Twenty-five years of August 10ths and somehow the throughline is always the same: get outside, suffer a little, love it anyway. It started back in 2001 with a heat-exhausted race finish in Wallingford, and by 2003 the calendar was already stacked, a soggy-then-glorious half-century ride through the Lymes, a new baby welcomed all the way in Valdez, and a hiking getaway planned for the Lincoln backcountry.
The mountains kept calling. 2004 sent me off toward the Crazies with Marcy and Paul, and Thursday Night Rides became a whole personality, first as a rainy-day solution in Sawmill Gulch, then as single-track heaven followed by beer and pizza in Missoula. Even the quiet years counted, like 2009's honest shrug of a bad day.
Then came the belt buckles and the buckling knees. A torrential-downpour PH100 chase, a carless Bangtail plan, a Yellowstone road-to-trail pedal, and a canyon-side reckoning about losing touch with the wild. Later, a ridge camp with strikes and gutters, a mysterious tunnel, an offensively named gulch, flood warnings in Yellowstone, a whole month of two-wheeled chaos, and finally, creaky knees and carob cake by the Clark Fork.
Different decades, same restless heart. Still showing up, still riding out the storm.