Bikefornia is made up of a married couple, Nicki and Yonas, who are based in the Bay Area of California. Together, they love to go mountain biking and spend time in the redwoods.
Born near Santa Cruz, Yonas Kameda developed an early relationship with landscape, motion, and an instinct for finding every hidden trail within reach. He spent his formative years riding through the forests of the Pacific Northwest, where slick roots and towering evergreens shaped both his athletic instincts and his sense of place. Alongside his commitment to riding, he pursued music academically, studying it in college, performing in bands, and eventually becoming a music educator. The parallels between disciplines continue to inform his life: rhythm, flow, pacing, and improvisation exist as clearly on a trail as they do in a musical score, though trees tend to offer more immediate and less forgiving feedback. Now based in the Bay Area, he balances teaching with an ongoing devotion to dirt, elevation, and well-timed descents, occasionally daydreaming about trail conditions during staff meetings.
Riding among the redwoods of Santa Cruz provides Yonas with a deep sense of connection. Moving through the woods offers a steady recalibration, an embodied awareness that comes from reading terrain and settling into the quiet complexity of the natural world. He is equally passionate about the hands-on side of cycling, often building and wrenching on his bikes with meticulous attention and the occasional colorful remark when a stubborn bolt refuses to cooperate.
Mountain biking is both a family and community affair for Yonas. He loves riding with his daughter, sharing trails, snacks, laughter, and with his brothers, swapping stories and enjoying good-natured competition that no one admits is actually serious. After meeting his wife Nicki in California, they quickly became partners not just in life but in adventure, sharing countless rides, exploring trails near and far, and building a life full of experiences, with many more to come.
He has been known to crash, lie in the dirt for a reflective moment, and call it “trail meditation,” though Nicki is usually less amused and more concerned about the state of his body. Together, they run Bikefornia, combining their love of biking with community, creativity, and just enough organized chaos to keep things interesting. For Yonas, riding is not merely recreation. It is a creative, communal way of inhabiting the world, best experienced together and, almost always, with just one more lap before heading home.
Nicki was born in Santa Cruz, CA, grew up in Colorado, but spent the majority of her adult life living outside of the country in South Korea, Argentina, Italy, and several other cities and countries. For the past several years, she has run the travel blog and YouTube channel of the same name, Nicki Posts Travel Stuff, a pun on her maiden name (Post).
At the start of 2025, Nicki returned to the US, specifically California, to be closer to her family. Life had come full circle. Shortly after moving to the Bay Area, she met Yonas and fell madly in love. Because Yonas was already obsessed with mountain biking, Nicki quickly picked up the sport as well. Within two months, she had gotten her own bike and got fully kitted out.
Nicki had grown up riding bikes and even used a bicycle as the sole means of transportation in various cities she lived in, but she had never gone mountain biking until she met Yonas. She never imagined she would love the sport this much, but it’s the perfect combination of being in the woods, having an adventure, getting exercise, and overcoming new challenges. Even though she’s now based in the US after 2 decades abroad, finding new trails is the next best thing to exploring new cities and foreign lands.
The idea for Bikefornia was born, of course, while biking. Yonas and Nicki took their very first 2-day bikepacking trip from San Francisco to Menlo Park. While riding along the trails above rocky cliffs near Half Moon Bay, and then into the Purisima Forest, they discussed how very few people know about these trails. What if other people, regular people like us, want to do a bikepacking trip but don’t know where to start? What if out-of-towners want to find a great trail in the Bay Area but don’t know where to start? We could create a resource for locals and people visiting the area to help them build confidence and find the right trails.
Just one week later, we started to build this website. Slowly, we began to add details about our favorite trails, the MTB culture, the gear we use, and yes, a guide to that 2-day bikepacking trip that started it all.
With Nicki’s experience of travel blogging and Yonas’s vast knowledge of bikes and trails in California, we knew we were the right team to be the best resource for anyone, like us, who wants to pedal into nature and find the best loam.
