| Bio: |
I'm a Southern Californian who was lured away long ago from Minnesota by one of those California girls the Beach Boys sang about in the '60s and who still views himself as a character out of author Garrison Keillor's "Prairie Home Companion," i.e., quiet, tries to do good, and still lives way beyond his senses as any Minnesotan would do out here in sunny coastal Southern California. This place is a cyclist's dream come true-year round comfortable cycling, lots of fellow cyclists, and an infrastructure of bike lanes and paths that provide for an easy appreciation of this semi-tropical-paradise. I worked at the local university for twenty-five years (now thankfully retired), doing all kinds of technical support (but mainly computer graphics) for the Geography and Anthropology Departments. News flash: I have come out of retirement to pursue my long-time fantasy of being a pro-cyclist! OK, I admit that it's actually pedicabbing for www.sbpedicab.com on weekend evenings and at Santa Barbara Bowl concerts. But what a gig: people are paying me to ride my bike! I'm very happily married to that California gal I met back when we were first-year students at the University of Chicago in the late 1960s. One of my memories from our campus courtship was riding bikes together . . . many years later we rode mountain bikes around the trails of Santa Barbara, and now we share a recumbent tandem trike. We have a daughter, who did her jr. high school years at a bicycling-intensive middle school http://www.sbms.org She did many amazing week-long bike treks with that school all over the western US . . . you go girl! (She's now a 21 year-old Paramedic for Los Angeles County . . . yes, I'm a proud papa). As for me, I started out as a child on three wheelers and after decades of progressing through 1950s era balloon tire bikes, English 3-speeds, and then mountain bikes, I now find myself in my late middle ages back once again on three wheels, albeit recumbent performance trikes. For a more detailed cycle-biography, please check http://members.impulse.net/~dms/cycle_past.html I was one of the original customers of http://www.terratrike.com and have been happily using their products since 1997. Why? Because they're fun, fast, and treat the body and pocketbook very fairly. And why did I write these journals? Well, if it weren't for how easy Neil has made this process, I'd still be putting off requests from people who have asked me to write about my triking and one in particular, my 2002 National 24 Hour Challenge experiences. Now at the retired age of 63, I've embarked on a new cycling experience (alas, one that doesn't qualify for a CGOAB journal status) pedicabbing! I'm purchasing a Broadway model from Pedicab.com and joining Jim Heaton's SBPedicab.com fleet of pedal-powered purveyors of people-pleasers along Santa Barbara's beautiful streets. Wheeeee! |
