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By: Evan Madsen
Intro
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he first glimmers of a new day are just now starting to peek through the pines of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The air finally begins to warm, and the smooth blanket of fog lifts from the treeline, replaced with orange hues. The sun is rising, and with it go a small group of cyclists, huffing their way up a steep, winding hill. They’ve already been riding for two hours and won’t reach the top for another four. This ride is physically torturous for most people, but for Jon Madsen and the rest of his biking crew it is the exact opposite. To them, every turn of the pedal, every hum of the spokes, and every crank of the gears, is a crucial part of their routine; all in an effort to keep a cool head in the midst of the bustling and booming Silicon Valley.
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History
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ike many of his peers, Jon Madsen was not always a road biker. For the longest time, he had actually steered completely clear of it. “As a kid, I actually used to love to go downhill really fast, and I used to love the mountain bike,” he recalled. Jon would regularly take trips to Colorado, where he could take the ski lifts up to the top of mountains, and then mountain bike the rough terrain all the way down, not having to climb for a single foot of pavement. However, this would change when he first moved out to the Bay Area from his original home in the flat suburbs of Chicago. In a new place, with
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