Interviewed at Tea Rex on Mission Street, San Francisco CA, April 29, 2026

Ian: Wait a minute, you rode on a bike at 16 months?

Arlo: Yeah, we had a Cannondale tandem, and my dad and mom rigged up a seat rest and a seatbelt so I could fall asleep on the back of it and not fall off. I was in trailers before that.

That's an early start. When did you first start riding road bikes?

I got my first road bike in ninth grade. I had gotten my first mountain bike from Noah [Libeskind]. And then I was like, I should get another bike. Maybe it was a bar mitzvah thing. Anyway, it was a Giant Defy from our neighborhood used bike seller. Pretty barebones. My mom still rides it sometimes. Yeah, that was my first road bike.

What year was that?

2017, 2018, somewhere in there.

When did you get serious about road bikes?

I had played soccer seriously through 8th grade. In 8th grade, I lived in Spain, and I played soccer on the high school team there, and it was just too much. It was too stressful. I was all right, but I wasn't that good and I didn't do very well under pressure. I didn't like having teammates rely on me because I was goalkeeper. And so I said, okay, no more soccer. And I started doing a little bit of cycling in Spain with my dad. And then, I don't know whose idea it was, probably my dad's, he said that I should try out the mountain bike team at my high school. So I bought Noah’s old Rock Hopper. It had 32/32 gearing, like a one-to-one gear ratio on it. And yeah, I started riding and racing on that in ninth grade.

What does serious mean to you?

That's the question I was most scared about! I have a really hard time defining serious. I think a lot of the time I like to pretend that I'm not serious to make myself feel like I'm just doing it for fun. Obviously, it's a lie, I am serious about cycling. I think sometimes it's hard to understand how much it takes to just have the setup to regularly go for a bike ride. Like, getting into it. Doing a solo bike ride takes so much — you should be able to do bike repairs on the road and know the safety things and the routes and everything. So to some extent, once you can do that, go out for a solo ride without being concerned, you're a serious cyclist. For me, it means choosing to commute to work by bike every day for exercise, trying to make sure I keep my aerobic base strong, intentionally setting aside time on weekends and free time to do efforts. But at the same time, it's like, I'm doing it because I like cycling and not always because I'm trying to be a serious cyclist. So I feel like I get a little in the weeds there sometimes where it's like, oh, I have to go ride, I'm so serious. I don't have to do this. And then I usually choose to do it anyway and it feels good. But I like telling myself I'm not super serious, even though I am.

So you sometimes feel, maybe, an inner obligation to go?

Yeah, it's like, I'm trying to get faster. I have to ride today. And the truth is, I do want to ride, but sometimes it's just really hard to get out the door. The motivation of being faster for the next ride is sometimes what gets me out the door. And so I feel like that's part of being serious — motivating yourself with performance goals and speed goals. I don't do power goals. I try to focus on times and speeds more than power. I haven't found like one thing that is the main motivator, I guess. Just enjoying riding my bike, that's the strong motivator.

In what ways does road biking impact your life?

Road biking opens up so much to me. It lets me go places. I don't own a car. I don't really want to own a car. But I get to go to all these great places that are sometimes car accessible and sometimes not. I feel like I get to see so much of California, of wherever I live. I biked across the country this summer on the road bike with some friends. I've gotten to see so much that I wouldn't have seen without the road bike. It has a really profoundly positive impact on my life. I like going places. It's fast, it's easy, it feels good. It makes my back hurt sometimes, but yeah, it sort of impacts how I think about everything, in the sense that the way I live my life is centered around how I'm getting places and what I'm doing, and how I'm getting places is usually associated with my road bike.

Interesting. So it's really about transportation at its foundation?

I think it’s just as much about exercise as it is about exploring and going to, I don't know, going to the cafe at Point Reyes or something. I like the exercise part. But it's also very much just being able — it feels very independent and freeing. Yeah, it helps me, it sets my goals, and I just sort of base my life around being able to road bike.

Have you ever felt like it's negatively impacting your life?

I think oftentimes, when I'm going through mood swings and I feel really down about it, what I end up doing is considering what it would be like if I wasn't doing any cycling at all, and with that perspective it always feels so much worse. Like, okay, well, I guess I don't have to bike to school today, but it means that I'm gonna carpool and sit around and I'm gonna get home and feel like I haven't done my exercise and then I'll have to go out for a little run. And so I definitely set rules for myself around it, but imagining not having the road bike makes it feel like it's such a positive thing for me. There's definitely been — I don't think it necessarily keeps me as healthy as people might assume.

What do you mean by that?

I think I have issues with my body that I've caused by doing exclusively road and mountain biking and not more well-rounded activities. It's such a repetitive exercise. I need to do more cross training, basically, because road biking does not help me with core stability. It gives me inspiration, maybe, to do more of that kind of well-rounded body exercise, but I don't think it's always healthy. The food you eat when you're doing a big effort is not healthy, the way you feel afterwards is not always a healthy feeling. But it is definitely overall positive for me. Does that make sense?

Yeah, like the pain of not riding is greater than the pain of riding.

That's how I feel.

Net net, do you think road biking is positive or negative?

It's positive for me. It really does open up so many cool activities, especially moving to San Francisco, there are so many places that are accessible that by either car plus hike, or I've done super long runs from bus stops and stuff, but the car stuff seems so unpleasant. My partner and I took the tandem to Kirby Cove at some point. It was such an annoying spot to get to with either public transit or car. And being pretty fresh out of college and having a job that doesn't leave a ton of extra income, it's such a cost efficient way to do so many cool things that I just can't imagine how I would do otherwise, really.

Do you have any goals for yourself in regards to road biking or any biking?

Yeah, I really want to do some more races. I talk myself out of them sometimes with planning difficulties and entry fees, and it is more dangerous to do a bike race than just a regular bike ride. But it is something I want to get back into. I haven't raced consistently since high school, which was cross country mountain biking. Just doing some races is the goal. I was hoping to do some more recently, and then back stuff has been flaring up a bit. But having the team now and people carpooling and sharing Airbnbs, it feels approachable again. One of my goals is to just commit to some races, decide on a time, do them, try to be proud of myself whatever happens. I have a lot of nerves around seeing where my fitness is, I think. And so I sometimes avoid things that really test my fitness too much because I don't want to be disappointed. But there's a lot of gratitude after races, I feel like. And also just watching other people race and be excited about it makes me want to do it as well. I'm hoping soon to do this Four Peaks ride. That's like 220 miles, which should be the longest I've done. And I also want to try to do a bikepacking thing on the tandem, one night of camping at first, maybe just bike out to Kirby Cove, camp at the point, and then bike back. I think it'd be cool.

That's a good adventure goal. What are some things you absolutely love about riding?

I love being outside and being really far away from where I started. I think that's one of my favorite things — looking around and being like, I cannot have gotten here any other way. Like when we do the longer rides up north and stuff, being along the coast, being like, wow, I can see everything around me, I can feel the air, I can look at the birds, and I'm also getting stronger at the same time. That little Marin vision loop that we've done. I love that one. It makes me feel like I'm so far away from home. And then when you ride back, you're like, wow, I went out there, I saw something incredible, I challenged myself, and now I'm all the way back here. I always feel after those rides like there's no way I could possibly explain to somebody how joyous that bike ride was, and how much I feel like I saw. I take pictures, I'm usually pretty good at taking pictures, but I'm always like, you have no clue how much fun I just had. The pictures are impossible.

Yeah, it's not just that you see it — it's the context in which you see it.

Right. I've done some really great stuff abroad as well, where it's like, I'm just out here and it's not accessible, and that's cool to me, I guess.

If you had zero constraints on your time, how many hours a week do you think you would ride?

I think I would do like 25 hours a week, probably.

And how much do you ride now, on an average week?

On an average week I think I'm doing around 12. I get about an hour and a half every day I go to work, which is nice, and that adds up fairly well. So like 6 for those, and then 2 hours on Thursday, and then this depends on how much riding I do over the weekend. Some weekends you do 10 hours of riding, some weekends you do 3 hours, but somewhere around there.

What is something you wish a non-cyclist could experience about cycling?

I think mostly the joy. In college, my major was a mix of urban studies, sociology, geography, architecture, that sort of stuff, and I just feel like the discussions around making cycling safe in the United States revolve so much around this idea that cycling is unnecessary, and that cyclists are weirdos, that you're doing it for a show, and you're in everybody's way. I wish that people could experience both how it feels to ride with traffic and also how it feels to ride without traffic and still get where you're going in an understandable amount of time. I'm at work within 3 minutes of when I expect to be every single day. On a really fast one, I'll be 3 minutes early; on a slow one, a little bit after that. It's such a consistent mode of transit. It doesn't get slowed down by the issues that cars have. You don't need parking like you do for cars. It's really a great way to get around. And the biggest barrier to it is how many people aren't doing it, to a certain extent. Having that critical mass is what makes it safer and more applicable. I feel like people don't understand how fun it is. I understand why cars are necessary for certain things, especially in the way our lives are set up, but I just think having a bit more empathy for both the practicality and the enjoyment aspects combined would make so much everything so much better.

Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, the consistency is — if you say, we're gonna meet at 8:45 at this place, they will be there within 2 minutes.

Yeah, it's so amazing how precise you can gauge how long it's gonna take you to get somewhere. Even getting here, getting to my doctor's appointment today — it was to the minute, basically. It'll take me this long. I don't see that for any other mode. I love public transportation. I use it for everything I don't do by cycling. But the cycling's just faster and you feel good doing it, instead of feeling stressed and being all annoyed.

Have you ever taken a total break from cycling?

When Leonie and I started dating, we did a three-week trip together and I told myself I wouldn't be doing any cycling during that trip. I did rent a bike one day. But that was a pretty long stretch of not cycling for me. I took some stretches of not cycling when I was going to college in Pennsylvania. I got hit by a car the first winter I was there. And then I came back home, did cycling in California, it was great, it was warm. Then I came back to Pennsylvania, and it was super cold and snowy, and the cars were still scaring me. And so I took up running. I have not taken a break from exercising in a long time, or from doing cardio stuff. I used to be super strict about every day doing something, and I've been trying to recognize that I'm not always doing that for health — maybe just because of addiction or whatever. And so I've been trying to be a little bit more lenient when it doesn't make any sense to go for a run today, so I won't. So extended breaks have just been like vacations where I don't have a bike with me. It hasn't been like a conscious, okay, I'm gonna stop this for a while.

How do you feel when you have to take a break like that?

I try to enjoy it for the most part. My most recent trip I took, I ended up renting a bike one day, and I enjoyed that one day, and it was also sort of freeing to not plan my day around getting the bike clothing on. Really, the preparation and the post-cycling stuff takes a lot longer than running and a lot longer than doing nothing. So just being like, wow, I have a whole day that's not gonna be half taken up by a bike ride, and just trying to enjoy that.

It is crazy when you divide your day like that. I mean, if you don't ride for a day, it's like you have this bonus time.

Right. The day's longer. I can do all this other stuff. Sleeping in. I feel like people in our cycling circle don't do sleeping in. I don't have time for it. Yeah, sometimes on a Saturday if I don't have anything the rest of the day, I'll start my ride at 8:40 or something crazy like that. And then it's like you get home and you're not really done with the ride because you have to stand around and do nothing for like an hour before you're ready to move again. I can force myself to do a quick turnaround, I did a quick one to get here today, but it was because I had a slow morning. So I try to find enjoyment in not cycling when I'm not cycling, and try to find enjoyment in cycling when I am. I try to make the most of it.

Please choose only 3 words to describe who you are as a cyclist.

Level-headed. Excited. And stubborn.