I am a Mechanical Engineer with a strong interest in understanding how and why things work the way that they do. While growing up, my parents encouraged my brother and I to pursue all kinds of different mechanical and electrical interests. As a result, by the time I entered college I had already undertaken many projects. Examples of the projects that I worked on include:

• Built my own snowmobile engine powered dune buggy style go-cart
• Built a track and ski kit for a go-cart that my brother and I rode around in the snow before we got into snowmobiles
• Built a gang mower out of multiple push mowers so that my brother and I wouldn’t have to spend as much time mowing the grass
• Fully disassembled, repaired, and reassembled the manual shift transmission in a car that I had at the time
• Purchased, repaired, and re-sold dozens of snowmobiles, dirt bikes, ATVs, mowers, snow blowers and other pieces of equipment

During college at Syracuse University, in addition to the studies necessary to get my Bachelor Of Science in Mechanical Engineering, I participated in the SU SAE formula race car and Mini Baja off-road race vehicle programs. Before graduating, I also spent several summers working at Carrier Air Conditioning as an engineering intern.

After college, I went to work full time at Carrier and have now spent most of my career there designing compressors. Outside of work I continued to enjoy snowmobiling and started downhill mountain bike racing and dirt bike off-road racing. Some highlights of my post-college riding and racing include:

• Solo snowmobile ride on which I rode 1000 miles in 47hrs and 600 miles in a 24hr time period.
• Long distance snowmobile adventures in the USA and Canada.
• 6 seasons of downhill mountain bike racing. I held my UCI Elite license (pro level) for the last 2 seasons. I raced and rode all over the northeast USA and at other locations like Alberta Canada and California, Colorado, and Utah in the USA.
• 11 plus seasons of dirt bike off-road racing and riding. I won the 250A series championship in the competitive WNYOA off-road dirt bike race series that is held in New York and Pennsylvania. I raced AA in the WNYOA series for 2 seasons, and now race at Vet AA or Vet A level depending on the event. Unique rides and racing experiences include riding in Arizona and Utah, racing in multiple GNCC races, racing in a 24hr race and racing in Tennessee Knockout and Tough Like RORR extreme Enduro events.

In my riding and racing career, I quickly learned that it’s critical to have the correct suspension design for your riding style and the riding conditions.  I also found that proper machine setup and maintenance makes a big difference in machine handling, performance, and reliability. 

I’ve spent many hours on topics related to successful off-road riding and racing, but my main investigation and development interests are in suspension design. A few things that I've done in order to better understand and improve suspension include:

• Designed and built a suspension dyno that is capable of testing suspension at speeds over 200 inches per second.
• Developed software for use in quantifying important suspension characteristics in different riding scenarios.
• Developed calculation methods for critical aspects of suspension design, modification, and tuning.  

Over the years that I’ve spent learning and investigating, I’ve been surprised at how hard it is to find accurate, fact-based information about off-road related topics. I decided to start this website so that I can share the interesting and useful information that I’ve accumulated in order to make the journey a bit easier for other off-road enthusiasts out there! Thanks, I'll see you out on the trail!