Tag Archives: bike touring

Martina Brimmer: Swift Industries and the Empowerment of Adventures by Bike

Posted on February 19, 2014 by josh| 3 Comments

Bike Portraits
Photo courtesy of Martina.

Martina Brimmer is the force behind Seattle-based pannier and bag company Swift Industries. She’s also a dedicated bike tourist, adventurer, writer (she is a co-contributor, along with me, to the forthcoming bike touring guide Cycling Sojourner Washington), teacher and more. She and her partner, Jason Goodman, launched Swift Industries out of their home in 2008. It’s now a full-fledged business with full time employees and customers worldwide. I sat down with Martina in the Swift studio to talk about the challenges, successes, and growth of the company, her bike adventuring, her literary project Tough and Tender, and much more.

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Posted in Advocacy, Bike Industry, Bike Touring, Interviews

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Jeff Bahnson: Cyclocross, Bike Touring, and the Freedom of Adventure

Posted on September 5, 2013 by josh| 2 Comments

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Photo from Van Dessel.

In 2008, the MABRA cyclocross series championship race was a heated battle between Jeremiah Bishop and Jeff Bahnson. Ultimately it was decided by a close sprint at the line with Jeremiah—a seasoned pro and multi-time mountain bike national champion—winning by half a bike length. That a championship race came down to a sprint is not surprising, but Jeff’s near-victory is remarkable because he was just 15 at the time.

Something of a cyclocross wunderkind, Jeff grew up in Newark, Delaware. His mother, Lauri Webber, is a strong elite racer and Jeff came up racing with the Delaware Cyclocross Coalition of Delaware (which includes notables Weston Schempf, Marc Vettori, and others). He has four junior and collegiate national championship titles and has had strong results in the US and Europe.

This summer he took a break from training and toured across the United States with his friend Felix Smith. They chronicled their trip with photos and stories at lostonbikes.com and plan to put together a book of the 35mm photos they took along the way. In this interview, Jeff talks about his early experiences racing, his rise to the elites, his summer bike touring adventure, his future as a professional cyclist, and more.

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Posted in Bike Touring, Cyclocross, Interviews, Racing

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Kyle Dempster: A Climber’s Ride on the Backroads of Kyrgyzstan

Posted on July 11, 2013 by josh| 10 Comments

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Kyle Dempster is one of the top alpine climbers in the world. The 29 year old has pioneered new routes on some of the tallest mountains including Baintha Brakk in Pakistan and K7 in the Karakoram. He has won two Piolet d’Ors and several Golden Pitons, awards that recognize mountaineering’s greatest accomplishments each year. In 2011, he spent two months on a solo expedition, bike touring the backroads of Kyrgyzstan and climbing in its many mountain ranges. The video footage he gathered on the trip was recently turned into a short documentary, The Road From Karakol. I had the opportunity to speak with Kyle about his Kyrgyzstan trip, combining biking and mountaineering, the highs and lows of solo touring in remote and rugged terrain, the future of bikes in the climbing world, and much more.

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Posted in Bike Touring, Interviews

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Michelle Cassel and Ryan McAfee’s Tour of America ByCycle

Posted on October 3, 2012 by josh| 3 Comments

Michelle Cassell and Ryan McAfee are multimedia journalists-turned-adventurers exploring America by bike. As the journalism industry continued to falter in 2011 and the duo continued to struggle to make freelancing work, they decided to set off on a cross-country bike tour from Virginia to Oregon. They documented their trip in videos that became season one of their America ByCycle bike travel series. Now they’ve started on their second trip and second season of the show. I spoke to them as they and their new touring partner Alex visited Seattle early on in their Canada to Mexico West Coast tour. We discussed the inspiration for their first tour, their experience as completely novice touring cyclists, their backgrounds as journalists and their goals for the video series, and more.

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Posted in Bike Touring, Cycling Media, Interviews

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Jill Homer: Ultra Endurance Racing Around the World

Posted on June 19, 2012 by josh| Leave a comment


Jill at the 2008 Iditarod Trail Invitational. Photo via Jill’s Blog.

Jill Homer’s bike racing palmarès read like a checklist of some of the world’s foremost ultra-endurance and adventure racing events. They include the Ititarod Trail Invitational snowbike race, Great Divide Race (for which she’s the women’s record holder), TransRockies, Stagecoach 400, and many more. The 32 year old California transplant (by way of Alaska and Utah before that) lives for adventures that push her to her mental and physical limits. We discussed her path from not even owning a bike in her early 20s to ultra-endurance cyclist, her attraction and need to explore her personal limits through endurance racing, her new pursuits as an ultra-marathon runner, and more.

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Posted in Bike Touring, Interviews, Racing

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