Joe Montgomery

Joe Montgomery has passed away, he was 86. Many of you may not know who he was so I’ll fill you in. He was the founder and President of Cannondale bicycles. I never met him but I did own many of his products. Some I’ve written about in other posts so I may repeat myself a bit here.

The first Cannondale I ever noticed was owned by a friend at work. A bunch of us were doing a group fund raising ride and I noticed his bike leaning against his car. What made me notice it were the large diameter frame tubes. I learned later they were made of aluminum. The other thing I liked was the cannondale name and font on the down tube. I was sold. I wanted one of these!

In the coming weeks I went to a bike shop to look at several Cannondale bikes and the first thing I noticed was how expensive they were.  Pretty much out of my price range back then. I left the bike shop without taking a test ride and I’ll admit, I was a bit bummed. The one thing I did get was the current Cannondale catalog.

As you can see, I still have it! This was also my first introduction to Joe as he wrote a short message on the first page of the catalog.

I had gotten the prices of several models and I know I wanted one of the higher end models. After talking to the folks at the bike shop and looking hard at my budget, I’d settled on the R600.

I really wanted the purple and black one but the only one they had was blue.

After several days of mulling things over, I decided the only way I would be able to afford the bike was to sell my motorcycle. Sounds crazy, I know! I decided I’d go do a test ride and let that ride decide it for me so off to the bike shop I went!

The first thing I noticed about this bike was it had “clipless pedals” meaning you had to buy shoes that you could screw cleats to and those cleats clipped into the pedals which means your feet were locked into the pedals. To unlock, you had to twist your ankle a bit and hopefully your foot would come free. This was all a first for me. I decided to do the test ride in my normal shoes as this whole clipless pedal thing sounded a bit scary.

I think it only took the first 15 or 20 feet of my test ride to decide I was selling the motorcycle. This was a magic carpet ride! The best description is the bike was effortless to pedal. It just moved forward, with speed. It was smooth and precise. It was amazing! A few weeks later, I had sold the motorcycle and purchased the R600! That was the start of my relationship with Cannondale that continues to this day.

A year or so later I decided to upgrade this bike and picked up my next Cannondale catalog.

Again, it had a message from Joe on the first page.

The bike I ended up going with was the R900.

Those hand written prices show the list price and the price I paid, written by the bike shop owner where I purchased the bike. He happened to have been on Eddy Merckx’s bicycle race team and he performed a bike fit for me on the R900. He also offered me a number of tips that significantly improved my riding! That bike shop’s name was Denver Spoke and it was one of the best bike shops I ever visited. Sadly, it no longer exists.

The R900 I had for many, many years until I upgraded it with yet another Cannondale. I also ended up owning a used Eddy Merckx titanium rode bike that I still have. Life can be a circle…

Joe’s vision and leadership at Cannondale has provided me with over 33 years of joy, adventure, exploration and camaraderie! I’ve been able to ride thousands of miles seeing sites and living experiences I would have never had without his bikes. Steve Jobs talked about building products that can change the world. Well, Joe Montgomery built products that changed mine! RIP Joe.