Single Speed Worlds 2026: Port Jervis, New York

Event

Single Speed Worlds 2026

Date

2026-10-08

Region

New York

Country

USA

I have never been to the Northeast.

Not for a ride, not for a layover, not by accident. Colorado makes it easy to believe that everything worth riding is within driving distance of my garage, and I have never made much of an effort to disprove that.

Then Single Speed Worlds landed in Port Jervis, New York, and I bought a plane ticket.

For anyone new here, single speeding means riding a mountain bike with one gear and treating it as a personality. I've been defending the practice for years with arguments about simplicity and fitness. The can in the video above has a more honest summary. It calls this "our ancient ritual of stupidity," and it calls the event "a world class event that isn't classy at all."

I've spent a lot of time looking for a better disclaimer for this site and have not found one.

This is the running diary. It starts on day 0.5, because the first day was a travel day, and travel days only count for half. I'm being generous.

Day 0.5: Getting There

I woke up at 2:30am to get to Denver International Airport for a 6am flight to Newark. Nothing good has ever started at 2:30am. This was not the exception, but it did eventually include a burger.

Airports teach me the same lessons over and over. Today's was about sequencing.

They took my normal checked bag first. Then they weighed the bike bag, and it came in 2 pounds overweight. The fix was obvious. Move 2 pounds of tools out of the bike bag and into the normal bag. Except the normal bag was already gone, somewhere behind a wall, on its way to the plane without me.

So I paid $160 for the bike bag. That works out to $80 a pound for tools I wasn't even allowed to touch.

Lesson learned. I'd like to say I'll never do it again, but I've said that about airports before.

The Karate Monkey packed mostly fine in my ancient Dakine bag. It's also a very small bag. I doubt a Krampus would fit in it, and I'm in no hurry to find out. That's a problem for a future version of me with a bigger bag and a smaller sense of shame.

We landed in Newark around 11am. I rented a car and headed for Port Jervis, avoiding tolls wherever I could, which mostly meant picking the road with the most curves. I think a lot of it was Highway 23, but I wasn't paying close enough attention to swear to it. It's a pretty drive and a very twisty one. I was not told the Northeast had hills, and I would like a word with whoever left that out.

The weather was absolutely beautiful, which was another thing nobody had warned me about. The Northeast was supposed to be gray and damp, and it showed up sunny and warm.

In town I went straight to NeverLost Adventures. Not much was going on yet, but they gave me a few special beers made for the event, which is a strong opening move from a bike shop. One was a can of Singlespeed American Pale Ale, and the label is the video at the top of this page. I read it twice. It's the most accurate thing printed on anything I've bought this year.

I also decided to have them assemble my bike. Doing it in a hotel room would not have been fun, and there was a second reason. If United's baggage handlers had broken something, I wanted a bike shop to find out before I did, preferably with the right tools.

Nothing was broken. It all went together beautifully. Good job, NeverLost. It was the first thing all day that went according to plan, and I wasn't even involved.

Late lunch was at Fox N Hare brewery. The Sig Burger was good. I won't oversell it, but I'd eat it again, and I've already thought about it more than a grown adult should.

Then I went back to the hotel for a nap. I'd been awake since 2:30am, which I'm pretty sure counts as a previous day. At 7pm I went back to Fox N Hare for the get-together.

There's an Appalachian Trail display on the wall. The map puts Port Jervis just north of High Point, which tops out at 1,803 feet. For a Coloradan, that is roughly the elevation of a nice parking lot. I fully expect the Northeast to make up for it with roots.

Then there was the poster. Apparently my registration has been revoked, and there is a $1,500 reward for me. I have no idea what I did. I'd like to say it was a misunderstanding, but I've been to enough single speed events to know it probably wasn't.

When I got back to the hotel, I found something in my frame bag.

It's a railroad spike of some sort. I did not put it there. The bike bag spent a couple of hours sitting outside downtown Port Jervis, and single speeders like to play jokes, so I have a theory. I don't have a suspect. I'm keeping it anyway. It was free, which makes it the best deal I've gotten since Denver.

King Size Paydays are my snacks for the daily rides. I have four.

Tomorrow I'll drive the rental car to the camping area, where the long-term parking is, at about 9:30am and ride back into town with the group. The ride rolls out at 10:30am and should take around 4 hours. That's a reasonable plan, which means it will probably change.

Day 1: Friday, October 9

Friday was the intro ride, a group tour of the Port Jervis trails the day before the main event. About 100 to 150 of us showed up. That's roughly half of the 355 or so people who have applied for Saturday's main ride, so I'm treating today as the version with room to move.

We gathered downtown around a fountain. It was decorated with pumpkins, which is more seasonal effort than most bike events manage.

Friday was beautiful too, sunny and in the low 70s by the afternoon, though it started cold enough to remind me it was October.

I expected roots. I had pictured wet, tangled forest and a lot of sliding sideways. What I got was rocks. The trails were much rockier than I anticipated, and noticeably less rooty. I'm very glad I brought a bike with a suspension fork. I used all 140mm of travel on my Marzocchi Bomber Z2, and I'd like it noted that the fork earned its keep. Anyone who rode this on a rigid fork has my respect and my concern.

The tree cover caused a different problem. Between the shade and the leaves sitting on top of the trail, it was dark enough that I had to take my sunglasses off. I couldn't tell the trail from the ground next to it, which is a poor quality in a trail. This doesn't happen in Colorado, where the sun is so bright that sunglasses are closer to safety equipment than an accessory. I wish I'd brought photochromic lenses. Instead I went bare eyed, which is technically a strategy.

By my Garmin, the ride was about 20 miles with around 1,400 feet of climbing. The whole thing happened between roughly 430 and 1,160 feet above sea level, which is an elevation I normally drive through on the way to something else.

It took 4 hours and 37 minutes, and about 2.5 hours of that was actual movement. The rest was regrouping, photos, and standing around staring at rocks. I'm calling it scouting.

Some of that scouting was involuntary. At some point I got a little bit lost, and so did a guy named Joe, from Philly, who was riding a Surly Grappler. Between the two of us we had no sense of direction and exactly one plan, which was to follow whoever looked like they knew where they were going. Neither of us did. We ended up going the wrong way together.

It turned out to be a good match. We were at a similar fitness level, and we shared a "don't give a fuck" mentality about where we finished. That's a rare thing to find in a stranger, and I found it by getting lost. So we kept riding together for the rest of the day.

What We Rode

I matched my track against OpenStreetMap and checked the trail names against Trailforks. About 4.5 miles of the route ran on paths I couldn't put a name to, so this is only the named part, and I may have a trail or two wrong. Roughly in the order we rode them:

• Dejay Downs (about 0.35 miles): The technical one. Trailforks describes it as a tech trail with a rocky section, and OpenStreetMap marks it advanced. It was short, which was probably for the best.
• Beginner's Berm (about 0.5 miles): Easy, as the name promises. A short, friendly break from the previous trail.
• Skyline Path (about 0.9 miles): Blue, and really an access road. Trailforks calls it the common way to the top of the Watershed and the Point Peter overlook, with about 245 feet of climbing.
• Scout's Honor (about 1.3 miles with the cutoff): Blue singletrack, mostly downhill. Trailforks lists about 70 feet of climbing and 185 feet of descent over its mile.
• Reservoir Road and Box Baum Road (about 2 miles together): Gravel access roads, gated at the ends, with a long gradual climb. They are the connective tissue between the fun parts.
• Lost Bear (about 2 miles): The longest piece of singletrack of the day. Trailforks describes a 2.3-mile continuous trail with natural and man-made obstacles and rock rollers throughout. This is probably where the rocks stopped being a rumor.
• Delaware Trail (about 0.8 miles): Rated easy and almost entirely flat. Trailforks lists around 14 feet of climbing over its length. My legs sent a thank-you note.

The rest was pavement and town streets, including Academy Avenue, Main Street, and Sleepy Hollow Road. You can browse the whole system on the Port Jervis Watershed page on Trailforks.

We all ended up back in downtown Port Jervis after registration, and the hosted competitions started. One of the first events was racing while pulling a fire.

I didn't write that sentence as a joke. That is what happened.

Tomorrow is the main ride, and there will be two to three times as many of us on it. I plan to start near the back, which is where I do my best work.

Day 2: Saturday, October 10 (The Main Event)

Saturday was the actual Single Speed World Championship ride. The group rolled out of downtown Port Jervis at about 10am, and by my Garmin the ride came to roughly 25 miles with around 2,200 feet of climbing. It took 6 hours and 38 minutes on the clock, with about 4 of those spent moving. The rest was comfort stations, waiting, and the same staring at rocks as Friday.

It was another absolutely beautiful day, which felt like a clerical error. Three in a row is more good weather than I'd planned for.

It was a hard ride. Friday gave me rocks, and Saturday gave me rocks plus the roots I'd been promised, often in the same few feet of trail. Nearly all of it was chunky, which is why I only took pictures in the handful of spots where I could let go of the bars without a plan.

There was also the matter of the number plate. At check-in we each got one. They were all the same number, with no RFID chip attached, which is typical for events like this. The number itself is mostly decorative. The plate's real job is to collect stickers, because you get one for every loop you finish after the double aid station. No plate, no proof.

The plate needs holes to attach to a bike. I flew here, so I didn't bring a tool to cut them, and I figured we wouldn't need one. We did. Luckily they had extras on hand in town before the ride.

I still didn't have the right tool to punch holes in it, so I couldn't zip tie it to my stem or brake hoses like a normal person. I jammed it in my spokes instead. It worked fine, and it was surprisingly less annoying than having it in my cockpit in the first place. I'd like to say I planned that, but I'd also like to say a lot of things.

Before the start I put a few more PSI in the rear tire. I was worried about hitting the rim on all the chunk, and I'd rather have a bouncy tire than a bent wheel. I also bumped the fork pressure a little. The bike felt great all day, with no mechanical issues, which is more than I can say for the people I passed.

Several riders had flat tires along the way. I carry a nice LEZYNE Micro Floor Drive High Pressure pocket floor pump, and I lent it out after watching people struggle with their pocket pumps. What I couldn't spare was my tube. I carry exactly one, and it's for me. That's a bad answer to give someone standing next to a flat tire, but I'm told it's called self-reliance.

I saw a lot of tiny little thinwall tires out there, and a lot of the people riding them were standing next to their bikes. I run big fuck ass tires. They weigh a ton and they roll like shit, and I don't care, because I'm not changing a damn flat halfway through the ride. Thinwall tires are fast right up until they aren't. I'd rather be slow and still rolling than fast and kneeling in the leaves with a tube and a bad attitude. Big tires, slow ride, zero flats.

There were 2.5 comfort stations. The first one you visit twice, after a loop, and the half is the finish line. The plate stickers start after that double aid station, one per loop.

My snack plan failed. I started getting tired about 17 miles in, and I should have brought a third Payday. I only had two. Four candy bars sounded like plenty on Thursday night, and it turns out Thursday night me did not ride Saturday.

I didn't find out how bad it was until I finished. My Garmin estimated I burned about 3,600 calories on the ride. Two Paydays are hardly enough for that, and neither is a third. The breakfast didn't help either. The runny eggs at the Holiday Inn in Pennsylvania were no match for the day ahead, and there were no biscuits and gravy, which I'd been spoiled by at Single Speed USA in Utah. I know what a proper breakfast can do for a long day. This was not one.

I didn't ride alone, which is the main reason I made it through. I ran into Joe again at the start, and we rode together the entire way, double loops and all.

Joe was on the Surly Grappler from Friday. It's rigid, with drop bars and BB7 mechanical brakes, and he took it over the same rocks and roots that had me rationing my 140mm of travel. Earlier I said anyone riding this on a rigid fork had my respect and my concern. I now know exactly one person who qualifies, and the respect has gone up. The concern has not gone down. Big balls. Mucho respect.

About those double loops. We did them, and I think plenty of people didn't. I have no proof beyond the fact that we were in the middle of the pack, and then all of a sudden we were toward the back. That isn't evidence. It's a vibe. I'm not accusing anyone, but I did notice, and I'm putting it on the record.

Joe and I earned every one of those plate stickers the slow way, which is the only way either of us goes.

What We Rode

I matched my track against OpenStreetMap again. The trails here overlap and run side by side, and some of the loops were ridden more than once, so I'm only listing the ones I'm fairly sure about, roughly in the order I hit them. I may have a few wrong:

• Beginner's Berm, Skyline Path, and Cosmic Charlie: The warmup, and the way up out of town. This is where Saturday started to separate itself from Friday.
• Turntable, Throwing Stones, and Sugaree: Advanced and intermediate singletrack on the climb and traverse after that. The first real rocks.
• Scout's Honor and Outer Limits: Outer Limits is the longest stretch I can name, and it appears to make up a big share of the singletrack on the route.
• Starcrawf, Walt's Keep, and Holography: A string of moderate trails connected by Box Baum Road, which I'll admit made the connecting parts feel almost civil.
• Lost Bear: Back again after Friday, which is not a sentence I expected to write.
• Dejay Downs and Painted Apron: The advanced one from Friday showed up several more times as the route looped back through it. This is where most of the chunk lived.
• Lenni Lenape, Juda Hunter, Flintlock, Tallulah, Narrows, and Huguenot Hill: The rest of the system, ridden in no order I could defend.

The ride finished on town streets back to the start, with the usual downtown mix of pavement and bike racks. The full system is on the Port Jervis Watershed page on Trailforks.

After the finish I went straight to the brewery and had a burger before the official dinner at 5:30. I'd like to say this was a recovery strategy. It was a burger.

Dinner was very nice, a mix of American and Indian food. It was a better meal than a day that began with me standing in the rocks had any right to end with.

Day 3: Sunday, October 11 (Rainout)

It rained. It had been raining since I got up, and it showed no interest in stopping. Sunday was a total rainout, which is the weather's polite way of telling me the trip is over.

After three absolutely beautiful days, the weather collected on everything it owed us at once.

There was a bit of a ride to the Final Decider, which is how they figure out who gets to host next year. As I understand it, the finalists were a tie between New Mexico, two teams from Virginia, and a team from Pennsylvania. I haven't seen anything in writing, but the rumor is that New Mexico won. My guess is it was Mone bikes. I'm basing that on nothing, which is how most of the rumors at a single speed event get started.

If it's true, my friends out west and I are excited. New Mexico turns a flight into a drive, which means no bike bag fees and no overweight tools. I'll admit that out west, "close" is a generous word. Everyone assumes everywhere in the West is nearby, and driving from one major city to the next regularly takes 8 hours or more. Still, I'd take 8 hours in my own car with my own tools over the airport.

After that I went into town for a bit, and then I packed up.

This time I was smart. I remembered Day 0.5, when I paid $160 for the privilege of carrying 2 extra pounds of tools. So the tools are going in my normal checked bag, along with the saddle and the seatpost. The bike bag gets only the bike. It's a very simple plan, and I'm slightly annoyed it took an airport fee to come up with it.

The tools live in a Carhartt Utility Roll Organizer, which is handy. It's a water-resistant roll with 16 pockets, so the wrenches, gauges, levers, and pump all live in one place and unroll like a menu. It's the least exciting purchase in this article, and it's the one I'd defend the hardest.

There's not much else to say. It rained, I packed, and I'm flying home tomorrow.

• single-speed
• single-speed-worlds
• new-york
• port-jervis
• mountain-bike
• travel