Menso

ADVENTURE LOVER – PROFESSIONAL CYCLIST – CRACKER OF GEODES

Full of Dutch stubbornness and an at times unrealistic perception of his own limits, Menso is convinced that his professional endurance athlete fitness and willingness to suffer allow him to intentionally attempt adventures common sense advises against. With little preparation and comically minimal planning, he bikes, runs, and hikes in steep canyons, jagged mountains, and really anywhere with spotty cell phone reception and unmaintained trails. As a result, fellow adventurers now know that one “Menso-Mile” is exactly how far you are from the summit, regardless of actual distance, forty five “Menso-Minutes” is the variable length of time to the trailhead and at least fifteen minutes longer than the time until sunset, and to always pack 1000 extra calories and a charged headlamp for his trips.

Menso was a high school track and XC slacker/standout, raced road bikes professionally with Wonderful Pistachios (2011) and Jelly Belly (2012), and currently represents Team Clif Bar Cycling as a professional XC mountain biker. He has a BS in Earth Science from Cal Poly SLO and a Masters in Geology at CSU East Bay in Hayward, California. In January 2015, he started his next academic adventure, a doctorate in Geology at UC Santa Barbara.

Jaclyn

ADVENTURE LOVER – PATIENT WIFE – EMPATHY DRIVEN UXER

Often against her best judgement, Jaclyn willingly joins in many of her husband’s off-the-bicycle adventures, and now, with the acquisition of a tandem bicycle, tandem adventures. She usually provides valuable doses of common sense but occasionally contributes a bonk-induced decision leading to more adventure. Jaclyn enjoys warm, comfortable beds, hot meals, and full nights of sleep, all of which she enthusiastically forgoes to hike great distances and experience incredible natural beauty.

Between adventures, Jaclyn is a Director of UX, mastermind of this website, and can be found jogging along the paths with world class views in Santa Barbara. She has a BFA in Art & Design from Cal Poly SLO and hopes to someday end a hike before sundown, at a campground without snow on the ground. But she is not optimistic that will ever happen.

Blake

ADVENTURE LOVER – BEARD FARMER – ROADIE SNOB

Though a clean shave of his prodigious face-rug visually reduces him to a baby-faced caricature of his spectacular self, it’s unclear whether Blake actually derives his strength from the beard or if it grows deeply rooted from within. As one of Menso’s most frequent and willing victims, Blake’s masochistic tendancies were confirmed when the climbing averse cyclist signed himself up for a “rolling” stage race on a Caribbean island roughly shaped like a several thousand foot tall Great Pyramid emerging from the Atlantic. Spoiler alert: there are no pleasant rolling roads on volcanoes.

Blake has been racing road bikes since long before he could be reasonably considered to possess an athlete’s body, was the 2010 USA Collegiate Road Race National Champion, and travels to B-list international stage races as often as he can manage. He holds an architecture Bachelors degree from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and will perhaps someday complete the single-digit number of units left in his Masters in the same subject from the same institution. But not until after he gets back from his latest adventure.

Fred

ADVENTURE LOVER – INLINE HERO – RANCHERO

UNDER CONSTRUCTION