Seek and Ye Shall Find!

We enjoyed a nice 62-mile ride on our 1994 Ritchey Skyliner tandem today. It was a "road ride" but we also managed to have some good adventures, and explore two new (to us) trails along the way.

Seek and ye shall find! There's a little bit of dirt, sometimes more, near lots of roads. Why not steer that "road bike" off-road sometimes?

A short slideshow is viewable at this link. A few photos are here on this page.

Click play on this little video for a nice, soothing soundtrack,
courtesy of the duck creek we found in Harmony Grove!

We also want to take this moment to wish George "Red-Eyed Vireo" Vargas, and all the other competitors, GOOD LUCK in the Trans-Iowa race this weekend! It's an epic, 320-mile dirt road race around the backcountry of Iowa. This event is right up our alley and we salute the organizers, too. Hopefully we'll be on the starting line in the future. George will be doing some neat webcasting via his "Epic Adventures" blog throughout the race and we encourage you to check him out and follow the race. Links:

Epic Adventures Blog: http://epictrain.blogspot.com/

Trans-Iowa: http://transiowa.blogspot.com/

We also want to tip our hat to blogger-cyclist - and soon-to-be Rough Rider - Mozam for his outstanding post about Rough Riding. Thanks for spreading The Word and we hope to hear more about your own Rough Riding adventures! Here's just a short excerpt from his post:

"The whole framework for the Rough Riders is centered around the slogan, "Any bike, anywhere" and falls directly in-line with Chris' philosophy of adventure, in any form. For some odd reason this just appealed to me. Not because I'm bored, but because I really have a sense of adventure, even though I'm a little cautious about how much adventure I really do take on these days. Sloggin' through mud at 3am in the rain is not my sense of adventure, but cruisin' the back woods on poorly maintained, or dirt roads sounds great! At least as long as there is a shower, warm bed and beer at the end!"

Thanks for your support and enthusiasm, everyone! Be sure to tune into XO-1.org regularly. At the very least we are uploading Rough Riding photos from in the field almost daily. There are live links to them - updated automatically as we send in the photos - in the top left column of the XO-1.org webpage. Stay tuned!

Also, we hope to see you for the weekly Ramble on Wednesday afternoons in La Jolla! (Not local, but hosting a local Ramble somewhere? Send us the info and we'll feature it here!)

PS Just found this tandems-only shop online today while looking for a specific stoker bar for our Ritchey. They are in New Jersey, but sell online and also host tours. They called immediately when they got our email - they have what we need and are very friendly. If you ride a tandem, check them out. http://www.tandemseast.com/index.html