The Idiot Epic

Over the last several months I have become more and more interested in exploring untouched and unknown areas of the north Georgia Mountains. The history of my family is joined to the history of those hills; I can almost hear voices calling me home. I don’t know exactly what I am searching for but I will know when I find it.

My ulterior motive for going on another wild and wooly epic was to scout possible routes for the upcoming event I hope to host. I also wanted to learn more about multi day mountain biking without outside support. Mountain- bike- backpacking, if you will.

I planned to take this two-day journey alone, however I was happy to find that my buddy Joe’s weekend plans fell through. He was up for the adventure even though he had little idea what was in store for us. Joe is a good partner for insane adventures like this. He was in the army, which is perhaps the world’s best organization at inflicting seemingly useless suffering upon its members. He thrives on being an individual and takes any path that leads away from conformity. He is part wacko and part warrior. He is stronger and faster than I am and I am jealous. I will never be that fast or strong .He is also kind enough to wait for me at the top of each hill. I was lucky to find someone crazy enough to join me on a trip like this. This was not going to be your average ride. This was beyond epic; this was idiot epic.

Sometime after midnight before the morning we left I scratched out our route on a sheet of paper to leave for my wife. She was going out of town so I gave her instructions to call out the rescue party if she had not heard from me by dark-thirty on Sunday. In my mind it was just an academic exercise. Journeys like this are a living thing that evolve and become what they were predestined to be. If the mountains call me in a different direction I have to follow the voices. So, I left the itinerary knowing it was little more than a “serving suggestion.”

Joe and I arrived at our starting point around eight a.m. and began to unload our gear. We both were riding rigid single speeds with 34x18 gearing. No big deal except for what we had lashed to our backs. Joe had a backpack full of gear weighing near thirty pounds. I had over twenty pounds on my back plus a sleeping bag and jungle hammock strapped to the rear rack on my bike. The fact that we both had lightweight titanium bikes was more or less a mute point. Off we went to explore what the mountains had to offer as much as what we had to give.

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