The bike that changed everything

Brighton seafront - mid-late 1980s I guess.  I and some people from work have just completed the London-Brighton charity bike ride.  And I’m also guessing that Oliophoto took the original.

Between the ages of 7 and 17 I was bike mad.  Riding them, building them.  At 15 I join a cycling club.  As well as all-day club rides, I’m also racing; time-trials.  My heroes are Jacque Anquetil and Tommy Simpson.  Then one day it all changes.

It’s 1964; one of my slightly older cycling club mates gets two things that mean life will never be the same again; a fiancee and a scooter.  Suddenly we’re Mods.  I get a Lambretta.  “Ciao!” bicycle.

Fast forward to the 1980s. Oliophoto shows me an advert for a new type of bicycle - a mountain bike. This one. 

I don’t know why - mid-life crisis perhaps? - but I head to the local bike shop and order one.  By now I’ve moved to Milton Keynes, land of cycle paths and gravel bike tracks.  The bike starts off as a means of getting to and from work, but it’s not long before I’m taking it apart and upgrading it.  And buying more bikes.

Along comes Anniemay and she’s hooked too.  The extra shows our garage at the peak of bike ownership.  They’re not all mine.

The mountain bike seemed to change two wheeled transport in the UK.  Suddenly everyone had one - fat tyres, wide handlebars, cantilever brakes and 18 gears.  Easy to ride and you didn’t need go anywhere near a mountain to get the benefit.

In 1994 I found myself attending a workshop entitled The Bicycle in Science, Technology and Culture at the University of Lincoln, Nebraska. In attendance were a group of scientists, engineers and academics.  The purpose was to design interactive teaching materials (CD-Roms) based around the bicycle, for high school and university students. This had already been done successfully in the Netherlands and the UK.

Also in attendance were a couple of the inventors of the mountain bike.  In the 1970s they’d stuck wide handlebars and motorcycle brake levers onto old ‘high school clunkers’.  Looking at photos from the time, I could see the antecedents of my bike.   They’d taken them up into the hills of California and hurtled down at breakneck speed.  Just for the fun of it.  

Like I did the first time that I took my new Muddy Fox to the top of the Belvedere in Milton Keynes (see extra).  And it wasn’t the last time.