Great story! I always wondered how people afforded such bikes back in the day. When I was that age I could only stretch to a Kona lava dome, most of our riding group who had similar value bikes.
Needed to have rich parents or a bloody big paper round to be riding anything like that Marin back in the 90’s.
Yeah, no kid is going to afford something like that solo unless they're doing something illegal. I guess I was lucky growing up in the environment that I did but then I also was atypical in other ways too; we didn't go abroad on expensive holidays (I was 16 the first time I stepped out the UK), I didn't have any games consoles etc (and had no interest in them), or go the cinema, and didn't wear branded clothes until I was in my late teens. It's all down to what you and your family choose to spend money on. My dad worked his arse off in pretty stressful roles, usually doing 60-80hr weeks, so while he had the money his spare time was precious. I certainly appreciated everything I had, and when I got into racing I always knew that I had to make whatever I had last, I certainly didn't get new stuff every season until I was both sponsored, and paying for it myself.
I felt pretty lucky to have a muni-mula and could also only dream of stuff like the Marin DH. I daresay my parents could have spent more but in hindsight I'm pleased they didn't. My bike did the job and I was never off it in my early teens. Notwithstanding all the riding I did, I was never going to be a racer or make any money riding so its not like my parents missed some investment opportunity.
When we got into MTB it was our way of spending time together as a family, that along with hillwalking. And going back to the point of my dad's time being precious, he very quickly got fed up of constantly fixing the original Acera-X and Alivio junk that came on all the bikes when we first got them, either in the garage or in the middle of nowhere with driving sleet and a rather unhappy child/wife. So he'd upgrade his bike, then usually mine, and then finally my mum's. Mostly this was XT but the V-brakes were garbage and eventually we went with XTR which lasted marginally longer. Often he'd break something and buy a replacement while the original was being warrantied, so I'd then get the warrantied stuff, because to him it was more important to not waste a weekend than it was to save £50. That's how I ended up with a ceramic coated rim and a Hope hub once Hope had rebuilt it and sent it back. DH rims became our standard as we'd just destroy lightweight rubbish like 217's on Rocky Mountain trails. The other thing is that we'd go to some pretty remote and exposed places and the consequence of having a broken bike in nasty weather with a young kid (even a 16yr old hasn't fully developed the ability to regulate body temp properly), he just fitted good stuff to the three bikes because it made life easier, less stressful, less faffy, and safer. Originally I had all the stuff from this bike on my wee steel framed rigid trek so the upgrade to this Marin was basically a frame at £500 and a fork in the sale at £150. Ironically until I discovered DH and found the forks cheap it was a polished Muni-Mula that we'd been looking at to replace the Trek. I still love the look of those bikes, that era of Kona was peak IMO.
Some may look at all of this and say I was spoiled but at the end of the day the bikes were tools for us to go and do things on (and in the main that's still how I view any bike I'm currently riding, retro builds like this aside), and I absolutely appreciated what I had because I knew some of it had come of the expense of time with my dad. It's why in later life now I have a different approach to work/life balance than he did. He came from absolute poverty so knew hard work was his route to financial security, while I saw the downsides of that and came from something so didn't need to worry quite so feverishly about building a safety net. We are the product of our upbringings.
For Sale Roberts frame and forks