Adventures – Page 6 – Rodeo Adventure Labs, LLC

Passing the torch: A Kokopelli Trail do-over

Kokopelli trail for a second time? How did we get here? Rodeo has such an unpredictable trajectory. All it was ever intended to be was a way to bikes with friends. That was the start of it in 2014. A half dozen people said “if you’re starting a bike team I’ll throw my hat in”. Everyone in the first days of it all knew each other. We were all just friends here in Denver, road racing, mountain bike racing, cyclocross racing, group riding, and goofing off. It was all very simple for a hot minute, right up until the point when Rodeo went crazy and dismantled my predictable life. I have been overwhelmed ever since. It has not slowed down. It has not even for a second gotten less complex, it has only gotten moreso. A team became a community, the community became a larger community, and then it became a bike company. It’s been an incredible ride, one that I am very grateful for, but quite often I miss the simplicity of the early days of what we were doing: The just riding bikes with friends part.

La Sal Mountains

The Leadville 100 Podcast: TD3 vs LT100

The hosts of the Leadville 100 podcasts were super kind to invite Stephen Fitzgerald onto their show to discuss a question they’ve been hearing more and more from their audience: Can a gravel bike be raced successfully at the Leadville 100 mountain bike race? And even if it CAN be raced, SHOULD it?

Donkey Boy V. The RockStar Gravel Route

For most of us, endurance lays on a glorious spectrum of absurdity; a hobby devoted to journeys and dedicated to adventure.

White Rim solo on Drop Bars: a Flaanimal Ti adventure

Utah’s White Rim Trail seems to be enjoying a bit of a popularity boom in recent years thanks in large part to repeated attempts to set new Fastest Known Time records by a non-stop stream of world class riders. While those efforts are incredible from a human achievement point of view they don’t resonate much with me as it relates to my relationship with this beautiful and incredibly unique part of the world. I come to White Rim with slower times in mind, and with thoughts of long miles spent undisturbed by life’s complexities.

Canyonlands Flaanimal Gravel Bike WRIAD

The 2020 Playlist

Music and bikes are life savers. Pair them together and even the worst of times can be the time of your life. Nothing has made this clearer for me than the last twelve months. Through it all, the pairing of riding and music has truly transformed my year into unquestionably the best year of my life. Without these rides, and the soundtracks that accompanied them, I would have a diametrically different assessment of what this year has done for me.

UnPAved 2020: My Race of the Year

If life is, as Forrest Gump claims, like a box of chocolate, then 2020 is home to only the chocolate that nobody thinks they want. Yet, despite the funky, rancid, and downright rotten aspects of this year, this particular box of chocolates has some hidden gems. It may not have been the chocolate we had hoped for, but in some cases it has been chocolate I have truly cherished. Here are just a few of those chocolates:

Cover Photo Taken By Mark Yanagisawa

Bike racing? Never heard of her.

Cyclist far and wide have spent 2020 siting, wishing, watching, and waiting for racing. This new new landscape of cycling, one where intentions are crafted anew and every rider’s motivation have been tossed, churned and been spat out, has been a reckoning for many with competitive ambition. Some, who rode because of racing, found the year insufferable. Others, who in the past have raced to authorize the time to ride, have relished in the flexibility and creativity necessitated by the pandemic.

The Land of 10,000 Cattle Guards: Sky Islands East Loop

Brandon Proff and a band of friends took their bikes down to Arizona for a mental reset on the gorgeous Sky Islands bikepacking route. The story that follows and photos were generously supplied by those that rode this beautiful route.

patagonia Sky Islands

Montanus: The Wolf’s Lair Bikepacking Film

The Wolf’s Lair is a 400-kilometer bikepacking route that winds through medieval castles, alpine scenery, and ancient italian villages in the Apennines Mountains. The Montanus duo originally traced the route in 2016 after they felt the need to explore the Abruzzo region to learn more about their culture and origins. Giorgio went back to The Wolf’s Lair to film the experience.

Italy Montanus

Oh, What a Day!

Storytellers are architects.

Our craft is about projections, blueprints, and framework. While our products seem final in their own context, it is up to us to first enact the scene before scrupulously building and maintain our creations. No matter what we say to explain away our decisive power to dictate our own perspective, that poetic justice is ultimately undeniable. If taught to work around our bias and prejudice, the power to scrutinize, probe and vet is the only path to free and fair constructions of our products. Products which are one of the few things that allow people to connect with thoughts, emotions and revelations that may yet escape their personal perspectives.

The Grandest Tour: Glacial Lessons

There are some places which defy even the best of cameras.

These are places where the sheer veracity of color can’t be quantified by a manufactured pallet. Where the scale and magnitude of the landscape is too significant to be downsized. Places so unique that any fleeting snapshot of moments in time neglects the peripheral context to illustrate the divine profundity of its individuality. These are the places of poems, of songs, and of myths that transcend the visual and can only be truly expressed through the emotions of the most exquisite lyrics.