Equipment Outfitters

Just about every kid has attempted to jump their bike off something when they were growing up. Those that didn’t certainly never became extreme sport athletes. The small and cruiser-style bikes of the Sixties and Seventies began a shift in how people viewed bicycle riding. Kids found that they were quite maneuverable, and the smaller wheels and fatter rubber tires made them more capable of enduring the thrashing a hard-riding kid could deliver. These new bikes redefined what could be done, and soon kids jumping things found they could jump bigger things, and could ride on softer surfaces, and the idea of dirt racing and jumping just kind of evolved naturally. Read the rest of this entry »

Charging down a hill at warp speed on a bike is a rush that most of us have enjoyed at some time. As bikes developed they headed down the path of tradition, and for a while, all a bike buyer could find was a road-racing-style bike or a cruiser. Road bikes were fine for speed and offered a broad range of gears. But road bikes offered little comfort and didn’t take very well to rough surfaces. Cruisers were very comfortable, but heavy and not geared very well. All that changed in the early Eighties when a Japanese bike company by the name of Specialized purchased a unique bike made in Marin County, California, and took it home for a closer look.

The mountain bike can trace its roots back to when a small and unknown group of riders in Marin County, California first began riding stripped down and beefed up Schwinns on mountain roads just prior to WWII. One can only assume that the natural propensity of extreme oriented riders continued to pursue downhill riding until a few notable pioneers of the modern mountain bike began simultaneously experimenting and redefining the equipment they were riding. According to one of those pioneers, Gary Fischer, the early Schwinn “Ballooner” Cruiser bikes everyone was riding were so heavy that they were pushed, not ridden, uphill. Fischer is reported to have been the first to equip a Ballooner with multiple gears, an act that made it easier to pedal uphill, but also added 25 lbs (11.35 kg) to their weight. Read the rest of this entry »