What Goes Around Comes Around

What goes around comes around. We've all heard the saying. And I guess to some, or a great extent, it is more or less at least somewhat true, I don't really know. What I do know is that it usually seems to be associated with something negative - some sort of negative karma, or whatever.

Not this time. Two days ago I had just finished uploading and publishing a video to YouTube and was posting the YouTube link on Facebook when out of nowhere I received a private message from a friend whom I hadn't heard from in quite some time. The message read "2 years ago. Amazing trip....".

This is a screenshot of that message:

Under the text caption in the message is a short video. This is that video:



Kim is a fellow cyclist and mountain bike adventurer from Denmark. About 2.5 years ago I joined up with 2 other friends and Orlando area locals for a somewhat local overnight bikepacking adventure. Kim was here vacationing in the Orlando area and visiting one of the guys and he came along for the ride. That's how we met.

The ride was relatively short (by most bikepacking standards), but an epic one nonetheless. I had wanted to capture the experience as I do on many of my rides, so I recorded bits and pieces of video footage along the way, assembled it all into a timeline, and published it online. That was over 2 years ago.

Fast forward to this past Friday when I received the unexpected message above. I hadn't heard from Kim in a very long time and it was very refreshing and rewarding to receive a message of this nature. It made my entire afternoon to see that someone half a world away was reflecting back on some good times and epic moments that we had.

Cheers, buddy. We'll meet again sometime for another ride. I guess what goes around comes around is mostly true.

You can view the entire video of the ride I did with Kim & friends here:

Thursday Seminole State Forest Gravel Ride

click here to view directly on YouTube
click here to SUBSCRIBE

The Seminole State Forest. It's a beautiful wilderness expanse that's right in my backyard - If you consider 17 miles away to be in your backyard, that is. I've ridden all over this area numerous times and even camped there overnight on a couple of occasions. I mostly ride there by myself, so when some guys started getting together for a bi-weekly ride there, I thought I'd check it out.

Here's a brief recap / replay of last Thursdays' ride. Thanks to Matt Steward from Pedal Driven Bike Shop in Sanford, Florida for taking the initiative on creating this recurring ride. Hopefully it will become a weekly thing soon.

2018 Florida Divide rider Stacy Bolton

It's Florida Divide season. What's the Florida Divide, you ask? Then head on over to Trackleaders.com for a brief introduction, and to check out the current state of affairs. That's exactly what I was doing this past this past Monday (3/12) and several days prior. I had been following the steady progress of Stacy Bolton, who is riding his bike from Alabama to Key West, Florida on a mostly off-road route.

On Monday, Stacy was approaching the Central Florida leg of his amazing journey and the route he is following passes fairly close to my hometown, so I thought I'd take some time and take a ride to meet up with him on my own bike, and see first hand how he's doing. I caught up with him about halfway through the Seminole State Forest just outside of Sanford, Florida - 10 days and 873 miles into his 1500 mile journey. He was incredibly focused and in great spirits. We rode a few miles together and sat down for a few moments as he recounted his experience.

You can see more of my conversation with Stacy below.
(click here view video directly on YouTube)
Get more detailed info about the Florida Divide at singletracksamurai.com or on the Singletrack Samurai Facebook page.