Quantcast

Fairfax, Caliifornia honors its MTB roots

Repack Rider

Monkey
Oct 8, 2007
183
66
Marin County, California
Mountain bike racing started in Fairfax, California with the Repack downhill races between 1976 and 1984. At first the town was a little undecided about its place in bicycle history, but then over the next few decades thousands of mountain bikers came to town and spent millions of bucks.

That turned things around. Fairfax's economy hums along nicely on two wheels, and now the town has erected a permanent recognition of the guys everybody laughed at while they were changing the world.

Although the entire project is not complete, yesterday Fairfax blocked the main street for a festival called "Streets for People," and the main motif of the project was unveiled.





The project was paid for thorough donations, and donors receive recognition with their names on ceramic "sprockets."













The image of the "Repack rider" shown at the top is a reversed version of this 1978 photo of me.

 

dump

Turbo Monkey
Oct 12, 2001
8,195
4,419
Great stuff, I saw this when I passed through yesterday!
 

stoney

Part of the unwashed, middle-American horde
Jul 26, 2006
21,519
7,068
Colorado
Now if only we could ride somewhere other than the boy scout camp...
 

H8R

Cranky Pants
Nov 10, 2004
13,959
35
I rode Pine Mountain once. It should be called, "Grassy Wind-swept Hot and Pine-less" mountain. I came home wind burned and utterly baked.

I like Marin though, at least for the history of the sport. I never ride there.
 

JohnE

filthy rascist
May 13, 2005
13,430
1,949
Front Range, dude...
This "mountain bike" thing seems to be really catching on. I hear tell they are even on that there interweb now...


(Repack, is that really you? Cool...)