1979 illustration by Pete Barrett, from Chalie Kelly's Hubsite, the BEST website you will ever find.
This Thursday marks yet another Appetite Seminar as throngs of mountain bikers will congregate in downtown Fairfax before heaving (ok, speaking for myself here) up Bolinas-Fairfax Road to complete the Pine Mountain loop in an annual event that has occurred since 1975. You can read about the history of the event HERE on Charlie Kelly's Mountain Bike Hubsite.
Read the recap of last year HERE and check back next week for a potential recap of this year.
So, why choose the 1979 illustration? Well, aside from being drawn to comic style, depictive storytelling, I also found this on Mr. Kelly's stellar website:
I'd encourage you to read it on the website, but I'll do even better than that. You should buy this:
And you should buy it HERE. You can find Darryl Skrabak's clever article tucked within Kelly's pages. Charlie Kelly's recent book is the best gift you can give to a mountain biker of any level. Scratch that, it's the best gift you can give to a person of any level - bad person, kinda ok person, slightly good person, good person... It's the best $29.95 you can spend on a gift this season, it just came out this fall. Intoxicating words and tales, stunning, captivating photos of mountain biking's beginning - a time period even before WTB's official start in 1982. I open my copy and each time I marvel that it could cost $100 and still be an exceptional value. You have your holiday gift instructions.
If you check out the article on Charlie Kelly's website, you'll find very clever musings - that klunker shouldn't have been the appropriate term for the finer dirt worthy trail steeds of 1979 (Kelly and Fisher had started MountainBikes just before,) that bike parking lot ogling and part scrutiny has been a staple since apparently forever, that the spirit of adventure has always been there, and finally, that there's an exponential merit to misery riding, especially when recounted. History seems to have caught up with us. So go out, get some, pay your homage to the longest running annual mountain bike event and buy Fat Tire Flyer as a holiday gift - be it for yourself or others. Happy Turkey Day.