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Living
the Mountain Bikers Dream
Written
by Jamie "The Binks" Bianchini, sitting under a temple
with pumped legs and grinning from ear to ear, in Beijing, China
Two
Dreamers
 I
love to ride bikes. So does my best buddy Garryck. We ride them
all; road, cross, tandems; but our passion lies in tight single
track, squirrelly steps, and mossy roots. Back in college around
1993 both Garryck and myself had dreamed up a fantasy adventure;
a worldwide mountain bike trip where we could hammer the world's
finest mountain bike trails while touring the world experiencing
all the culture, food, language, history, art, and people.
In
1995 after graduating from college, we decided we should start
making progress. Unfortunately, it was tough, what with the student
loans and credit card debts. So the dream had to live on… for
another five years.
We
started part time businesses to speed our savings. Garryck had
been teaching English in Korea and me, working full time in the
high tech industry. Garryck began importing bikes into Korea and
I was selling telecom services after hours. During these times,
it was doubly tough for us to see our buddies buying "stuff",
going out to dinners and taking fancy vacations.
We,
finally, set a start date, April 2002 for our epic 3-5 years world
wide mountain bike expedition.
The
Dream Bike
In
December 2000, Garryck sent Jamie a design of a unique bike he
had designed on a computer drawing
program. This bike would enable the rider their choice of either
a burly free ride hard tail mountain bike, or a mountain bike
tandem. That's right, a tandem-single, now called a "Tangle".
His idea was brilliant.
We
began to dream, "what if we could tour the world with one
tandem bike each, with one "guest seat" each, and invite
other people to come ride with us? And at the same time, we will
still be able to realize our dream of mountain biking the world's
best trails?" Could we pull it off? Nobody had ever done
anything like it so we believed that we were truly pioneers.
Jamie's
business mind took over and he saw the vision of a unique tour
that not only would deliver maximum fun, but also would ignite
interest from potential sponsors, as we knew the bike and gear
would cost a fortune and eat up our savings lickety split.
A
World Wide Invitation to Ride
Remember, Garrryk was living in Korea and I, in California. After
a few chats on Yahoo Messenger we decided we would not only do
this expedition on two Tangles, but would find a way to make a
difference in the world somehow, someway, that was aligned with
our passion. A month later I came up with a logo and name for
our expedition, and had a graphic artist at Tennant Design spruce
it up. Hence was born the Peace Pedalers in February, 2001.
 The
name would symbolize our shared desire to ride the world with
peaceful and loving intentions, sharing our passion for cycling
with people of all ages, abilities, and cultures. We wanted to
put smiles on faces all over the world, especially those of people
who have never ridden a bike (Special Olympics athletes, the blind,
under privileged, etc.).
We
did a test tour of Malaysian Borneo in June, 2001 and we rode
with dozens of local riders. We could not understand each other
at times, but riding together was all we needed to communicate
our shared passion. We came back with a new slogan, “A Worldwide
Invitation to Ride”. We would invite everyone who wants to ride
to come join us anytime! We now have guest riders set for Lhasa
area, Nepal, India, Thailand, Australia and more.
Building
the Bike
The biggest task was to find a builder for the bike and a
way to get a frame built for free.
So
Garryck took the lead as the technical team leader and picked
out the best gear and components to outfit the bike for the trip
and I got on the ball in the USA writing sponsorship letters,
attending the Interbike tradeshow, and making phone calls like
mad as the Administrative Team Leader.
I
flew into Las Vegas and finagled my way into Interbike. It was
there that I met James Bleakly of Black Sheep Bikes who shared
the vision of the Peace Pedalers. He volunteered his CAD frame
design and building expertise for free if we provided him the
tubing and parts. We had our builder.
Next, I proposed sponsorship to Ancotech and Paragon, leaders
in titanium tubing and parts, who also shared our vision. Ancotech
provided all the titanium tubing for two bikes and Paragon hooked
us up with bottom bracket shells, Moots style dropouts, and other
small parts.
On our part we had to buy the titanium S&S couplings that
enable the bike to go from Tandem to Single and down to a bag
for bus/train/plane travel.
Interbike
was my open door to meet decision makers and to let them know
we needed the best. After many calls and a fair bit of brown nosing,
we landed some of the worlds finest: Race Face, Chris King, SRAM,
Sun Ringle, Vaude panniers, Old Man Mountain racks, Manitou forks,
and Sierra Designs and Assos clothing and camping gear.
Ready
to Roll
After years of saving and working, hundreds of calls and emails,
many late nights, we launched our ride
at the Sea Otter Classic mountain bike race and festival in Monterey,
California. We showed the bike, sold our fundraising shirts, hats
and glow-in-the-dark socks, (also available at our website)
and shared our passion and dream with fellow mountain bikers from
around the world. Yes, we had arrived. We were ready to do it.
After
a brief test tour from San Francisco to Santa Cruz with our first
two guest riders, Jennifer and Rich, and after fixing a few issues
with our bikes, we finally departed for Japan in April 2002.
I
arrived in Japan first and Garryck's plane was to arrive soon
after. I saw his baggage carousel begin to turn and ran up to
customs to see his smiling face. We screamed in excitement.
Our
dream of over 7 years, we are now living it!
/.....to
be continued
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