Words by Dexter Kopas
Photos by Aaron Hardin
Howdy, y’all! Stoked to be welcomed into the Otso club. I am 28 years old, live in Tucson, AZ, and I am drawn to Otso for three reasons, which together encapsulate what I love about bikes.
The structured component of my biking life is around competition. Over the last three years, I have gone from never racing to focusing most of my life on winning unsupported ultracycling races. For the riding I like the most (rowdy gravel), Otso’s Waheela C was the obvious choice. A supple, carbon, suspension-corrected, geometry-adjustable gravel frame with room for 2.1” rubber is everything I need to keep smiling for days in the saddle. Pared with a Fox 32 Taper Cast fork, a Redshift Shockstop suspension seatpost, and aero bars, this steed (named Waheelieee) is just what I want to take on my race calendar for 2025:
- Ozark Gravel Doom, 400 miles, April 5th
- Unbound XL, 350 miles, May 29th
- Gravel Worlds Long Voyage, 300 miles, August 22nd
- Vermont Super 8, 650 miles, late September
- Borderlands Gravel Race, 98 miles, November 15th
- Chino Grinder, 120 miles, October 18th
The second aspect I love about bikes is how they bring people together. A big reason why I prefer unpaved roads to trails is because on a road you can ride side-by-side and have a chat with your riding buddy. Otso also sees this value, giving me the freedom to connect with my audience largely through person-to-person connections, as opposed to focusing on widely distributed digital content. For me, the best way to relate with others is through direct interaction, whether suffering together on a group ride, sharing laughs after a life-changing race, or camping on a group bikepacking trip. One thing that initially led me to Otso was the ambassadors they had. These badass, inspiring, creative riders, several of whom I knew already personally, are just the sort of folks I want to be associated with. I look forward to connecting with all kinds of new bike enthusiasts before, during, or after zooming around on my Otso. Just recently Henley Phillips and I put on the first edition of the Sonoran Ultra Endurance Ride, a 300-ish mile competitive bikepacking event based in Tucson. You can read more about that here. Suffice it to say, it was loads of fun, a great opportunity to bring people together around bikes, and I can’t wait to take a fast go at the route on my Waheela C when time and weather permit.
Finally, the bike is a lens to see the world, and a bike like the Fenrir is just the lens I’m looking for. The Fenrir has the versatility to accommodate long or short wheelbases, and flat or drop bars. With mounts galore and a light, durable titanium frame, I can’t wait to point it at a big explorative bikepacking trip after my race season. An old friend and I will be flying south to Cuba for the infamous La Ruta Mala, necessitating a durable bike that can do it all. Less of a trail-riding fanatic (at the moment), I appreciate how a good all-terrain bike requires no specific infrastructure to enjoy. Simply point it at a part of the map you are unfamiliar with, and you will grow and learn from the world around you. Further down the road, I aim to take my Fenrir to longer races like the Nelson Trees Mountain Race series and the Tour Divide.
Just last month, I had the first chance to test out my Waheelieee. After a winter focused on road biking, where my longest ride was 140 miles, I had gotten used to going to bed looking at the cycling map of Tucson on my bedroom wall. Now with my new Waheela freshly in from Minnesota, a pleasant Sonoran Desert winter forecast, and a longtime friend up in Phoenix overdue for a visit, the plans made themselves. This time, I went to bed gazing at the larger map of the state of Arizona on the other side of the room. Owning a reliable offroad bike for the first time since my last one broke in May, a proper adventure was in my future.
When I first talked to my training coach back in September, I told him, “I know how to ride far. I need to learn how to ride fast.” Key to that goal has been not tiring myself with so many long rides. Still, sometimes I need to do a big dumb ride, for both my sanity and to learn how the improvements I’ve made feel when the going gets tough. This ride had the added bonus of incorporating those three pillars of biking that I outlined earlier. With a sweeping set of federal firings, hiring freezes, and language restrictions recently affecting my work as a conservation crew leader with non-profit Wild Arizona, I was off to see a Forest Service employee friend who was in the thick of it. So I pieced together an offroad route that would take me down as many new roads as I could find.
On Saturday February 8th, I took off from my home in Tucson before the sunrise and rode down the street to Tucson Hop Shop. Why start with a bar? Because this bar happened to be the meeting place for the annual Bell Breaker. Fortunately, my planned errand to Phoenix lined up with this alley-cat style local challenge of around 180 miles. After meeting with the dozen-or-so competitors and organizer Jenna from Transit Cycles, I rode the first 20 miles out of town while making friends with Matt McDonnell, who would go on to finish 2nd in the Bell Breaker.
Once Matt stopped for food, it was time to split off and continue north. Ripping through the Honeybee singletrack, watching the sunrise, I was impressed by how nimble the Waheela felt. After adding bigger XC tires and the Fox 32 fork, I’m sure I will feel much better on the singletrack in the Doom race than I did last year. Feeling confident, I pushed up to the highlight of this little route I’d put together: the 96 Ranch road, where ruins can be found tucked in the low Ninetysix Hills. 100 miles in, I came to Florence, where I tested out my tired gas station efficiency. Chocolate milk was guzzled, pizza was scarfed down, bottles were filled, candy was stashed, and my chain was lubed, all within 10 minutes.
I had decided to do this entire ride without any audio content in my ears, a rare practice that helps me connect with my mind and practice for battery-saving needs. While sometimes this brings deep thoughts, sometimes the effect is more to depart from too much thinking. This time all I got was the repetition of mantras, such as “he might kill you, but there’s no f***ing way he’s ever killing me” from the I Think You Should Leave skit about Detective Crashmore. Especially helpful when pushing through sandy washes in a nondescript flatland below massive electrical towers. An audio-free experience is also helpful for random encounters with the locals, like when I passed by Silly Mountain State Park and appreciated the whimsical name with some picnicers.
Eventually, I found the canal paths which guided me to my friend’s house in the suburb of Gilbert, safe and sound with minimal travel on busy roads. I had made the 170-mile journey in 11½ hours without wearing myself out and eating around 155 grams of carbs per hour, so a great confidence test for rides like Unbound XL in 3 months. After seeing many old friends and consuming many more carbs that night, I took off the next morning for a 100-mile shot to Tucson. It turned out to be more interesting than predicted, with mostly dirt surfaces showing me the often-overlooked farming communities along the Santa Cruz River Valley. I had achieved my goals of competitive growth, human connection, and deeper knowledge of the map of Arizona. Super excited for many more chances to do just that.
Strava rides: https://www.strava.com/activities/13577128693
https://www.strava.com/activities/13587465799
Instagram reel of the ride: https://www.instagram.com/p/DF6zQv4urEX/