When I was in college I was on a century bike ride up a particularly arduous pass when a woman well into her 70’s passed me (yes she was on her bike). It was at that moment that I grasped what would be a life goal. I want to arrive in my 70’s having kept a clear vision of what was important to me… pursuing what I love and having the health and fitness to do it, while digging every minute of it! I am at my best sitting on a bike seat, breathing hard, riding up or down a single-track with aspens or slick-rock blurring by. It literally makes me squeal with delight! My other outdoor passions include trail running, white water kayaking, tele and nordic skiing.

I first fell in love with the bike at 18, when I took a solo tour down the Oregon coast- asserting my independence as an adult. In the first 10 miles, I got a flat and had no idea how to fix it. In the next 25 miles, I caught two dazzlingly handsome college boys and spent the rest of the trip with them. I learned that being on the bike opened up a world that I couldn’t experience from the confines of a gas-powered vehicle.

Another memory-shaping adventure was a bike trip from Jasper, Alberta to Jackson, Wyoming, where we hitch-hiked when it started snowing, spent the night in heated bathroom buildings and begged for a free hotel room on a rainy night in Glacier Park to avoid our thoroughly saturated tent. Our motto on that trip was "you never have good stories from the perfectly good days, only the perfectly bad ones".

I’ve taken various bike trips in Europe; my favorite was spending three months with some dear friends in Provence and Northern Italy. That was where I learned how to cook on a one-burner camp stove, a beautiful thing when you have all fresh Italian ingredients. We never made camp without three liters of Vino Rosso, blatantly bulging from our panniers. These trips were the beginning of my language study, as I would try out my newly acquired Italian skills on innocent victims.

I have always coveted the chance to travel and have loved to learn languages ever since I can remember. After many semesters in and out of school with the excuse of ‘seeing the world’, I ended up with a MA in Linguistics/Second language acquisition. I taught Spanish and designed curriculum and language programs for children until I had Riley and Jonas. Then I pushed the jogging stroller a lot and hung up my bike for a while. I became a massage therapist so I could give what I love to receive. Massage also gave me the flexibility to have more free time with my husband and children, time you never get back!

In the last five years, I have dusted off the bike again and have lived some of my dreams, competing in adventure and mountain bike races. For my 40th birthday I did a seven-day mountain bike race in the Canadian Rockies. I teamed up with a fellow mom and we rode up and over the continental divide a handful of times, extracting ourselves from mud-bogs on a regular basis, bailing out when our brakes wore out and climbing into our sleeping bags in a coma-like state, after the nightly obligatory glass of wine.

One of the most important things to me, as I go through life, is having a connected relationship with people. I want to share what stirs my passion with others. If I can inspire and empower others along the way, I’ll in-turn gain the same and my life will be more complete. I got involved with Girlfriends Go for this reason.

I have had some exquisite traveling adventures with girlfriends. Whether crowded onto a scary bus through the Guatemalan mountains or telling sordid details of a love-gone-wrong while riding bikes through the flats of Belgium (before stopping for healing chocolate), or locking up our bikes so we could run with the bulls in Pamplona, travels with women are unsurpassed in my life. And let’s face it, there are no better partners in fun than women!