Stay tuned after the episode to hear our latest edition of And Then What.

In August of 2025, Sarah Swallow spent over a month bikepacking from the Pacific Ocean to the eastern slopes of the Rockies.

Her goal to scout a new formal bikepacking route stretching from the Mississippi River to Oregon.

Sarah was asked to tackle the more technical section of the Golden Gravel Trail,

a route put together by the Adventure Cycling Association, and let the designers know what she thought

about it all. Breaking new ground can be an experience of extremes. Excitement and fear are both

close companions of the unknown, and often it's exactly this seesaw

of experience that we seek from adventure. But the day Sarah began scouting the Golden Gravel

Trail, she almost couldn't leave her hotel room in Port Orford. Today, Sarah breaks down the good

and the bad of her mostly solo trip on the Golden Gravel Trail.

I'm Skylar Perwins and you're listening to The Dirtbag Diaries. I woke up with an anxiety attack. And it was very hard to get moving that first day.

You know, you can't reason with anxiety.

It's not based in reality.

It's debilitating.

And it's very hard to move when you're in it. And so it was really

just about putting one foot in front of the other and just like getting on the bike and taking

one pedal stroke at a time and eventually came out of it, you know. It never happened when I woke

up in my tent, you know. It always happened when I woke up in a hotel room and had to leave a town or something like that.

I was always really comfortable out in nature.

I was never afraid.

You know, once I got into nature, I felt really good.

I am Sarah Swallow, and I am a professional adventure cyclist based in Tucson, Arizona and Durango,

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