#Found-in-the-Mountains

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Vancouver! Stoked Spoke at Musette Caffè this Thursday!

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Vancouver! Stoked Spoke at Musette Caffè this Thursday!

Heads up Vancouver! Morgan and Stephanie at Found in the Mountains are bringing Swift Industries’ Stoked Spoke Adventure Series north of the border this Thursday, March 28th.

The night will feature bicycle travel stories that’ll be sure to get you pining for adventures near and far, including the world premiere of Admissions of an Amateur Bikepacker, Ben Johnson‘s self-shot short film from Peru.

Thursday, March 28th @ 6:30pm
Musette Caffè
1325 Burrard Street
Vancouver, BC

$5-20 sliding scale
all proceeds donated to WTF Bikexplorers and Our Community Bikes

RSVP at Eventbrite!

Riding in a Forest of House Plants on Maui’s Road to Hāna – Morgan Taylor

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Riding in a Forest of House Plants on Maui’s Road to Hāna – Morgan Taylor

Riding in a Forest of House Plants on Maui’s Road to Hāna
Photos and words by Morgan Taylor

If you’ve spent any time in tropical places, this may not come as a surprise to you – but to Stephanie and I, content and comfortable in the damp temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest, riding Maui’s Road to Hāna was completely mind blowing. We didn’t go to Hawai’i for the beaches (in fact, we didn’t even swim), and we weren’t really doing it to escape the rapidly deteriorating weather conditions at home. We didn’t have expectations, just a few recommendations and an open mind – our usual way of traveling.

Coffee Outside and a Hidden Dirt Ride – Morgan Taylor

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Coffee Outside and a Hidden Dirt Ride – Morgan Taylor

Photos and words by Morgan Taylor.

I unclipped the far side of Stephanie’s Sugarloaf to get coffee going and something I knew was eventually bound to happen, finally happened. After 15 weeks of #coffeeoutsideyvr, an object of actual (and sentimental) value fell off the pier: Stephanie’s double wall titanium camp mug, that had dangled carefree for 4,000 km of touring last summer and lots more since, was now floating in Burrard Inlet.

That was how our Good Friday began: with Tom stripping down and sending it into the cold, cold ocean to retrieve Stephanie’s prized possession. What we’ve come to know in the past three-and-a-half months of getting together to make coffee every Friday, is that there are a lot of rad people out there you haven’t yet met – people who might one day jump in a frigid body of water on your behalf.

Found in the Mountains Good Friday Ride!

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Found in the Mountains Good Friday Ride!

Morgan and Stephanie are hosting an adventure pace, mixed-surface ride in Vancouver after their usual coffee outside on Friday:

“We’re crafting up a route that will keep us out of traffic and exploring off-the-beaten-path dirt and neighbourhood connectors around North Vancouver. This will be an absolutely no-drop, adventure pace ride. Expect about 50 km of mixed-surface riding with options to bail out along the way if you want a shorter ride or need to get somewhere earlier in the day.”

Get the details at Found in the Mountains.

Goodbye, Canada – Morgan Taylor

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Goodbye, Canada – Morgan Taylor

Words and photos by Morgan Taylor.

Where I last left you we were less than 50 miles from home as the crow flies, having ambitiously pedaled three days from our front door and ridden a remote high mountain pass with way too much gear. We were solidly in travel mode, no longer just camping in the front yard. It was early July and while that sounds like it should be summer, we wore our GoreTex more in the week we rode in Canada than we did for the two months that followed. You know, the Great White North, and all.

There was still some amount of comfort in what we were doing: while the scenery was changing more quickly than we had anticipated, we were still spending colorful money and freely using our overpriced cell phone data. The people we ran into still knew where we lived – or at least had heard of it – and could drive there in an easy day.

Showing Found in the Mountains LA

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Showing Found in the Mountains LA

Morgan and Stephanie from Found in the Mountains are here in Los Angeles and over the next few weeks, we’ll be showing them around to the local rides and maybe we’ll even do another group ride or two. While our touring couple has seen much of the West Coast so far, I don’t think they were prepared for the coastal desert that is Los Angeles, in the middle of the summer.

We’ll be riding early in the mountains to keep cool and laying low during the heat of the day. Expect lots of coverage from their trip to hit the site next week!

Found in the Mountains Los Angeles Group Ride

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Found in the Mountains Los Angeles Group Ride

Our friends at @FoundintheMountains have made it down the California coast and will be arriving in the Los Angeles area on Saturday. We’d like to welcome them to LA in style, so we’re throwing a group ride. Expect a 60 mile day total, with around 4,500′ of climbing. Half of the day will be on dirt, the other half through Saturday morning traffic, so keep your whits sharp!

The plan is to meet at Intelligentsia on Sunset Avenue in Silver Lake at 6:30am for a 7am roll-out. BE ON TIME. We will be leaving right at 7am. No excuses!

You should bring plenty of food, sunblock, tools, tubes and pack your big bottles. It’s going to be a hot day, with the highs in the 90’s. There is a water stop at mile 18. After cruising on some of LA’s finest inner-city dirt, we’ll drop down Topanga Canyon and meet our friends at 11am at the Reel Inn on the PCH, eat tacos, drink a margarita or two and then ride back to the east side via Santa Monica Blvd. This is a no-drop ride. There is a lot of climbing, so be prepared.

Ride your cross or road bike! If you’d like to load this route in your GPS, here’s my Strava file and if you’ve never ridden Dirt Mulholland, check out some photos from our Getting Dirty post!