A Humbling Moment for The Bike Farm – A Pisgah Mountain Biking Dream
A humbling moment for The Bike Farm in Bike Magazine and Redbull.com. We set out to create a mountain biking destination in Pisgah National Forest. Welcome to our dream.
You will have to bear with a little redundancy, also known as a nostalgia trip. Eva and I spend our winters in Colorado. For her it is the keystone to her ability to run her “other job” from NC (or wherever else she finds herself with an internet connection). It is her time to get in the studio with her father, James Surls to clean up from the year prior and plan for the year ahead. It is not much different for me. I set up my office and watch the snow fly as I force myself to sit at the computer. I know this comes as a huge shock but I have a hard time sitting at the computer when I could be in Pisgah mountain biking. In fact, I am the master of finding a reason to go outside. It is early winter and the snow in Carbondale is not good enough to ski, board, or bike and it is plenty cold enough to make sitting inside a little more tolerable.
In the past two years I have rarely slowed long enough to take in all of the incredible moments that Eva and I have experienced on this ride known as The Bike Farm. No less than four thousand three hundred and twenty two times I have said I need to write about this, I need to slow down and take it in. The secret is out, I move fast, I keep myself busy, and I suck at Social Media. It is now time to reflect.
Eva and I have been humbled constantly that people found our dream compelling enough to come visit, and in some instances even write about us. Bike Magazine is the holy grail of publications in my world. We were floored when Bike Magazine sent Mr. Graham Averill to come tell our story back in Jun of 2014 (The Bike Farm – farming for the future). At that point we were still trying to align stars for our first project. We were rolling the dice, doing a little gambling, and trying to swing for the fences. We were able to broker a land deal with Oskar Blues Brewery founder Dale Katechis, line up Red Bull and Oskar Blues, and turn a historic NC dairy farm into a bike playground where we hosted a Red Bull Signature Series Event, Dreamline. (Dreamline lands down on The Bike Farm)
That could have been enough to keep us satisfied for a year or two at least, but that is not how it played out. We were presented with an opportunity to develop yet another incredible Western NC property, this time adjacent to my favorite playground of Pisgah National Forest. We have been incredibly fortunate to work on not one, but two beautiful properties all in two years time. There was much speculation and small town rumors about why we were moving on from the Katechis’ property now known as The REEB Ranch, but the truth was as simple as for us to grow our own brand we needed to keep on moving, and develop our own brand completely independent and unencumbered. We had been in conversations with the owner of the 440 acre piece of private Pisgah forest with 800 vertical feet to dream and play with for close to two years, and were able to start development last Spring. Incredibly, and once again completely humbling, Bike Magazine saw fit to send Graham back out in September of 2015 to catch back up and tell the world about our progress. (The Bike Farm’s New Roots)
The Bike Farm started with a dream drawn on a sheet of paper. All I can say is thank you to those who have thought our dream worthy of telling or seeing for themselves.