Everyone responded with SUCH better detail than my original ramble could have expected! I feel I should follow suit:
My first 2 wheeled adventure began 1975 on a Huffy exactly like this one.<http://bmxmuseum.com/image/img_0800_copy1_blowup.jpg> Dad stuck training wheels on it for a few weeks till I was ready to pilot solo. I rode this beast in one form or another till I was about 11. Then my step dad sold it at a yard sale on a weekend I was at my dad's house and replaced it with a sears 10 speed. I hated the bike and furious with him for selling my BMX. Anger and determination in my gut I mowed my ass off that summer to earn enough money specifically for a baby blue GT ProPerformer with white mags. I was knee deep reading the BMX/Freestyle mags with Dizz Hicks and Ceppie Maes and all the other 80s legends. 2 weeks before school started, I had one of these. <http://bmxmuseum.com/bikes/gt_bicycles/9575> Pics from BMX Museum Shortly after we moved from Ohio to Colorado and I ended up doing more dirt riding and jumping than freestyle and purchased my friends PK Ripper. That was mainly used to ride the dirt roads into town to the one patch of cement where we all met to skateboard. Right out of highschool I got my first mountain bike, a Trek 820 Antelope, and I was bitten with the MTB bug in a BIG way. I saw Cindy Whitehead race her HUGE aluminum tubed Klein and would go to the downhill cup races to watch Tomac, Herbold, Tinker, Wiens, Overend, Grewal Bros, Furtado etc etc doing their thing. I worked for my moms embroidery company, and was doing work with Yeti, DEAN, Rock Shox, Norba and a bunch of other companies making their hats, shirts, aprons. I got to meet Paul Turner when he came to our shop with a "new" thing called bicycle suspension...IE the very first prototypes of the RS1. We did patches for him I think for the Anaheim show. I ended up with a metallic blue Klein Rascal with a a Scott Unishock! The pogo stick was quickly replaced with a Rock Shox Mag 20. I rode this bike for several years and ended up working for my local bike shop. Our crew of employees were attached at the hip for about 4 years. It was nonstop ride, build bikes, work the shop, go to the trade shows, ride, ride, ride. We rode mainly MTB but also BMX, Trials, CX, Unicycles, High wheelers, folding bikes, fixed gear...basically any bike we could find from about 93 till 98. During that time, I had several VERY wonderful bikes. One of the best was a Specialized S-Works Steel outfitted with a Mag 21 SL-Ti fork and a bunch of DEAN ti parts. It was an incredible XC bike and crazy light at 21lbs. I unfortunately crashed it and folded the down tube on a tree. By that time Specialized had ceased production on the S-Works steel and moved fully into the M2 Alloy. I ended up on one of the early AMP designed full suspension bikes build by DEAN Titanium. It was cool and squishy, but I longed for my rigid steel. Luckily I met Keith Bontrager at the Bio Show in Vegas and his display Race Lite was the answer. Soon as we returned to Denver, I called Keith and had one on the way. Oddly enough, that trip also landed me a job offer to work for DEAN Ti in neighboring Boulder. I jumped at the chance and for nearly 2 years was one of a 3 man team building custom Ti, Steel and Alu bikes. I had also started racing on the road. Unfortunately 12-14 hours of building bikes followed by a few hours of training and racing on the weekends burnt me out. I quit the bike biz, went to work in Denver for small family owned business called Orange Glo. Yea...OXY CLEAN! BILLY MAYS!! That one. While working there I had only kept my Colnago race bike, and a custom steel cyclocross bike I built myself. The CX became my commuter when I wasnt riding my motorcycle. I didnt have a MTB for several years but sorely missed it. As I was getting really restless with the corporate life, I got offered a job selling Ducati, Triumph, and BMW motorcycles and said bye bye to great wages, spending money, health care etc and went into motorsport. Thankfully this also led me back into mountainbiking because a few of my coworkers were into it. My manager happened to have a Cannondale F1000 Woody edition with a lefty fork he wanted to get rid of and I was back in the dirt! That led into a chain of different MTBs. Cannondale F1000 - Yeti ASR-SL - Specialized Epic - Cannondale Caffeine 29er - Surly Karate Monkey - Spot Brand 29er. At the same time I got married, and we had a daughter. I became a stay home dad and my riding very abruptly became more urban. I started riding my CX bike almost exclusively. Wanting something more comfortable, I looked into Rivendell and hastily snagged a 54 Bleriot<http://www.flickr.com/photos/42027576@N00/4547850699/in/set-72157623711195863/lightbox/>. Although it was too small, I immediately took to it. I purchased a trailer and my daughter and I were on a mission to bike to every park and playground in the Denver metro area. I was riding centuries with my buddy, 20-30 mile mixed terrain rides, grocery runs, cruiser rides...it was all my other biking melted into one. After realizing I needed a bigger size and wanting fatter tires, I stepped up to a Bombadil<http://www.flickr.com/photos/42027576@N00/4456242586/in/set-72157622638063409> . I never did connect with the Bomba and sold it to buy a Hilsen.<http://www.flickr.com/photos/42027576@N00/5295032286/in/set-72157629578384859> After my trade experiment and romantically going back to 26" AR for the cantis and mystique...it appears that magically the trade is going to be reversed and will once again be sailing the AHH again! Other bikes of note that passed through my doors: Nakagawa track frame Craig Calfee custom carbon racing frame Paula Pezzo edition OCLV XC racing MTB Several DEAN Ti varients Specialized M2 S-works Road Pinarello Steel road Bianchi Mega XL (Pantani frame) Zinn TT bike Lemond Poprad Mondia vintage CX Colnago Mexico road and on and on... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
