“Hey, hey, the clouds are away”, Sang the Swindon band XTC on their classic 1982 hit Senses Working Overtime, and they were still going strong under the XTC banner right up until 2006. Strangely enough, that was also right about the time that another XTC entered my life – my Giant XTC carbon composite hardtail mountain bike. This bike is still topping my own mountain bike charts, where it’s sat at co-number one for longer than Bryan Adams and Wet Wet Wet combined.
The bike has well and truly done the global rounds a few times, and is actually my ‘newest’ – and my go-to – mountain bike. That said, when it arrived back in 2005, if you’d have said that we’d still be strutting our stuff together 20 odd years later, well I’d probably have choked on my chips.
Light-hearted leanings
This isn’t an evangelistic ‘ride old 26-inch wheel bikes’ thing – this is purely me, actually realising how life passes by in the blink of an eye, and realising just how old this bike is (and me), and also just how light and relevant it still is (to me).
The spark or realisation struck a few weeks back when a bike brand announced its latest bank-busting lightweight XC bike, weighing in at just over 10kg. I know these quoted weights are for full suspension bikes, but either way, I thought, “I bet my old Giant can match that”, and sure enough, according to the bathroom scales, it weighs in at around 10.5-11kg, not bad for what some would consider a museum piece.
When I first got the bike, I was in pretty fine shape and trained huge amounts on it, in preparation for an MTB stage race in the Pakistan Himalayas. There it really did nab the weight weenie show, and was even borrowed by then MTB 24-Hour World Champ, Tim Vincent, for an uphill TT (if I remember right, as I can recount us trying to adapt it for his even lankier loom), such was its racing snake lightness and front end compliance.
Trigger’s giant broom
Much like Trigger’s famous broom in Only Fools and Horses, the bike has been through an ongoing cycle of changes, and it would be fair for me to guess that it’s probably only the frame and maybe the front shifter that are original. With the original own-brand (I assume, as with the following parts) basic short travel suspension fork, I’d even say it was probably a touch lighter when new.
The original bike had a mix of Shimano XT and LX parts, Hayes disc brakes, own-brand furnishing, and I think Roval/Formula wheels; it certainly wasn’t the highest-end model. Over time, I wore through most of the original parts, and its current ‘Frankenbike” mix includes a pair of Mavic Crossmax wheels from my even older Diamondback, RockShox Recon forks from another bike and Race Face bits from a bike of about the same age, and comparatively newer Hope disc brakes.
Travels and travails of a 26-incher
Over the past 20-odd years, this bike has travelled the world, taking on the odd race, riding some pretty extreme trails, bikepacking through remote hill tribe lands, and it’s hardly skipped a beat. In fact, it’s probably weathered the wrath of time much better than I have.
The frame hardly has a scuff, and I’m certainly not one to ‘mother’ my bikes; it’s been hurled onto jeeps in Nepal and Pakistan, strapped to trucks and buses in Laos, carted through jungles in Borneo, thrown down gravity bike parks in Bali and much more besides. The only issue is that one of the bottle cage bosses is flopping around and out of service.
The small wheels keep on turnin’
I’m sure there are plenty of rolling eyes out there when it comes to me still riding this bike like it was 2006 all over again (but much slower) – and fair enough, yet there is zero soapboxing going on here. Sure, the bike is (almost) a classic, and yes, it still performs – pretty much as it did 20 years ago.
Occasionally, when travelling, I do indeed get to ride newer, plusher, and more complicated bikes. One such occasion was in Bali a few years ago, when I rode a volcano to sea long-distance enduro style trail with two local guides – all of us on enduro/trail style bikes. I hung on, but took a bit of a body beating that day, and was dreading going back the next day for a second trail whipping. I thought, maybe, just maybe, the old man had passed it.
The next day, we rode a slightly less technical trail, and I took my old XTC along. The guide raised his eyebrows and laughed at my big discs on a cross-country bike. It didn’t take long for him to get the whipping of the week from the old fella on an old hardtail – so, yeah, it still is relevant.
Last year, I took it through the remote hill tribe mountains of the Golden Triangle and on through the uncharted tribal wilds of Laos. All epic stuff, and we both lived to tell the tale.
In fact, I’m not the only one riding 26-inch wheels on older bikes; there are a few racing greats of old who still do partake of the retro stuff, even if only on occasion.
Big wheels, small wheels, steel or carbon, they all have a soul, and they’ll share that with you out on the trail. If you do have a wise old classic looming in the shed, take it out on occasion. You might actually enjoy it!
