My van is built and ready to rock for 2020.
It has been a spectacular year, mountain biking the best trails in the world and bringing you along with me on YouTube.
It was also a tough year, as I lost two of my close family members. I was able to pull through and continue to create because I had my people in the comments to rely on and fire me up.
I started my channel in April 2016 and by August of that year I quit my day job to pursue this full time. It’s been 3 years of full on adventure, and I couldn’t have done it without you.
I’ve pulled out some of the highlights from the year that you may have missed, come along with me for the ride.
JANUARY
The year started with an absolute dream ride with my buddy Alexander from the Singletrack Sampler on Hangover trail.
When I watched Nate Hills ride this trail on YouTube I was flabbergasted at how good it looked and, more importantly, how good it sounded. That video showed me it was possible to create WATCHABLE mountain bike videos on YouTube with a GoPro.
Fast forward a couple years and I’m finally to riding the trail that sparked this whole thing. It was so intense! The GoPro and gimbal may enable you to make a living on YouTube, but it never prepares you for how gnarly a trail will be in REAL LIFE. It was straight down step. So scary.
I also debuted my Wheels Down: Austin, Texas video in January. This was a video I had shot in December as an experiment to see if a more highly produced, travel-focused video would hit with my YouTube following.
I was really stoked with the way the video came together and turned out. I actually met my partner on the project, Alex Witkowicz, on the Tibet trip in 2018.
He is a real deal cinematographer with tons of credits. We were both chatting about what our dream project would be and thought that an MTB travelogue would be such a cool thing to try.
The finished project was pretty damn cool. My audience enjoyed it, but it wasn’t a breakout hit. And holy hell, it took a lot of work to pull off and had to go through a lot of hands.
In the end, I didn’t think it would be feasible to keep doing videos that require so many days to shoot and so many people to be involved. But this idea is NOT dead. I will revisit it again down the road and will hopefully be able to pull it off with a skeleton crew.
FEBRUARY
The first international trip of the year was in New Zealand with a crew of BKXC fans. I put the word out on my Patreon page that I would be going to NZ and needed a few friends to come with me. Phil and Jamie from New Zealand Mountain Biking put together an amazing itinerary on the North Island.
I ended up getting sick, which is the WORST on an international trip that you’ve been looking forward to for a year. But I was pretty grateful it was ME getting sick and not someone who had spent a lot of money and vacation time to have their vacation ruined.
I was able to get plenty of videos from the trip, so it didn’t hurt too bad! I really want to get back to Rotorua and ride ALL of the trails in the Whakarewarewa Forest.
On February 9th I became an uncle! It’s pretty damn fun to play with my niece and to see how far she’s already grown and developed. We’ll get her on a bike soon enough.
I’m planning on spending a lot of time in the van in 2020, so I hope she still recognizes me when I make it back home.
When it’s winter, you’ve gotta head south and I finally made it to the much-hyped mountain bike trails of Florida.
I had always been adamant that you can’t have mountain biking without mountains. But I knew that the Florida flat-landers had some kind of ace up their sleeve, because it was a continuously recommended destination.
These trails blew my expectations out of the water. Alafia was rad. Santos was bad ass. Everything was so good. You DON’T need a ton of elevation to make great trails, but DO you need a lot of ingenuity and artistry! These folks in Florida are making the most of what they’ve got and it should be a lesson to the rest of the mountain bike world.
As much as I loved the riding, the people are always what make these trips memorable. Joe “Mr. Tonka” was a GREAT host and I got to meet so many cool people from his crew along they way. I’ll be back!
MARCH
It wasn’t long before Alexander and I got back together for another road trip series. This time I wanted to show him what California had to offer. It was still a bit wet and rainy, and some of the best riding was snowed in, but we still had a GRAND OLE TIME.
It was great to show him most of my local riding spots and even discover a few local spots even I hadn’t done.
This trip also saw the retirement of my Orbea Rallon and the rise of the Ibis Ripmo. Ibis lent me this bike to ride and I’ve dug it from day one.
APRIL
With the BC Bike Race looming on the horizon I had to put away the Ripmo and get some miles on my BMC Agonist XC race bike.
BMC lent me this bike and gave me financial support for my XC races.
My first challenge was the three-day XC race Moab Rocks. I did OK. My fitness wasn’t great, but my descending on this bike was PRIMO. It was basically a preview of what would happen in the BC Bike Race: absolutely tear through the descents, but lose all my gains on the flats and climbs.
But even though my fitness may have been subpar, my body held up really well with doing three days straight of INTENSE mileage.
MAY
In May I started a more formal relationship with Ibis, doing a sponsored video that showed off their new Ripley — but more importantly showed off the Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz and how that group makes an impact by building and maintaining trails. Ibis regularly donates bikes to MBOSC to be raffled off to raise funds.
And then I headed to the Czech Republic. People loved these videos and I was blown away by the response. I think they had the perfect blend of riding and culture and novelty factory that blended all together.
SR Suntour sponsored this trip and I brought the Rallon out of retirement to shred the Czech trails.
Jan from Czech MTB Holidays put together a great week of riding in a pretty much unknown (to me) destination. It’s amazing that there are still amazing trails out there hiding in plain site. Finding them and showing them off to my audience is one of the best parts of doing this.
JUNE
I lost my grandfather in June, which was a tough one, but he lived a long life and had a huge impact on his world. At this point my Uncle Dennis, who got me into mountain biking, had been sick for a couple years. The last time I saw Dennis was at my grandfather’s memorial service.
The show must go on and I headed to Japan for the first time. What a strange and amazing place it is.
Matt from League of Trail reached out on a bit of short notice, but I jumped at the chance to pack my bags and experience something so exotic.
I had been to Asia previously, in China-controlled Tibet, and the best way to compare it with Japan begins and ends with toilets. In China most toilets are a hole in the ground. In Japan the toilets are highly advanced robots that spray a joyful stream of cleansing water anywhere you need cleansing. Need I say more?
The dirt was amazing in Japan. The 7-11s were pretty good. It was an adventure I’ll never forget. CHOMBO!
JULY
I got back home from Japan and got to work with my dad in the Nuggetorium. I had a few ideas for upgrades and BKXC Sr. brought them to life. It’s really quite amazing to have a bike workshop that is so versatile. It’s one of those things I dreamed about, but didn’t think would actually happen.
AUGUST
And now for the main event! It’s hard to convey what kind of mythical status the BC Bike Race has. I think it might have been the first mountain bike “thing” I ever heard of, if that makes sense.
It’s a big deal, and I always wanted to do it, but I was always scared I wouldn’t survive.
But holy hell, I didn’t just survive, I thrived and did pretty decent for myself. I was right around 200th place out of about 600 riders.
The trails were awesome. The struggle was real. Nothing could ever beat that experience, so I decided it would be my last cross-country mountain bike race. I’m full enduro now, bro.
After BC Bike Race I was planning on staying on Vancouver Island to recuperate and make some videos with Nick from Island Bike Life. But my uncle Dennis took a turn for the worse and I headed home.
Uncle Dennis died on July 23. I made my “Why I Ride” video the next day.
It’s only been a few months since he’s been gone and I still think about him a lot. I hope I never stop thinking about him.
I was already contemplating staying in the USA for 2020, but once Dennis died I said “fuck it” and bought the van. It’s something he would have loved to do.
This thing is a mean machine and it’s going to help me tell so many great stories next year. “Ya better believe it!”
SEPTEMBER
It wasn’t hard to get back on the road and back to work, because I had the YouTuber Enduro World Series 100 ahead of me. I had always dreamed of doing the “fanboy” version of the EWS Whistler course, and the EWS100 allows scrubs like me to do it.
It was a dream come true. What made it even better was competing against a bunch of my YouTuber buddies. I took third in our group and felt pretty good about it.
My skills have come a long way, and to be able to ride hard without a ton of fear was a huge win for me.
After the EWS it was a mad dash of travel. I headed to Mendocino to do another sponsored video with Ibis, showing off their “singletrack summer camp” Ibis Migration.
Then it was off to New York State for the first time for a sponsored trip to the Adirondacks. What a cool place. The trails were SWEET, but the PEOPLE I met were really great. They are a tight-knit community making things happen.
If every MTB community had this much passion for volunteering and making things happen we would be in heaven.
If I’m within driving distance of Sentiers du Moulin in Quebec then I’m going to find a way to get there and ride those trails! It’s my favorite trail center in the world and it’s always a good time.
Lucky for me the UCI World Cup Downhill was in town, so I got to meet Ben Cathro and ride with him for the first time. The next day I got a sneak preview of some new trails that will be open in 2020. Slab City is going to rock the MTB world.
OCTOBER
We had a family vacation in Maui where I was able to rest and relax a little bit. But of course I had to sneak out and get a ride in with my brother. We went to the top of Haleakala and it was pretty damn cool. Those loose lava rocks made for quite a silly descent.
And then something completely different! The Mare Island Brewing Company put on their first-ever Pedalfest and created an urbancross course for fun and serious competition.
I had a few kids from Benicia High School invite me to do the 4-man relay. We did pretty damn good, but next year we’ll do better!
It was the most interesting, silly and cool thing I did the whole year. I hope they keep doing it and grow it into something even bigger!
NOVEMBER
Here we go again. I got myself into another BasqueMTB High Pyrenees trip and it’s hard to even explain how hardcore these “holidays” are.
Hours and hours, day after day of really tough trails, amazing food and more tough trails. There is not much downtime. You ride and ride and ride some more. No one goes home thinking they got shortchanged, everyone goes home a little sore.
The BasqueMTB trip in the north was just the beginning, as I spent the next month road tripping with Andrew from McTrail Rider.
It was a blast and a blur. Day after day we met new people and shredded new trails. Spain has SO MUCH TO OFFER, it’s overwhelming. There’s so much more Spanish gold to be unearthed, I’ll be back — eventually.
DECEMBER
I got back home for the holidays and had a bit of recovery before I headed out on the road to get my van built out.
I chose Wayfarer Vans plug and play camper kit, which means I had to drive out to Colorado Springs for the install. I was completely scared that I would be stuck in the snow. I’m not a fan of driving in the snow.
Thankfully it was all smooth sailing with the driving and the build out.
The van is ready to rock and hit the trails in 2020. I hope I see you there.