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Guets: Kimball Taylor; Tim Neenan
Back from vacation and ready to rock and roll!
My first guest thought the story he was sent to research and then report on was about the environment when he uncovered a smuggling operation between the U.S. and Mexico in which thousands of abandoned bicycles began to appear on trails across the border in Mexico.
Kimball Taylor is the author and journalist who wrote The Coyote’s Bicycle: The Untold Story of 7,000 Bicycles and the Rise of a Borderland Empire.
The story begins with a young boy growing up in an impoverished village of Mexico when his parents decide to follow their older children to the U.S. leaving Pablito behind to finish his secondary education and find a way to survive.
When his grandfather, with whom he was left by his parents, died unexpectedly, Pablito decides he had no choice but to try to find his parents.
As the story unfolds, the problems with the U.S.-Mexico border, smuggling, become very clear and the solutions become very ambiguous.
It’s a fascinating read!
My second guest is newly “retired” frame builder Tim Neenan. Tim, whose company is Lighthouse Cycles in Ynez, California, built his first bike in 1975, has been a jewelry maker, a world class chef, designed the original Specialized bikes including the world famous Stumpjumper, and now claims that he’s hanging up his torch!
It’s a fun and fascinating conversation that reaches back into the early US frame builders’ world and looks forward into Tim’s future.