about ME
I studied journalism and environmental sustainability as a grad student at UC Berkeley. I went on to report on environmental issues for NPR’s Living on Earth and to work for various environmental NGO’s.
But in terms of my bicycling life, here’s the important stuff:
• age 5, I’m given my first bike soon replaced by a brown Schwinn with a banana seat and sissy bars, then a Huffy thunder road.
• inspired by the movie Breaking Away, I chase semi-trucks on the highways of upstate NY on my Motobecane ten-speed. Still in high school and living in Santa Fe, NM, I compete in road races and explore the high desert and Sangre de Cristo mountains on my trusty Guerciotti.
• while in college, I suffer flat after flat on my supple sew-up/tubular tires traveling the glass strewn rolling hills of Maryland and Washington DC.
• riding through the wet El Nino winter storms of 1997-98 on a Hoo Koo e Koo mountain bike, I make the daily commute to the UC Berkeley campus.
• touring California’s coastal Hwy 1 in the summer of 2006, my brother and I ride from the Bay Area to San Luis Obispo pitching our tent in Santa Cruz, Monterrey, Big Sur, and San Simeon.
• minutes after borrowing a bicycle from a hotel in Vietnam, in 2008, I am promptly, and rather brutally, run over by a speeding motor scooter in an intersection like this.
• finally living in a house with a garage (in Fairfax, CA–a great biking town about 20-30 minutes from the Golden Gate Bridge), I grow my stable of bikes to four and launch The Friday Cyclotouriste.
Nathan
May 2009
