The Price family
Hand-me-down bicycles are fairly common among family members.
But Monica Price, 30, and Maria Elena Price, 27, are running an international bicycle tour company passed down from their parents.
The company is Fort Collins, Colorado-based ExperiencePlus!, which has been offering bicycle tours primarily in the Americas, Europe and Australia for some 30 years.
The outfit was founded by Rick Price and Paola Malpezzi Price back in the '70s. As their daughters grew up, they participated in the tours and helped run the business. They had gone on to working for other companies, however, when the parents decided to retire.
The Coloradoan.com reports Monica and Maria were happy to take over the company from their parents:
“Both are accustomed to the company’s lifestyle, which allows them to travel freely, and they said yes. The sisters bought the business’s assets, primarily bikes and computers, and started their own company under the same name.”
Maria Elena heads the Fort Collins office while Monica is stationed at the Italian field office.
At the company website, Monica says her favorite tour to lead has been the Venice to Florence or Pisa tours:
“I think that tour provides a complete experience of northern Italy: while you travel through important art cities of Italy like Venice, Ravenna, Florence, Lucca and Pisa, you also see a side of rural Italy that most tourists don’t see. We bike through farmland and villages, meet local cyclists out for their afternoon ride, and all the while eat some of the best pasta that Italy produces.”
Maria Elena, on the other hand, specialized in leading tours through Spain. Her favorite is the Roncesvalles to Santiago de Compostela:
“On the Camino you find rich history, wonderful cuisine, varied landscape and fascinating people. There are few routes in the world where you bicycle or walk by 20 people speaking 5 different languages! Throughout history the Camino was a corridor that connected Europe. More recently it has become a path shared by thousands of people every year—exploring as they travel towards Santiago. You’ll find extraordinary cuisine, history, landscapes and great bicycling …”
While the traditional sagged tours have experienced a slight slowdown because of the recession, they've seen an uptick in self-guided tours through Bike Rentals Plus!
The clientele is essentially baby-boomers who pay $2,500 to $5,000 for a one- to two-week trip. ExperiencePlus! also is offering expeditions, such as the 2,000-mile, month-long bike tour from Tocopilla, Chile, to Buenas Aires, Argentina.
Many tours appear to be based in Italy, although the outfit also is active in Australia, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, France, Greece, Hungary, India, New Zealand, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, Uruguay, Vietnam and the US.
We wish the Price sisters lots of luck in coming years.
Above, the Price family — Monica, Paola, Maria Elena and Rick.
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