Chris Chavie

I’m just trying to get butts on bikes.

On many Monday mornings, while much of the Twin Cities settles into another workweek, Chris Chavie points his bike away from his home without much of a plan. Sometimes he rides towards open countryside and rolling farm fields. Sometimes he wanders toward a rail trail or strings together stretches of pavement and gravel. He sometimes carries a lunch, and if the weather cooperates, there may be a stop at a park for a sandwich and a nonalcoholic beer before another hour or two in the saddle. Chavie calls these rides his “Monday Meanderings,” a name that captures both the lack of urgency and the sense of freedom that keeps drawing him back onto the bike year after year. “I can just kind of go and randomly just ride,” he said. “It’s the freedom.”

For more than a decade, Chavie has spent much of his free time helping other people find that same feeling. Through his blog, Minnesota Bike Trail Navigator, and an increasingly active social media presence built around short-form cycling videos, the 57-year-old Minnesota rider has become one of the region’s most trusted voices in cycling culture. What began as a personal attempt to organize information for himself eventually evolved into something far larger: a detailed, constantly updated collection of race calendars, trail resources, ride ideas, gear discussions, and visual storytelling that thousands of riders now rely on throughout the Midwest.

The project was never intended to be a business. Chavie was not a professional writer or media personality looking to capitalize on the cycling boom. He worked in the restaurant industry, rode bikes when he could, and found himself frustrated by how difficult it was to locate reliable information about places to ride in Minnesota after returning to cycling around 2011. Living in a rural area surrounded by gravel roads only intensified that frustration. There were routes everywhere, but very little centralization of information for people exploring them. “I wanted to ride places, but I didn’t know where to ride,” he said. “I couldn’t really find any resources online that were like a database of where to ride in Minnesota.”

So he started building one himself. Launched in January 2012, Minnesota Bike Trail Navigator quickly grew into a clearinghouse for nearly every corner of the state’s cycling scene. Chavie cataloged rail trails, gravel races, charity rides, mountain bike systems, touring routes, and fat bike events. Riders looking for a beginner-friendly trail in southern Minnesota could find one. Someone searching for a gravel race months ahead of the season could find that too. Over time, the site developed a reputation for being thorough in a way few independent cycling resources were. “That was my goal going into it,” Chavie said. “I wanted it to be the go-to site.”

The idea of removing intimidation surfaces repeatedly in both Chavie’s work and the way he talks about cycling. A newcomer looking for a scenic 10-mile loop receives the same enthusiasm as a rider training for a gravel century. He posts videos explaining winter layering systems, bike-fishing setups, trail previews, race recaps, commuting routes, and gear ideas. The tone feels like encouragement from someone who remembers exactly what it was like to be new and unsure where to begin. “The whole goal of me being an advocate is to get people excited about riding,” Chavie said. “Whether it’s a 10-mile loop down in Hastings or if they want to do their first gravel century.”

The advocacy role developed organically. Chavie describes himself as a “self-proclaimed cycling advocate,” though the title now feels earned through sheer consistency. For years, he updated calendars almost daily while balancing a full-time job, family life, riding, and the demands of maintaining a growing online platform. Eventually, the workload became too much to sustain across all cycling disciplines, leading him to rebrand and narrow his focus to gravel riding and winter fat biking. Though he admits, “I’d rather spend time riding than sitting and updating calendars,” stepping away entirely was never an option.

The shift toward video helped solve part of that problem. Platforms like TikTok allowed him to condense experiences into quick, visual snapshots that could reach riders across generations. A gravel race recap could be delivered in under a minute. A trail condition update suddenly became more immersive. Videos from winter fat bike rides or bike-fishing outings introduced viewers to forms of cycling many had never considered before. Chavie estimated he gained thousands of followers in just a few months simply by posting videos consistently and cross-posting them across platforms. Yet, despite the expanding audience, he still speaks more like a rider than an influencer, simply enjoying helping people discover places worth riding.

That influence has not gone unnoticed inside Minnesota’s gravel scene. Organizers routinely reach out, offering race entries or collaboration opportunities because they understand the value of his platform. Gravel racer and North Star Gravel Series organizer Chase Wark told Chavie he had relied on the blog’s race calendars for years while planning events. “Nobody has a better one than you,” Chavie recalled Wark telling him.

Perhaps no event illustrates his long relationship with the gravel community better than the Filthy 50, a race he has completed every year since its inception. When founder Trenton Raygor launched the event in 2013, the goal was to create something less intimidating than the ultra-distance gravel races dominating the scene at the time. Chavie immediately recognized its appeal and helped promote it through the blog. The first edition drew fewer than 200 riders. Today, registration fills almost instantly, and the event has grown into one of the region’s signature gravel rides.

For Chavie, though, the draw is not merely the event’s growth but the landscape and culture surrounding it. He talks about the Driftless terrain with the affection of someone who has spent years relishing every rise, descent, and remote stretch of road. “It’s just beautiful down there,” he said. “Amish farms and minimum maintenance roads and one-lane little lanes through the Driftless area. The community is great, and the vibe of the whole event is just fantastic.”

The same appreciation for experience over performance carries into the quieter corners of Chavie’s riding life. While many endurance athletes eventually become consumed by pace, rankings, or mileage totals, Chavie still talks about cycling with the curiosity of someone who genuinely enjoys discovering new ways to move through the world. One season that may mean gravel races and long road rides. Another year it may mean experimenting with bikepacking setups or hauling fishing gear across frozen lakes behind a fat bike.

What makes the information so effective is not simply that Chavie highlights his adventures, but that he approaches them like an educator rather than a showman. He talks viewers through apparel systems, visibility, safety considerations, route planning, and equipment choices in ways designed to make intimidating activities feel approachable. He remembers very clearly what it felt like to be uncertain and inexperienced, and much of his content seems rooted in answering the kinds of questions he once had himself. Even winter riding, which many cyclists view as inaccessible or extreme, becomes something more manageable in Chavie’s telling. “If you’ve got the right apparel, the weather is a non-factor,” he said.

That philosophy mirrors his own relationship with cycling. Obstacles are rarely reasons not to ride; they are variables to solve.

That mindset became particularly important this past winter after rotator cuff surgery sidelined him from fat biking for the first time since roughly 2012. For someone accustomed to riding year-round, the forced layoff was jarring. By spring, he joked that he felt like a beginner again while trying to rebuild fitness after months away from the bike. Still, even while discussing recovery, Chavie sounded more eager than frustrated. There was another gravel season ahead. Another event calendar to update. Another route to explore.

The physical side of cycling matters to him, but not in the way endurance sports are often portrayed online. Chavie rarely speaks about wattage, structured training blocks, or race ambitions. Even when discussing events like the Heywood or the Filthy 50, his emphasis stays rooted in challenge, scenery, camaraderie, and experience rather than finishing position. “I may do races, but I'm not a racer,” he said. “I’m more about the fun and the scenery and the experience and challenging myself.”

That outlook may help explain why so many people seem drawn to his work. He talks openly about being middle-aged, about rebuilding fitness, about simply wanting to get outside after work, even when motivation is low. He understands that for many riders, especially adults returning to the sport later in life, the biggest challenge is often just getting out the door.

“Well, even though I may not feel like riding, after the fact I always have the feeling of, ‘God, I’m so glad I did this,’” he said. “It’s great for mental health. I love the endorphins.”

Over the years, the platform built around those rides has also created unexpected relationships and opportunities. Chavie talks warmly about gravel race organizers who became friends, group rides that introduced him to new communities, and the people who helped shape his return to cycling. One of the most influential was Pat Sorensen, former owner of Penn Cycle, who helped reintroduce Chavie to riding more seriously and later encouraged him into winter fat biking. Sorensen even loaned him one of his first fat bikes before Chavie eventually purchased it himself. “He’s the one who really got me into the winter fat biking thing,” Chavie said. “Without him kind of luring me back in, who knows, maybe I wouldn’t even be riding.”

There is a subtle undertone running through much of Chavie’s story: the idea that cycling communities are often built person by person rather than institution by institution. Someone shares a route with a new rider, invites a friend to join a group ride, or takes the time to answer a beginner’s question without making them feel out of place. Those interactions may seem small on their own, but over time they shape the character of an entire cycling community, and Chavie’s work has quietly become part of the connective tissue of Minnesota’s cycling scene.

Today, the Minnesota Bike Trail Navigator functions as both a living resource and an accidental historical archive. Scroll back far enough, and the evolution of the region’s cycling community becomes visible in real time — races appearing, expanding, disappearing, rebranding, or exploding in popularity; equipment changing; fat bikes growing from niche curiosity into an established discipline; bikepacking carving out its own culture; communities forming around roads and trails that many riders were once unaware of.

Sometimes Chavie revisits those old posts himself. “It is kind of like a journal,” he said. “I’ve gone back and checked out some old articles and stuff, and it’s like, wow, I forgot.” In some ways, that may be the most remarkable part of what he has built — not the follower counts, race partnerships, or growing social media reach, but the accumulated record of thousands of ordinary moments that otherwise would have disappeared: a snowy fat bike trail, a gravel road at sunrise, a crowded checkpoint at the Filthy 50, a rider discovering bikepacking for the first time, or a Monday afternoon spent wandering southern Minnesota without much concern for where the road eventually leads.

With all the technology now attached to cycling, GPS computers, radar systems, social media algorithms, 4K video, and electronic shifting, the heart of Chavie’s work remains simple. He is still doing what he set out to do more than a decade ago: helping people feel a little more confident about getting on a bike and seeing where the road goes next.

Or, as he put it more plainly near the end of the conversation, “I’m just trying to get butts on bikes.”