If you mention the name Naresh to almost any cyclist near the intersection of 900 East and 900 South in Salt Lake City at 9 pm on any given Thursday night, you may elicit an understanding nod or even a sly, nostalgic smirk. Among the crowd that clusters on the four corners, you might even come across a rider who claims to have met the elusive founder of what has become the city’s most popular recurring social bike event, the 999 Ride.
“I’ve met him,” says Anna Grossniklaus, a participant of the ride on May 21, excitedly. “He’s cool as hell!” While Grossniklaus couldn’t recall the specifics of her one-time encounter with Naresh, she confirms him as the event’s originator. Just don’t expect Naresh to agree.
“My friend Skylar [Hoellein] and I were co-originators,” says Naresh Kumar, Salt Lake City native, avid cyclist, and the very real face behind this local legend.
Kumar rejects the founder title entirely, in fact. “The ethos of the ride is that there’s no leader,” he insists. “It’s a collective atmosphere.”
This sentiment remains in the ride’s mostly leaderless orientation today and grew out of the gratefulness Kumar feels towards the city’s broader cycling community, which was there for him when he needed an outlet after a bad breakup.
“When I joined the cycling community, it was so warm and friendly that it made riding around on streets that were not inherently bike-friendly easier for me,” Kumar says. It had been years since he regularly rode bikes, and to help reacquaint himself, Kumar joined The Bicycle Collective, as well as an online forum called Salt Cycle. When another Salt Cycle member made a post about an annual cruiser ride in need of a guide, Kumar volunteered himself, having garnered some experience leading bike tours in the city. This early inspiration for the 999 Ride was open to all bikes, skill levels and rider sensibilities.
“I didn’t invent anything,” Kumar says. “If I left some kind of legacy, it’s not because that was my intention from the beginning. It was really about this great community. Once I became a part of it, there were all these different people with different ideas and ways of getting involved.”
Inspired, Kumar and Hoellein soon organized their own social ride, tentatively named “An evening in the city with Naresh.” They opened it up to any manner of wheels and set out on a random Thursday night with 12 friends in tow. The next week, they did it again.
This small, casual club began burning rubber regularly and it slowly caught fire. And it never lost its inherent all-inclusive spirit, even as upwards of 1,500 riders now sometimes appear.
One of the first people to attend the initial weekly ride was Gabe Mejia, a prominent local cyclist and regular competitor in the Beehive Bike Polo Club. Mejia sadly passed away in 2025, but for many he was and still is emblematic of the accessible, friendly and somewhat rowdy attitude of the 999 Ride, which thrives today without many rules or even predetermined routes.
“He was incredibly instrumental in the community,” Kumar says. “He was infectious, and everybody that met him was really inspired by him.”
Mejia’s indomitable spirit will be honored by the polo club with a commemorative tournament this summer.
Since that first soiree in the streets on some Thursday in 2011, Kumar has advanced in his illustrious research career at The University of Utah. He doesn’t have as much time to attend the 999 Ride anymore but says he appreciates the lore that surrounds its inception still, and how the values have held.
Will Heinig, a five-year veteran of the ride, says early May is when things really start kicking off each week. On May 21, Heinig rode his Velotric GoMad Ebike, which came fully equipped with two batteries, giving Heinig up to 75 miles of range and potentially limitless power because of the portable charger he brings along. This ample setup provides Heinig with some headway on other participants like Grossniklaus, who usually rides her mom’s 90s-era Specialized Rockhopper. Grossniklaus and her two friends, Maria Nelson and Isaiah Lewis, say they come to ride because they need something to do in the summer when the lifts are closed. All three of them were on similarly seasoned mountain bikes.
In short, anything goes. And once the group goes, you go with it. Every Thursday around 10 pm, the assembled riders in their hundreds take off in a spontaneous cardinal direction which is never fully disclosed until the last moment. While many participants taper off after the second or third stop, Heinig says some take it all the way to the rosy dawn, regardless of weather, traffic, or tomorrow’s Zoom meetings.
The boisterous energy that characterizes most of the 999 Ride’s participants is a result of the long-established bonds and trust they’ve all helped to build within the local cycling community. “I’m really grateful for the opportunity to be a part of the cycling community in Salt Lake City, and to have played a role in this ride at all,” Kumar says, adding that he hopes to visit and put a face to his well-known name again sometime soon.
Feature Image by Jack Sagen.
