Hi there! I'm Mert from Turkey. I am an academic and an avid cyclist. I am also a Ride of Silence coordinator. I lived in the US between 2012 and 2020 while I was in grad school. My first "road bike" was a heavy Walmart bike with cheap components, although I managed to put 1000 miles on it (even rode a metric century once). At the moment, I have a Lapierre Sensium 3.0 Disc road bike, a Trek Marlin 7 MTB, and an Umit Cunda folding bike for short commutes.

Actually, I'm coming back to the US for postdoc this fall and planning to bring my Lapierre w/ me. I will be in Piscataway, NJ and I'd be happy to meet people from the Tri-state area so I could join the regular group rides over the weekends.