The Biking Hub: Mountain

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Contributor introduction: Dan

Now that my first ‘official’ story is out of the way, I figured it was time to introduce myself.

My name is Dan Dakin and I’m a journalist based in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. I have lived here all my life and I’m now married with a four-year-old boy (a future biker perhaps?) Although my full-time job is as a sports writer for a daily newspaper here in the Falls, I have been a freelance writer since about 1996. Over the years I’ve had stories published around the world in dozens of newspapers, magazines and websites.

Like most people, I first put a leg over a bicycle when I was about four years old, but it wasn’t until about 12 years ago that I really got “into” biking. I was 16 years old and saved up money from a summer job to buy a Peugeot mountain bike. It was around $500 which was like buying a Ferrari to me and was my first bike with front suspension. Unfortunately the fun only lasted about two months when it was stolen. Insurance covered the price to buy the same bike again, but I was done with high-end bikes.

Skip ahead eight years and I was now married and getting bigger by the day. As a reporter, I was eating ridiculous amounts of fast food and the result was a McSpareTire. I started to look like the Pillsbury Dough Boy. I started riding again and after doing my first race in 2001 I was completely hooked.

Over the past four years my life’s focus has turned to cycling. My house looks like a bike shop, I have almost as much bike clothing as regular clothes and the ‘Favorites’ list on my Internet Explorer is dominated by cycling websites. My collection of bike right now stands at seven: Cannondale Rush XC, Cannondale Chase park MTB, Raleigh Serengeti hardtail MTB, Giant TCR0 road bike, Giant OCR2 road bike, Cannondale Ironman TT bike and an Electra Rally Sport cruiser bike. My new year’s resolution is not to buy any new bikes in 2006, so we’ll see how long that lasts.

As you’ll see by the types of stories I post on The Biking Hub, my focus now is on higher-end cross country mountain bikes and urban/park-style hardtails. I’m also a bit of a roadie, so keep your eyes this site for more developments in that department in the coming months.

There are already nearly 30 events on my racing calendar for 2006, so it’s going to be a very busy, but very fun year.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 10th, 2006 at 9:45 am and is filed under Site news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.