Bike Camp 2026

a guest blog post by Kody Dahl

Velo Orange was in attendance at Bike Camp 2026, slinging goods, hosting test rides, and sponsoring one of the southeastern U.S.’ newest bike shows. Kody Dahl is here with photos and words about it. Be sure to check out the huge gallery at the end of the post!

If the first swing at something is really good, the second try always feels like a bit of a risk. Was that first time just dumb luck? Is this a Tubthumping one-hit-wonder situation? Are we bound for a sophomore slump? Well, dear reader, we’re happy to share that the second year of the Southeastern U.S.’ premiere Appalachian alt bike festival was not in any way a Chumbawamba track (and we apologize for bringing your attention back to the decline of Chumbawamba for spurious reasons).

Bike Camp began last year as a celebration of the non-competitive side of cycling put on on by non-profit, bike shop, and community hub Two Bikes Chattanooga. Held in the midst of a buttercup-strewn field tucked in next to Lookout Mountain, it’s one part bike show, one part community meetup, and one part Appalachian folk festival. This year’s event took what was great about the first, and thoughtfully improved on it. Old friends and new shared workshops, rides, talks, and good food. And the bike show…let’s talk about the bike show.

Noted pizza fanatic, headline speaker, and acclaimed rubber sommelier Ronnie Romance noted the many choices made on bikes in this show as he hosted the awards ceremony; while he did not feel that they were all correct choices, there were certainly an eclectic set of them. And many of the entries present (our words, not his) were striking, evocative examples of a particularly fun species of bike: frequently ridden. In between wood spoon carving, broom making, talks on foraging, bikepacking, urbanism, photography, and nutrition, canoe paddles, rides through the woods to swimming holes, and good old-fashioned making friends, the astute observer would have seen a surprising number of curious individuals, knots of interested bike-browsers, and certainly quite a bevy of bike folk (including a few from the VO team) filtering through the bike show, admiring, learning, enjoying, and disapproving alike.

The winners: In the pre-Y2K class, Dill rolled into his second annual Bike Camp win with a gorgeous rusted out Schwinn, Eddie Bauer edition. Perfectly dialed finish AND roller cam brakes, are you kidding!? Dill was seen on this bike absolutely RIPPING down Lookout Mountain on one of the group rides on Sunday.

In the post-Y2K, Sam with his sparkly purple Crust Scapebot (and matching wardrobe). He toured his way to the spotlight from many hundreds of miles away, and his bike is brimming with the kind of enjoyable details you get from a lived-in rig. Sam was spotted doing a perfect fakie on this bike, fully loaded.

And last but not least, for the People’s Choice, we had Joe with an exquisite Crust Nor’Easter build that just hit all the marks. Joe’s build is the kind of bike that, on some level, spoke to the scene at Bike Camp as the Bike We All Want, from its tasteful aesthetic to its many practical details. This bike continued to draw admiring comments as it (and Joe) passed everyone on the way up the mountain on Sunday.

Day two of bike camp felt lighter: wake up in a field in the morning light, eat breakfast, pick up a few conversations from the night before over your coffee or tea…and then roll out. The team at Bike Tennessee put together two gorgeous routes, a “20ish” mile and a “40ish” mile option, and both overlapped for the first ten miles or so.

On the ride, the non-competitive culture stayed front-and-center: nobody was chasing KOM’s, conversation was frequent (except for on a few of the stouter climbs), and several more casual cyclists found themselves doing a ride they would have perhaps been uncomfortable to tackle on their own. Mid-ride, the team at Two Bikes had set up an aid station in Lula Lake Land Trust, a hop, skip, and a jump from an overlook of one of Chattanooga’s tallest waterfalls. The rides rolled on, folks trickled back into the meadow and began to pack up, break camp, and ride back into town, and very casually…that was it for Bike Camp ’26.

If you’re looking for a way to spend a beautiful spring weekend outside, on and around bikes and bike community, without the pretense and ego of competition…mark your calendars for April 9–11, 2027. We might just see you there.