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About the Editors
PAUL DIAMOND grew up in Washington DC. He worked as a photojournalist for United Press International in Pittsburgh, and later taught writing at Ohio University and Tulane University. He now lives in San Diego and works as a writer and editor. When the ocean is flat--when there are absolutely no waves to surf--he takes his road bike out and rides along the coast in a t-shirt and board shorts.

Erich Schweikher has always preferred wheels—his earliest memory is that of being pulled around the neighborhood in a Radio Flyer wagon. A BMX bike replaced the wagon and the obsession began. While he has only one competitive race under his belt (he finished dead last due to a disqualification), he rides every chance he can get, mostly commuting to and from work in Portland, OR, where he teaches composition at Portland Community College. When not on the bike or in the classroom he spends his down time writing poems, a number of which have been published in national literary journals.

Contributors
Heather Andersen |  Carla Axt-Pilon |  Luke Bauer |  Bob Burt Jacques DeBelle | 
Eugene Etsebeth |  Michael Fee |  Roland Goity |  Stan Green |  Mike Hainsworth | 
Shashi Kadapa |  Adrain Kien |  Austin King |  Michael McCann |  Bob Mina
David Monnig |  Bob Neubauer |  Amy Nevala |  Claus Palle |  Eric Pinder |  Steve Pucci
George Niels Sorensen |  Dave Stamboulis |  Randall Stafford |  Greg Taylor |  Aaron Teasdale | 

Heather Andersen is a bicycle tour leader and writer. She is currently working on a book about her experience cycling in southern Africa, a trip she embarked on after serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in the tiny country of Lesotho. She has worked for bicycle advocacy groups in Washington, DC on both the national and local levels and has never owned a car. A traveler at heart, she has lived on three continents and cycled on five. She has cycled more than 100,000 miles, including more than 13,000 leading and working on tours.

Carla Axt-Pilon is a middle school teacher living in Naperville, Illinois, with her husband, two daughters, two cats, and three bikes. She has competed in triathlons since 1999. When not training or racing, she gardens, and monitors amphibians for the Forest Preserve. This summer she hopes to complete six triathlons, including her first half Ironman . . . with loosened releases on her pedals!

Luke Bauer is a twenty five-year-old part-time college student, part-time traveler, and full-time writer/photographer. He currently lives in Madison, WI, yet tries to get out of Madison as much as possible to ice climb, rock climb, ride his bicycle long distances, and generally enjoy the outdoors.

Bob Burt took on nine cars and lost every time in his seven-year bike messenger career in Pittsburgh and Seattle. He put an untold number of auto mechanic's children through school by working his way around the lower 48 living in a '78 van, trying to sell photographs to people who didn't want to buy. Then he went to Alaska where seven fishing seasons in the Bering Sea yielded more casts and stitches. Now he's changing diapers in the Pacific Northwest working as a sub-par unlicensed, unbonded, uninsured contractor and wondering why his back hurts.

Jacques DeBelle suffers from severe ADHD, which has invariably led him to commit a number of mischievous acts. He grew up in Canberra, Australia. He has a four year-old son named Oliver. He has road raced on and off for past 20 years. He is currently unemployed and seeking work in the fitness industry. His knee requires major reconstruction from an indoor soccer incident 10 years ago; hence he is no longer in any competitive sports at the moment. After his operation Jacques hopes to play social tennis, go running and cycle recreationally.

Eugene Etsebeth is a recently married 37-year-old business analyst from Johannesburg, South Africa. He started riding his bike competitively at the University of Port Elizabeth when he was 19. Now, he enjoys the occasional cycle touring holiday in Europe. He writes for Bicycling South Africa and other publications. While cycling he has been shot at with a BB gun, hit with palm fronds, attacked by a drunken Dane, swerved at by a bus and mugged. He has also broken a hip in a cycling crash, but he wouldn’t stop riding his bike for anything.

Michael Fee's final business school project was writing a business plan for a bike touring company with Greg LeMond. Through the course of developing the plan, Michael and Greg worked closely together including following the Tour de France for ten days. So while Michael started business school on a rough note, he completed it by riding the route to Sestrieres in advance of Lance Armstrong and the peloton (and without a crash)! Since then Michael has worked with various education programs and today runs a small company that teaches foreign languages to children. He lives in Oakland, California, with Karen and his three kids, and manages to struggle through Category 3 road races from time to time.

Roland Goity’s stories appear or are forthcoming in Fiction International, the Bryant Literary Review and the Talking River Review. He is currently editing a literary anthology on rock music and culture while he teaches writing workshops in Menlo Park, CA. He received an MFA in Creative Writing from San Diego State University.

Stan Green is a native of New Orleans and a lifelong resident of the area. He and his wife Patti have three daughters, whom he characterizes as the scientist-adventurer, the nurse-cyclist, and the artist-runner. He has degrees in English, biology, and engineering, and has worked for twenty-six years as a project manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in New Orleans. Stan has been an avid cyclist for more than thirty-five years, although in the wake of Hurricane Katrina the exigencies of his job have left little time for his bicycle.

Mike Hainsworth began cycling in the rural lowlands of eastern north Carolina with the encouragement of his cousin who owned Right Bros Bike Shop in Greenville. After a summer of interval training induced by dogs chasing him on farm roads, he won the NC junior state road race championships in 1985. He raced for several amateur teams in the early 90s, including the Tulsa Cyclones which had him competing in the National Cycling League, a dangerous, no-rules criterium series developed specifically for ESPN. However, he gave up a chance at going professional to take care of his cancer stricken mother. Recently, he has won several Category 1 and Pro Category races in Washington State and he rides for the Dewar’s Scotch team based out of Santa Rosa, CA. He lives in Seattle where he bangs nails as a contractor.

Shashi Kadapa was born and raised in a small village in the Dharwad district of India. His earliest childhood memories include long bicycle rides perched on the handlebars next to his older brother while his father pedaled, and his mother and sister sat on the rear carrier rack. The bicycle was his family’s only form transportation, and they often rode like this (the whole family on one bicycle) to country fairs, the cinema, or wherever else the family wanted to go. His family heirloom, the revered bicycle, was handed down from grandfather to father to elder brother and finally to Shashi (much to the envy of his friends). He rode the bicycle through rain and mud, through harvests and droughts, through mango orchards and rice fields, to and from school and then to university where he earned an engineering degree and later a MBA. He has worked as a production and design engineer, marketing manager, journalist, lead guitarist for a rock band, sadhu (an ascetic holy man), researcher, writer, animator, programmer, and knowledge management consultant. He is currently the CEO of an Indian software company (www.activemuse.com) that offers software services and consultancy to leading Indian software companies.

Adrian Kien teaches poetry at Boise State University. He recently had to undergo an antibiotic treatment for a mysterious rash he had developed on his mouth. He rides a Diamond Back Axis TR circa 1995 with a single speed conversion.

Austin King has been racing since he was 13. He lives in sunny Phoenix, Arizona and currently races road bikes professionally in the U.S. for the Jittery Joe’s team. He spent the better half of 5 years racing as an amateur in Europe with the U.S. National Team and the Cycling Center. In 2004, Austin was one of the main characters in a Belgian prime time realty television show called Man Bijt Hond (Man Bites Dog). Off the bike, he spends as much time as he can with his girlfriend Suzanne. Currently he is enrolled in a local community college (which is no place for a professional cyclist) chipping away at a business degree. He also runs a popular personal website: AKingsLife.com.

Michael McCann has a near-unhealthy passion for pedaling. His solo travels on a second-hand, thirty-pound, mountain bike have taken him across the United States on a number of different routes , as well as across the Arctic Circle . . . twice. Much of this riding was done in board shorts and flip-flops. Mike currently lives in Washington State, where he teaches in a Seattle Public School program for homeless youth. He is a long-time volunteer/executive for the Seattle Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, as well as the founder and coordinator of their Snowrider Project. Many of his cycling adventures are documented at: www.mikelikebike.com.

Bob Mina is 35 years old, and resides in West Chester, Pennsylvania. He was the fat kid in his High School band, but in 1988, he discovered the bicycle. Soon he lost 65 pounds and was racing. After a USCF racing career in which he maxed out as a Category 3 (total career earnings: One $25 prime, one T-Shirt, one Power Bar), he was struck by car on a training ride in April of 1995. During his rehab he caught a broadcast of the Ironman Triathlon on TV, and turned to triathlon training to complete his recovery. Since then he’s raced 45 triathlons of all distances, including 6 Ironman Triathlons. He’s finished 26 marathons, including 10 Philadelphia Marathons in a row. He will race in anything he can find until they close the lid on him. Lately he’s been messing around in Dragon Boats. Bob is married, has one daughter (15 months old), and a cat.

David Monnig taught middle school in Portland for four years before moving to La Grande, Oregon where he attends Eastern Oregon University with his girlfriend. A passion for mountain biking has replaced his childhood devotion to road biking, and early morning rides in the woods near town are a daily activity. David still enjoys tinkering with bikes, currently he is building a tall bike—one bicycle welded on top of another.

Bob Neubauer has bicycled solo from Maine to Florida. His adventures from that trip are chronicled in his book Two Wheels and a Map. He has also published numerous travel stories in newspapers including: the Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe and San Francisco Examiner. When he's not riding, he serves as editor of a national trade magazine called In-Plant Graphics.

Amy Nevala began her cycling career in 1999 by pedaling 3,254 miles across the United States to report stories on a group of bicyclists raising money for the American Lung Association. On an 88-mile day in Montana, a tall cyclist shared his peanut butter sandwich; she married him in 2004 on a Cape Cod farm. Amy and her husband live and bicycle in Massachusetts, where Amy works as a science writer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Claus Palle is a 37-year-old, father of one, living with his fiancée. He holds a law degree and works as a legal adviser at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. He played competitive soccer and basketball, while the bike was only a means of transportation.. Eventually he discovered a passion for endurance sports, and began competing as a long distance runner. At some point he was drawn towards road racing, but still wanted to run, so he turned to triathlons. This in turn introduced him to adventure racing. Parenthood means an inevitable decrease in sporting activities. He love bikes for their pollution free ability to get him out in the forest or countryside , far away from the city. He owns four bikes, but no car as yet.

Eric Pinder is the author of three books about mountains, weather, and the outdoors: North to Katahdin, Tying Down the Wind, and Life at the Top. For many years he lived and worked at the weather observatory atop New Hampshire's Mount Washington ("the highest paying job in New England") and as a guide and instructor for the Appalachian Mountain Club. He teaches nature writing at Chester College of New England and resides in Berlin, New Hampshire.

Steve Pucci is a 57-year-old active cyclist. He lives in West Newbury, Ma (35 miles north of Boston) with his wife Jeanne. He has two daughters Jennifer and Molly. He is the team manager of the regional powerhouse cycling team CCB/Volkswagen, which he occasionally races for (5 to 6 times a season). He has coached several successful bike racers: Tyler Hamilton and Tim Johnson among them.

George Niels Sorensen has been a bicycle rider since the 1950s when it was popular to clothespin playing cards to the wheels to annoy the neighbors. For the better part of 30 years he has been a professional writer and marketing communications director in the corporate world. Author of several books, George has an eclectic background and set of interests. His undergraduate degree is in Theater Arts and he also holds an MA in Theology. He became interested in the Iron Riders when he wandered into a museum and saw their photo on the wall.

Dave Stamboulis is a freelance photographer and writer based in Bangkok, Thailand, specializing in off the beaten track adventure travel around the world. He has written for many magazines and newspapers in Asia, and is the author of Odysseus' Last Stand: Chronicles of a Bicycle Nomad, which won the Society Of American Travel Writers' Silver Medal for travel book of the year in 2006.

Randall Stafford has been an avid bicyclist since the age of 10 when he talked his parents into purchasing a bright yellow and white $200 British-made Falcon 10-speed. Both kidney disease and too much schooling have frequently threatened to interfere with his cycling. Stafford, his wife and their two daughters live in Palo Alto, California where he is professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine. As Director of the Stanford Program on Prevention Outcomes and Practices, his main focus is research on heart disease prevention. He is committed to both helping individual patients reduce their risk of heart disease and advocating for policy changes to combat the growing societal problems created by obesity, physical inactivity, and poor nutrition. He is the author of nearly one hundred scientific papers, as well as a handful of bicycling and kayaking travelogues. While a successful masters racer and a diligent bicycle commuter, his most memorable (and problematic) cycling experiences have been multi-day solo bicycle tours.

Greg Taylor is a native of Alexandria, Virginia. Identified by name in over one-third of the world's creation myths, he is a middling cyclist and a world-class smart aleck. While everything that he says should be taken with a grain of salt, Mr. Taylor really did beat Miguel Indurain over a mountain stage of the Tour de France. He commutes to his job as a litigation attorney by bicycle, much to the bemusement of his colleagues. When the mood hits, Mr. Taylor sends articles and stories to Cyclingnews.com.

"There's just something about bikes," says longtime velo-adventurer Aaron Teasdale, "that gets me in trouble again and again. They’re such perfect vehicles for exploration – and, let’s face it, true high-grade exploration leads to trouble more often than not.” Teasdale has been writing about and photographing his exploits – being chased by spear-wielding Masai warriors in Tanzania, battling man-eating bogs in Newfoundland, getting utterly lost in Newark ghettos, and finding decaying mummies in the salt flats of Bolivia, to name a few – in various national magazines for the last ten years. Currently Deputy Editor of Adventure Cyclist magazine, he lives in Missoula, Montana, with his wife and two young sons.