#huracan300

Once again, it's time for the greatest bike race in the south, the #huracan300 . Solid pale ale to kick off a grueling four days of swamp racing. #drewsbrewreviews #craftbeer #beer #beerporn #bikepacking

The bike is loaded and ready to go via @bikeflights in my @evocusa bag. T-9 days to riding the #huracan300 route in central FL with my old buddy @dweiner1313 . . . #mtb #mountainbiking #bikepacking #biketouring #bikeadventure #adventurebike #fl #florida #huracan300 #sunsandandsingletrack (at Arlington, Massachusetts) https://www.instagram.com/p/BtHLI7GlCL6/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=18dvyjs5grqrj

Cleared the southwest corner... So far so good. #OffRoadRando #singletracksamurai #TeamSamurai #HuRaCaN300 #CFiTT #AdventureByBike #salsacycles #TeamSamurai (at Ocklawaha, Florida)

Tomorrow is the Ides of March Bikepacking trip and #salsacycles bicycle demo out the shop. This is officially the first trip of the year that I have to pack all my cold weather gear.... I got this... Excited and looking forward to showing new #bikepacking folks how fun it is... Plus we have a kick ass back country ride in store.. If they only could understand the fun that awaits... #TeamSamurai #singletracksamurai #salsacycles #onthedivide #HuRaCaN300 #CFiTT #singletracksamurai #AdventureByBike

Wednesday 3/9 Ross Prairie - Croom Today we rode somewhere between 60-70 miles. Joey and I started out with the group, intending to split off from them and did so about a mile after departing from Ross Prairie. We immediately took up a quick pace, traveling down pavement that soon gave way to sand roads, the sand becoming more and more dense as time progressed. Surrounded first only by loblolly trees, we began to pass clusters of houses and trailers nestled off the sand roads. The farther we progressed along the Huracan, the more trash piles we saw (yesterday we were waiting next to a trash pile for half of the group to meet us and I looked up to see Adam squatting down picking through the pile. As the rest of the group rolled in, he shot up excitedly, VHS in hand and yelled from the side of the road, "Anyone wanna watch Saving Private Ryan later?"). Barbed wire fence eventually defined either side of the sand road. The GPS route looked like it led through the barbed wire and onto a road of even thicker sand. Joey and I ditched the route in search of a more navigable road. Every route we tried led to deep swamp. Finally we resorted back to the GPS, hopping the fence and sometimes trudging/sometimes riding through the sand. We followed these roads until we came to what seemed to be another glitch on the route. The route led into a swampy area behind another barbed wire fence. We jumped the fence, laughing frequently in disbelief while traipsing through the swamp, bikes in tow. After exiting the swamp and dumping the mud out of our shoes we continued riding on roads made of ash from what looked like a controlled burn. Finally the bikepacking universe gifted us some gravel roads that stretched for miles, leading us to jump two more fences and then continue into a final short stretch of pavement just as we ran out of water. We stopped at a church to use their hose. There was a huge tube TV outside with a post it note on the front reading "works good." We laughed about that, then tasted the foul water and scowled about that all the way to the next RV park where we found slightly less foul-tasting water. We continued into the Florida Greenway and with no traffic to worry about and no food left, I quickly realized how much my feet were throbbing from blood being constantly pushed to them. It was so uncomfortable. I was also really hungry. We ate so many fries and so many mozzarella sticks at this weird cafe, then CRUSHED our last 10 miles of single track to the van. Pictures from top left 1: Our first mile of the day with the whole group 2: Same 3: Awful ash roads 4: Post swamp-trudge legs 5: Last miles in Croom MTB park

Monday 3/7 Little Lake Bryant (Ocala National Forest) - Santos We started out today on concrete roads that eventually turned into sandy single track at the Florida Scenic Trail. Surrounded by swamp, we rode for two hours or so until hitting a snag in our plans when one of our crew began to feel sick and dizzy. We walked much of the next few miles, riding when she was able, to our lunch stop near Huntington, FL. At lunch we split up, half of the group riding six miles to Santos Campground while Cassandra, Shannon and I went to a Winn-Dixie to resupply. The ride to the grocery store from lunch was short. We cut through neighborhoods and were even graced with a pinch of single track leading to the back parking lot of the supermarket. The resupply took the girls a while to complete while I stood outside of the store bike babysitting. People walked by and stared at me, sweaty from the heat, covered in the thin film of sand that was always attracted to my sweat, my bangs glued against my forehead. A man on a bike stopped five feet away from me, smoked a cigarette, looked at the bikes, said nothing, then left. Shortly after a child biked up to me, said nothing, left his bike next to all of our bikes, went into the store, then left with a candy bar and still without saying anything. When Cassandra and Shannon were finally done, we began packing the bikes as best we could as we came to the comical realization that there was way too much food for the space we had made in our bags and on our bikes. In the middle of taking everything out of its packaging and shoving it into every receptacle we could find, a cashier from the Winn-Dixie zoomed out on a lark and started asking us all kinds of questions. The three of us answered her between our own banter about where we were going to put this meal for 12 people for two more days, and she eventually told us to be safe and zoomed away. We kept shoving food everywhere; seat post bag, frame bag, backpack - but there wasn't enough room. We put the remaining food in plastic grocery bags and tied those to our backpacks, then rode the last six miles to camp, Cassandra and Shannon giggling with fatigue the whole way. Pictures from top left 1: Shannon, Emily and Lizette pumping water at Little Lake Bryant 2:Kirby on singletrack 3: Marker for Florida Scenic Trail 4: Cassandra and I at the Winn-Dixie

Saturday 3/5-Sunday 3/6 I don’t know how many hours we drove to Florida but it took a long time. We pulled into camp around 9pm at Clearwater State Park (?) in Ocala and knocked out. We woke up the next morning and were riding single track by 10AM. We stopped for lunch at Alexander Springs and then continued on to roads filled with deep, punishing sand. After miles of half riding/half hike-a-biking the sand thinned out. We skirted a U.S. Naval Base Bomb Testing Range. Combined with all of the lifted trucks covered in dust that blew by us, the afternoon was eerie and post-apocalyptic. We took a break at a recreation area with an old-timey water pump coming out of the ground and decided to push 15 more miles to a farther campsite - Little Lake Bryan. As soon as we left our water break spot we were greeted by trucks parked in the middle of the one-lane sand road. Several people were huddled around one shirtless man who straddled an alligator, cigarette in his mouth, the alligator with a bag over its head and its mouth tied shut. We soon realized that someone had left the alligator in the road tied up and the people congregating around it were trying to free it. The man who straddled the alligator carefully removed the bag from its head, then removed the rope from its mouth while holding its jaws shut. He then released the alligator as it jumped and hissed out of his hands, snapping its jaws. It crawled away under his truck towards a lake. Then we tried to crush as many miles as possible while we still had daylight. We eventually made our way to paved roads and rolled into camp around 7pm. I don’t know how many miles we rode today but it was somewhere between 35 and 50. My ass hurts. Pictured: 1. Camp in Ocala 2. Emily and Joey 3. Bombing exercises 4. S A N D

Kinzer @loosenutscycles is getting the @salsacycles Warbird all tuned up for my #huracan300 ride at the end of next week. Drinking some @redhook_brewery Long Hammer IPA and he's preparing my unprepared ass for a very brutal trip #drewsbrewreviews #craftbeer #beer #beerporn #bicycling