I'm a flatlander, I am told, as constantly reminded by my uncle in Colorado Springs upon moving out to Colorado. I grew up and spent 25 years of my life in Indiana. I received my Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering Technology from Purdue University in 2010, at which point I made the move to the not-so-flat land of southern Indiana, specifically Bloomington.
June 2010: The start of a mountain biking "career".
Career: course or progress through life. Or, in terms of an occupation, herein pertaining to some form of work, where work equals a force times a distance, of which I am executing on a weekly basis through the cranks of a bike, my career path is constantly being forged.
This began the saga of pure love, adoration, and addiction to mountain biking that I still find myself wrapped up and twisted in today. Brown County State Park, just outside Bloomington, has one of the best systems of smooth, flowy, buttery singletrack in the country. It still ranks at the top of my favorite trail systems. A year and a half of exploitation on my behalf, at a rate of 3-4 times a week, was still not enough to undue the grip of anticipated joy that kept pulling me back.
I showed up at my first race in May 2011, the D.I.N.O. Series event at Warsaw. Not knowing where I stood amongst the ranks, I entered into the CAT3 field and won by a considerable margin. I was pushing a rigid singlespeed Niner S.I.R.9, the same bike I race today. I moved up to CAT2 for the rest of the summer, but was only able to complete a few more races due to some nagging knee injuries and personal/family setbacks. It turns out that mountain biking isn't the most important thing in the world. However, it does rank up near the top, somewhere in between beer, girls, peanut butter, Ron White, and cut-off shorts, but always behind family. My worst result was 3rd in CAT2, but was always right up there with the front-runners.
This same year, 2011, was also spent "working".... hiatus; work is to be engaged in physical or mental activity in order to achieve a purpose or result, key words, purpose or result ....in a manufacturing/fabrication shop in southern Indiana as a design engineer. 15 months of commuting ~2 hours a day, sitting at a desk on a computer 40 hours a week, and feeling little to no connection, passion, or purpose to what I was doing was all I could take. It should be noted, I enjoy doing 3D design, and look forward to doing more in the future. I currently have a few ideas floating around that are waiting to be put into action. So I hit the road two days before the start of the new year, 2012. My first stopping point was Fort Collins then Boulder, Colorado, where I find myself today. It turns out that Boulder is a decent place to live if you enjoy cycling. I have been slowly falling in love with the place ever since.
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| First couple of days in Colorado. Nederland, CO. |
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