Gravel

On Monday June 7th my buddy Dan and I drove over to Cle Elum to preview the new GRiT L course.  The GRiT is a new three course event (GRiT, GRiT L, and GRiT XL) scheduled for July 10, 2022. Dan and I decided to ride the forty-seven-mile GRiT L.  Forty-seven miles might not sound […]

Route Beta: This is a mountain biker’s gravel course: significant climbing on minimally maintained roads.  I suggest 1.9” or wider tires (basically mountain bike tires) and gearing as low as you can go (mountain bike gearing).  The Yeti is old skool with a triple in the front.  I spent a lot of time in the […]

Over the weekend I joined my “up for anything” friend Mykenna on a 300Km brevet ride with the Seattle International Randonneurs.  A brevet is an organized ride with a set start time and a set route.  For the 300Km distance the rider is allotted twenty hours to complete the course.  An interesting aspect of riding […]

Following a recent ride of the Oregon Outback I got to thinking a bit more about something that I’ve experienced for nearly three decades – what I call Post Adventure Blues (or PAB).  Recently I’ve discovered that this is a common condition known as Post Event Depression.  For me, the feeling has never escalated for […]

In late 2014, when times were much different, I opened up the autumn issue of Bicycle Quarterly and read about a bikepacking race that stretched the length of Oregon, it was called the Oregon Outback.  That year the co-owner of Breadwinner Bicycles and fellow Des Moines, Iowa native, Ira Ryan won the 363-mile event with […]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the Northwest Gravel Riders Facebook group is an awesome source of route and route condition information.  Last week while scanning through the suggested routes page I came across an interesting prospect through the hills north of Darrington – a sixty-seven mile loop with two significant sustained […]

Despite being a born and raised Iowan (I left the state in 1988 at the age of 22) I must confess to being ignorant of most of the state, especially the northwestern quadrant.  When I decided to ride RAGBRAI 2021 I was happy to see that the route would take me through this corner of […]

RAGBRAI Day Minus 2 I have a habit of biting off more than I can chew, at least more than I think I can chew.  If at least one time during an endeavor you say “what the hell was I thinking” it wasn’t worth it.  This attitude has served me well, but if you continually […]

Stampede Pass to Tacoma Pass via Lizard Lake While I embrace the uncertainty of adventure cycling, I prefer to have some confidence that a route actually pushes through the rough stuff and actually goes somewhere.  This is why I appreciate the NW Gravel Riders Facebook group – new routes that are ridable and that don’t […]

75 miles/5100′ vertical elevation gain in Northwest Washington. Map here:Worried About Lead Poisoning Near Spada Lake | Ride | Strava I like the ride to Sultan, either via the Mackworth Forest or by the Ben Howard road, so when I mapped out a route to Spada Lake I decided to go via the former and […]