Send It Society

My best friend Matthew got me riding. After I came home from the Marine Corps, he was the one who put me on a bike and kept me moving. That was his thing. He knew what being outside and on the trail did for your head. He knew it because he lived it.

In early 2019, I lost Matthew to suicide.

That is not something you process and move past. It is something you carry. And the question it left me with was simple. What do I do with this. Not in a philosophical way. In a practical way. What do I actually build.

Matthew showed me that riding was medicine. Not the clinical kind. The kind where you are moving and breathing and too focused on the trail to stay inside your own head. The kind where conversations happen naturally because you are side by side, not face to face in an office. I knew that worked. I had lived it. So I built something around it.

Send It Society is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The mission is specific: provide a non-clinical healing environment to raise education, awareness, and action for mental health through mountain biking. Not therapy. Not a support group. A place where people ride bikes and talk about the stuff that matters when they are ready.

Every Saturday at 11 AM we meet at Galbraith Mountain in Bellingham, WA. The format is deliberate. We start with a beginner-guided trail run so nobody gets left behind. Then we split by skill level for group laps. Mental health conversations are built into the ride structure. Not forced. Not scheduled. Just built in. The trail does the work.

Last Saturday of each month is an extended group ride starting at noon. Longer loops. More time together. Same ethos.

I run this the same way I run a design team. Clear structure. Consistent cadence. People know when the next ride is. They know someone is going to be there. That reliability is the whole thing. Community does not happen by accident. It happens because someone keeps showing up and holding the space.

This does not run on one person. Levi Hill and Mikel lead rides. Brian "Avocabro" Doner is a team rider and ride lead. These are people who showed up, kept showing up, and took ownership. That is how you know it is real. When other people carry it forward without being asked.

I set up the operations so it does not depend on me having a good week. The same systems thinking that keeps a 12-designer team running across 60+ brands also keeps a nonprofit running 85+ events over multiple years.

Eighty-five events and counting. Each one is a few hours where people put their phones away, ride bikes in the dirt, and remember what it feels like to be part of something. There is no metric that captures what that is worth.

Some people came to one ride and never came back. That is fine. Some people came to one ride and have not missed one since. That is the point. The door is always open. No membership fee. No obligation. No pressure. Just a group of people who show up because showing up matters.

Matthew would have loved this. Not because of what it became. Because of what it is. People on bikes, outside, taking care of each other.

This is the most important thing I have built.