And what was the hardest challenge?

"I think the hardest challenge for anyone is going though the ownership process and becoming mature in kind of... you know... when you own a company at fifteen years old, you basically own it with no maturity, you don't know what you're doing, it's an accident waiting to happen, it's an accident in my case just the fact that i was able to make a living at a young age, not that i didn't work out bu that i actually found a way to not only, i mean they say, rub two nickels together, i had a way of rubbing nothing! From the begining. There wasn't two nickels! There was just hard work and using myself as a guinea pig, because i was racing, because i was trying to make something that i could become a better competitor with and have the opportunity to race at the highest level of my sport at that time, that was a very different motivation for being in business than someone that had whatever worked in the bike industry, that had worked as an engineer, that had gone to college whatever... I was able to play, in a way, under the roof of my parents and make mistakes at an early enough age that when i had to make very serious business decisions and try to make a life for myself, i had had a grace period aa a young person, that was unique. Very few people had that window that i had and i am not sure that am answering the question in a coherent way but the way in which it happened for me, i ended up, at the time, in the way that the Cycling Industry was developing, there was no rebels, everyone was following the leader of the Europeans, i was able with my youthful confidence and my mistake mindedness, and my racing Guinea pig, you know, provocativity to play games with an industry that no one was playing games with, no one was trying to pierce the envelop, no one was going outside of the hollow ground that was laid down by the Europeans and their over control of anything that was out there, i was poking holes intentionally, unintentionally, looking for things that were opportunities, looking for things that i could do that made my performance different, better, unique, that an older person and all the persons at that time, at that mindset in the Culture...You didn't do! But as a young kid, as a sixteen, seventeen years old, i could do it and the fact that i could actually brash-fully own these ideas and make something of it ended up being a porthole of opportunity for me that somehow benefitted me in a unique way in my business and gave me confidence, instilled people's confidence in me, and just you know...I don't know...kind of turned out to be the point in time when the Bicycle Industry was being influenced indirectly by the Mountain Bike and so the eyes and the ears of the world were looking at the United States at the time that i was playing around with poking holes in the balloon and all that kind of stuff you know...made it possible for a brand to become a new brand and there was a lot of copiers , there was a lot of other brands that were playing with... you know... trying to wear their pants on backwards and be different but they ended up kinda missing the holistic way that... i would say... made it possible for me to be the guy that had the most genuineness or be the brand that gad the most authenticity or whatever it is... you know.., that you could think is the right word... i know that sounds presumptuous, but i have always been what i could consider to be the same person that i grew up with...I look at everything i do and i go "yeah am gonna ride that, this is good, this product is not gonna be brought to market until it works, until it works, until satisfies me", all these kinda things, in which are part of me being the person that rides the bike, me being the person that validates the product, begins with a Guinea pig test of an idea of something that i need and need to do and ends up with me rubber stamping it because it works and people, i think, see that, they see that connectivity and the brand from the early days and until now, you know there are people that show up here and know the brand from thirty years ago and i think they're here because they know that's who i am."

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Riders at the AMR

Shots Selection.

PICTURES

Racing bikes in Kenya

chasing Fabian Burri (an article for theradavist.com)

a few bike rides in Portugal.