msvphoto

I'm a 54 year old clydesdale in Santa Cruz. I first started riding, mostly around the SF Bay Area Peninsula area (with Western Wheelers, Eric Peterson was my neighbor in my home town Menlo Park) in the early 1970s as a kid. I rode the Davis Double in 1973 with a partner, Tommy Hill (you out there Tommy??? wanna do it again 40 years later?) and was very involved in cycling all of my teen years. Got a driver's license when I turned 19 and didn't ride so much after that for a few years. In the 80s got a MTB and played with that a bit, but not as much as I hoped (the off road thing really didn't do it for me). Ballooned up and got the bug again in the 1990s when I began bicycle commuting in Santa Cruz. Lost a lot of weight, got pretty comfortable and treated myself to a couple of nice road bikes in that era. Got scared by cars and quit again. Ballooned even bigger this time (5' 8" ~280 pounds!). In the mid 2000s I got a Tidalforce "ebike" to commute to work (I work at around 860 feet and live at sea level). That lasted a year That got me back on a bike! After a year I moved to a commute bike I built up from a yard sale score 80s Stumpjumper (my commute bike to this day). In 2009 joined my local gym (24 Hour in Santa Cruz) and started doing spin classes with my wife. Now I hover around 200 pounds (my riding weight even as a teenager was around 175-180) and am on my commute bike 5 days a week, along with 3 spin classes a week. The garage is now filled with interesting bikes of various forms (none very new--I'm pretty old school). A month ago my wife and I bought an old Santana tandem and are really enjoying it! We hope to do a metric century next month (Strawberryfields). So, that's me, Mike (and Lena, my amazing wife and stoker) in Santa Cruz.