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To hear Tony tell the stories of his time in Latin America is to hear a young man electrified with a sense of purpose. For now, that seems to be more than enough.
In his 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College, David Foster Wallace warned against what he called “the default setting”—an unconscious state of routine that awaits us all, lest we do something about it.
He begins with a parable:
There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” The two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually, one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”
We all have our routines, our doldrums that mold us, unwittingly, into a world of redundancy. We forget that we’re swimming in this bountiful ocean of experience. There’s a world worth delving into if you take the time to pause, reflect, engage.
Tony Martin, co-founder of 2Wheel Epix, is the old fish in the parable (the 25-year-old is wise beyond the constraints of annual speed checks). Since childhood, every moment spent indoors was a lost chance to be outdoors. The world so full of life, of possibility, held yet another opportunity to enjoy the swim.
While attending a renowned outdoor school—from which most of his classmates went on to attend Ivy League (or adjacent) schools—Tony heard the call of the untracked, untamed, and unimagined wilderness waiting just outside those doors.
The wilderness aspect of the school that I went to, that’s where I thrived. It was evident which students were going to go on to Stanford and Yale and million-dollar salaries. But it was also clear who was going to go on to make million-dollar memories.
From hiking the Washington coast to backpacking in Canyonlands to rafting the Salmon, yet-to-be-had experiences drove him. Led astray from the predetermined path, from measures of success like lofty alma maters, he wandered unconstrained by a default setting. College in Fort Lewis (a school known for its mountain bike team) introduced him to mountain biking as a lifestyle. Traveling in Bolivia and Spain gave him the opportunity to study Spanish and international business. Then came Ecuador, where he found an apex stage in his journey to self-realization.
Romanticism collided with ideals, and the aftermath served as the foundation of his life’s work. A new-found penchant for unexplored topography brought him to the ancient Incan trails, pueblos, and indigenous people of Latin America. Their way of life perplexed then enthralled him. Exposed to the organic truths about art, culture, food, land preservation, and human connection, Tony dreamed of bringing more people to this magical place. And the kiddos he met along the way—smiling ear-to-ear while popping wheelies on clapped-out, too-small bikes? Those kiddos sent him over the top.
In his moments of reflection, passion melded with acumen and a plan took shape. Connecting mountain bikers with unspoiled single track was one thing, but connecting cultures through riding, art, and the collective experience of proximity and curiosity—that was something else. What if, through these experiences, you could give bikes to indigenous children to ride? Then teach them to build up the trails in their cherished land with their own two hands? What if it were all to come full circle as cultures began to find syncopation?
This, perhaps, is what the wise old fish was talking about. Presence, connection, awareness—this is water.
In his own words, Tony discusses the upbringing that propelled him outward, toward the dusty trails and powder fields, away from his world of expectations and fortunes foretold.
Have you ever seen this meme—all sorts of different animals lined up. Then there’s a table with three teachers sitting at it. They’re saying “Everyone’s gonna climb this tree. That’s today’s exam”. There’s an elephant, a fish, a monkey, a snake, a bird, and they’re not all climbing that tree. They represent different personalities. They don’t all act the same way or do the same things. I was the elephant or the fish. I didn’t do well (in school) until I got older because my personality and learning style wasn’t based on sitting and studying all the time.
The wilderness aspect of the school that I went to, that’s where I thrived. It was evident which students were going to go on to Stanford and Yale and million-dollar salaries. But it was also clear who was going to go on to make million-dollar memories.
In college, at Fort Lewis, all my homies got into downhill mountain biking. And we quickly got on the school’s mountain biking team. So I was off. We were doing a week’s worth of homework in two days, so we could ditch the rest of the week to tear it up on the single track during the shoulders and chase powder in the backcountry during the winter.
After school came the inevitable “What am I going to do with my life?” question. It seemed that there was only one path, but each time he tried, Tony strayed. Corporate interviews turned into personal dismay—he wasn’t a corporate candidate. So he took to traveling and teaching English in Latin America. It was here that the stars began to align.
As Tony explored deeper and farther into the countryside, he began reaching out to locals, connecting with strangers to ride the unimaginable. Each trip, an opportunity to learn and listen. Each trip, a new story.
One time we got picked up at dusk. We drove on these busted-up dirt roads. As it got darker and darker we drove onto this compound. And it was scary. We thought: “We’re gonna die. This is our death, homies”. And the people we met there are kids I’m still friends with.
I lived in Cuzco for seven months. We would ride bikes at least three days a week. We’d load the bikes on these travel buses that were 60 cents apiece. One of us would climb on top, grab the bikes from our homies, and throw ‘em on. The bus was full of indigenous women bringing their products from the mountains to Cuzco to sell. All these hard-working people on these rickety old buses just doin’ work, living life. Then we’d get dropped off in the middle of nowhere and ride down an ancient Incan trail.
When I first started scouting Ecuador I kept trying to find this place called Bella Vista, because I had seen it in a video. I looked online, asked on forums, couldn’t find it. Lo and behold, one of our friends texted me when we arrived in Bolivar letting me know that his friend Rene was waiting to pick me up at the bus station. We drove an hour and 20 minutes into what seemed like the middle of nowhere. Up dirt roads, over hills. I was so confused as to where we were going. And all of a sudden, we came up over and around a bend, and there’s the sign that I’ve been looking for (for weeks), LA Bella Vista. And I thought, “We arrived!” I was looking for this place all over the internet and just randomly on my travels around the country. It was just, “This is where you’re staying.” It happened just like that.
Tony made trip after trip to Ecuador and Peru. He began to see the possibility of building something there, something more than a bike touring company. It was all about the riding. But then, it wasn’t all about the riding. It was about bikes as a means of communion and a means of sharing. It was about cultures coming to understand one another. It was about connection.
Most of what I do is based on my ideals and morals, not margins. We’ve finally been able to distance ourselves from this materialism and commercialism that we all found so important.
If we can take someone who’s really stoked about riding in new locales on a trip that exposes them to indigenous people and traditions, including, for example, traditional candle making, then we’ve upped the game. They get to watch and engage with the women making these elaborate candles as a part of their expedition. They get to connect with that person with that experience. Enlightenment—that’s what it’s about.
On the other side of it, the value for the other person, the candle maker—showing that person glimpses of the modern world, introducing them to different cultures, it’s profound. To show them that people from around the world care about their world, their culture, it gives them pride. Those underlying values don’t have a price. You’re still creating wealth, but the gain isn’t monetary, it’s experiential.
Success is measured in small doses. If a kid can go ride his bike and give mom two hours of peace—those are the types of small successes that are happening. A brother and sister connect, because of the bike that brother got. Now they have a different relationship. These are the smallest, little baby successes.The big successes are seeing new trails in the process of building, and seeing other people taking action.
In March of 2023, Tony and his filmmaker buddy Alex Mager traveled to Oaxaca to document the achievement of culture and communal stoke in the land of Ixtepeji. They landed in Mexico, 85 brand-new bikes built and ready for distribution to local kids. Only months before, Tony and master builders Shire Built spent five days with the community’s up-and-coming shredders to build two flow lines through the landscape’s remote beauty.
We got COVID in Oaxaca during March of 2022. We didn’t have symptoms, so we went out on some trails. We ended up spending about three weeks there before we realized, “We gotta do a trip here.”
We set posters up two weeks before announcing that we’re gonna have a community meeting. We met at the cubre, which is the meeting point for the three indigenous communities who govern the land. We had an informative lesson about biking geared toward kids. We thought there’d be 15 kids or so. And 85 kids showed up! I thought there was no way we’re going to get that many bikes. Then Carlos (Tony’s counterpart in Mexico) got in touch with this Mexican bike company, Mercurio. They gave us 85 bikes for 13 grand. Carlos put up five grand of his own cash. So we said we’d throw in the other eight. A week later, Carlos bought the bikes.
We built an A-class flow line, the most insane flow. The lines you see are perfect, manicured—it’s so gorgeous! Riding it, you don’t touch your brakes. We used step up lily pads, step downs, and integrated the work into the geography. It’s the Willy Wonka factory of mountain biking.
Give a person a fish or teach a person to fish? Why not both? Bikes in hand, the task before the crew was to create a ripper’s paradise deep in the jungle primeval. On top of that, they had an opportunity to teach the young’uns how to bend the land, how to create new paths merging and dancing with the land itself.
We built an A-class flow line, the most insane flow. The lines you see are perfect, manicured—it’s so gorgeous! Riding it, you don’t touch your brakes. We used step up lily pads, step downs, and integrated the work into the geography. It’s the Willy Wonka factory of mountain biking.
The bulk of the project is building progressive trails and conducting a build clinic. We knew we needed a world-class builder, so I reached out to Shire Built—they’ve built some of the most badass courses out there. They dug trails at Red Bull Rampage in 2021 and they are about to be behind some of the United States biggest and baddest projects. They’re some of the best American builders.
We ran a crash course with the top five builders from the local community. We taught them how to build berms, pack, build jumps, create landings, scout lines, build better uphills—basically trying to help them develop all the tools and resources to be able to take over the building and maintenance of their park. They can continue making their bike park better and better and better.
We finished the build in five days. All the homies went down and built bikes. And on March 11th, 2023, 2Wheel Epix, Coyote Aventuras, Women’s Radical Pursuits, and Project Bike Love donated 85 bikes and a kids bike park to the local community.
To hear Tony tell the stories of his time in Latin America is to hear a young man electrified with a sense of purpose. While he has a vision for expansion—taking the model he’s built in Latin America across the world—there’s still so much to do here. For now, that seems to be more than enough.
Footnote: As we neared the end of our time together, we asked Tony what his cosmic billboard would read. The billboard somewhere in space where all the world will pass by and see. He left us with this:
.
Life is meant to be fun. Don’t take it too seriously. Do what you love..
In his 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College, David Foster Wallace warned against what he called “the default setting”—an unconscious state of routine that awaits us all, lest we do something about it.
He begins with a parable:
There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” The two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually, one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”
We all have our routines, our doldrums that mold us, unwittingly, into a world of redundancy. We forget that we’re swimming in this bountiful ocean of experience. There’s a world worth delving into if you take the time to pause, reflect, engage.
Tony Martin, co-founder of 2Wheel Epix, is the old fish in the parable (the 25-year-old is wise beyond the constraints of annual speed checks). Since childhood, every moment spent indoors was a lost chance to be outdoors. The world so full of life, of possibility, held yet another opportunity to enjoy the swim.
While attending a renowned outdoor school—from which most of his classmates went on to attend Ivy League (or adjacent) schools—Tony heard the call of the untracked, untamed, and unimagined wilderness waiting just outside those doors.
The wilderness aspect of the school that I went to, that’s where I thrived. It was evident which students were going to go on to Stanford and Yale and million-dollar salaries. But it was also clear who was going to go on to make million-dollar memories.
From hiking the Washington coast to backpacking in Canyonlands to rafting the Salmon, yet-to-be-had experiences drove him. Led astray from the predetermined path, from measures of success like lofty alma maters, he wandered unconstrained by a default setting. College in Fort Lewis (a school known for its mountain bike team) introduced him to mountain biking as a lifestyle. Traveling in Bolivia and Spain gave him the opportunity to study Spanish and international business. Then came Ecuador, where he found an apex stage in his journey to self-realization.
Romanticism collided with ideals, and the aftermath served as the foundation of his life’s work. A new-found penchant for unexplored topography brought him to the ancient Incan trails, pueblos, and indigenous people of Latin America. Their way of life perplexed then enthralled him. Exposed to the organic truths about art, culture, food, land preservation, and human connection, Tony dreamed of bringing more people to this magical place. And the kiddos he met along the way—smiling ear-to-ear while popping wheelies on clapped-out, too-small bikes? Those kiddos sent him over the top.
In his moments of reflection, passion melded with acumen and a plan took shape. Connecting mountain bikers with unspoiled single track was one thing, but connecting cultures through riding, art, and the collective experience of proximity and curiosity—that was something else. What if, through these experiences, you could give bikes to indigenous children to ride? Then teach them to build up the trails in their cherished land with their own two hands? What if it were all to come full circle as cultures began to find syncopation?
This, perhaps, is what the wise old fish was talking about. Presence, connection, awareness—this is water.
In his own words, Tony discusses the upbringing that propelled him outward, toward the dusty trails and powder fields, away from his world of expectations and fortunes foretold.
Have you ever seen this meme—all sorts of different animals lined up. Then there’s a table with three teachers sitting at it. They’re saying “Everyone’s gonna climb this tree. That’s today’s exam”. There’s an elephant, a fish, a monkey, a snake, a bird, and they’re not all climbing that tree. They represent different personalities. They don’t all act the same way or do the same things. I was the elephant or the fish. I didn’t do well (in school) until I got older because my personality and learning style wasn’t based on sitting and studying all the time.
The wilderness aspect of the school that I went to, that’s where I thrived. It was evident which students were going to go on to Stanford and Yale and million-dollar salaries. But it was also clear who was going to go on to make million-dollar memories.
In college, at Fort Lewis, all my homies got into downhill mountain biking. And we quickly got on the school’s mountain biking team. So I was off. We were doing a week’s worth of homework in two days, so we could ditch the rest of the week to tear it up on the single track during the shoulders and chase powder in the backcountry during the winter.
After school came the inevitable “What am I going to do with my life?” question. It seemed that there was only one path, but each time he tried, Tony strayed. Corporate interviews turned into personal dismay—he wasn’t a corporate candidate. So he took to traveling and teaching English in Latin America. It was here that the stars began to align.
As Tony explored deeper and farther into the countryside, he began reaching out to locals, connecting with strangers to ride the unimaginable. Each trip, an opportunity to learn and listen. Each trip, a new story.
One time we got picked up at dusk. We drove on these busted-up dirt roads. As it got darker and darker we drove onto this compound. And it was scary. We thought: “We’re gonna die. This is our death, homies”. And the people we met there are kids I’m still friends with.
I lived in Cuzco for seven months. We would ride bikes at least three days a week. We’d load the bikes on these travel buses that were 60 cents apiece. One of us would climb on top, grab the bikes from our homies, and throw ‘em on. The bus was full of indigenous women bringing their products from the mountains to Cuzco to sell. All these hard-working people on these rickety old buses just doin’ work, living life. Then we’d get dropped off in the middle of nowhere and ride down an ancient Incan trail.
When I first started scouting Ecuador I kept trying to find this place called Bella Vista, because I had seen it in a video. I looked online, asked on forums, couldn’t find it. Lo and behold, one of our friends texted me when we arrived in Bolivar letting me know that his friend Rene was waiting to pick me up at the bus station. We drove an hour and 20 minutes into what seemed like the middle of nowhere. Up dirt roads, over hills. I was so confused as to where we were going. And all of a sudden, we came up over and around a bend, and there’s the sign that I’ve been looking for (for weeks), LA Bella Vista. And I thought, “We arrived!” I was looking for this place all over the internet and just randomly on my travels around the country. It was just, “This is where you’re staying.” It happened just like that.
Tony made trip after trip to Ecuador and Peru. He began to see the possibility of building something there, something more than a bike touring company. It was all about the riding. But then, it wasn’t all about the riding. It was about bikes as a means of communion and a means of sharing. It was about cultures coming to understand one another. It was about connection.
Most of what I do is based on my ideals and morals, not margins. We’ve finally been able to distance ourselves from this materialism and commercialism that we all found so important.
If we can take someone who’s really stoked about riding in new locales on a trip that exposes them to indigenous people and traditions, including, for example, traditional candle making, then we’ve upped the game. They get to watch and engage with the women making these elaborate candles as a part of their expedition. They get to connect with that person with that experience. Enlightenment—that’s what it’s about.
On the other side of it, the value for the other person, the candle maker—showing that person glimpses of the modern world, introducing them to different cultures, it’s profound. To show them that people from around the world care about their world, their culture, it gives them pride. Those underlying values don’t have a price. You’re still creating wealth, but the gain isn’t monetary, it’s experiential.
Success is measured in small doses. If a kid can go ride his bike and give mom two hours of peace—those are the types of small successes that are happening. A brother and sister connect, because of the bike that brother got. Now they have a different relationship. These are the smallest, little baby successes.The big successes are seeing new trails in the process of building, and seeing other people taking action.
In March of 2023, Tony and his filmmaker buddy Alex Mager traveled to Oaxaca to document the achievement of culture and communal stoke in the land of Ixtepeji. They landed in Mexico, 85 brand-new bikes built and ready for distribution to local kids. Only months before, Tony and master builders Shire Built spent five days with the community’s up-and-coming shredders to build two flow lines through the landscape’s remote beauty.
We got COVID in Oaxaca during March of 2022. We didn’t have symptoms, so we went out on some trails. We ended up spending about three weeks there before we realized, “We gotta do a trip here.”
We set posters up two weeks before announcing that we’re gonna have a community meeting. We met at the cubre, which is the meeting point for the three indigenous communities who govern the land. We had an informative lesson about biking geared toward kids. We thought there’d be 15 kids or so. And 85 kids showed up! I thought there was no way we’re going to get that many bikes. Then Carlos (Tony’s counterpart in Mexico) got in touch with this Mexican bike company, Mercurio. They gave us 85 bikes for 13 grand. Carlos put up five grand of his own cash. So we said we’d throw in the other eight. A week later, Carlos bought the bikes.
We built an A-class flow line, the most insane flow. The lines you see are perfect, manicured—it’s so gorgeous! Riding it, you don’t touch your brakes. We used step up lily pads, step downs, and integrated the work into the geography. It’s the Willy Wonka factory of mountain biking.
Give a person a fish or teach a person to fish? Why not both? Bikes in hand, the task before the crew was to create a ripper’s paradise deep in the jungle primeval. On top of that, they had an opportunity to teach the young’uns how to bend the land, how to create new paths merging and dancing with the land itself.
We built an A-class flow line, the most insane flow. The lines you see are perfect, manicured—it’s so gorgeous! Riding it, you don’t touch your brakes. We used step up lily pads, step downs, and integrated the work into the geography. It’s the Willy Wonka factory of mountain biking.
The bulk of the project is building progressive trails and conducting a build clinic. We knew we needed a world-class builder, so I reached out to Shire Built—they’ve built some of the most badass courses out there. They dug trails at Red Bull Rampage in 2021 and they are about to be behind some of the United States biggest and baddest projects. They’re some of the best American builders.
We ran a crash course with the top five builders from the local community. We taught them how to build berms, pack, build jumps, create landings, scout lines, build better uphills—basically trying to help them develop all the tools and resources to be able to take over the building and maintenance of their park. They can continue making their bike park better and better and better.
We finished the build in five days. All the homies went down and built bikes. And on March 11th, 2023, 2Wheel Epix, Coyote Aventuras, Women’s Radical Pursuits, and Project Bike Love donated 85 bikes and a kids bike park to the local community.
To hear Tony tell the stories of his time in Latin America is to hear a young man electrified with a sense of purpose. While he has a vision for expansion—taking the model he’s built in Latin America across the world—there’s still so much to do here. For now, that seems to be more than enough.
Footnote: As we neared the end of our time together, we asked Tony what his cosmic billboard would read. The billboard somewhere in space where all the world will pass by and see. He left us with this:
.
Life is meant to be fun. Don’t take it too seriously. Do what you love..
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