Mar 12th, 2008
Thank You Dick Burke and Trek For Getting Me Excited About Bikes
Tuesday on BicycleRetailer.com I read that Dick Burke, founder of Trek Bicycles, died Monday night, March 10, due to complications from heart surgery. It was sad to hear the news. It made me think about what Dick and Trek have accomplished and about what bicycles have done for me.
When I was in high school, my brother Steve was an Italian fanatic who had an Alfa Romeo Spider and a Pogliaghi road bike. I wanted to ride road bikes like him, so I bought a Japanese made Centurion (I couldn’t afford a nice Italian bike). I didn’t ride the Centurion too much. Riding bikes wasn’t the cool thing to do in high school.
In college I got the bug to ride. Dick Burke started Trek in 1976 and a good quality American made bike was a novel idea at the time. I can’t remember what model it was, but in the spring of 1979 I bought an anthracite grey Trek road bike from Fisher’s Cyclery in Salt Lake City while I was a college student at the University of Utah. It was a great bike. I think it had a mix of Suntour parts on it. I rode it a lot. The picture is of me with my Trek and a little more hair.
After school let out for the summer, I drove from Salt Lake to Mammoth Mountain, California with my Trek tucked into the back of my Volkswagen Rabbit to ride with my brother Steve. He was a ski instructor there at the time. During that trip, one day we road from Mammoth to June Lake. It wasn’t very far, only about 20 miles, but I remember the ride back. The last stretch of road from Highway 395 up into Mammoth was a killer. It was a hot day and my tires squished into the soft asphalt and it felt like I was riding with the brakes on.
I didn’t ride that Trek as much as I should have. I had a friend who was car less and he needed to borrow my Trek to get back and forth from class (We were at different schools at the time). I felt sorry for him and I wasn’t riding much, so I loaned him the bike and asked him to take real good care of it and lock it up when he wasn’t riding it. He did, but what I didn’t know was that when he road the Trek he wrapped the bare chain and lock around the seat post and let it bang against the frame, chipping the Trek’s beautiful Dupont paint job. Ouch!
After a heated exchange, he agreed to pay for getting it painted. It turned out the Dupont paint was super tough and too hard to get off (I tried having it dipped in a solvent tank at a local radiator shop, but it wouldn’t come off), so I took the money and bought a new Trek 560 frame from Pasadena Cyclery in Southern California. I had a little more cash then, so I splurged for a mix of DiaComp and Campy Nuovo Record parts and some hot new Specialized foldable clinchers.
I rode that Trek 560 for a long time. I raced it one season as a Cat 4 racer in various California criteriums and the Mammoth Mountain Stage Race (That year there was some new fangled mountain bike race going on at the same time and some guy named John Tomac decided to sit in on a couple of the road races. When mountain bikes first came out I couldn’t understand how someone could take a perfectly good clean bike and get it all muddy riding it off-road).
My first Trek and the Trek 560 is probably what really got me into cycling and eventually my marketing career in the bike industry with Shimano and Specialized. I’ve had many brands and types of road and mountain bikes since then and I rode them a lot. I’m sad Dick Burke has passed away, but I’m very glad he started Trek and helped lead me into the life I have had and will continue to have through riding and appreciating bikes.
Thanks Dick!
[...] Smith, our main PR guy and great friend at SOAR Communications, wrote a nice story on their blog last week about hearing of Trek founder Dick Burke’s passing recently and his [...]