21
Dec
The story of my 1996 Rivendell All Rounder starts six years earlier…
It’s the summer of 1990, I was living in Edina, Minnesota working at a bike shop in Minneapolis called Kenwood Cyclery that carried Bianchi but also had access to Bridgestone. Bridgestone was making no nonsense mountain bikes such as the MB-1; a steel Tange Prestige lugged frame with Shimano Deore XT (Shimano M730) components.
Under the direction of Grant Petersen , Bridgestone USA introduced the Bridgestone MB-0 or MB-Zip. Limited to just one thousand builds, the Bridgestone MB-0 was a lighter, more exclusive version of the MB-1. Hand-built using TIG-welded Ritchey Logic Prestige tubing with mix of Suntour XC-Pro and Mavic Paris Dakar, MB-0 eschewed the trends of the time such as a Shimano Bio-pace chainring and bar-ends.
Needless to say, I was fortunate enough to get one….but that’s a story for another time.
In 1994, Bridgestone ended its USA operations which opened the door for Grant Petersen to create Rivendell…which brings us to my Rivendell All-Rounder.
My custom built Rivendell All-Rounder in pumpkin orange.
The frame was custom built with a longer top-tube (to accomodate my long torso) using Reynolds 753 main tubes with stiffer Reynolds 531 fork blades. They’re joined with silver-brazed handcut lugs by the framesmiths at Waterford Precision Cycles. I built this up with a mix of components from by old MB-0 as well as some newer oddities such as the Softride stem.
At the top of the Meadow Mountain in Avon, Colorado. Photo: Felix the Cat
This past summer I took it out for some proper mountain biking while in Vail Valley⛰️. For being over twenty-years old, this bike still elicits memories from a time when mountain biking was just about the simple pleasure of riding.
Custom Built Rivendell All-Rounder
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Rivendell Reader
Bonus: If you’ve made it this far then check out the back catalog 📄 of all the Rivendell Readers as well as the Bridgestone Owners Bunch in PDF form and Kindle format below: