Hanging out in front of Murals

SXSW took a page out of Paris-Nice's playbook; it started cold, wet, and sloppy and ended with sunshine and happiness. It's not just every day that you see an enormous wave towering overhead in Austin, TX, but we somehow made that discovery.The Open the Road series by SRAM is just so darn cool and captures what's fun about cycling. SRAM opens its trailer doors -- literally and figuratively -- and unloads a fleet of WorldTour worthy bikes. There's delicious coffee and absurdly good baked goods by Lentine, a team of mechanics and engineers ready to chat about eTap or hydro disc breaks, or better yet the combination eTap HRD. And it all makes for a fun day on the bike.This was after a ride on the longer side by our Open the Road standards and we ended up at Counter 3 Five IIV where bike riding chef Damien Brockway crushed it in the recovery meal department. We were feasting like kings.Tourists? What tourists? We're toooootally locals!Really can't say enough good things about Austin. Despite some blurry-eyed early mornings, the entire week was a treat.Yours truly crossing that bridge when I got there.A single day home between week long trips requires a lot on the to-do list. Not least of which was to come home and embrace the first day of sun I've seen in "sunny California" in ages. With my sweetpea Laura and good friend Nate, dawn patrol commenced. Hellooooooo Sausalitoooooo!And with that, I can confirm that the sun still rides. Patrol complete.In the continued spirit of collecting as many friends as possible for the simple stoke of the bicycle, I knew I was going to be in Southern California with some spare time on my hands so I reached out to InCycle about creating an event. With UnTapped now featuring two new ridiculously delicious waffles, Coffee and Raspberry (tasting like coffee because we use only real coffee. Tasting like raspberries because we use only real raspberries), it was a perfect opportunity to fuel up, let folks try them out, and go for a sweet ride.And sweet ride we did!The InCycle crew plus Cannondale came together with a fully supported ride, bikes to demo, awards awarded, and maple (and raspberry and coffee) to sample. It was an awesome -- and not at all easy -- day in the saddle.A huge turnout, all the more impressive when your watch hardly reads 7am...Mid-ride fueling up...And views worthy of the effort... Plus artistic deployment of product in the shop.And I'll wrap up by saying that I'm still in southern California through early next week. If you're out and about and want to ride any type of bike -- road, mountain bike, or #froad -- I've teamed up with Velocio and Pedaler's Fork to spread that message.The ultimate selfie.