The group

The contributors to the website include me (Dale) as the guy doing the typing, bad spelling, and terrible grammar. Jodi is who takes pretty much all of the pictures, well unless she is in them and even then thanks to a tripod she takes some of them. She also tries hard to catch my shitty grammar. Jayme is part of the design team and also an editor.

Dale Schlatter

Founder, Editor-in-chief, Author, Photographer, Webmaster

I started my two wheeled career as a pint size first grader with a motor between my legs. The bicycle just did me no good growing up on a farm. It was slow, hard to chase cows with and to be truthful I didn’t have a clue what a mountain bike was. I soon grew into a motocross bike and that was my life for many a year. I had a short, but fun five year motocross racing career. This started to erode away with the meeting of one person, Jayme, and the discovering of beer, parting, and the final blow was college and the lack of funding. For almost four years, I never even thought about a bike and this was almost the end of my two wheeled love. But then, fate and the ever wandering Jayme, who was always yakking about mountain biking this and that, started to put a bug in my ear. My career as a shift worker brought me back to Bismarck making gas at the Tesoro Refinery for all those gas guzzling SUVs. I soon had a good job, a house, and some stability. I now found myself poking around the bike shop and realized that bikes in my hiatuses had under gone a great change. They had suspension, 27 speeds and looked cool. It was 1998 and I cheaped out and bought a Wal-Mart bike which I soon out grew. Now, with Jayme coming to town for some riding, I had to upgrade. I found a Kona Lavadome and I’ve been hooked ever since. The Wal-Mart bike, by the way, was destroyed a few weeks later by Kevin in the Badlands, but that is a whole other story. From the Kona, the riding and bikes spread like wild fire. I soon was the guy yakking about chain ring this and XTR that. I drove my coworkers crazy and my non-biking friends thought I was nuts. Although I did convince a few of them to follow our lead and buy a bike themselves and they have loved me ever since for it. Right Andrew? I now find my self owning two: a custom built Giant ATC and the Kona which has been totally rebuilt. I still work at the refinery, own the same house, and enjoy riding more than ever.

Jodi Schlatter

Photographer, Associate Editor, Wife to Dale

The first bike I ever had that was mine and not a hand me down was a pink ten speed. Sassy! At age 11, I used the money I received while I was in the hospital with 2 broken femur bones and a broken right wrist to make the big purchase. I currently ride a hand-me-down K2 that Dale has adjusted to fit me perfectly. While attending BSC (Bismarck State College), I met Jayme and I witnessed him using his bike for transportation all year round. One stormy winter day when BSC called off school due to weather, he came home from work at Sergios all bundled up from head to toe with his warped front tire in one hand and the rest of his bike in the other. He started to shed off clothing when I noticed a grin on his face from ear to ear. He seemed to love riding so much that his slip on the ice on Washington St didn’t faze him. I heard about him riding home one weekend to the farm South of Glen Ullin (70 miles). The task seemed impossible at that time, but he tackled it. I’ve been fabricated into the mountain biking safety queen. With my helmet, gloves, shades, sunscreen, bug spray and of course my digital camera, I head off into the ND wind with no real destination in mind for my journey anxious to see where I will end up and what kind of pictures I will have when I return home to share with you. Dale eased me into riding mountain bike nice and easy. The hardest part was tinkering with the seat so that my knees wouldn’t kill me half way through the ride. A couple of journeys in and a few adjustments later, we perfected my position on the bike. The farthest distance I’ve ridden is 25 miles so far with my sister Jessie. I plan to expand that distance to a much more impressive one.

Jayme Kohler

Associate Editor, Contributing Author, Web Programmer, Intercontinental Nomad

Jayme Kohler has been exaggerating his biking skills since he was eight years old. Only the scars and injured pride can prove otherwise. With his love for cycling born solely out of necessity in 1996, thousands of miles, kilometers, singletrack and fire roads around the world have forged what could be the most symbiotic relationship between a man and his mountain bike ever known in the natural universe. In October of 2005, Jayme completed cycling the Lewis and Clark Trail, an endeavor that spanned two summers, five weeks, and almost 3,000 miles. His butt doesn’t need the tour journal to reminisce. Jayme can usually be found fighting off hordes of anti-Americans and wishing he could ride more. Mountain biker by choice, intrepid traveler by occupation, and U.S. Marine by blood, he’ll be buried with his medals, passport, and a multitool… a bachelor.

Jayme maintains a personal blog as well as his Lewis and Clark Bicycle Tour journal.

Andrew Peltz

Rider, Contributing mind

Andrew Andrew story is much like my own. Hell, he was my riding buddy when I had a motocross bike. We have been friends for as long as I can remember. He was also a farm kid with about as much use for a bike as I had. This was all about to change when I moved back to Bismarck with all kinds of ideas. Andrew has had the unfortunate honor for a number of years now to be the guy I drag along when I get one of my “great ideas”. I have the uncanny ability to convince him that one of my hair brained ideas is good as gold. Now, whether it is because he is a good friend and does not have the heart to tell me to get lost or is lacking something better to do at the time, he goes along with it. Not with out much complaint when the plan goes south on me though. That is pretty much the way he stumbled into mountain biking. I purchased a bike and it looked good to Andrew. Once again, we were riding buddies. I have drug him all over the country in rain storms, snow storms and wind that has a hurricane rating. We have ridden it all. I have convinced him while standing in the rain, 100 miles from the badlands that is has not rained there(small lie) and it is perfectly dry to ride there(guessing). That was some of my best work which he still does not let me forget. We did ride that day after this is on Andrew’s near death day, it was hot. it dried for a few hours. He has been there when I have damn near died of heat stroke, puked, crashed, and I have seen him do the same. Well, maybe not puke. That is a honor only I hold so far. I am sure that the ideas will keep coming, although he is starting to come up with some of his own now. I am also sure that some day many years from now we will be looking at recumbents, so we can race our geriatric butts down the singletrack.

Content updated on May 15th, 2009