Hey, I’m Gino. I founded BCADV in early 2024 out of the desire to find other people to ride (mostly off road) with here in Boulder County and beyond. I had spent that winter in Tucson riding mountain bikes and motos with my wife Starla, and in Tucson there was a highly engaged ADV crew (Tucson Adventure Riders) that made me wonder if something like that existed here. To my surprise, it didn’t.

When we got home in March of 2024, I created a fake Facebook profile (Mule Barn, which was the name of my grandpa’s fix-everything + hot rod car shop in Florence, Alabama) to be able to start the BCADV group. For a few months, there were a handful of us that started hanging out regularly, and eventually going on rides together. Our first ever moto social was in April 2024 at Upslope Brewing, and it was @ChrisL, @Rich_Strauss, @Paulo, my wife Starla, and me. Paulo and I did the first official BCADV ride, froze our asses off, and watched a Harley rider narrowly miss a trip to the ER on some snowy backroad west of Loveland.

Outside of motos, I worked in the tech industry for 25 years, first as a product designer, then as a founder/CEO during the last 10 years of my career. I retired from that world in 2020. I also co-founded a charitable women’s cycling program called Distance to Empty with my wife, although she runs 99.9% of it at this point.

I have a rare genetic disease called Fabry Disease, and it has caused me to need a kidney transplant (2017), a stent in my heart that failed (2019), and a double bypass (January 2020). Despite all that, I keep going and do my best to find the good stuff; every day is a bonus now. Once you’ve been through things like these, it brings into sharp focus what matters, and for me in my early 50s now, what matters is spending quality time with good humans, and trying to do as much good in the world as I can, while I can. That’s why I created BCADV, and why I’m happy to put so much into it. At the end of your days (and I’ve nearly died three times now!), all you have is the collection of relationships you’ve made and reflections on the memories of the time you spent with those people.

I’m happy you’re here, and look forward to riding with you at a chill pace. I don’t need to cheat death any more than I already have.