Category Archives: Interviews

Ed Ewing: Race, Equity, and Empowerment by Bike

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAPhoto Courtesy of Cascade Bicycle Club. 

Cycling has a reputation for being a white man’s sport, hobby, and transportation. It’s an image rooted in truth—white people accounted for about 80 percent of the cycling population in the US as of 2009—but it’s far from a complete picture. From 2001-2009, the rates of cycling among African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians grew far more than among whites. Ed Ewing is working hard to keep that trend going. He is Cascade Bicycle Club’s Director of Diversity and Inclusion and co-founder of the Major Taylor Project, a program that uses cycling to empower underserved youths in the Seattle-area.

I sat down with Ed at his office to talk about his work with the Major Taylor Project, how it got started, his history in racing, racism he’s experienced as an African American cyclist, the importance of diversity, inclusion, and equity in cycling and bike advocacy, and much more. Through the course of our conversation, Ed dove deep. He discusses the systemic issues of race and discrimination, policies like neighborhood redlining, and poverty that shape the lives of the students he works with and explains how cycling is connected to all of it. As he says in the interview, it’s always about more than just getting kids on bikes.

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Sam Smith: Making Bike Movies, Waking up Happy

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Photo courtesy of Sam Smith.

Filmmaker Sam Smith is probably best known as the eccentric-looking guy following Jeremy Powers around with a camera for the web series Behind The Barriers. But Sam’s roots in cycling films reach back over a decade. His first film, Transition, centers on the 2004 North American cyclocross season, following the stories of guys like Barry Wicks, Ryan Trebon, Adam Myerson, and Geoff Kabush. He followed up with a sequel to Transition, a short-lived “video periodical” called Cyclofile, before eventually starting Behind The Barriers. And though he’s left Behind The Barriers, Sam is still producing cycling films including the forthcoming Working Dogs and a new episodic series called Acro Velo. Sam and I spoke about his history with filmmaking, his junior years of bike racing, working on Behind The Barriers and his decision to leave, his filmmaking influences, and much more.

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Casey Greene: Mapping the Future of Bike Touring

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Casey Greene planning for an adventure. Photo courtesy Casey Greene.

There is a trend afoot in bike touring to get off-road and onto dirt. It is, in many ways, the logical conclusion of several years of exploding popularity of bikepacking races like the Tour Divide, gravel events like Almanzo 100, and the continued growth of on-road bike touring. And, after all, what’s not to love about riding quite forest and country roads, in beautiful settings, away from the noise and danger of cars and trucks?

Casey Greene is doing his part to help encourage this growth of dirt riding. He is Adventure Cycling Association’s cartographer and the man behind their newly created Idaho Hot Springs Mountain Bike Route, a 750-mile dirt road and singletrack ride that links over 50 natural hot springs. I spoke to Casey about what it means to be a cartographer in the digital age, creating the Idaho Hot Springs route, his own backcountry adventures, and much more.

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Nicholas Carman: Pedaling the World as a Gypsy by Trade

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Lael Wilcox and Nicholas Carman on the Arizona Trail in 2013. Photo by Nicholas Carman.

The chorus to the JJ Cale song “Homeless Man” goes, “I’m not a homeless man/I’m a gypsy by trade/And I’m traveling this land/I’m not a homeless man.” It is the source from which Nicholas Carman’s blog Gypsy by Trade draws its name–an appropriate umbrella for the journals and photographs of a man who spends about half of each year exploring the world by bike.

Nicholas and his partner Lael Wilcox have toured on and off road through Europe, Canada, across the United States, on routes like the Great Divide and Kokopelli, and plenty more. They’ve structured their lives around travel, spending winters working and summers on the road. Nicholas answered my questions by email from Anchorage, Alaska where he’s currently working seven days a week at a bike shop, saving up for the next adventure. In this interview, he discusses his foray into extended bike touring, his favorite trips around the world, how he and Lael make their travel work, his evolution of thought about bike touring gear, and much more.

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Katie Hall: the Hectic Life of an American Neo-Pro

UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team December 2013 training camp.
Katie (center) with the United Healthcare team. Photo by Jonathan Devich via uhcprocycling.com.

Katie Hall is the sort of person who makes you question your time management skills. As a first-year professional for the United Healthcare cycling team, she’s racing a full American road season and dipping her toes into the waters in Europe at the Women’s Tour of Britain and the Giro Rosa. She’s also a full-time graduate student working on a PhD in molecular toxicology at UC Berkley. I spoke to Katie in a brief moment of spare time after she returned from Britain about her experience in Europe, late entry into the cycling world, balancing life as a neo-pro and grad student, the on-going evolution of women’s professional cycling, and much more.

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