California Started It All

The numbers of mountain bike touring have "more or less doubled every year," he said. New York police officers last month began tagging mountain-bike riders in Central Park. That says much about the trend that people would have mountain bikes in one of the largest cities in the world.

But then there are those who do take a turn off the pavement and plunge into the wilds in Mountain Bike Touring. "They are an absolute generic requirement for human beings," said Jan Morlock of Minneapolis, who bought a $600 mountain bike three years ago to add to her 10-speed racer for a complete cycling stable. "It's a wonderful rush. Have you ever been cross-country skiing? And the sensation you get when you go shooting down a hill? It's like that."

At 37, she's been regularly riding a bike of some sort for 15 years. "I've done a lot of tours, like riding across Wisconsin from corner to corner, and Minnesota, and out West," she said. All that was done on a road bike, which is the cyclists' term for what the general public calls a 10-speed (which usually has more than 10 speeds these days). But she rides the mountain bike more than half of the time now.

The road bike, great long-distance machine that it is, also is something of a big deal to get ready to ride. "When I'm going to ride my road bike, I put on my cleated shoes, bike pants, jersey, helmet and gloves. It's a more formal experience," she said. But preparation for the mountain bike is just "jump on and ride. I can wear my jeans and my boots." (Helmets are strongly recommended.)

It all started about 1974 in California when, according to mountain-bike legend, a man named Gary Fisher took a Schwinn newsboy-style frame and added some modernisms, such as gears and motorcycle brake levers, and went cruising down the mountains north of San Francisco. Fisher Mountain Bikes is a big company today.

They are expensive. Enthusiasts will tell you that anything under $400 isn't worth riding, while $700 is commonplace. Competition machines begin at $1,000.

Much of the cost is explained by the components. Gene Lew, of Flanders Brothers Cycles in Minneapolis, said, "Most components are made in Japan, and they are so good that they don't really break down."

Lew began with the most noticeable aspect, the fat tires: "The old cruisers (balloon-tired newsboys) had 2.25-inch wide tires," he said.

Mountain Biking