I wrote a book about mountain biking

Repack Rider · #1 09-29-2014, 11:33 AM

Velo Press is now shipping my book, 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."

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.

Idris Icabod · #2 09-29-2014, 11:44 AM

Mine arrives tomorrow from Amazon, looking forward to reading it.

malcolm · #3 09-29-2014, 12:32 PM

very cool story. I'm envious and I'll be buying the book. Thanks for taking the time to write it all down.

Idris Icabod · #4 10-06-2014, 06:54 PM

Finished it! Great book, quite surprised when it arrived at how heavy and glossy it was. I've come to the conclusion that Charlie is to mountain biking what Nirvana was to grunge, I even thought of you on Friday night when I was having a lot of fun with my buddies out on a night mountain ride (although I'm glad I wasn't riding a 50 lb klunker).

93legendti · #5 10-06-2014, 09:12 PM

How cool! Congrats. I will have to buy the book.

redir · #6 10-07-2014, 09:08 AM

Sweet! I'll be getting a copy for sure.

rugbysecondrow · #7 10-07-2014, 09:13 AM

Very cool, I will order one. Is it available via E-book?

Thanks,

Paul

Repack Rider · #8 10-07-2014, 10:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rugbysecondrow

Very cool, I will order one. Is it available via E-book?

Thanks,

Paul

The people who have already received it will tell you that you don't want to read this on a "device." No way electrons can do it justice.

I put my manuscript and images in the hands of Velopress, and they hit it out of the park. The printing job, graphics, artwork and layout are so good that you need to hold this thing in your hands to appreciate it. It weighs four pounds. List price is only $30, but apparently no one is even charging that.

Right, guys?

Idris Icabod · #9 10-07-2014, 11:59 AM

It is for sure a high quality coffee table book, not best for an e-reader.

And yup, I think I paid about $21 on Amazon for it. Which I think led to my surprise when it arrived, it feels like there is $21 bucks worth of blank paper in there. It is a heck of a deal.

rugbysecondrow · #10 10-07-2014, 02:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Repack Rider

The people who have already received it will tell you that you don't want to read this on a "device." No way electrons can do it justice.

I put my manuscript and images in the hands of Velopress, and they hit it out of the park. The printing job, graphics, artwork and layout are so good that you need to hold this thing in your hands to appreciate it. It weighs four pounds. List price is only $30, but apparently no one is even charging that.

Right, guys?

Awesome, thanks