The lovely copy above from post 1986 and pre 1994 pretty much sums up what the early origins of WTB were all about - taking what was being used for what people at the time called mountain biking, and making it better.
You can tell that WTB was founded by real riders when stumbling across things like shifter adaptors. Why should anyone care about shifter adaptors? Simple, so you can keep pinning it full boar and shift without moving your hand position - how can you go fast if you have to constantly keep moving your hands about the bar? See, going fast was cool before Strava. WTB has always been about improving mountain biking and the riding experience - in this case, going faster.
The drop bars get back to the essence of WTB's formation: making parts that wouldn't break. Available parts, or parts being used, broke. This wasn't necessarily the fault of pre-WTB parts, they simply weren't designed for the application they were being subjected to. So... design some parts for it... along comes WTB and available parts were modified then designed and made ground-up around mountain biking. The rest is history.
Speaking of history, looking at the back of this mailer, the astute will note that the address is in Corte Madera, CA - also right at the base of Mount Tamalpais but tucked one fold over, Blithedale Ridge that is, from WTB's current Mill Valley location, which we've been in since 1994. Corte Madera sits adjacent to Larkspur, CA, which is the home of the Larkspur Canyon Gang - some would argue to be the first mountain bikers, others would disagree. The Corte Madera address was one of the first non garage - as in actually one of the founder's garages, addresses for WTB.
