Throwback Thursday: Fat Tire Flyer, Charlie Kelly's Original MTB Mag
All photos courtesy of Fat Tire Flyer.
At this point, mountain biking media is pretty much web-only, with videos and reels taking the place of print and patience. For folks who simply want more in their feed, there's no better time to be a consumer, but you'd be forgiven for feeling nostalgic about the simpler days when a few print mags ran the game. The very first of those early magazines was the Fat Tire Flyer, created by the one and only Charlie Kelly, one of the pioneers of the sport in California's coastal mountains. I'm not going to attempt a full recounting of the history here, as there's nobody better suited to do that than the man himself.
Charlie has been digitizing the entire FTF collection, with a great deal of the issues already available to view on his site. In the pages you'll find a wonderful time capsule of mountain biking's early days, back when things were really cool. The Flyer's full run of existence took place before mine even started, so it's been a real treat to get to dig into the earliest history of this sport I love so much. Sometimes kooky, often rad, there's no shortage of entertainment in the scanned pages, even if it's just the ads.
It's basically a First Look, only 40 years ago.
There are plenty of instances where I'm reminded of how young mountain biking is, relative to other outdoor pursuits - considering skiing's earliest days could date as far back as 8000 BCE. Though there's plenty of debate as to when mountain biking really got going, but any time in the late 1900s is pretty recent in comparison.
Some things didn't age all that well.
Bring back hand-drawn bike ads!
One facet of the FTF archive that surprised me was how strong the local racing scene was back in the day, despite the sport being tiny in comparison to today's scale. Take this race report from the Punk Bike Enduro, a fat tire race in the hallowed woods of Annadel State Park in Northern California. I grew up riding these trails, and they manage to still be plenty exciting even on modern bikes - it's pretty impressive to imagine folks hurtling themselves through the rock gardens on their glorified cruisers.
An ENDURO in 1984? Proof that time is indeed a flat circle.
It's pretty cool to see that some of the brands featured in the Flyer way back then are still making bikes and components at the forefront of the industry. Say what you will about Ibis' industrial design, but the fact that they've gone from the steel frames of yore to the curvy carbon creations of today is a pretty wild evolution.
If you dig around, there are plenty of indications of what's to come as well, with people discussing tire clearance, geometry, brake setup, etc. all in the same way we do now. Sure, today's bikes are more than a little bit better, but the way we discuss them hasn't really changed since the get-go.
Charlie's archive stops around 1990, as that's the year that the sport really exploded, making the cataloging nearly impossible if you aim to collect every last piece of lore. In addition to the many scanned pages of Fat Tire Flyer, Kelly's archive also includes publications and stories from other magazines and media of the day, with some other cycling history sprinkled in for good measure.
Bottle cages haven't changed much, thankfully.
Sick.
I've just cherrypicked a few images that caught my eye, but if the history of our shared passion interests you, there won't be a bad page in the Archive. Head over to the Fat Tire Flyer website to see all the digitized issues. If you want to support Charlie Kelly in his mission to preserve the early days of mountain biking, you can do so by becoming part of the Mountain Bike Legacy Project.
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Must Read This Week
Dropper posts - Hite Rite
Adjustable headsets - Mountaneus
Access issues (especially wilderness access)
Internal cable routing - Klein
Flat vs. Clips (okay these days it's clipless, but still)
Mullet bikes and wheel size debates
Ned Overend crushing everyone
High end domestic vs. mass produced imports
Crank length debates
Jersey's vs. t-shirts debates
Stem length debates
Bar length debates
Now days it's all about what bike you are on (go forbid it's more than 2 years old) what gear you are wearing and mean mugging people in the chairlift line.
Take me back, maybe it's the rose coloured glasses talking. But MTB as a whole was just better back in the 90's.
In the mid seventies when I started riding trails, BMX was the only legitimate trail bike, now that was fun!
Mountain biking on the other hand, didn’t really gain traction until we got suspension. Sure, single speed 29ers were a thing in the late 90’s, but what mountain bikes are capable of now, that’s we keeps me riding!
I don’t reminisce at all for the old days, my Pinion enduro sled is the shite!
The trails didn't suck, because there weren't any dedicated mtb trails. You just went out to explore, and rode everything that was sorta rideable. And it was f*cking great! In fact, it was that sort of riding that makes gravelbikes so popular. Venturing out and making your own decisions instead of just following a trail someone else set out for you.
Thinking mountain biking only gained traction after suspension came around is just factually wrong. Personally I lost interest exactly because of suspension, and bikes getting more and more expensive and complicated.
I am still riding my '94 mounainbike (now with a dirt drop bar and faster rolling tires), as do my friends, and we have a blast.
It was my trials bike, trail bike, DJ bike, DH bike, road bike and BMX bike
No helmet, tshirt, jeans and open finger gloves....come get some
The more 'EXTREME!!1!' mountain biking became, the more bored I got with it. I hardly touched my mtb for years (for trail riding that is, I used it as my daily bike all the time). Then I was a MTB test event, where many brands brought their latest and greatest, and I decided to give these full suspension, wide barred, dropper equipped bikes a fair try… and I hated it. It was like the suspension dampened everything, including all the fun and excitement. What a bore.
Luckily there were two brands that brought gravelbikes too, and after riding those on the technical mtb trail I was stoked! They gave me a deja vu of my pioneering mtb years. The next day I started rebuilding my '94 mtb in to a monstercross/gravel-ish bike, and I have been having a blast ever since.
Chose a dirt drop bar with plenty of flare, because it gives me a wider grip for technical trails, and with the brakes pointing towards each other I can get somewhat aero to. Put some 2.0" wide tires on with a faster rolling gravel thread (hardly any thread in the middle, a bit more knobby on the sides for cornering), and went 1x with the drivetrain. Put on cantilever brakes because they work better with the road brake levers. Chose Microshift Advent for the brifters, rear derailed and 9-speed 11-42 cassette. Oh, and a higher, steeper stem to avoid a too stretched out, too deep position.It's just a simple, but fun and very capable bike. Affordable, and even if something breaks it will be cheap to repair/replace.
Now I run an absolute black oval chain ring. Now people just laugh behind my back. So they tell me..
If you spin a high cadence, like a roadie or a hamster on a wheel, forget it. You’ll hate it.
If you waste energy being out of the saddle, have more core strength than leg strength, and ride Slickrock all day, it’s for you!
And the claim that they span a tooth range higher and lower than the actual is crap. They work like the tooth count they have.
And I won’t ride without one!
I still remember my 9th grade geometry teacher (‘97-9
I’m still not sure how the thing(s) work.. if it’s “slipping” through the low power, nearly vertical crank arm position to keep from bogging, or slipping through to simply speed up the cranks for the “power” stroke.
I’d guess a degree of both.
I’ve heard of the 90° clocking, but I just don’t remember them working that badly back in the day. I think they had more “Biopace effect” than my Absolute Black ring.
Topping out my Black ring in the smallest cog feels silly. I look like I’m dog paddling on a pogo stick!
Oh interesting point..
I ran flats with Biopace since there was no such thing as clipless in the mid ‘80’s. Not that I knew of.. And I never got toe clips to work for me.
Now I’m clipped in and kinda wish I never started.
I’ve done many Moab trips and my (current) oval sprocket kicks ass. Feels totally natural scaling Slickrock steeps. Amazing how the dog paddling effect disappears you’re climbing for your life!
No way..
Then he is a better man than I.
I wonder how much “ovaling” he uses. If it’s off the shelf or something custom for him.
I’ll inform my friends they can stop laughing at me now..
You know, the old Biopace triple ring set may have an advantage over 1x12 oval.
They claimed each ring profile was specific to the condition to which it would be used.
Now we have one.
It took me ten years on the bike to get my cadence from 65 RPMs to 75. I’m a horrible spinner.
After racing two-strokes all my life, I got on a four-stroke 250F and never looked back. Actually looked back once by trying a two stroke again and it was horrible! No weight on the front end!
Now, which is fits into the round hole, and which is oval..?
I’m going four-stroke for oval just because of the added rotational mass of the engine..
My comparison was based on what I hear my friends talk through the years,some of them having tried both types more than once.
The oval chainrings however,I can talk from experience,had an Ofmega (italian brand) copy of Biopace on my first MTB back in '89 and it was crap,now I have ovals on 2 of my 6 bikes and it's great,especially on the low rpm/high torque range,I get the feeling that the bike maintains traccion better and feels easier on the knees.
And guess what? 4 strokes were complete crap back in the day! No one took them seriously enough to build a chassis around one that was worth a damn.
Until they started getting shoehorned in 2 stroke race chassis. Then the benefits could be realized.
You know more than you thought!
Cheers to all of the above!
I was on a CR250 back in the day and couldn’t shake an XR350 in a drag race..!
Led to adding a Moose flywheel weight to my CR.
Where I’m from in the Rocky Mtns, an XR200 is considered the fastest bike for single track. I was trying to keep up with a racer buddy of mine on one with my YZ250f and I couldn’t! The trail was just too tight.
But, my YZF was heavily modified, and would destroy any stock 250f on the track. Even the KTM..
For the woods, my bike didn’t really work. On an MX track, my 250F was unreal.
I’m just sayin, that when the YZ400f came along, the shit got real, and the two-stroke’s days were numbered.
Hmm, touché..
Yes! Exactly!
Maybe someone showed up to an early Mtn bike race on a road bike with a high stem and dusted the whole field.
Where’s the fun in that?
..roadies
They should have stuck to causing traffic jams. On the road.
Lets see who can pick out all or some of the legend's names in the enduro results??
I will also go to Switzerland in September for the European Vintage MTB Festival www.vintagebikemasters.com
Thought of it as a typical tourist trap when I showed up, felt like I was coming back from another planet by the time I left..
I was once looking for an aluminum framed ~2015 SC Tallboy so I could commute on the same bike as my carbon Tallboy.
Gone. Nowhere. A super popular bike that apparently was rolled off the edge of the flat planet.