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About The Evolution Of Mountain Bikes

As you can guess just from the name, mountain bikes are made for riding on mountain trails. They were designed by bike lovers who liked exploring on their bikes, but needed something more efficient than the bicycles that were around at the time. They couldn’t just go out and buy Diamondback bikes: they were forced to invent MBs on their own. With just a few ordinary tools and no money, they had to rely on their wits and determination.

Road and racing bikes were no good for their purposes because they had such skinny tires. Those tires are designed to reduce traction, while their bikes needed even more. The bikes they worked with were fat tired street bikes.

What racing bikes have that fat tired bikes didn’t have was a good range of gears. The first mountain bikes were hybrids. They took the derailleurs from the best racing bikes and added them to the clunky bikes they were using on the trails.

Next they went to work on the handlebars. They started off just sticking a flat bar of steel on the bike, because they wanted a lower profile and could really push the bike on the hills. However, they needed to lean back for traction, so they added ends to the handlebars so they could change their hand position and pull back on the handlebars when they needed to.

Once they had the basic design down, these young entrepreneurs started building bikes from scratch. They began using lighter weight materials and adding refinements to the frame design. Before long, people who saw them riding around on these cool looking bikes started asking them to build one for them.

These small time bicycle designers eventually became some of the biggest selling brands of mountain bikes. Even after the Schwinn mountain bike and others like it came on the market, these smaller bike makers continued to thrive. Today, they are still some of the best selling MBs.

All that remained to be invented was a helmet that was both cool looking and functional. A black helmet made for playing football just wasn’t right for blazing down single track mountain trails. Helmet designers went to work and now there are dozens of lightweight helmets that look good and do their job as well.

The mountain bike was definitely not just a passing fad. They continue to be some of the best selling bicycles on the market. They are seen on every city street as well as off road. They now are made with sophisticated components, such as high quality gears and disc brakes.

Although they haven’t had as important an impact on our lives as the PC, MBs have a similar proud history. Both of these revolutionary inventions began as backyard dreams. Thanks to great ideas and hard work, they became testaments to what great ideas and determination can accomplish.

Uvex XP100 Mountain Bike Helmet

Cyclist on Valley Trail in summer beside Green Lake in the Whistler valley, Photo Mugs Cyclist on Valley Trail in summer beside Green Lake in the Whistler valley, Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, North America….

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