My Rivendell All-rounder
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 Cycles 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.
In 1990 when Bridgestone, under the direction of Grant Petersen (and eventual Rivendell founder), brought out the Bridgestone MB-0 or MB-Zip. Limited to just 1000 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 US operations which opened the door for Grant Petersen to create Rivendell…which brings us to my custom built Rivendell All Rounder.
The frame was custom built with a longer top-tube (to accomodate my long torso) using super-thin 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 with dampener.
My custom built Rivendell All Rounder in pumpkin orange.
This past summer I took it out for some proper mountain biking while in Vail Valley⛰️ and it’s still as fun as when I first got it back in 1996.
