A brief new year’s day reflection

I woke up late today after playing a really great New Year’s Eve party last night. It’s just me and the pup here today, so as I reheated some cheesy breakfast grits I decided to start ticking off some of my YouTube Watch Later list.

The tl;dr of both of these is “less is more”, “just get out there and have some fun on two wheels”, “you don’t need to spend a ton of money or have the most cutting edge technology to have fun”. Of course this is the Run What Ya Brung ethos.

Also, I can’t stop thinking about a conversation that my buddy Alex and I had when we were pushing our bikes up Mount Diablo last year. I kept saying that we were “really hillibiking now!” He asked what Grant Petersen meant by “hillibiking”, and a quick Google revealed this:

There’s no wrong way to get out and enjoy a bike ride of course. My Starling Murmur is currently in my work stand getting zhuzhed with the hopes of riding down some rock slabs in the Upper Peninsula sometime in 2025. But this concept of “a bicycle for traveling” continues to reverberate in my head. Sometimes I wanna travel on forest roads, dirt roads, and double tracks, so I reach for my Rambler, HRXC, or similar bike. Sometimes I wanna travel on paved roads [for some reason], so I grab my Centurion Pro Tour. Other times I want to travel on primitive singletrack, so I reach for my Murmur. But at the end of the day, cycling has become even more beautiful to me when I approach my bike as a companion taking on me on unforgettable travels, rather than the way I used to view my downhill skateboard and increasingly spooky hills to bomb.

sometimes it’s fun to travel down 100+ year old hiking trails that lead to the lake where miners used to bathe. photo credit Graham Bewley

Here’s to a 2025 filled with memories made with friends and loved ones, whether it’s on 2 wheels or not.

-Peter

PS: Here’s an anthem I can’t stop listening to on repeat.