Getting Medieval

With a nostalgic glance back I dug into my VHS collection this morning and watched this.

It’s the 1995 Greg Stump film(or half hour Specialized commercial if you prefer).  This was the year I bought my first mountain bike.  I mailed a check (which is a paper form authorizing people to remove funds from your bank account for those who can’t remember) and waited the full 6-8 weeks for it to arrive. 

At the time, I watched, mouth open, coveting the carbon fiber Judy fork one rider had.  And then later, close-ups revealed the Specialized Ground Control full-suspension design.  Not completely sure, but I think it garnered a full, two and one half inches of travel. 

Watching it now, the comedy of what was going on is glorious.  This is long before the sport of mountain biking had fractured into a million other niche sports.  Everybody who was on a mountain bike rode like this.  And rode equipment like this.  One of the features was about the Cactus Cup NORBA race, featuring guys on hard-tails with first generation camelbacks, bar-ends, and cantilever brakes.  Later, they went to Kamloops British Columbia to film Brett Tippie, and others bailing down steep loose slopes, on hard-tails with first generation camelbacks, bar-ends, and cantilever brakes.  It’s awesome.  Every single rider in the 28 min film is wearing spandex shorts, fingerless gloves, and a t-shirt.  With giant styrofoam helmets, and blade style sunglasses.

Funny thing is, they were killing it.  One guy, clipped in, pony-tail flailing, made three unsuccessful attempts at a 360° spin.  And the crashes, the most protective gear anybody was wearing was a pair of volleyball knee-pads.   These guys are flying down brushy, gravelly, cliffs and stacking hard.  Then they popped back up laughing.  The scale of what they were doing wasn’t quite on par with what’s happening today, but the uhhh…..enthusiasm they did it with was motivational none the less.

When they weren’t filming the “extreme”, there was a lot of soulful cruising on singletrack.  By today’s standards, this type of filming is pretty lame, but in the days of toe-cages and grip-shift, I was completely enthralled.  The soundtrack was surprisingly cool, if dated.  The artists featured on the back cover are Seal,Hole,Sugar-Ray, and the Charlie Hunter Trio.  Golden.

Unbox the Gimp and look for a copy, you’ll thank me.