Red Bull and Cannondale Bicycles are sending two pro cyclists up the Eastern Seaboard of the US on a six-stop multi-discipline road trip called the Red Bull Crossroads. Over the course of five days the duo will appear at bike shops and host group rides, while they learn to ‘crossover’ from their preferred riding disciplines.
The six bike shop stops on the tour are open for riders and fans to meet Aaron Chase and Tim Johnson, as well as ride with them.
The duo brainstormed the ‘Crossroads’ while attending the opening of the New York Red Bull’s soccer stadium last March. Sharing sponsors and a sport, albeit radically different sub-sections, they hatched a plan to ‘just go ride’ with the purpose of sharing and teaching each other their very different pedal-powered passions — all with Red Bull and GoPro cameras in tow.
“We’re hitting the whole Cannondale quiver of bikes over the next five days,” Johnson told BikeRadar. “He’s [Chase] showing me what he does and how he rolls and then on Monday we go to Cannondale for a road ride… he’s not an endurance rider at all.”
Over the course of the trip, the duo will share a half dozen or so rides, highlighting bikes from the new Jekyll ‘over mountain’ trail bike to the Super Six High Mod professional road racer. They’ll even take to the streets of New York City on Bad Boy commuter bikes to attend the Red Bull Monster Track alley cat race on Saturday. Highlights and bloopers will undoubtedly come when Chase sets off in chase of Johnson on a ’cross bike and when Johnson learns to ‘huck’ at Highline Mountain Bike Park in Northfield, New Hampshire. “It’s totally absurd,” said Johnson. “He doesn’t wear spandex and I’m going to try and do what he does; he’s going to put me out of my comfort zone and I’m going to put him out of his comfort zone.”
Red Bull and Cannondale sponsor both Aaron Chase a professional free rider and cyclo-crosser Tim Johnson, and while the two couldn’t be further apart in riding style, both have experienced similar paths to becoming professionals. “We’re friends,” said Johnson. “I’ve known him since he was 13. He’s since made a living ripping around on his bike and in a lot of ways I’ve done the same. We were just doing different versions of it.
“We’re going to do a mountain bike ride in Boston at Lynn Woods and it is were we both did our first races.”
The Crossroads Tour kicks off 6pm tonight at Bike Doctor in Waldorf, Maryland and continues through Wednesday at Highland Mountain Bike Park in Northfield, New Hampshire.
- 11 March, 6pm, Bike Doctor, Waldorf, MD
- 12 March, 12pm, Cycle Craft, Parsippany, NJ
- 12 March, 6pm, Ride Brooklyn, Brooklyn, NY
- 13 March, 11am, Sid’s 19th Street, New York City
- 14 March, 4pm, Target Training TrinCycle, Westport, CT
- 15 March, 4pm, Quad Cycles, Boston, MA
- 16 March, 2pm, Highland Mountain Bike Park, Northfield, NH