Originally Posted by
Trakhak
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?
Jobst Brandt had been doing those rides with his posse of rotating characters for many years prior, and was the one who introduced Tom Ritchey to such riding. We know much about Tom Ritchey specifically because he never stopped, and became a big figure in the industry. There were countless others around the US riding their road bikes offroad that moved on to other activities, before entering into history. You can sometimes see their letters in old issues of bicycle mags posted by SpeedofLite writing in to ask questions about gearing, tires, frames, and other subjects. Or find their riding stories in other issues, and out-of-print books. Greg LeMond, among others, has mentioned such off-road riding during his youth as well.
Many a cyclist has greedily gobbled up every single paved road in only a few short years, and when that hunger for novelty strikes again, have taken their road bike into the unpaved wilds searching for more.
And of course as we well know, any place any one ever went on a road bike - somebody on a touring bike went there first.
