My first mountain bike way back in 1987-88 was a Specialized Rockhopper. I went away to a boarding school in Vermont where I started to learn how to ride on trails. I'd already done several long biking trips, tours through Maine and across sections of New Hampshire and Vermont. But it was an entirely different experience riding my bike through the woods, shushing my way down a pine needle padded fire road or grunting that bike up sharp hills.
And in the winter, I made my own ice tires by screwing wood screws through a tire and mounting it on the back. I wasn't smart enough to make a front right off so I spent a lot of time just cruising down frozen streams with the studded back tire as my only lifeline to something resembling control.
I rode that Specialized as hard as I could. I treated it badly because I didn't know any better and it really never let me down. Sure, I flatted out but the bike never just flat out broke.
Since then I've owned a good number of other bikes, mostly Ibis Cycles but with a Fisher, a Diamondback and Mongoose in there too but I will always fondly remember what a great fun bike that Rockhopper was.
Nowadays I get to ride in some of the finest areas in America. My regular trail is through the redwood trees in Nisene Marks. In the next year we plan on doing an epic Nisene to the Demo Forest and back down.
I also have outfitted my bike with a handlebar mount to shoot video while riding which has resulted in a few good videos. I'm very interested in mountain bike photography as well.
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Here's what it boils down to. I love to ride my bikes. I would ride everyday if I possibly could. I write a bicycling blog (yes, with motorcycles too because I love riding my motorcycles). I am in the planning stages of a new and much more specifically bicycling dedicated website/blog. Being part of the Specialized Trail Crew would be great fun, I'd love having an awesome excuse to go out and ride my (well, your) bike, tweet about it from the trail and then come home and write up some sick trail tails.
If I don't win then no worries, I'll still be hitting the trails as often as I can and doing an awful of grinning along the way.
Here are some videos and photos I've created, videos were shot from a homemade handlebar mount with a Canon pocket camera.
