A dirty little bike touring blog. Mostly about bikepacking and rigid single speeds. By Montana Miller
The road is one of those impossibly steep ones, the kind where you'd shift a car into first gear to try to creep down, but it's still too steep so the by the time you're at the bottom the brake warbles and smells like shoes that were supposed to be drying by the campfire, but … Continue reading Auckland to Coromandal
This is the Big Boy. I like her very much. So first, why- in the last year I've been real taken with skateboarding. I couldn't imagine taking a winter off the board, but I still wanted to go bike touring. So I just needed to figure out a way to carry my skateboard on the … Continue reading The Big Boy
We've just crossed the Alabama Florida line, and the 15th and 16th dogs that day run out of their yard to chase me, and I snap. "Arff arff arff arff arff!" they yell. “Fuck you fuck you fuck you!” I yell, and boot the closest dog in the head. Four really good, solid kicks, excellent … Continue reading Florida and Mississippi
We're in a Mexican restaurant that's playing twangy country music. New Year's Eve. It was a long day, not much above freezing and heavy rain and we had no choice but to ride 60 miles to get here, Ozark, Alabama, because it was the closest place with a motel. I look over the available beers- … Continue reading Alabama
“I think I left your water bottle in the mini van, let me grab it,” Colleen says. It looks like someone filled the bottle with beer. She unscrews the top. Scrunches up her nose. “This is full.” She pauses and makes another face. Kinda the face you'd make if you'd just sniffed 24 ounces of … Continue reading Mystery Pee (and we’re riding cross country)
“Now, we enter the Plains of Despair!” I say. We’ve left the mountains and are have to cross about a hundred miles of very flat farm country before Christchurch. “I really wish you would stop calling it the Plains of Despair,” Colleen says. “Los Llanos de Triste.” “God,” Colleen grunts. “You’re depressing me.” “But I … Continue reading To Christchurch
We ride into Dunedin on a sunny afternoon, then a cold rain moves in. We pay to camp at a hostel, which is a nice option sometimes— sleep in the yard instead of in a smelly, snore filled dorm, hang out in the house if it’s raining. And at the rate we drink coffee, it … Continue reading Dunedin to Mt. Cook
