Originally Posted by
rekmeyata
I use to do a lot of skidding too, made my dad mad because he was the one buying me my tires, so we found skid slick tires, that had real thick rubber, it took a long time to wear those out, and as a bonus, my flats went way down!
There was school near where I lived that had steps that went up about 14 steps, but there was a pretty good amount of concrete on top to get enough speed to get going and jump the stairs.
We did that sort of crap on those stingray bicycles when I was a pre teen, but later I still did that same stair jumping thing on a 3 speed Schwinn Racer.
I think I mentioned this, but in my late teens and early twenties back in the early to mid 70's we use to take cheap 10 speed bikes and go trail riding in the mountains of Southern Calif, unbeknownst to me at the time that sort of riding was going on all over the US on 10 speed bikes and some custom built bikes by riders. Try doing that with a modern road bike!
You were probably more of an outlier than you think. I doubt that "that sort of riding was going on all over the US on 10-speed bikes" in the early to mid-'70's.
The guys in California were just starting to race their old coaster brake Schwinn klunkers down Mt. Tamilpais then. And Tom Ritchey routinely rode his tubular-tire-equipped road bike on fire trails, but the fact we know that about him suggests that he was probably the only one doing it regularly.
Some friends of mine and I did some riding on the trails through water company property west of New Haven on our road bikes (with tubulars) in 1974 or so (I was on my white first-year Raleigh Professional, and the other guys had a Bottechia, a blue Raleigh Pro, and a PX-10, I think), but we were all scared that we'd break our rims, so we only did it a couple of times.
That said, I believe that a modern road bike would hold up just fine: especially one with 28-mm-wide or wider tires. Why would it not?