Bio

     It's funny how parts of our lives can feel so long in our memory, but look so short on paper.

     I grew up in a bicycle world.  At least I did for a few years.  In the early '90's my parents owned a bicycle shop in western North Carolina.  Both of my parents were in the early amateur mountain bike racing scene, and led groups of kids and teenagers on rides in Pisgah National Forest.  A bulk of my earliest memories are playing in a bike shop, stealing ball bearings from my dad's parts bins and sneaking tools out of his tool chest.  After the shop closed, bicycles sort of faded from my world for several years, until I started exploring the back roads and countryside of my hometown from the saddle of my mountain bike.  College came, and I commuted to class virtually every day on my trusted bike.  After I decided that I was ill-suited to the world of academia, I did some traveling with a hint of soul-searching and whilst rocketing through Kansas on I-70 to come back home, I had an idea:  work in a bike shop.  It took a year, but in 2010 I began work as a bike mechanic in a tiny, dirty, wonderful bike shop in my hometown.

Nowhere better on Earth.

     The next year and a half I became saturated in the mechanical side of the bicycle world and developed both my skills as a mechanic and a somewhat cynical outlook on a "subculture" renowned for eccentricity.  I loved working on bikes, but I soon began to realize I didn't really fit in with the typical, or perhaps stereotypical, image of a "cyclist."  In 2011 I moved to northern Arizona, and became unemployed for six months.  In 2012 I relocated to Tucson, Arizona, bicycling capital of the Southwest, with my future wife.  Once again donning a mechanics shirt, I found myself with grease covered hands as one of the bike mechanics for the REI in Tucson.  I married my wife, and we lived in Tucson for a total of three years.  Finally having our fill of the desert, we saved money and departed for the Pacific Northwest, transferring to the REI in Hillsboro, Oregon.

     However, we felt it was time to move on from REI and each got new jobs in Portland.  Now, I am a mechanic at the Community Cycling Center, a non-profit bike shop and advocacy organization with a ton of great programs.