Photos by Andy White

Look, I don’t deal well with foul weather. Not anymore, anyway. The years of living in NYC have dwindled away as far as my body is concerned. Now, I’ve adapted to desert life in Texas. So when spring rains come, the trees are blooming and it’s grey outside, I succumb to all kinds of allergies and moody blues.

Maybe that’s why when Andy from FYXO mentioned doing 160k today in the rainy, muddy hills of Kinglake, I opted out for a shorter, more manageable ride. Or maybe, as destiny would have it, I’d be content with 100k. For whatever reason, my “man cold” was a perfect excuse to opt out of one of Fyxo’s fabled tough rides.

We began heading out to the familiar hillside, before approaching what I’m calling “cuntbuster”, or in the native tongue “Pine Ridge Road”. The first hundred meters or so was totally rideable, but we scaled 300 meters in elevation in just under 3k (1,200′ in 1.2 miles). Basically, we hiked up the 30+ degree, rutted, nasty “road”.

At the top, we quickly descended into a glorious stretch of gravel aptly named Watson’s Rd, got lost and then saw a very rare site…

From there, the ride became an animal rescue mission. Head over to FYXO for the full scoop on how we saved a rare Wedgetail Eagle and check out numbers and such on my Strava.