Wheel Love? Hmm… maybe that is stretching it with my 1990 Shogun Prairie Breaker Expert. It was an ok MTB for its time, it’s just that it was way too big for me — I guess you’ve got to make that mistake at least once with a bike. Those were the days before the internet, and MTB magazines weren’t around much either. You just went to a bike shop and bought a bike, often from whatever they had on the floor. Regardless of its size though I really enjoyed exploring the Bogong High Plains on the Prairie Breaker over the first full Summer season I’d lived in the High Country.
The Prairie Breaker replaced the old faithful 1988 Apollo Everest. After all the adventures I had on the Everest it was sad to see it go, I guess I was waving goodbye to solo long distance MTB touring and saying hello to daily fun MTB adventures in the mountains. I sold the Everest to a Falls Creek local who really needed a bike. He stripped it down, repainted it, and used it a bunch. It went to a good home.
Anyways, this is all in retrospect. As you can tell by the photo taken in November 1990 before the Shogun Prairie Breaker turned a wheel on the dirt for the first time I thought the bike was pretty damn flash, though it would be sold the following summer… to a much taller guy 😛