Specifications

The low down on our selves and our gear.

Mark		Max

Max (as provided by his brother, Mark)

While growing up I was always envious of my brother, Max. He seemed to whizz effortlessly through school, and he had so much ambition.

While I played on the computer he became an Eagle Scout and worked for Lockheed. He's always loved taking things apart and putting them back together. Not always successfully. Once he built an amplifier using a cookie tin as the housing. That was just so cool. He seemed destined to become a mechanical engineer.

So, two years after I left our hometown of Palo Alto, it was his turn to go to college. Off he went to Cornell, where he built Hybrid Electric Vehicles, custom furniture, and all sorts of cool stuff.

After graduating, Max worked for two years for an industrial design company in San Francisco designing the mice we all use. Somewhere along the line he got into the environment and biking. For a while he became disenchanted with the whole idea of designing products for people to buy, thus depleting our natural resources and pretty much dooming our race, even if it might have been cool to live in some cyberpunkish, new-goth society. He eventually decided, though, that he could redefine the better mouse, not only by cost-benefit and usability standards, but also by environmental sustainability standards.

But before Max goes on to change the world, which I'm sure will happen (just as I'm sure he'll eventually meet the love of his life), he's decided to see more of it. Last year he went on a Southeast Asia trip (and was robbed of a large sum of money) and this year Max has decided to quit his job and bike across the US.

I've decided to tag along, making impossible demands only a brother could make. Like insisting that we maintain a Web page along the way.

He calls me crazy.

Hey, I'm not the one contemplating climbing the Golden Gate Bridge next weekend with some buddies just because the fine is only $150.

I call him kettle... or is that pot?

If you want to learn more about Max, you sicko, then check out Max's website.

Max adds - ... and he's got dashing good looks... when he doesn't have poison oak and stops talking in third person.