So when people first meet me one of the first things they inquire about is why? Why do you love bikes? How did you get into this? Where did you learn this kind of skill?
I grew up playing soccer. Loved to play ball from the age of 4. I played on some of the best teams with some of the best players in the area. I traveled and played all over the state of Ohio indoors and out. I was an endurance machine. I played midfield and ran like it was my job, because on the field that what it was. But a few years after high school I got hurt. Bad enough I couldn’t run well anymore. The doctors told me I could still play but I would never cut and run, sprint and stop like before my injury. I took up cycling as a rehabilitation assignment. I had ridden my brothers ( a Concord Selecta 12) bike all over before I got a drivers license but had not done much riding a few years.
Then it happened. I was going to school at Kent State and screwing around on campus doing something when I should have been concentrating on schoolwork. There were two guys on bikes out in the middle of a grassy field. The bikes were like nothing I had ever seen. They were dirty. Really dirty. The guys were smiling ear to ear. The bikes were mountain bikes with knobby tires and mud everywhere. I fell in love. I wanted one, bad. It was in that fall of 1989 I got my first mountain bike ( a Diamond Back Apex). From then on my passion for cycling was equal to and growing from the love I had for soccer up to that point in my life. Been that way ever since.