Adventure

When I was a kid, all of my neighborhood friends would cruise around our town, population maybe 1200, in our Kmart Huffys like we owned the streets. We found ways to get hurt creating games like “bicycle freeze tag” or “who can make it down the slide first”. And the ultimate challenge was being able to successfully bike to the summit of Cemetery Hill (a quick detour to Strava showed me this was a whole 0.5mile and 200ft). At some point the Huffy was gone, probably sold off in the town yard sale, and bikes were forgotten about. It wasn’t until 2013 when I was re-introduced into the world of cycling. I picked up a used hybrid, flatbar, aluminum Cannondale for $300 off of Craigslist and set out of my first bikepacking adventure. The rest is history.

Just north of Portland, ME lies the rural community of New Gloucester which is sprinkled with pristine class I and II gravel roads, short punchy climbs, and plenty of forest to hug the streets. Mainely Gravel was the last race of the New England Gravel Triple Crown series and my first time biking in Maine.

If you follow Unbound Gravel, you know to never expect an easy ride. The eastern-central town of Emporia, KS is no stranger to heavy, wet weather that can quickly cut your speed in half as you’re forced to go through peanut-butter consistency mud. Or finding yourself stuck going high speeds down a road laced with sharp jagged rocks. Flats are a dime a dozen. Everyone there carried their make-shift mud stick and extra tubes expecting the worst.

If you’ve ever biked through New England, you don’t have to go too far to find a warning sign for an upcoming unmaintained road. You’ll hear it called Class IV, Class VI, sometimes Pavé, but regardless of the term, you better get ready… you’ve been warned.

"What did I just go through?” were the final words I blurted out while crossing mile 376 to complete the South Lobe of the Vermont Super 8 route. It was 2 days, 14 hours, and 44 minutes since I had left Montpellier, VT to embark on my first self-supported ultra bikepacking challenge. Man, did I pick a doozy.

My Gravel Biking Experience In The Upper Valley

I was working as a traveling physician assistant jumping from state to state for a little over two years when a friend messaged me about a job opportunity in New Hampshire. I had nothing to lose by checking it out. A few months later, I hopped on a plane from San Francisco to Boston, rented a car, and drove to the middle of nowhere. The further from Boston I got, the fewer the cars, the thicker the woods, the more mountains appeared. The small “city” I arrived in had a single coffee shop, only one option for basic genres of food, and no one in sight past 8PM. What were people doing here?