“Benedicto: May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you -- beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.”

–Edward Abbey

Daniel Sharp

Portland, OR-based photographer and cyclist. This site is my journal related to my cycling, camping, bikepacking adventures on two wheels. My intention is to share travel and route information, food recipes, gear and packing tips. My hope is that this site will be as collaborative as possible, inviting DIY solutions, new projects, new events, new ways of enjoying the outdoors, and inspire wild creativity. I have no intention of being definitive, there are so many ways to travel by bike, so many ways to spend time outdoors. We love road cycling, dirt and gravel road riding, and mountain biking. Long distance racing or just rambling with friends? Yes, and, not either or. We'll touch on all of those aspects. Remains to be seen. Either way I hope you'll check back in occasionally, frequently, or whenever the spirit moves you. Happy trails!

“Ride as much or as little, or as long or as short as you feel. But ride.” ~ Eddy Merckx

Flashback to 1988. The year this band of skaters from Overland Park, KS decided to buy mountain bikes and drive across Kansas and Colorado to be a part of the Crested Butte Fat Tire Bike Week. We had no idea what we were getting into, had zero fitness, but we got some trail maps and went and did our best. We cheered the XC race, camped out, and had the time of our lives. Mountain biking has come along way and on the other hand it's still essentially the same. Full suspension bikes will deliver you down the trail faster, but the desire to get off pavement and breathe that mountain air, to get in over your head and realize you've got a lot of work to do before this seems like a reasonable thing to do. Well, not much has changed for me. The bikes are much nicer, I rode many miles and have better fitness, but it still seems hard and I still have that drive to ride new trail and go further than I went before. This site is dedicated to that drive…and that drive West away from Kansas to the hills! To the hills!