Joe Breeze was one of the central figures in the development of mountain biking. He's probably best known as the designer-builder of the first successful modern mountain bikes. Joe became a leading designer and proponent of a sport that has gotten more people on bikes in the western world than at any time since the 1890s. Joe attributes his successes with mountain biking to his passion for bicycling, evident in his oft-quoted line, "We were just havin' fun." Joe has made bicycles his life's work--as rider, racer, designer, builder, and advocate.

Born in December 1953, Joe grew up in Mill Valley, California, at the foot of Mount Tamalpais, the Marin County mountain that would become famous worldwide as the birthplace of mountain biking. Joe's father Bill, a machinist, rode his bike to work in the 1950s. His job was specialty preparation of sports cars and race cars and he passed along to Joe an appreciation for lightweight, mechanically efficient vehicles and the view that the bicycle is the supreme example.

Like most kids of his era, Joe rode a bike to school and around the neighborhood. By the age of ten he and friends were riding beyond town. In his early teens he began touring California by road bike. He started racing road bikes at age sixteen, in 1970. In 1971 he took a cycling tour of Europe, where he met famed bike builder Cino Cinelli and was inspired by the cycling infrastructure of Holland. He saw people of all ages using bicycles to get places and was deeply impressed with the positive effects that transportation cycling had on communities. Back at home, he began studying machining and metal technology, learning the art of bicycle framebuilding, and looking into the rich history of bicycles. He built his first road bike frame in 1974 and was soon in demand as a custom builder.