I credit Jay Petervary with these two mantras of bikepacking. Do the work applies to the big picture as much as the immediate details. There are a million places to cut corners in a trip, a good example is a sloppy tent pitch, picking a less than ideal spot, not maintaining tension, not guying out the tent or skipping the fly. Sure, you can get away with it, but the tent flaps in the slightest breeze, you are uncomfortable, or worse severe weather comes up during the night and your sleep is majorly interrupted or worse your shelter is damaged. Do the work, take care of the details, don’t cut corners.

No matter how slow progress is, it is forward progress. At the end of the day it is amazing what you can accomplish by bike. Keep moving forward and there you are. On my own, I ride until I feel like I am no longer making forward progress. Then it is time to call it a day, enjoy where I am, reflect on where I passed through, and tomorrow will be another day.

Looking at the overall mileage statistics 2025 was a big year for me. If I inspected the details there was even more to 2025. But it can’t be all addition, there were trade offs. It is easy to describe them as sacrifices, but that sounds negative to my ear. In my mind looking back there were very few negatives, regrets, or sacrifices. But something has to give, choices are made.

What were the goals for 2025? Ride more? Well that was measurable, 5,000ish miles, vs 1,500-4,000 miles a year for the past 5 years. But that is a pretty non-specific goal. Because the terrain is so variable, elevation tracks mileage, and similarly time track mileage, and speed hasn’t really been a goal. Road rides with Jeremy Holdway really contributed to mileage, time, elevation and fitness. And fun! Road riding is social. I don’t know how we had so much to talk about. We had a pretty consistent Monday ride with big ambitions and a great meal as a reward. 

Filling in the map? Where there more trips to novel places? I feel like that has fallen off a bit from its peak, but I haven’t tracked it closely. It is more of a feeling. I didn’t have a new “project” this year, like Highroads, or Bikefishing, or Abandoned Rail Road Grades. And those “projects” will never be complete. The latest project is Trucks and Bikes, collaborating with overlanders. Collaboration with other groups is a long term strategy to amplify our voice for conservation for recreation. #bikepackingisoverlandingforbikenerds A project that is just picking up now is a focus on the Stillwater Range’s Numunaa Nobe National Conservation Area. This is a focus that will continue into 2026. A second NCA was created at the north end of the Wassuk Range, Pistone-Black Mountain NCA that has me curious too.   

Writing? I think 2025 has been a good year for writing because I found weakness in my blogging, getting stuck behind a particularly big project. That project was writing up my trip to Taiwan. I had a 10 day bike tour leading up to the tradeshow and I wasn’t sure how to write it up. So it sat. My notebook of daily reflections stayed closed. Because I wanted my blog to be chronological my trip write ups backed up and I felt squashed under a mountain of assignments. At the same time I kept my newsletter on schedule and Instagram/Facebook updates were always within 24/48 hours of a trip. Keep in mind this is all just totally self imposed. Think, Do the work, write forward.

Non-profit volunteering/ trip collaborating? My work with Friends of Black Rock High Rock continues as I serve on the board as the Vice-President and chair of the Programming Committee. The dynamics of the organization has shifted as the board has shifted from an advisory board to a working board. We lost our Executive Director and federal funding while we are still managing several grants and carrying out programming, stewardship, and outreach. The band marched on.

The work with Bikepacking Roots has grown. My role as a Community and Route Steward has grown to include Advocacy. These three pillars connect the local bikepacking scene to the national efforts to support off road bicycle touring. When looking at the Great Basin bikepacking community we have fantastic neighbors in all directions. In particular our Idaho, California and Arizona neighbors are supporting a great community.

I have expanded my participation with Wildwood Open Lands Foundation mainly because it is a fun way to pursue the values of sustainable adventure travel. We did two big trips this year bringing bikes and trucks together. We premiered our movie about our Massacre Rim-Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge Expedition at the Nevada Off-road Association’s annual summit in Elko which was a fun event for WOLF to rally around. 

Travel in 2025 was almost excessive. I made 3 cross-Pacific trips, Hawaii, Taiwan, and Japan. There was also a great summer road trip. We went to Lamoille Canyon for two weeks, Stillwater, MT for another two, then a return home via Long Beach, WA (Astoria, OR for reference).

Year in Rearview, from the bike saddle

One nice thing about my newsletter is I have a monthly summary of trips and things to reference. Otherwise I can scroll through my STRAVA, Ride with GPS, Instagram, Google Photos and blog to put it all back together. 

• West Humboldt Caves* (DA)
• Middlegate Madness* (DA)
• Little Tonopah Getaway* (s)
• Mojave Butterfly* (DA)
• Snowpacking Dog Valley* (B)
• Made Ride in Taiwan Bike Tour*
• Benton Gravel*
• Gravel Rides with Nick Jensen*
• Sheldon-Massacre Expedition with WOLF*
• Desert Creek-Lobdell Lake-Mt Patterson* (B)
• High Rock Canyon* (RwF)
• Augusta Mtns* (s)
• Perseids Campout* (B)
• Burning Man* (s)
• Ely Gravel Roundup*(s)
• Great Basin’s Edge (DA)
• Sheldon Loop (s)
• Jackson Mtns (s)
• Micro-Playas (B)
• Stillwater Range (s, DA)

Key: s-solo, DA-Doug Artman, B-BurritoPackingNV, RwF- Rides with Friends, *- write-up linked. 

These highlights include 20 big trips, from day trips to week+ in length. Most of the trips I have linked to their write-ups a few are still in the works.

Year in Revise, re-write, and post

It has been another year of the newsletter on Substack and that has been very rewarding. The platform has exposed Bikepacking Northern Nevada to a broader audience and kept one aspect of my writing on a “strict” or less irregular schedule. Daily writing, though not publishing, is still a goal. If you are not familiar with the newsletter, I try to include an essay on a general topic that inspires my adventure travel, then a month’s recap, and a multi-month look ahead. The goals for the newsletter are outlined in The Pitch.

I need to get back to regular publishing here on the blog. A blog post every 1-2 weeks seems appropriate. Along with that is reading within “my community” of bloggers. Once I hit publish I tend tend to reward myself with a session or two of reading the blogs in my follow feed. I need to find a better reading schedule than habitat stacking publishing and reading. If this sounds like a bit from James Clear’s, Atomic Habits, it is. I have listened to it on Audible. My Audible library could be sorted into bikes, adventures, environment, self-help, and fiction, more-or-less in that order.

Looking at the blog’s stats, and I always do whether that is important or not, there was incredible growth for the first 5 years, and a leveling out over the next 5 years. My top 5 reads for 2025: Ragged Top Road and Emigrant Trail, Middlegate Madness Overnight, How to carry water in the desert, Bikefishing in the Desert, and Mt Shasta Loop. There might be some keywords in the titles that lend to the popularity of these titles such as emigrant, bikefishing, and Mt Shasta, but otherwise it is a mystery how these posts are so popular. I am under the impression that reviews and how-to’s are popular blog formats but I haven’t really dove into that style. I try to include a little of it in each trip write-up. My favorites from this year include Middlegate Madness, Mojave Butterfly, and Augusta Mtns – Riding into Deep Time. And My Tonopah Getaway. It really is hard to pick a favorite.

One shift in my write-ups is including the Ride with GPS maps and links rather than my hand plotted On-Route! Maps on Google Maps. This seems to be what people want and it is easier to share. Maybe I should enhance my presence in RwGPS by adding more details to my routes and rides there.

Looking Ahead into 2026 – Keep Moving Forward; more riding and writing

More, more, more! Or at least just as much and keep it fresh, balanced, fun! When I think of the projects I have started, such as riding the abandoned railroad grades, highroads arbitrarily set at above 9000’, bikefishing, bikerafting and so on, it’s not like I have exhausted any one of these projects. So I need to revisit them. If I were to look at the inspiration I write about it is overwhelmingly coming from books and museums. So, I could spend more time with those two sources. This year I was given a stack of past Nevada Historical Society Quarterlies. I got so much out of reading them that it is time to become a member.

I feel like there is balance within the types of riding I do. I keep saying I need to have coffee outside more often. Why have coffee-in-the-kitchen when you can have coffee-on-trail? My friend KC has his coffee in the desert, and brings a camp chair and a book. Sometimes he cooks up a yummy breakfast. I’m inspired, be more like KC!

Getting back to pouring over maps ensures finding that next long day ride. When I open the Route Planner in Ride with GPS I can turn on my heatmaps or the global heatmaps to find the road-not-taken. And then there is reviewing rides-past where I left a little out-n-back GPS tag to say, “look where this road goes,” come back to it! One area in mind is the Bodie Hills. That area made such an impression on me when Doug and I toured through there in October.

Finally there are the longer tours and international trips. Right now I am a month out from flying down to Rio de Janeiro in order to bike to Brasilia, via a primarily dirt road route. As a bit of a follow up to last year’s Ride in Taiwan I am super excited and already thinking about where else in the world I want to go. Doug A and I have had a couple of longer trips in October but we are setting off next week for a 400 mile tour of Death Valley. With the right planning we can spread our longer trips throughout the year.

I have had some really good chats with Patrick Smith (Is Peavine Dry?) over the last year. We talked about my goals for Bikepacking NV. I think we came up with inspiration, entertainment, and accuracy. But one thing he reminded me with respect to these community oriented passion projects, everything you add takes away from the one thing you really want more of, for me that is time on the bike. I hope to see you out there!