Handmade Bikes, Sloppy Gravel, & The Best Flow Trails!

a really cool handmade bicycle show some rip and mountain bike trails super smooth and fast good food good drinks and a sloppy but fun gravel ride with new and old friends that was an arbor over last weekend started off on Friday we went out for a bike ride going around akan Dylan came up from Columbus and we went to one of his favorite restaurants in town before hitting some of the gnarly climbs around akan a little bit of industrial gravel and all that kind of stuff the goal was to get on the road fairly early on Saturday morning up to an arbor of course stopped with a cup of coffee before we hit the road uh over at asteris in kyogo Falls and then we were on the way so I'd been messaging Dylan about something else and I told him how I was trying to swing the an arbor handmade bike show he was like I'd be into that there's some good trails around there Aaron was like long as we do it towards Monday I can do that weekend as well and then Ben was able to get his shift covered at Dirty River Bicycle Works and us too so ended up getting an Airbnb for Saturday night and Sunday night so yeah we drove out we got some lunch right outside of an arbor on our way to the DTE Trails I had never been to them but uh Dylan had and he thought they would be something that the rest of us would really enjoy and he was saying how you could even ride these things on a typical gravel bike and he was definitely right these were probably like the smoothest surfaced mountain bike trails I've been on anywhere outside of uh the air quote mountain bike Trails I rode in Tallahassee Florida but these Trails were so much fun this is my kind of riding um I love to just be able to blast around on Trails like this you could probably ride most of these Trails on as Nero tires as you wanted I mean I would say 38s as you can see there are some features but most of them have either a bypass or you would be you would have enough awareness to be able to if you wanted to slow down and walk over them you could but the majority of them you can ride around uh the features that you didn't want to hit don't think that stopped us from getting some of the typical comments though right when we're starting off Ben got a comment about riding full rigid out here which man is ridiculous this is totally full rigid friendly like I said this is drop our normal gravel bike friendly and in 95% of it also when stopping to rest at one of the top Hills we got mansplained uh which brakes we should use and how to flow through Rock Gardens so here you could see one of the bypasses a lot of features have been toally if knew what they were going look like I'm anyone M you come up to that looks like a pile of rocks and you don't know what's going to be on the other side of it so doing these Trails a couple more times would be really cool cuz then you'd be like okay I can't actually hit that and we did session a couple SE sections of the trail where we you know saw them spotted them and then tried them again especially Dylan cuz he could hit some of the more advanced stuff that uh the rest of us probably wouldn't be comfortable hitting anyways no matter for me personally no matter how many times I did it I am impressed though like this Trail these trails are really well designed and like the little humps that you could get some air on uh I'm getting better at that I'm never going to be someone who's sending it down those crazy trails with ski lifts and Enduro stuff but I am getting a little more comfortable especially with the Gunner and the sweet bars at like you know at least doing a little hop off the ground that section there we realized we had turned the wrong way and we had come out too early and so we had missed a ton of the trails we realized we could take a gravel road and then we could take this little access road to get back on the trails we had to backtrack a little bit um I think we ended up I think there's there's 20 some miles of Trail so I think we ended up more with like a 25 mile day trying to hit all the trails cuz we did backtrack a bit here's like some of the stuff like that little drop would be a little too much for me some of the features also like here you could see not really features but this was you know GoPro never shows it but fairly Steep and banked but I still feel like a beginner could ride this just by tapping on your brakes a little bit it wouldn't be that bad I just really do feel like these are very friendly Trails but also you know you could literally literally pedal really fast and get a lot of speed and just have a lot of fun it's also always fun riding with someone much better than you to get to see how things are supposed to be done whether you're willing to try them yourself or not like that would be too much for me it's not my style and same with this you know where but again you could see there's clear bypasses if you don't want to hit the drops and all that kind of thing these trails are really only about 3 hours from us and I would definitely go back and ride them again if I was heading out that way or just even making another special trip to do it so yeah you can see even though the elevation is not crazy for mountain biking you can see there's a lot of sections here where you could really get up some speed uh reminds me a bit of eim around here uh minus the more like rock garden you can't skip but yeah it's still just a great day out like lots of trails lots of fun after the trails we went and checked into our Airbnb we were hoping to be able to do some riding but it was kind of spotty drizzle and all that stuff so we just decided to drive out to dinner and wander around a bit um got some snacks and all that kind of stuff it did rain pretty good overnight but by the time we got up in the morning it was mostly just a light drizzle it drizzled on and off but it was never enough to really soak us through or to worry about too much so of course we hopped on our bikes and rode into town I I ban be must have been I don't know a mile and a half 2 miles outside of downtown at the most so great bike infrastructure in ant Arbor everywhere even in spots where they seemingly don't have room for bike bike Lanes they kind of Mark them off and I just really like that I know there's some people who have that belief that paint doesn't do anything give me a little bit of paint over nothing I really appreciate it because it does cars do have an awareness then that it is shared there is space for bikes this is the rules really cool in downtown an arbor 2 they kind of to close off a number of the streets going in One Direction the bars and restaurants patios then spill out onto the streets uh when we got our coffee before leaving ant Arbor on Monday morning we realize that's a weekend thing and a lot of the barriers come down so the city could function more as normal but it's still um very friendly with bump outs and stuff like that this is in a arcade in an arbor and the coffee shop was in there really really cool space really really good coffee had some croissants there wasn't anything vegan there so we have actually headed over to a second spot that's coffee shop in the morning more of a bar in the evening that was right next to the bike shop where the ride was going to be started in the bike show was going to be it was cool cuz when we walked into the second coffee shop here I ran into a friend who came out for the channel Meetup and also he was with Eva from Liberation Fab you might have seen her stuff she's been featured on the r RAB vist and uh pathless peddled and a number of other uh Outlets so yeah everyone was assembling kind of waiting the drizzle a little bit it did pick up when we got to the bike shop but again nothing too bad Ann Arbor man this bike path right out of town and it looks like these are kind of some artificially built like Rapids for kaying really cool you hit a couple dams over the river really really beautiful and then it's not long before you are out of town you know just a few miles you are out of town and onto just really pretty country gravel roads the ride I thought was going to just be like a 10 mile social ride around town or something like that kind of like a bike party critical mass type thing but it was actually more of a proper gravel ride so it was really really cool um and everyone did it as more of a me a weight up ride so even though some people were kind of hitting the hills and hitting descents when we got to certain intersections everyone just decided as a group collectively to kind of keep it mostly together it wasn't necessary you know they sent the GPX files and it was kind of ride at your own pace thing but kind of made it fun to get a ride with everyone when you do that also the an arbor half Merit was going on so on this stretch of road it was uh little strange to you know everyone was running and telling everyone good job and we're really respectful you could see we had to go through a water stop here but everyone was really careful to stay out of the way of the runners as much as you know we should I had some great conversations out on the road talking to some an arbor locals who I had never met before and just about the area and about different bike rides but then also some people I had met you know at Higher Ground hundo nutmeg hodeg last year so really cool when you start doing more and more of these kind of alt cycling events you just get to know more people right there I was riding with a Bag Maker who was also going to be exhibiting at the bike show later Aaron and I were a little annoyed with ourselves because some of the gravel we hit was pretty sloppy from the rain the night before and we had both we had both brought rear fenders clipon ones and then we didn't put them on our bikes in the morning you it's problem with leaving the uh Airbnb Airbnb before you've had a coffee how many bees did I put in that first air bbbb so really pretty country gravel roads just right outside of town as mentioned and as I said I was talking to some other people from Ann Arbor who were telling me that as you head to the West you could just keep riding gravel roads for just miles and miles and miles some of them were some of them were pretty soft in uh chunky and slippery you actually did have to be a little bit careful um that was I don't know to me even more fun I know some people like is a little too sloppy but hey that's how it goes it's a gravel ride right gravel ride in late spring early summer the other thing is they said you know if you head towards the West you kind of start to get into the Detroit you know Metro region which to me would also be a cool ride and they said a couple people told me that there were good routes to get out to Detroit so I lived in ant Arbor I would definitely see doing a couple overnighters where you rode out to Detroit got some dinner crashed into an Airbnb then rode home I'm someone who really likes Detroit so so great route planning by Jude who I had rode a little bit with at the end of the hodeg country rabble and I think chatted with that nutmeg and maybe maybe even higher ground the first year I did it as well this is the running back to town so a little bit of bike lanes and Roads to get back into an arbor proper when we got back in we stopped at the bike shop had a couple chats talked to that's when I was talking with Frank lugs not drugs he was the one who was hosting the handmade Bike Show and The Bike Shop that was hosting it was sick Transit sick Transit Cycles when we got back to the shop the show was still being set up we decided to set off and get some lunch first uh obviously I think this was what a 30 m gravel ride so pretty hungry after that so after doing the ride and chatting around for a little bit we decided to head out there was a they said it was newish a vegan restaurant called The Filling Station so we went there and man it was delicious if there was vegan and vegetarian food around like this when I was younger I probably would have stayed vegan and vegetarian I'm still vegetarian at home but I'm would never call myself a vegetarian so those are all the dirty bikes from the bike ride but then upstairs at the bike shop is where the handmade show actually took place it was cool it was a little crowded and tight um you know Franken said it was going to be like that which is no big deal was still able to move around and talk to people I didn't do a bunch of interviews or anything like that uh it's not really my style yet but it's my buddy Woody who is roach clips who makes you know valve caps bike accessories zephrine Workshop makes bike caps really really cool stuff uh locally they sell them at Dirty River and then up in Cleveland at Joy machines as well him he's in the upper peninsula handmade bike bags and all that stuff we got a talk while we were out on the road which is pretty cool obviously all the lugs not lug not drug stuff actually picked up a musette bag which I'll show on the channel later in a different video um I'm pretty stoked on it and then the handmade bikes uh 1251 Cycles with more of like the dirt uh Dirt Jump mountain bikes stuff like that there were beautiful bikes from Wake Robin very classically um classic triangle bikes gringle bicycles which I'll talk about again in a second and Liberation had her road bike her gravel bike and her Rando bike which are all super cool I really think the Rando bike is awesome those are the Wake Robin bikes right there one of my goals was to chat with some of the builders about my rally because it needs some work which I did with Eva and I did with Gringo bicycles who is actually a bike shoer owner in Cleveland Ohio Blazing Saddles so I talked to him about replacing the Dropout in my rally uh my derailer hanger has no Integrity anymore and it's integrated so hoping to uh make a plan to get that fixed and we'll also see about the possibility of maybe doing some photos and videos while that happens if he's open to it but anyways excited about that that was one of my goals for the weekend to figure out find a frame Builder to fix my baby I know I didn't mention everyone at the bike show but the bike show was a lot of fun it was fun to hang out chat with people and you know just a really cool cool experience smaller show but that also makes it a lot of fun too cuz then you really get the chance to see everything and chat with everybody so we also had some other friends from akaran and Cleveland who are up there as well so Joy machines guys and stuff like that after of course we went back and got showered and cleaned up and then we went out for a ride for a while before dinner we went out with no plan you know we saw we had in the skate park here and then we were just kind of cruising around the town to see it a little bit more Aaron was a little tired didn't wanted to chill for a while so she hung back and she was just going to walk out and meet us for dinner we went over to University of Michigan to check out the campus a little bit I'd been here before um when we were riding this little Hill in this park outside of Campus Dyan was climbing the hill really hard and he broke his Hub so he had to Pedal really lightly the rest of the way because if he pedal too hard his um the free wheeel wouldn't work so that's it's kind of a bummer look at that I don't know someone who's from Ann Arbor tell me what the weird deal with this neighborhood and all the power lines being full of tennis shoes I haven't seen anything quite like this I mean I've definitely seen a few pairs of shoes hanging from power lines in my life but not on this scale so yeah kind of soft pedaling towards dinner we went to a brewery for dinner the beer was really really good the food was um okay it wasn't bad food but it was definitely off the truck Cisco food that they were trying to charge like way more homemade prices for so uh yeah I don't know to me that's sometimes a little bit of a let down it shows in the Google reviews when I read them after but that's how it goes obviously got to get a photo of a Bridgestone when they're sitting out there so yeah just uh went out for a snack after we rode a little more that evening um stopped for another beer just to sit around and chat and sit outside it was an absolutely beautiful night I had been to Ann Arbor a number of times one was kind of a work trip one time I went up to see a photographer give a lecture I have some friends who live there and my friend Rick his niece lives there so we've gone up a number of times highly recommended just lots to do good coffee good restaurants those DTE Trails I can't recommend High highly enough if you you know for my description if it sounds like it's something that's up your alley to find out more about the stuff that we saw at the show definitely check out lugs not drugs on Instagram and the an arbor made bike show account that'll do it for this video see you in the next one hit that like button peace [Music]

Channel: Tim Fitzwater

Views: 10,560

Keywords: cycling, fitzwater cycles, industrial gravel, bikes, gravel bikes, adventure cycling, Ann Arbor, Lugs not Drugs, Six Transit Cycles, Gringo Cycles, ATB Bikes, flow trails

Id: Xb3H0_flexQ

Length: 15min 43sec (943 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 10 2024