Once upon a time, if you said you owned a Mountain Bike, it meant only one thing. You owned a bicycle built on a Tom Ritchey frame, assembled and sold to you by Charlie Kelly and Gary Fisher out of their little shop in a rented garage at 1501 San Anselmo Avenue in San Anselmo.
This is such a sweet and nostalgic page about the origins of MountainBikes – the Company, and mountain bikes. The most interesting part of the page is how Tom Ritchey was singlehandedly tig-welding all the frames for the nascent company. Because he didn’t depend on lugs, he could quickly produce the frames. Being in his young 20s, he could burn the midnight oil to keep up with the demand.