botto 

Was sorting through some old magazines, looking for a 17 year old article for a piece on my blog, and thought I'd share some quick pics.

Needless to say, news didn't travel as fast back then. Enjoy.



Bicycling Guide. I found 6-7 issues from '91, and I can't even remember why I bought it. I guess it was because I was still reasonably new to the sport, and read what I could find.



The article (for those who are oblivious, 1991 was Motorola's first year as a sponsor).



An ad for Shimano, featuring Davis Phinney, who was in his first year riding for Coors Light.



Motorola's consistent winner, Mr. Phil Anderson.



Pre-Lance Trek.

jccaclimber

Interesting, thank you.

divineAndbright

(:

I ride one of them trek composite road bikes (mines a 2100), a '91 even... or at least the frame is the only '91 thing left on it!

waterrockets 

f-sake botto, I think I have both of those issues out in my shop. We're old. I mean like pcad old.

I still remember that Phinney/Shimano ad like it just printed yesterday. Remember the Armstrong/Subaru-Montgomery ad, when he was still an amateur?

Ti-tillIdie

the splatter effect paint jobs of 1980's and 90's bikes makes me cringe....

p.s. "Do I really need to stretch?" I'm curious.

wanders

Diggin' the purple Looks on the Trek.

big john

I used to like Bicycle Guide and I bought a Tesch s22 after reading a report in BG about how stiff and solid the frame was. They were right, that thing is the stiffest bike I've ridden.

patentcad

I had that Trek just before I had my Merlin (Spectrum ti) just before I had my Ibis, just before I... wait, I still have the Ibis.

Bostic

I had an impressive pile of Bicycle Guide, Bicycling, Winning and Mountain Bike Action magazines from the early 90's. I should have saved them instead of ditching them during a move. I had a 1992 Trek 2100. The 2300 was a truly ghastly bright color on the aluminum sections.

You should scan the ad of Phil Anderson shaving his legs if you have it. It was worded something close to "mows his legs more often than you mow your lawn."

woodduck

had that trek too, also the cadex mountain bike version in purple (I belive it's still kicking along).

In fact I still have the alu fork from the trek road bike down under my house somewhere.

HigherGround

I would love to have seen the look on the Motorola marketing exec's face (who cut the sponsorship) when Lance won the Tour in '99 riding for Postal. I imagine there was some serious headbanging going on that day, without any 80's metal in the background.

And just to geeze a bit (as in "geezer" not "oh geeze")... I remember having to look in the box score section of the newspaper to see the top 10 finisher's on the Tour de France stages from the previous day... wait until the weekend to see the clips on TV during the Wide World of Sports, usually interspersed with reports from Pierre Salinger investigating the local wines and John Tesh adding lots of melodramatic music... wait two more weeks for Velo News to arrive, which was actually printed on newspaper and had to be unfolded like a newspaper at the time... and then wait two more weeks (about a month after the event) to get a copy of Winning or maybe Bicycle Guide with color pictures and in-depth articles.

Then again we had to take a hand off the handlebars to shift or tighten up our toe clips and straps. Every ride was uphill in both directions. We didn't have compact cranksets. We had a big ring and an bigger ring! We destroyed our knees and we liked it! "Hey you whippersnappers, get off my lawn!" (*shaking fist)

HigherGround

Bicycle Guide rocked. They had interesting, intelligently-written articles. They didn't try to dumb things down for their audience, or make every article in to a 30 second flash.

El Diablo Rojo

I had one those in Pink, very 80's early 90's..that thing descended like it was on rails. Great bike.

woodduck

and in May 1991 I was still hanging around in Steamboat Springs after the ski season was winding down and I had a black with pink decals rigid cannondale mtb to ride around on, as well as a Gary Ellis style pro xxl gt race bike.

bikes were so inexpensive back then. I'd buy them in oct ride them for 6-7 months, take them back to Aust and sell them for more than I paid. I did the same thing with ski gear from the Elan ski factory in the usa. Good times.

mollusk

1991 - The beginning of the Indurain era

botto 

i remember this.

botto 

incorrect.

woodduck

they were for me. As there was no money around in Europe where I lived, I would come over to the USA and get ski gear, goggles, sunglasses, clothing etc and sell it to buy bikes.

Compaines couldn't really pay you too much more money per month, unless you got good photo rates (for magazine images) so they loaded you up with product so you caould at least survive.

I would buy an average bike then for about $1kUSD and sell it back in Aust for about $200 more, but it would be used. They were bikes for fun whilst moving around, so nothing too special or exotic.

I think the Aussie dollar was equal to about $0.92usd iaround the late 80's and early 90's and the same sort of bike was at least double the price in Aust.

It's all relative.

patentcad

More like the Dawn of the Pcad Cycling Zen Era.

mollusk

Are you Greg?

woodduck

1991 tdf was a great year for Djamolidine Abdoujaparov.

Green jersey and all.

Not a good year for lemond. He was in yellow for a few days though.

Phil Anderson took a stage win.

Fox Farm

Second that! The day that Peterson Publications bought that mag and then killed it was the day I stopped buying bicycling magazines. Road Bike Action is sort of getting there but it was the detailed ride reports on the true characteristics of a bike frame, components, maintenance tips, etc that made Bike Guide a great publication. It probably only suffered from a poor name.

botto 

and too many articles about mountain bikers.

unbelievably

I'd love to read the "Zen cycling in Japan" article.
What can you do for me,Botto?

FatguyRacer

Me too. Mines a 1992 model. I tossed the original alu fork in 1995 for an aluminum crowned Icon carbon fiber one. Totally change the bike. Those were the ones that made it on the OCLV frames back then.

I still crank thousands of miles a year on it. It's my training mule/beater.