The easiest product endorsement for me to make is that Kona Bikes Rock! The love story started in the 80’s in place on the North Shore of Vancouver called Deep Cove, when one fine Sunday afternoon in the month of June two Dudes emerged from the woods on bicycles that were covered in mud and at a glance your could tell that they had just been extreme off-road.
What I was witness to, was the birth of mountain bike development, as those were the early generation of Kona Bikes that were made for the off-road, right near where I first saw them. Ever since that day I’ve loved the breakthrough that is mountain bike riding and appreciate the way in which Kona Bikes have remained on the cutting edge of radical riding.
Now of course the company has gone global for decades and has Kona World for online bike selection, in every category, not just radical off-road, downhill mountain bikes. Kona makes every type of bike and I’ve owned them for years, here’s a classic Kona Therefore I made this page for an archive of Bike photos from over the years.
Kona Bikes is a bicycle company based in the Pacific Northwest. The company was founded in 1988 by Dan Gerhard and Jacob Heilbron in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Still owned by Gerhard and Heilbron, their world headquarters are located in Ferndale, Washington, with Canadian distribution offices in Vancouver, and European distribution offices in Geneva, Switzerland.
Miranda Miller Introduces the All-New Process 134 from Kona Bikes on Vimeo.
Gerhard and Heilbron worked initially with Mountain Bike Hall of Fame rider Joe Murray to create a range of custom steel hardtails. Kona was the first brand to produce a complete range of sloping top tube design mountain bike frames. Paul Brodie collaborated with the TBG and was likely instrumental in implementing the sloping top tube design from previous work with Rocky Mountain and with his own company. The Canadian headquarters are located near the famous North Shore mountains of Vancouver, leading Kona to develop a range of Freeride mountain bikes in 1998 known for durability as well as for their ability to handle extremely technical downhill terrain.
Kona has gone on to develop a complete range of road, commuter, cyclo-cross in addition to a complete range of mountain bikes. Using a range of materials including carbon fiber, titanium, aluminum and steel, Kona’s bikes are sold in over 60 countries worldwide.
The company’s website is located at www.konaworld.com
NOTE: Only 5 days after I posted the above story, my favourite Kona Bike was stolen from in front of my apartment. In broad day light the combination lock was picked or the Krypto cable was cut with bolt cutters, either way, in 60 seconds something so precious, having travelled twice to Brazil and thousands of miles of riding in BC, was stolen from me.
Kona Photo credit: mo yun on VisualHunt.com / CC BY-NC-ND
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