Repack Rider
09-29-2014, 10:33 AM
Velo Press is now shipping my book, Fat Tire Flyer (http://www.amazon.com/Fat-Tire-Flyer-Repack-Mountain/dp/1937715167/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1411961862&sr=8-1&keywords=fat+tire+flyer).
It's mostly autobiographical, starting with my meeting Gary Fisher (at the Grateful Dead office) in 1971. We became roommates and our house was the center of the brief "klunker" craze in Marin County.
In 1976 I started putting on crazy downhill races for the klunker crowd, on a hill we called "Repack."
In 1977 I asked a friend to build me a bike for this new type of riding. He did, and other people became interested in owning one of these bikes.
In 1978 some of us went to Crested Butte and introduced the locals to the new technology, which they embraced wholeheartedly.
In 1979 Gary Fisher and I started a business with Tom Ritchey to make and sell this new type of bike. We rented a garage and called our little company "MountainBikes (http://sonic.net/~ckelly/Seekay/mtbikes_company.htm)."
Then every bike company in the world started copying our bikes and within five years mountain bikes outsold every other type of bike.
Along with that adventure I also went to the Giro d"Italia and the Iditarod, published the first MTB magazine, and wrote the first set of rules for mountain bike racing.
I will rank my bicycling adventure with anyone's. There are only three people who could have written this book, and the other two won't, so I did.
I signed the first copies to come off the press at the recent Interbike trade show. Signing books along with me were my far more famous friends, Tom Ritchey, Gary Fisher and Joe Breeze. It was such a rare gathering that a photo made the front page of the show publication.
http://i419.photobucket.com/albums/pp271/repackrider/Miscellaneous%20images/show_daily_zps26fdbab3.jpg
It's mostly autobiographical, starting with my meeting Gary Fisher (at the Grateful Dead office) in 1971. We became roommates and our house was the center of the brief "klunker" craze in Marin County.
In 1976 I started putting on crazy downhill races for the klunker crowd, on a hill we called "Repack."
In 1977 I asked a friend to build me a bike for this new type of riding. He did, and other people became interested in owning one of these bikes.
In 1978 some of us went to Crested Butte and introduced the locals to the new technology, which they embraced wholeheartedly.
In 1979 Gary Fisher and I started a business with Tom Ritchey to make and sell this new type of bike. We rented a garage and called our little company "MountainBikes (http://sonic.net/~ckelly/Seekay/mtbikes_company.htm)."
Then every bike company in the world started copying our bikes and within five years mountain bikes outsold every other type of bike.
Along with that adventure I also went to the Giro d"Italia and the Iditarod, published the first MTB magazine, and wrote the first set of rules for mountain bike racing.
I will rank my bicycling adventure with anyone's. There are only three people who could have written this book, and the other two won't, so I did.
I signed the first copies to come off the press at the recent Interbike trade show. Signing books along with me were my far more famous friends, Tom Ritchey, Gary Fisher and Joe Breeze. It was such a rare gathering that a photo made the front page of the show publication.
http://i419.photobucket.com/albums/pp271/repackrider/Miscellaneous%20images/show_daily_zps26fdbab3.jpg