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Summer 2009 Continental Calling
On the wall of our office in Portland hangs a map of North America. Four feet wide and three feet tall, it’s covered with dots, lines, photos and notes. For the past thirty-days, this has been a daily focus; how can the Rapha Continental cover and ride as many ‘epic’ rides in the parts of the countries we haven’t been able to ride the first two years of our endeavor?
Beginning the last week in December hundreds of friends, partners and customers answered the ‘Continental Calling’ plea to help us find the roads and regions to help make our story more complete. Thank you. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your point-of-view, we had far more rides of great character than we were able to cover. Amazing rides like Maui’s ‘Road to Hana’, or the entire length of the Blue Ridge Parkway from Ashville to Washington D.C. had to be put into a “rides we must do someday” pile. Countless others sounded equally remarkable, but were too close or too similar to rides that our riders have ridden already.
After a first edit against the map, we began calling our prospective ride hosts around the country. We vetted road surfaces and closures, total distances, loops versus out-and-backs, accommodations, likely seasonal weather conditions, elevation gains, calendar dates and coffee shops.
We now have a schedule of 25 rides covering many of the regions that are neglected up to now. We plan to ride, map, and share the tales of towns like St. Francisville, LA; Muse, OK; Nashville, TN; Asheville, NC; Dahlonega, GA; Mathias, WV; State College, PA; Traverse, MI; Steamboat Springs, CO; Chilne, AZ; and Missoula, MT to name a few.
Beginning May 1st, we invite you to follow our team of Rapha Continental riders and local hosts here all summer with a daily report from the road. You can expect accounts throughout the season to come to life through photography, stories, maps, product insights, interviews and video.
- See the hosts and ride descriptions: here
- See the day to day Road Journal: here
