Trust The Bike

A lifelong minimalist embraces the equipment-intensive sport of gravel cycling.

- Jacqueline Detwiler

THEY SAY you can tell the make of a man by what he keeps in his garage. Okay, no one says that. But in any case, Michael Hurley’s freestanding garage in Venice, California, is a monument to the sport of cycling. And Michael Hurley is a monument of a cyclist. For one thing, he stands 1,9 metres tall. For another, he’s married to a former professional cyclist with whom he rides constantly. Michael Hurley joined Strava – a cycling tracking app where, instead of checking in to your local café the most times, you try to pick off your friends in fictional group rides – in 2011. Since then he’s ridden more than sixty thousand kilometres. This is at least fifty-nine thousand more kilometres than I’ve ridden in the same length of time, which is why I’ve asked Hurley for help.

I’m more of a bike commuter than a cyclist, which is a distinction having as much to do with gear and preparation as it does with mileage. I ride a single-speed, sometimes while wearing sandals. And yet I’ve been wanting to try a gravel ride, an increasingly popular hybrid between road and mountain biking. I could probably figure out how to do this on my own. (Bike + gravel = gravel biking? Am I close?) I just wouldn’t do it well. I’d wear a T-shirt and gym shorts and end up upside-down in a bush with a flat tyre and a bent rim. As it is, I’m sitting in Hurley’s cycling store of a garage, dodging an array of questions I am ill-equipped to answer: “How’s the height on the handlebars?” “Do you know your European shoe size?” “Have you ever ridden clip-ins?”