Twenty years of June 13ths, and the through line is almost too obvious to ignore. Trails, crashes, boredom, bears, and the stubborn insistence on showing up anyway.
It started simply enough in 2005 with a case of the Mondays, a slow day at work, a George Bush quote that practically wrote its own punchline, and a vague plan to hit the Treasure Trail before a meeting. Nothing dramatic. Just a guy with a blog and not much to say, which somehow became the most honest kind of post there is.
By 2008 the stakes were considerably higher. Bear hunting turned out to mean slogging through slushy snow up Marshall Canyon, negotiating with a fictional grizzly, and ending the night thawing frozen feet in a bathtub. The suffering was real. The bear was not. Classic Thursday Night Rides energy.
Then came the productive stretch. Finding new loops in 2009, the Zephyr Trail, a racing bike called the Leader, and a morning coffee at City Brew. In 2010, a self-invented sufferfest called the Jumbo Juggernaut, six hours, 2,500 feet of climbing, and a two-man world championship race where the judging criteria apparently included mud coverage.
2011 brought madness at Marshall Mountain. Fourteen laps, 10,000 feet of climbing, a chainring to the shin, and a brief but humbling game of chase with a world cup racer. The headwall won a few rounds. So did the rider, eventually.
Then something quieter. Pure form in 2012, a trail run at sunset with a storm wrapping around the mountain, no bike, just feet and something that felt like clarity. In 2013, reacting to whatever came, life moving too fast to plan, the blog itself becoming a way to understand the current rather than fight it.
2022 offered the desert, a Lovell Canyon bike ride through Joshua trees and wide open Nevada sky. In 2024, the day belonged to a small stuffed bear navigating the fuzzy trails around Homestake Pass, catching air, wrecking gloriously, and standing quietly before the Lady of the Rockies as the moon came up. Weird and wonderful and somehow completely on brand.
And this past June 13th, stripes and silence, PagerDuty nightmares, convict tangs at the Seattle Aquarium, and a neighborhood spin just to prove the legs still work. Less mountain, more survival. Still showing up.
Twenty years of the same date and the same restless impulse to move, to write, to make sense of whatever Monday, or storm, or headwall, or on-call shift happens to be in the way. That consistency is its own kind of treasure trail.