shopThe recently opened Museum of Mountain Bike Art & Technology (MOMBAT) preserves and chronicles the evolution of the sport of mountain biking, it’s personalities and products. The museum’s collection contains over 400 bicycles, including more than 250 mountain bikes, as well as hundreds of vintage parts and accessories and thousands of pieces of literature, including period catalogs and magazines that follow the evolution of mountain biking. MOMBAT is located within First Flight Bicycles in historic downtown Statesville, NC. Admission is free and the museum is open to the public Monday-Friday, 10-6 and Saturday, 10-5.

Actually, Jeff Archer, the museum’s curator, has been displaying his collection within First Flight Bicycles  for some time, but he recently decided to pump the volume. Jeff told me: “We have been operating the ‘museum’ out of the shop and decided to make it a little more ‘formal’. Ross Shafer helped us come up with the name . We’ve also been spending a ton of time scanning catalogs and reviews for the mombat.org website plus updating the pictures of the bikes in the museum.”

Speaking of the website, kudos to Jeff and the MOMBAT gang for providing such a great online resource. The virtual bike museum has photos of vintage bikes from the likes of Amp Research, Breezer, Fat Chance, Gary Fisher, Grove Innovations, Nishiki, Potts, Salsa, Schwinn, Trimble and Yeti—to name but a few. Equally fascinating is the online parts museum, which is chock full of classic brake levers, derailleurs, pedals, shifters, stems, suspensions and much more.

For a sample of the eye candy available at mombat.org, click on the thumbs below. Click here to check out First Flight branded goodies.

klein amp breezer fat

grove ibis proflex salsa