Great Cycling Brands

Shame about Pace. Like I said, I don't know what has been going on with them.

RE: the 29er thing I did not know that, had alway heard it was GF. the entire "invention" of 29er is a funny one anyway.Considering that a 29er is really just a bike with wide 700c wheels riding off road you could argue people had been doing that for years on touring bike and cross bike with over sized tyres. Wheel prob never reached 29" because of tyre availability but as big as you can get, prob made a 28" wheel. It's a bit like the fact that the yanks didn't invent off road, it's always existed in some guise or another.

29ers were the original MTB...it was only years later that they started using 26" wheels when someone had the idea of cutting and rewelding a 700c mavic rim (charlie cunningham i think?) to allow them to use the smaller balloon tyres that were more accessible.
Wes willits had been keeping things going...along with bruce gordon who made the 'rock n roll'...basically a cross bike with the fattest tyres he could get.
Fisher realised what was going on wayyyy later.
But then he did the same thing with the MTB anyway...he gets a LOT of credit considering he didn't even make any for ages...he saw the fun the other guys were having and then payed another builder (Tom Ritchey i think) to make them so he could sell them in his shop...he then came up with the name 'Mountain bikes' and the rest as they say is history. :)

But...it takes the fishers of this world to bring things to the mainstream...without him we wouldn't have anywhere near the selection of 29er stuff we do now...he did what wes willits couldn't basically.