Biographies
Ryan McAfee is a multimedia journalist from Kansas City, Kansas. His interests include, but aren’t limited to, golfing, reading Shakespeare, smelling the inside of new furniture, sawing PVC pipes, telling ghost stories about his ghost friends TO his ghost friends, shaking up jars of marbles that are used in those “guess how many marbles are in this jar” contests, and tweezing out the spines on his favorite cactus plants to make them more homely.
After a short stint as an extra in the movie “Fly Away Home” with that girl from the movie “My Girl,” he decided to go to south Florida and do something completely different. He got a job as an intern for the Naples Daily News, entering in high school football box scores, updating rosters, and putting together office chairs.
When there were no more chairs to assemble, he decided to learn how to edit and produce short documentary videos. After several decades of not doing any videos that turned even the laziest eye, he got the gig that took his videography and storytelling to the next level, as a journalist for the Las Vegas Sun. The hot, dry desert air mixed perfectly with his brain and other stuff, too, to produce not 0, but ONE 3rd place winner in the NPPA monthly multimedia contest for his piece “The Coffin Couple” about a married couple in Pahrump, Nevada, who are obsessed with coffins.
Once the Las Vegas Sun caught wind of this very modest success, they had no choice but to lay off the entire video staff in order to not overdo the mediocre talent they had grown accustomed to.
A few more things have happened since then; nothing really noteworthy, but they were still kinda fun. Now, Ryan finds himself thrust kneecap-deep into a cross-country tour on a bicycle built for one (the biggest problem with this being that he never learned how to ride a bicycle). As far as bicycles go, though, this one is great. It has two wheels, brakes, and several gears that apparently are easier or harder to pedal, based on what gear you’re on when you start.
The only thing left is to now put air in the tires (duh), break in his seat, and start pedaling west, as he makes his way toward the unknown landscape (or portrait, if you turn it sideways–photography joke!) and excitement in places he may or may not have already been (but mostly not).
Ryan loves any kind of adventure, whether it’s backpacking in Costa Rica, camping at Anniversary Mine in Las Vegas, kayaking in the gulf of Mexico, or climbing to the top of 300-foot-tall wind turbines. He is always up for the challenge, even if he is a little afraid of heights.
His favorite food is pizza.
Ryan’s Moderately Awesome Things
Michelle Cassel, aka Mich (pronounced meesh, not mitch) is a free-spirited video journalist whose nomadic lifestyle currently finds her cycling across America…somewhere. Growing up in the suburbs of Northern Virginia where inspiration and freedom of thought were hard to find, Michelle jumped ship, diving into a world of coconut cracking, volcano climbing, banana harvesting, illegal border crossing (for documentary purposes only), off the beaten path adventures.
Michelle is famous in Central America. She is known to the locals as the “Blonde Haired, Large-Nostrilled, Hobbit-Footed American Girl With Expensive Laptops That We Should Take Without Consent.” She is so famous, that on her last visit to Costa Rica, she was spotted even before stepping foot outside the airport terminal. It wasn’t long before laptop numero tres made the headlines. She is too proud to tell her friends about this.
To her east coast friends she’s a hippie, and to her west coast friends she’s a vegetarian environmentalist who’s an avid pursuer of peace, love, unity and freedom, aka a “neo-hippie” (hey, at least she’s not a hipster). Michelle is addicted to dancing. Whether it’s the sounds from a music festival, a shitty cover band, or a jukebox in an empty dive bar, you’ll often find her the last one uncontrollably flailing away on the dance floor, in the parking lot, or atop a grassy hill (which last time ended the dance in a pretty impressive tumbling stunt).
Michelle has a love for the ocean that is unconditional. She grew up wanting to sing with Flounder, Sebastian, and Ariel from “The Little Mermaid.” She got closer to spending her life “Under the Sea” after becoming a certified scuba diver, but never found her singing friends. However, her adoration for the ocean stayed the same, and has resulted in a reciprocated love from its surrounding wildlife. More specifically, it’s the birds that love Michelle. They love her so much, they physically express their love by defecating on her whenever possible. Twice in one day, and one of them was while she was UNDER a beach umbrella!
Michelle also happens to be extremely skilled with fire. She’s a certified wild-land firefighter, although she’s never actually fought a fire. She DID almost get hit by an inflamed falling tree during a controlled burn in the Florida Everglades once. She was later found hiding underneath an ATV vehicle filming (what she thought) was her last video confession to the world. On the flip side, she is a pretty awesome fire dancer, a skill only a few of her international friends know about.
It’s now an exciting new adventure for Michelle, one that she never imagined putting her ass through. It is a journey across America by cycle, with absolutely no experience when it comes to cycling or wearing padded shorts, or “spandex diapers” as she calls them. The road awaits Michelle: challenging, surprising, frightening, and electrifying her universe on every pedal.
Oh we forgot to mention…Michelle’s profession is documentary filmmaking, (we’ll leave the illegal immigration, sex trade, and oil spill topics for another, more serious conversation), therefore all her catastrophes, philanthropies and debaucheries (rhyming is fun!) will be documented throughout her journey and brought to you right here…on another page…which isn’t actually here yet. Enjoy!
