I Ride Mountain Bikes

I get really deeply into my hobbies, bordering on obsession. The primary, consistent hobby that has taken up much of my last 15 years is cycling. I love three things about cycling:
- Being outside, even if it's in an urban setting
- Having fun with friends
and most of all,
- Bikes.

I love bikes. I enjoy working on bikes as much as I do riding them. I've owned many in the last 15 years. Sure I had the standard little thing with training wheels when I was little, then I got a BMX-style bike when I was 8 or 9, and the first thing I ever saved money for was a Sears 10-speed when I was 13. I rode all of those bikes, like most of us did when we were young, and, like most of us, I stopped riding my bike when I got a car.

In April 1995 I bought a Trek 850 mountain bike. It was the nicest bike I had ever owned. Cantilever brakes, fully rigid, 21 speeds. By today's standards it was heavy (right about 30 pounds) but it had Rapidfire shifters and it was awesome.

That bike lasted 7 months. I bought a Trek 7000 that November. It was also rigid, it was also 21 speeds, but it was aluminum and was 23.5 pounds. It was light. I put a fork on it, a Rock Shox Judy XC, and I rode it a lot. I rode the Olympic Mountain Bike course in Atlanta on that bike, that was the hardest ride I ever attempted. I began upgrading every single part on it, and by the winter of 1996-1997, I had replaced literally the entire bike.

So I bought a new frame an moved everything over to my Klein Pulse. A beautiful hardtail, internally routed cables, gorgeous welds, huge tubing. A beautiful bike. I rode that bike an awful lot, almost all of it on real singletrack in the woods. I loved it, but dual suspension bikes began coming into their own, and . .

. . in 1998 I bought a ProFlex 857. Again I stripped the frame and replaced every part. I don't like to think about how much that cost me, but I was single and dumb so it didn't really matter. I rode that bike a lot. Loved that bike. I sold it to a great friend, it is still his primary off-road bike.

In 2000, Colorado Cyclist had Intense Uzzi SL frames on closeout. I couldn't afford it, even at closeout pricing, but a very generous friend bought it for me with the stipulation that I pay him back "whenever you can." I did. He also upgraded a ton of parts on his own bike and I got what was left over. Normally leftovers are bad, but in my case they were exceptional. See I am a pretty big guy, and my friend had bought a bunch of stuff that turned out to be way too heavy-duty for him. He sold it to me for less than half retail, and I got the heavy duty stuff I needed. I still have that bike. It's a 1999 Intense Uzzi SL. The fork is a Marzocchi Z1 QR20. It's a full Shimano XT drivetrain, with the exception of an XTR front derailleur. The brakes are enormous Hope DH4 discs, 8 inch rotor in front and 6 in the back. The stem and seatpost are Thomson, the bar is Easton, the pedal are Time ATAC. The star of the show, though, is the wheelset, Sun Ringle hubs (20mm in the front) laced to enormous Mavic 321 disc rims. I can ride right at a 6 inch log in the middle of the trail and not even have to lift. Amazing.

Now I don't get to ride it often these days - mountain biking eats time on a much greater scale than road riding - but I don't see myself ever getting rid of that bike.