International Kook Exchange Program Part O1: Milk and Honey Edition
Words and photos by Jorja Creighton

Founded April 2017, the International Kook Exchange Program (IKEP) provides a safe place for vulnerable kooks in the international biking community, globally, worldwide.The International Kook Exchange Program is for everyone. Chances are… you are a raging kook, embrace it, nurture it, take it into the wild and spread the kook pollen this summer. The exchange aims to provide inspiration to travel and mingle with other bike enthusiasts, it’s a reminder you’re ugly and it’s all goood!

The Australian-US exchange is in its first week of a two-month tour, with Marcel and myself bringing high visibility and sun safety to the land of milk and honey.

We’ve started The Summer Exchange in Arizona with a visit to a well known Kook…Metal Ray, who joined us in Australia two months ago on the first official Kook Exchange; the #crustvantour which you might have seen a month or so back.

Metal Ray took us on a high altitude warm up tour of Northern Arizona’s San Francisco peaks and its labyrinth of MTB trails and tracks nearby his hometown of Flagstaff. A 0% humidity and 100% blazing sun bike ride through fire rampaged mountainsides and snow-capped peaks, along ribbons of single track into Aspen oasis campsites. Dreamy.

We were stopped in our Crust Bikes tire tracks by leaping deer and eagles playing in the wind while poor unsuspecting Americans were stopped by our retina damaging fluorescence. It’s a safety thing. Our second week of the exchange will see us getting hot and heavy at the Grand Canyon with some deep, penetrative North Rimming and Rainbow trailing in what everyone around here says is the best part of the wide and dusty Wonder of the World.

At the beginning of July, we will be embarking the Oregon Timber Trail which we have been warned will be in rather rough, possibly still snowy condition this early in the season. If you are interested in kooking out we will be starting the trail on the very American date of the 4th of July. It’s a Slow Squad occasion, so don’t bring legs.

Represent your inner Kook with these Kooky patches.

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