The immediacy with which my Race Around Rwanda ended was abrupt and fortuitous. See, during the race my flight home was pushed back by nearly one week. So upon finishing the race, I had a very unpleasant three hour window of talking to four different airlines trying to expedite my trip home. Rwanda was lovely, everything about it went remarkably smoothly, but after crossing that finish line I was in the mood to return home to my family. After being assured that this was not possible by the first three airlines, I was booked on a speedy flight home the next day. Twenty six traveling hours later, voila, home sweet home!

Laura had just single-parented for eight days. I doff my hat to any single parents out there. That is just such an incredible feat that you deserve an award daily. So home, sweet home, I was excitedly reunited with my wife and kids where winter was in full full force. Here I am now in late February and I don’t think we’ve had a day over 30 degrees since early December. Not ideal for the cyclists in the audience, the skiing and winter recreating has been out of this world! I skied with the kids, sledded a handful of times, heck Hazel loves just riding the tube being pulled up and down the driveway. Laura and I went out of my belated birthday dinner, and then this cycling thing being a business, it was time to double down on production.

With many hours of raw footage captured, it was time to do something with it and that’s where the following video was hatched. It’s an absurd undertaking to shoot a bike race while trying to do your best in it. But like a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it, what’s the point if I don’t cull it down to a formal video. And THAT’S where the real work comes into play. The point being, video editors, your artists. I’m just a hack.

I also had the pleasure of writing for Dotwatcher.cc and Bikepacking.com. A hopeful believer that in an age of AI and the abundance of audio… everything, the written word is not dead.Those articles can be found here and here, respectively.

And speaking of audio, my wife, our friend Stu, and I host the Gravel Kings podcast. Head on over and please give that a “subscribe” and “favorite” and “5 star rating”. And while you’re there, you can give that two-parter a listen(s). Moreover, this being 2025, people consume their podcasts in all sorts of ways, so I turned that into a video podcast, as seen here:

And then if all that wasn’t enough, in an effort to cross-pollinate, we turned that two episode podcast into a single podcast on the longer-running King of the Ride.

So that’s a post Rwanda wrap! The “real” gravel season kicks off shortly with MidSouth just around the corner. Hope to see you at the races.