1996 Atlanta Games MTB

As if you don’t have enough bike racing to watch this weekend…

10x doper than 2016 if you aks me. (that’s a loss of .5 dopeness factor every year. Shocking!)

The new laps around a pump track with obstacles style is cool though, but nothing like this.

There’s something spiritual about MTB. A deeper connection to the woods and nature. Be alone on a desolate trail at dusk as the forest comes to life and the sunlight fades to understand it. For a lot of people it’s an escape from their urban/suburban confines. On the pump track this is lost.

Imagine the amazing terrain the hills around Rio naturally offer for MTB…

I can’t imagine Olympic skateboarding.

What’s it going to be half pipe/vert contest? Are they going to put national uniforms on them? Give them an Olympic training facility? Coaches and drug testing?! Skateboarding without weed is like…

I don’t know how I feel about that.

Barf…

…actually. That’s how I feel about that.

The article below about mountain biking…in 24 years you’ll be able to read the same thing for skating.

Seems bad. Skateboard team kits and carbon boards coming soon.

I wouldn’t mind some 70’s action like slalom or downhill. That wouldn’t be damaged with uniforms. Bring back the trucks with shocks in them. Stacy Peralta hand sanders.

just thinking…

I was talking to Mat T about bike clothes a while ago, it’s a hard sell for some people.

You got to think about it like this…

Would you roll up to the skate park in bike clothes and try to shred?

No way! You’d get verbally and maybe physically destroyed.

Same thing on the bike. Are you going to show up for a 2 hour plus road ride in t-shirt, boxers and baggy shorts?

Wedgie, saddle sores and discomfort await so you don’t feel unstylish.

I dig the t-shirt and shorts mtb style but to tell you the truth I see a lot more people in full kit in the trails these days.

Times have changed.

(Locally look at the Wissahickon. Over the years it has become more and more streamlined. The paths are smoother and quicker, lots of rocks have been cleared, it’s easier for a novice like me- that’s for sure. But nothing like it was.)