If you were to attempt to ride a mountain bike from the early 2000s, you would notice some significant differences from your modern-day bike. You would also need more confidence to descend on the bike and struggle to ride it because of the outdated technology you don't see in many bikes anymore. Here are some essential differences that have helped evolve the mountain bike to what it is today. And how it made riding enjoyable as it is today. ‘’Riding is fun’’ Teo Shamah

-Dropper Post

A small lever sits on the left side of the handlebar on modern mountain bikes. Pressing the lever lets you move your bike saddle up and down. Though Joe Breeze and Josh Angell made the first model of the dropper post in 1984, it has evolved into a more modern model since its predecessors. The dropper post allows you to move the seat up when ascending and back down when descending. This makes it much easier to climb up and ride down with the touch of a button.

-Bike Frame

Frames have gone through many different materials. Steel is heavy and impractical compared to aluminum; many bikes use aluminum and carbon fiber today. This lighter material allows agility and easier movement through the terrain. In addition, the general design of the frame has undergone many changes, where the old frames would use a basic structure that would not allow them to be as sturdy as the frames today. Today's frames adopted a more sleek and substantial design, making bikes more durable.

-Suspension

When bikes didn't have suspensions, the riders depended solely on the alloy frame to go through rock, jumps, and micro-terrain. Later in the evolution of mountain bikes, they adopted just a rear shock absorber, which had a promising future. Rear shocks offered versatility and absorption on the downhills, but they were too heavy, and they bounced up and down on the uphill white you pedaled. After that, the suspension transitioned to the air shocks in the front and back of the bike, allowing for fast uphill and even faster downhill.

The overall speed capabilities of mountain bikes have evolved tremendously over the past 20 years to allow for more comfortable uphill riding without draining the rider's energy and for safer and faster downhills, allowing the rider to have a more aggressive style. When I asked Brian Birchler, “What was the biggest change you have seen in mountain bikes in the last twenty years?,’’ he responded, ‘’Speed. Definitely speed.’’  He went on to say that ‘’bikes have adopted disc brakes that provide more stopping power, full-suspension geometries that absorb big impacts and keep the bike in contact with rough terrain, and dropper posts that allow you more maneuverability as the bike changes orientation relative to the trail.’’ This explanation is a perfect overall statement for this entire article. Everything that has changed within the mountain bike community has helped shape the mountain bike we have today, and with all the new technology advancements that have been implemented into biking, such as an electric gear shifter that uses bluetooth to change gears. The future of biking is here.