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MTB HAll of Fame moves to Fairfax, CA

syadasti

i heart mac
Apr 15, 2002
12,690
290
VT
Of course there is an unbroken chain of events leading from them to the modern sport.

Not.

People rode bikes on dirt for a long time before there was a sport called mountain biking.
Ok, then that would be the RSF (established 1955) if you want oldest with unbroken chain. Off to the UK you go...
 
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JohnE

filthy rascist
May 13, 2005
13,457
1,996
Front Range, dude...
This is turning into a MTB version of the East coast v. West coast rap wars...

"Yo dawg, CB be where is at, fo shizzle..."

"Fo rizzle? Cali be happening if you be on dirt yo..."

"Sh!t, best be watchin what you be saying, I will bust a CO2 cartiridge on yo a$$!"

"5 inches fo life, SoCo keeping it real!"

"Thats what you sister sayz..."

"Yo man, I put the GUN in Gunnison..."
 

Repack Rider

Monkey
Oct 8, 2007
183
66
Marin County, California
Ok, then that would be the RSF (established 1955) if you want oldest with unbroken chain. Off to the UK you go...
I'm familiar with the RSF

Gary Fisher and I were members of the Rough-Stuff Fellowship; we were two of the three RSF members in NorCal (the third was Holland Jones). The club newsletter published my article about the Crested Butte to Aspen ride.

The RSF members did not ride fat tire bikes. They didn't care for downhill. They liked wide, level equestrian paths.

But other than that, they were just like us.

The closest England came to "inventing" a mountain bike was Geoff Apps and his "Highpath" cycles.
 

6thElement

Schrodinger's Immigrant
Jul 29, 2008
16,110
13,358
Where does Al Gore fit into this?

I'm grateful to all those who made our sport possible on whatever level they participated.
 

pinkshirtphotos

site moron
Jul 5, 2006
4,846
594
Vernon, NJ
We won't abduct the french in the MTB hall of fame, 29er belongs in the hall of fame. Yall must be underpaid 26" wheel riders. With $500 hitch hiking wherever this place is from NJ might be a snap and a clap. We all know the 29er was built first on the east coast, now you do. East coast wins, no matter whatever city you move the hall of fame to it is far far away. And yall to trust airplanes must be crazy, those machines can drop from the sky any minute. 29er still gets east coast award because it was closer to the east coast then the other coast. Finland is right over the creek from Maine if you had a map you'd know.
 

stevew

resident influencer
Sep 21, 2001
40,649
9,644
I'm familiar with the RSF

Gary Fisher and I were members of the Rough-Stuff Fellowship; we were two of the three RSF members in NorCal (the third was Holland Jones). The club newsletter published my article about the Crested Butte to Aspen ride.

The RSF members did not ride fat tire bikes. They didn't care for downhill. They liked wide, level equestrian paths.

But other than that, they were just like us.

The closest England came to "inventing" a mountain bike was Geoff Apps and his "Highpath" cycles.
thanks for the white mans hobby.

pat yourself on the back.
 

Repack Rider

Monkey
Oct 8, 2007
183
66
Marin County, California
Geoff did and he beat Gary Fisher to 29er fad too.
Go read Geoff's entry on Wikipedia. You will see the record of collaboration between him and MountainBikes. He used 650-B because it was all they had in England. We used 26" because it was all we had.

You can make a bike in a garage. You can't make a rim and a tire in one, so you use what you can find.
 

jonKranked

Detective Dookie
Nov 10, 2005
86,233
24,735
media blackout
Go read Geoff's entry on Wikipedia. You will see the record of collaboration between him and MountainBikes. He used 650-B because it was all they had in England. We used 26" because it was all we had.

You can make a bike in a garage. You can't make a rim and a tire in one, so you use what you can find.
who keeps the metric system down?
we do!!!!
we do!!!!
 

syadasti

i heart mac
Apr 15, 2002
12,690
290
VT
Geoff also used 29ers back then too. Wheelsize doesn't determine bike type though, though with poor selection in tires and/or rims it slows adoption by users then just as it has now. Maxxis just started selling some nice enduro/gravity oriented 29" tires in 2013 over 30 years after the 29" MTB was invented.
 
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Repack Rider

Monkey
Oct 8, 2007
183
66
Marin County, California
Here is an update on the Marin Museum of Bicycling.

MARIN MUSEUM OF BICYCLING TO FEATURE IGLER COLLECTION OF HISTORIC BICYCLES

(Fairfax, CA) March 5, 2014 – The Marin Museum of Bicycling announced today that it will display a selection of bikes from the Igler Collection, a comprehensive collection of bicycles dating back to the 1860s.

The Igler Collection will form one of two permanent displays at the Marin Museum of Bicycling, the other being the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame. Last August, the museum announced the relocation to Fairfax of the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame, founded 25 years ago in Crested Butte, Colorado.

Marin Museum of Bicycling curator Joe Breeze said, “The Igler Collection documents the birth of the bicycle and its “Golden Age,” when the sharpest minds of the day were focused on perfecting the most efficient machine of personal transport ever devised.”

Ralph Igler, a NASA engineer based in Palo Alto, started his collection in 1960, traveling extensively to build a group of key examples in the development of the bicycle. Bicycles from his collection have been featured in museums in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Ralph Igler died in 2004, leaving the collection to his son, David Igler, Professor of History at UC Irvine. David Igler said, “The Marin Museum of Bicycling’s devotion to telling the unsung history of this extraordinary vehicle would have pleased my dad.”

Museum president Marc Vendetti said, “The Marin Museum of Bicycling is thrilled and honored to receive this long-term loan of bikes from the Igler collection. The collection’s wide range of bikes enables us to tell many interesting stories. We can feature a “chronology of technology” and rotate other bikes in for special exhibits.”

Among the collection is an 1868 “boneshaker” velocipede from the first bicycle builder, Ernest Michaux of Paris. Also included is an 1880s Coventry Rotary tricycle, the design that held human-powered speed records until improved high-wheel bicycles, such as the collection’s 1886 Rudge, took over as speed king. There’s even an 1898 Pierce shaft-drive bike, which was that company’s top model until it launched its Pierce Arrow automobile.

The Marin Museum of Bicycling, which will double as a cultural center for Marin cyclists, expects to open its doors to the public in mid-2014. Museum construction is underway in downtown Fairfax at 1966 Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, former location of the Good Earth grocery store.

To raise funds for the museum, the Marin Museum of Bicycling is building a low wall at the property's corner, with the profile of Mount Tamalpais. Donors can purchase personalized tiles for this “Mt. Tam Legacy Wall” to help support the museum, on the museum's web site: http://mmbhof.org .

# # #​

FOR MEDIA INQUIRIES, please contact:
Joe Breeze
Marin Museum of Bicycling
415.454.6536
joe@mmbhof.org
 

Repack Rider

Monkey
Oct 8, 2007
183
66
Marin County, California
Bitter guy with no known contributions to the sport complains because the people who contributed most of the collection in the MTB HoF have raised the money, found a building, and done the work to bring their stuff back where it came from and make it accessible to millions of people.

For a place that "sucks for mountain biking," you can't find a parking spot on a weekend because of the hundreds of mountain bikers who show up, ride, and spend lots of money. And now the town wants to build MORE stuff that bicyclists might enjoy and give them a reason to spend more money.

Communism, for sure.

I invite Mr. A.S.S. to open his own museum in a more "appropriate" location, where he can display his pathetic collection of bicycling souvenirs dating back to 1993, and see who comes to visit it. It's a free country.
 

Repack Rider

Monkey
Oct 8, 2007
183
66
Marin County, California
Maybe The Oatmeal can make cartoon to go with ASS article on Marin
Help me out here. Is there some reasonable objection to a bunch of people spending their own time and money to collect and display objects that may be of interest to many cyclists? In a place that is visited by tens of thousands of bicyclists every year, where the economy revolves around bicycles? The only town I know of with a public monument to mountain biking?

Nobody makes anyone pay attention to stuff they don't care about, nobody makes you come to Fairfax. Apparently it is important for people to let me know ad nauseum how little they care about people who are so passionate about bikes that they are working on a museum of bicycling, and how the riders of Marin ripped off a bunch of guys they had never heard of who lived a hundred years ago.

If you don't care, leave it alone. Let it go. Deep breathe. Meditate. Read another thread. It's a free country.
 

Repack Rider

Monkey
Oct 8, 2007
183
66
Marin County, California
the white guys hobby
I see a lot of Black mountain bikers. You must not live near me.

All my employees are Black, and I gave one of them one of my bikes, a F/S Specialized. He's pretty good, can ride a wheelie for miles, but like a lot of people new to it he doesn't much care for clipless, especially on the trails. Not something he's used to. He's amazingly tough, can ride up the steepest trails on flat pedals, kicks my ass, but of course he's 35 years younger.
 

jdcamb

Tool Time!
Feb 17, 2002
19,880
8,485
Nowhere Man!
I don't think anyone is hating on your friends and the Museum. I hope things work out well for you and your friends Bikes are cool in any way, shape, or form.

When I was young and getting into cycling, I read every magazine I could find and I read about all these mythical Norcal rides. Many us ventured out to the West coast and tried to ride these mythical trails. But as magazines and companies do. Those trails really didn't exist except in the magazines. However a lot of us went home and built the trails we wanted to ride and bought bikes we wanted to ride. And Mountain biking grew to the sport we all love. Here, there, and everywhere. So maybe they did build it in the right spot. Congrats that's pretty cool.