One perfectly freezing Sunday morning in Bend, Oregon, the Bike Friday® Show'n'Ride Team was frantically riding the demo bikes around the picnic table in order to stay warm when up strides Shawn Corrigan, canoe racer, builder, greyhound aficionado and owner of a cream soda blue Pocket Llama.

Shawn has toured much of New Zealand and a "few other places" on his trusty Llama, but he confides that nothing gives him more pleasure than staying at home.
"I like to tour, but equally I like to be a homebody and explore Bend on my Bike Friday®, it's a beautiful place, with great routes and great scenery."

Of course, not everyone has it as good as Shawn, largely due to the concrete and car-choked cities many of us find ourselves trapped in. As an enlightened builder, stopping the urban sprawl is one of Shawn's pet preaches. "This is my personal endeavor to stop this madness," he says, leading us out the back of his beautifully part-restored timber house. In the small back yard stand his own personal "Twin Towers", a pair of compact, mirror-image 2-story apartments joined by a deck. Shawn has put many months of hard labor and love into his alternative answer to the American Dream, with energy efficiency, simplicity and quality of life the top priorities. "There has been no heat in these apartments for 2 weeks, and the temperature is around 70 degrees," he says proudly, pointing out the massive sun-catching windows that sweep right up to the roof throwing light onto the floating mezzanine floor. Shawn's idea is that if people live closer in, as they did in village times, they would not have to go as far to get to nature.

Unfortunately, the whole modernistic notion of 'zoning' has created urban developments which are logical on paper but pretty desolate in practice, with people having to drive miles to get to a tree that isn't surrounded by a concrete circle. I am looking across at the concrete wasteland, five-lane thruway and horizon of superstores outside the Bike Friday® factory and I can only say, I concur.

"I know that one day, I want to have a farm," says Shawn, playing hide and seek with the love of his life, his Great Dane Eva. (That's a dog, not a large Danish gal, but Shawn lives in hope.) The No. 2 love of his life sits parked against the kitchen post, all dressed up and ready to ride. "I want to do a tour in the USA. Something close. Maybe around here."

Shawn is interested in hearing from anyone who shares his dream of a smaller planet. Contact him at [email protected]