Michael Frank

Title: Contributor

Email: veedag@gmail.com

Location: New Paltz, N.Y.

Social Media: @mfwords, LinkedIn

Expertise:

• Topics of Expertise:
• Moto, auto, cycling, skiing, outdoor gear, sustainability
• Years in This Expertise: 20+
• Number Of Products & Number Of Hours Expert Has Tested: 2,000+ products, 10,000+ hours

Career Highlights

• Surviving a Gran Fondo in Italy with serious gastric distress—but somehow still not finishing DFL.
• “Testing” ski gear above the Arctic Circle in northern Norway, which was really just about jumping from snow into a fjord or three and then immediately back into a sauna.
• Interviewing Alex Honnold a few times for Adventure Journal; once about how he could be such an awesome climber and still eat like garbage.
• Driving over 100 miles an hour over the course of five days for the Mille Miglia—a perfectly legal thing to do in Italy for no sane reason at all.
• Writing about undocumented farmworkers in the Hudson Valley for the Atlantic in 2017.

Education & Certifications

• Education: Bachelor, Humanities, University of Colorado; Master’s English Lit, American University
• Years of Writing: 20+
• Club or Association Memberships: Fats in the Cats Mountain Bike Group Board Member
• Previous Publications: Adventure Journal, Coolhunting, PopMech, Bicycling, Gear Patrol, Consumer Reports, Inverse, Ars Technica, Forbes, Esquire… and many more…

A Word From Michael Frank

I got here by dumb luck. I was interning on the Hill in D.C. and one broiling summer night I had my camera on me when somehow, a giant stone fell into the lap of Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial. This was pre cellphone, so having my camera was key, because I caught the moment on film and the shot wound up on the cover of the Sunday Washington Post the next morning. 

That was my “big break” into journalism—and my exit door from academia, thank heaven! Today what I love most about journalism is really talking to anyone from any walk of life. I love to know how people tick and where I can, to get that into stories. But I also love gear and the invention of it, and explaining to readers how it works and what separates “meh” from better-than-meh, and I genuinely enjoy working with other editors and writers as a team, to improve how we communicate and make something we can all be proud of.