fiesta rodante en baja california

Hot on the heels of my foray into the world of the insta-famous and group-touring (dfl the divide) I was invited to a sort-of-exclusive bike party/tour on a new route called the Baja Divide; In celebration of the completion of the route. A pair of adventure-bike-world luminaries and acquaintances of mine; (Nick Carman (@nicholascarman), and Lael Wilcox (@laelwilcox) had spent a couple of winters riding circles in the desert scouting out a not-too-sandy, off-road route, with reliable water sources every few days; the length of the Baja California peninsula.

The route (gps coordinates and such) is freely available on the internet, and several people had already completed it, or were enroute. So I wasn’t being invited to ride the route as much as to ride it with Lael and Nick and 100 or so friends including a bunch of the dfl-the-divide crew. Or at least, to start the ride on new years day, with the rolling party — the first two nights had planed camps, after which we were on our own, so to speak. The route starts in San Diego CA but crosses the border in Tecate rather than Tiajuana, so it parallels the border on the US side for awhile and our first camp was at a road-side tourist restaurant still on American soil. But the merriment started long before that, at least for the DFL crew.

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vacationing! in patagonia

When my friend Melinda asked me to take her bike-packing, and suggested Patagonia, one of my favorite parts of the world, l immediately said yes. And suggested the Carretera Austral. Which is the southernmost extension of Chilean highway 7. It is largely gravel, and dead-ends into a lake — meaning that the further south you ride, the less traveled it is. The road is well graded, the surroundings beyond spectacular, the water drinkable and the towns well spaced — pretty much a perfect route for bike touring. As such we had ridden while RidingTheSpine.

So l felt confident recommending this stretch of road as an ideal place to try out bike travel. When other cyclists we met along the way discovered Melinda had never even ridden a loaded bike before, the were uniformly shocked (and awed). But the truth is, as spectacular and remote as it is, the Carretera Austral is a highway. Which means it’s nearly impossible to get lost, and busses and other such emergency/bail-out help are readily available. In addition to the aforementioned perks, the climbs are not particularly steep, and this time of year there is 14 hours of daylight — so no need to hurry or ride fast. Hard find a better spot to tour most anywhere in the world. I’m happy to say she loved it, and is now a confirmed bike-tourist.


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internet dating on the great divide

#dflthedivide

@crustbikes (matt) invited me to join him and @larkin80kv (darrin), @markreimer and possibly some other friends @ultraromance and @mr_shredward in Banff for a ~10 day ride on the great divide trail with the intention of making it to Missoula Montana for the 40th anniversary celebration of the Adventure Cycling Association. It seemed like the perfect real world test for sample ScapeGoat I had just built-up, not to mention lots of fun. Naturally l waited till the week before to commit — and flew to canada without the faintest idea what the ACA celebration would entail, nor any idea who else would be on the trip.


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merry Crustmas to me

It’s the day I’d been waiting for — my ScapeGoat had arrived. Sure I’d been riding the (awesome) prototype Darrin made for me for a couple of years now. But theres nothing like opening the box. Especially after all the back and forth with Taiwan; design and redesign, drawing after drawing. And now l have a shiny (actually it’s matte) new, beautifully dark-red frame. Adorned with custom artwork and logo designed by my good friend ariel.

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Indeed it was so beautiful and exciting, that l was almost afraid to touch the frame; Fortunately, l also had a large pile of boxes – full of parts new and old – which need assembling and modifying. So I started there, separating the shiny bits from the enormous amount of packaging. Fondling all the beautiful, slightly esoteric and carefully chosen bits of metal that would soon come together to make my bike.

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