{"id":309,"date":"2020-11-10T22:10:55","date_gmt":"2020-11-10T22:10:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/?p=309"},"modified":"2020-11-10T22:14:52","modified_gmt":"2020-11-10T22:14:52","slug":"gravel-stranger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/?p=309","title":{"rendered":"Crank Stranger"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After an hour-long drive down narrow fog shrouded Texas farm roads I followed the sign and turned right down the gravel driveway towards Huff Brewing.\u00a0 Riders were already heading out for a day of gravel riding east of Houston on the organized ride known as the Crank Stranger<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bicycling events are few and far between during these COVID days and I was happy to stumble upon this event during my time down here in Houston.  I signed up for the long event which was fifty miles and a little over two thousand feet of elevation gain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fog remained thick as I rolled out of the parking lot and onto the course.  Within the first mile I met up with Jon, a rider with whom I\u2019d ridden the Prison City route out of Four Notch the week before.  Jon and I rode along for a few miles following the well-marked rolling gravel.  I was no longer in the Houston flats; this is some nice rolling country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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East Texas Gravel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The event had sold out, but the road wasn\u2019t crowded with riders.  Soon a rider rolled alongside and noted that he and I were riding the same Ibis Hakka MX mounts.  He introduced himself as Corey and we ended up riding the remainder of the route together.  Both Corey and I were on the same page when it came to pacing the route: we moved along quickly, but not race pace.  At one point a group of eight assembled due to a crossing train and when those crossing gates went up I naturally went into race mode.  My first inclination was to hit it hard and then start moving up though the group, pushing towards the front.  Then suddenly I had an epiphany: hey this isn\u2019t a race, ease up and roll steady.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Waitn for a train<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The gravel conditions varied from super smooth packed rock to rutted washboard to three-inch deep sand.  The Ibis smooths out the washboard, and years of Pacific Northwest cyclocross has taught me how to float through sand so neither obstacle proved to be a significant problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was following the map on my Garmin and wasn\u2019t tracking mileage and I was surprised to see cars and trucks parked along the road marking our return to the parking area.  My internal odometer figured that we had at least ten miles remaining.  I guess the fast packed gravel and relatively flat (flat compared to the mountains of the Pacific Northwest) threw off my internal sensors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All in all the Gravel Stranger was a super well run ride on a fun route.  There were enough riders to make me feel like I was out with like-minded folks yet not so many as to give me any COVID concerns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I enjoyed making new friends on the ride<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After an hour-long drive down narrow fog shrouded Texas farm roads I followed the sign and turned right down the gravel driveway towards Huff Brewing.\u00a0 Riders were already heading out for a day of gravel riding east of Houston on the organized ride known as the Crank Stranger. Bicycling events are few and far between […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":310,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gravel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=309"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":316,"href":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions\/316"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventurescript.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}