John Castellano
While developing the Sweet Spot suspension, John became intrigued by the idea of incorporating spacecraft-style pivotless flexures into his long-travel suspension system, and began modeling and testing pivotless prototypes. This work culminated in the Ibis BowTi, the ultimate expression of his Sweet Spot Suspension. With 5” of travel and no pivots, the titanium BowTi is in a class by itself. Castellano’s next inspiration led to the SilkTi and Ripley softails, also built by Ibis, featuring John’s pivotless Flat-Plate chainstays and Critically Damped Elastomer shock.
John recently had the honor of displaying the SilkTi and BowTi at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington DC. He was one of only 24 inventors in the nation selected to participate in the Re-inventing the Wheel Innovators’ Exposition, which was part of the museum’s Invention at Play program—a theme John is very familiar with.
Chris Chance
[news article: ] Here on the worn-out East Coast, where everything has a history, the big book of mountain bikes starts with Chris Chance. Even as the first fat tires began roaming the Berkshires, Adirondacks and Appalachians, Fat Chances, as Chance’s bikes were dubbed, were our secret weapon. They went where no other bikes could go.They climbed hills no other bike could clean, and they snaked along trails with nary a tread misplaced.
In fact, when Chris built his first fat Chance in the summer of 1982, there was, quite literally, nothing else like it. West Coast bikes from Tom Ritchey and Gary Fisher had ultra-long chainstays, shallow head angles and low bottom brackets. Even production bikes were weird:The first Stumpjumper stays yawned about 19 inches over the horizon. But Fat Chances were different, with buzz-cut chainstays, upright angles, and high bottom brackets to clear the stumps, boulders and eruptions common to New Englands battered terrain. In other words those Fats already looked alot like the bikes we ride today.
Steve Potts
A member of the original Marin county gang, Potts was inspired to build his first mountain bike to get out in the mountain wilderness to pursue his first love, fishing. Potts knew a bike had to be sturdy and have several gears in order to get where they wanted to go, so he collected assorted components at the junk yard and assembled them in his high school metal shop. That hand painted pinstriped bike led to the development of Wilderness Trail Bikes, in which Potts is now a dedicated partner, designer, researcher and bike builder.
