Why It’s Called the Martyn and Alex Tour of the Gila

Alex Olsen and Martyn Pearson

BY SUSANNAH BARSOM

PHOTOS BY JAY HEMPHILL [except where otherwise noted]

Welcome to the 36th Tour of the Gila. This year, it is called the Martyn and Alex Tour of the Gila. You may be wondering why, and we definitely want a chance to tell you about Martyn and Alex, so that you will understand why the race organizers and the community named the 2023 race in their honor.

Many of you have raced the Tour of the Gila in the past. If you have, you are likely to have met Martyn Pearson and Alex Olsen. They were co-owners of Gila Hike and Bike, and they were warm and funny and generous people, beloved by all who knew them. Tragically, they were killed in an automobile accident last October.

Silver City was stunned by the news. Within 24 hours, hundreds of people had come together at an informal vigil in Gough Park. A week later, several hundred gathered at the Fine Arts Center Theatre to remember and celebrate their lives. The grieving is ongoing, as are the tributes to Martyn and Alex, and now Tour of the Gila commemorates their lives.

Their parents, Whitney and Clark Bullock, and Julie and Chris Pearson, are honoring them at this year’s race by donating funds to ensure that the Tour of the Gila’s professional women racers receive equal prize money to the professional men. This is an issue that was important to both Alex and Martyn, who wanted equal access and opportunities for female cyclists at all levels and in all cycling disciplines.

To understand why these tributes are so important to so many people, you should know something about who Alex and Martyn were. First, as owners of Gila Hike and Bike they had opportunities to help countless cyclists and hikers—both local residents and visitors from around the world. And their shop participated in many charitable activities. But deeply rooted in each of them was their sense of duty to give back to their community. Their individual and combined efforts made a difference to the people who live here.

Martyn and Alex with the crew at Gila Hike and Bike

Martyn organized trail maintenance work days in the region. He served on the mayor’s Trail and Open Space Advisory Committee. He was a coach for a youth cycling team. He organized the annual celebration for Tour of the Gila Volunteers. Alex volunteered her time with a local center for food security and sustainability. She taught Culinary Arts to teenagers at the Aldo Leopold Charter School and organized that school’s many extracurricular trips. She coached the Silver City Swordfish swim team.

Together, Alex and Martyn organized mountain bike races. The annual Signal Peak Challenge was a testament to their remarkable creative and organizational skills, as well as to their sense of humor, their kindness and their gracious hospitality. Everyone felt welcome at their events.

Martyn and Alex liked to make people happy, and it showed.

At the Signal Peak Challenge—always an opportunity to maximize silliness

Most of the cyclists and hikers and other citizens of Silver City know Martyn and Alex as committed advocates for this community. But, as you have probably noticed, Silver City is well off the beaten path, and neither Martyn nor Alex started out here. So how did our little town get so lucky?

Martyn Pearson came to Silver City in 2004. He had grown up in coastal England—Norfolk, to be specific. He liked the beach and he liked fishing. He liked riding his bike and playing music and singing. He loved playing golf. And he really loved the Norwich City Football Club – the Canaries.

But back to golf. Martyn first learned the game as a six-year-old, playing on clubs cut down to a usable size by his father. From the beginning, the golf course provided the opportunity not only to hone his skills on the links, but to observe nature, and in particular the animals he might see while walking the fairway (or the rough). His mother, Julie Pearson, observed that for Martyn, golf never seemed to be a good walk spoiled—there was too much to see along the way.

Eventually, Martyn became very good at golf. He played at three golf clubs: Great Yarmouth & Caister, Royal Norwich, and Mundesley. He also represented Norfolk as a junior and as an amateur adult. And then he earned a scholarship to play in the US—first at a community college in Kansas, and then at Western New Mexico University, here in Silver City. He studied hard, played a fine game of golf, and made excellent grades, earning academic honors as an English major. Philip Pearson, Martyn’s younger brother, best friend, fellow musician and golf partner, expected no less from him. “Martyn was super smart with an incredible work ethic,” he reflected, “my amazing brother and friend!”

In Silver City, Martyn learned that a good way to get from the campus to the golf course was by bicycle. And he found that the ride could be really fun if he got on a mountain bike and pedaled through the Boston Hill Open Space. He soon found himself wanting to spend more and more time riding a mountain bike.

Martyn’s good friend, Jay Hemphill, recalled the first time he met Martyn, “We were planning to ride the Signal Peak Trail, from the top down to route 15. It’s a technical ride, and can be fairly gnarly, and there was Martyn, with his inexpensive department store mountain bike. We tried to talk him out of it, but he was determined.” At the bottom, the group waited for some time, and was just about to go in search, when Martyn rode out of the woods, “bloody and battered, but beaming with delight and satisfaction.”

Martyn Pearson, after developing serious bike-handling skills

As Martyn explored the Gila on foot and by bike, he grew to love the area. He could hardly have found a place more different from where he grew up. His family’s home in Norfolk—in the tiny village of Horsey—is situated below sea level in The Broads National Park. The region is a vast network of interconnected rivers and lakes (broads), interspersed with expanses of marshland. It is very wet. Martyn was struck by the beauty of the high and dry landscape of southwestern New Mexico. He was fascinated by the terrain, the wildlife and the history of the area, and he came to know it well and to love it.

By the time he graduated from college, Martyn had decided to stay in Silver City. He had found the place he wanted to stay. “He loved England,” said Julie Pearson, “but he made his home in Silver City and he adored it.”

In time, Martyn began working at Gila Hike and Bike, first as a volunteer, and then as a paid employee. All the while, he felt that this work signified a kind of homecoming—his paternal grandparents had worked for the Raleigh Bicycle Company in Nottingham, England. (Jack Brennan, a good friend and Martyn’s boss at Hike and Bike, likes to say, only semi-jokingly, that Martyn tried to buy every Raleigh-Nottingham bicycle that came up for sale in Silver City.)

Martyn at work in Gila Hike and Bike

Working on bicycles was not the only family tradition Martyn was following. His family had always been enthusiastic volunteers back in Norfolk. He had learned early the importance of making a positive contribution to the well-being of the community. Taking this to heart, he pitched in to help make Silver City a healthier and happier place.

And then there was the music. A musician from childhood, Martyn played in bands and DJ’d in the community for many years. He especially liked making music at home with friends and family—just for the fun of it.

While work, music and volunteering took a lot of time and attention, he was devoted to his two children, Addison and Zeyah. Martyn’s friend and colleague at Gila Hike and Bike, Doug Horner (once a bike shop owner himself), was amazed by the numerous biking, hiking and camping trips that Martyn took with the kids, and by his commitment to visiting his family in England. “A lot of bicycle shop owners find it difficult to leave the shop,” Horner recalled, “Martyn had this uncanny talent for managing his schedule, and he was always able to prioritize time with Alex and his kids.”

Martyn had found his home in Silver City, and he was thriving here.

Martyn and Alex riding with family and friends

In March of 2015, Alex Olsen came through Silver City as part of a women’s cross-country bicycle trip. Her own journey to Silver City was a long one; in retrospect it seemed almost inevitable that she would find her way here.

As a child in upstate New York, Alex loved riding horses and exploring the nearby woods with her younger twin brothers, Carroll and Perry. (This often involved playing “The Man from Snowy River,” a favorite film at that time, and always.) She also loved the New York Mets. And her pets. And swimming. And spare ribs. A foodie from way back, her time in the kitchen with her father (and with her grandmother, who taught her to bake) may have led to her lifelong interest in all things culinary.

A young Alex considers her next move [from Bullock Family collection]

Alex had many interests, and it became clear to her parents that when she loved something, she jumped in at the deep end. She got involved. Her father, Clark Bullock, recalled that from a young age, Alex seemed have to have a unique propensity for focus and resolve. She would decide what she wanted to do and figure out a way to make it happen. This purposefulness became very clear when, during the family’s year living in England, Alex applied herself and won her school’s English award. Prior to that, school had not been especially interesting to her. It was certainly interesting after that year. “I think that might have been when Alex herself realized that if she made a thoughtful plan and determinedly carried it out, she could accomplish virtually anything,” said Whitney Bullock, Alex’s mother.

Alex had an enduring love for animals. Cats and dogs, sure, but she had a special fondness for bunnies. Even after her first pet bunny, Ninja, turned out to be a rather unpleasant biter, she knew that bunnies were for her. In high school, one of her jobs was to take care of the bunnies—the unfortunate bunnies that were supposed to be fed to the snakes at the school’s small zoo. She used her planning skills and her determination to rescue them all, hiding them with friends and family members. From then on, she always had pet bunnies, from Timmy to Maisie.

Alex was always charmed by animals—and they were charmed by her

After high school Alex was ready to explore. While studying history at Clark University, she made time to study abroad twice—once in Grenoble and later in Granada. She also swam competitively, though in her last year she decided to coach a local swim team instead. And as she had done throughout her life, she formed lasting friendships everywhere she ventured.

Following her graduation from college, Alex worked in New York City, organizing a variety of events for the food and wine industry and immersing herself in the art, craft, and trade of food and wine. Along the way, she also earned a culinary arts diploma, certificates in viticulture/vinification and cheesemaking, and a master’s degree in Food Studies, History and Culture. It’s possible that the high-school year she had spent in England ultimately influenced her graduate research, which was on the history and cultural significance of the “The English Breakfast.” Her master’s program led to her work with students who were interested in careers in culinary arts and foods studies.

Alex the happy camp cook

And then…she took a break. A much-needed break. She volunteered on a cacao farm in Costa Rica (and had some outdoor adventures there). She traveled to Mexico to research food traditions.

She came back to the US, and went for a bike ride. A long and life-changing bike ride, as it turned out.

Signing on with a women-only cross-country bicycle trip, she found herself dipping a bicycle wheel into the Pacific Ocean on March 6, 2015. The plan was to ride every day, with the exception of a few scheduled 36-hour stopovers. One of those stopovers was in Silver City.

And that is how, on the 19th of March in 2015, Alex Olsen walked into Gila Hike and Bike and met Martyn Pearson. Was the connection instantaneous? Well, it must have been pretty close to that; the two spent enough time together in the subsequent 36 hours to decide that they really should spend even more time together. Neither of them was on the lookout for that kind of change in their personal lives. But it happened.

When Alex’s parents met up with her at the halfway point of her bike journey, they knew immediately that something had changed. But Alex wasn’t ready to talk, and they weren’t going to pry.

After the bicycle trip was completed, Alex went back to New York, packed her belongings, sold her house and moved to Albuquerque. This gave her the chance to have a bit of distance while exploring her relationship with Martyn…and with Silver City.

Well…they did fall in love. Alex moved to Silver City. She and Martyn both worked in the bicycle shop, and then became owners. Alex loved Martyn’s children and loved having an instant family. She loved his family in England. Martyn loved Alex’s family. He came to love the Mets, probably as much as Alex did.

Martyn and Alex cheer on the Mets [from Bullock Family collection]

Alex brought her intelligence, her expertise and her gift for organization to various arenas in town. She taught culinary arts and helped prepare amazing meals for big events in town. She coached swimming and cycling and helped organize bicycle safety events and races. Her colleague and friend, Mattie Eagle, observed, “Alex was such a good organizer, that you often didn’t even know that she was organizing.”

Wayne Sherwood, former director of the Aldo Leopold Charter School, referred to Alex as his right hand, “Alex played a major role in planning our trips for outdoor education… She was a godsend for the staff and me. Her attention to detail was impeccable.”

“We miss her dearly,” Sherwood continued. “There will never be another Alex.”

Together, Alex and Martyn made life better for people in Silver City. During a recent group ride, a local cyclist quietly observed, “Martyn helped me choose these shoes.” These kinds of reminders of how Martyn and Alex treated people—taking the time to help select the right gear, encouraging others on a group ride, helping a child learn new skills, explaining where a trail goes—these come up regularly for us. There are memories that are more significant, of course, but even those fleeting images make us smile sorrowfully, and miss the presence of two very good people.

We mentioned it before, but it bears repeating: Martyn and Alex liked to make people happy, and it showed.

The people of Silver City respected them and loved them. And we miss them.