A big adventure ride on Forest Service Roads in Idaho.
Not shown in this gallery is the sector of the course that should’ve had a wood sign with these words burned into it: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” It was the outer, 100-miler loop and brutal, like not epic and suffering with heroic stories to tell, but trench warfare in the desert that beat hope of you. Like losing a religion, am-I-gonna-miss-the-time-cut-type hope, with a few did-I-make-a-wrong-turn worries too.
Riding out of the leg-destroying terrain, on a slight descent with a tail wind, I was relieved that torture was over and rode to the next rest station for more water. “Sign me up for next year!” I said to the volunteers and continued towards the finish.
If all the words in this issue about adventure got you interested in riding on gravel, the best tip I can share is wearing headphones to tune out the white noise of the crunching and THEN the inevitable disc rub. The gravel we rode over in the Copper Basin sounded like a Thin Lizzy riff, the one from Jailbreak, which is a real rock ‘n rolla for the first hour or so and then you’ll want something mellower to keep you going all day…
Ed. note: After a good run of 42 issues, our magazine app is no
longer available, but we’ve archived
the content here on our blog.
Also published on Medium.
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