July in Gravel

We're getting ready for Walhalla, our last Gravel Roll of 2026! We are working hard to finalize our 2027 calendar for announcement. I'm sure you'll be excited to hear what our Road Graders are smoothing out (sorry, not sorry that we lean hard into the cheese) for next year.

If you are sad that Walhalla is the last Gravel Roll of the year, there are a couple of additional rides where you can join the Cycling Quests team if you're up for a little travel.

First up, I'm working with the Bourbon Burn bicycle tour. Most of you know me from the years I lived in Georgia and a few years in Tennessee, but you probably wouldn't have guessed that my formative cycling years were spent on the Bluegrass roads of Kentucky. In fact, I coined the term Bluegrässenbergs decades ago after my first taste of Flandrian pain at race pace. Granted, they aren't cobbled, but the short, rolling climbs and pocket forests are so similar in much of Belgium. 

Granted, as we get older sentiment generally takes over, but there was something magical about "growing" up on those quiet one-lane farm roads between Louisville and Lexington. The cold snowy winters and the hot, humid summers. Those miles did the same thing to me that the seasons do to a barrel of bourbon. The smell of tabacco drying in barns in the fall as well as the "angels share" on a cool August morning from the 100 degree day before. You'd descend down into a creek valley where a barrel house would be, there'd be a light fog and as soon as you entered it you'd catch that whiff of evaporating bourbon before climbing up the other side. 

Then at the top of each rise, you'd see horses dancing through rolling fields of the greenest grass you've ever seen. A few times I had teammates with me the best comment I ever had was a simple "Kentucky is pretty!" Simplicity in the fact that words failed to capture the emotion. 

I'm working with the Bourbon Burn on refining these courses, so everyone can hopefully feel what I felt, and generally miss these days about my time in Kentucky and what road riding once was. So why don't you all come join me. You can sign up and use the code GRAVELROLL to get $50 off your registration price. 

For more information and to sign up go to: https://www.bourboncountryburn.com/

Also, if you are up for some great fall gravel riding, Cycling Quests is managing a gravel race in Idaho on October 11th. Ally is starting her cross Oregon tour/graveljourneé around then and we are going to ride with her for a day or two and then bop back over the state line to roll the NP103. You can find more info for that here: https://www.summitandsprint.com/