The Summer We Became a Community

It’s Monday, September 21. The last Monday of summer.

As I sit here in the final few hours of Summer 2026, hundreds of miles away from Summit County, trying to figure out how to write another Monday update, I keep coming back to the same thought:

This has been the best summer of my life.

I don’t say that lightly. I’ve had incredible summers. I’ve traveled, raced Ironmans, ridden thousands of miles, climbed mountains and had days on a bicycle that I will probably talk about for the rest of my life. I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced an entire season quite like this one, though.

For almost five months, people kept showing up. Every week. Saturday after Saturday, ride after ride, event after event. Some weeks there were huge groups. Some weeks were smaller. Some mornings were perfect. Others were cold, windy, smoky, wet or required a last-minute route adjustment.

Still, people showed up.

That consistency may be the thing I’m most grateful for. Community isn’t built by one big event. It isn’t built by a logo or a website or an Instagram page. It isn’t built because somebody starts a WhatsApp group and tells everyone that community exists now. It happens slowly. Someone wakes up on Saturday morning and decides to ride. Then they do it again the next week.

Eventually someone new pulls into the parking lot and doesn’t know anybody.

Someone stays near the back.
Someone waits at an intersection.
Someone walks over and introduces themselves. Someone explains the route.
Somebody reaches the top of a climb first and turns around to see who is still coming.

Before long, the person who was new two months ago is the one welcoming somebody else. That happened over and over again this summer.

That, is Spoke.

We Rode a Lot of Bikes

There’s no getting around it: we had a pretty ridiculous summer on two wheels.

We rode around Lake Dillon more times than I could possibly count.
We climbed toward Montezuma.
We rode Vail Pass and Independence Pass.
We watched Swan Mountain reopen and immediately started connecting the county in ways we hadn’t been able to for years.
We had Tuesday rides, Thursday rides and Saturday rides.
We had Monday mountain rides, Friday mountain rides and Sunday mountain rides.

There were races, spontaneous meetups and countless messages in the chats that basically amounted to, “Anybody want to ride?”

Then there were the big days.

We showed up at the Triple Bypass with a huge Spoke crew, with riders choosing their own version of the day and taking on something difficult together. A few weeks later, we took on the Copper Triangle.

For some riders, it was another enormous day on a bike.
For others, it was their first Triple.
Their first ride that big.
Their first experience discovering that the line they had drawn around what they thought they could do might not actually be the line at all.

I had the privilege of riding beside people accomplishing things they had trained for, worried about and worked toward for months. Those moments became some of the best memories of my summer. Not because everyone needs to ride 100 miles or climb three mountain passes. Because there is something incredible about watching someone discover that they are capable of more than they thought.

Then I Found the Dirt

One of the unexpected gifts of this summer was that I got to experience some of this from the other side. For most of my cycling life, I have been a road cyclist. That is the world I understand. Group riding, pacing, climbing, descending, long endurance days, those are places where I am comfortable.

Mountain biking was different.

This summer, I stepped much further into that world. Suddenly, in some ways, I was the new person. I was the rider learning from other people. I was figuring out lines, getting more comfortable on technical terrain, learning when to let the bike move underneath me and trying to understand an entirely different kind of cycling culture.

People helped me.
They waited.
They gave me advice.
They showed me trails.
They encouraged me.
They pushed me.

I eventually lined up for the Summit Mountain Challenge and somehow found myself winning the beginner division on Peaks Trail. Later came the Firecracker 50, another completely different experience and another step further into a side of cycling I had spent years mostly watching from the outside. The results were never the important part. What mattered was experiencing firsthand what it feels like to walk into someone else’s cycling world and have them make room for you.

I understood Spoke differently because of it.

For years, I knew intellectually what it meant to welcome somebody into a road ride who wasn’t sure whether they belonged. This year I got to feel a little of that uncertainty myself. I got to experience what happens when other riders say, in their own way, “you’re good, come with us.”

The mountain side of Spoke grew significantly this summer, and I loved watching its own culture develop. Different leaders stepped up. New rides appeared. People found riding partners. Racers encouraged newer riders. And more of us started crossing between categories instead of defining ourselves exclusively as road riders, mountain bikers or gravel riders. We were just people who liked riding bikes together.

That feels important.

Somewhere Along the Way, It Became Bigger Than Riding

For all the miles we covered, some of the most meaningful moments of the summer happened when the bikes weren’t moving at all.

We gathered for Rock the Dock and filled the space with people who had spent months riding beside one another. Then came More Than a Ride, our social with Building Hope. More than 60 people together in one room.

No helmets.
No pace lines.
No Strava segments.

Just people talking.

People who recognized one another from rides but had never really had a conversation. People meeting someone new. People talking about friendship, belonging, mental health and what it means to create connection in a place that can sometimes feel surprisingly isolating.

That night was one of the clearest moments of the entire summer for me.

From the beginning, Spoke was never supposed to be exclusively about cycling. Cycling was supposed to be the vehicle. Movement gives us a reason to gather. The bike creates the first conversation. Everything after that is the important part.

Then somehow this little cycling community in Summit County ended up on CBS Colorado! That still feels surreal to write. Even the CBS story wasn’t really about bikes. It was about loneliness. Friendship. Mental health. Belonging. It was about what can happen when somebody has a reason to leave the house, stand beside a few people they don’t know yet and start building relationships.

CBS simply helped tell a story that all of you had already been writing all summer.

The Part That Means the Most to Me

Then September arrived, and I left.

Work took me hundreds of miles away from Summit County after spending almost the entire summer there. For months I had been organizing, posting, answering questions, thinking about routes, leading rides, taking pictures and generally being involved in almost every part of this thing.

I wasn’t there.
I wondered what would happen.

What happened next may be the thing I am proudest of from the entire summer.

You kept going.

People stepped up.
People coordinated rides.
People welcomed new riders.
People posted in the chats.
People helped lead.
People took pictures and sent them to me so I could still tell the story from hundreds of miles away.

The mountain rides continued.
The road rides continued.
Saturday morning kept happening.
The conversations kept happening.
The community kept moving.

Now, as summer officially closes, we have another perfect example of what I hoped Spoke could become.

This Friday, September 25, Craig is hosting our Harvest Moon Ride. We’ll meet at the Frisco Marina at 8:00 PM for a nighttime lap around Dillon Reservoir. Headlights and taillights are required.

I’ll still be hundreds of miles away. I love that. Not because I don’t want to be there, I absolutely do. I love it because somebody else had an idea and said, let’s do it. That is community ownership.

That is leadership.

That is exactly what I have hoped would happen. Spoke cannot be one person standing at the front telling everybody where to ride. If this is going to last, it has to belong to everyone.

This summer, we watched that begin to happen.

Look at What We Built

There was also a small reminder this month that people outside Summit County are beginning to notice what is happening here. Campus Cycles included Spoke in its Front Range newsletter about riding and fall colors in Summit County. That is incredibly cool.

The thing that matters much more to me is what happens after somebody discovers us.

Maybe someone comes up from Denver and joins us for the first time.
Maybe they find six riders instead of sixty.
Maybe they show up to one of the smallest rides of the entire summer.

That’s okay.

Community was never supposed to be measured by whether every ride is enormous. It is measured by what happens when that person arrives.

Does someone introduce themselves?
Does someone make room?
Does someone say, “Come ride with us”?

That is the work.

Every person who participated in Spoke this summer helped do it.

If you came to one ride, you helped build this.
If you came to twenty rides, you helped build it.
If you led, swept, waited, encouraged somebody, fixed a flat, explained a route, posted in a group, answered somebody else's post, invited a friend, shared a picture or simply showed up when you said you would, you helped build this.

I may have started Spoke.
I could never have created what happened this summer by myself.

Not even close.

The Best Summer of My Life

When I look back at Summer 2026, I’m certainly going to remember the events.

Copper Triangle.
Triple Bypass.
The Summit Mountain Challenge.
Firecracker 50.
Five Lake Lap Century.
Rock the Dock.
More Than a Ride.
CBS Colorado.

All the Saturdays.
All the random Tuesday nights.
The mountain rides.
The races.
The enormous days and the tiny ones.

I think what I will remember most are the things that are harder to put on a calendar.

Watching people become friends.
Watching riders become stronger and more confident.
Watching somebody arrive alone and slowly become part of the group.
Watching somebody complete something they weren’t sure they could complete.
Watching people begin stepping into leadership without ever needing to be asked.
Watching somebody who once needed encouragement become the person giving it.

Those are the things that made this the best summer of my life.

So many of the moments I treasure most weren’t about something I accomplished.

They were things I got to witness.

Summer Ends. Spoke Doesn't.

In a few hours, Summer 2026 will officially be over.

The aspens are changing. The mornings are colder. The days are shorter. Before long, bikes will start sharing garage space with skis. Road rides will become shoulder-season adventures, and eventually fat bikes will begin showing up in the chats.

The season changes, but I don’t feel sad tonight.

Mostly, I feel full.

Full of gratitude for every person who trusted this little experiment enough to show up.
Full of memories from a summer that somehow exceeded every expectation I had for it.
Full of appreciation for the people who stepped forward when I stepped away.
Full of excitement about what this community might become next.

This summer proved something to me.

We don't have to wait for community to happen to us.

We can create it.
We can show up.
We can say, “I’ll lead.”
We can invite someone in.
We can introduce ourselves.
We can wait at the top of the climb.
We can stay with the person at the back.
We can ask who wants to ride tomorrow.

If enough people keep doing those little things, eventually something much bigger appears.

That is what happened this summer.

What began as people meeting to ride bikes became friendships, adventures, races, conversations, firsts, breakthroughs, leadership and a community that now keeps moving whether I am standing at the front of the ride or 600 miles away.

We don’t know exactly what Summer 2027 looks like yet. We don't need to.

For the last few hours of this one, I just want to appreciate what happened.

Summer 2026 is in the books.

We rode bikes.
A ridiculous number of bikes.

We climbed mountains.
We crossed finish lines.
We welcomed people in.
We challenged ourselves.
We took care of each other.
We learned from each other.

Somewhere in the middle of all of it, we built something real.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Thank you for showing up.
Thank you for trusting this.
Thank you for teaching me.
Thank you for stepping up.
Thank you for taking care of one another.
Thank you for letting me be part of your rides, your challenges, your victories and your summer.
Thank you for making Spoke what it is.

This has been the best summer of my life.

It happened because of all of you.

See you soon.

-Patrick