There are places in the world that can’t be reached even by four-wheel drive vehicles and that, ironically, cyclists and bicycles manage to reach. These are places where the fascination of the bicycle is absolute: devoid of any discretion.
Certainly, this can happen in remote corners of the earth, where human endurance reaches its extreme limit: the Canyonlands in Utah, for example, the most arid place in the world. But that indiscreet fascination can also be appreciated elsewhere, in circumstances that are in no way prohibitive: on a Sunday, at the end of a cycling route with the aim simply of soaking your feet in a mountain lake. Situations like this are not particularly tiring and there is no performance obligation. Instead, they reestablish the bicycle’s most important condition: freedom.
So, it might not be important how far you have travelled before reaching your goal or even if the route was more or less flat or if the track was bumpy and difficult to ride. The average speed might not even matter, because the indiscreet fascination of the bicycle can be also related simply to the possibility of reaching a place that is inaccessible to any other means of transport and keep your gravel-bike, which will shortly lead us home, nearby.
Well, this may represent an indescribable pleasure for many, even more than personal performance: ideal for a trip that, based solely on choice, can lead more or less to adventure and give sensations that remain in your memory for a long time.
Pleasant company, total immersion in nature and, why not, the unstoppable desire to push your limits can make a day or a weekend the best way to recharge our batteries to face the city with a renewed spirit, and with the clear awareness that the principle of every important release is a bicycle able to live up to big and small challenges. From the white roads that descend from the Cansiglio and lead to Lago di Santa Croce, to breathtaking trails that connect Moab to Island in the Sky in the Canyonlands, USA.
