94 Marin Bear Valley SE, I'd been a committed roadie up until that point, I'd owned a couple of low end mountain bikes, but that mid range Marin was a revelation, some friends took me to the Peak District the weekend after I bought it and we rode all around Matlock, some of the downhill was insane, steep bare rock which involved placing your torso on the saddle, gripping both brake levers tight and just trying to somehow make sure you bounced from boulder to boulder and avoided the large gaps.
I only fell off once but what a tumble it was
There was one descent, a high fast sweeping dirt track that had a rocky wall to the left and a scary looking drop to the right, the lads told me to look out for the tree root about halfway down, I don't know how fast I was going but it was definitely faster than I'd ever been on any road bike and it felt like I had very little control, I had to fight to keep the bike pointing at the middle of the track. I saw the tree root from about 120 metre's and prepared to bunny hop over it at what I was told would have been about 38 mph, but completely mistimed the hop, my front wheel came down on top of the root and I don't know what happened next except I was no longer on the bike, it was floating in the air alongside me, I remember reaching out and grabbing the frame and after a few seconds we both made contact with the steep slope to the right of the track and we slid down side by side for about 30 feet, no bones broken and the bike was fine.
When I got to the bottom of the run the lads were all there laughing, one of them had been behind me when it happened and the last he saw was me cartwheeling over the edge, when he reached the bottom he told the others he was sure I was dead.
It was the best days cycling I ever had, nothing came close to that, probably because I was an off road virgin and these were some pretty hardcore trails, but I was hooked and we went regularly to different places around the UK and Europe, even South Africa and the US to scare ourselves silly.
So that Marin was a great bike for me, it was so much better than anything I'd ridden before, and even though I rode better bikes since and on better trails the crazy adrenalin hits I got back then frazzled my dopamine receptors.
I only fell off once but what a tumble it was
There was one descent, a high fast sweeping dirt track that had a rocky wall to the left and a scary looking drop to the right, the lads told me to look out for the tree root about halfway down, I don't know how fast I was going but it was definitely faster than I'd ever been on any road bike and it felt like I had very little control, I had to fight to keep the bike pointing at the middle of the track. I saw the tree root from about 120 metre's and prepared to bunny hop over it at what I was told would have been about 38 mph, but completely mistimed the hop, my front wheel came down on top of the root and I don't know what happened next except I was no longer on the bike, it was floating in the air alongside me, I remember reaching out and grabbing the frame and after a few seconds we both made contact with the steep slope to the right of the track and we slid down side by side for about 30 feet, no bones broken and the bike was fine.When I got to the bottom of the run the lads were all there laughing, one of them had been behind me when it happened and the last he saw was me cartwheeling over the edge, when he reached the bottom he told the others he was sure I was dead.
It was the best days cycling I ever had, nothing came close to that, probably because I was an off road virgin and these were some pretty hardcore trails, but I was hooked and we went regularly to different places around the UK and Europe, even South Africa and the US to scare ourselves silly.
So that Marin was a great bike for me, it was so much better than anything I'd ridden before, and even though I rode better bikes since and on better trails the crazy adrenalin hits I got back then frazzled my dopamine receptors.
