Sam Tracy

Background

About Sam Tracy

Sam Tracy began scavenging behind Milwaukee bike shops in 1992, using a map torn from the phone book. Following a fortuitous encounter at the Uptowner bar, one of them hired him as a mechanic in 1993. Returning home to Minnesota years later, he rode as a messenger through five winters before turning his focus to rental bikes and recumbents. Tracy moved on to San Francisco in 2004, wrenching and learning at a high-end road and commuter shop before leaving for Boston, where he worked with the unhoused. He and his wife, Kerri Spindler-Ranta, later served together with the Peace Corps in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania. They have since lived and biked in Riga, Latvia; Georgetown, Guyana; Washington, D.C; Pretoria, South Africa and Montevideo, Uruguay. Their journey in recent years is enlivened by the presence of their son Atticus, now age 11. Tracy is author of Riding More with Less: A Future for Bike Repair, published by PM Press in 2024. He also wrote How to Rock and Roll: A City Rider’s Repair Manual Bicycle! A Repair & Maintenance Manifesto (2006), and Roadside Bicycle Repair: A Pocket Manifesto (2008). The first two books are out of print; PM Press published a second edition of the Bicycle Manifesto in 2013.