Gregg Bleakney

Screen Name: GreggBleakney

Gregg Bleakney

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Nationality: US
Currently Living: Bogota, Colombia
Member Since: 10/13/2007

Website: gBleakney.com

Gregg Bleakney was raised on an island in Washington State's Puget Sound. He went to the University of Oregon on a Track and Field scholarship. There, he studied sports psychology and became a two-time All-American in the triple jump. He spent 184 days of his senior year living under a dilapidated soccer stadium while training with the Brasilian Olympic Team in Sao Paulo, Brasil. He blew out his knee a few months later at the USA National Championships.

Next, Gregg founded a travel-software company and went on to work for Oracle and AccessVia Software. He started cycling to rehabilitate his knee and fell in love with the view of life from the seat of a bicycle. In July of 2005, he sold nearly everything he owned and rode his bicycle from northern Alaska to the southern tip of South America. He pedaled 18,500 miles over twenty-two months and raised $50,000 for the American Diabetes Association. Along the way, Gregg was electrocuted by a lightning bolt and attacked by machete bandits. He also discovered a planet and people that demonstrated their magic time and time again. In Santa Barbara, CA a slick camera salesman talked him into spending two-months of his budget on a SLR camera. He started making pictures for the first time. Those pictures found their way into a coffee table book, "Bicycle Diaries"—it is being packaged for publication by Rich Clarkson and Associates.

The focus of Gregg's work stems from the cultural and environmental inequities he encountered on his bicycle trip. He likes to make pictures of people doing adventurous things outside too.