I still have that bike, though now its a single speed. I even have those Sidi's still. Big Ring all the way with one finger oh shit breaking.When I finally got good enough to start getting product for free, Spring was like Christmas. Boxes would show up on the doorstep with a seasons worth of goodies. Sunglasses, sunscreen, forks, bikes, tires, etc,. It was great. I'd scour Velo News every Fall and make a list of manufactures. Then I'd send out dozens & dozens of letters & resumes. One by one I'd either get a rejection(thousands of them) or a letter offering me a deal of some sort. Its been a long time since I've been fast enough to get free stuff. Ah the good old days.
That was a great post! I read it from top to bottom. The only thing Forrest was mistaken on was Tinker's suspension stem, I'm sure he was running a HeadShox that season...CMac
ReplyDelete'94 I'm pretty sure he still had that flex stem crap. Perhaps some research will confirm or deny. Get your classes on it as homework & let us know.
ReplyDeleteIt was a great post. I trained quite a bit with Susan Dematei back in the day. She was one bad ass chic. Technical skills that most guys would be jealous of. I had to learn to ride a lot of stuff because I got tired of her showing me up.
Alison Sydor is riding a headshox in one of those pictures so I'm pretty certain Tinker would have one also. Maybe he was running it in conjuction with that flex stem crap...CMac
ReplyDeleteAce and Gary,
ReplyDeleteTinker was rolling a headshock. Henk was rolling a flex stem on a Ritchey P-23.....Henk later bitched in a an article about how much faster he would be without that stem.
In early 95 I got one of the Tinker knock off F3000 with headshox and magic motorcycle cranks...bike weight 21lbs with no crazy stuff on it. I loved that thing.
MTB racing in the early/mid 90s made me want to drop out of college and be a pro....thank god I stayed in school