Rewriting Mountain Bike History?

[m_xl]

Hi everyone…

Been reading this and other threads with interest.

I'm a member of the Rough-Stuff Fellowship and made two books featuring photos from their archive. The second book includes details of the links between the early mountain bikers in California and the Fellowship – Charlie Kelly, Gary Fisher and Holland Jones were members in the early 1980s.

John Finley Scott was also a member, and much earlier. In 1963 he contributed an article (attached here) to the club journal, which must be one of the earliest accounts of "rough-stuff" riding in the USA?

In that article he details a special rough-stuff bike he had made, built by Jim Guard in Southampton, UK, in 1961, with 650B wheels. I don't think this is his (Padgett-made?) "Woodsie" – that seems to have been made in 1953 according to MMBHOF (with a pic from the time).

This doesn't have any bearing on the Repack evolution, but thought I might be able to clear up some confusion over JFS that seems to have come from some inaccurate info in the various articles online on the subject…

He finishes by saying "Personally I expect rough-stuff riding to increase, because there are now many who are both cyclists and enthusiasts for remote regions and rough terrain. It is not unlikely that they will do as I have done and blend their interest in an American version of the British speciality."

Cheers

Max

 

[m_xl]

J

Hi everyone…

Been reading this and other threads with interest.

I'm a member of the Rough-Stuff Fellowship and made two books featuring photos from their archive. The second book includes details of the links between the early mountain bikers in California and the Fellowship – Charlie Kelly, Gary Fisher and Holland Jones were members in the early 1980s.

John Finley Scott was also a member, and much earlier. In 1963 he contributed an article (attached here) to the club journal, which must be one of the earliest accounts of "rough-stuff" riding in the USA?

In that article he details a special rough-stuff bike he had made, built by Jim Guard in Southampton, UK, in 1961, with 650B wheels. I don't think this is his (Padgett-made?) "Woodsie" – that seems to have been made in 1953 according to MMBHOF (with a pic from the time).

This doesn't have any bearing on the Repack evolution, but thought I might be able to clear up some confusion over JFS that seems to have come from some inaccurate info in the various articles online on the subject…

He finishes by saying "Personally I expect rough-stuff riding to increase, because there are now many who are both cyclists and enthusiasts for remote regions and rough terrain. It is not unlikely that they will do as I have done and blend their interest in an American version of the British speciality."

Cheers

Max

Just to add: the 1953 Woodsie was a Schwinn World diamond frame, but it did have handlebar mounted derailleur gears (source). So the Padgett bike must have been later. But the origin of "Woodsie" is definitively American.

 

[GrahamJohnWallace]

In the last 40 years, hundreds of people have told me that they themselves "invented the mountain bike," long before I took up cycling, which is the primary reason I don't make that claim. AFAIK, no one has claimed that they invented the downhill off-road time trial before I did.

I have heard an account from a British 'Tracker' bike rider about removing the engine of an old moped and then taking timed turns to race it down a hill to see who could go fastest. Nor can I believe that 17th century Draisienne riders never raced downhill against the clock before roads were built.

I do accept that neither of these two examples were technically bicycles. More importantly, such activities did not evolve to become an category of cycle-sport that continues today.

I would be interested to know whether cyclists today still take part in time trials down 'Repack' style, gravel fire-roads?

 

[GrahamJohnWallace]

J

Just to add: the 1953 Woodsie was a Schwinn World diamond frame, but it did have handlebar mounted derailleur gears (source). So the Padgett bike must have been later. But the origin of "Woodsie" is definitively American.

Hi Max and welcome to RetroBike.

Thanks for providing a link to the 1963 Roughstuff Journal article by John Finley-Scott. This used to be available online but was taken down so. it's good to see it again.

With regards to the John Padgett 650b bike, accounts of its age vary from 1960s to the much later date posted with the following photo of 1978:



From other photos I can see that the bike had 650b Super Champion 58 rims who's production time would date the bike to 1970s-early 1980s. So 1978 is probably accurate. Interestingly, this would be around the same time that Tom Ritchey says that Finley-Scott ordered a 650b rough-stuff frame from him.

I know that a specialist rough-stuff bike could be ordered from Jack Taylor. I also understand that Archie Woodward, the Roughstuff Journal editor from 1969-1991, would refuse to publish technical articles. Therefore, it seems unlikely that such bikes were ever reported on? Do you happen to know if adverts for custom-built bikes like the Jack Taylor bike ever appeared in the Journal?

 

[Repack Rider]

I would be interested to know whether cyclists today still take part in time trials down 'Repack' style, gravel fire-roads?

With the evolution of the bikes and riders, "Repack" would be considered tame by modern DH standards. Strava lets you do your own timing.

The fact remains, that no one on a modern DH bike has beaten times set on that course by men on modified 1930's cruisers.

 

[Russell]

The fact remains, that no one on a modern DH bike has beaten times set on that course by men on modified 1930's cruisers.

https://m.pinkbike.com/news/chasing-history-repack-dh-course-fkt-attempt.html
??

 

[Frankenorange]

https://m.pinkbike.com/news/chasing-history-repack-dh-course-fkt-attempt.html
??

Doesn't count. He is Canadian.

 

[GrahamJohnWallace]

I set a record time on the Ridgeway trail in England back in December 1986 that has to my knowledge, has never been beaten.

It was a record ten hours to ride the forty miles from Avebury to Streatley. The grass on the trail was so saturated with rain water that the wheels just sank in and the rolling resistance so high you needed to pedal hard to keep moving on the downhill sections. I tried to ride along the water filled ruts made by four wheel drive vehicles and trail motorbikes, but they were often too deep for the pedals to rotate freely. I remember large deep water filed holes, presumably made by the rear wheels of tractors spinning-out when they got stuck in the mud.

I soon worked out that it was easier to cycle through the long grass and undergrowth at the side of the trail. So that's what I did for mile-after-mile out of sheer necessity.

The last four hours were ridden in the dark without using my lights if I could avoid it. Back even the the best D-cell batteries would only last four hours and I had to preserve them for the eight mile ride across London needed to get home that evening.

It was not exactly California and 'Repack', but definitely memorable.

Nowadays, the worst sections are gravelled, motor vehicles are banned in the winter and the drainage and maintenance of the trail is much improved. So even someone pushing their bike the entire forty miles is unlikely to beat my record.

 

[Nabeaquam]

We all know the story of the first mountain bikes:
"Joe Breeze is normally credited with introducing the first purpose-built mountain bike in 1978. Tom Ritchey then went on to make frames for a company called MountainBikes, a partnership between Gary Fisher, Charlie Kelly and Tom Ritchey."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of ... ain_biking

However recent publicity relating to the Latest 650b mountain bikes appears to be rewriting this history by saying that the first Ritchey build mountain bike was made in 1977, and had 650b wheels.

The fact that Ritchey made some of the first 650b wheeled mountain bikes using 650b Nokia Hakkapeliitta tyres is well documented. But the earliest published reports of these bikes that I have seen, date from 1982, five years after the uncorroborated 1977 date.

The use of 650b wheels fitted with narrow tyres was not unheard of in 1970's America. So it would have been quite possible for Ritchey and other NorCal builders to have made traditional 650b bikes. Maybe Cyclo-cross or English style rough-stuff bikes. But it would be highly misleading to describe them as mountain bikes.

Search 1977 and 1979 in this 2013 Ritchey catalogue:
http://velosprint.ua/images/Catalogs/ri ... e-2013.pdf

Some reminiscences from NorCal framebuilder Lennard Zinn
http://velonews.competitor.com/2012/07/ ... 50b_252332

http://www.myfaq.co.uk/2012/06/26/tech- ... with-650b/

http://velonews.competitor.com/2012/09/ ... ngs_252520
Photo#3

Ritchey Bikes Time line:
http://www.oldmountainbikes.com/bikes/

No one made the first mountain type bike. It’s been done as long as bicycles have been around. The most natural thing is to build an off road bicycle. Here are several French 1950s jobs with 650B wheels.

The Brit’s sometimes used 650C in the late1940 on their gravel pit racers. Wide bars aren’t new. Front drum brakes and suspension.
In the UK bomb crater racing morphed into cyclo track. Phillips made one, 1950s.
The Dutch also raced dirt, late 1940s-early 50s.

Cyclo cross started in the early 1900s as a way to have fun training on the off season. One village church steeple to another village church steeple. Since there were no rules people started riding cross country, throwing bikes over fences and running.


My friends and I all rode some trails and gravel in the 1950s. We used 26 inch American balooners or Department store rebranded Relaigh three speeds. Usually the balooners as three speeds didn’t become popular where I was living until the mid 1960s. Three speeds or three speeds converted to single speeds were used where I live in the 1970s. There are photos on the net of farm kids riding balooners on rural gravel roads in the 1930s. Early commercially made mountain bikes used balooner geometry or road lugs. Mountain bike geometry improved rapidly after that.

 

[Frankenorange]

No one made the first mountain type bike. It’s been done as long as bicycles have been around. The most natural thing is to build an off road bicycle. Here are several French 1950s jobs with 650B wheels.

View attachment 761663View attachment 761664View attachment 761665View attachment 761666View attachment 761667 The Brit’s sometimes used 650C in the late1940 on their gravel pit racers. Wide bars aren’t new. Front drum brakes and suspension.View attachment 761668
In the UK bomb crater racing morphed into cyclo track. Phillips made one, 1950s.View attachment 761669
The Dutch also raced dirt, late 1940s-early 50s.
View attachment 761670
Cyclo cross started in the early 1900s as a way to have fun training on the off season. One village church steeple to another village church steeple. Since there were no rules people started riding cross country, throwing bikes over fences and running.
View attachment 761672

My friends and I all rode some trails and gravel in the 1950s. We used 26 inch American balooners or Department store rebranded Relaigh three speeds. Usually the balooners as three speeds didn’t become popular where I was living until the mid 1960s. Three speeds or three speeds converted to single speeds were used where I live in the 1970s. There are photos on the net of farm kids riding balooners on rural gravel roads in the 1930s. Early commercially made mountain bikes used balooner geometry or road lugs. Mountain bike geometry improved rapidly after that.

As soon as the first bicycle shaped object could be put up against a decent timepiece the riders would've been challenging each other to go up, or down, hills and such like.
I read a book along time ago about some WW2 pilots. I can't remember the UK airfield, or the book, but there was a hill nearby that had some kind of dirt path/track thing down it.
When time allowed these young british pilots would throw the airfield bicycles(there were many of these heavy singlespeed things on every military place in the UK and some are probably still going now) into airfield transport and go up the hill.
With borrowed stopwatches they timed the runs and even they didn't invent the first downhill offroad time trials as it was something some of them had done as kids, with mates counting seconds in place of stopwatches. Mods were done like removing guards and extending the handlebars.
I heard that people(mechanics and/or Vickers chaps probably)would race down the test hill on bicycles, at the Brooklands racing circuit. It was concrete and straight but another example of what happens when you give a human some wheels and a hill.
In the mid 70's myself and a bunch of friends would cycle all over the place. Mainly in our local woods and on common land. We found a track that went downhill and one of us would just shout "GO", as loud as possible from the bottom and start the stopwatch. All the bikes were a whatever parents bought us, or were found. There were definitely some klunker things and all sorts of brakes. All of the latter were mostly rubbish and even the best performers would be nothing short of a joke compared to modern downhill bike brakes.

Sure as bears sh!t in the woods none of the above were firsts. I bet you would have to go back a very long way to find the first timing of some people racing offroad downhills and it will probably be before 1900. I expect some loons were doing it on penny farthings but most certainly it would have been going on once the wheels were the same size, at either end. I am sure i read about a downhill event, that took place in the early 1900's, in France. Maybe that was the first proper competition? and maybe the pics in the above post are from that event?

What the Repack gang can be credited with is the marketing of what they were doing because some were framebuilders/engineers and they wanted to earn money. Some words were invented and a fun activiity, that was already many decades old, became a big thing thanks to industry contacts and then into an income, for a lucky few.