No Cops, No Cars, No Concrete: Gary Fisher’s Life on Two Wheels

We've had a few living legends from the world of cycling on the podcast over the years and today

I'm delighted to be adding another one to that glittering roster. Gary Fisher is one of the

founding fathers of mountain biking. His life in and sometimes out of cycling is the subject of a

fabulous new book called Being Gary Fisher and as well as an interview with Gary I'm delighted to

be joined by two of the people who made that book happen. Longtime friend of the podcast Guy

Andrews who published the book and Guy Kestevan who helped Gary convert his swirling technicolor

galaxy of thoughts and recollections into a linear sequence of letters and spaces known as words,

sentences and paragraphs. Welcome both of you to the podcast. Hi Jack, thanks for having us on.

Hi Jack. I'm going to assume that a lot of the people

listening to the podcast don't know who Gary Fisher is or may have heard the name or seen it

on a bike or two but don't really know much more than that. So before we hear from Gary in my

interview with him can we take a moment to fill those people in in the briefest terms and this

is going to be a real challenge for you in sort of boiling it down on the part that Gary Fisher

played in the genesis of mountain biking and also

why you were so keen to work with him on the book. Oh crikey that's that's such a

such a difficult one to answer quickly. I think the one thing I'll say is I think it's Gary's

personality and ability to tell the story I guess was the bit that was exciting from a book

publishing point of view and also you know he's such a colourful character I mean that in this

broader sense of the term because he's what he's what I think he's done is he actually turned

cycling on its head. He was you know he was from a traditional if you like cycling background but

his life took a lot of series of twists and turns and as it happened he bought I think what he

bought to cycling was a just a slightly new way of looking at it and I think that's the unique

part of the story and I think that's the unique part of Gary Fisher is is that

his ability to to to get across his passion for not just cycle sport but cycling as a as a as a

lifestyle I guess for want of a bell word. I think that's the thing that stands him as as probably the

biggest name in the cycling business from that point of view. He just has this incredible ability

to to tell a story which we explain in the book it's it's a lifetime achievement if you like a

to get to that point. So Guy Kesterman it's going to fall to you I'm afraid to fill us in on some of

the some of the basic facts of who is Gary Fisher and why does Gary Fisher matter? Well for a start

he was the guy who coined the phrase mountain bikes that was the sign above the shop he set up

in the late 70s in California and he failed to patent it that's another long story but he was

the guy who coined the phrase mountain bikes before that they were clunkers or they were

woodsy bikes and that's kind of an extrapolation.

He was the guy who made mountain biking a marketable sport and recreation and he was the

guy who really pushed it from an experiential side and as in his own words sold the shit out of it

not just locally but globally and you know he went from you know the early mountain bikes were more

expensive twice the price of a top of the range Cornago at the time and he made not just mountain

bikes but bikes as a whole really really aspirational so not only did he invent a sport

that kind of captured the extreme sort of the growing extreme sports scene of that day but he

also made it the kind of thing that you wanted in the back of pictures in flats on tv programs if

you're trying to do aspirational stuff there you know it became a real lifestyle accessory something

that cycling had never been before up to that point bikes had been something that you only used

if you couldn't drive a car or if you wanted to put your bike on the road or if you wanted to put your

someone is a bit down on their luck and all of a sudden you know it was what you stuck on top of

your fancy car it was something you did and showed off about doing it wasn't something you kind of hid

as a dirty secret you know it was properly revolutionary on that level what he did with

the mountain bike you know he's gone from a tiny little backwater sports being on the front of time

magazine to being you know a multi-million selling lifestyle magazines across the globe

and he's pretty much the guy he's the prime mover behind all

that well thank you both and i think it's time to hear from gary himself and after my chat with

gary i want to come back to you and add a bit of context and your own reflections as there was so

much about the story that i wasn't able to cover in the time that i did have with gary so i began

at the beginning and asked gary to cast his own mind back to the moment when he first fell in love

with cycling it was like when i was like

10 and 11 and i had some local friends and i had a raleigh colt three-speed and we would fly around

town and it was our freedom out of our little small block we could go all over the neighborhood

and with my two best friends at the time that was it you know that was the beginning and um

you know i i still hold i still have those feelings

i'd still be able to get it you know it's a miracle we can have so much fun in under 20 miles

an hour and so on the one hand i suppose that could be a rational thing you know freedom for

a child under their own power to go and do what they want with their friends to get out from

beneath the eyes of parents and and carers and that kind of thing and that's part of it but is

there a i guess you might call it a kinesthetic

side of it the side of it that is felt in your body and in the way in which your body interacts

with your mind that is the world of sensations but can you can you put that into words well

my wife will say to me uh you're getting twitchy i think you should go on a bike ride

and it helps you forget and it helps you remember that's what it does and we know

that

and now we have more medical peer-reviewed papers that tell us that there's a lot of reasons uh you

know besides just the endorphins and you know the physicality that the fitness and everything is

this movement that we make we go from side to side skater does it surfer does it

bike rider does it it actually makes us happy

and i'm a great believer that this world could use a lot more happiness

something that i experience with people who have not ridden a bike for a long time

is when they get on a bike just makes them smile and they rekindle quite a lot of sensations

and ideas that they thought they'd left behind in childhood it kind of makes us young again in in

in mind if not in body well that's that's the

biggest uh disease of all right it's like uh losing your childhood losing that uh that sort

of like curiosity that happiness you know that spontaneousness you know man we die in stages

you know and that's i just it's so evident

so let's so let's let's turn back to those um early days um what was the status of the bicycle

in 1950s america

what did the bicycle signify well it it got very close to disappearing you know they were um

1966 was the first uh national road race they had had in over 30 years

uh bike racing was mostly on the track um and it existed in the east coast and the midwest and

just about died you know completely in california and it was you know the whole

1955

was when they started building the interstate freeway system and it was the most money that

the united states uh ever spent you know and hasn't spent anywhere near that much money on

any type of project and it was based on a fantasy you know more than anything and a great uh idea

in a way that didn't work out the way people figure it out you know and had no facility for

bicycle riders or pedestrians

and the vision of the future in the united states was going to be 100 motorized and so bicycles were

seen as something from the past well from the past for kids or for a dui victim you know a real loser

so to fall in love with the bicycle at that age that you were at 10 11 was to go against the

grain of society yeah you would see a bike

rider riding at that time and like you either knew exactly who they were or you stopped you

know exchange phone numbers or like they were a kid or a dui victim like that they were just

it was like that's how few bike riders there were in the san francisco bay and in all the united

states and was there anything that you could say that within that those kind of people that

that was common between them some a common thread or was everyone different and freakish in their

own way well they were a lot of different and freakish in their own ways but they were like

they're all like uh used to being outliers uh i mean definitely it's really funny and you know

like we'd ride down in san mateo county and when i was like 13 14 and and we uh ride through la

honda um it'd be an 80 mile ride and we'd see the hell's angels out there you know and they'd look

at us and we'd look at them and we both

nod we were outlaws you know two-wheeled outlaws you know they always gave us respect you know

that's funny and uh so you felt like that you know you definitely

but the bike riders were bold you know and in that they didn't care they walk into a restaurant

with their jerseys and stuff on you don't understand it that's fine it's okay and there

wasn't any conflict that i remember except for the police i mean i got stopped i was a kid

don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know

You know, I get stopped by the cops sometimes.

What are you doing out here?

You're supposed to ride on the sidewalk.

You can't be in the road.

That's ridiculous.

You can't ride on the sidewalk and make mileage or anything.

You know, and the cops would make me cry.

And I want to go home and all this.

You know, it's horrible.

You know, but that was the only thing.

There wasn't as much car traffic.

You know, people didn't go out there in those places as much.

So it was really light traffic.

And it was just like a miracle that, you know, I'd ride 80 miles on the Sunday ride when I was like 14.

And that was normal, you know, and club riding.

It was just so much fun.

I couldn't imagine not doing it ever.

It seems like a very abrupt turn from this kid who was going to races, riding out, doing these big rides and the empty roads of Northern California.

And suddenly you're in the thick of 1960s counterculture, doing light shows for the Grateful Dead, the Hate Ashbury scene, the whole thing.

There are a lot of people who say I was there.

You were really there.

I was, you know, it's like Jack Leary, Timothy's son.

He was my best friend.

You know, I worked for the Bear.

He was a guy who made more LSD than anybody in the world.

And, you know, I still stayed.

I stayed in touch with him until he passed a few years ago, you know.

And like Ken Kesey, used to hang out on his farm and talk with him.

I was a kid, you know.

I built a geodesic dome with him one time, you know.

And they were like, they're all like famous people.

Mountain Girl.

Oh, my God.

She's, you know, Garcia, Jerry Garcia.

Garcia taught me how to roll the J, man.

You know, how to clean the weed, the whole thing as a kid.

Like 15.

I met Jerry and I'd hang out.

I go with Jerry a lot.

I go to his house.

And Jerry said to me, you know, Mountain Girl is his girlfriend.

There was all kinds of stuff.

You know, I was really good friends with the manager.

Really grateful to John McIntyre for a long time.

Bobby Weir.

You know, we went on like a 10-day trip one time up to Montana, mountain biking, fighting clear-cutting with, oh, man.

With John Oates from Holland Oates.

And mountain biking and everything.

That was like in the 80s.

And the critical part was there in the 60s.

There was a lot of great brains there.

You know, it's like people thinking about consciousness expansion and about society improvement and what could happen and all that.

And it was an incredibly exciting time because it was like some big change in everything.

You know, it just, it was the Vietnam War and all that.

I mean, and.

Yeah.

People were protesting being shipped off to this place and killing people that had no reason to kill, you know, it's crazy times, you know, and we had that sitting as a kid, you had that sitting on your chest is like you could be drafted and sent off the next year around the San Francisco Bay Area with all my friends.

Everybody was figuring out a way to get out of it because it was like, you know, you could be called up and then it was like the whole nuclear threat too.

I mean, we were told, you know, yeah, get under use.

You had to sit at your chairs and your desk at school, bend over really hard and kiss your ass.

You had that type of pressure.

And that that created a lot of change, you know, in people.

And it's the same like what we've been going through this last you know, it's not over yet situation.

And this is to me, it's hilarious because it goes right back to the LSD was a very like interesting drug in that.

It was like.

Yeah.

It was like.

micrograms is what you would take and that's like that's the tiny tiny amount you know and back then

you'd take 50 100 micrograms and now that's come back you know it's sort of like in silicon valley

they're doing that but they'll do 10 micrograms which is much more reasonable i mean we did

things way too much to excess there's no doubt and then came in um you know really some like cocaine

that stuff is not good for an organized brain it creates a very disorganized brain

so i have this i have this picture of of of bike racing cycling and kind of parties concerts

happenings acid like fighting over your soul and like are you going in and out are you managing

both at the same time what's happening how's it working i was a kid i wanted to do a light show

too because that was communication you know it was like and the big communicator at the time was radio

uh for the bands and everything they get exposure on radio like crazy and light shows well that came

to the realization that like we're not going to get on the network television there's no such thing

as video at the time you know it wasn't that thing there isn't what there is today and you know you

became sort of like a pawn you needed to work for a rock band and that's not really where i wanted

to go on the whole thing and there were 50 light shows in the san francisco bay area and a lot of

the light shows were on the show for 50 bucks a night and you'd burn we'd burn a hundred dollars

worth of bulbs a night in 60s money you know it was crazy we had 10 people on the show this was a

big deal you know we couldn't operate in those sort of margins and that's sort of a thing and

the biggest promoter in the bay area bill graham he like said i hate all you light show guys i'm

gonna pay you a hundred bucks a night and what he did the trick he did is he had a passageway

went from the light show booth he went up in the attic go across the way and he would write down

the stars so all these kids didn't want to come meet the stars they didn't and the show was crap

you know the light show was garbage you know it wasn't it uh and it stopped being a real art form

and just sort of being awful and at the same time my own personal health was doing the nightlife was

not for me you know and i went on a ride with an old friend of mine down in la i was down there

visiting my grandparents and we rode for 10 miles and i had to sleep the rest of the day and i said

wrong i gotta start riding the bike again and i started riding and i got i got in good shape

quick you know it really worked and it was intoxicating oh my god my first race i came back

you know i did it was this uh criterium up in davis california and all these big racers you

know that i'd known when i was a teenager that were like wow these are the big guys

were there and so the last lap i took a flyer you know with about a half a lap to go was a

one mile course

and um man i got pipped on the line by like four people you know or three people like a fourth

place and that that like man they never let me do that again so you know i started making a comeback

and i i got second in turn nevada city and i blew the sprint i just totally blew the sprint on that

one could have won that one so easy and i'm like oh and so at the same time as you're doing this

road racing there's the kind of

beginnings of a sort of semi-organized off-road scene and we're not talking about cyclocross here

we're talking about something different well that that was it wasn't much you know uh as far as

being organized you know the uh we had our race you know the repack race you know so it was a the

first sort of dirt uh time trial you know charlie kelly pretty much you know the first time trial

did that and i helped them do it in the beginning and i managed to win the thing a few times and then

set the record on it you know and it was a scary thing for me but um that was about it well how

about how about these people you mentioned the larkspur canyon gang i mean that sounds what a

great name they were a lot of fun they were my friends in high school they were doing like drum

circles the most organized things and they'd have races but it was like races within their own you

know community it was tiny it was a bunch of high school friends and there was one guy older guy

casey sana band and casey sana band was a drummer you know conga drums and they sort of invented the

drum circle around here and they casey would put on these events called the dog ball you know and

it was like mostly just drumming and everything and sometimes you'd be in the city and they do

a poster for it that's as that was as organized as they ever got you know

because and the other thing that they do is a derby night uh derby time and derby time is like

somebody gets some beer you know either a keg or like a bunch of six packs drag them out into

the woods into like a place where like a few trails came together big wide spot and uh you

know for the first hour would be cocktail hour you'd be drinking beer and you'd be

riding your bike around your clunker with uh you know a beer in one hand and you know

that to spill so much and then you get to serious derbying and derbying was like where you

would go in front of somebody stop and try to get them to fall down okay and then if you fell down

other people could ride over your bike that was like okay the end of the night would be a bike

pile and the bikes would get piled up on top of each other and people bullshit smoke weed and all

that you know and then drag their bikes and their parts out of the woods you know that was it wasn't

organized at all you know it was just a party scene going on but with bikes the bikes were

part of it that's what it's interesting to me definitely well as a road rider you get to like

around in your training all the time you get to know all your roads and i mean all your roads

and in all your roads within like 50 mile radius you know all the roads you know everything and

any new road you want and you get done with all of them and then you like we switch to like

you put your bike over the fence and go along a gravel road and that was a big deal right

and so this there was part that i do with it you know but no the canyon gang was all about

thrills more uh rip tear shred gotta get some air and that you know we did the other part you know

that the go through some gravel gravel riding and that happened in the 70s in a totally different

place that would be like yopes brandt he was like oh my god i'm not gonna do that i'm gonna do that

hardcore road rider that i knew and i'd go on these it'd be a hundred mile ride and include

you know 20 miles 30 miles of dirt you know and you'd ride the classic tire was it can't be out

of domundo clement 27 millimeter tire 700 c sew up you know and that was a you know you try to

get your hands on some of those or else you took a couple of sets of tires you know draped over

your shoulders because they were going to be flats you know and uh you know that that that was a

i got an intro to gravel with that but and we did some cyclocross or road cross you know but

the canyon was a totally different thing canyon boys and that was you know we're going to go as

fast as we can down this this thing like one of the rides uh trails we like to do is a thing

called roller coaster and i did it the other day and it's you know it's a classic you know as far

as like up and down man you get zero gravity on the up parts and everything it was great you know

that was sort of a the new thing of like wow man it's

because i'd take a cross bike off road you know in the early 70s and like you'd have to take you

know a few pairs of a few tires with you and you wind up you know patching tires for for a couple

hours you know every time you go ride real pain and you couldn't go really fast on the descents

you know it's just too rocky and you know you look at like the birthplace of cross and where

cross is really big well man they got a lot of sand some roots and not a lot of rocks you know

it's a really different animal you know so it's a

it's you know it's funny how things came along but um the whole thing um clunkers

was with fred wolf he was a guy who like organized a lot of the rides you know and i'd come along

i'd go out on my training ride and uh in the morning you know i might ride 100 miles you know

on a road bike and then call up in the afternoon say hey we're gonna do a moonlight ride an

afternoon ride or something and you just you know i just go in what i was wearing which is

levi's denim shirts stuff like that just around the house you know put on a pair of either you

know running shoes so i use those a lot of the time and sometimes you use steel toe boots just

if it was like big rocks and stuff and so these were these were social rides or or races they

were social rides they weren't racing where did so how did the racing come out of these social rides

this this sort of clunkers thing when did you you know because it's one thing to go out for a

race and then you just enjoy each other's company enjoy being in nature and then suddenly you're

racing them yeah well that was the repack yeah and the repack it was a few years of that and then

there started to be other races and the other big race okay the other big race this is the one

was uh rosita to the sea and this is put on by a guy victor vincente and it was i think it was 80

1980 81 but this was uh announced at the long beach trade show

Victor Vincente. Oh, my God. This is Michael Hiltner. He changed his name. Michael Hiltner. I knew him in the 60s. He won that inaugural National Road Championships down in L.A.

You know, and I think it was 66, you know, and he was, you know, on the Olympic team and I think 1960, 64. He was a really top notch, you know, road racer. And he dropped acid, man. And he and he changed his name and he did a cross country ride.

And he went all the way west coast to the east coast, liked it so much, turned around and came back.

And so he, like, broke the record for riding across the United States and changed his name to Victor Vincente of America. So because he did, he was victorious twice.

Anyway, here in the, you know, here we are down at the show, 1980, and we're on like just a 10 by 10 piece of concrete, you know, I mean, it was like our very first show.

And there's Victor. He's got a show. He's like got a lawn chair, one of his bikes.

And he's.

He made an off road bike with two 20 inch wheels, you know, with alloy rooms. And he was putting on a race, Zeta to the sea. And everybody, there were a lot of people, not everybody, but a huge amount of people at the show were like speculating on who is going to win the race.

You know, is it going to be a BMX rider? Was it going to be a road rider? Was it going to be a cyclocrosser or one of these newfangled?

I called a mountain bike, you know, and a lot of people came and the press came, you know, the bicycle press came to the event.

And I had ridden my bike two weeks before that we'd ridden on a training ride from San Francisco to L.A., you know, and sort of a circuitous route.

And Greg LeMond was on that ride and his dad, Bob, and everything. And I was fit and ready to go.

So the race started and my major competition was Ron Scarron.

Ron Scarron and Steve Grossman, his teammate from North Hollywood, Wheelman.

Ron was a multiple Olympian, you know, and had won the nationals a number of times, you know, both on the pursuit on the track.

And he was a criterium specialist, you know, and a good road racer.

So they were on like these titanium Teledyne Titan road bikes and they both had cyclocross tires on.

And so the first four miles of the race were like a climb on pavement.

And I'm on, I'm there.

With my bike, you know, steel frame.

It's like around 27 pound bike with unirail tires, you know, because that was the only tire worth really doing off road at the time.

And I stayed with him on the climb.

We got to the dirt and I said, bye.

And I won by four minutes, you know, and it helped.

It was one of those races that helped put the whole controversy to rest of like what this bike is good for.

You know, and originally.

It was, you know, about going from point A to point B in the woods and everything.

And, you know, it's really, the bike is morphed into like, man, do you want to have fun?

You know, rip, tear, shred, got to get some air.

That's, that's what's really changed is the bike is really suitable for that.

You know, back then, I mean, you didn't have any kind of suspension.

Oh man, you come down a lot of these hills and you'd have to stop halfway through and just go like this.

It was like holding onto a paint can shaker.

Again, I do not kid you.

It was so intense, you know, that's the thing that blows my mind is that it was a huge attraction and a huge hit, even though like we didn't have this technology yet.

I mean, maybe that's an interesting way to look at the invention of the mountain bike rather than saying, aha, here comes the mountain bike.

This kind of platonic form that nobody.

Until then had come up with actually was the result of you trying to address a bunch of problems associated with existing types of bicycle.

Right, right.

Cause it, the bike, it had, it was incredible.

And it, um, on one hand, it was an extremely practical bike, you know, that it, uh, had a relatively upright, uh, position.

It had a relatively wide tire.

Uh, it had plenty of gearing, plenty of brakes.

And, uh, you know, you felt absolutely secure.

And at the same time, it was very practical, but at the same time, it had this totally crazy image going for it.

I mean, it's, you know, it's the, the major type of bicycle sold worldwide.

I would think for, has been for many years, but very few mountain bikes are ever ridden over a mountain yet this term mountain bike that you came up with really stuck.

Okay.

At one point, uh, bicycling magazine, all right.

Chuck McCullough, he was the editor at the time.

He said in his editorial, um, I'm going to, I want to call, I want to come up with, uh, an alternate name because Gary Fisher owns a, the bike name, I mean, mountain bike name.

So we got to come up with an alternative and they did a big survey, a big contest, and it was ATB all terrain bike.

Right.

And the only ones that sort of followed that were, uh, the French or the French had to do it and they did it independently.

Of course.

They're like fellow to Tehran, you know, and so where there are other names on the drawing board with you, or is it always just going to be mountain bike or is it so obvious whether, whether other things that you might've called it.

That one was a big one that just stood out because it was just powerful.

That one was some of the ones that didn't, that it could have been, can you remember?

No, that's what I'm saying, because I could tell you the stories of a lot of other names and how they sort of like.

Evolved, you know, I could tell you those, because I've been, I've been through a lot of those, I mean, it's still involved in the naming thing, you know, it's like now it's like I, with all the product that we do and everything, I tell all the product managers, everybody, you think of a name for this thing.

First, that's the first thing I want you to do, because we've had classic situations.

I can never forget, like, here we are, we're over in Germany, we're doing our European show, like the, the head of product at the time is showing me this.

You.

New feature of all of our, you know, these lower end bikes, it's like a utility port, you know, it's like you can plug in a rack, you can plug in, you know, a trailer, you can plug all these different things into this thing.

And like, here it is, it's in the catalog and everything, and I'm saying, hey man, what do you call this thing?

There was no name for it.

I couldn't believe it.

I say, how can this thing exist and not have a name?

You know, this is like having a child without a name.

You know, think about it.

You know, it's like.

Oh, and like, my guys are like, why is Gary coming in glued?

It's like, it's because you don't understand that this whole project has got to have emotion behind it.

You can't have it unless it's got a name and a reason, a rap, the whole thing, you know, it's, it's like, you know, product is so funny.

I mean, it's like the three, the three legged stool is like, you got to have a great design, which is the name is part of that.

A lot of hype.

You know, you got to market the thing like crazy.

Then you got to deliver the product.

That's the big deal.

You know, and that's, that was where, you know, my company, we got out ahead right, right away.

And then I worked really hard on trying to get, you know, product, you know, and like be able to get it.

And like in the early days, it was like, we built all the frames in the United States.

We did all the assembly.

We did all the painting.

We did everything, you know, and like, I'd import these parts from so many different places.

You know, some cranksets and the brakes from France, you know, the brake levers from Germany.

So the business side of stuff, Gary, the idea of taking your passion and making a livelihood out of it, it's, it's a big jump and it's, it's not always worked for people.

And in fact, I go to say that more than often, it doesn't work.

Even if you're a great innovator, you're not necessarily a great salesman.

And even if you are both of those things, that doesn't.

It doesn't always lead to business success.

I mean, I know you've had your ups and downs in, in, in kind of the bike industry.

Do you have any reflections on those that might be helpful to other people out there who are thinking about how to turn their passion for cycling into a kind of livelihood?

Choose what you want to be and the size and work hard on choosing your customers.

And all that stuff sounds really simple, but no, it's.

Especially the choose your customers part.

You know, you don't have to be the biggest to be completely successful and yeah, you got to grow at the right speed and do the right thing.

So it's about having a tribe.

It'll be only as big as, as your group of people, you know, you've got to treat your own people.

Right.

So if I, if I can look at history in a, in a comparative way, maybe you'll say this is unfair, but at around about the time and in the, in fact, not just the time, but the same place.

Yeah.

the same way of thinking came up with a personal computer, all right, the Apple Mac and, and all this.

And now we've got like, we've all got these personal computers that we have in our pockets that we do everything through.

Yet the bicycle is still in the margins in society.

It hasn't taken over.

It's, you know, Trek or whichever is not the biggest company in the world.

You know, if, if, if bicycles had followed the trajectory,

of microcomputers we'd be in a very different world than we are now yeah but the bicycle is

as powerful as a microcomputer for what it does in terms of personal mobility with the efficiency

that it has why did one do the thing that it did and the other is still kind of on the margins

it's like it's you know the microcomputer has been coming on for a while i mean uh i think in

our business the first one we had was like an 82 you know and and it's now it got to the point

really quickly it's like you can't do business without it you know you take all your stuff off

you know it gets that way and we're we're not there you know we're not a necessity at the moment

but i think that's going to come i mean there's all the only way you can hit these numbers for

uh reduction of uh carbon is to start using bikes a lot more

technology it is you know it is an e-bike especially that's the world's most efficient

motorized vehicle i mean an e-bike battery all right a tesla battery equals about 200

e-bike batteries as far as its footprint goes as far as all that goes as far as this is energy use

it's recycling all that it's so it's so much smaller and this is the logic that people have

got to get is that to hit those kind of numbers man you got to not be

trying to push that sort of energy you can't bring along your rumpus room your kitchen your

toolbox everywhere you go you know this is like ridiculous you know and we come to this ridiculous

uh point in time and that's you know the necessity has got to be there through the desire and desire

can be brought you know i mean i gotta say i mean the the microcomputer you know being able to haul

this thing around everywhere i go i mean it's like a i make a joke and i'm like oh my god i'm

yeah my wife's a third of my brain and this is the other third of my brain you know but i'm three

times as smart as i was and that's the truth you know and i can figure out a lot more stuff on my

own and we all love that part of it and everything and the same with this type of mobility you know

that that that was the hit that always blew me blew me away it's like when i was a kid and

everything i was able to ride 80 miles on spaghetti you know a plate of spaghetti you

know that was about it it was amazing you know and it wasn't this this you know overkill

machine and everything this whole big polluting thing because that was the other thing that was

going on like crazy it was like every time you go to la we call it chocolate i mean it was really

brown down there and it would get bad here in the bay area as well you know and it was obvious you

know and they had this whole uh we had the interstate freeway uh whole thing going on and

then there were freeway wars you know we're like on tv you'd see people that were like uh refusing

to leave their houses and

the sheriff would come with the papers and take them away and the bulldozers would come and tear

down their place and i was like what are we doing you know replace this with this freeway and it was

like there was a quite a bit of pushback i mean the freeway guys totally won out but there was a

and there always has been a fair amount of pushback it's a but now we look at numbers you

know numbers coming out of new york city you know they they recently did a big survey and people

like it the way it is and they're like oh my god i'm gonna go to la we're gonna go to la we're gonna

go to la we're gonna go to la we're gonna go to la we're gonna go to la we're gonna go to la to give

them a good start but then they actually give up a lot you know and they don't they realize that

they give up a lot when they give over everything to parking so there is more of a movement and the

people that from my generation that know no other way are just literally dying i don't want to wait

that i'm not sure that they're being um replaced by better people necessarily and and i and i think

in within the bicycle world one of our failings is we focus a little bit too much on the

the bicycle rather than the environment in which the bicycle is used um and i know you've talked a

lot about that there's there's a lot of that in your call to action towards the end of the book

about urban design about what the dutch have got right it's going to take more than the bicycle

industry to to kind of change the way you know space is allocated the way the rules of the road

the way everything works at the moment to prioritize car travel and we've got to change this

around how are we going to do that as a salesman and as a kind of innovator and a guy who's changed

the bike how do we change our streets you know the micro mobility people i you know the uh the

people like they're doing all that the uh number of them had money have money they got more money

than the bike people and they really believe in marketing things right so this is scooters are

you saying like electric scooters and that sort of thing batman scooters like on the 25th of

september there's a big uh i don't

know what they're going to do with it right now because everything could change how big it's going

to be but there's a big micro mobility uh meetup here in san francisco so it's all kinds of stuff

i mean you know electric skateboards are pretty incredible because you just pick that little thing

up you know and you're gone with it you know and that like you go into a restaurant you can go on

another form of transport just boom like that and the same with scooters if you know they're

relatively small they don't take up a lot of space and that's

that's their big thing we're campaigning about is like hey if you take out all this car parking

you could have all the space you need you know all these car jams and all this stuff could be a

thing of the past you guys are living in a stone age you don't have to do it this way we're looking

at paris and what they did and some of the other cities and everything and and it it's amazing you

can get rid of all that issues with getting around and you can make your populace healthier because

that's the other thing the other big elephant in the room

it's still for the uk and the united states and a lot of other countries cardiovascular is the

number one cause of death and it's not pretty because you know you get people that are immobile

you know that have you know we both both our countries suffer this and it's like i my line

is you know i have a solution i'm very open to yours i'm listening i'm listening i haven't heard

anything because they don't have a solution

works you know it's been proven putting in more lanes just like takes up more space and makes an

uglier place you know it doesn't get people there you know and it's it's hilarious we got all the

data to like back us up and everything and it's it's really it it comes down to a lot of politics

and a lot of marketing with the thing and that's what we're trying to figure out my services with

the micro mobility will be how to make your stuff really cool okay so you got to make the thing

that you're trying to sell cool and you're trying to make your stuff really cool and you're trying to

and how about and how about the thing that people are wedded to through a century of

promotion by the industry itself by governments that the automobile is tied up with status as

you said earlier on in the 1950s like a bicycle was for someone who was like who'd been banned

from driving or a kid or someone with no money and a car is still being seen and sold as a

promise of high status freedom safety all the rest of it can you just be cooler than that or

are we gonna have to grasp the nettle and start restricting the freedom to drive a car wherever

you want it to go at a pretty low cost it's both i mean absolutely and it's there's like that's a

huge thing i mean like i said when i i come over the top of the hill i look down there at standard

and i go like these guys are gonna shut that they don't have a plan to shut this down no way you know

and it's a that's a real attitude and i can totally you know uh appreciate it that you know

no no we have no other plan but um nothing lasts forever you know and um it's the biggest change

is the hardest change is always what's between the ears all that gray matter i mean once you

change that everything else is easy you know that you know so

that's where a lot more work has to be done it's like providing solutions and uh saying hey dude

you don't have any clothes on do you know that it doesn't look very good and do you think all the

technical stuff is essentially there um or is there stuff in the realm of bikes and micro

mobility that you are looking forward to the day when they invent that thing that can do this

or

do you think like we've pretty much got it and we just need to orient our environment towards it

we got it we got so many good people that really good engineers and a lot of good cooperation

in industry they love people love making bike stuff you know it's of course they love making

medical stuff better it pays better i'm sorry but no we've got a tremendous group of people

that we never had before that was the thing the most striking thing in the 50s

oh you were totally an outlier in the 60s you were lonely in the 70s it was tiny you know and it's

been growing and growing and growing you know and that's because we have a highly addictive activity

so when people read your book they're going to um read a great life story beautifully illustrated

with some fantastic photography some brilliant layout and they're going to

watch this amazing meeting of of worlds which i still can't quite get over of like

road racing plus like the grateful dead and and light shows um but what what do you what do you

hope that that they'll that they'll come away with what do you want people to read this and

get up and do people generally they take it a little at a time okay and they said so many stories

you know i come back and go back and go back and go back and go back and go back and go back and go

back and back for another another gem and it makes them feel good and then you know i'm trying

to have more of a call to action you know more people having the the catching that thing that

yeah despite all these odds despite all the you know righteous things you're talking about because

those the other forces boy they market every single day and they play every avenue they can

they're great they're great examples of how to do things okay

despite that uh we can bend things our way quite a bit and have a very very good time doing it

and feel very good and is there still room in the bike industry of of 2021 for the kind of

diy culture that i guess your life epitomizes

oh yeah definitely you know and it's like uh it's like that's you know for us too i mean

our biggest

most powerful you know sector has been uh the customization thing you know and just that and

you know and we customize to a fair degree but then there are people that do anything do crazy

stuff and you can find them and they're they're way deep into their thing and they do a great job

so the people out there that are tiny that are doing just fine you know in the bike world and

that you know i i love that you know that needs to

stay happening and the thing that's going to help them do more is this thing about

printing things you know with your printer you know printing parts and stuff that 3d printing

yeah oh yeah because that's going to bring it right back into your own little shop your own

little place you'll be able to make some pretty sophisticated stuff with that you know so it's

sort of that's sort of like taking a total minimum middleman out of the whole thing and

you don't have to like deal with somebody overseas or do any of that it's sort of that's

that's amazing i i'm thinking of buying one pretty soon just to see what type of little

goodies i can make and stuff you know just and you know because the thing is you get one of those you

get a scanner and um you know and then there are people that will scan things and work on it you

know and be able to ship you a program here's this part man and and is there i'm going to ask

this as the last question is there a bicycle that is available on the market now that if someone

rides it they will experience what gary fisher wants it to feel like to ride a bike

you know like a really well-cut suit you know that has your style and they'll be able to relate

to you through an object or is that just a pipe dream you bring up uh exactly and the the bespoke

bicycle the bespoke suit there's a lot to be said for you know to make

oh you don't like a suit because you none of your stuff fits you you know you don't like this bike

because it didn't fit you you know and there's so many ways so many little details on the thing

and that's why like uh the bike dealer is going to exist for a long time and it's what it is it's

like you come in and you expect like this person knows about everything all the latest stuff and

they can look me over and help me find and guide me to the right stuff that's super important so

like that's not going away the human touch the human being they get in there i mean

that's like uh my wife's a family doctor and you know that's a general medicine and uh that

there's a higher demand for that than ever before because people really want to have a gatekeeper

they want to have somebody that really spends the time and finds out what's going on because

um man the thing you find out about all this stuff is never simple

therefore there's space for us human beings still there isn't there isn't

a particular model a particular line that you would like people to to throw their leg over and

and give it a try here's the funny thing uh there's a bike that i campaigned for a lot

within track it's called the marlin and this bike is uh it's oh it's uh under a thousand dollars

it's just a simple mountain bike and the idea is is that um all the parts uh i said to my guys

it's like why don't we pick a bike make a line of bikes that is made out of parts

that don't break you know that we don't get returns on that are also parts that are easy

to find worldwide dimensions that are easy to find worldwide and uh have very reliable suppliers

so we can all get this i tell you and then uh the frames are you know it's new technology so it's

uh hydroformed uh aluminum you know and it's really a good job you know we got the alloys down

we got the hydroforming you know that i mean

takes a big computer a good computer program to make it right it's incredible what we can make

and incredible paint really cool graphics and the bike is arguably the largest selling

mountain bike in the world so i'm getting inching inching closer to covering the earth

with bikes go to your local bike shop find somebody you connect with

and that's it and then also find a group to ride with that you like because that that will get you

out more than anything but if you want to grow you know it's this way if you if you go to grow

the market you grow the pie by making events to show up to and to go to you make the market spend

more money on their product by doing competitions because people show up and if everybody's on a

better bike than them then they go out and buy a better bike and then it becomes an arms race

but i i you know it's still you can buy you can spend uh 15k on a bike you know these days on a

nice road bike and i never feel bad about that because these bikes are made in a way of something

from formula one or from nasa and you cannot own those objects you know this is the way these

things are made they're incredible i show i've shown our frames to a friend of mine that works

at nasa and he says i don't know if we make anything that's nice you know he's looking at

the way we do it and it's you can actually have a bike that's made in a way that's made in a way that's

and then you can feel the difference they're a miracle they're amazing how those things ride so

i never feel bad about it as long as we're still making bikes that are relatively cheap

relatively simple and a good deal you know and we'll always continue to do that and then there's

this whole new categories and the new categories are taking stuff around with you and that's

especially enhanced by the electric bike because you don't mind taking around a little extra

just fine gary it's been a pleasure to talk with you may you keep doing what you've been doing for

decades now i wish you all good health and well all the happiness in the world well thank you so

much thanks for this time i was talking with gary fisher and i'm still here with guy andrews and guy

kestavan who published and co-wrote this brilliant new book being gary fisher it's difficult

when you talk to iconic figures in any field i think really because they're quite used to telling

stories about themselves because a lot they've done a lot of interviews and you almost want to

take things off into different dimensions you don't want to be asking them to repeat themselves

the whole time and also sometimes there are sensitivities in a story which you know as a

friendly interviewer you have to sort of skirt around a little bit so what i'd like to do in

our chat now is to go through some of the things that you've done in the past and what you've done

into some of those things that i didn't cover or i didn't feel comfortable covering or just we

didn't simply have time to cover in our chat if that's all right with you both so this origin

story of the mountain bike which is something that has been quite contested and i think people

i don't know if they've actually fully fallen out about it but there has been debate and there is

debate and i think there is an academic paper out there somewhere about who invented the mountain

bike i mean is is that

a sensible question to ask who invented the mountain bike in a word no i mean it's something

that gary's really honest about and what attracted you know and what kind of got me on board with

straight away is he admits that in the mid 90s there was a lot of hype generated around his name

as the father of mountain biking and that caused an absolute stink but he's kind of now he wrote

you know he's now he's much more lucid about the fact that people have been riding off bikes off

road by definition for longer than they've been

roads because there were no roads when people started and you can pretty much stick a pin in

the map anywhere and find a bicycle equipped or modified to ride off road whether it's the 30s

50s bomb sites in paris uh woodsy bikes in the woods of wisconsin whatever what gary did was name

mountain bikes and create a massive fuss about him and i mean even what's interesting is when

you start digging into it even the people that the there's more general awareness like joe breeze like

like scott nickel from ibis probably haven't got the prior claim anyway i mean there's a whole

different segment of off-road riding in southern california there's people like the koski brothers

at the cove bike store who met up with mert law will is another icon from mountain biking

and produced a really really advanced bike but as gary was quite honest about he said we just got

our catalog out faster it took him six months to get their catalog out and in that time gary fisher

had built a bike that was probably not as fast as the one that he had built but it was probably not

as good although he reckons he had better brakes and got it out there and got it selling he beat you

know he was the one who took something that was just that had been carrying on for a very long

time endemically all over the place all over the world and he named it and he sold it guy andrews

how would you see um gary's part in the kind of founding fathers within the sort of marin county

scene which i think is sort of where we do see

the emergence of that object that is recognizably a mountain bike that he then as guy kestavan said

got the catalog out first was he was he brazing frames was he mechanically minded as well i think

gary was definitely uh very mechanically minded i don't know he was he was a mechanic you know

in a bike shop and that's how he started out sort of tinkering about with bikes like like kind of

a lot of us did but i think that the the real contrast

if you like with gary and joe breeze and tom ritchie and charlie kelly is gary is the

personality gary's the one that wants to get in front of the tv to as guy kestavan said earlier

to sell the shit out of it because that's in his nature i mean he's he's he's just one of

these characters that's that's happy to sell joe breeze is a wonderful engineer and a really

engaging guy but he's he's definitely a

quiet private person and was happy to build the first 10 arguably the first 10

mountain bikes um that we now know as being kind of the first if you like first geared

geared clunkers should we say but i think i think that the argument is is is whipped up

or has been whipped up by the media down the years i think gary's almost slightly embarrassed

about it because it's it's kind of like i don't think he ever claimed to uh to be the um

to be the the father of mountain biking although i i don't think he'd ever deny that claim either

because you know it suits his uh it suits his story but i think it's a tricky one i mean i

think of all the all the founding fathers it's interesting that tom ritchie who who made the

first um mountain bike frames for for gary and charlie's company mountain bikes he's the only

one who's remains in in in cycling as a brand uh tom ritchie is is is a well-known brand across

all uh aspects of uh sort of high performance cycling so you know he's still around from that

point of view so he actually built a sustainable business if you like and the rest of them have all

kind of fallen away a little yeah i think one thing that came out during the process of writing

the book is how incredibly curious gary is about innovation whether that's you know doing light

shows and stuff for the grateful dead or when he was a kid racer he had a bike specifically built

to be as lightweight as possible with simplex

gears on it and all sorts of uh you know things that were totally left field at the time when

everybody else was using campag because he was a really light skinny kid he had a custom built

frame with cyclocross cantilevers because they were lighter than the side pulls so even on the

road scene he was an innovator and then when you move into mountain biking he was actually testing

for bicycling uh magazine while he was uh creating a lot of the early clunkers so a lot of those

innovations came from early access to things like shimano positive

tron uh gears to dura ace free hubs which enabled him to make a stronger wider rear axle on his bike

and you know even to the point of brazing campag rear dropouts onto his front forks

so he could experiment with different offset which the offset he came on with 26 inch wheels

didn't actually change until very very recently when again he kind of stepped it forwards and

introduced different offsets on 29er forks and all the way through the book whatever he's

doing there's this incredible memory accuracy for the technical side of things right down to like

tubing diameters wall thicknesses all that kind of thing you know he's he's a super geek you know

he's yeah he's he's right up there something that i'm really interested in is the collaboration

between california and japan and i suppose later taiwan um in cycling um in mountain biking um i

think we often see the mountain bike as this californian thing but actually it was as much a

pacific rim phenomenon because it was with the mountain bike am i right that shimano sort of

ascended to become the mighty shimano that we all know now as the sort of you know biggest

um bicycle component manufacturer in the world and Gary played a part in that didn't he yeah

absolutely if you go back to when the mountain bike comes around uh campagnolo were totally dominant one

year after Gary actually had a prize for the first bike to finish that didn't have campagnolo on it it

was that dominant and the japanese just saw the fact that i mean because they'd watched BMX and

companies like araya uh tange and and construction companies like that who got on board with

components but obviously with a mountain bike you've got a whole level of extra gears for a

start i mean shimano are a freewheel company that's how they started out and suddenly you've

got this whole other arena

to create gears for and I think it's what's interesting is how slow as much as the Japanese

were very fast to react the European bike brands are incredibly slow I mean the only contribution

from European bike brands was really magura uh giving Gary a trade account for motorbike

brake levers for his early clunkers I mean campagnolo has only ever produced two mountain

bike group sets in the empty in uh in the in the mid 90s and they were dreadful and they went from

a sort of well I guess arrogant position where they completely ruled it and shimano just took

the legs right under them and grabbed this new category which turned out to be this huge sort

of revolutionary revenue recognition grower and just owned it you know panorates uh yeah

Paneracer Sonto Bridgestone all these Japanese brands just jumped straight in there and they

became the innovators and the actual Japanese frame companies were really really well set up

like mountain bikes I mean Gary describes going over there and just being seeing these incredible

rooms at shimano where there's nobody in there apart from these machines just stamping out

cassettes and cogs and factories where literally raw tubing went in one end and a painted bike

came out the other so yeah I think the one interesting thing about the the the California

Japan connection was that was another thing that Gary um purposefully went out to to to

do you know it sounded like a lot of the other um mountain bike folks at the time wouldn't have even

thought of doing that um you know they were quite happy to keep churning things out in their own

sheds and and and that's you know sort of um that supplied the the demand at the time obviously Gary

had bigger bigger ideas and and realized that you know the only way to to to get this to a wider

audience was to be able to manufacture on a large scale which is obviously you know bikes in boxes

was kind of what Gary was all about um and I think that was a revolutionary part of the bike

industry for that part of the 1980s you know it was something that you know that you never did

you know you built a bike from the ground up you didn't you didn't buy a bike in a box at that time

um and if you did it was a very cheap bike so Gary revolutionized that so he was an innovator

um he had these great sparks of inspiration in terms of teaming up with Japan

he was a brilliant salesman yet he didn't make a fortune running his own company in fact his own

company ran into trouble fairly soon didn't it I kind of I tried to get him to elaborate a little

bit on his reflections on life in the bike biz you know making money out of bikes um but he um

he kind of uh sidestepped the question a little bit so sort of what what happened and why did

Gary Fisher's you know he was a brilliant salesman and he was a brilliant salesman and he was a brilliant

know business career not turn out as successfully as it might have done i think one of my favorite

quotes from the whole book is that i want this book i want this book to be to be uh handed out

in business classes as an example of how to do things but also as an absolute example as how not

to do things on a regular basis and i think you can boil it all down to the fact that gary gets

massively distracted and i know a lot of the taiwanese problems he where he was basically

getting sold frames that were cracked already or overpainted or had old componentry on them

he got taken by a ride by the taiwanese company he was working with because he was racing his

bike too much i mean he was going for olympic selection at the time he was racing with greg

lamont he was having a fine old time he'd had 20 years of doing all these bikes all by himself and

suddenly the time and he's like yeah we'll do that for you gary we'll have your name we'll sort it

all out by the time he realized it was an

absolute nightmare he was too busy racing you know so that's when that happened and again i

think just things like him not painted in the mountain bike name it was just an it was just a

detail he didn't drill into because there's so much more going on and then he eventually broke

this deal with trek which was brilliant but he was still a maverick within trek and what's

interesting although he was really really cheesed off when they killed the gary fisher brown because

they kind of parked it back up a bit there guy and tell us what happened with

trek i mean so gary fish from from what i understand is gary fisher's business got into

trouble and he kind of had to essentially sell the name his name and go and work with trek who then

took on the brand within the trek family and he was taken on as um spokesman you know maverick

whatever but ultimately they were trek bikes is that is that right partially right trek when gary

moved out they were very unexciting they barely did any marketing uh they

sold really good solid touring bikes and they had some respectable bikes right across the category

they didn't have sponsored athletes anything like that and at the time trek kind of just

well they kind of vajazzled themselves with illuminaries right across the bike scene so

they picked up lamond they picked up keith bontrager they picked up gary klein all of

which are iconic people they picked up gary fisher as well but interesting gary fisher rather than

just kind of going okay have my name and kind of do a pastiche of what i was doing already which

is kind of what happened with klein

and really what happened with bontrager they produced some privateer bikes and then you know

he became the name of a component line uh and let's not go into lamond gary andrews can go into

lamond on an entirely different podcast but gary actually went fully hands-on he rightfully says

that treks now are much more like gary fisher bikes than they are trek bikes you know you can

pick out a load of different technology i mean 29er is the obvious ones but even oversized tire

tires like the trek rumble fish uh started on the gary fisher uh range uh different fork offsets

different geometries they were it was kind of their experimental arm right the way through

and because trek were kind of moving more and more of these innovations and platforms across to trek

they didn't really need gary fisher he almost became an unwelcome competitor but yeah like i

say he was really really cheesed off when he finally went from gary fisher to gary fisher

collection

to him just being kind of an ambassador and stuff but then he realized he was still getting a

paycheck and basically go around the world wearing his suits and you know bigging up biking which i

think is a role he's pretty happy with now finally i just want to round off our our reflections on

on gary and and and your time with him producing the book by thinking about what we might learn

going forward and what we might do differently

differently in cycling looking at him as an inspiration there's a film on youtube that i

only discovered the other day and i think it's been up there for a while and it's a really well

made little film about a bike ride in i think 1980 um in colorado one of the kind of clunkers

events called the crested butte classic i think and i i will put a link to it from the bike show

webpage you can search for it um crested butte classic and i'm going to hold that in my business

uh facebook it's linked in the description below and also you can finally see it on the website

you can also just go to the website i'm going to post it on my social media sub it um thank you

for watching this video and if you guys do agree with me let me know you know which kind of interest

you know that um i love this well so do you want to check how difficult it is and how to get it done

crested butte clunker classic and it comes in two parts but just to give you a little flavor

here's a short edit from the audio track of that film clunker is a balloon tired bicycle we have

several in here it's essentially a an old newspaper boy bicycle that's been converted to use in the

mountains and there's still a lot of clunkers that are that are one speed bicycles coaster

brake bicycles your old newspaper boy bicycle and they've that's now a 75 bicycle they have

evolved to 1500 12 15 18 speed highly sophisticated pieces of machinery where we put a lot of gears

on it this one's 18 speeds weighs in at about 26 pounds it's real light we have all kinds of

little trick devices on it that we've come up with over the last eight or nine years

of this kind of riding it's more of a party than a ride actually it just happens to attract

the element we all like you know

10 o'clock we'll ride from here to cumberland basin which is probably close to 20 miles somewhere

around 20 miles we'll ride up there some people will arrive at camp in three or four hours the

rest of us old folks will get there um you know four o'clock in the afternoon by that time there'll

be a big fire going kegs of beer set out people will start quenching their thirst and we'll have

dinner be a lot of bike talk around the campfire go to bed up early in the morning for the hardest

part of the climb pushing the bike that last 2 000 feet up to the top of pearl pass

i'm not a serious fanatic bike rider

why am i taking it easy and having a good time you can hit like 40 miles an hour down some of

these hills so it's totally thrilling it's total exercise and it's getting away from the cops the

cars the concrete and getting out here no no nothing is under control if everything went under

control it wouldn't be any fun pro pass is uh definitely the rockiest thing that we ever ride

i mean it's insane

that downhill is uh just unrivaled i mean you depending on how far you want to hang it and it

just turns your arms your shoulders your hands to mush it's uh it's really hard on bikes too bikes

that we think are super strong and everything uh stuff fails on it that's one of the big reasons

we like to come here too because we build bikes all year long but hey this is the baddest test

you know this one really uh you know if you can survive this uh the rest of it uh is pretty easy

so that was a little taster of the crested buked clunker classic film which you can find on

youtube and i have to say i fell in love with that film it it just presented a kind of cycling

that seems just so joyful and free and lacking in ego and just wonderful everything everything

that i like about cycling is kind of in that in that film just people having fun on bikes being

together in a wonderful landscape and being slightly about it obviously it's a very different

time and place it's colorado in the 1980s so like 40 years ago it feels connected to our time in a

way that a film about you know a ctc ride in the 1970s might feel a bit kind of antique um and it's

seems a lot more fun than you know the slightly regimented world of the cycling club that

preceded it that scene that way of being seems to be a really important contribution from that

whole era and you know set aside the technology of the mountain bike just the way they rode their

bikes is is wonderful to watch and and maybe we could learn something from that that's a kind of

really long way of asking a question but um what what do you think that we could learn from those

mountain bike and gary fisher's life in cycling i think there's this one uh there's one thing in

the book uh it's a quote and i'm not quite sure who we can attribute it to but it's basically no

cars no cops no concrete and i think that's kind of where that whole clunker scene sort of developed

from you know this whole ethos that you know you need to get off the roads you need to get away

from the city uh you need to be away from the hassle you know and that was what it was kind

of behind it all i think crested boot was a sort of celebration of that almost it was like uh

a weekend where everybody just gets away in the middle of nowhere you know has a has a has a great

time um and as you say it it's it's not it's certainly not an organized affair like you'd have

uh in a in a european country so i think it was a very unique time um i think in some respects uh

it's slowly going full circle

coming back to that kind of uh idea uh behind cycling and i hope it i hope that i really do

hope that continues because i think what we have got now is we've got way too obsessed with

um with you know what you need to buy in order to go cycling and you know technology and all

of this sort of stuff when actually the reality is the reason why we go cycling is because we

love the freedom you know we love being outside and we love you know being away from all the

modern day life and i think that was the

the clunker movement if you like and i think it's the you know it's the ethos behind

what i see in cycling and i think what a lot of people get from cycling

gary approached us with the whole idea that this book was to be delivering his vision of bikes

as a solution for many many of the world's problems whether that's traffic whether that's

personal freedom whether that's physical exercise and we kind of had to strap on the story almost

like a booster on a saturn 5 you know to give it kind of some weight and give it some context

but i think it kind of boils down to we've been really really guilty of selling

cycling i mean i'm particularly guilty of this as a technical editor for the past 25 years

by head angle not headspace you know we need to sell the experience sell the fact that it's a

vehicle an incredibly efficient vehicle not just from a mechanical sense but in also for meeting

people for breaking down barriers for expanding your personal horizons and just you know you look

and like you say you watch that video you look back at the early pioneers of clunking and it's

such a diverse collection of people it's just wonderful to see but also quite depressing when

you kind of look at the demographic that seems to dominate that's traditionally dominated cycling

but i think more than ever we're now at a time when we're seeing cycling massively expanding

back into those areas you know and i think that's the thing that's so important to me

you know whether covid's been a really really helpful catalyst i think you know even in terms

of riders who have a riding experience having that window of going oh wow if there's no traffic this

is so much more pleasant and now speaking to people what you're seeing is even dyed in the

wool road riders are now going actually now traffic's back i don't like riding on the road

so much maybe i'll do gravel biking maybe i'll get a mountain bike maybe i'll go and sleep in a hedge

we've commoditized

cycling we've made it far too technical we've gone down a rabbit hole of appearing to the tech

side appearing to dare we say the male side when actually it's such an open field it's such a great

thing to encourage anyone to do whether they're school age whether they're just about to roll off

this world and can't walk anymore you can still have a roll along on an e-bike and i think that's

that's the payload that this book was meant to deliver and hopefully hopefully gary's happy we've

done that

guy andrews the publisher i'm not gonna ask you to add to what guy kestaven has just said because i

think he just brought together all the threads of this story in a really beautiful way there

um but one thing we haven't mentioned is the visual quality of this book um and the way you've

brought this story to life in pictures um not just by accessing photos but the way you've laid

them out the way you've designed the book the way you've um interspersed photos and the way you've

created photographs with drawings and catalogues and things like that congratulations this book is

as much a book to look at as it is a book to read well yeah thanks jack i mean it's it's it's in no

small part thanks to alton coil and alex ferguson the two guys who who who helped design the book

um and bought an awful lot to uh to to the party i mean i i could we could probably do a whole

podcast on how the book was designed um it's a very complex uh approach and i think it's kind

of a colorful um celebration of gary's life which is exactly what we wanted to do we you know we

we didn't want we wanted to throw the kitchen sink at this book we wanted to have everything in there

to help support the story because i think it's a very integral part of gary's story um this is

the way he embraces great design and and um and great photography great illustration i mean we

used a lot of illustrators as well to help tell the stories that we didn't have pictures of

um and a lot of the photography came from directly from gary and his his extensive archive so you

know there was a lot to pull together a hell of a lot to pull together and and in no small part due

to you know due to alton alex and taz taz darling who worked on the um on the images

uh it took uh a lot longer than any other book we've ever worked on um and i think anyone who

buys the book will see uh see that for themselves each page is a it's like a different it's a

different it's a different story we wanted to make sure that each spread had its own life and its own

um its own characteristics so that's that hopefully that's mission accomplished

being gary fisher and the bicycle revolution is published by blue train publishing and um

it's

36 pounds you can buy a copy direct from the publishers at blue train publishing.com and as

a listener to the bike show you will qualify for a um a special discount well a free postage i think

is what guy has offered us which is tremendous and i have to say you know 36 pounds it's you

know it's in coffee table territory for books but it's absolutely um worth it full color on every

page a brilliant story told in in a most wonderfully engaging way and i will put a link

to um the website with everything you need to qualify for the free postage promotion if you're

a uk purchaser on the bike show website thank you gentlemen both um enjoy the rest of your days and

thank you for the time to um come on the bike show to talk about being gary fisher thanks very much

it's been good therapy