Remember when you started riding bikes? Remember why  you started riding bikes? As a kid, it was a chance to get away, from your house, your parents, your every day. The bike would take you seemingly miles from home, even if it was only a few suburbs away. Somewhere along the way we lose that sense of adventure, especially if we drive to the trailhead and do a lap of the park. It doesn’t feel as if you’ve been out exploring, discovering new things about your surroundings that you might not normally see.

This is what fascinates me about the new breed of adventure/cross/gravel bikes or whatever the hell they are calling them. Stupidly long rides have been less of a thing for a while, but to set out in the morning and return hours later in the dark, having covered all sorts of terrain along the way and uncovering some hidden gems, or getting to the top of some far off hill that you saw from across the skyline that morning, that’s appealing. It might even look like what Ty Hathaway gets up to here in this inspiring little clip of him escaping the madness of LA and getting a new perspective on things.