BMX Plus! February 1980 Review of The MountainBike

Charlie Kelly was on the Cycle Jerks podcast recently. There are lots of great stories in that interview, but one of my favorites was about the review of the first MountainBike in the February 1980 issue of BMX Plus, where they managed to misspell Tom Ritchey's name! Charlie has it nicely documented on fattireflyer.com

Gary Fisher and I started “MountainBikes” in the fall of 1979, with nine Tom Ritchey frames. One of the bikes we built went to Monte Ward, whose friend Dean Bradley was the editor of BMX Plus! magazine. Dean was blown away.

We ran our first ad in that issue. This brought us to the attention of Southern California off road riders., where we found kindred souls.

Dean didn’t even know how to spell Tom Ritchey’s name. We didn’t even have decals yet, so it didn’t appear anywhere on the frame, but he made the most profound assessment of the new bike…ever.

“This month’s 26-inch test bike is called a Mountain Bike. Chances are you have never heard of it before, but believe me, you will be hearing a lot about this revolutionary bike in the future.”

Read the full BMX Plus! review at fattireflyer.com