What goes around comes around.

It was back in the late 80's when I got my first Mountain Bike - a Raleigh Montage. It had 18 gears and a Baby Blue paint job - not unlike the sort of Blue you see some Oranges painted these days.

Back then the idea of cycling 'off-road' was frowned upon by the masses, not yet familiar with our two-wheeled ways. The Bridleways were the preserve of the Horse community and if you rode down a footpath and met some walkers you'd be met by a tirade of abuse, red socks and walking sticks.
Fellow Mountain Bikers were few and far between - it was a surprise to see other tread marks in the dirt and you could go a whole day without seeing another rider on the trails.
The early races I entered were predominantly Cyclo Cross events (a few laps of a muddy school field) with a small sub category for this new fangled Mountain Bike thing.  The general attitude was that we were a phase "which won't catch on"
Analogies can be made to how the early Snowboarders were accepted by the Skiing community - in fact the Lurid dress code of neon coloured clothing and whacky hair does was something that crossed our sports in these early days.

Bored with just having myself for company I decided to reach out to any other 'closet' Mountain Bike riders out there by forming a club. "We will meet at the local car park and ride all the good bits of trail I know" I thought. So an advert was placed in a copy of the now defunct Mountain Biker International with a meeting place (Water Meadow car park in Chesham)and a time (10am) Be there or be square.
To my suprise and delight I rode round to the car park to find a cluster of other MTB'ers unpacking bikes from cars or tweaking the odd bolt here and tyre pressure there.
The rides were a success and the club got a name - The Mud Monsters Mountain Bike Club - and we soon established a core of regular riders. A newsletter was produced 'Descent' which contained race reviews and product tests with headlines such as 'Shock Horror!! Jim attempts suicide drop off' and 'Club member tries to trash Raleigh Torus at the Bomb Hole'

We entered races with the Malvern Hills Classic being our equivalent of Glastonbury, did night rides and even did events for charity like fancy dress bicycle hockey on mountain bikes. At it's height we had over fifty riders on the books.
Fashions came and went (remember Bula hats?) 18 gears turned to 21 and tyres got wider. Regretably the rides became less frequent as time went on and eventually the club disbanded - but the riding and racing continued if be it in a more solitary manor.

In the spirit of the title of this post 'What goes around comes around' well, look at what we have now! Dedicated trail centres are the norm, I've lost count of the sub-categories MTB's come in nowadays - XC/DH/4X/AM?, some MTB's have 30 gears and suspension and hydraulics are the norm, but look at what hasn't changed - we still get grief from the red sock brigade, we still ride the same trails from time to time and although MTB fashions have got so much better since the early days I'm still not convinced by the downhill 'pyjama' look.
I'm still in contact with some of the riders from the early days thanks to the wonders of Social Media and I'm still doing a newsletter with product tests - only it's not produced on a typewriter now - it's on line and you're reading it!
Here's to the future, thanks to the past.