We recently sent off a big boxes of photos from the pre-digital days to be scanned. 1,310 photos in all, most of which were comical due to their age and our personal lack of age at the time they were taken.
This single photo though, from around the North Bend area of the Seattle suburbs, is a time capsule unto itself filled with nuggets of my personal mountain biking history. back 30 years or more of mountain biking and also is proof positive that I have never been a slave to cycling fashion
Specialized Air Force fabric covered ultralight helmet – not a fashion statement by me, but the helmet was more fashionable than the thick hard plastic buckets of the day. It was also shortly to be recognized as more dangerous too because the fabric would tend to catch on things and not let go. So rather than have your head sliding down the road or trail after a crash in a hard plastic bucket, the ultralight fabric & mesh helmet would drag, snag and twist your neck up until it broke. Guess I dodged a bullet.- Riding Jersey (aka Cotton T-shirt) – stained and heavily worn, sporting ventilated fabric for to keep me cooler on hot days
- Cycling Shorts – cotton gym shorts – not lycra and looking a lot less worn than the T-Shirt, could possibly be padded biking undies under there, maybe?
Fanny Pack – I’v just recently returned to riding with fanny pack rather than pack on occasions where I don’t need hydration bladder or a lot of other gear simply because it is cooler (temperature) than wearing a pack. It is quite possible, though not certain, that I may have just worn that very same Mountainsmith waist bag last week. No, it’s not my Mountainsmith has yellow detailing and it looks like I can see a red zipper pull in the photo.- Rhode Gear cycling specific sunglasses – which in hindsight were probably just regular safety glasses rebranded by some, now rich, marketing genius.
- Cycling gloves – can’t tell brand, maybe Pearl Izumi. I didn’t really ever scrimp much on gloves after the first time I crashed a road bike on pavement. These were likely real leather rather than the faux type.
Now, older and wiser, I have gotten a new T-shirt.