Kayaking the sandusky with some new found friends

Kayaked the sandusky north from Tiffin Saturday after work, camped,got up this morning at 6am, road 60 miles with friends, now it's off to lunch before doing some lake kayaking up at cataba island. Good times.

Soda Pop Stop, a passion for business

via youtube.com

hard for me to summarize, but I just love the whole idea of this business. Guy takes a passion for soda pop and explodes a niche into quite a business.

Some Tour Divide Questions & Answers with Justin Simoni

via kentsbike.blogspot.com

Kent Petersen aka. Mountain Turtle's interview with Justin Simoni is absolutely the best single interview I've read on the tour divide. Justin attempted to do the whole 2700 mile divide route this year without taking any reroutes / alternates despite record snowfalls and nearly succeeded succombing to a taco'd wheel and shoulder injury only 120 miles from his goal. He was one of the many colorful characters that made the tour divide such an exceptionally great race to follow this year.

One small excerpt: "Q: Did you have any exciting animal encounters?

A: The most exciting animal encounters were the bear prints on the road up Flathead Pass - the first really snowed in pass. There wasn't one part of the track that wasn't covered in them. The forest is so dense up there, that all the animals take to the road to travel themselves. If there wasn't bear prints, there was bear scat, if there wasn't bear scat, there was the scattered plume of some animals fur or feathers from a successful kill. The pattern was sustained through the entire snowed in part. I didn't even have bear mace."

Michigan Woman Faces Jail Time for Planting Vegetable Garden

via takepart.com

It's sh*t like this Michigan. Sh*t like this. Be sure to watch the video. It's as unbiased as I am myself, but I think they got the sentiment right: "What would you say to people who would call this 'ridiculous'?"

What a waste of tax payer time and money and whomever decided to prosecute her should be straight up fired.

Bikerafting Alaska's Lost Coast: Yakutat to Glacier Bay.

via vimeo.com

Mike Curiak's video shakedown of their trip.

"Late June, 2011, I went on a little trip with Eric Parsons, Dylan Kentch, Doom Fishfinder, and Roman Dial.

We beach biked out of Yakutat and bear trail bumbled along Alaska's outer coast, then trailless stumbling and ocean paddling brought us into Glacier Bay.

We carried all gear and food from the start, drinking from fresh and glacial streams, cooking in driftwood fires, sleeping just above high tide."

Yakutat to Gustavus Coast‬‏

via youtube.com

Screw trying to summarize this up, just watch the video, preferably in full screen full 720p. One 20 second clip that will just blow your mind with its magnificence.

You can view more pics and read part one of the trip report here:
http://epiceric.blogspot.com/2011/07/yakutat-to-gustavus-coast-trip-part-1.html

Eric has been blowing my mind with his adventures since I discovered the videos from his "lost coast" trip: http://lostcoastbike.blogspot.com/

stand-up paddling 300 miles

A Hawaiian man completed what is believed to be the first ever crossing from the Big Island to Kauai on a stand-up paddleboard. It took five days alone at sea on his surfboard to cross the 300 miles of open ocean. He survived on dried foods and freshwater strapped to his board and slept on an inflatable mat that he’d tie to the top of it, occasionally getting awoken when a wave flipped his board and mat. He was treated for infected blisters on his feet, but was otherwise in remarkable condition. He wasn’t even sore - the hardest part, he said, was the mental anguish of spending five nights floating in the middle of the ocean on a surfboard.

via thegoat.backcountry.com

Another reminder that there are endless opportunities to push the boundries of human endurance in wild and wonderful ways.

Tour Divide, the most grueling bike race in the world

via pinkbike.com

I still can't believe that Kurt Refsnider blew away the previous record for the great divide by finishing it in 15 days, 21 hours, and 1 minute. Congrats Kurt!

Though I'm not even sure if this is official yet this is a full 2 days, 5 hours faster then Mathew Lee's seemingly untouchable finish of 17 days, 16 hours, 13 minutes.

To top it all off Jefe Branham came in just behind him at 16 days, 16 minutes while riding it SINGLE SPEED!

A large amount of riders are still coming in. There seems to be no news articles or summaries anywhere that can even remotely capture the excitment and stories and yet the TD race discussion on bikepacking.net is growing so rapidly I can't keep up. It currently stands at some 1,860 comments: http://www.bikepacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=2179.new

The tour divide has definitely gotten big this year with some 140 or so riders, but is still getting suprisingly little press which is fine by me. Maybe one day I'll get to ride it before it get's all grown up and the bar is so high one can't even hope to finish in the now much shortened (thanks to Kurt's new record) cut-off time.

Do the huge success this year it will no doubt get much bigger next year.

The best snapshot I have seen capturing the mistique of the ride has been by photog Devon Balet who posted some superb shots of the tour divide including a couple wonderful videos. They start to capture what a wonderful thing the divide is, but beware the second video. In it's own absolutely wonderful and superb way it also captures just how wild and crazy and un summarizeable the event is. This is not an event that has been polished and possibly cannot be polished for mainstream appeal. It's riders and their amazing stories are as varied and wonderful as any come. It's what I love about it.