[bEn]

I used to ride a lot when i was a kid until i lost intrest in it. Then a friend of mine got me back into the sport in 2004 and i started riding again. I bought a new bike and from then on i've loved it. It's been more then a year since i've been back into Mountain Biking and by the look of things nothing will stop me from riding.

LowCel 

When I was a kid. I rode bmx and freestyle until I was about 15, I rode mountain bikes from the time I was about 13 - 18. I then took a 7 year break for stupidity (drinking, smoking, women) until February, 2001 when I was 25 years old. That was when I quit smoking, I had been smoking three packs a day up until February 21, 2001 when I quit cold turkey. I started riding again then, just for some type of exercise to try to help my lungs get back into some type of shape.

I figured if I was riding I wouldn't smoke, if I smoked I couldn't ride. One thing led to another and I became a cycling addict. I started racing in 2003 and I haven't looked back. It seems like a much better addiction to me.

dirtbikedude

Like LowCel I rode BMX as a kid as well as MX , no freestyle though, from the age of 4 until I was 21. Then I switched to mountain bikes. I still ride BMX and MX as well. I have never taken more then a month or two off unless a football, or lifting injury kept me away.

DBD

frankiee

I allways had an old road bike around that I used sometimes. For about 20 years. There was no passion to it.
I allways stayed away from mountain bikes because road bikes were faster and I wanted to get from point A to B in a hurry.
Just 4 years ago I got a mountain bike with a good strong carrier on it and I used it like a truck for my trip to school and back.
I started to take some shortcuts off road and found that it could be quite exciteing.
I got a half decent bike for $1200 Canadian and still get more of a thrill every year.
My next bike this summer I want more of a free ride bike instead of a mountain bike because there are a lot of unpassable spots on the trails around here. I want to see how many of them I can clear. I have to learn to get the bike more in the air.
So I figure I will get a bike that is designed to do that.
So for me.
4 years (plus when I was young under 16 and didnt have a car)
with an every day passion for bikeing.

bbarend

I have been an avid MTB enthusiast for about 15yrs and road for about 3yrs.

koine2002

From ages 15-18 I did a lot of road biking. I "retired" due to college and dabbled with a few xmart mountain bikes over the years. Back in February I did the last of many ankle sprains (they could hear the pop 100 yds away) while doing some wind sprints--it still swells up and gets black and blue if I try to run any more than 20 yards--guess at 31 I don't recover like I used to. Anyway, went to a nearby shop and bought and entry level KHS--which I've done some upgrading on--and got in to MTB riding. I also picked up a used Bridgestone RB-4 for commuting, rainy weather riding and to get that occasional distance fix in. I'm glad I'm back.

pinkrobe

My mom taught me to ride when I was 6. I rode everywhere, still do. I got my first mtn bike when I was ~13, and I've been hitting the trails ever since.

FLBandit

I rode alot till I was about 20 or so, then kind of drifted onto two wheels with motors. As kids we all rode our spyder bikes in the woods before there were BMX or MTBs. I got back into road biking about a year and a half ago and fell in love with bikes all over again. As for MTBing my first trip down the single track was last week! Cool stuff, even if I am an old fart now!

Blazinall91

I've rode thigns with pedals since i was a wee little tot. I started on a big wheel, then the tricycle, then the training wheeled 16incher, then my first BMX bike which i rode pretty much into the ground. I then got my Giant Attraction (13") my first real mountain bike, which i rode in the woods behind my house on a farmer's trail that he rode his ATV on to get to the soybean field he owned (quicker than his road for equipment) Mostly downhill really fun, i gained most of my biking skills in those woods on my Giant. About 8th grade i got really into BMX again, the dirt jumping side of things and i started jumping and riding around town, i had a Mosh DJ3 and it was bombproof. Then high school came i played football, so that sort of took all my time for riding and i lost interest, i was running alot and lifting weights and practicing so no time what so ever. I now have a Trek Bruiser 1 which i bought as a graduatuon present to myself, and i started riding that and i now love biking again. I also got my dads 1993-95(not sure which) Schwinn High Plains (full solid) for long rides and XC duty since he doesn't ride anymore. I love biking, a lot.

btadlock

Rode as kid, nothing specific, but starting riding seriously at 21, 1983. First real mountain bike riding was Crested Butte in 1991.

rnorris

Started at age 6 on a singlespeed Sears kid's bike, solid rubber tires, coaster brakes... amazed that my nether regions survived that bike . Really started cycling as a teenager, commuted to school by bike and rode around with friends on 5 and 10 speed road bikes.

First mountain bike was a late '80s Univega Alpina, unique paint job of charcoal gray with little red flecks- I called it the "bloody sneeze" bike. Rode that for a few years, then as I got into more technical MTB riding I bought a C'dale F700 hardtail (1997). Had a lot of fun on that bike- took it everywhere, riding singletrack in Washington, Oregon, and Arizona. In the summer of 2001 we were doing a geophysical experiment at work, and I got PAID to ride logging roads and singletrack to look for seismograph sites that summer, in areas where vehicles couldn't go. Does it get any better than that?

Sadly, the F700 was stolen while I was sleeping at a remote campsite in central Oregon Still miss it. Current MTB is a Jeckyl with full suspension. It's not the climber that the F700 was, but a much better bike for technical downhill stuff. My riding has shifted more toward the road in the past year, but hope to do more mountain biking next summer.

trekkie820

I started when I was 5, then I rode everywhere until I turned 16. I took 3 years off, and picked it up again when I was 19, and haven't stopped. I have always been interested in mountain biking, as we had woods behind my house with about .5 miles of trail, and I would always take my BMX out there. I guess my life has come full circle, seeing as I ride a rigid singlespeed, basically a big BMX. Now it has consumed my life, and I find myself sitting and staring at my baby, dreaming of what we have done, and what we will do.

WorldWind

Strong memories from my childhood

My Grandpa had worked for The Chicago Nut and Bolt Co. before the crash. He had been a tooling engineer. After he retired he moved to Menlo Park. He had more tools than god. I now have many of them in my collection. He passed when I was 13, up to that point his workshop was my favorite place in the entire world.

When I was about four or five he made a tricycle for me, I sat on his workbench and watched him design and build it with his own hands. My dad held a welding mask in front of my face while he welded. It had a small steel tractor seat and a chain drive to its 24” front wheel. When I was Six my mother finally let me out of the yard with it.

When we moved from Palo Alto to Stockton the trike stayed, in my dads’ eyes a bike doesn’t have a sole, it is just a tool to get you there. It was three days until Christmas, I was ten years old, had been ripped from my friends and made a pedestrian. I wept silently in the back of our Chevy Nomad the whole way to our new home.

In the driveway, my dad opened the garage door at our new house. There in the middle of an empty garage was a brand new red over cream Schwinn excelsior. The door stayed open only long enough for him to be sure I saw it. He closed the door and said; “I think I’ll just leave the car parked here in the driveway, so the neighbors will know we are here.” He looked at me and smiled.

No amount of pleading on my part could convince him to re-open that garage door. It was mid morning and we unloaded our things from the car into the empty house, a box into the kitchen and suitcases full of clothes into the bedrooms.

Mom said “Ok, let’s go get some things for lunch, the moving van will be here soon.” I offered to forgo lunch and stay and guard the garage. I was denied. “I need your help at the market, dad is going to stay and wait for the movers.” I was beside myself.

When we got back the huge yellow truck that had swallowed all our possessions the afternoon before was backed into the drive and disgorging them into our new house and garage. The huge door stood wide open. I jumped from the car and ran, into the garage. I made running loops around the stacks of boxes and power tools searching, I looked in every cranny. To quote a phrase my Uncle always used, no joy. For three days all acknowledgement that their had ever been a bike in that garage were smilingly denied.

In Stockton where we had moved, there was a vast field right behind our house. A part of it was a huge patch of land scored by dozens of deep parallel irrigation ditches and all overgrown with weeds and thistle bushes. The tops of many of the berms between the channels had become my bicycle highways from place to place across the field. Way off in the far corner was a woods with hundreds of climbing trees and trails through the dense underbrush. It was my whole world, and my friends and I ruled it on two wheels. In my own mind I believe I invented off road riding on the trails I made in that field.

When we moved to Torrance, my bike came with us. Well most of it came, by then the streamer grips had been replaced with bar tape, the fenders with its light and reflectors had been removed as well as the tank pieces, the kickstand and the chain guard. Little did I know how much I would wish later that I had saved those pieces. But I was happy with my fat tire flyer and it served me well.

The summer before I went into high school I mowed lawns and hung out at the bike shop. I made friends with the pro and ran errands for the owner. By the end of that summer, along with some birthday money that my uncle had kicked in, I had saved enough to buy my first real bike. It was a used Colnago that had been hanging in the bike shop window. Even though it was a few years old, and had belonged to someone else, at the time that Colnago was the most lusted after thing in my whole life. The day I rode that bike home I was on the very top of the world. My best friend said to me when he saw me with it, “You paid that much for a ten speed, and it doesn’t even have fenders or a kickstand? You got gypped.”

elysdean

I started riding/racing when I was about 12 and raced seriously till I was 18. I was hit and miss on my riding and racing until I was 26 (this last season) when my older brother got me back on the bike and racing again

iamthetas

I started riding when I was about 5(1969). I didnt know what mountain biking was until 1990s and started riding a "mountain bike" in 94. suspension then for me was low psi in my tires. as a kid if point a to point b was closer by riding in the woods, well, we rode in the woods so technically I started mountain biking when I was about 10. we didnt care about name brands then, we just rode and rode and rode.up hills, down hills, thru the mud, in the rain, jumps were a necessity not a huck, and a helmet was something we wore only at the skateboard park and only because it was required

mtnbiker66

I don't ride,I just like to post here.

mtb23

Used to ride when i was a kid. Stopped for a while, now have started again.