Hello and welcome back to King of the Ride podcast. Ted King here, sitting down in the recording

studio, which doubles as my office. I'm your host here on King of the Ride. Now as we as we zero in

on the end of the season, it seems that I'm either making up for lost time or doubling down on a full season of accumulated fitness because I just completed the 414-mile mega hopper.

And that event took place on the recent tail end of a 500-mile bike packing trip, just a short period prior to that, which was preceded by a 300-mile VTXL, riding clear across

Vermont.

Three ultras in a month and a half.

It was only the Portuguese 500-mile ride.

They required a little bit of sleep.

The other two were pretty much flat-out efforts, start to finish, ready, set, go.

So maybe, needless to say, that's why I find myself yawning a bit more than normal these days.

But today's episode is a very fun one.

It's a 166 point full circle, as I'm sitting down with Mel Gale Crawford, the founder of the Grouse Hopper Adventure series,

what we now call a gravel race series,

but since he started these events nearly 30 years ago, more than half his life ago,

nearly one third of a century ago, absorb that for a second.

We weren't calling it a gravel race series then.

It was just an adventuresome ride with friends. And I say 166 point full circle

because Miguel was my first guest on this show 165 episodes ago back in 2018.

He's, of course, hosted hundreds of grasshoppers since the first event back in the mid-1990s.

And now with this episode, today we're going to talk about his first foray into ultras

in the Grasshopper Adventure Series family, the Mega Hopper.

There is, of course, a lot to cover.

...