Fat-Tire Flyer: The Birth of Mountain Biking with Charlie Kelly
posted April 29, 2016 8:28 AM   RSS | iCal | +googleCal

Mon May 23 at 6:00 PM, Berkeley Public Library
2090 Kittredge St, Berkeley, CA, USA (Map & Directions)
I will be speaking at the Berkeley Public Library about my bicycle adventures and my book, Fat Tire Flyer: Repack and the Birth of Mountain Biking.
I took part in the most important bicycle development of the last fifty years, the rise of the "mountain bike" in the 'seventies and 'eighties.

In 1976 I started promoting a new form of bicycle competition for my friends, downhill racing on a dirt road on bicycles modified to take extreme abuse. This event, which was originally meant to be a one-time lark, is now a world championship sport.

The mountain bike movement started on old bikes from the 'thirties, modified with gears and extra brakes, but by 1977 my friends and I were designing and building bikes specifically for riding off-road.

In 1979 Gary Fisher and I rented a garage, where we planned to assemble and sell a new kind of bicycle, using frames built by Tom Ritchey. We called our little company "MountainBikes," a term that has become generic. By 1983 every major bicycle company had adopted our design and our company to describe such bicycles.

I will be speaking about my book, and about the new Marin Museum of Bicycling where I volunteer as a docent.

I will be showing one of the bicycles from the museum collection, "Breezer #2," built for me in 1978 by Museum of Bicycling curator Joe Breeze. Joe's personal bike, "Breezer #1" is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution. The ten "Breezer Series 1" bicycles were the first bicycles built for what has become a worldwide phenomenon called mountain biking.
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