GRASSROOTS & INDEPENDENT
FOR THE FUN OF IT

We just want to put on a cool local event, and we’ve picked the week before another cool local event. If you’re an out-of-towner, fantastic, you can get two weekends of awesomeness for half the price of the big “playa’s”. If you can only pick one, do one every other year, or honestly, go to the other. 

The gravel event calendar is getting painfully full in the spring and fall, and avoiding overlap is getting harder and harder to do. Overlap is particularly harder and less palatable when – large – vanilla – quasi-Triathalon-style – corporate organizers put events overtop of just about anyone and everyone, even themselves. Or worse, they’re buying up fantastic events and making them indistinguishable. Then, to top it off, they throw absurd amounts of cash into the mix, only rewarding a select few while pilfering from the local race pool from across the country, screwing the little guy at every chance they can get. We’ve done these events – and yes, we may still be bitter about not getting our ONE beer and ONE” insert average food ticket here” while charging outrageous entry fees. Some of us may have done these events not just once but twice, even a third time—and we’re still waiting on our food for most and never did get our beer – shame on this guy for not learning his lesson. We enjoyed the spectacle they provided, but in our opinion, they’re now taking too much bandwidth, and to add insult to injury, every event is the same. 

We’re not saying to not do these corporate, vanilla, formulaic events, but when we’re asked to lower our entry fee because the “gravel scene is getting too expensive, ” maybe we need to look at the big picture of the scene. So, please, do your one, maybe two, destination rides, but don’t ask the little guy, who most of the time is paying for a good bit of it out of their own pocket, to suffer because of it. Border Wars, we’re the little guy, and we plan on keeping it that way. We’re offering a unique event, and you will get a big bang for your buck; we like to think a really big bang. We have scoured the border roads of Georgia and Alabama and are working with local friends to provide a stellar party that just happens to put on a terrific “race” that, to win or just ride, will be equally as rewarding.