Born from Junk

This was offered to me in my YouTube feed recently. Yeah, guess they know me pretty well. This is a story I was not aware of, the beginnings of MTBing from the Colorado side. I knew more of the California beginning as some of those players later on started businesses and brands which lived on some till today. These folks in Colorado were really just about having fun. Sometimes more fun than biking but the story is well told and only 15 minutes long.

Those might know that I was an early BMXer. In the mid-70s I would also take different bike parts and put them together to ride dirt jumps. More than once we took our bikes to the levee at the Mississippi River to run the lines and we would end up with a pile of junk, broken bikes, wheels handlebars and sometimes bones. Once a close friend jumped off a ramp and in mid-air his saddle broke off the seatpost. We watched in real-time as he then landed and went to sit down on the seat which was missing. We heard a scream which scared us all white. A few stitches later he was fine and soon back on the bike but we still took our parts and pieces to make what was just pure fun for us.

This video reminds me of those times. I went on to road racing as in New Orleans we didn’t have the hills to make MTB interesting. In college I raced road bikes for the university winning 2 races (both through pure chance). If you follow me on Instagram you will know I still ride today with the help of a motor but through the hills here in Germany and along the vineyards of the Rhine River. Yeah, biking and rivers are still a theme in my life and I think about that often.