I started doing tricks on my 20″ Kuwahara around the age of eight, taking jumps, riding no hands, standing on the saddle, etc. My parents upgraded me to a Trek Antelope which I took my skills to the next level as I learned to wheelie for long stretches at a time. I also started doing XC mountain bike races at this point, and quickly I was pushing the mid-level bike past its limits – plus, suspension was improving rapidly and all the other folks at the start line had better shocks than my three year old Trek.
My dad, always happy to enable this kind of sport, arranged an incredible build of a Norco Team prototype that was left over from the elite racers, with a really interesting downtube that had external ribs that ran the length of the tube. It was kitted with the best of everything, full compliment of Syncros and XTR and a really cool early Marzocchi fork. Sadly, it was swiped from the back of my dad’s truck only a few months later, and my time with it was both short and exclusively winter.
Feeling some guilt I’m sure from the complacency of leaving it in the back of the truck even in our rural driveway, my dad purchased a Marin Team Titanium for me, also with a pretty high end build. It was a 19″ frame when I wanted a 17.5″, but that didn’t stop me from riding the absolute heck out of this bike for ten years – ten of the most influential, memorable, and transformative years between me and cycling.
When I got this, riding bikes was my life. I rode to school most days, despite my commute being down (and then back up) a mountainside. I rode basically every day after school, and explored my local trails (Burke Mountain) every weekend. I knew those forests like the back of my hand. I raced the full XC circuit, working my way up to expert class, and I honed my technical skills with log rides, wheelies, and even learned to hop on the back wheel and do trials pedal kicks from rock to rock. I wore out several sets of tires, and broke most of the components at one point or another, until very little of the bike was original.
One of the most memorable times on this bike was a tour of the southern Gulf islands, organized by a teacher at my school who headed the Outdoors Club, which was essentially a cycling club, and I cannot overstate how important this club was to my life as a high-schooler.
Leave a Reply