See

You ever heard of Mike Curiak?

He's prolly one of the many bad ass Ultra endurance doods out there and he most definetely makes my short list of heroes.

Lot's of my most recent bike builds where inspired by forum and blog post from said individual.

Most recently my new ride, the yet to be named specialized bike I bought has 30 gears.

Years ago, Mike was putting together custom cranksets with 12-36 rear cassette and a 29 x 22 front ring set up. Said the low gears where great in tall mountains. He said, the less you walked the better.

And this new bike I got now totally fits that description as my lowest combo is 22 x 36, I shouldnt be walking much. Two weeks from this day I will test it in Pisgah, but a week past last Sunday I took War on a little exploration ride.

There was no planning involved just a desire to find a dirty route to this spot by the St Johns river.

We used satellite maps on our phones and off we went. A turn here, a twist there slowly making our way to the spot. The grass got taller and next thing we know we came upon a creek. To dirty to wade through with some serious effort we got across via a log. More over head tall swamp grass and another creek crossing and we came upon a fence. To our left was some sweet tight twisty singletrack. We rode the twisty trail for about a mile and it dumped us out onto a familiar forest road. Everything turned out great, but the bushwacking and the on the fly mapping lead us to a snail pace of 5 miles in almost 3 hours LOL.

Eventually we emerged on pavement, bug bitten, and a little tired.

Interesting ride, but the low gears on the bike really worked out well, sure there were times I could of walked faster than I was riding, but it was an excellent adventure regardless, the bike set up with the gears just begs for off road exploration.

Take Care,

Laters,

The NaKeD InDiaN