New tire plan

Midnight Century minus a week

Here we are again. A week out from the MC.

Unfortunately (well, actually it's fortunate in the bigger picture, but that's not what this blog is about...), I've got a shift in project stuff at work so it's taking up a lot of my obsessing processing space, which is really something I have to do "in memory" if you know what I mean. Pro obsessers like Pat can save off a complex set of obsessions to disk for later while churning on multiple obsess-threads in real time. The guy is good.

I'm a serial-obsesser. If I get more than one obsession going at once I can't really focus and no obsessing gets done. So, I'm putting my active obsession into work at the moment and I'm putting my Midnight Century obsession on auto-pilot.

In year's past, I've worn a backpack with blinkies and reflective tape.
I have a blinky and a solid (lower left -- dyno driven) on this bike.
I may sew some reflective tape on my vest.

To wit: after riding bits of the route over the last few weeks, I've decided to go with the Quasimoto's. Normally, I'd prefer to obsess on tire selection a bit more. Maybe have a few sleepless nights to end with a last minute tire swap at 11:30pm next Saturday night. But man, the dirt sections have some serious wash boards this year. Maybe it was all the rain? In any case, I'll take the penalty on the pavement for some comfort/speed on the dirt.

If weather continues to hold, I'll be happy in knicks, light LS wool, and vest. I'll have emergency bivy (about the size of a hacky sack), wool cap, and thin wool liner gloves too.

A bit more bag than I need.
I'll have to be careful not to fill it up.
Tool bag on our left. Spare tire on our right.
Rory's bag hack works swimmingly btw.

Hydration: Three water bottles. I'll pound tons of water on the Centennial Trail roll-out, then fill up in Liberty Lake to hold me out to Spangle.

Food: Ruffles and a couple snickers. One water bottle will have Nuun.

Dope: Two Advils before roll out. Two at the Palouse crossing.

I plan on taking a couple 40 mile rides this week before work. But other than that, I'll take it easy.

This causes ghost shifting

And I don't have a chain tool on this bike. Luckily it's mostly down hill to P2P.

Transporting the goods

Summer commute

I love this time of year. It's shirt-sleeve mornings like today that I fantasize about on days like this in the deep dark winter.

Manito Blvd



Mirror Pond

  

 Hi Joe.

This is a knarly hill.
Huge potholes. The good line is down the left, in the glass and crap-strewn gravel.
Given the speed of the south-bound traffic and the low visibility,
 I recommend a full stop at the bottom. 





The best part.

See that sidewalk in the center of the picture?
Not the curvy one.

It's a jump. I pinch flatted there yesterday on the RBT.







Ava's bike

Another 24"ed wheeled beauty.

Justin's Rawland rSogn

Nice bike.

Crazy deal. Justin paid $525 for the frameset shipped. I think the price now is around $600 + shipping, which is still a great deal for the bike you're getting. There's lots of details to like about this bike.

It's essentially a production version of my Elephant, which was a copy of Alex's Gifford.

The rack on Justin's bike is an Alex rack.

Clearance for the Quasi's. Maybe even the Neo Motos?

If 650b scares you -- and really, unless you're bush-whacking your way through a 3rd world country, there's no reason it should scare you -- then consider this beauty for about the same price. It's been bugging me lately. Get outta my head!

In unrelated news. There's a tree across a trail down on the trails.

And related to that, there's a group of trail-fixers working with WSU folk to fix up and maintain the high-drive trails. They're on Facebook (High Drive Bluffs). So far, they appear to be doing good. They fixed the main intersection off the Bernard/HD trail head and did really nice work:

I sniped this picture from the Facebook page.

Last batch of river pics

We had a great time at the river for the last couple weeks.

I've got a couple more days of vacation, then back to the world of dreams on Monday.

Here's the last few pics. If you're into quality over quantity, check out the super-off-the-charts river pictures on Alex's blog. Man that guy can shoot.

This sign cracked me up. I couldn't get a good picture of the sign along with the sheer drop into cliff walls below. I'm thinking that no one has or will ever consider jump off this bridge unless they're calling it curtains.

Here's the landing spot if you want to disregard the sign. Those little things that look like stacked sticks are logs.

I turned 40 on July 18th.
It was a nice birthday.
Liza and Maddie each made me a book about me.
And Maddie kept me in local beer most of the day.

Maddie screamed when she saw this beauty (the beetle, not the dime) under the tarp covering our firewood.

Overlooking the Columbia River.

The Gifford Cemetery.
Cemeteries are good for easy water refills.
Note the frost-free faucet just right of the rear wheel behind the fence.

Barstow to Beniditto's: the numbers (follow up)

 

Ideally, moving average would be 15. But until that day, the way to hit an 8 hour Midnight Century this year will be to chop the "Stopped" time way down.

 

 

Here's the elevation profile.

 

The "Elevation" number in the screen shot above is just a snapshot of the elevation where I took the pic. A block from Benidittos.

Screw it. I'm riding home tonight

But to Beniditto's first. Wings and beer are calling me. I should be there by 8:30. Nudge nudge wink wink.

4 miles the easy way

I've been fighting headwinds and rain for 50 miles on Hiway 25. Four miles of coasting sounds just about perfect.

Homeward bound

Rice, WA

Alex visits the river

Alex brought a kayak-in-a-bag.
It's sort of the S&S of the kayak world.
Jamie looks on disapprovingly.

I've got no time to lay out the whole story. But we took a couple rides. We mostly hung out. By the river or by the fire with my family.

Nice weekend. But I didn't take many bikey pics.

Alex swapping Hetres for Quasi's.
South Paw Jamie ripping it up.
Maddie's disembodied head.

Lovely Liza on the Kettle River Road

Glen showed up for about 12 hours.
He and Alex had an opportunity to do a deep nerd-bike dive.

Trike

Alex rocking the trike.

Some more river pictures

Taylor showed up last night.
He rode his new track bike.
He was happy to have a s'more.

Fishing bike.
Turns out that Walleye are really yummy.

Don and Theo visited yesterday.
Maddie loves having passengers.

Race.
Maddie let Taylor win.

Kettle River road

This road runs on the east side of the river for about 8.5 miles. A nice alternative to 395 for beer runs to Kettle Falls.
Traffic count at 7AM:
2 Hawks
1 Bald eagle
Shit piles of turkey vultures
0 Cars

River trike

Maddie loves riding this old trike. It belong to my grandfather who rode it daily along the boardwalk in SoCal.

When my grandfather died, the trike was pretty much the only thing my dad wanted from his estate.

Maddie loves it. She puts her cousin in the basket and hauls her around.

Going up a hill: takes the whole body.

Going down the hill is easy, but the single front brake kind of sucks.
I need to put new pads on it.

Maddie digs BCI.
Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom is showing at the moment.