Fellow Riders

Shawn McGlynn - Bozeman, MT

Shawn, originally from Billings, MT, works at Montana State University in the research labs doing things you and I would not understand!  I met Shawn while in school at Montana State and our friendship has stayed strong, even though we have not seen one another in nearly five years.  Shawn is an experienced cyclist (mountain, road, and loaded touring) and has worked in several bike shops throughout Montana.  His previous tours include over 1,000 miles on the South Island of New Zealand, numerous Yellowstone Tours, Beartooth Pass, Bozeman to Calgary Canada by way of Jasper, Banff, and Kootenai National Parks.  Shawn has agreed to ride with me out of Fairbanks up the Dalton Hwy, by far the hardest part of the ride on the map!  From there he will ride back down the Dalton with me all the way to at least Anchorage where he will fly out after pulling at least 1,800 miles through some of the best countryside North America can offer! 

Marie Marušková - Prague, Czech Republic

Marie is a city girl from Praha who likes to ride bicycles!  She graduated from a secondary art school and then went off to work one year in London.  Marie is currently a masters degree student at Charles University of Prague in the Department of Art and Education.  Marie does not own a car, nor wants one, and loves riding her bike to school, around the city, and around the beautiful Czech country.  From January till May last year she participated in an exchange program in Rovaniemi, Finland.  From there she did her first long distance tour!  From Rovaniemi to Kiruna, onto Narwick and Lofoten, down through Norway, Sweden, Rhugen, Berlin, and finally back to Praha. She went with her friend Katerina the first month and the rest alone. The ride was 4050 km long and took her 45 days. She says, "I Loved that!"  Marie will join the Why I Ride tour in Fairbanks, AK and plans to ride all the way down into the Lower 48, at least to Texas where her sister lives!  From there she will either head south to Mexico or ride with me through the mighty South!

Callie Spencer - Somewhere, USA

Callie was born in Seattle, WA and has logged more touring miles than anyone on the Why I Ride team.  She has ridden across America TWICE from Savannah to Los Angeles.  Once when she was 18 and then again as a guide last year.  She has also led tours from Massachusetts to Montreal, around Cape Cod, from Prince Edward's Island to Acadia National Park in Maine, and from Seattle to San Francisco.  She claims she can change a flat in under a minute, but I have yet to confirm this!  I met Callie while hiking the Kepler Track in New Zealand.  Then I randomly met her again  in New Zealand when her convoy picked up my roommate and I while we were hitch-hiking from Dunedin to Christchurch.  Callie, a University of Virginia alumni, enjoys snowboarding, dog sledding, and "cluster fighting" in her spare time!  She plans to join Shawn, Marie, and I in Fairbanks, AK and ride all the way to at least Calgary before commencing a Masters Degree in Outdoor Education this Fall.

Brandon Newcomer - Boulder, CO

Brandon was born in Goshen, Indiana the same year as me way back when!  He was raised on a farm in Southwest Michigan and graduated from Edwardsburg High School before attending Central Michigan University from 2001 to 2003.   He then wisely decided to head for the mountains of Montana where he got a job in Glacier National Park for the summers of 2003 & 2005.   Brandon attended The University of Montana for the 2003-2004 school year, but returned to Central Michigan to finish his degree in Accounting.  Brandon and I met during an audit internship in Charlotte, NC during the Spring of 2005 and had about everything in common.  Upon graduation, Brandon moved to Steamboat Springs, Colorado where he worked and lived his dream of snowboarding the powder everyday at Steamboat Ski Area!  Currently, he lives in Boulder and works as a Staff Accountant for Spatial Corp.  In his spare time, Brandon enjoys riding his bikes on the front range, snowboarding most all of the CO resorts, and climbing Colorado's 14,000ft peaks.  Brandon plans to join Why I Ride for an unspecified amount of time somewhere through the Rocky Mountains.

Dean Read - Bar Harbor, ME

Dean is a 60 year old retired banker who can make any young legs feel old after a day of riding at his side.   Dean and Penny, his wife of 36 years, have two grown daughters (31 and 30), and one beautiful granddaughter who is <1 year old.  Dean rides over 6,000 miles a year since retirement and started touring the same time as me back in May, 2005, when we first met.  We rode the entire Blue Ridge Parkway together as our first loaded tour.  Dean rode the Blue Ridge Parkway again in 2006, but I had to work!  This year we will tour the Natchez Trace with some other BRP friends from May 8-16.   Dean spends his spare time volunteering with several bicycling organizations and sitting on the local hospital board.  Dean plans to join the tour in Salt Lake City and ride to St. George Utah, and enjoy some of Utah's beautiful National Parks.  Dean is a great guy to ride with and I personally can't wait to have him pull me for several hundred miles! 

Mary Madison - Wolf Point, MT

Mary is a 72 year old lady who has lived all over the US serving a long career as a registered nurse.  I met Mary in the Adirondacks of upstate New York when I was riding cross-country in 2005.  Mary was pedaling a 4500 mile route to celebrate her 70th birthday.  Mary has biked for many years, but until she retired in 2002, she didn’t have time to do the long tours she had yearned for years to try.  Upon retiring, her first trip was a 600 mile self-contained bike tour of New Zealand in January 2003.  For more years than I have been alive Mary had been a Diabetes Nurse Educator, always trying to help people to live healthier lives.  After she completed the New Zealand tour, Mary decided to continue helping people by riding to her 50th class reunion in California.  Mary, having the support of the local American Diabetes Association and several people in her community, left from Wolf Point and bicycled the Northern Tier of the USA to the west coast, then down the coast of California, and inland to her reunion in Folsom, CA.  Her mission throughout the ride was to advocate bicycling for its many health benefits and to raise awareness for diabetes.  At the end of the reunion, when her classmates were struggling to get comfortable in their Cadillacs, she turned around and biked back to her daughter’s home in Missoula, MT and arrived as the first snows were falling in October.    After a short break, in May of 2005 just after her 70th birthday, she decided to ride from Wolf Point, MT to Bar Harbor, Maine, and back.  She used a different route coming and going than her route just a year earlier!  It was on her return home that Mary and I met one another in the Adirondacks.  Mary and I did not bike together as I was headed east and she was headed west, but we spent an enjoyable evening together telling stories and having chilled beverages.  We enjoyed a 3,000 calorie breakfast the next morning and made a promise that we would ride together one day.  Mary has just had surgery to install a complete new knee but hopes to be recovered enough to join me for a few days somewhere during the Montana leg of the journey.  Mary doesn’t claim to be fast; in fact she says the secret of her success is time, but I can promise you that Mary is one of the toughest women I have ever met and I am looking forward to her company!

Travis McKay - Asheville, NC

Travis was born and raised in Asheville, NC and is a recent graduate from Western Carolina University.  Travis and I met circa 1992 when both of our fathers were ski instructing at Cataloochee Ski Area in Maggie Valley, NC.  We became good friends over the years and shared a passion for skiing, soccer, and later bicycling together.  15 years later we still get together as often as possible to scream down Corbett’s Couloir on snow skis in Jackson Hole or bomb down some Western North Carolina single-track on our bicycles!  Travis has been riding bikes seriously longer than I and has added five years of racing road bikes to his resume for the likes of Pro-Bikes and Liberty Cycles out of Asheville.  Travis, now more of a mountain/downhill rider, has completed two Bike Ride Across Georgia (BRAG), 450miles tours, various routes of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and logged a dozen or so centuries in addition to his mountain / racing miles.  As of lately, he prefers to catch the chairlift to the top of the mountain and let his 8” travel downhill bike get him safely down!  Travis has been in the outdoor industry for quite some time now, even at only 25 years of age. He has ran a ski/snowboard/skate/surf shop for three years, an outdoor shop for two, been a ski instructor for ten, and ran a ski/snowboard youth race program for Western North Carolina.  Currently living back in Asheville, Travis is still in the outdoor sports industry as a sales representative for quite a few snow ski, snowboard, and wake board companies, as well as a few casual clothing companies.  Travis plans to join me in Athens, GA and ride back to the promised land of Western North Carolina for the last leg of this ride!