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Hi. This is Kathy. We decided to introduce each other because… well, for a number of reasons. Here’s some things you need to know about Scott, and me, but mostly Scott.

• Scott will be the first to mention that I am older than he is and that he once gave me shit for “pushing thirty” (when 30 seemed VERY old). That should indicate how long we’ve known each other.
• We are  happily married… to other people.
• Before we go on, I want to just mention that at the time of the “pushing thirty” comment, I was 8% older than he is. Now I’m 3% older than he is. So… you know… we’re splitting hairs and he knows it.
• We’ve developed our friendship mainly within moving vehicles … from his ’69 Charger, to my Datsun B210, to 24′ Ryder trucks doing touring Gilbert & Sullivan opera gigs, and now on a tandem bike.
• Don’t ask me why.

Many times, as I’m riding on the tandem, staring at Scott’s yellow wind vest, I wonder how we actually got here.

• When I first met him in college, he was a taciturn stage guy/musician who watched the world from behind his long hair, moustache, and 1980s vintage aviators.
• He didn’t talk much and it was unclear whether he thought he was too cool to talk to me, or whether my own coolness intimidated him.
• After graduating he seriously considered going for a History of Consciousness PhD at UC Santa Cruz (like, um, OK…)
• We both ended up in LA when I started grad school, and somehow we started spending a lot of time trash talking each other while playing Asteroids and drinking beer at McGintys.
• When he decided to go to law school, he studied harder for the LSAT than anyone I’ve known.
• He nailed law school.
• He landed a fancy suit-and-tie job in a large downtown LA law firm … and hated it.
• He drove a fancy new Alfa Romeo during this time … and loved it.
• He quit practicing law and lived on a boat in Sausalito while he figured out how to reinvent himself next (I was super impressed).
• He started teaching sailing…
  • And somewhere in there he got a license to skipper large boats…
  • And married Lisa (very very cool move)…
  • And had a super cool kid named Kazu and made him watch all the Rockford Files and taught him how to surf…
  • And tenaciously and methodically created a writing career for himself…
  • And started riding bikes. A lot. That requires another whole section.

And all the while we kept in touch, going from driving aimlessly around LA worrying about our life paths and regretting ever leaving Santa Cruz (when we were younger), to yakking about kids and bikes and the writing life and the adventures we’ve had and (now) are yet to have.

And we swap Tom Waits quotes by text all the time. I’m not sure why, but we’ve been doing that FOREVER.

FAQs

• Is there a type of bike this guy hasn’t ridden?
  1. Yes, unicycles (to my knowledge)
• Let’s rephrase – what has he ridden?
  1. Road bikes
  2. Fixies
  3. Mountain bikes
  4. Tandems
• Is there a distance this guy hasn’t tackled?
  1. Yes: the circumferance of the planet
• OK, smart ass, what distances has this guy tackled?
  1. More centuries than I can count (on every kind of bike)
  2. More double centuries than I can count (including one on a tandem)
  3. The completely insane 1200k (750-mile over four days) Gold Rush Randonee (about which he wrote one of my favorite pieces about bike riding ever)
  4. The even more insane 1400 mile Pony Express Trail (about which he wrote a terrific book, published in 2023 called On the Pony Express Trail: One Man’s Bikepacking Journey to Discover History from a Different Kind of Saddle)

So… the takeaways?

We’ve known each other forever.

I’m only 3% older.

And, most important, please remember that THIS TANDEM AIDS/LIFECYCLE THING IS ALL HIS IDEA.

Come along for the ride. It’s gonna be… interesting.