride.

Love it! 1979 was when 16 year old me finally cut my hair and aknowledged it wasn't cool to be a hippy any more(although I'm still a bit hippy at heart). We were always ten years behind around here. I'd graduated to a cheap motor bike by then, but a couple of years before I spent a lot of time tear arsing around the local disused quarry trying to do jumps on a variety of home bodged clunkers. Managed to put my front teeth through my lip while trying to jump across a road. My face hit the home made cross brace on the cow horn bars that a mate had welded on for me. Was shit at jumping then and still am. Was probably late eighties before I got into it again and got my first proper rigid mountain bike and I'm sure that bike wouldn't have been available if it weren't for guys like those.

That was great fun to watch, thank you for posting.

Does anyone have any pictures of their "tracker" bike from the 70s?
Grifters allowed!

Great wee vid, thanks for that

This thread pops every year on the anniversary it seems.
While I have no doubt that they didn't invent riding bikes offroad or down big hills, this group certainly did spark off the commercial design sale and marketing of the MTB.

Don't be ridiculous - that was Geex, TJ and Onion's dad.

But the dog ate their homework.
🙂

Does anyone have any pictures of their “tracker” bike from the 70s?
Grifters allowed!

I put Strika bars on my Tomahawk, does that count?

I'm sure someone involved away back then must have written a book about it. Could anyone recommend one?

Has repack changed from claiming he invented mountain bikes to a more accurate one of the first to codify dh mtb racing?

A claim I am careful not to make and have denied making now for a long time. But still there are those who believe they have read something I never wrote, and I still have to hear from people who must now be in their 80s who did it before I did.

The video speaks for itself. It is the FIRST video of this sport, and it is an anniversary, so I put it up here. Nobody in it had any idea that this goofy sport would take off like it did.

A claim I am careful not to make and have denied making now for a long time

[i]We[/i] know that, [i]you[/i] know that... but every time you start a thread... [i]someone[/i] gets a bee in their helmet.

Great vid, thanks for sharing. Love seeing this old stuff 😁

Can you still ride that track or is it fettered with gates and other obstacles?

didn't someone try it on a modernish bike a few years back?

I’m sure someone involved away back then must have written a book about it. Could anyone recommend one?

cant tell oif sarcastic or not being interwebs..

Can you still ride that track or is it fettered with gates and other obstacles?

actually reading Charlies (excellent) Fat Tyre Flyer book right now.. was on my christmas list but had to buy it for myself im the end. so glad i did, even though I knew a bunch of stuff from being old-ish and seeing Klunkerz a few years back. book has nice short chapters for a sleep deprived, time poor parent of a youngun like myself 🙂

Great vid, thanks for sharing! 🙂

cant tell oif sarcastic or not being interwebs..

He's a born Big Hitter.

But still there are those who believe they have read something I never wrote, and I still have to hear from people who must now be in their 80s who did it before I did.

Dude. Roll back a couple of decades. You turned up and claimed to have invented mountainbiking on many forums and heard from many folk (me included) around the world who told you of others who were doing similar riding before you guys "pioneer'd and coined the name "mountainbiking".. Most of those forums have since died and you've changed your tune somewhat since then but please don't deny what was said. Hippies should be cooler than that 😉

^ it'd be in waybackmachine.. data rarely dies

He’s a born Big Hitter.

heh.. anyways.. seems from posts online its still rideable which the talk of gates in the book is obvs out of date?

there's a strava segment with a few well known names if you scroll through
https://www.strava.com/segments/1129111 : fastest is 4:19 with a top speed north of 42mph..

gary fishers time i 4:22 timed from maybe another place, and during an official race so not sure how well the comparison goes.

A claim I am careful not to make and have denied making now for a long time. But still there are those who believe they have read something I never wrote...

I presume Google is slower than usual at the moment because Tj is furiously searching everything ever written on the internet currently?

While Marin County gets considerable credit for introducing mountain biking to the world, it is far from correct to suggest that the mountain bike was invented here. People rode bikes on dirt as soon as there were bikes, and no doubt a few of them raced downhill, but left no record of their competition. Many others had already come up with the idea of putting derailleur gears onto balloon-tyre bicycles long before anyone in Marin County did.

Whatever is going on here?

I find it hilarious that anyone can claim that the Repack guys didn't start up mountain biking as we know it today.

The fact that a few beardy British/French/insert nationality types rode touring bikes or other weird creations off road before the Repack days is utterly irrelevant; there are very few links between these bikes and the sport of mountain biking that took off in the mid-80s. When Specialized copied a bike to produce the first production MTB, it wasn't something made by Geoff Apps, was it?

JP

^ yup.

my dad was arsing about in the quantocks (since taunton, somerset is at the foot of the southern end) on whatever passed for a youths/non road bike in the 60s, but no racing, no innovation just teenagers going where they could on bikes and getting lost. i did the same but mountains bikes were a thing over here by then. i'm sure the story is the same the world over.

a few years later they'd have land rovers with winches on, get themeslves stuck and have fun pulling themeslves out. they just used what transport they had in the environment they were in.

great video. Repack your a legend. They may or may not have invented mountain biking, but that is still some video.

For me, the Repack races and the scene around it are most representative of mountain biking, not some tourer types on basically an off road club ride/audax thing. Look at the bikes, the mindset, the ethos - it's recognisably MTB. Would I say the RSF stuff is? No. More like gravel/audax/touring.

Fair play Charlie - great video and keep them coming......

40yrs ago I was riding an old track bike hundreds of road miles a day for my kicks, I'd like to thank Repack and his mates for saving me from myself 😉

You only need to look at his posting history to see his hyperbolic claims

yeah but how many people got to ride with Gary Fisher who made some of the first mtbs as I understand.

Santa Cruz full of hippies and people still dodging the draft in the early noughties. Probably the same now.

Thanks for posting the vid @repack-rider

I got your Fat Tire Flyer book for xmas - absolutely love it, captures the whole DIY vibe of the early development of mountain biking as it evolved into what we have today. A damn good read 🙂

For the haters - Charlie addresses in the book exactly where the Repack timed downhill race scene, organised by himself, Gary Fisher, Joe Breeze, Tom Ritchey et al fit into the evolution of what we now know as mountain biking, and specifically that people were already cycling off road from the day bicycles were invented.

You only need to look at his posting history to see his hyperbolic claims

It's hard, I find, to strike the right balance between bitter and resentful, but I think you've nailed it.

Two young mountainbikers in the 60s

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Thanks to the Repack gang we don't have to ride bikes like that on single track anymore. The British industry was never going to do anything of its own initiative,