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 ...

  It forms out ahead of me as I pass between low green walls of soybeans, the rain. I try to convince myself that the grey haze marching toward me is the sweat smeared on my glasses or maybe fog, but I know better. Up ahead on the left side of the road at a break between bean fields I see a small house with an open carport. I struggle to rise from the saddle and pedal harder to reach the carport before I am smacked in the face by the frog strangler fast approaching. I carry no raingear, since wearing it while vigorously riding a bicycle in Mississippi’s September would be like doing aerobics while wearing a thick black trash bag. What will I reach first? The line of rain? The house? The line of rain? A few big drops splat on my forearms and thighs as I come even with the driveway. I turn hard left onto the gravel, dismount and lean my bike against the faded aluminum siding of the house just as the noise of the rain beating down crescendos. Photo: Jason Shearer I cautiously knock on...