The heritage of “mixed-terrain” rides has far-reaching roots in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. Logging roads, farm paths, ex-military routes all snake through the hills of this region in various stages of disrepair and recollection. Many of these have been turned into the ubiquitous “Fire Roads” which make up many of the favored routes away from traffic.
Beginning sometime back in the late 70’s, cycling iconoclast Jobst Brandt led folks on what became known as the legendary “Jobst Rides”. These were cross-country and fire road epics which were tackled on “bikes” - before mountain bikes as a genre existed. Flickr and RBW List buddy David E. found this link to a run of about 100 photos from these rides - it’s interesting to see the simple machines they used to deal with such a variety of terrain. You can almost see the wheels turning in Tom Ritchey’s head as they negotiate the lumps and bumps of the routes. (And you can certainly tell the by the level of exhaustion in the faces of most riders that these weren’t easy little jaunts…)
http://www.geocities.com/rayhosler/coastrangeslides/coastrange.html
(Note - it takes a while to load)
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:35 pm Hey Jim, I think you have a free radical in your link to the Jobst pics. :-)
May 23rd, 2008 at 7:21 pm Oops. Pardon my space! Fixed now, so it should work mo’ bettah!
May 24th, 2008 at 4:05 pm Great photos - thanks for posting.
May 25th, 2008 at 8:17 pm Thanks for the shout-out! :-) Those look like such great rides. Pure underbiking! The link was forwarded to me by another flickrer through the I’m convinced that any bike can go anywhere, just some are slower at it and wear you out a bit more in the process…
May 25th, 2008 at 8:18 pm My html skillz need help…
May 27th, 2008 at 12:40 pm To the south we must venture and investigate!
May 27th, 2008 at 4:51 pm Well, it goes back even further than Jobst… http://reneherse.com/images/Photo01-1.JPG
May 29th, 2008 at 4:05 pm This brought tears to my eyes. With a bad leg for about 1-2 months I have been limited to very mellow rides with very little dirt. Can’t wait to get well and go on more epic adventures. ABTD, any bike, any terrain, any day.
May 29th, 2008 at 5:29 pm Carlos - I’m really sorry to hear that leg has been such trouble - seems like it’s been a rough spring for all of us this year. We definitely deserve a nice long, mixed-terrain epic ride with good weather and the usual excellent company! - Jim