racedoctor
Old School Hero
Hi All,
I joined here last week and just noticed this tread.
I'm 28 and from the Wigan/ Warrington area. I've been into bikes since I got my first half decent mountain bike (a Saracen Forcetrax) back in about 94/95 ish. At school I always used to have pictures of bike stuff cut out of Mountain Bike Action or MBUK, Kooka cranks, Pace frames.. that sort of thing.
I upgraded the odd thing on my Saracen, mainly just cheap anodised bits. Then when I started College (1997/98 ) I found a little bike shop along my bus route and started going in quite regularly and chatting with the guys there and gaining some knowledge. I also started to shell out a bit more on upgrades, first being a set of Marzocchi Z3's which meant I had to get a proper headset and Ahead stem.
I managed to get myself a part time job in the bike shop, mainly just serving customers and packing mail order stuff. Now with my new staff discount (read trade price ) my upgrading kind of spiralled out of control (well as much as it can when you’re only working Saturdays and a couple of evenings).
I had upgraded pretty much everything on my Saracen and wasn’t long before I got sucked into the whole trend for little strong frames, or 'dual slalom' frames as they were called at the time. I got a DMR Trialstar when they first came into the shop and really loved it. It turned out to be a bit faulty and broke during a landing on a fairly small jump on a car park :cry: I got my money back on it and then bought a Planet-x Jack Flash frame as they had just come in, looking back it was never as nice as the DMR.
During 99/2000 I was offered a Muddyfox Dual Slalom frame from one of the reps which he had and didn’t need, it was red when all the ones I'd seen for sale were blue, plus it had no stickers on. So I sold off the planet-X frame and the fairly crappy Z3's and got some nice 98/99 Z1's. The muddyfox frame is nice and chunky with some cool details and not really what I would have expected from muddyfox at the time.
I broke my foot in 2000 and didn’t cycle for quite a while and then kinda stopped cycling all together, went to Uni, got a proper job, the bike shop had changed to a road bike specific importer selling to trade and now the boss/ my mate has moved over seas.
So anyway, my bike has been sat in the back room un-used for the best part of 10 years and is pretty much like new. A guy at work is starting to get into his mountain biking and brought in an issue of MBUK and I had a flick through, first time in years, everything has changed now and I don't recognise a lot of the names. So I find myself here (this forum) in a very comfy place of memories of better times.
I've already bought a new (old) tyre thanks to a link somebody posted. Hopefully my first of many purchases here. Now just need to get back on it and start riding again
sorry for the long post, got carried away.
I joined here last week and just noticed this tread.
I'm 28 and from the Wigan/ Warrington area. I've been into bikes since I got my first half decent mountain bike (a Saracen Forcetrax) back in about 94/95 ish. At school I always used to have pictures of bike stuff cut out of Mountain Bike Action or MBUK, Kooka cranks, Pace frames.. that sort of thing.
I upgraded the odd thing on my Saracen, mainly just cheap anodised bits. Then when I started College (1997/98 ) I found a little bike shop along my bus route and started going in quite regularly and chatting with the guys there and gaining some knowledge. I also started to shell out a bit more on upgrades, first being a set of Marzocchi Z3's which meant I had to get a proper headset and Ahead stem.
I managed to get myself a part time job in the bike shop, mainly just serving customers and packing mail order stuff. Now with my new staff discount (read trade price ) my upgrading kind of spiralled out of control (well as much as it can when you’re only working Saturdays and a couple of evenings).
I had upgraded pretty much everything on my Saracen and wasn’t long before I got sucked into the whole trend for little strong frames, or 'dual slalom' frames as they were called at the time. I got a DMR Trialstar when they first came into the shop and really loved it. It turned out to be a bit faulty and broke during a landing on a fairly small jump on a car park :cry: I got my money back on it and then bought a Planet-x Jack Flash frame as they had just come in, looking back it was never as nice as the DMR.
During 99/2000 I was offered a Muddyfox Dual Slalom frame from one of the reps which he had and didn’t need, it was red when all the ones I'd seen for sale were blue, plus it had no stickers on. So I sold off the planet-X frame and the fairly crappy Z3's and got some nice 98/99 Z1's. The muddyfox frame is nice and chunky with some cool details and not really what I would have expected from muddyfox at the time.
I broke my foot in 2000 and didn’t cycle for quite a while and then kinda stopped cycling all together, went to Uni, got a proper job, the bike shop had changed to a road bike specific importer selling to trade and now the boss/ my mate has moved over seas.
So anyway, my bike has been sat in the back room un-used for the best part of 10 years and is pretty much like new. A guy at work is starting to get into his mountain biking and brought in an issue of MBUK and I had a flick through, first time in years, everything has changed now and I don't recognise a lot of the names. So I find myself here (this forum) in a very comfy place of memories of better times.
I've already bought a new (old) tyre thanks to a link somebody posted. Hopefully my first of many purchases here. Now just need to get back on it and start riding again
sorry for the long post, got carried away.