Adventures – Rodeo Adventure Labs, LLC

Getting my gravel legs: Solo adventures in Corsica

Editors Note: You can find Morgan online on Instagram and follow more of her adventures there!

Hi! I’m Morgan, and I am fairly new to the gravel world. I come from a (semi) long-history of road biking: 10 years, which when considering I’m 28, is a good chunk of my life. Like most folks, I was quickly intrigued by the gravel medium, the off-road possibilities, the chance to pedal on dirt roads far away from aggravated or distracted drivers. I recently spent a week on the French island of Corsica with my van, my road bike, and the newest addition: my super sexy Flaanimal Ti. This bike will soon become my swiss-army-bike: a bike that can excel on any terrain, whether the distance be a short 50k road race or a multi-day bikepacking event in the Alps. But for now, it’s my adventure gravel bike, and boy was I ready to have some of those in a place I’ve never been. Below, I share with you two of my more memorable adventures from my time riding on the island.

Calvi Corsica

Foreign – Luke’s Traka Adventure

2 AM, on Sunday Morning and I’m in a Boeing at over 35,000 ft in the air. Sorry, over 11,000m in the air. When competing outside of these United States, we will use the metric system, like the rest of the civilized world. But I refuse to be some proselytizing Metric Snob just because I have been to Europe once. As soon as I cross that border, that Wahoo returns to miles and I’ll be referring to my beverages in “fluid ounces” and calling French fries by their true name, freedom fries.

Rock Cobbler 11: Does gravel get any better?

In 2014, a crazy guy named Sam Ames, some volunteers, and about 50 very trusting riders gathered in Bakersfield, California for a lark of an experimental, mixed terrain bike circus. The Rock Cobbler was born, and quickly began to grow. Cobbler combined a wildly variable course, beautiful emerald rolling hills, silly gags, and a positive atmosphere to form something that was not often seen in the cycling landscape in those days: A singular bike party.

Lessons from Fat Pursuit and cycling in -40F

The Fat Pursuit is a winter ultra event located in and around Island Park, Idaho. There are two distances, the 60k and 200k, and there are three different disciplines, biking, running, and skiing. I did the 200k on a bike last year and had to come back for more. Looking at the weather prior to the race I knew it was going to be a tough one. Lots of new snow had fallen making the course soft and slow and with lows in the -30F range plus wind chill it was sure to be an exciting one.

Donkeys Fly South: Southern Migration recap

Once upon a time, exactly ten years ago, when Rodeo started, it was 100% about community. There were no products, no ambitions, no balance sheets. We started a team, we invited anyone who wanted to join the team, and we had no plan from there. Whatever happened, happened, and a lot happened. In the following months an entire community sprang to life not just locally in Denver, but throughout the state, throughout the region, and throughout Colorado.

Adventure Cycling Flaanimal Gainsville Gravel Bike Rodeo Labs Rodeo Rally traildonkey

Everest (ing) by Donkey

Everesting is a ride wherein riders ride a single hill over and over until they’ve climbed the height of Mount Everest. That’s 29,032′ or 8848m.

I decided to do an Everest attempt after doing a last minute Instagram poll just throwing it out there to see if I should give it a go. 100% of you said yes. I wasn’t sure if I would do it up until this point and since this was the day before I was pretty ill-prepared.

Adventure Cycling Gravel Bike Mountain Biking Rodeo Labs traildonkey

White Rim With Friends

Words clutter. So without delay, here is a video we shot of a most perfect outing to White Rim with friends in late October, 2023.

Cycling as Sustainable Tourism: The Grayson Gravel Traverse

Consumerism is undeniably woven into the fabric of modern society. However, its expansive reach may not be as innocuous as flashy advertisements would have us believe. Now, it might seem contradictory to start a blog discussing the pitfalls of consumerism while intending to funnel visitors to Rodeo’s website, hoping they’d invest in a bike. But this juxtaposition is what sets Rodeo apart. I think I speak for everyone here when I say that Rodeolab’s fan’s are here for the culture not just the bikes. As adventure cyclists, our brand of consumerism is geared towards not just healthier choices, but also more meaningful experiences. What I’m driving at is, while traditional consumerism, particularly the American variant, often leaves a trail of depletion, there exists an alternative that can enrich rather than exhaust.

Creeper Trai New River Trail Rodeo Labs

Rodeo Rally: Southern Migration 2024

Come join us for three days of bikepacking southern backroads with other Rodeo riders the weekend of January 13th, 2024!

Florida

Back to Community

This Journal entry is the third entry in Brynn’s series about the things that took them away from the bike, and the things that brought them back. You can find chapter 1 here, and chapter 2 here.

Grief brought my life to a standstill. At first, I didn’t know who I was anymore: whether I would be able to continue nursing, and, if I did, what that would look like. After years in the ICU, years during the pandemic, and then finally watching my father waste away on a ventilator, work was a constant trigger point.

What I also knew is that I don’t do well when I’m not moving. I decided to take the leap and try travel nursing out in California, which was the last place I had really felt like myself. The year prior I had worked at the clinic in Yosemite National Park and it had been life changing. I had fallen in love with the West coast, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and backpacking. I wanted that energy back again.