Welcome to the Newsletter

hi this is Amity!

I’m sitting on my couch in Truckee, home and reeling from a massive training week back in the Bay.

The new Soccer Mommy Tiny Desk is the only other page I have open and it keeps making me tear up. I’ve heard all these songs so many times but stripped-back production is such a gut punch for lyrics that hit this hard.

Here it is, if you want the same soundtrack as me during this letter:

My mom always told me the best way to start is to just start, which sounds dumb and obvious written out, but for me, someone who will make every excuse and complete every other mundane task before I do the one main thing hanging over my head, it does help. And so, Welcome to the Newsletter. Instagram is becoming an ever-more-unfulfilling way to update everyone on my life and the narcissist in me thinks there oughta be a better way to share my life with you, all the weird ins and outs of being a solo female bike racing professional in a world previously dominated by teams of men. So here goes. Don’t worry, I’ll still make shitty Reels and hype up my photographer friends, but here is where you can come to know what’s happening, what’s happened, and what might.

you can keep up via the Substack app, or simply by receiving via email whenever I publish.

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I didn’t really know what to expect career-wise, coming into 2023, having been mostly absent from “the scene” for a year. Someday, I will talk about the months I spent away, most of them in fear or numb, and that isn’t to say that now I am healed, far from it really, but I’m at least a sufficient amount of time and closure away to realize that my life will continue its forward push into the future and I have to try to keep up. I miss Moriah, every day, every time I get on a bike or go somewhere we went together, which at this point seems to be just about everywhere I end up. She’s gone and I miss her and that’s still all I can say without having a total breakdown. She started her Substack a few months before she was killed and we talked so much about me starting mine, how we’d cross-post and guest write for each other and review all the wine we won from racing in California. I was going to make people pay for mine and she laughed at my audacity, so you have her to thank for this non-exclusive content.

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I initially went down to the Bay for 2 reasons: Destination Everywhere and the Coast Ride. Destination Everywhere is a series by Pas Normal that brings brand athletes together for a consecutive few days of hard riding in a beautiful place, and I was so psyched to jump in immediately after sealing the deal on that partnership. Longtime followers will know this is actually a return for me— way back in 2016, pre-international gravel fame and pro career, I was a PAS ambassador. I remember having to pay the import taxes on the free clothing and barely being able to afford that— DHL actually sent back one package after I couldn’t save up the money in time. I was making $13.50 an hour plus tips at a café and living with two roommates in SF and honestly I was depressed and barely making it work but I still was riding 1000+ miles a month and dreaming of getting paid to do so, despite the general aura of futility about it. And here we are! There’s a brand new Pas Normal store in SF and in a funny way it seems like we both went and became something bigger and now we’re back together. I rode 550 miles in 7 days in the most inclement weather and don’t have a single chafe mark or saddle sore to speak of. Not to mention I got to spend every one of those miles stylish as fuck.

^baby me, circa 2016

I considered making the Newsletter a “sponsor-free space” since I do want it to remain genuine, and importantly, my own space, but if something is truly great, I’m not going to gatekeep it, and I can say here that I let go of a *much* more lucrative deal with another clothing company in order to wear what I actually want to and work with some of my best friends. And the luxury of being able to make that choice, and still have a career and everything that comes with it, feels pretty great. So much of my early sponsorships (and bike racing partnerships in general) were based so firmly in desperation and necessity, and to be free of that feels like a very tangible marker of success.

Anyways, Destination Everywhere. A ton of people came out for it only to be welcomed by massive rainfall and flooding and as it happened, only myself and two other ambassadors I regularly ride with anyways were the only ones pushing the full distances (shoutout Gino and Matt, thank youuuuuu). They are both faster than me so I ended up with 3 days of full-on intensity, scrappy clawing my way back onto wheels and spending a few minutes in the wind every now and then just to feel like I was contributing something. It’s quite the rush to launch immediately into intensity after very little riding in the past few months, but my main takeaway is that I could hang just fine, and I feel great about that. I went home Thursday night empty and with a plastic bag of every piece of foul-weather kit I own drenched and gritty.

Friday was the store opening and we drank too much wine and I saw so many people I rarely see anymore after running away to the mountains and it was perfect and reaffirming of my decision.

the rides:

Day 1: SF to Sonoma via Marshall

Day 2: Sonoma Mountain to Trinity to Veeder

Day 3: Sonoma to SF via Marshall/Coast

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Somewhere in all this mess, Coast Ride was called off. I panicked. For those who don’t know, every year over MLK weekend in January, several hundred of us ride from SF to Santa Barbara over the course of three days. I’ve done it without fail every single year since I started riding more than running, save for 2020 when it didn’t happen. It goes rain or shine; there have been years we’ve been rained on every day, years we’ve headed inland after the all-too-common winter landslide in Big Sur. But historic levels of precip across the state meant it was actually an impossible journey: there was no way through. The group chat went through all the stages of grief, with an initial rebellion forming. We’d do it anyways, hire our own SAG, put together a crew. It continued to rain and the prospects worsened. A majority decided it wasn’t smart. I was devastated. It would have been year 7. But I am grateful to my friends for being able to make intelligent decisions when I am still blinded by my own stubbornness.

So we planned a replacement, 3 days of big rides from the city, and it was good, if not an exact replica of the effort. I rode 100 each day, mostly hard, mostly behind stronger wheels. It was the effort I was looking for— the initial wall of resistance you hit after a day of fatigue, the mostly mental shove through it and the bliss on the other side of feeling like you could ride absolutely forever. I remember that same feeling from the 20-something mile trail runs I used to do with friends in college and it’s the single most addictive thing about endurance sport. Limitlessness. It rained, it fucking poured, and our little band of riders pushed on. I sometimes can’t believe how lucky I am to have friends who want to do the same dumb shit as me, even if I’m grumpy and antisocial for the greater half of it.

picture: Dominique Powers, Day One Destination Everywhere (it only got more despondent from here on out lol)

Coast Ride Not Coast Ride, AKA Liquid Death Tour:

Day 1: Point Reyes Lighthouse

Day 2: Limantour and Marshall

Day 3: Point Reyes Station, Headlands, Muir

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And now I’m home, in the snow, with so much more shoveling to do and a mostly quiet week to let my tired legs absorb all the work. I will miss this time of year so much; it’s so quiet, no flights to catch, no semblance of a schedule to adhere to. A necessary balance to race season, which looms. More on that in the next episode.

Thanks for reading!! I’ll leave you with a few things to eat and listen to, my other favorite activities. In the future you can expect playlists and original recipes, but this installment is long enough for now.

Album:

Recipe:

https://cheesegrotto.com/blogs/journal/buttermilk-ricotta-recipe

Don’t roll your eyes at me for the ricotta— it’s surprisinglyyy simple, and leagues better than anything you can buy. Toss it with pasta or roasted vegetables or just eat it with a spoon— honestly a great source of protein and healthy fats.

ttfn :)