Hey Tyler, hey Matt! As it's been a while since Tyler and I crossed paths, both in person as well as online, and I'm assuming neither of you are familiar with the things I've been up to over the past few years. I'll use this as a bit of a refresher for both myself to gather various projects and hopefully show you two the way that I look at, document, and talk about the world as I move through it.
I lived in Austin for about a decade working in advertising for various clients like Verizon, Logitech, and SoundCloud. Got into riding bikes, riding a lot of bikes, photographing almost all the races around town, and built a pretty good little following for the weird way that I captured the cycling scene.
Covid kicked off and kinda flipped everything on its head. I managed to keep busy as freelance gigs dried up by messing around in AE with projects in the house but the stir crazy was unavoidable. I moved into my van February 2021 and wandered around the US exploring various national forests until ending up at the top of Michigan where I spent the summer. It was here that a few different factors nudged my life into the steadfast direction I’m now on.
The main criticisms of unhoused or transient people is the trash that they frequently leave behind wherever they choose to set up their home, which led to me obsessively cleaning every parking lot or street that I parked the van at. I already felt guilty enough living in a car (which are very bad no good) that I didn’t want to be challenged by some local who could gesture around at plastic bottles and cigarette butts in the gutter as evidence why I should be paying rent somewhere.
Idle hands, devils workshop, etc I got the idea it I was finally time for me to do a cross-country bicycle tour. These days there are so many well-developed routes and resources that it's not too much of a challenge to ride a bike across a state or country or continent. Just about anyone can do it on any sort of bicycle, right? Due to my love of ridiculous rules, type 2 fun, and an enhanced interest in alternate forms of environmental activism I wanted to see if I could do the whole thing while carrying every little bit of my single use plastic waste with me. Basically: if I get a snickers on the third day I have to carry the wrapper for the next few thousand miles.
It had been a while since I dove into a new bike project and have always lusted after front loader cargo bikes used by my messenger friends around the world. I placed an order for a ti Omnium but due to supply chain delays and a whole bunch of other jazz I needed a spot to spend the winter. Based on a couple hundred suggestions from Instagram, I ended up in Tucson. Started doing group rides, camp trips, and filling in the city as my default methodical nature as a way to get to know the place.
Cargo bike arrived so I started riding that around but pushing that much carry capacity with nothing on the front feels like driving an empty F350 to work and back so I started picking up trash on my way, with the idea that everywhere that I've been will be a better place after I've been there? This rapidly escalated into hunting down areas with the most trash and trying to pick up every single aluminum can that was loose in the city. I got so good at this that a company called Culdesac decided to sponsor a similar endeavor for 6 months in Tempe.
Being in the PHX area during summer was one of the most otherworldly brutal experiences I’ve been through. I found it incredible that a part of the country that inhospitable to simply existing outside has formed one of the most impactful bike scenes I’ve had the fortune to experience. Something about riding a cargo bike, the dumb heavy long thing, allowed me to flow from the wheelie kids to the tempo 100k roadies and everything in between. The cargo and me by proxy (certainly assisted by the camera always on my back / in my stem bag) defied all expectations that anyone might’ve had and was never not spreading stoke anywhere it went.
A quick boop from PHX to the Grand Canyon was my shakedown for the cross country setup. Fucked up a LOT but learned from all of it. The artist residency ended Nov 20th and that’s when I started rolling east. I’ve been logging highlights of that trip over here: cargobikepacking.com but I’ll drop a few good’ns below.
Now that we’ve arrived at the present-ish, I guess? A long rambly dance around to arrive at what we call the CTA, if there’s any A to be had. Basically I’m going to buy some of your stuff, certainly cargo bibs (love the pocket to hold my insulin pump) but maybe more, and destroy it because that’s what riding a cargo bike across a country does to literally everything I use. Finding products that can stand up to the rigors of bike touring life while also being sustainable has honestly been impossible until half my engaged followers bonked me on the head with a bat saying ORNOT. Yeah, duh, y’all are the exact kind of jam that I could be head-to-toe outfitted in and feel great about it. If there’s some sort of partnership that we can make happen where I can provide y’all with some content + data to improve the products, then hell yeah I’d be into that whether or not I get a discount on the gear.
There’s plenty of exes that can confirm how bad I am at closure and apparently that applies to whatever this sort of “application” thing is, as well. It would feel good to do something with a company like ORNOT but I’d obviously want a company like ORNOT to also feel good about doing something with me. I’m way less of an internet asshole than I used to be (back in the TYC vs T$A days, lotta big yikes back then, as Tyler surely remembers) but I still get mad about cars and GHG and urbanism and the rapidly approaching end of the world. It’s understandable that some companies are reticent about partnering with that sort of thing, but it’s somewhat comforting that you at least have that stuff in the back shed of the head and maybe are okay with people like me having it out on the front lawn.
p.s. here’s some other cool stuff I made that you might think is cool