26 September 202514:31550 views on YouTubeWatch on YouTube
A glass calm lake is not always a gift. The opening admission in this episode is that the water was too smooth for the riding to be at its best, and that this is precisely why the evening became a music episode instead of a ride episode.
One song, three interpretations
The starting point was a track composed by Stephan about flying above water and living without waiting for permission. Three artists were then given the same song and asked to make it theirs, and they came back with versions that barely share a genre. Cia Berg’s Ride Forever is acoustic indie folk, stripped to the emotional core and left spacious enough that individual lines land. Specific Ambiguity’s Better Way to Die goes the other direction into alt rock and synth pop, adding new lyrics, stadium guitars and cinematic weight until the rebellious edge of the original becomes an anthem. Heather’s in Heat close it out with Now’s the Time to Fly, alt rock and baroque punk, complete with a hurdy gurdy solo and enough attitude to make it the version most likely to lodge in your head.
How the vote works
The mechanism is deliberately simple: listen to all three, and give a thumbs up to the one you want. Voting runs until the end of December 2025, and the winner becomes the official 2026 Verdant Ride theme song. Since each track sits at its own timestamp, you can go straight to whichever version you want to hear again before deciding.
The ride underneath it
The footage is a solo golden hour session shot in late September 2025 in Minnesota, on a Lift5 Pro with a 32 inch mast, an HA180 front wing and a 36 Glide rear. Carving alone into fading light is the exact scene the lyrics describe, which is why the smooth, unremarkable water turned out to be the right canvas after all.
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