Lachlan Morton and his buddies are packing their Gregory bags up into a campervan, highway ahead of them, heading east.

From the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, across the Great Plains and up through Canada to the green hills and valleys of Vermont, they are stopping to ride bikes with new friends and old ones in corners of the continent that Lachlan has not yet discovered. They will camp under vast canopies of stars (campsite recommendations are welcome), do a bit of running and a lot of exploring, and experience the countryside the best way they know how.

“I have always thought that North America is best seen by road tripping with a bike,” Lachlan said when we caught up with him, as he and his mates were driving across the prairies on Thursday. “You can see the land change. We started in the mountains in Boulder. Right now we are in Nebraska, going across the plains towards Iowa City through Des Moines. After that, we will go through Chicago, Detroit, and then up to Canada through Toronto and Montréal, and then back into the States to go to Vermont. There is a lot to see on the way.”

Karter Machen is there to photograph the trip and make sure the van keeps moving east at a decent clip. There is a Chicago Hotdogs baseball game the guys cannot miss. Lachlan is due to throw the first pitch. 

Road dog John Kasaian is filming the journey and pacing Lachlan on his first training runs. The Three Peaks Cyclocross is coming up and Lachlan wants to be ready. He has already taken his new Brooks out for three good rips on the trails this week. 

Lachlan’s trusty mechanic Tom Hopper has brushed up on the camper’s dashboard manual to make sure that they stay on the road and will prep Lachy’s race bikes. Lachlan’s mate Tony from Auburn is going to join too. Lachy is calling him the Chief Vibes Commissioner.

The boys’ next stop is core4.bike this Saturday in Iowa City.

“The race is a hundred miles and we can camp at the venue,” Lachlan says. “It is completely new to me. That was the appeal. It looks like a cool event. You arrive on Friday. There is a five-kilometer run Friday afternoon that I might do. There's a bit of a party and then you get to camp and then race on Saturday and then there's a bit of a party on Saturday night. It just seems like a nice relaxed vibe. It is part of the Gravel Earth series, so I'm sure there'll be some people who take it quite seriously and I'm sure the race is pretty hard, but I’m going for the atmosphere.”

After core4, the guys will head for Chicago for the baseball game on the 18th and to meet up with the good folks from WorldBicycleRelief for a ride around the city on Buffalo Bikes. Then it’s off to the border and across to Toronto and into the Canadian woods. They have some time to explore before the group ride they have planned in Montréal (watch for more details on our social channels). That’s the whole point of this road trip for Lachlan.

“We're stopping to ride all the way,” Lachy said. “I was out this morning already ripping up the sweet gravel roads in Nebraska. It is nice, because you get to ride somewhere new every day. It is about trying to find fun routes to do every day in new places and hopefully meet a few new bike riders on the way. That’s the plan anyway. This morning we did a more or less 60-mile ride and most of it was off road. We didn’t see any cars. It took me maybe five minutes to make the route. There are so many options. Definitely, in these parts of the country a gravel bike is the best bike to be riding.”

The final destination for Lachy and his buddies’ Great North American Road Trip is Vermont Overland on August 23rd and 24th. Lachlan wanted to race it this year as a kind of tribute to his good friend Sule Kangangi of Team Amani who died in a tragic crash there in 2022.

“I just want to see where it happened,” Lachlan said. “I don’t know what I am looking for to be honest. But I think that will help. And I've heard really good things about Vermont Overland. It is a very community oriented kind of event with a trail running race on Saturday and a race on Sunday. You can camp at the race location, which is going to be pretty cool. That was the motivation. I’ve never raced in Vermont before and have heard a lot of good things about the riding up there in general, especially at this time of year. So, I’m excited for that one.”

If you are on route, come out and say hi. It is going to be a blast. 

As Lachy says, “This is a multidisciplinary trip. We've got running, we've got riding, and we’ve got baseball!”