With eighteen years of journalism in the fields of transportation and urban sustainability, Rick has been a keen observer of America's cumbersome (and ongoing) turn away from a freeway-centric suburban lifestyle and back to a more balanced, sustainable approach. This is particularly true in Los Angeles where, since the 1970's, he has had a front row seat for the gladiatorial machinations of powerful interest groups over development, housing, and car and truck traffic. Through it all, he remains optimistic. His writing has been published in the Los Angeles Business Journal, Bicycle Times, Momentum, Cycling Mobility, the Audubon Society newsletter, and various literary magazines. Now he has begun exploring the emotional ramifications of theses changes in a series of novels and stories set in the dark hearts of the cities he loves, bringing to light the denizens of shadow as they struggle to survive and even thrive in America's forgotten backstreets.