Born on the beach. Raised in the mountains.
TGIF grew out of the same childhood impulse that sends kids into the surf, onto skateboards, and onto BMX bikes after school: stay outside, move through the day, and see where the afternoon takes you. We used to call it being gone until the street lights came on. There was never a finish line, just the promise of one more hour before someone yelled your name.
The details were ours — board shorts, beach parking lots, the particular smell of dry California sage — but the feeling wasn’t. It was the same thing that happens in pickup basketball games, on neighborhood dirt trails, in snowbanks, or anywhere a kid disappears with friends and loses track of time. You go farther than you meant to, stop for food you didn’t plan on, and come home with a story instead of a destination. Your version might have looked completely different; the pull was the same.
As we got older, fixed gears replaced BMX bikes. We rode up and down the Southern California coast in cut-off jean shorts with no real plan beyond finding water, a meal, and a good story to bring home. A ride from Huntington Beach to San Diego became ordinary: roughly a century toward Mexico, tacos or a burger somewhere along the way, then the train back north. The point was never speed. It was where the day took us and who was beside us.
Life pulled people apart for a while. When childhood friends found each other again, gravel felt like the natural continuation of those same aimless coastal days: connect familiar roads to dirt we had never ridden, let a few hours turn into an entire day, and stop worrying about whether the bike or the kit or the route was the “right” one.
Colorado changed the scale and the terrain — bigger mountains, mining roads, weather that arrives at 2 PM, altitude that makes you honest — but not the reason for riding. That evolution became the TGIF community and the rides now shared across California and Colorado.
Southern California roots. Colorado grown.
We love cycling. We also think it takes itself too seriously more often than it needs to. The unwritten rules, the equipment anxiety, the quiet sorting of people by speed — none of that makes a ride better, and a lot of it keeps people from starting at all.
So TGIF isn’t a club, a team, or a race series. It’s a standing invitation that grew out of too many good days spent wandering. Some Fridays that means twenty-two easy miles and a picnic table. Some weekends it means a self-supported day above treeline that you’ll bring up for the rest of your life.
There are people who started this and people who keep it going, and honestly the second group matters more. The community is the protagonist here — the guides, the volunteers, the person who brought a floor pump nobody asked for, the friend who dragged someone new along.
Some of the most important conversations we’ve had happened riding side by side, when the miles gave the words somewhere to go. That’s why mental health awareness and suicide prevention have become part of what TGIF rides for — not the whole story, but an important one. More openness. Less stigma. More people feeling like they can say the hard thing out loud.
The rides have always been free, and we intend to keep them that way. If you ever want to help carry some of the work behind them, Ride It Forward explains how — and why it buys nobody a better place in the group.
Trail Marker
Ride Bikes. Meet People. Build Community.
Two homes
Colorado
Boulder and the mountains above it. Mining-town gravel, long climbs, weather that arrives at 2 PM whether you’re ready or not. Coffee before, beer after.
Southern California
The coast and canyons where TGIF got its start. Dry hills that smell like sage, fire roads that lead to the ocean, and the kind of riding weather that makes you stay out longer than you planned.