Originally published on Groucho Sports blog.
“I see you have me on the Tour de France. Does that mean I’m going to Europe?”
Those are the words that came out of my mouth when I called my manager after receiving my first ever schedule for Trek Travel. I wish I was joking about that. I was too excited to make sense.
I took a big gamble when I applied for a job with Trek Travel back in 2005. It wasn’t actually the first time I applied to be a guide. I’d applied one year earlier as well. At a time that it made a lot more sense for me to uproot and take off. A year earlier I was just a part time sales rat at Penn Cycle. I was living in an apartment that was both too big and too expensive for me to keep. My life was in flux.
Fast forward to 2005. I was fresh off a promotion. I was putting down offers to buy a house. Things were coming together. I was pretty content where I was. But the chance to travel, ride bikes, and have my paycheck say Trek Bicycle Corporation in the upper left corner seemed like too good of an opportunity not to take one more shot at it.