My entry into having an obsession with cycling came about through mountain biking. My first ride on a borrowed bike at age 13, where a friend and I got totally lost in the woods, saw me hooked.
A not-very-suitable bike got me through the first two years of learning, then I knew enough to get a good bike in the right size. My parents helped me out with half the cost and I was able to afford an end-of-year-discounted 1991 Specialized Stumpjumper Comp. This at the time was the top of the line – a Japanese-made Tange Prestige-tubed frameset, with a full Shimano Deore XT groupset (XTR wouldn’t be introduced until 1992). This would be my one bike for everything for many years – I rode it to school every day, mountain biked at least twice a week all year and in all weather, fitted panniers and slick tires and toured across France, and raced it in local cross-country events.
I added road and time trial bikes to the stable when I went to university, but Stumpy remained my only mountain bike – I rode it to fifth in the British Universities XC championship and sixth in the cyclocross champs.
The Stumpy and what followed
Riding in all conditions all the time gets through a lot of parts – the only original components left now besides the frame and fork are the thumb shifters. I was a little ahead of the curve on gearing – I used the hidden eighth click on the thumbie to go to 8-speed (adding a ‘massive’ 32T rear cog to the existing 7-speed 12-28), along with ditching the granny ring to have a 2x8 setup. It remains amusing to think that road bikes now routinely have lower gears than this!
The bike has been repainted twice; I fixed a dented toptube the second time. Latterly I was able to add some more blingy ‘90s parts; it has a Cook Bros. crankset, Avid Tri-Align brakes in long-arm (front) and short-arm (rear) varieties, Ringlé skewers and oh yes, a Tioga Disc Drive rear wheel. Nothing rumbles quite like this rear wheel going down a boulder field! The trusty Stumpy doesn’t really get ridden these days, but so many great memories with this guy.
Whilst I was super happy with my bike, I drooled over the unattainable superbikes of the time – one from the UK with the Pace RC-100 (I was able to revisit that one with my own homage to it ), then all the US-made exotica from the likes of Trimble, Fat Chance, Funk, Merlin and of course, Klein. This was pre-internet, so all my information came from the two British monthly mountain bike magazines. In 1990 the first sanctioned World Championships were held in Durango. The Brits did well – with Tim Gould finishing third in the cross country, and Dave Hemming second in the Junior men’s downhill. There was a full-page image of Dave Hemming at speed on his team-issue Klein Attitude – it stuck with me.
My interest never deKleined
For those not aware, Gary Klein pioneered the use of oversize aluminium bicycle frames whilst at MIT, and went on to found his eponymous company in 1981 in Washington. Whilst his bikes were known for their massive tubes and incredible paint, they had features that were well ahead of the era – super-sloping top tubes, pressed-in integrated headset and BB bearings, internal cable routing, one-piece bar/stem, and incredibly low weights.
Did we do a good job with this story?
