Customer Reviews

The Birth of Dirt: Origins of Mountain Biking

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As a keen mountain biker of old I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
I could not put it down.
I will pass this book to friends for them to learn the info.
Great book.

A wonderfully quixotic and quirky read. A ramshackle recollection that skews closer to oral history than an academic tome, which makes it perfect for the subject at hand.

In the pantheon of sport (which is an awful phrase to heap on any activity that's supposed to be fun, evoking dusty accounts of Marquess of Queensberry rules for boxing and textbook synopses of the first Olympiads held in Athens...although, for those matches where the victor got the laurel wreath and the losers got, umm, death, those certainly stirred the blood and raised the bar), mountain biking is still a newbie. Most of the MB founders are not only still alive...they're still bombing down the single-track trails and tweaking their rides. Although nowadays, there's a bike company attached to their name and when they tweak, a new product rolls off the line six months later.

The Birth of Dirt resembles a rock-n-roll history, although these characters are certainly healthier than the Stones, The Who and their peers. And when blood's involved, it's because of an unplanned skid, not some transfusion that's needed in order to go on stage. But like the music, it was created for the most part by the counter-culture, ok, let's call them hippies, who rode in skinny jeans and T-shirts. Helmets occasionally.

MTB essentially started by taking forgotten Schwinns out of the garage and seeing if they'd stay in one piece while trying to make it to the bottom of the hill. The sport grew as the equipment was improved by the racers. Like Yvon Chouinard at Patagonia, these soon-to-be manufacturing legends would ride and race all weekend, then hole up in their shop during the week, welding this, hammering that. They'd then try out their improvements the following weekend at the test lab better known as Mt. Tam.

A couple examples that handily reflect the humble origins of MTB: the first regular race was called the Repack, because if you were lucky enough to make it to the finish line, you'd probably have to disassemble your hub and re-grease the bearings that were smoked en route. Also, one of the main guys was named Joe Breeze, and his bikes were called Breezers - how cool is that?

It's a quick read, a light read (certainly lighter than those original clunkers), and reading it will point you to a hill when you're done, as it should be - the birth of dirt might be in the Bay Area, but now it lives on the thousands of trails around the country.

Perhaps my favorite quote sums it up best: "Nobody started out to change the bicycling world. It just worked out that way."

The Birth of Dirt is a quick, fun read, and offers a quite thorough review of origins of the mountain bike, with numerous contemporary photos and drawings. Berto, formerly the technical editor of Bicycling magazine, has a fine command of the technical issues of bicycle design. But the book holds its good share of entertaining stories as well. Berto has the advantage of living in Marin County, California, where the mountain bike originated, and of knowing and having interviewed most of the pioneers in its development. They are a lively cast of characters, and Berto is a personable and engaging writer.

Berto has gone to considerable lengths with his research, yet I found a few minor errors of fact: for example, what is described as an Atom drum brake on page 28 is a Maxicar brake; Berto also locates the home of the late John Finley Scott in Davis, California rather than in nearby Dixon. Though this book is nearly definitive, the last word in such histories always lurks somewhere in the future.

Biking is a great source of exercise, and for some, a great source of adventure. "The Birth of Dirt: Origins of Mountain Biking" is Frank J. Berto's journey to track down the origins of adventurous biking and the bike created to facilitate that purpose. With plenty of full color and black and white photographs tracing the history of the mountain bike, it's intriguing to see the progression of the bike variation. "The Birth of Dirt" is highly recommended to anyone who wants to know the origins of their favorite hobby.

I read a Berto story in Mountain Bike magazine regarding the history of the mountain bike, so when I saw this book, I had to pick it up. It's a great read with all the usual suspects (Breeze, Fisher, Ritchey, Sinyard...), and as an avid mountain biker, factoid freak, and history buff, this book answered a lot of questions about the origins of the mountain bike. Living in Mountain View, CA, it's great to be able to ride the trails (at least the one's still open) where the mountain bike was born.

The article I read about the book is from the local county paper, The Independent Journal dated feb 6,1999. The author is interviewed and the conclusions are discussed openly.It is a great format for the book because each of the men going for the inventor of the mountain title are interviewed and quoted. I went to high school with the real inventor and hung with them. Read the book to see who it was.