I was trying to start a campfire a couple weekends back and grabbed a fat piece of wood with a crack at one end, ripe for splitting into two smaller pieces that would burn more easily. I searched my van for something to split the wood with, and came up with: A 55 cm mountaineering [...]

You have approximately one million different travel mugs at home. I know this because I have previously owned approximately one million travel mugs. You buy one, it works OK, but you think maybe you’d like one with a handle, or a new one without a handle, or one from a coffee shop you visited on [...]

I remember flipping through 5280 Magazine‘s 2011 “Top of the Town” issue to the section where “Best Bike Shop” appeared, and seeing a full-page photo of my friend Scott Taylor sitting on a bike in front the south wall of Salvagetti Bicycle Workshop, and I started giggling like a little kid and pumping my fist [...]

Every year, my pal Nick and I inevitably have a chat about our goals for the year, at some coffee shop in Denver. In 2009, it was already late February or March by the time it came up in conversation. I probably told Nick about my goals, which usually include sleeping outside at least 30 [...]

Maybe you only ask yourself this question while bicycling or running: Can I beat up that dog? When it comes down to it and a dog is chasing you, you start to calculate your odds of survival if the dog actually attacks you. Most breeds, you think yeah, maybe I could. Not pit bulls or [...]

Not so long ago, my pal Nick made up his mind that he was going to get himself a motherfucking Trek 970 if it was the last thing he ever did. And it was beautiful. Not the bike, mind you, but the pursuit of the bike. It was nothing short of Ponce de Leon searching [...]

A few weeks ago, a friend had stopped her car at a 4-way stop sign in Capitol Hill, and drove forward to proceed through the intersection just as a young woman riding a bicycle rolled up to the stop sign to her right. As my friend rolled through the intersection, the cyclist ran the stop [...]

I have biked everywhere within 4 miles of my apartment in the past 5 years, including every job I’ve had — I’ve never had to drive to work in Denver. I find riding a bicycle exhilarating, but that’s no reason for you to think you should. In fact, here are 9 reasons you shouldn’t bike [...]

I feel lucky to have a story that Grant Petersen thought worthy of the latest Rivendell Reader. It’s about riding across the country on the same bike I ride to work every day — the 1985 Raleigh Team USA I bought from a Craigslist ad for $100. Click the photo below if you’d like to [...]

A little over a year ago, I was bicycling across the country with my friend Tony. It was almost exactly 3,000 miles, and took us 49 days. It was the longest vacation I’ve ever taken since I was 16 years old, by about 40 days. I remember talking to my friend Nick when I got [...]

  There’s a single paragraph in Yvon Chouinard’s Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of A Reluctant Businessman in which he talks about solo expedition kayaker (and grandmother) Audrey Sutherland, who at that time had paddled more than 8,000 miles around the world. One of the quotes attributed to Sutherland is one of the [...]

The average human poop event weighs between 7.3 and 9.3 ounces, according to an Iranian study of 100 male and female subjects. I only looked this up because I think no one should buy a $7,000 carbon-fiber bicycle, since the only people who arguably “need” a bicycle that expensive already get them for free and [...]

You like your bike ride to work. It fires up your heart, lungs and legs before you spend 8 hours sitting in desk chair getting soft. You lessen your impact on the environment. You spend a few more minutes outdoors, every day. It makes you smile. One thing can wipe that smile off your face: [...]