Since he was a kid growing up in Florence, S.C., Curtis Dobbins has had a thing for bikes. Riding them, naturally, and because he was an inquisitive lad, tearing them apart and figuring out how to put them back together. He began riding seriously in high school and found work as a mechanic in a local bike shop. He moved to Raleigh in 1981 to go to N.C. State and got into bike racing at a time when Raleigh was one of the country’s hot spots (the old Capital City Criterium offered as much as $20,000 in prize money, enough to attract some of the nation’s top cyclists).