racing frames, using his father's machine shop at their home in Mill Valley. He also studied Machine and Metals Technology at College of Marin from 1974 to 1976. Breeze had taken up cycling seriously as a teenager in the late 1960s, sometimes going on rides of a few hundred miles. He so enjoyed cycling and saw such value in the bicycle as a vehicle, he wanted to spread the word. In 1970 he took up road-bike racing, figuring that publicity about races could show people how fast and far a bicycle could go. Breeze also studied bicycle history and while traveling for races he searched for early bicycles. He hoped to promote cycling by restoring and displaying examples from the 1890s, the high point of bicycle technology. Development of the mountain bike Joe Breeze raced road bikes throughout the 1970s, eventually racing in the top category. By 1972 Breeze was also competing in cyclocross races and often rode on the trails of Mount Tamalpais. In 1973, he and Velo Club Tamalpais teammate Marc Vendetti were looking for fine early bikes and found a less elegant relic: a 1941 Schwinn-built balloon-tire bike. Vendetti had a few years earlier ridden similar 1930s-40s “paper boy” bikes on Tamalpais at the periphery of the mountain's seminal group of off-road riders, the Larkspur Canyon Gang. Encouraged by Vendetti, Breeze bought the old fat-tire bike for $5, stripped off its extraneous parts and rode it down Mount Tamalpais. He loved it. Breeze, Vendetti and Velo Club Tamalpais teammate Otis Guy were soon riding Mount Tamalpais trails together regularly. They and other teammates including Gary Fisher, and other enthusiasts from Marin located old fat-tire “ballooner” bikes of many makes, used them off-road and settled on Schwinns built between 1937 and 1944 as the best. They would remove extraneous parts from the bikes, strip them down to their original paint and ride them on Marin's rugged fire roads and trails. Some, including Gary Fisher, added parts such as gears and derailleurs to their ballooners. In 1976 Breeze began to compete in Repack races. A downhill time trial on fire roads in the hills west of Fairfax, California, Repack brought together riders from around Mount Tamalpais who stripped down older bikes for off-road use and fitted rugged parts to them. Repack served as a testing ground for off-road bikes. The heavy old fat-tire bike frames, made of mild steel,