They are undefeated in Southern California as duo team for 12 and 24 Hour Mt Bike Racing and they are ranked 2nd in the nation. Heidi is 3x California State Champion Cross Country Rider Mario has raced the toughest international Stage Races including La Ruta in Costa Rica 4 times, Cape Epic, Trans Alps, and Trans Rockies and other endurance races in the United States. Heidi and Mario ride for team Sho-Air in Southern California and they are members of USA cycling.

In addition to his own training and working full time as a software engineer. Mario spends his available time coaching a handful of athletes for endurance races and he is often counseled for advice on many several mountain biking blogs. Mario is a competitive athlete that is always giving back be it on the trail and giving up the last of his water to a struggling rider or guiding fellow riders with online advice.

Heidi is a freelance Art Director and Photo Director whose clients include the The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Outside Magazine, Women's Health and Men's Health and Niner Bikes.

This year Heidi will also help raise awareness for the latest photo exhibit "Views from Afghanistan from Mountain2Mountain which is a foundation that creates ties between mountain communities through education, and empower individuals to become catalysts for community development at home and abroad. Heidi also lectures and attends portfolio reviews at Arts Center College Design.

http://enjoying-the-ride.blogspot.com/

David Quammen is a freelance journalist and author who travels widely on assignment, usually to jungles, deserts, and swamps. He is a Contributing Writer for National Geographic, for whom he wrote the “Megatransect” series (2000-2001), about Mike Fay’s epic walk across Africa, and the 2004 cover story, “Was Darwin Wrong?,” which won the National Magazine Award for essays in 2005. Quammen writes occasionally also for other magazines, such as Harper’s and The New York Times Book Review. His short works have appeared in a number of anthologies, including The Best American Essays 1999 (edited by Edward Hoagland), The Best American Travel Writing 2001 (edited by Paul Theroux), The Best American Science Writing 2005 (edited by Alan Lightman), and The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2008 (edited by Jerome Groopman). He served as guest editor of The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2000.

Quammen’s books include three novels, four essay collections, and the nonfiction titles The Song of the Dodo, Monster of God, and The Reluctant Mr. Darwin. His earliest collection, Natural Acts, has lately been released in a revised and expanded edition. He’s also general editor of On the Origin of Species: The Illustrated Edition, a decorative reissuse of Charles Darwin’s great work, published in October 2008.

Quammen has received an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a John Burroughs Medal for nature writing, and (three times) the National Magazine Award, among other recognitions. He presently holds the Wallace Stegner Chair of Western American Studies at Montana State University. He lives on the south side of Bozeman, Montana, with his wife Betsy Gaines (a conservationist), two large white dogs, and a low-maintenance cat named Skipper.

QUAMMEN BOOKS:
To Walk the Line (novel) Knopf, 1970
The Zolta Configuration (novel) Doubleday, 1983
Natural Acts (essays) Nick Lyons Books, 1985
The Soul of Viktor Tronko (novel) Doubleday, 1987
Blood Line (short fiction) Graywolf, 1988
The Flight of the Iguana (essays) Delacorte, 1988
The Song of the Dodo (nonfiction) Scribner, 1996
Wild Thoughts from Wild Places (essays) Scribner, 1998
The Boilerplate Rhino (essays) Scribner, 2000
Monster of God (nonfiction) W.W. Norton, 2003
The Reluctant Mr. Darwin (biography) W.W. Norton, 2006
Natural Acts (revised and expanded) W.W. Norton, 2008
On the Origin of Species: The Illustrated Edition, text by Charles Darwin (DQ as general editor) Sterling, 2008

Anne Sherwood is a freelance photojournalist based in Bozeman, Mont. Covering stories that range from the civil war in Liberia to the bison cull in Yellowstone National Park, Sherwood has traveled to all 50 states, and more than 50 countries on six continents. Her work regularly appears in such publications as the New York Times, National Geographic Adventure, and Smithsonian.

In 2003, Sherwood was awarded a prestigious Pew Fellowship in International Journalism, sending her on a long-term assignment to South Africa. Some of her other meaningful projects have included photographing the tsunami disaster in Sri Lanka, documenting the plight of AIDS orphans in Zambia, capturing the ski industry in Western Ukraine, recording the devastation of Hurricane Mitch in Honduras, and exploring ecotourism in Panama. Though she often documents human suffering around the globe, Sherwood considers herself a chronicler of hope.

A graduate of Princeton University—where she studied with fine art photographer Emmet Gowin and majored in Public and International Affairs—Sherwood began her journalism career at the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics. Following graduate school at Ohio University’s School of Visual Communication, she shot more than 1000 assignments as a staff photographer for the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, winning numerous National Press Photographer Association accolades, Society of Professional Journalists awards, and a coveted spot in two years of the Communication Arts Photo Annual. She devoted herself fulltime to her freelance career in 2000.

Although she’s never been known to turn down a plane ticket, Sherwood finds as much inspiration in her backyard as she does on the other side of the planet. Some of her favorite experiences while on assignment in the West have been pedaling her way across the big sky state on her bicycle; surviving an encounter with a charging herd of wild bison; and making telemark turns at the state’s only Native American owned ski hill.

We have been educated our entire lives about the difficulties our people and our world face. Challenges stand before us that seem impossible to surmount. What are we to do with all of this knowledge? My mission, through my photography, exploration, and lecturing is to move people to take action, to inspire people to stand up in the face of overwhelming challenges and accomplish together what we cannot accomplish alone. To inspire is key, because without it who will stand up first? I take photos to show people how I see the world, in all of its beauty, and in it’s many different faces. I use the profits from my fashion and advertising photography to fund my conservation projects around the world, and to supplement the grants and donations received from those who share my desire to preserve what we have. As humans we are not the owners of this planet, the planet is not ours to do with as we will. We are not destroying the planet, we are destroying our ability to survive on it. Earth will be here long after we are gone.

Ben Horton is the first recipient of the National Geographic Young Explorers grant for work he's done involving Shark Poaching in Cocos Island, he continues to chase his dreams of exploring the world. In the spring of 2008 Ben was a part of the National Geographic sponsored Ellesmere Island Expedition in the High Arctic, Ben and a team of explorers traveled by dogsled to document the effects of global warming. Ben continues to search for new and exciting adventures that can be used to inspire the world and to challenge humanities self centered approach to our place on this planet.