Sleeping outdoors is fun whether car camping, bikepacking, or backpacking. But let's be honest. When you really think about it, "camping" is simply reducing our quality of life for a night or two. We move from sleeping in comfortable beds in climate-controlled rooms to sleeping on thin sleeping pads hoping we removed the bigger rocks underneath. And then there are bugs and the night was colder than we had anticipated. When we wake up in the morning (usually earlier than we normally do) the first thing that comes to mind is ... coffee.
Trails are more than ribbons of dirt and built features that deliver an outdoor version of a gym workout. Trails define us ... and we define them. So what is the allure of trails, especially new trails?
In our frenetic world there is a cacophony of information, messages, data, images, media, and voices bombarding us all at once. We're regularly told "do this," "buy this," "wear this," and so on. We usually deploy some kind of filtering system to wade through the noise so we can breathe easily. Interestingly, companies are the same. What we long for, personally or as a business is this, simplicity.
Since we started Loam Coffee we talk to mountain bikers on a daily basis from around the world. Many ask lots of great questions about our coffee, our roast profiles, where we source our beans from, and most often what to try out first.
Mountain bikers are social creatures. Rarely do you find social media posts of someone slogging it out alone in the backcountry on a weekend while everyone else is riding with their homies and posting all sorts of pics ... pre-ride, mid-ride, and post-ride at the pub. Mountain biking and mayhem go well together and the bigger the posse the more the mayhem. But what do you do when you need to simply peel away from everyone and ride alone?
I have an affinity for obscurity ... off-the-beaten-path places, no-named bands that fill my Spotify playlist, and simply the innate desire to go upstream. Fortunately or unfortunately the same applies for my tastes in bikes. You see, for a number of years before moving to the Pacific Northwest I rode a singlespeed XC bike at a time when most were not. I was drawn to the allure of singlespeed riding simply because it was "different" back then. But I had help.
