Rear View 2018: Fall And The Remainder Of 2018

Dreams of Fall single tracking were drowned in copious amounts of rain.

After all the gravel events things calmed down quite a bit and nothing big was happening.

Fall came in and looked pretty spectacular for a while. The Fall colors looked like they were going to peak about the right time and they looked to be better than they had been in years. However; heavy rains came in, we got flooding off and on for most of October, and the single tracking dreams were drowned in murky backwaters.

Meanwhile I had to squeeze in whatever riding I could get on gravel roads. That wasn't all bad, by the way, and the fun rides piled up. Health came back. The legs started working again. I was having some fun again on the bike. A special ride for a co-workers wife on gravel was one of the Fall highlights for me.

Later on I was working with local rider, N.Y. Roll on two events. First was the Iowa Gravel Expo/Bike Party, and then the other was a gravel road race event we dubbed "Creatures Of Gravel", or C.O.G. and it was to be a 100 mile route. Then I figured why not make it a State Championship, and then to further make the weirdness, why not require every rider that chooses to participate use a single speed device? Yeah......why not. 

The recon was done after a bit of early season snow in November and the route looked great to us. It was a teeny bit more than a 100 miles, but......hey! Bonus miles for the money, right? Then after that settled down it seemed like the RidingGravel.com site work picked up and all kinds of irons got in the fire, keeping me pretty busy right through the end of the year.

Riding gravel roads with almost zero single track ended finally when in November everything froze solid and we could finally get out in the woods again. Then, of course, the weather warmed up in December and whatta ya know? We end the year riding in mud or back to the gravel roads. Weird!

And that brings us to the end of the Rear View for the year. Thanks for reading!