1979 MountainBikes Publicity Photos

When Gary Fisher and I went into business as MountainBikes in the fall of 1979, we needed photographs of the bike we wanted to sell. Mere studio shots were not sufficient for selling this new concept in bicycling, we needed photos of the bike in action. Today, if you want a photo of a mountain bike “in action,” the rider would be doing a back flip superman no-hander tail whip tsunami, but that standard had not been set in 1979.

There was only one example of our product, and that was Gary’s personal machine. Our inventory consisted of nine bicycle frames built by Tom Ritchey and fronted to us because he had not been able to get rid of them in Palo Alto. But a frame is not a bicycle. You need to show a bicycle in order to sell a bicycle.

Between the two of us, we owned a couple of cameras, but mine was a cheap Instamatic and Gary’s was an incredible large format Hasselblad, part of his collection from the days ten years earlier when he had his own light show, “The Lightest Show On Earth.” I volunteered to take the photos, since it was Gary’s bike, but he didn’t trust me to use the complicated camera, so it fell to me to ride the bike.

We went out past Deer Park School in Fai8rfax, on the fire road that goes to Five Corners. No real challenging terrain, a fire road and a creek bed next to it, near a convenient hillside for posed static photos.

We wanted to show the various aspects of the new bike, and one of those aspects was how light it was compared to a vintage Schwinn. I held the bike out at arm’s length for the photo, but as impressive as the photo is, it took a fast shutter speed to catch it because you can’t do that for even a second.

After that, some action, so we went with a photo of a cyclocross carry while I jumped over the boards that had been put up to keep people from riding their bicycles past the side of the gate. Of course I was wearing the current style in mountain biking footwear, a pair of Red Wing boots. Not easy to look nimble with a relatively heavy bike compared to a ‘cross bike, and weights on your feet.

Now carrying up something too steep to ride.

A word about the t-shirt. In the photos I am wearing a shirt printed by Bob Burrowes, one of the original Repack Riders. The image on the front is Bob.

Our action photos were barely action at all, but at least they showed me riding in the woods. I’m including outtakes because why not?