In 1990 I bought my first Mountain Bike.
I then got a part time job in a small bike shop and had to learn how to build new bikes and fix broken ones.

In those days Mountain Bike brakes were fiddly Cantilevers with shaped washers that adjusted how the pad hit the rim. They also had a connecting wire that ran through a yoke on the activating wire.

I spent months learning how to set this fiddly crap up correctly, to give the right feel on the brake lever, the least amount of noisy pad vibration and still feel firm enough to actually stop a speeding mountain bike! I got so good that I could set up Scott Pederson Self Energising Cantilevers on Campag Stheno curved rims, with out the pad rubbing the tyre. I was a great Bike mechanic in 1990.

Suspension hit the market big time and Rock Shox released the long travel Judy DH, that had 60mm of travel and an oil damping cartridge. I trained on Ballistic Forks, because they were going to be the next big thing according to my boss. After snapping my third pair, I gave up on them and not long after so did the rest of the UK mountain bike market. I can to this day remember still how strip and rebuild crappy Ballistic Long travel forks.

I ended up working in a bike shop again in 2008, my skills were obsolete, even cheap and nasty bikes have disk brakes now and every one else has V-Brakes with their one single wire to activate them, the Bike shop boss had never even heard of Scott Pederson Self energising brakes.

I miss the old school simplicity of mountain bikes, when seven gears on the back was cutting edge. Some one laughed at my bike recently because I still run Shimano Deore, seven speed Thumbshifters on an 8 speed block. It works well, but I do not think any of the modern bike mechanics I had to work with could fix my bike (which has Hope disks front and rear, full XT gears and a carbon fibre handle bar, I am not that much of an old lady yet!).
( Rev. Jayneflakes Buy my book, I need the cash for drugs and hookers, Sun 3 Jul 2011, 1:11, Reply)