Within a week of showing up in Bellingham, Washington in 2012, it was made very clear to me that I needed a mountain bike.

I had moved for a five-month internship at a local magazine—I was barely 21 and on the kind of early-20s tear that can only result from being raised in a rural town with eight churches and little space for trouble. That summer opened a lot of doors for me, but mountain biking was admittedly not one of them.

My colleagues at the magazine were the first people to encourage me to try mountain biking. I had about $300 to my name, part of what I’d saved prior to leaving Michigan for the internship; obviously this wouldn’t get me far in Bellingham, even in 2012. The first of the month was fast approaching, and while the questionable $250-a-month room I’d found on Craigslist wouldn’t completely break the bank, I wasn’t in a position to be taking up new hobbies.

I didn’t have a car, so I began applying for jobs within walking distance or a quick bus ride of my rundown rental—none of which wanted to hire me because I’d admitted that I would only be around for a few months. I started scouring online listings for odd jobs weeding garden boxes, which did help me earn a little money until I realized that I didn’t really know how to differentiate between weeds and plants that people paid for.

Desperation set in and I ended up at the mall. Hollister offered me a job but required that I purchase three new outfits before starting work—spending a paycheck I hadn’t even seen on clothes I didn’t even like was an obvious deal breaker. I eventually convinced Orange Julius to hire me, having lied to the hiring manager by saying I had no plans to leave Bellingham and that I was committed to hawking strawberry banana smoothies for the foreseeable future. When I got my first paycheck three weeks later—just over $300—I immediately went to Craigslist to find myself a mountain bike.

A simple road bike was what I needed, but the guys at my internship recommended I get a mountain bike, and I come from a place where a bike is a bike. So, when my search turned up a $100, nearly 10-year-old Specialized Stumpjumper—a legit-enough sounding model, I remember thinking—I jumped on the opportunity.