My dad was already a bike enthusiast- not a racer, but a long distance rider. At 13 years old, I wasn't interested, because every time I went riding with him, he would drop me, and it would be a humiliating experience. But at 14 years old, I dropped him, so the tides turned.

In a very short time, I went from being an enthusiast to wanting to race, because I had friends that were riding. It was a natural desire. At 14 years old, I raced my first race, and got excited about training. As soon as I started racing, my dad wanted to start racing. So the two of us would go to races, and he would race the veterans and I would race the juniors.

My dad was a very good engineer, and I was always taking over the garage . . . when I was 15, I said 'Dad, I want to build a bike.' And he said he'd help me, and we both built my first bike. And naturally I started to race using the bike, and I started winning races, as a junior, and it became kind of a novel thing to win races and do it on my own bike. So I started off building one for my best friend, and then other friends, and this is the 30th year since I sold my first bike. In 1972, I built my first bike, and in 1973, I sold my first bike.

During that time period, the environment and the people that were racing, Joe Breeze, Charlie Kelley, Gary Fisher all rode . . . we knew each other, we rode with each other, we raced with each other, and we also had fun rides that were training rides, but looking for more adventure in our rides. Rather than just cars and pavement, we would ride off road with our road bikes. So without a lot of thought, by accident in certain ways, the experimenting with bikes that were more and more off road purpose bikes was a part of my and other peoples interest, and still my focus was road racing and road, but we were playing around, in training and in adventure, in other ways.

I'm more comfortable with the title of innovator rather than inventor. . . you're building on someone else's efforts. I consider the things that I think of to be very small. They are innovative. I think vector force analysis was the first time people thought of tires' orientation and tread design. Up until the time I was a frame builder, everyone had previously used lugs. I obliterated that back in the seventies. I said, 'I want to figure out how to braze well enough to not need these lugs, and that's going to give me the freedom to use geometries that no one else has made before, and to use tubing that no one else has used before. And it was basically not being bound or limited by the history of cycling, frame technology, and frame building, and telling myself, "I'm going to break those molds, I'm going to make bikes with different geometries, and angles and diameters and tubing . . . I wasn't the first to do that, but I was probably the most innovative. That gave me the ability to look at something like, what we were calling at that time, a ballooner, and say, no problem.

Most recent innovation that I am proud of is the Break-Away bike . . . the travel, flexibility . . . people's concept of a folding bike is heavy, and not as high performance, and expensive. I've produced a bike that disproves all these concepts.

What are some of your favorite designs, and some of your most challenging designs?

The most challenging designs would probably be saddles. People have incredibly diverse taste and experiences in how a saddle performs for them.

A bike is compactness. It's efficiency, it is speed . . . it's a noble recreation. It's one of the few recreations that is really so broad, that anyone can have, basically if they are functioning. Anyone can do it, and experience it. Just to be able to be in something that I consider to have evolved to the point where I am an "expert . . ." to be able to have a few things in my 30 years that I can say were technological advancements is a huge thing. I am first and foremost acommitted lifestyle cyclist, and pursuing things that create freedom, opportunities for more and more people. As the world struggles with over-population, the need for recreation, and the desire to find a personal escape . . .

The fundamentals of design for me, or the core philosophy of Ritchey is the art of high performance. High performance can look ugly, and I try to make things look very elegant, and stay as true to the performance side as possible.

I have a desk, but my desk is on my bike. And my drawing table is in my head, 95% of everything that I create that ends up being a product is not in an office. It's in the office of my bike, and on the drafting table in my head.

A lot of the things I bring out every season, the new products, aren't new in my head. A lot of it is old. The manufacturability of a product is often the release point of that product. Because there are so many desires in my head, whether it has to do with a road bike or mountainbike, that is a seed, every year I can count on an old idea becoming available.

In what direction do you see Ritchey moving? Do you view that direction to be different than that of the rest of the bike industry?

Ritchey has really come full circle, in that it is moving back to its roots in road racing. Other companies in the industry are so focused on the 'extreme' image, or lifestyle.

I feel that the invention of the bicycle and the opportunity to be involved in the development of the bicycle is something that appeals to the core need for freedom that everyone has. Whether it's a road bike or mountain bike or a track bike or a bike, what appeals to me is an immediate access to something that is a freedom tool. You can be in your office and say, 'I'm gonna go for a bike ride.'

I want to be involved in technology that makes it even more user friendly, even more instantaneous- it's spontaneous, and exciting, it's something that is at the core of how I use the product, and why the product appealed to me as a non car user back when I was 14.