I had "ten-speeds" as a kid in the '70's, a juvenile Peugeot and then a Raleigh Gran Sport, but as a young man I was into mountain biking.

This was in the late '80's and early '90's in Southern California. There were fire roads all through the hills, the Angeles Crest range was nearby, Ned Overend and John Tomac and Missy Giove were the star riders, Mountain Bike Action magazine was pushing the latest motorcycle-derived techno-bikes and Grant Peterson was blazing his own grouchy path in the opposite direction. I started with a Raleigh MTB, bolted a sprung fork to it, scared myself witless bombing down rutted dirt trails - no helmet, naturally - and eventually stepped up to a Bridgestone MB-Zip which I still have. In another decade it will be squarely C&V. Then kids and work took over and I drifted away from cycling.

From time to time in the next decade or so I used my old MTB to commute, to grad school or to work, but I wasn't really a cycling enthusiast, just a steadily expanding guy on an old bike.

When we moved to Portland, I slowly started noticing bikes again, they're everywhere here. I started commuting on the MB-Zip, getting in shape again, and as I got stronger I enjoyed riding more. We put an Xtracycle extension on my wife's old Bridgestone MB-5 and started doing more errands by bike. I picked up another Bridgestone, the XO-1, and I started riding a local hill route with it on the weekends. This was the first time I'd gotten on a bike purely for sport, in over a decade. I started noticing how much faster the XO-1 was on the street, than the MTBs, and decided I wanted a real road bike. One day I saw a CL ad for an unusual Vitus frame, and bought it as a project - which remains unfinished. Then I saw a CL ad for a Peugeot PSV, and that became my daily rider. More bikes, bike parts, and bike tools followed and now the bikes outnumber the people in our house. I only drive once every week or so. Two of our three cars sit unused. I'm "training" for my first long ride, Seattle to Portland.

The biking thing works well with my job. I work in the financial industry, and have to be in the office at 5:30 am. So I ride in at 5:00 am, there is no traffic, I get to work awake and energized. I leave pretty early most days, so again I miss the "rush hour", not that Portland's rush hour is much compared to what I used to sit through in California.

Funny, I used to be really into cars, first vintage Land Rovers and then air-cooled Porsches. I've spent countless hours working on cars, reading about cars, auto-crossing cars - now I'm just not much into cars anymore. My Porsche sits under the cover, tires getting flat. I also had figured I'd have a real motorcycle by now, graduate from the vintage Vespa to something fast or vintage or both, like a Honda CB750 cafe racer, a BMW R90S, an old Ducati - but now I'm not much interested in that either. My life, at least my hobby life, seems to have veered off in this new direction of leg-powered transport.

Well, I guess it's good for my health. Bikes are undeniably cheaper than cars - I mean, each of my "grail" bikes would cost less than the parts for a suspension refresh on the 911. And I do come to bike wrenching with a crapload of tools and some mechanical experience.

Other stuff - let's see. Degrees in math, law, business. Two kids, three cats, one wife. Also like to kayak and shoot film. My other major hobby is cooking. Other than BF, I mostly hang around cooking foums.