When did it start going rubbish?

[Andy R]

As above really - we're all just people out riding bikes, which can only be good, surely?

 

[Neil]

Surely for people riding the modern bikes, with discs that work better and don't destroy your rims, suspension that allows you to cross rougher terrain, go further and faster, it is all about the ride?

I disagree, for me, it's not all about going faster, or going over rougher terrain. YMMV.

Most of you seem to be guilty of severe prejudice and are lumping everyone who rides modern into the Red-Bull-North-Shore-X-Games category...

A fair point, well made.

However, there's this constant, reoccurring, insidious idea I see often, and a few times in this thread - the concept that having greater numbers participating is automatically a good thing - like it's some kind of axiom.

Actually I disagree - I don't buy that sheer weight of numbers and more and more people doing something is necessarily a good thing - often, it's not - it can result in being an something of a negative thing - either in corrupting the experience, or how it's perceived by the masses and the knock-on effect that has.

Wouldn't you agree that more people on bikes is a good thing, regardless of their chosen influences?

Nope.

I'd concede that having more people get around using their own steam than automatically jumping in a car would be a good thing, but not just greater numbers on bikes.

We ride retro, not because it's necessarily better, but because it satisifes in us a desire to return to a time when our lives were simpler and so were bicycles. The nostalgia that it evokes is no bad thing - yet consider someone whose golden years of cycling were 20 years before ours; they would regard what we're riding as new-fangled and un-needed. Are they right?

Yes.

Are we?

Yes.

Does it really matter?

Not one jot.

So you don't want to ride faster, that's fine by me. I have no problem with the speed that anyone else wants to pootle along at. Why do you have such an issue with anyone that wants to ride fast?

Personally, I couldn't care less - I'm just against the supposed axiom of that being able to go faster is a good thing.

With all your indiscriminate prejudices, and Daily Mail-like views on what you think everybody else should be riding (so you don't want "suspension corrected geometry" or discs - fine, don't buy them then! No-one is forcing you to...), you are what's wrong with mountain biking, not the people riding dirt jumps, North Shore, drop-offs, or just good old trails on their hydroformed, disc-braked, "monstrosity".

What went wrong with mountain biking - like everything else that started off, gained popularity, became a craze, then diversified - is that it did get very popular, than fractured off into various types of riding and bikes, then sooner or later the various "types" of mountain biking slowly die out, and actually, choice eventually evolves to being not really that much choice.

At least they seem to be enjoying themselves...!

Now that's just not very Hovis-bread-advert, is it.

 

[dbmtb]

Personally I don't the the rot has set in atall. There's a lot of very nice new bikes out there these days.

 

[Tazio]

Personally I don't the the rot has set in atall. There's a lot of very nice new bikes out there these days.

Good point. I think perhaps the real question is "at what point were you happy with what you had and decided to opt out of the evolution of cycling?"

In relation to the point a couple of people have flagged up about being almost mown down by rapidly moving young lads on full suss bikes, that's more of a geographical thing. It has happened to me a few times when I've been out for a quiet Sunday pootle around. Where I live there are a huge number of converted old railways, canal path and riverside walkways that allow cyclists. So inevitably they get very busy on a sunny weekend. And you do get young lads blasting along on bikes that are more suited to black runs at trail centres.

I'm sure these lads would rather be down at Glentress on a Sunday but probably don't have the means to get down there so just go for a blast wherever they can get offroad. If I choose to do something like that I just chuck the bike in the car and take off as I have the option.

I don't think I'm a mountain biker anymore, not in the modern sense, I just enjoy getting on the bike and going for a zip around and getting fresh air and hopefully find a few good unpaved bits of track most of the time.

So basically what I'm trying to say is that a lot of the modern bikes are built for trail centres so when you get them on a cyclepath or the nice little route round your local reservoir they are easy to hammer at full speed. If you're me and enjoying a nice slow Sunday ride you'll inevitably get in their way.

Damn, I've even got a bell now!!

 

[IDB1]

One of my favourite threads of recent days. . .

 

[LeeDevelopment]

THIS IS WHY...........................

You miss out on moments like this:

 

[LeeDevelopment]

I wear what I like when riding which is normally a pair of denim shorts and a t'shirt. If I'm spending a day out in the woods, forests, moors etc then I'll wear MX-inspired gear, mainly because it wicks sweat away.

As for equipment..... disks are a good thing but then I'm much more downhill orientated to cross country. Having said that I've spent many a day cycling up from Barnard Castle to the moors and dales all over, up the Stanhope road and into the back of Hamsterley via the mine track, up over Egglestone moor, up the upper/higher Pennines, all under my own steam when solo riding. Sunday's, sure, we got a lift in a van off a friend's father but that means we had more time to spend in the forests as opposed to riding tarmac.

Where we used to have Ringle and Cook Bros we now have Thomson and Tune, Middleburn, Chris King, Hope and Paul Components are thankfully still with us, plenty of other high-end manufacturers to be found. I appreciate both retro and modern parts, believing they can all be used to the build the 'perfect' bike. I'm not one to stick to a specific period build, cos having lived through them I know there used to be a lot of crap around and indeed the same rings true today. Just do your research first and you'll be fine, learn from your mistakes.

I have never ever bought an 'off the shelf' fully built bike, well my parents did when I was in my early teens, but that was soon replaced by a Zaskar LE frame with Mag21's! If you're passionate about biking most do a fair bit of research before putting up the cash for their steeds and this still rings true today.

Some modern downhill bikes are absolutely amazing, the Santa Cruz V10, Intense M9, and the frames my team are racing on, FTW's FB10 to name a few:

Parts will continually be tweaked and evolve, new equipment will come into play. Development and experimentation with gearbox frames can be traced back to the Sturmey Archer, here's the Colin Godby designed Spooky Cassius:

It's still an exciting time in the bike world, the innovations are still there and for that I'm pleased.

 

[legrandefromage]

For me, personally, it all went rubbish when I was still buying modern back in 2006, the new bikes were not the same and something was missing from the ride.

So I stopped buying 'modern' and found this site.

I just cant justify buying something 'modern' now as I can get more pleasure out of something found or 20 years old or 30 years old (tyres dont count!).

 

[SilverSurfer]

I realise that I'm just another arse with an opinion but it was a heartfelt one.

The only reason I'm on here is because I wanted to get back into MTBing and couldn't find anything that inspired me. Just by chance I stumbled on this site and everything that I saw resonated with me.

From then on it was simple - just get an old , fully rigid bike and ride it, often with tracksuit bottoms an tee-shirt. As I had previously been a wannbe roady with carbon wasnots and lycra doodas this was total liberation and a return to a child-like quality of just heading to the woods to ride and feel free and forget my woes for an hour or 2.

That said, there's no reason that modern bikes shouldn't allow you to do that, but they seem to be an over-engineered way of acheiving it.

 

[legrandefromage]

not every ride is a race.