Boblo and I were shooting the breeze with Mike at Black Mountain Cycles when a guy walks in to collect his wife’s fancy Moots cross bike.
His dog does tricks, it takes off the guys hat, puts it back on and gives him a high five.
We check out the S&S couplings on the Moots and talk about bikes, not difficult when BMC has an amazing collection of retro bikes.
We talk about the origins of the sport and he says he was there and that he had a hand in the establishment of WTB. I’ve met Charlie Cuningham and Steve Potts, but I’d never heard of this guy called Lance, I forget his surname.
He tells us about the amateur origins of Steve’s frame building business, the impossibly long build times and his inability to get significant discounts from distributors to assemble the finished frames with parts, so he advises him on how to establish his fledgling business on a more sound commercial basis.
The first hurdle would be a company name.
Lance, was a cyclist and a hiker. He went walking on extended tours in the Sierras. He made a form of flapjack he ate on the trails. He called them Wilderness Trail Biscuits. So when asked what the bicycle company should be called he immediately thought of Wilderness Trail Bikes.
He said that WTB CEO had approached him asking if he’d like to market the biscuits under the WTB brand name.
