Linda English had been cycling on Oregon’s rural roads around her home in Bend for years, but one day in 2013, she seized upon a rare opportunity.

Her husband, Kevin English, also an avid cyclist, had injured himself and needed time out of the saddle to recover. That made him the perfect person to drive the shuttle car while Linda and her friends pedaled between Post — a hamlet at the geographical center of Oregon — and Paulina, a Central Oregon community about 30 miles west. (If you go, be sure to check out the awesome pastrami sandwiches at the newly renamed Paulina General Store.)

“The whole time Kevin’s driving, he’s looking out the windows at all these gravel roads and thinking how we should be riding on those,” Linda says. “And so he started exploring, got us gravel bikes, and everything took off from there.”

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