Sarah Swallow was introduced to bicycles, and the cycling community, at the young age of 12 when she started working for a bike rental company in Ohio. She wasn’t a cyclist at the time and had no idea that one day she’d be a sponsored Adventure Cyclist.
When Brendan Heinig lined up to the start of this years Tour Divide “Classic” he didn’t have any idea he’d be at the pointy end of the race with TD veteran Jay Petervary. If you didn’t watch the dots as this race unfolded you missed a 1,500 mile “nail-biter”!!!
I’ve been familiar with Jessica peripherally as a member of the Austin cycling scene and also from her published work in Bikepacking.com. She’s penned two works for them, Discovering Aloneness on the Arkansas High Country can be found online. Her other piece, River Road Rendezvous, is featured the in the 2021 edition of the Bikepacking Journal. So when I received my July ’22 issue of TPWD Magazine I was surprised, but not shocked, to see an article she wrote for them about bikepacking during the pandemic.
Just a month after my interview with Seth I found myself back in Stillwater, OK across a picnic table at Lake McMurtry from Bobby Wintle with a bottle of fine bourbon for us to share. And share we did!
On this episode I get a private tour of the new Texas Hill Country Overnighter with it’s creator Maxwell Johnston. This is one of only four routes listed on Bikepacking.com in Texas and two of those are in Big Bend, which is beautiful, but also very remote, requiring a 10+ hour drive from Central Texas.
On May 22nd Liam Glen lined up at the start of the Highland Trail 550 on his fully rigid single speed Stooge Cycles Scrambler against the likes of James Hayden, Josh Isbett, and others. He would go on to win with a time of 3d, 10h, 55m which was good enough to get the SS Course Record and almost enough to best the Course Record set by Neil Beltchenko in 2017 (3d, 10h, 20m).
Like many of you I didn’t know who Andrew Onermaa was before he signed up for the 2020 Arkansas High Country Race. And if you still don’t recognize his name, maybe you’ll know him as the guy who was going toe to toe with Ted King before he ultimately went on to set an FKT. Andrew withdrew from the race around mile 700 after pushing himself further than ever before. Literally pushing his mind and body to it’s limit.
I wanted to hear Seth’s story about his journey from almost losing his life in Feb. of 2013 after being ran over by a car while commuting on his bike. To then go on to set a Singlespeed FKT on the Arkansas High Country Race. The collision nearly cost him his life, but a year later he competed in the 2nd ever LandRun 100 (Now Midsouth) and he finished! All while wearing an eye patch as a visible reminder that he was still recovering from the injuries he sustained.
On this episode we get to know Kevin and some history on RWGPS and then we get into the maps! And we go deep. But, we also cover very basic topics. This episode was designed with the hope that it will be a resource for you to build your own routes, modify existing ones, or fly by the seat of your pants using heatmaps.
When I contacted Ryan Stoyer about coming on the podcast it was with the idea that we would talk about his unique lifestyle and how it allows for him to life a more fulfilled life. I still like that topic, but Ryan had other ideas. After the official BoD instagram invite was sent, his reply was an enthusiastic yes, followed by a suggestion, “how about we go bikerafting?”. My response was equally enthusiastic and I gave no thought to the fact that I’d never been bikerafting, or had a raft, or new how to build a route, etc etc.
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If you enjoy the podcast, please consider helping to cover the costs.
"Supporters of the podcast are the PSI in the knobby tires that keep BoD rolling." ~Patrick
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