Editor's Statement

Where we call home in the northern hemisphere, we are more or less in the midst of the cycling off-season. Even the most die-hard commuter inevitably puts in fewer miles come the colder, darker months. Now is a good a time as ever to start making plans for the next year. Let your bicycle take you places you’ve never been.

Nearly every city has less populated roads within a long day’s ride, some more than others. We’re blessed to have seemingly endless rolling hills through progressively less populated suburbs—choose the right roads, and you can find farmland within an hour. If you’re looking to sleep under the stars we have direct access to the longest continuous trail system in the country connecting some 325 miles between Pittsburgh and Washington DC. Serious woodland and miles upon miles of crisscrossing forest roads are but a day trip in a car away.

I spent my teenage years on my mountain bike, getting lost progressively further and further from home until I moved into the city and found an abundance of new-to-me neighborhoods to explore. A decade later and I feel like I’ve barely started, and not really for lack of riding.

Get out and explore, I encourage you to make plans to get lost. Diverge from your everyday route, round up a gullible friend and find out what it’s like to bonk far from home. If it’s the neighborhood over the hill you’ve not been through or the far off tour you’ve always wanted to tackle, now is the time to let your imagination go wild, and have enough time to make it happen.

State Bicycle Co.