Mar
18
Chip Smith, our main PR guy and great friend at SOAR Communications, wrote a nice story on their blog last week about hearing of Trek founder Dick Burke’s passing recently and his memories of his first bike – a Trek – and how it inspired him to start riding. My plan was to just re-print an excerpt here and link to the whole piece and as I started writing this, I remembered that it was a Trek that got me into riding, too. While Chip’s was a ‘79 touring model, mine was a circa ‘90 930 mountain bike. Here’s a picture of Chip and his bike (and a bit more hair, as he put it):
My Trek was definitely a child of the late ’80’s. And not just because it was a mountain bike. It was mostly black, but had fluorescent green lettering and highlights. I thought it was a hot looking bike at the time.
Not having ridden since I was a kid back in junior high, I borrowed by Brazilian college roommate’s bike for the Summer. I was staying in my college town to do an internship and said I’d hold onto his bike for the Summer while he was back home in Rio. I was on the rowing team in college and thought that the biking would help me stay in shape for my senior year season. Even though it was an mtb, I don’t think I took it off-road once that summer. The Trek and I just did long rides on the road everyday. The bike had those crazy Scott mtb handlbars (with lime green grips and bar wrap) that curved around to the front into an aero-bar position that I used alot. I thought I was all aero on my off-road bike with knobby tires. Groups of roadies going the other way gave me funny looks. The baggy soccer shorts probably added to the visual humor.
One of the things on that bike that got me hooked on riding and on bikes themselves was a piece of technology: push-button Rapid-Fire shifters. Not the more-recent trigger-style, mind you, but the original two thumb-actuated button shifters. I thought it was so cool that you could just push a button and the bike would shift. That was my first experience with indexed shifting. And while the shifter self-destructed later that Summer, it was enough to get me hooked on bike technology.
When I graduated from college a year later, my parents offered to buy me a graduation gift. I asked for a bike. And since I only ever rode on the road, I asked for a road bike. Even though I lusted after those carbon tubes-bonded-to-aluminum-lug Treks that my college town shop sold (Bicycle Alley in Worcester, MA), back home at my local shop (Greenwich Bicycles in Greenwich, CT) I ended up buying another brand (a ‘92 Bridgestone RB-1 that I still have, btw). My dad was so impressed with that Trek I borrowed, that he bought his own Trek mtb (“for more than I paid for my first motorcycle!” he commented) that same Summer and eventually an OCLV road bike (the’99 Lance Armstrong Tour win commemorative model) and got into riding seriously.
So while I never met the guy and didn’t have an opportunity to meet his son John at the BLC recently, his efforts in founding Trek back ‘76 played a role in Chip and I getting into cycling. Thanks, Mr. Burke!
Comments
5 Responses to “Thank You Dick Burke and Trek”
Fun post, Rich.
My first “real” bike was a yellow Schwinn three-speed, with a metallic yellowish/gold banana seat with chopper handle bars and a wheelie bar in the back. I earned it selling Christmas cards door-to-door as a Cub Scout while living in East Palo Alto, the “poor side of the tracks” to affluent Palo Alto, California, home to Stanford University. (Read more here.)
And back in the day, MTBs were still a dream and road bikes were NOT seen in my hood.
Keep up the posts, Rich.
David (“Poppa P”) Politis
P.S. My next bike (a Schwinn 10-speed that weighed something like 50-billion-pounds) didn’t come ’til 1975 while I was in Washington, D.C. for a couple of years.
Going back aways, my earlier bikes were first a generic yellow Stingray-type bike with solid rubber tires and a green banana seat, then a brick red Schwinn Scrambler and finally a blue Maruishi ten-speed with a huge speedometer on the handlebars and battery-powered turn signal hanging from the saddle. These got me up to about age 12. The Trek was my first ‘adult’ bike.
[...] storage, rubber bands, and frame protection.Rich "Interbike" Kelly on Trek founder Dick Burke, who passed away last week.The U.S. Ambassador to Denmark is a cycling [...]
RIP: Rich’s Rapidfire Shifter!
great article and so cool that your Dad got into cycling big-time.
that picture of Chip with hair is rad, too!
Rich & Chip,
You whipper snappers…..I was selling these early Treks in retail when you two were buying them for your first “real” bikes.
My first real bike was an early 70’s Raleigh “Competition” with Zeus and TA compnents. Tubulars no less…I was 14.
Lance