Rodeoer Geoff K. has been riding his mint green Avery Co. Cycles in singlespeed configuration ever since we started Rodeo a year ago. Geoff is a restless soul though and he never stops thinking about alternate configurations for the bike.
By Chris Baddick
Bike riding is fun. You know that already. For some of us, racing bikes is just as fun as riding bikes. The rush of pinning on a number, sharing conspiratory glances with competitors on the start line, and drinking the best tasting beer at the end adds another level to why we’re in the cycling community. But then comes the urge.
My wife’s family has a couple holiday traditions. The first is the annual ornament exchange. The majority of these ornaments are homemade, or “artisinal” in hipster parlance. The ornaments are intended to commemorate something memorable from your year. Most of them are sentimental, celebrating a new house, a promotion, a new baby, or some other memorable event. But not all memorable events are positive, so some of the ornaments are intended to mock your lesser moments from the year.Continue reading
Cycling is so great because, at least for Rodeo, it’s fundamentally about having fun and spending time with like minded people. Yes, it’s also about rad gear and exploring and racing and the outdoors, but who cares about any of that if you don’t have friends to share it all with?
Rodeo is fundamentally not “pro” in the traditional sense of the word. We don’t field the fastest race team, our feats will never come close to being mentioned amongst the top ranks of the sport. That’s fine with me. We are “pro” at a couple of less traditional things though. One of those things is having fun. We hold our w00ting skills in high regard. Bonus fact: Nobody wins or loses at having fun. There is no leader board, there is no way to accurately measure it. There is no KOM of fun. You just go out and do it and you know you’ve done it right if you come back from a ride and you feel like maybe you are levitating and you can’t stop talking to people about what just happened. When you’ve had fun you feel compelled to share it, and therein lies some of it’s value: Sharing our best experiences with each other is one of the simple joys of being human.
History/Course Features:
Pennsylvania has a rich geological and natural resource history. The Appalachian Mountain range extending through the center of the state running diagonally supplied early colonists with iron ore, hardwood and limestone. These same natural resources today supply off-road cyclists a constant source of GNARishment. Seizing the opportunity offered up by nature, Mike Kuhn director of the Transylvania Mountain Bike Epic (aka “TSE” or simply “The Epic”) and front man of High Speed Cycling, designed Iron Cross, the “Original North American Ultracross Race”. The event is part of the American Ultracross Series. Held annually each Autumn, Iron Cross turned 12 this year.Continue reading
Colorado finally got some dramatic weather on Sunday at Cross Of The North and Rodeo went out to investigate. After a race wherein Trail Donkey’s crank fell off and the pit bike saved the day, I stuck around to shoot some of the later races. Racing is a blast, and shooting races is a blast. Most of the time I have to chose one or the other, but thanks to a day pass from my wife, I got to have my cake and eat it too on Sunday. I’m quite thankful because the combination of a great course, epic wind, mud, and some cool late afternoon light made it a great day to spend some time behind the camera.
Photos by Brett Rindt, Patrick Charles, Peder Horner, Nick Gilroy, and Stephen Fitzgerald
Fall is in the air in Colorado. The leaves are putting on their yearly show as they turn from green to gold to fiery red before drifting away on gusts of wind. If you live in this state you wait for this time of year with anticipation. Maybe you feel the morning air getting more crisp by the day. Maybe you’ve noticed that the tomatoes in your garden have stopped turning from green to red. Whatever the case, you know that the window to catch nature’s leaf peeping display is small, only a few weeks at most. The Rodeo crew decided to organize a last minute rally to coincide with the season. Many of us had seen an obscure gravel road heading due east into unknown hills off of Highway 285, and it was decided that we would create a route exploring this wild section of Colorado that had hitherto not been explored by any of us. It didn’t hurt that said road plunged straight into rich bouquets of red and yellow aspen, and beneath those bouquets waited trails and roads carpeted in gold and ripe for exploring.
So, as with the turning of the seasons, it reminds me of how life follows the patterns of nature. We’re talking about the diminishing of oneself and the tuition of our next generation. My son, B., has expressed continued interest in cyclocross, did a race last year, and successfully petitioned me to purchase him a ‘cross bike (Thanks Salvagetti for being so helpful!). When I told him about the, now 3rd annual, Colorado Junior Cyclocross Camp in Empire, CO, he was more than excited. So, I signed him up for the full weekend getaway and me as a parent chaperone and worker. A week from the camp, his great-grandmother passed away, and thus a hastily arranged funeral service would be arranged in Texas. Deirdre, the camp director and awesome BOSS, was very kind and offered to let B. come up to the camp after he returned to Colorado. So, up we were at 0600, threw the bike in the back of the 2002, and we were out the door for the camp in the mountains at 0645.
Photos and words by Samer Khodor
Like most rides in Colorado, there’s no warm up. The trails start by going straight uphill. And the 4×4 road leaving the small mountain town of Marble toward Crested Butte was no different. Except that it was steeper than most with some grades over 20%! It felt more difficult than I recalled from my first time riding it in 2007 and I had apparently forgotten the road climbed 800 feet in the first mile! As my legs and body ached I began to wonder if we should have driven to Crested Butte and saved our legs for the challenge of Pearl Pass the following day. Of course I did not reveal these weak unBelgian thoughts to my poker-faced riding buddies: Sean Malone, Jeff Sillik, Nick Sherwood, and Andrew Sterner.
Our much maligned, much loved, much misunderstood, much understood CX.1 team kits arrived on Friday, just in time to debut at Boulder Cup on Saturday. w00ts! Instead of doing our first CX race of the year the normal way (drive there, warm up on rollers, race, drive home), we decided to ride 40 miles to the race course, race, and ride 40 miles home. That’s a Rodeo style day of CX racing.Continue reading
