Donkey Boy, Author at Rodeo Adventure Labs, LLC

Starting Anew By Coming Home: Stokesville Strade

Home is a powerful thing. For many it is one place that exists throughout time as the bastion of their childhood. For others, it is something more fluid, something that develops as they do. I, for one, subscribe to the former.

Glorious early spring day in the valley. In a months time the rolling hills will be a vibrant green, the the roads supplying a nice ribbon of contrast. Now, the land remains in its slumber but its rippling beauty still shines through.

For me, home is something that exists in a purely daily context, depending on where I place my head. I chalk it up to my family’s nomadic habit; Arizona to California; California to Idaho; Idaho to Virginia; Virginia to Arkansas. Home was never a building, a bedroom, or a state; Home was a place where I could feel the love of my family; home was a place where I could appreciate those around me; home was a place that I enjoyed being.

Dear Road Racing,

Logan Jones-Wilkins

No, I have never nor will I ever ride the Tour de France.

One Rodeo of a Year: One Year Review

In general, I don’t love things.

I love people; I love places; I love activities, memories, and journeys. But things? Things are good only for the utility to foster euphoric externalities. I would rather make do with less than do less with more stuff. Things like multiple pairs of shoes, pants, devices just never get me jazzed.

The 2020 Playlist

Music and bikes are life savers. Pair them together and even the worst of times can be the time of your life. Nothing has made this clearer for me than the last twelve months. Through it all, the pairing of riding and music has truly transformed my year into unquestionably the best year of my life. Without these rides, and the soundtracks that accompanied them, I would have a diametrically different assessment of what this year has done for me.

UnPAved 2020: My Race of the Year

If life is, as Forrest Gump claims, like a box of chocolate, then 2020 is home to only the chocolate that nobody thinks they want. Yet, despite the funky, rancid, and downright rotten aspects of this year, this particular box of chocolates has some hidden gems. It may not have been the chocolate we had hoped for, but in some cases it has been chocolate I have truly cherished. Here are just a few of those chocolates:

Cover Photo Taken By Mark Yanagisawa

Bike racing? Never heard of her.

Cyclist far and wide have spent 2020 siting, wishing, watching, and waiting for racing. This new new landscape of cycling, one where intentions are crafted anew and every rider’s motivation have been tossed, churned and been spat out, has been a reckoning for many with competitive ambition. Some, who rode because of racing, found the year insufferable. Others, who in the past have raced to authorize the time to ride, have relished in the flexibility and creativity necessitated by the pandemic.

Oh, What a Day!

Storytellers are architects.

Our craft is about projections, blueprints, and framework. While our products seem final in their own context, it is up to us to first enact the scene before scrupulously building and maintain our creations. No matter what we say to explain away our decisive power to dictate our own perspective, that poetic justice is ultimately undeniable. If taught to work around our bias and prejudice, the power to scrutinize, probe and vet is the only path to free and fair constructions of our products. Products which are one of the few things that allow people to connect with thoughts, emotions and revelations that may yet escape their personal perspectives.

The Grandest Tour: Glacial Lessons

There are some places which defy even the best of cameras.

These are places where the sheer veracity of color can’t be quantified by a manufactured pallet. Where the scale and magnitude of the landscape is too significant to be downsized. Places so unique that any fleeting snapshot of moments in time neglects the peripheral context to illustrate the divine profundity of its individuality. These are the places of poems, of songs, and of myths that transcend the visual and can only be truly expressed through the emotions of the most exquisite lyrics.

The Grandest Tour: Home on the Road

I didn’t have a lot, but it was enough.

I didn’t have a lot of food, but it was enough. I didn’t have a lot of comfort, but it was enough. I didn’t have a lot of money, but it was enough. I didn’t have a lot of gear, but it was enough. Last of all, I didn’t have a lot of time. But it was enough.

The Grandest Tour: Wheeler Peak Mountain Duathlon FKT

See a mountain, summit a mountain.

A simple proposition, but one that can entail so many different things. Some mountains are best tackled by a lightweight road-bike, others call for a machine that is a bit burlier, and some can only be conquered by one’s own hands and feet. However, every once and a while there comes a certain summit that calls for blurring the lines between those spheres of separation.

The Grandest Tour: A Class in Productive Loneliness

Loneliness is such a fickle thing.

For what seems like an overwhelming majority of our population, loneliness is a wasteful feeling. Loneliness is mental destitution; a dead-end street on the front stoop of depression, anxiety, and even death. All around the world, millions face these dead-end streets, and all too many never escape. Over the last year I have had my fair share of trips down that path. There have been the soggy winter rides, the classic case of college isolation, the solo Valentine’s Day dinner, and, of course, the never-ending quarantine in a no-stoplight town.