Dave Snowberg and Michelle Dodd at Beaver Creek near Sedona, AZDave and Michelle met in Flagstaff, Arizona in December, 2006. Their first date was a bike ride, and almost immediately they started planning a bike tour together. They bicycled the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route in August and September, 2007. This was Michelle’s first bike tour, but Dave has all kinds of experience in adventure travel.

Michelle has been car-free since January of 2002, and enjoys bicycling in all its forms. She also loves to hike, run and camp, and she skips whenever possible. After several years of living cheap and saving money, she quit her job as a web designer for the Bilby Research Center at NAU in June, 2007, and moved her belongings into a small storage unit in order to have fewer expenses while traveling.

When Dave is not traveling by a bike or sea kayak, he enjoys backpacking, hiking and canyoneering. To support his expeditions, he works as a renewable energy contract engineer. He is glad to be applying his engineering ability within the world of sustainable energy development. He usually only works enough to save money for the next expedition. He has chosen to minimize his time at the office because there is too much in this life of ours to experience. For many years he lived in a wall-tent in the woods while working as an engineer. This lifestyle has contributed to allowing him to save money for the next trip.

Dave and Michelle aim to stretch their savings in order to travel for at least a few years before thinking of returning to the working world.