Alejandro Jiménez

My name is Alejandro Jiménez (but everybody calls me Macu), I was born in Madrid, in 1975, but I moved to Marbella (The south of Spain) when I was eight years old. I lived there for more than eight years and there was where I met Jordi at the age of 11 or 12. I got my first"real" bike when I was seven years old and that fact changed my life...

Jordi and I were not very close friends until I came to California, six months ago. We knew each other for almost 15 years, but our friendship has become stronger since I went to his Santa Cruz' house, where I started to know what really means BIKING...

I am going to ride with him during the trip for about two months and that makes me very excited, because I am going to be a part of a dream, the dream of a friend that is going to be in my heart for all my life.

Jean-Paul Cane

Hi, my name is Jean-Paul Cane. I met Jordi last Spring through a mutual friend and within three weeks we had done an overnight bike trip to Monterey together. Now, I am lucky to have Jordi and his wife Ama as friends here in Santa Cruz.

As a kid in L.A., I rode on practice rides with a local racing team and participated in a youth program at the Cal State Dominguez Hills velodrome and have always dreamed of taking a long-distance ride. I guess destiny has caught up with me.

My other passions include surfing, climbing, back-country skiing, cooking and thinking up hair-brained idea/adventures. This Spring I climbed the Zodiac on El Capitan in Yosemite with two friends and was lucky enough to witness the Huber brothers break the El Cap speed record by climbing up the Zodiac (and right past us) in an hour and 51 minutes.

I hope to join Jordi for the Andes section of the trip perhaps staying in Patagonia to climb afterwards. 

Manuel Maqueda

Hello!  I was born in Madrid but have been living in Santa Cruz, California for a few years now.  I worked as a corporate lawyer and economist in Spain, but soon became tired of ironing shirts and wearing ties.   So I quit my job, came to California and started an import business.  

Besides being a business owner,  I'm a freelance writer and photographer specializing in mountain biking and travel.  I'm the US correspondent for El Mundo de la Mountain Bike magazine. 

Apart from mountain biking, I love hiking, mountaineering and sailing.  I've done a few major outdoor adventures both on foot and with a bicycle and I have sailed throughout the Americas for a year aboard the Spanish four-masted schooner Juan Sebastián de Elcano. 

I met Jordi in santa Cruz through a common friend and became interested in his project.  My goal is to help Jordi carry out his dream journey and, hopefully, join him for a few stages in the Andes, while gathering materials for a magazine article.