“Be like a rocky promontory against which the restless surf continually pounds; it stands fast while the churning sea is lulled to sleep at its feet. I hear you say, "How unlucky that this should happen to me!" Not at all! Say instead, "How lucky that I am not broken by what has happened and am not afraid of what is about to happen. The same blow might have struck anyone, but not many would have absorbed it without capitulation or complaint."   -Marcus Aurelius,  Meditations I rolled out of the Dogwood Motel an hour later than I had intended and was rewarded for my sloth by arriving at Walmart just a few minutes before it opened at 7 a.m. I resupplied water and snacks and bought reading glasses that I slid down in the camelback pocket next to the sunglasses that hadn’t come out since Day 3. I continued riding north out of town past the signs advertising various productions of Ozark folk music. I knew from having ridden this part of the course in the other dire...

I've wanted to do Gran Gravel since my friend José Bermúdez won the first iteration a few years ago. The event is a 500-mile lap around east Texas, mostly on dirt and gravel, starting and ending in Bryan, Texas, my old stompin' grounds. "I just don't have the right kind of bike," I used to think, since all the photos I had seen showed everyone on mountain bikes capable of running big tires. This year I decided that the best bike in the world for me is the bike I have right now (2016 aluminum Salsa Warbird). I now live in Hewitt, an hour and a half away from College Station. I made some weekend trips over to ride parts of the course and realized that my bike would be a great choice over much of the course. The race being cancelled didn't matter that much to me, even if I had to do an individual time trial. I figured the safest place in the world from the corona virus at that point would be behind the Pine Curtain in East Texas and I suspected this would be the ...