I've wanted to do Gran Gravel since my friend José Bermúdez won the first iteration a few years ago. The event is a 500-mile lap around east Texas, mostly on dirt and gravel, starting and ending in Bryan, Texas, my old stompin' grounds. "I just don't have the right kind of bike," I used to think, since all the photos I had seen showed everyone on mountain bikes capable of running big tires. This year I decided that the best bike in the world for me is the bike I have right now (2016 aluminum Salsa Warbird). I now live in Hewitt, an hour and a half away from College Station. I made some weekend trips over to ride parts of the course and realized that my bike would be a great choice over much of the course. The race being cancelled didn't matter that much to me, even if I had to do an individual time trial. I figured the safest place in the world from the corona virus at that point would be behind the Pine Curtain in East Texas and I suspected this would be