Bike Forums - Pics from 2016

2016 was full of memories for me. In March I participated in my first bikepacking event and we got caught in a sleet blizzard before we got to our destination but we carried on. I did various gravel rides throughout the year and I also participated in RAGBRAI for the first time with Team Pez. My 17 year old son who has nothing to do with biking wanted to ride one leg of RAGBRAI with me. So I threw some platforms on my Mountain bike and he rode that bike (Soma Bside) while I rode my gravel grinder (Vassago). He is the punk in the blue underarmor shirt lol. In October I hosted a gravel bikepacking event in SW Iowa that I named the "Pony Creek" event and we had an awesome ride to our destination. 2016 was also full of some lows. One of my biking friends who is also a member of Team Pez had his colon cancer come back at the end of 2015. A couple months before RAGBRAI our team founder and leader announced that his wife had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. This was hard for all of us. My mother had been fighting cancer since Febuary of 2009 and my mother in law fought brain cancer since 2009 and she finally succumbed to the disease in 2014. After the announcement of our team leaders news, one of my best friends father died from leukemia. 3 weeks later my mom finally died about a month before the big ride. Needless to say it has been a rough year for a lot of us. In December we went to Colorado for a skiing trip with some good friends and we took our bikes. I managed to get an afternoon ride around Leadville on 2 feet of snow for almost 12 miles and got some beautiful pics!

So I haven't been riding much lately and I should have my skinny ass out riding instead of posting so much on these stupid forums but as I sit here today weathering out an oncoming ice storm and relaxing I feel compelled to post on some of my forums. I thought I would share some of my favorite photos from 2016. I hope you enjoy my photography as I am no pro lol!