Cycling in Spokane 2010

Pretty good year. This year, I"m going to blast through this post. No pics. No links. No more than 1000 words. Wish me luck. Word count starts now:

 

Bikes: As usual many a comin and a going.
Those that went:

• 720 got Albatross'd and went to my brother Jamie. Long term loan arrangement.
• Kogs with 26" wheels. Had this for a short time. Went to Councilman Snyder.
• Kogs with 650b wheels. Had this for an even shorter time. Went to Ryan at P2P.
• Blue "urban" RB-T -- it's not officially gone yet, but it will be soon. This will go to Alex.
• CB-Zip: I had such high hopes for this bike. I sold it and shipped it somewhere.
• Shogun: Went back to Patrick. Again. But I want it back again. It's my favorite fixed gear set up. Every time we sell this frame back and forth, the cost goes up. I figure I'll be paying about $100 for it on the next deal.
• Yellow 94 RB-1: Went to Dylan. He's the bad-ass cat 4 (now Cat 3!) cross racer and web guru nerd that takes care of our P2P site. And my midnightcentury site. One lousy RB1 frame is really not enough.
• White 89 RB-1: not sure if I really can even claim this went, since it only sat in my garage for a while and I never built it up. It was going to be my fixed gear, but the headtube was stretched. So it became Maddie's new bike.
• God I have a problem.

Bikes that came in:

• The Elephant. Rad bike.Love it.
• MB-2. I've had this frame forever, but I resurrected it this year as a single speed snow and ice bike and I'm totally digging it. It's all set up with generator lighting, a rack, fenders. And it's wearing studs. Total go-to bike for most winter tooling around.
• Liza's XO-1 -- not my bike, but I obsessed about it like it was my own. I'm really hoping she loves riding it next spring.
• Maddie's Elephant - same story. But she loves her bike way more than Liza appears to like her new bike.

Other bike notes:

• Loving my cycle truck. Loving my 747. Solid bikes that will be around forever. I'm building up a set of sew up wheels for the 747. Crazy, right?
• Rawland -- I've been carrying on about this bike a lot in the last few months. I ride it a lot. It just keeps getting better and better.
• Current bikes-I-don't-have obsessions that need dealing with: Civia Kingfield, Surly Troll, hard tail mountain bike.

Advocacy and stuff
I don't feel like carrying on about this. A lot of bikey infrastructure has gone down on the streets this year and more is in the pipeline. It's good in that way. But hard bikey stuff that will really propel Spokane into a solid bike town is proving to be very hard. 2nd Ave is a good example. There's some hard design and political work there - we're good at plunking stuff down when the feds hand us the money and there's nothing but space on the roads. Blech. Blah. This is my last year on the BAB. And I'm ok with that. The good news is that we have a great set of applicants coming in to fill BAB vacancies. These are smart, dedicated, passionate people.

 

P2P is doing good. The space has worked out. We've got a good cushion of money in the bank to allow John and Ryan to maintain their hours through the slow season. We are serving a lot of people down there. Hopefully, we'll see more open hours in the spring. Growth is slow but steady. That's good.

 

Experiences and Riding

• I had a bunch of great bike trips this year. Justin and I started the season with a great over-nighter. It was 180 miles and a great camping spot. A strong start.
• Alex came over twice for trips to CDA Nat'l Forest. Those were just flipping rad.
• I think one of my favorite memories this year though was the overnighter to Badger Lake with about 7 friends. It was so cool to be around great friends at that specific time, when my mom was so sick. Even getting kicked out of the camp spot by the police wasn't so bad.
• I missed the midnight century this year. I hate that. But it was really unavoidable. I won't miss the next one.
• Cross season was uneventful. My mom died right before the season and I just couldn't get crazy about cross. I did 3 races and had a good time, but I gotta say, those far away races are just hard to pull off for me. I really hope we can see more races closer to Spokane next year.
• Generally, the mileage was better than last year, but not as good as 08. I think I enjoyed riding more this year though than I have in a few years. I've never really tracked mileage. But I sort of track fun. I had a lot of bike fun this year.
• Rack building has been fun. I look forward to finishing my first rack and hopefully building one for Liza's new XO-1.
• I've also made more of an effort to become a bit better at wrenching. I built a lot of wheels this year and I feel pretty good about my wheel building. I've learned from Glen that being a good bike mechanic is really about paying attention to details and taking the time to get the details right. That's a hard one for me because I rush through things and try to just get them done.

 

Ok. that's it! I blew my 1000 word goal. But there's nary a link or photo! Lucky you.

 

Good riding in 2011. Thanks for reading!