JOe BREEZE

HE STILL REMEMBERS EVERY TWIST AND TURN OF LOSING HIS REPACK VIRGINITY

Joe Breeze was one of the original ‘klunker crew’ and the man who built the custom chromoly-steel ‘ballooner’ bike that inspired Tom Ritchey [overleaf] to begin making 26in-wheeled off-road frames and set up Ritchey MountainBikes – the brand that gave the sport its name – with Charlie Kelly and Gary Fisher. Joe went on to found Breezer Bikes, only stepping back a few years ago, and is the curator at the Marin Museum of Bicycling and Mountain Bike Hall of Fame. He still rides the hallowed trail where the sport was born, and remembers every twist and turn of losing his ‘Repack’ virginity.

“Charlie held my rear wheel, said ‘three, two, one’ and then I sprinted off over the initial brief rise and hit the downhill at speed, adrenal glands wide open, eyes locked into ‘the line’, my brain processing critical trajectory math. Business as usual [for an accomplished road racer], but with trail topography considerations! Fortunately, I’d had months to sort out my beast of a bike – a 1941 Schwinn-built BF Goodrich with a Morrow coaster brake – and I managed to stay upright and win the nascent race in record time.”

Despite the Repack races (thus-named because riders’ coaster brakes got so hot they had to re-pack them with fresh grease after every run) starting out as pure, unadulterated fun, things soon started getting serious. “Competition was absolutely improving the breed [in terms of the equipment being used], with everyone looking for a leg-up to steal the day,” says Joe. “With Repack’s 80-something turns, better brakes did make faster bikes. Eventually, we had parts from around the globe hung on our relic ‘newsboy’ frames.” That still wasn’t enough, though. “These frames of mild steel, strong only due to their mass, were busting right and left. In early 1977, Charlie approached me with $300 in his hand and said, ‘Build me a proper frame.’ I remember looking at him and saying, “Aren’t we just having fun out here?’ But, on realising that I could buy tubing for 10 frames with that, I agreed then and there.”

Inspiration from above

So far, so uncontroversial. Yes, people had ridden bicycles off-road ever since they were invented, and some had built custom frames for the purpose – including Englishman Geoff Apps, who outfitted his 1979 creation with 650b snow tyres – but it was only once Breeze, Fisher, Kelly et al got involved that big-tyred off-road bikes went into mass production.

But where did the name ‘mountain bike’ come from? “Without a doubt, Kelly and Fisher popularised it,” says Joe. “But I understand the name came from Santa Barbara. In 1978, a cyclist called James MacLean was riding his touring bike near the university there and ran across a fat-tyred bike leaning against a tree. A lilting, prophetic voice came down from the branches: ‘We call this a mountain bike.’ James looked up to see this dreadlocked dude named Wing Bamboo [an inhabitant of the local Tipi Village hippie commune].

“On a tour up the California coast, James stopped in at Sunshine Bikes in Fairfax, where he found Charlie Kelly astride his Breezer [the bike Joe had built for him] and told him that where he was from, they called such a bike a mountain bike.” Charlie and Gary Fisher immediately claimed the title, and the rest is history.

It’s widely accepted that the sport we love and the bikes we ride originated on the slopes of Mount Tamalpais, in Northern California, back in the late 1970s. The story of how a bunch of hippies began racing downhill on modified beach cruisers known as ‘klunkers’ has been told and retold, with the details varying a little depending on whom you speak to. So, we thought we’d track down five of the forefathers of the sport to find out how it really all came about and what they’re doing now.