Category: Adventure
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The Rift 2024
What an amazing experience this race was. I came into the race doing it mostly to have a reason to visit Iceland. I was surprised by how challenging and perfect and awesome the race itself actually was. There is a reason why more and more people keep signing up for this race with this year’s…
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Riding from Birmingham to the Chief Ladiga Trail
This is mostly just a place to document some of the options. But I would like to also state that people who don’t ride 20,000 miles on a bicycle every year don’t have a good perspective on the hierarchy of dangers in cycling. For example, riding a two-lane county road with a speed limit of…
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A tale of weather, Sir Arthur Eddington, counties, and Pike’s Peak
TLDR Adventure 1 – Thanksgiving – I attempted a 550 mile out/back-ish (tight loop) from Birmingham to Panama City Beach and back to record my own GPS data for Washington and Bay counties in Florida. The ride was going to be split into 265 miles there and 285 miles back for back-to-back Eddington 256 rides.…
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Paris-Brest-Paris 2023
TLDR – It was tough I had imagined this as being a slightly faster, slightly longer version of my normal multi-day adventures around the South. What I hadn’t counted on was how exhilarating it would actually be to do the ride and how I would overextend myself early in all the excitement. They had great…
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The Road to Paris
I had intended to document my training and everything leading up to my Paris Brest Paris (PBP) adventure a bit more, but life has gotten so busy. I’m going to use this post as a “reverse order” summary of the journey leading up to PBP. TLDR Paris Brest Paris is only held once every four…
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Six State Graceland 600k++
This ride started and ended in the land of the delta blues with a lot of delta blues in the middle, too — but no pouring rain. Instead, it was beautiful dry weather with a wind blowing pretty strong behind me as I headed north. Unfortunately, the wind did not die down much during the…
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Tour Divide 2022 – Day 18 – June 28th, 2022 – Finishing the Tour Divide on our 19th wedding anniversary
On June 28th, 2003, in a beautiful small town with no traffic lights in rural Northwest Wisconsin, my beautiful wife said “I do”. The featured pic above is an hour or so later taken by a dear friend who snapped it after we finished the drive even farther into the woods to a cross country…
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Tour Divide 2022 – Days 16 and 17 – June 26th/27th, 2022 – Grants, NM to Silver City, NM via the toughest ride of my life
Keep in mind by the start of this ride I was averaging about 3 to 4 hours of sleep per night for 15 days in a row. Also, keep in mind that by the start of this ride, I had already ridden over 2,400 miles over those same 15 days. Lastly, keep in mind that…
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Tour Divide 2022 – Day 15 – June 25th, 2022 – Cuba, NM to Grants, NM via the Navajo Nation Reservation and Deino community day
Since I had arrived so late, I was a bit slower getting started, rolling out the door by 6am. Still, the worker who I had talked to at midnight when I resupplied at the gas station was amazed to see me again already. “Didn’t I just see you?” … “Yep, short nap”. I had run…
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Tour Divide 2022 – Day 14 – June 24th, 2022 – Del Norte, CO to Cuba, NM via the highest point in the race and an endless pavement re-route
I had made sure I had 24 hour access to the storage closet because I knew I would be leaving in the middle of the night. It felt a little strange to be tip-toeing through hardwood floors of the historic hotel at 2AM while carrying my bags I had taken off the bike a few…