Vroom With a View
By Jesse James McTigue
Businesses founded in Telluride are eclectic and often fueled by personal passion rather than a vetted business plan. They provide an experience versus a consumption of a good — or a crafty combination of the two. Telluride Moto is no different and is the newest passion-fueled, homegrown business to join this successful local model.
Argentinian husband-and-wife team Frankie Zampini and Cristina Dickson started Telluride Moto in 2020. It is a motorcycle rental shop, tour company and riding school based in Placerville with 70 acres of training and playgrounds in Dolores. But, as with many folks who fall in love with Telluride, skiing initially brought them to the valley many years before.
The two met in 2004 while working in Bariloche, a well-known ski resort in Argentina. In 2007, after they began careers as ski instructors, they embarked on what is referred to as the “endless winter”: teaching skiing in Telluride during North American winters and in Bariloche during South American winters. When they started a family, they sent their kids to school in both places. “They’d get a few weeks of summer in the shoulder seasons,” Dickson explains.
For 15 years, the family traveled back and forth across the equator chasing winter. Then, their plans abruptly changed toward the end of their Telluride stint in 2020. In March, the Covid pandemic hit and international travel halted as the global shutdown happened. “We were stuck here,” Zampini says.
Now that they would experience four seasons, they needed to figure out what to do outside of the winter months. Says Dickson, “Frankie grew up riding and racing motorcycles, so I thought about opening a motorcycle school.”
At the time, neither Dickson nor the kids rode motorcycles, but for Zampini, it had been a significant part of his childhood. “My family was all about motors,” he says. “I grew up with cars, motorcycles, ATVs — whatever there was to ride, race and play with.”
Zampini recalls a time when he took his mother’s motorcycle without permission. He was in trouble for riding it without knowing how to fix it, so he took the motorcycle apart and put it back together to prove himself. “It took about two months to build it again, but I got my motorcycle after that.”
Instead of letting the young Zampini learn the sport through trial and error, his parents sent him to a motorcycle riding school. “From there, I never stopped. I raced dirt and track,” he says.
Inspired by Zampini’s childhood love for riding motorcycles, the couple opened Telluride Moto. The enterprise’s storefront is in Placerville, where clients can rent Enduro and Dual Sport bikes or book a tour to explore paved and unpaved roads in the area, including Last Dollar Road and Imogene Pass. The learning happens in Dolores, where Telluride Moto leases 70 acres for its motorcycle school. Here, beginner riders can start on flat areas and intermediate and advanced riders can play on bedrock features, ride single tracks and progress through advanced terrain.
The couple are proud that all their instructors are certified by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation, an internationally recognized, national nonprofit organization known for its comprehensive research-based rider education and training system.
Says Dickson, “This business has affected us in a way that formed unity and pride within our family and proved to us that we can achieve riding to that highest peak, even though it looks a long way away, and we are just starting.”
Adds Zampini, “We are proud to provide an exceptional experience riding motorcycles.”