 We're the three best friends that anyone could have. Hello and welcome to episode two of the Huracan, a 300-ish mile bike packing event in Central Florida. On the first day, I made a lot of new friends and learned very quickly that even though there's no mountains here, the pedaling isn't necessarily easy. In this episode, we head into Greenswamp and I get acquainted with the famous sugar sand. We get a little dirty and go off course to check out the murder cabin. Ah-ha-ha-ha. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. So we've been packing up in the dark over here. Brett, how you feeling, buddy? Feel like a million bucks, man. A million bucks. It's nice and cool, but not cold. Yeah, it's a much warmer morning. There's cloud cover, the calling for rain. We'll see what happens. Brett says that you never know in Florida, right? You can get a 10-minute thunderstorm and a day of showers, you can get nothing at all. You can just get clouds all day. You can get a little mist all day. There are people on bikes all over the place. Last night, I couldn't really tell how many of us there were and we're mixed in with probably 40 hikers as well. So this has become a tent city. Thank you hikers for letting us crash your campsite. You're so awesome. It was great. Yeah, have an awesome final day of your trip and a cozy bed tonight. So the red stuff is bad news. That is bad news, yeah. And that's around 11 a.m. Should be out of here at like 12.31. Should be out of here. Good, thank you. Oh, there he is, on the 36-inch wheels. Have a good one, bud. Thank you, amazing fire for keeping us warm all night. Carlos, I can't thank you enough for setting all this up for us. Oh, man, it was a team effort. Team effort. Team effort, my new best friends helped out with it. Yeah, that's right, the hikers are rad. The hikers are awesome. Yeah. It was good to break bread with the hikers. Definitely. It was such a good time. It was an amazing camp. I have no idea how many people are here, but a lot of people are here. A lot of people. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new team member today. His name's Walt. Good morning. Good morning. And he's from Alabama. Alabama. He's got one of those cool southern accents. I hope so. You do. Sometimes it's not so cool. I think it's cool. All right, you ready to have some fun today? We are. We are, and Brett, how about you, bud? Dude, I'm stoked. Let's roll. We're stoked. We might get a little wet today, but that's all right. Florida wet, never know. All right, bike, you ready? You ready? We're ready. That way. See ya, Carlos. Woo! Woo! Let's go, team. Let's go, man. We're going to the green swamp. I'm excited. I have swamps in Colorado, especially not swamps with alligators. No crashes, no flaties, no whammies. Walt knows it. They know my dumb chant down in Alabama. You know what to do, Walt? You know what to do. Here we go. Ole, ole, ole, ole. This is pretty funny, steep slope. That's about as steep as it gets here in Florida. I have been enjoying the flatness of everything. But because of that, you have to pedal all the time. There is no coasting in Florida, really. Like in the Rocky Mountains, you go up, up, up. And you can coast down for 10 miles or so. Not here. It's a different kind of riding. Keeps you in your rhythm, just constantly pedaling. I wonder where all the bike packers are. Look at all these bikes. I feel like I'm at Raghbri. Check this out. A Circle K hash brown. Looks exactly like the hash browns at McDonald's. I think they get them from the same truck and just heat them up. But it's pretty good. I'm psyched. Brad, what'd you get? Abrito. Oh, yeah, that's a pretty solid breakfast. It's all right. Rice is a little underdone. You look very color-coordinated. What's all this about? This is WEC. This is Wednesday evening cycling. We're just a group of friends that get out and ride bikes at night through the Surrey Hills in southwest London area. So I'm an expat living in the UK. And I brought a couple of my friends over with me to do the huracan. He joined us and said, OK, you've got to come and do some real hills rather than the silly hills we got in Surrey. Have you ever done anything like this? First ever bike packing at all. And I tell you, we've learned it a lot. Don't bring extra 20 kilos of stuff to carry, because it's just not worth it. It is painful. Yeah, what do you think about the single track and all that fun stuff? It's fantastic, actually. It's really good compared to what we got in the Surrey. Because it just goes on. Everything got in the UK is about 1, 2K, maybe. Not 60K. Yeah, right on. And somebody said Florida was flat. They were lying. Yes. And also, they said it was warm. There was frost on my tent this morning. Or yesterday morning. It's all rubbish. It's a cold, wet, hilly place. You're asking what that is. Yeah, what is that? Skidmark. Oh, I can kind of imagine. One prong. Are these all your nicknames? Yeah, I'm Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan. All right, good. And so have you ever done anything like this? He took me on a little 200 mile one in around England called King Alfred's Way. King Alfred's Way, yeah. It was quite nice, but it didn't carry a tent. Got a credit card and stayed in a hotel. I can recommend that. Come on, guys. Let's go get wet, right? Yeah. Yeah, probably. Yeah, probably. Right into the rain. So goodbye to the pavement. Time to head into the swamp. Looks spooky in here this morning. All gray and moody. So Brett, you've done this before. What are we in for? Train's going to change constantly. You go through about two dozen different biomes and ecosystems. There'll be sand, floods, rocks, everything. Cool. This is my favorite spot. So we're looking at about 60 miles of this. About 60 miles of this. 60 miles. And no services. No civilization, no nothing. I love it. Just alligators. Sugar Sand City. I've done my Baja training. Oh, boy. So the difference with this sand and Baja sand is this sand is so fine. It sticks to your tires. So it kind of covers up all your treads. And then it's like you're riding a bald tire. Go get them. That's right. Walt and I were just talking about how bike packing is really a lot of times a solitary sport. And this is just so fun to have people all around us. You feel safer. You feel the camaraderie. You're cracking jokes. You're having fun. When did you get into bike packing? Three years ago. OK. Started doing small, really fast, one day events. So I guess in the last two years already getting into a few more multi-day events. Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, man. I do not like doing them by myself at all. So thank you, Ryan, for letting me hang out with you for a couple of days. Of course, man. That's why I'm here. I want to hang out with people. I'm usually by myself in the woods, crying. This is where I am when I'm alone, too, in the woods, just crying, wondering why the heck I'm out here or why I'm not home. Looking good. Here we go. Now we're getting swampy. Swampy. Look at that. Still working. It takes a lick in. You still here? Cool. We're back. We're back online, everybody. What was I saying? Oh, yeah, it's swampy. Look. Jacket time. Jacket time. Number 17. Yeah, we're taking them on and off, but now this is the big old fat rain. Are you feeling there, Brett? A little wet. It's all good. It's all good. It used to be wet here, though. You know, it's Florida. It's Florida. Even when it's not raining, you're wet, because it's humid. There you go. Get muddy. It's just a little bit rainy. And it's not cold rain, luckily. I like that sound of the rain. Now, these trees are cool. I am falling in love with these spooky Florida trees, especially on a day like today. This is awesome. We are truly in the swamp now. There's water on both sides. Brett said sometimes there'd be alligators out there on a warm day, sunning. Today, they're inside. Inside their cozy alligator houses. Limbo it. I love this. Even on a rainy day, this is really fun to be out here experiencing a totally new ecosystem. Yup. We're getting hit with the red rain that Hiker warned me about this morning. Yeah. But like I said earlier, we're really grateful that it's not cold. I don't know if you can really see it on the camera, but there is blue sky. We're heading right for it. There it is. We have found a little bit of shelter. Yay! Fault, because he's a southern boy. He said this is called a skinning shed. This is where hunters take their deer to skin them, right? And this is where I'm just going to eat a gas station egg McMuffin. And what's your gourmet lunch? I have a sun warmed Pop-Tart. I just got to let it sit here for a few minutes. Yeah, look at that, the sun's coming out. Oh, yeah, check out those legs and those socks. Looking sloppy. Life just changed dramatically. The sun is out. We got blue skies. It's like it never rained. So we just took our jackets off, thinking the sun's out. Now the clouds are back. Man, we are dirty. Look at this. Look at us. What did we do to ourselves? That's riding dirty, baby. Riding dirty. And look at your back. I'm running in my back. It's a little muddy. You see, you have this thing here called an ass saver, little fender. I'm not sure it's doing much. I don't think it's doing anything at all. How's the duck? Got a little dirt, but he's still in good spirits. Yeah, rubber duckies, they thrive in these situations. Oh, yeah. So explain to me what you're doing here. This is called pinion envy. Gates carbon drive. Listen to how crunchy that is. I'm actually doing nothing but making myself feel better, because it's definitely not making my bike feel any better. I remember doing this back in the day. Yeah, we're getting dirty out here. There's no doubt. A little bit dirty. My drivetrain is happy as can be. This is where it shines. Walt is mostly jealous of my kickstand. I am very. More than anything else. More than anything else. I have kickstand in me. You see, you have to sit there and hold your bike. Mine is just sitting right there. No problem. We're going through the Palmetto palms right now. And it's just so cool. I love it. I feel like I'm in Jurassic Park. We're in the chunky stuff, but we're cool with it. Right, Walt? We're good. We're all good. We're all good. Whoa, whoa, little bouncy. What is this? Some Huracan trail magic for Mr. Rick Holly. Right on. All right, thank you, Rick. Pull some water and bug spring. There's a bivvy in there, a couple of bivvies. So we're on a nice, smooth patch of dirt. And I think it's time to get to know Brett better. Brett, how did you even get into bike packing? Kind of by accident. We were kind of bored. And COVID had just hit and we had nothing to do. And we stumbled across the Great Divide series. We looked at that and said, huh, we can do that. One of my close friends had this idea to ride to Key West. And so we put it together. We binge watched a million videos, got it organized, and got on our bikes and rode to Key West. What do you love most about it? I love the freedom. No one's bugging me right now is nothing but a couple of guys, a couple of bikes, and open road. I am the only one bugging him. This is indeed a spooky cabin. Looks like we've got some homes for scary wasps and things. Wow, I can't imagine living here somewhere so isolated and small. So Brett took us a little bit off route to see the murder cabin. I'm not usually into morbid things, but it's historical. There's actually a historical marker. I'm gonna go read it right now. Here's the graveyard. It's the Stuart Homestead. Mr. and Mrs. Stuart ax murdered together in their home. They died on May 9th, 1918, born 1860. Rest in peace. It may have been lonely to live out here, but certainly beautiful. Imagine living with your sweetheart and having this outside your door. That's kind of romantic. You get to focus on each other a lot. You don't have the distractions of everyday life. So Brett just said he's super hungry and he's sick of the energy bars and that he had a secret weapon. I'm like, what's that buddy? Da da da da da. Yeah, you know it. Oh, what? You know it. You brought some beans. We're going all in. How about you, Walt? I'm in. You put enough beans in there? No, no such thing. You're always going sideways, sitting in sideways style. All right, my brothers. Burrito cheers. Burrito time. Yeah, we've been working hard today, even though Florida's flat. It's hard to get around. Pedal, pedal, pedal. So how was it, man? Man, it was good. Yeah? Sitting on the side of the road here in Florida eating a doserito. Are you going to start carrying beans and tortillas? Maybe. We'll see you in an hour. I'll let you know. We found the shlap again. I kind of like this shlap. This is some rideable shlap. We are officially out of green swamp. Thank you, beautiful swamp. I haven't spent a lot of time in swamps, being a Colorado guy, so that was pretty cool. We're on the Van Fleet Trail now. It's paved. We're fairly close to camp tonight. Life is good, right? Life is good. Life is good. We are only a mile away from camp, but we looked on the radar, and there's something gnarly coming through. So we're hiding at this church until it passes by. We are so close. Woo. Kidoke. We've waited long enough. We are tired. We want to be done. Oh, yeah. We are home for the night, and Brett was smart enough two months ago booked a room in the hostel at this campground. So we're staying tonight at an old lodge in an airfield, and they converted a lot of the hangers to rooms, like dorm style rooms. Brett, we did it. Made it to Willow Tree. Boom, way to go. Oh my god, it's Tim from Rag Bride. Good to see you. Thanks for hooking all this up. No problem. Happy to have you guys here. We've been talking forever about getting you here. We never thought you actually would, and then you show up. Here I am. Walt, way to go. We did it. We did it. You're running away because you know I was going to film you, don't you? Hey, don't you run away, Carlos. Don't you run away. I want to give you a high five too. Thank you for everything. We love you. All right. I can't believe that this place even has my favorite video game ever. Gallagang. I used to go to this pizza place near me in Boulder and play it every week. And I still love it. It's really the only video game I love. And we have a pinball machine. Brett is in heaven. Oh yeah. I can't believe it. This place is awesome. I've got some happy feet. Good night, Brett. And good night, Ryan. Ride again tomorrow. So you found a bigger one? You found the biggest one? We found a bigger one. We got Zilla. Where is he? Oh yeah, wow. Look at that guy. Hello, my friends. I hope you enjoyed that video. 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