My name is JOEEEEEEYYYY DOOOOLLLLOOOOWEEEEE:

YES it rhymes and it is really my name. I identify first as a mountain biker, second as a father, third as a Marriage and Family Therapist and Fourth as a lazy iconoclast. I love bikes, and I love the gear that makes riding them either more efficient or more comfortable and fun. This is the beginning of my admiration of Scott and his packs: His creative genius and skill have created the absolute best packs for racing I have ever used. Back to me, as I am the center of my own universe and this is my BIO: Yippee, it is all about MEEEEE.
So I love bikes, love racing, love helping others and combined all of this helped me create my private practice: I offer therapy while hiking, biking, skating and even paddling. As I have decades of bike commuting here in So Cal, with thousands of errands run on my skates I know and understand the positive effect that being outdoors can have on the psyche. I was lucky enough while in graduate school to take a chance with a new patient that could not sit still. We were in a residential drug treatment facility and could not leave, but we could walk around the gated parking lot. This worked wonders for this situation and at my next internship I could and would offer the same idea to patients that I thought it would help. When I passed my tests and concluded my thousands of hours of supervision, I could finally spread my professional wings and offer therapy in the hills on the beach and in the water. In the ensuing 18 or so years of private practice, research has come out showing that neural chemistry changes and specific parts of the brain use less glucose when in the outdoors: this is further enhanced with walking past tree’s helping to cultivate a greater sense of personal comfort and safety. I love it when what works for me has the scientific method to support it. Then for some teen patients we would go skate and talk and skate and talk some more. Finally I integrated my longest life passion, bikes, into my professional work space and promoted therapy while cycling, with a push from me for mountain bikes in the hills. I feel fortunate to have decided to present these options and to have received positive feed back from the beginning and from every patient that has tried. The only thing I wish I had figured out sooner was the understanding that now, I could purchase many things and use this as a business expense: all my joy from new and shiny and it is a business expense, I have found my happy place.
Now back to bikes: I am fortunate to live within 3 miles of my office so I ride 90% of the time, skate 2% of the time and use my truck when necessary. I am on a bike 7 days a week and it keeps me focused and sane, helps me smugly feel taller than I really am and of course much better looking. Then there is my racing and my team: OUTER CIRCLE RACING, which is 36 years old. I got my first MTB for Christmas in 1985, my parents graciously agreed to pay half for one as a gift, knowing that I could not spend too much. It was not love at first ride, it took 6 or 7 and then I was hooked. Then I tried racing and the hook was set deeper. I thrive with the idea of competition and training: Racing mountain bikes was my new focal point for my life and helped steer me in the right direction. Then I started my own team, OCR, then I put on races, then I tried single speeding (and raced nothing) else for 23 years.
Then the 2 decades of torque from my single speed started to have some impact on my knee’s and hips. I needed to pay attention and change my strategy and simultaneously lose a big part of my identity: I was going to need gears on my bike. I expected to be teased a lot more than I was, I was not sure how I was going to integrate within the racing community and thankfully, my chosen tribe, was wonderfully understanding and supportive. I love mountain bikers: Thank you to each and every one of you: I hope to meet most of you before I die. As my life has constantly shown me, adaption, is what helps me most and with gears and a few age related health issues, I had to adapt again. Now, oddly, I am riding longer, faster and almost as smooth as I was in my 20’s. While simultaneously changing to race multi day stage races.
In and amongst all of the above, I met a girl in Bogota Colombia and married her: 4 years later, we had a daughter, who, yes of course rides (you can see the pics in the May 2022 issue of Mountain Bike Action) skates, and climbs tree’s like I did when I was 10. My life is full and my heart and mind are blessed to feel challenged in all the right ways: and content in all the rest. I attribute my personal feelings of contentment and happiness to all of the following:
being able to ride: being sponsored: to begin challenged: to being beaten in races by better or stronger racers: to being adaptable and finding my current and 4th stage of riding and racing bikes: I am 56, grey, with all the accumulated injuries and sun damage from my life style, and I am the story teller around any campfire; from all that I have learned and experienced because of wheels: bike wheels, skateboard wheels, roller blade wheels: I hope my story will motivate or help, or give hope, and or most of all, let you know it is ok to adapt and find your path, your way and your style.
I apologize for any run on sentences and or grammatical errors: I am ADD&D (attention Deficit and Dyslexic) and when I get excited about a topic my mind is too fast and easily distracted. I hope it was coherent and helpful. Now that I have slowed down a little, I really hope to meet as many of you riders, hikers, runners, and do-ers, outside, someday, somewhere. So Cheers. cs