Cycling Spokane

Hard to find tape like that these days

2012-02-02T08:49:00.001-08:00

Losing my cool

2012-02-01T08:56:00.000-08:00

Dang it.

I just flipped a driver off on my way to work. It was a full-on, rotate my body, get eye contact and bird-flipping second.

That hasn't happened for over a year. I really try to keep it cool. I expect people to do the wrong thing so I'm always able to let stuff roll off. But this morning an aggro driver got the best of me.

By the way he beat a gap and cut off another car to pass me, only to end up behind a left-turning driver -- I knew -- I KNEW -- he was going to pull out in front of me. The John-I-want-to-be should've just backed off a bit, slowed, and let the guy be on his way.

But the real John held his line, only to swerve by the inevitable cut-off. And in doing so was justifiably pissed off and most importantly, deeply wronged. Ugh.

So I added a bird to this already angry world. Of course, he caught up, passed me and gave me a solid middle finger complete with rage-filled eyes.

My bad.

Dude in the convertible Saab: I'm sorry. We were both suck-ass drivers this morning, but I really do hope your day gets better.

Fixing the Nite Rider

2012-01-31T20:41:00.001-08:00

Pat has all the right tools. And a warm, clean shop.

Rad bike

2012-01-29T11:37:00.001-08:00

Maddie is getting the hang of it.

Mercier Mini Velo -- let the hacking begin

2012-01-28T10:18:00.000-08:00

So it turns out that there are bikes out there that don't meet the strict standard quality bar at bikesdirect.com. These bikes are sold at bikeisland.com. Such was the fate of this "Mercier" mini, which according to the ad at bikeisland.com, was complete but just didn't have the headset installed. For $250, shipped, I couldn't maintain my loyalty to my legions of friends at the LBSs.

Don't mistake this as an endorsement of either of these price-diver websites. There's a reason these bikes are so cheap. The internet is full of forum posts about how low-quality these bikes are. At the end of the day, this is really a buyer-beware scenario. If you are good mechanic and can deal with repairing super cheap parts, that are often not manufactured to be serviceable, then these super cheap deals may pan out for you. Especially if you are fixie/SS type: you can get a workable deal here.

Anyway. It turns out that the reason the headset wasn't installed on this bike is because the crown race couldn't be installed on the fork. The reason the crown race couldn't be installed is because there was a big burry turd on steerer tube. Glen mentioned something about a lathe and how it wasn't turned properly or that he'd need to properly turn it on a lathe to fix it or something. I wasn't paying close attention. But upon reflection, I'm thinking Glen is just making a stronger case for Pat to "store" his lathe in Glen's (really really dry) garage.

Onward! Glen fussed with the burr, as I looked for stuff. And by the time I had found the stuff I was looking for -- which turned out to be spilled across his work bench -- he had the crown race pounded on and was putting the headset together.

The headset of course is a super cheap number, with a knurled thread thing that you have to adjust with channel-locks (not the proper Var tool) to really appreciate. Of course Glen has the proper tool so he dialed it right in and I expect that it will be dialed in many months from now. And of course the bearings were ovalized in their little holders and had to be finessed into the bottom of the headset, otherwise they'de herniate out the sides.

Finally -- since the bike didn't come with installed forks/headset, the handlebar people didn't get the memo: "don't wrap the bars cause this one is a special case." So the bars were all wired up to the brakes and wrapped and the quill stem (traditional, w/ non-removable face plate) was at the bottom of the box. Luckily, Glen had the super turd stem + threadless adapter post on hand. Lucky me.

So there it is. If I had been putting this bike together, I would've hit the wall way back there at the "burr stage." And I would've been either broken something trying to deburr it, or just hauled the whole mess to Glen. I'm smart as I get older. I had this thing shipped directly to Glen in order to save a step. Fist pump.

Next up: ride it hard. Abuse it. Ponder changes to saddle (something more aero of course), brakes (canti posts are in order), bars (likely O-8 Space Bars), tires (anything would be better than these weird plastic turds).

Finally, the capper: it's a wheelie machine. As Glen says, all you have to do is look up and you're popping a wheelie. Sweet.

FW: If i had a blog this would be a great post.

2012-01-25T11:38:00.001-08:00

From: Jon Eberly
Sent: 1/25/2012 11:15 AM
To: John Speare
Subject: If i had a blog this would be a great post.

Today on my way to school I stopped by the Shop to pick up cyclocross magazine from coffee joe. Deviating from my normal commute path I decided it'd be fun to go down the trails from perry district to liberty park. The trails were slicker than snot, and given that studded tires only give you so much additional traction, I fell and slid most of the way down.

I now had to make my way from liberty park to SCC. I chose to take the "scenic" routes through the train yards to avoid as much traffic as I could. After I had committed enough to the endeavor that I didn't want to turn back and find a different route, I realized the route I chose had its own draw backs. In between each track was a mini lake of ice cold water. I had many opportunities to practice my cyclocross mounts and dismounts but in the process soaked the wrestling shoes I was wearing.

After the impromptu train track swimming lessons I was relieved to finish my commute and get to school where I could warm up in the computer laboratory before class. I dismount and pull the shogun into the bike rack while reaching in my back pocket for my u-lock.

"Fuck," I said realizing my lock must have fallen out of my pocket when I took a slide down the liberty lake trails. I looked at my watch and realized I had 1 hour until class. Do I head all the way home and grab another lock or do I attempt to find my u-lock where I think I may have lost it? I decided to go find it.

Not knowing exactly where my u-lock fell out of my pocket I backtrack my path back to the park. If my feet weren't soaked now they sure are now as I was forced to cross the train yard once more. I make it to the park and begin my ascent of the icy trails. I scratched, clawed and pulled my way up the frozen trail utilizing any shrubbery to prevent sliding back down. Nearly at the top, lying right in the pristine ice, is my lock. I grab it and this time stuff it in my pannier and head back to school.

I took a different path this time that didn't involve any wayward train track crossings. I made it to school with minutes to spare, smiling, realizing this adventure is exactly the reason I ride my bike.

Ice

2012-01-25T09:10:00.001-08:00

It's easier to ride this than walk it. Assuming studded tires of course.

For Glen

2012-01-23T10:50:00.000-08:00

This chestnut popped up on Pandora for me today. Glen, watch it. Dig the manual-fest starting at 2:10.

Dang this is a great video. And song.

Pat tracks

2012-01-23T08:06:00.001-08:00

Damn

2012-01-19T14:16:00.000-08:00

Lunch time 1/2-Fat bike ride

2012-01-18T13:55:00.000-08:00

There's finally a bit of snow here. A quick 5-miler on the half-fat bike shows more promise than I'd expected, frankly.

The front wheel sort of plows through everything and the bike's whacked slacked (then uber-slacked by the giant fork), forces me to sit down. Seriously. When I get off my butt to stand the weird geometry is like an invisible bully just shoving me back down. Luckily, the bike is geared for super fast, low-gear spinning.

Yes. I'm actually riding a bike here. Crazy, right?

I've got the paddle WTB tread on the back under all my weight. As a result, I sort of "plane" in that boat way of planing, not bike way, over the snow.

This might just work. The real test comes when this nice, cold, powdery snow melts a bit, then refreezes into deadly frozen slush ruts.

Some pictures from the last year or so

2012-01-17T11:19:00.000-08:00

Q2xlYXJseSBJIGhhdmUgbm90aGluZyB0byBzYXkuIEl0J3MgY
29tZSB0byB0aGlzLg0KDQpBbGV4LCBJIGV4cGVjdCB5b3Uncm
UgZGVjb2RpbmcgdGhpcyBpbiB5b3VyIGhlYWQuIFJhY2hlbCwg
SmltRywgRHlsYW4gLS0geW91IHByb2JhYmx5IGhhZCB0byB1c2
UgYSBkZWNvZGVyLg0KDQpCdXQgcGVvcGxlIGxpa2UgcGljdH
VyZXMhIEFuZCBJIHdhbnQgdG8gZ2l2ZSBwZW9wbGUgd2hhdC
B0aGV5IHdhbnQuDQoNClBhcnR5IG9uLg==

Maddie's mountain bike - Kona Smoke

2012-01-14T20:12:00.000-08:00

Last year, Maddie and I did a tiny bit of trail riding on the HD trails, lots of dirt-road riding up at the river, and a lot of neighborhood errands where we sought out the dirt-way-there.

Maddie's Elephant is a capable bike for the kind of trail and dirt and lite-rough-housing that she does, but we're (ok, I'm) hoping to do more proper mountain bike this year. I think it would be cool to go out to the air strip area out at Riverside State Park and get Maddie in the woods on the flat and non-technical single track.

For that, she should have a mountain bike. Glen and I scoped out this bike and the parts. Glen built it up.

Kid bikes are hugely heavy always. And if you check out kid mountain bikes, they're even worse -- with the suspension bits and clumpy, low-quality components. So the goal from the start was to find a good-enough rigid frame that we could lighten up with nice old light stuff.

The frame here is a Kona Smoke. It's Steph's old commuter frame. It's pretty perfect for what we're looking for: steel, rigid, sloping top tube, and cheap. Maddie should be able to get at least 3-4 years out of this bike.

Dig the wheels, with the Mavic hubs. I bought the wheelset at P2P along with a styling MB-Zip frameset (which will likely be Maddie's commuter when she's older, or if Liza gets a hankering for mountain biking, she'll get it).

Gearing is 1x7. Paul Comp chain catcher. Redline 3-piece short cranks. Purple pedals and anodized bling on the rear brake. The purple grips smell like grape gum, which will make Maddie go faster. Carbon bars. Purple anno BMX stem. Suntour Pro shifter. Basic Shimano v-brakes. High zoot super light Maxxis 310 racing tires.

Bike comes in right at 23lbs. Maddie weighs 60lbs, so it's still a lot of bike, but I think it will work out well for her.

There's rules now in the garage.
Pay heed.

Bill

2012-01-13T15:22:00.000-08:00

Bill, Tony, and I took a hearty cold ride today.

I think the high was about 28F. Bill's beard was nice and frozen.

Reason enough, right there, for a beard.

Cat 6 and other cranky observations

2012-01-12T16:30:00.000-08:00

I was riding home today and a guy on a bike was riding down the wrong way of the street towards me. This happens sometimes. I just hold my line and they always move.

But in this case, it turns out the guy was running down a guy in a car that must've blown the stop sign at the Centennial Trail crossing. The biker guy was yelling at the car dude while riding toward me.

Thankfully, I had Greg Graffin yelling at me in my ear buds so I couldn't hear the biker guy or what his particular beef was.

Then the biker guy swung off behind the car, did a u-turn, and then rode on the wrong side of the road in the opposite direction, just in time to cut me off as he turned onto the Hamilton St overpass. As I climbed the overpass to pass him, he drifted left. Ugh. I paused. He drifted back to the right, then I passed on top of the over pass.

That was it for that deal. I took off and was on my way.

I had forgotten about him until I approached nun statue where I had to pass some walkers. I was shocked to see this dude right on my wheel when I looked over my shoulder before passing the walkers.

Whoa. Freaky. Like one of those horror movies where the victim is looking out a dark window, the lightening flashes, and a big scary face is just right there. He was in my bike bubble for sure.

I immediately figured out that I had unwittingly just participated in my first Cat 6 stage and I wanted out. I slowed down and just focused on not paying attention to the guy, who thankfully peeled off under the Opera House.

One thing I've learned after lots of riding is to let stuff roll off. People (regardless of their mode of transportation) do unpredictable stuff all the time that has the potential to ruin my day/life when I ride. I watch for it. I expect it. Most of it is not done out of malice. And even if it is, what's the point of running them down?

This guy was pretty amped up. He was on a fancy double-boinger mountain bike and was all kitted up. I'm thinking he doesn't get out in traffic much because if you took the time to run down every cyclist or driver or pedestrian that does unpredictable silly stuff, then you'd never get anywhere. And you would be angry a lot. And the fun part of being on a bike would go away.

Speaking of which, I'm kind of fed up with the fact that fun is sort of a side-benefit of a lot of "why you should bike" stuff that I read. Newsflash: Fun is the point. All the other stuff (health, environment, easy parking, etc) is a side benefit. I've got enough to say on that to do a full rant and I just might do that.

Also while I'm cranking out the crankiness: I don't really say hi or wave to cyclists anymore. I used to. And I used to get sort of huffy when other cyclists didn't wave. But when I drive a car, I don't wave to all the other car drivers. Why would would I? I'm not unfriendly and I'll wave back if someone waves, but generally, I'm just spacing out and in my own world when I'm riding. And I like that.

Initial impressions - Chrome Kursk Pro spd sneakers

2012-01-10T12:01:00.000-08:00

The folks at Chrome sent me these shoes to review. I've been wearing them for a couple weeks and so far so good.

The fit is nice -- I'm used to getting squeezed out of most bike shoes, but the sneaker shoes fit like I want any shoe to fit. Not too narrow in the toe and enough room for mid/light-weight wool socks. The DZR's fit ok in this department, but these Kursk's are even better on the snugness scale. That is, they're not too snug.

One thing to watch though - the Chromes run long. The Chrome person who helped me recommended sizing down a half size. I did and the fit is right. I wear a 45-46 in Shimano and a 11 in most other shoes. These are 10.5's.

Final note on fit is a gripe: my heels slip up a bit when I walk in these shoes. And when I'm pushing my bike up a steep trail, my feet nearly pop out. Staring at the shoes, I can't quite figure out why this happens. Maybe the heel-pop is the trade off for the slightly roomier fit that I prefer? If so, I'll take that trade, but the shoes become a tad less useful as daily drivers and trail riding.

I like the rubber toe. When I was a kid, my mom forced me to buy shoes with rubber toes, which were uncool in junior high (thing Stan Smiths... a shoe I never owned), but now that I pay for my own shoes, (uh... well most of them anyway)... I get the rubber toe thing. PLUS -- it's a nice wind block. I've been wearing these shoes in our unseasonably warm winter, but I'm still happy as I tool around in sub-40 weather. How's that for rubber toe protection?

If I were king, I'd place the lace-keepers one more set of laces toward the ankle -- to hold the laces better.

Installing the cleats was easy. There's plenty of room for pushing the cleats way back, which is where I like them. In fact, the Kursk cleat bed is unique among my many SPD shoes in that they actually have more backwards room than I use. The cleat cut-away leaves lots of room for pedal. All-in-all, the cleat implementation is well-done on these shoes. Which is surprisingly rare for most non-race shoes that are SPD'ized.

Like all non-race SPD shoes I've tried, the shoes are stiff, but not crazy stiff. They suit me just fine in that department. Aside from the heel slip thing, the Chromes are comfy enough for walking around and daily life, which for me is a lot of sitting punctuated by a few rides. I wouldn't want to walk more than a couple miles in these shoes. But, I'd rather not walk more than a couple miles in any shoe, so that's not saying much about the walkability of this shoe.

I'll follow up with report on durability. And warm-weather breathability and the resulting funkidelicality or lack thereof.

SOS classic

2012-01-08T12:49:00.000-08:00

Classic SOS ride today. To have a classic, Joe must be there. It must follow a classic route. It must be socially paced. And the capper: it must end at Indaba.

Done. Done. Done. and Done.

Glen. Clipping out.

Joe

A bit a of snow. Likely a "trace" in the parlance of the pros.

Indaba

Snow, finally

2012-01-07T22:43:00.001-08:00

Hopefully it piles up enough for Pat.

Moose da (麋鹿)

2012-01-07T10:36:00.000-08:00

I've been quietly grumbling about all the increased traffic on the HD trails for a while. It's inevitable. Most runner/walkers get it -- they appreciate the efficiency of stepping off the trail to let bikes pass. When it makes sense, I'll roll up the side of a trail to let a group pass. It's all about efficiency.

Whatever. I try to avoid the trail on weekend mornings and the top trail on weeknight afternoons, but sometimes you only get a small window to ride, so you gotta take what you can get.

See the moose up there?
Right on the stinkin' trail.
No getting around that dude.

Today, the trail hog was a moose. I'd put moose in the camp that doesn't "get it." But like big red-neck trucks on a rural road, moose get the "I'm bigger" pass for not getting it. So I work around them. Especially when they're traveling with a mom. I didn't see the mom, but the guy high-tailing it down the trail with his dog towards me said that the mom lowered her head at him like she was going to charge. Yow.

I've run into this pair before. A couple years ago, they were hanging out on the other side of Hatch Road, below the Pines development.

I make a point of giving them lots of room.

The context-less track.

To see exactly where the mooses were this morning, you can study the track to see where I had to double back twice.

Dirtying my hands

2012-01-05T19:25:00.000-08:00

A while back, I mentioned my relationship with Elephant Bikes. I do stuff for Glen. In trade, he does stuff. One of the stuffs he does is fix my bikes. Which is sweet.

Every now and then though, I have to do my own maintenance. Like tonight. Oh the horror.

I've pretty much been mostly on the Legolas for the last couple months. I've lubed the chain a couple times, but I've not done anything else.

So after riding through a bit of snow and ice and rain and then some mud a couple weeks later, I wasn't that surprised to find that shifting into the smaller cogs is rather sluggish.

Tonight, I blew out the housing at the rear derailleur, piped some T9 in there, and cleaned off the crusted mud along the length of the shift cable. There was a lot of mud caked on, in, and around the cable and surrounding crevices.

Given the warmish weather, I just might hose the bike down after tomorrow's ride.

Wow. Cleary, the well o' blog content is frighteningly low. I just posted about lubing a cable housing. Sorry about that. But all I want to blog about is heart rate stuff, and I find that sort of freakish. So I'm resisting that urge. For now.

Calories

2012-01-02T09:47:00.000-08:00

A year or so ago, I counted calories on a Droid app and actually lost some weight. But generally, I don't count calories. I pretty much know what I need to eat and not eat (and drink) if I want to maintain or lose weight.

But this watch/GPS/HR monitor outputs total calories burned. And it's sort of interesting.

I only went on two "real" rides when I was visiting the Seattle area last week: a trail ride at Ebey and a short road ride on south Whidbey.

I think Dylan and I rode about 1/2 the trails at Ebey in the 2 1/2 hours we were out.
Click picture to open the map in Garmin-land.

It's interesting to me how many more calories I burned on the trail ride. It's not surprising -- because when I'm gasping through the (mostly) up parts of the trail ride, I'm feeling it. But when you see the numbers laid out on paper, it's weird.

The trail ride

Distance:	12.89 mi
Time:	2:40:36
Avg Pace:	12:27 min/mi
Avg Speed:	4.8 mph
Elevation Gain:	1,094 ft
Calories:	2,057 C

Avg HR:	146 bpm
Max HR:	197 bpm

The road ride

Distance:	17.32 mi
Time:	1:32:07
Avg Pace:	5:19 min/mi
Avg Speed:	11.3 mph
Elevation Gain:	1,434 ft
Calories:	813 C

Avg HR:	134 bpm
Max HR:	167 bpm

Trail ride is longer time-wise, but otherwise: less mileage and less elevation gain. The road ride had a couple hard climbs. But the trail ride is over twice the calories burned.

The Garmin software calculates calories burned as a function of heart rate and time. It also knows my weight an my "fitness level," which I put as a "3" -- which is just fit, not crazy fit and not slothy.

The net: pushing your heart rate burns more calories. Wow! I should write a book.

Btw: the 197 max HR bpm on the trail ride is wacky. I would've known if I hit that. I rarely hit 180. And my top has been 183.

I heart Seattle

2011-12-29T19:19:00.001-08:00

Best of the Wetmorian lot

2011-12-29T10:27:00.001-08:00

Dylan at Ebey

2011-12-28T08:47:00.001-08:00

Cycling in Spokane - 2011

2011-12-26T09:12:00.000-08:00

Gonna go for the ultra-short versionthis year. Really. No links. on a miserable computer set up... pardon the formatting funk.

Bikes

Those that came

-- Shogun came back again. FromPatrick. Now Jon (of Eberlizer'ing fame) is borrowing that for the winter. It'sa great River Bike and will go back to that role in the spring.

-- Salsa Ala Carte – mountain bike.Your basic 26” steel hardtail with Fox forks. Suites my riding perfectly. Yes!I’ve tried 29’ers!
--That half-fat bike thing.
-- Legolas. Love it.

Those that stayed

-- MB2 -- The oldest bike in thefleet. There's something about how low my bar of expectation for this bike isand how it therefore over-delivers.

-- 747 and Cycle truck: consistent putter-outters.

-- Elephant v1 – love it. Soon to beswapped out for Elephant v2 frameset(slightly larger with different tubeset).

Those that left

-- Rawland. Not officially gone andmay not officially go. But it's disassembled and in frame state only.

-- Tandem – we finally unloaded it.That was a hard one to let go of, but I did so knowing that there is a communaltandem solution in the pipeline.

-- RB-T coupled bike. The horror!Gone, but we’re all better for it. Really.

Liza/Maddie bikes

- Liza’s XO-1 city bike conversion wasa total and utter success, thanks in part to rack making with Pat and to thefact that the green is rad.

- Maddie’s Elephant was her main go-tobike this year.

- Pump track bikes exposed Maddie tosome new rides – most notably, thes Intense BMX race bike, a highly-covetedbike among her friends in the neighborhood. She also has spent a fair bit oftime on a clunky Redline BMX that kind of rules.

- Next bike in the queue for Maddie isa righteous mountain bike. The used bike has been purchased, the bits gatheredand mostly assembled… expect more here on that soon.

Advocacy and Stuff
2011 was the year of unwinding myself from Advocacy stuff. I grabbed Liza too. In March I finished with the Bicycle Advisory Board, which was a huge weight off my shoulders. My personal goal there when I joined 5 or so years ago was to work with Bob and co to get a damn Master Bike Plan. Nothing significant could happen with out it. Ever since that passed, I felt like attempting to scale the next peak there would just take more than I could give. It was great to be done with that.
There's a much bigger and a well-organized set of up and coming advocacy folk joining the fray to fight through this stuff now. With the passage of the Complete Street Ordinance, the game has been ratcheted up another huge notch. Well done to Kitty and Jon on that -- for pushing and driving that huge coordinated effort to pass the ordinance.

We also handed off Pedals2People. We started that with friends 5 or so years ago and it was a great thing to do, but at some point we felt we needed to let go and see if we actually built something that could survive without us. Until we became involved in building up P2P we never could have appreciated the amount of effort it takes to create and sustain such an organization. Likely, had we known, we never would have attempted it. Such is the benefit of ignorance. Liza especially has spent a shitpile of time in the background holding up the P2P organization. Seeing her set her self free of this has been great. P2P is in great hands -- a new prez, a smart board, amazing volunteers, bad-ass shop employee, a great new spot, and a few thousand in the bank -- the foundation is there. It will be fun to sit back and see how it goes.

Unrelated to advocacy, but related to the overall effort of cutting back -- I wrote my last "Every Day Cyclist" column for OTM in December. Hank (Shallow Cogitations) will be picking that up for the new year.

Experience and Riding.

Overall this year was marked by a frustrating level of weird health issues. The lung thing took me out for what seems like 1/2 a year in the early part of the year. Once I finally recovered from that, I got clogged. Shit. It's still with me as I mind my thin blood. By Feb or March or so I should be fully whole.
Pump track -- best bike thing that happened this year by a way long shot. It's a huge commitment for buddy Pat and his reluctance to continue hosting it is easy to understand. But we have a good alternative in the pipeline and a small and enthusiastic willing work crew to hopefully turn the alternative into a solid reality.
River hang pretty much defined my riding this summer. There's just everything up there -- road, trails, deep Nat'l Forest fun. I plan on rocking it crazy this summer.
Midnight Century was fun. It landed right in a window of wellness for me and I had a great time.
I didn't do nearly the overnighters I wanted to do... mainly due to health issues. blech.

Goals

More overnighters
Faster Midnight Century time by 1/2 hour or so
Rock the Cat 4 CX races next year! Just one stinking top 5 finish please! (yes, that's rocking it)
Get Maddie mountain biking.
Most of August at the river with as much bike-riding friends and family as possible
Not be sick and lame all year!

Good year all!

Hard to pick a favorite

2011-12-25T07:52:00.001-08:00

Happy day.

182 commutes

2011-12-22T13:44:00.000-08:00

Get ready for the year-end roll up posts: "tried and liked," "year in review" and this one.

Here are the bikes I rode from my last 182 commutes to work. Basically -- this encompasses the calendar year 2011 of commutes. On a normal week, I ride to work M-Th. Friday is ride day. Friday-ride bikes are not noted here.

Here's a post from the last time I did this compilation in July 2010.

41 days - Elephant

This is a perfect commuter. It's super easy to just grab and go: integrated lights, fenders, rack. It's fast and nimble and is happy to oblige the trail-way-home on a whim.

This bike is being replaced by Elephant v2. More on that to come, but the elevator version: v2 will be pretty much the same, but with minor tweaks -- a tweak or two to satisfy Glen and a tweak or two to satisfy me.

The better news is that it looks like this v1 Elephant will become S&S'd a sort of communal travel bike. Stay tuned on that too.

39 days - Lyon "747"

This bike never gets the virtual ink it deserves on this blog. It's fast and wonderful and perfect handling. With integrated lights and fenders, it makes for a great fast commuter. I do not ride trails on this bike.

I put the soon-to-be-ubiquitous-on-most-of-my-bikes Campy 10 brifters (against 8 speed shimano/sram) on this bike since this picture was taken.

Since there's no rack on this bike, it turned out to be the one that forced me to discover that I'm more of a backback-person than a messenger bag-person.

This bike will be going on a diet this winter in preparation for more fast and long rides next spring and summer: the fenders and lights will go away, a lighter saddle and crankset will go on, and a tubular wheelset collecting dust in my garage will also go on it.

25 days -- MB-2

Last January.

In the winter months, this is the crap-weather go-to bike. Again: lights, full fenders + mud flap, and a rack. Platform pedals. Single, low-ass gear. With studded tires, I can pretty much trudge through anything on this bike.

In the summer -- I strip it down and put super light-race tires on it and treat it like a BMX bike. Super fun for cruising, beering, or easy trail rides.

23 days -- RB-T

Ah the soulful RB-T. Alas, how I wish you could remain by my side old friend. But the Legolas just beat you down handily.

Combined with an old cast-iron tractor seat, this once-proud frame will be demoted to a stool at the river.

The RB-T is just fun -- not so much on wet/rainy days -- but for any ride that has some dirt and trail potential, the RB-T always stood ready to rock. I broke it. I bent it. Glen beat and welded it back into shape a number of times. I considered selling it, but Glen said no way. Thus, it shall be stoolified.

21 days -- TIE: Rawland and Legolas

Jon on the Rawland.

Another retired bike. With the arrival of my mountain bike, the Rawland quickly became dustier. It also overlaps in function with my Elephant (for long dirt-road/forest exploration) and to some extent, the CX bikes.

I still dig the Rawland and I think I'll horde the frame for a year or so to make sure I'm sure I don't want to ride it anymore. The thing I miss the most about it is having a fat-tired, drop-barred trails bike that handles like a road bike. With the disc brakes on there, it's a special frame for sure. I may revive it some day when drop-bar hydraulic brakes are available.

As a commuter, shod with Hetres, the Rawland just begged taking the rough route every time.

As for the Legolas, it's pretty much all I've commuted on since getting it built-up a couple months ago. It's altered my thinking on OS tubing and even front-end handling a bit. It's fast, it's fun, it's super capable. As a commuter, it's impossible to take the paved way every time with this bike. I'm looking forward to racing it in next year's CX series.

9 days -- SH80

Just like in my last compilation, the SH80 falls nearly to the bottom of the heap -- this is a poor way to measure its usefulness. I only commute on the SH80 when I have a load to haul: P2P parts, t-shirts, etc. But with integrated lights and fenders and tons of cargo capacity, this bike is used for kid-hauling, grocery runs, and swap sessions on a regular basis.

3 days -- Salsa

Very rarely (3 days exactly), I get a notion to ride the mountain bike. On these days, it's because I want to take the long trail way home. I have big knobbies on it now so if I run into a big snow day this winter, I may give the Salsa a shot.

High-value all-rounder sorta CX tires

2011-12-21T15:28:00.000-08:00

Since my high-zooters finally blew up, I've been riding the WTB Interwolf 700-38 tires on my CX/Trails/commuter bike.

My buddy Alex gave me these tires a couple years ago. As I am wont to do, I favored the fancies and disregarded these lowly workhorses. Although, thinking on it, I did use these on a couple-day CDA forest exploration with no complaints. But other than that, these tires sat in the corner of the garage for over a year.

I really like them. For our non-muddy, slightly sandy, sometimes rooty and sharp-rocky trails, these tires really put out. I've had a handful of flats on them, but no pinch flats, which is pretty much unheard of for me when I trail ride on CX-type bikes, where my poor line-picking puts me in pinch flat land with regularity.

I run them both at 60 psi happily. Sometimes when I am doing all trails I'll squirt a bit of air out on the front to put me in the 50 psi neighborhood.

The knobbie profile is kind of perfect. It's grabby on the corners, which is what you want for banking in the thin-layer-of-sandy-over-hard-dirt of the HD trails. The same grabby corner knobbies slow me down a tad when cornering on pavement -- especially wet pavement.

And the center of the tire is flattish knobbies, which bite well at 60 psi on dirt and seem pretty benign on pavement. They roll surprisingly well on pavement. I commute on them all the time.

Kind of perfect.

December in Spokane.
Digging it.

These are not supple fancy squishy love bomb tires, but they're not awful either: a happy compromise for sure.

Come summer, I'll be back on my fancy white Grifo's, but for until then, I'm digging these.

Of course, like most rad bike things that I take a liking to, these tires appear to be no longer made, though still available until the stock runs out.

Season's Greetings from HD trails

2011-12-18T10:34:00.001-08:00

Found in a corner in Maddie's room

2011-12-16T22:00:00.001-08:00

Garmin stalking

2011-12-16T11:23:00.000-08:00

I mentioned the gps watch thing a while back. I've been tracking just about every ride I take. Expect a forthcoming boring-ass analysis soon.

But in the mean time, dig this. One feature of the Garmin Connect software is being able to explore other routes that people have uploaded (and made public) to the map set. It's pretty damn sweet. Default search is scoped by the view of the map that you focus on. But then you can filter by cycling or even a sub-filter: mountain bike.

I found this bitchin ride that "mtbmoose" posted recently: river trail, both sides for 90% of the ride. He hammers it too. I want to ride with that guy. Creepy right?

Well, I've ridden all of mtbmoose's route except for that little piece that from the Meenach bridge upriver to Sandifur bridge. The last time I tried that was probably 15 years ago. And I don't remember the specifics, but I do remember turning back. So mtbmoose's track is intriguing.

Historically significant bit of trail. This is at the end of 8th on HD trails. We used to come here in the 80's and ride this little track. It's probably one or two piles of dirt from being easily pumpable.

Jon, Tony, and I set off to figure it out this morning. It's slick and foggy and snowy and icy on the roads. But the trials are ok. Except for slippery roundish rocks which are often terrifying -- depending on the context of where one encounters them. The section of trail that mtnmoose exposed for us was full of those slick bastards and the trail was very uppy-downy-rollercoastery. So -- we did a lot of pushing, walking, slipping. It's worth checking out in the spring.

Dorkier by the week.
That helmet seemed cool in the catalog.

Tony has this odd thing when I take pictures. He makes me give him my phone so he can take pictures of me. I've tried to explain to him that that's not how it's supposed to work. But he doesn't get it. I'd be lying to say I don't feel obligated to post the pictures he takes of me.

Bike Hang. Bennidito's. Weds. 7:30

2011-12-11T13:51:00.001-08:00

Title says it all.

Picture is gross. But also tells a story in its own gross way.

Snow-Fat bike v2

2011-12-10T14:04:00.001-08:00

So the cheap fat-bike thing didn't really work out.

But Glen is always thinking... and he pondered this hack.

And I'll be a monkey's uncle. It's not as stupid as it looks. And it looks pretty stupid.

Seatpost shim. The weird-o frame takes a 29.4mm post.

Of course, I've not ridden it in the snow yet. But it's pretty easy riding: with the crazy-slack angles (further amplified by pushing the front of the bike a few inches skyward), and the tall bars.

It puts you right over the rear wheel and removes weight over the front wheel. So maybe. Just maybe, it will float, while the rear wheel does all the work. And if I can find a cheap (free) fatter tire for the back, I can go to about 2.5 there.

The weirdo frame also took a (surprise!) Italian-threaded bb. The only one Glen had laying around was a sweet titanium one. Nice!

And the biggest bonus here? And Joe2 called this as soon as Glen popped it out of the stand -- the bike is a wheelie machine. Like: just pedal and you can lift the front wheel.

More to come on this I'm sure.

The other fat tire will be homemade-studded by people that hang out in Glen's garage. I need to get the hardware for that. You should go hang out at Glen's garage sometime!

Beer #3

2011-12-10T09:26:00.001-08:00

From the Dylan stash.

Stine, Glen, Liza, and I gave Beer #3 a taste yesterday.

It's "Gueuze Girardin."

When he gave it to me, Dylan introduced it with something like, "it kind of smells like a barnyard, but I'll be interested in what you think of it. Grace loves it." Grace is the wife of Dylan.

It's interesting. The following flavors were detected:
- Ripe cheese
- Arm pit
- Urine

And Liza detected a distinct "salami... or fermented meat after-taste. Like briny olives."

We were all perplexed. After Glen identified the "arm pit" flavor, he said, "but I keep drinking it..."

We're not sure what happened there.

Slavin Loop

2011-12-09T22:16:00.001-08:00

Tony and Mike

I took a ride with Tony and Mike this morning. Tony showed me the Slavin Conservation Area. Joe and I went here years ago, but came at the site from the other end and sort of dead-ended on a trail and left.

I'm a dork.

Tony showed me a way into the area from the west side. We came at it from the dirt side of the White Road climb. My kind of ride -- lots of dirt trails and dirt roads. Of course, I had my super-watch on, so you can check out the route, my speed, and my heart rate here.

Tony

It was about 20F. Aside from a 3 or 4 mile descent on 195 back into town, which was damn cold, we kept moving and stayed mostly warm.

The hoar! The hoar!

With the cold came the frost. It was super pretty. Especially on the Slavin Conservation, where the hoar frost clung to everything and the ponds and small lakes were frozen sheer. I just learned about hoar frost today.

Review follow up: shoes, jacket, beer

2011-12-08T09:46:00.001-08:00

DZR GMT-8 SPD-compatible sneakers
Original review here.
OTM review here.
Did I buy it? Yep

The upshot: good shoes. I'd buy them again. We're a solid 6 months into this shoe and it's holding up great. I'm pretty surprised actually. As noted in the OTM review, there is a bit of a steamy funk factor with these. But that's not really the fault of the shoe... you know what you're getting when you buy a canvas shoe. So if you bite on this one, pull the inserts out every couple days and air them out for best results.

Ibex Breakaway Hybrid 2
Initial review here.
Did I buy it? Nope. It was provided by Ibex for review.

The upshot: this is the best one yet. I really had to wait until it got nice and cold to make sure the jacket was suited for sub-freezing weather. It is.

It's lighter in feel than the older Hybrids, but the front of this jacket does a great job of blocking the cold wind. My commute in the morning is straight down hill for 4 miles. It was 17 F this morning on the way to work and as my face and fingers froze, my core was happy.

That's the shoulder-section of the jacket that I landed on. I washed the jacket and there's no trace of the wreck.

And just like the other Ibex stuff, this jacket is tough. I was wearing this jacket when I was Eberlized, which tore open my knee and scraped up my back to draw a bit of blood. There's zero impact to the jacket -- no rips or pilling or even a unstiched little thread. Crazy good stuff here.

This pricey-ass jacket is totally worth the money.

Sour beer #2
No prior reviews.
Did I buy it? Nope. Dylan gave it to me.

Dylan brought me a pile of super awesome sour beers a few weeks ago. Noted here.

The Russian River Supplication was the first one I tried, and it totally lived up to the hype. That's one of my all time favorites now. I have one bottle left and I'm not sure when I'm going to drink it.

The second beer from the Dylan stash that I tried is called "Monk Cafe Flemish Sour Ale."

The upshot: great beer. The sour is there, but it is a tad too fruity for me. These Flemish sour beers appear to be made in the same way: by mixing an older cask-aged beer with a younger fruitier beer. In this one the fruit is too aggressive for me, but it's still a great beer that I'd happily drink any day. It's just not the pure bliss that The Supplication and La Folie are for me.

City bike

2011-12-03T06:57:00.001-08:00

This is Glen's beer hang and commuter bike.

It's been hacked together over the last couple years. He bought the frame from P2P. The forks (Lyon) are from Alex. And the rack was one of the early Alex racks.

The stem is titanium to keep it all light.

Light is the new cheap BM jobber -- good enough. Bag is old Boeing tool bag with a zillion little pockets. Pretty stylin'.

The rear clearance is a little tight. 35mm Pasalas. He had to mount the brake on the inside to get that tire to spin.

I took these pictures on Thursday night.

Last night Glen fixed the rear clearance issue and sent me this pic. He might be able to wedge a fender in there now.

Oh boy. Here we go

2011-11-30T18:39:00.001-08:00

I got a new heart rate monitor. It has a GPS built in. The free online Garmin software for it is just silly in it's radness and simpleness. I realize I'm coming way late to this party.

I'm sort of overwhelmed by the radness of it all, but let's start crunching some numbers.

Here's an easy way to start.

Dig this:

This is the data for my basic commute to work. Left column is my fast bike (747), right column is my new CX bike, the Legolas (with knobbies).

There's a lot there. But I think the highlighted bits are the most interesting.

First thing to look at is average heart rate: 155 bpm in both cases. So the engine is pretty similar on both bikes.

But average pace, moving speed, and best pace (pace is amount of time it takes to go 1 mile) show that I'm a bit faster on the 747.

This is the lightweight info. For the fun stuff, check out the mashup of map+elevation+speed+heartrate data. Here's my ride home today in fun format.

Glen says a Powertap is next, but that's really not interesting to me. In fact, I'd probably find that sort of depressing. The heart rate stuff has always been sort of interesting since I used one a few years ago to loose some weight -- it's a great forcing function to make sure you are getting good exercise on rides. Assuming you have a comfortable bike, riding 30, 40, 50 miles is not hard, but doing so at 150 bpm can be a challenge. The heart rate monitor forces that challenge.

The unit I'm using is the Garmin 110 watch. I liked the smaller women's size and it came with the HR strap. It does exactly what I want it to do: track routes, HR, and elevation. I don't care about bikey options like cadence. It cost a bit over $200.

WIng Hang. Tomorrow night

2011-11-29T11:02:00.001-08:00

The godfather: before the discovery of wings.

The godfather of hangs has called an emergency wing-hang session for tomorrow night.

Flaming Joe's on 29th at 8 pm. Tomorrow. (Weds)

Pull-up

2011-11-26T15:14:00.000-08:00

Black Friday thankfulness ride

2011-11-25T13:24:00.001-08:00

Get ready for some really crap pictures.

I consider myself a pretty thankful guy. I have a lot to be grateful for.

But as I sit here, post-BF-ride, sipping on perhaps one of the best beers I've ever had, I am feeling particularly thankful.

Best expressed, bulletily -- as most lists are:

The weather. What the F happened here? I've been watching wunderground all week. At best I was hoping for some slushy wet cold misery. It was cold when we left Rocket Market at 8:10, but it was approaching 40 already. And by the time we finished -- glorious: sun, clear, amazing, silly weather.

Jake, Gage, Jon, Kory, Geoff, Dylan, Joe2, Silly Weather

The BF turnout. Off the top, I missed Glen, Pat, Bill and Justin. Verily. And I wouldn't have minded seeing Ben, Wade, Nate, Steph, Hank, and a few others. But wow. We had: Coffee Joe, Joe2, Kory, Jake, Dylan, Gage, Geoff, Craig, The Eberlizer, and Chris. And me. That's 11. And I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting someone. What a great thing. I'm not a "big pack" riding guy, but this was great.
Spokane trails. I've carried on a lot about how lucky we are to have such great trails so close in. But with a bit of frozen-ness over damp, the trails were nice and ridable today. So that was a bonus.
Jake and his insane output. I'm actually not that thankful for that. But when Jake says: "there's another way up this [already hard, already too long] hill. It's a bit longer and harder, but it's fun..." that's where I should say, "Sounds great. Hey Dylan -- you should try that!" Instead, of course, I get all puffed up and what comes out of my mouth, is something like, "sounds great, let's do it." Chasing Jake and Dylan up the hard, long way up the hard long hill destroyed me early on. They shat me out the back 1/2 way up and I'm not sure I ever really caught my breath until our group was cut in half by a train.

Joe, Craig.

Trains. The scenario: the pack is at point A. Point B is about 100 yards away with a train track in the middle. Of course a train is coming. The pack sprints. All but 2 of the pack make it before heeding the panicky non-standard whistle blows from the train's engineer. It could have been longer, but it was thankfully long enough for us to get a proper break while waiting for the 2 smart ones that didn't dash in front of the oncoming freight train.
The Sun. This is a re-hash of bullet #1. But the weather got so good, it's worth reiterating.
Funerals. By the time we got to the 2nd part of the ride, we lost Jake, Coffee Joe, Craig, and The Eberlizer. We kind of lost Gage. But just for a bit. We climbed out of that hard sandy steep road across from People's Park and Gage, who was riding a single speed manfully and valiantly, had blown up. He was done. We said our good byes and limped to the cemetery, where thankfully, a funeral procession was just getting started. Being the super respectful lot we were, we took this opportunity to have another long rest while the procession pulled away.

Geoff, Dylan.
Finishing the Mega-Church section of the River trail.

Chris. As we swooped into the lower part of the cemetery, Chris asked where we were going into the trails -- he wanted to stop by and pay his respects to a dead friend and then catch up with us. The beauty of that deal is that my mom was buried, quite conveniently, just a few plots away. So we took a quick "paying respects" break. I'm thankful to say hi to mom on the day after Thanksgiving, where we sort of stumbled and mumbled our way through the 2nd year without her.

Chris

Kory

Joe2

Ben, Ann, and the MortBorns: totally unrelated to riding. But TG worked for us this year thanks to great friends that took us in. All my life, I've been in the family gathering that takes in the akward family-less friends on Thanksgiving. Liza, Maddie, and I were the family-less nomads this year and we got hooked up. Including Thanksgiving leftovers... wow.
Thanksgiving leftovers. No commentary required.

Crazy good beer. I'm thankful for the Reno guy that tipped me off to the Russian River sour in the comments of this blog. Thanks Reno guy. That put me on the hunt for "Supplication."
Dylan. He's the guy that came over from Seattle to visit family. He came on this ride. He's a PBP'er and CX'er and he's strong and super-nce and cool. Open up page 56 of the latest BQ and you'll see him hanging with the heavies in France. He's the guy with the beard. Anyway, he brought me a 6'er of rad sours. Including the Supplication, which I am enjoying immensely now.

Gage.
He just keeps pushing.
And showing up.

Gage. After we bombed the cemetery trail, we re-grouped under TJ Meenach. The plan was to ride up the trail for a bit to loop the little bit of rad river trail back to the TJ Meenach. (I realize that only makes sense to about 14% of the people reading this). Before we started the climb, Gage said his goodbye's (again) and peeled off. At this point, we were down to Me, Kory, Chris, Geoff, Joe2, Dylan. After we did the loop, Geoff and Kory peeled off, while Dylan, Chris, Joe2 and I climbed up that brutal little bastard of a trail (I call it the Pat Rick trail) at the bottom of Doomsday. As we get to the tippy top and we are riding the trail overlooking the river, who shows up? It's Gage again. He had some slightly confusing-to-me story about how this came to be, but there he was again.

I'm thankful for more than that, but that's the top-of-mind list at the moment. I can't imagine anyone got through all of that....sorry so long!

BF ride looking good

2011-11-22T18:31:00.001-08:00

I don't want to jinx it or anything.

But a solid NW-Passage trail ride is looking very good for the 2nd Annual BF ride.

If you don't want ANY context, here are the facts:

-- Nov 25th - *leave* Rocket (on 43rd) at 8 AM.
-- Trails/hard ride
-- Assume about 3.5 hours.
Otherwise, click that link up there to find out more.

Mostly-perfect winter commuting glove-mitten

2011-11-22T17:34:00.001-08:00

A while back I offered my pro bono glove design services to the world. Amazingly, the accolades are not pouring in. And even more amazingly, not a single glove-mitten maker (that I'm aware of) has produced a set.

What gives?

This is easy money, man.

So. Once again, I'm forced to hack the just-ok REI glove-mitten (whoa! as I write this, these just-ok glove-mittens are on clearance for $20/set - that's a good hording price IMO) into a mostly-perfect solution.

Last time, I stitched a water/wind panel on the front of the mitten fingers. This time, I'm covering the full fingers. I figure that will keep the heat in on those sub-freezing rides. We'll see.

That messy-assed stich job took me nearly two hours!
I'd pay up to $58 for these gloves, if you're wondering.
That fleecy stuff holds up pretty well. And it's warm enough.
If you buy a size up, you can wear glove liners for the super cold days.
I'm telling ya, this is a good solution.

For the record, I'm not into the blaze orange. My buddy Jon gave me this fabric -- and it's exactly what I need, so I'm not gift-horse-mouth-knockin here. That's just too much orange. I get the visibility thing, but these are just too much. So if you're a giant corporation looking to take this idea to the bank, please do, but please don't do the hunter orange part. A reflective strip would be nice though.

You're welcome. Again.

Solidarity

2011-11-21T11:02:00.001-08:00

On the ride to the office this morning there was a fresh small layer of snow over most of my commute.

As I approached Liberty Park, I noticed two other cyclists had already made the same ride.

My favorite part is this hill. (That linked picture is a year old, but the hill is the same.)

Both of the earlier cyclists also took this hill.

And they both climbed the Magnolia street freeway overpass.

And they both made it down the other side w/out scrubbing. I didn't.

There's something cool about following these trails on snowy-icy mornings. These cyclists, who I may or may not know, feel like pals.

I suspect one might be Wade. (Second to the left in this pic.)

Spider AT in the snow

2011-11-19T15:17:00.001-08:00

I took my first snow ride on the Sun bike.

It's looking more and more like I picked a real boner here.

The bottom line, hard-to-fix failure of this bike is it's aluminum-ness. If it were steel, then the stupid 2-speed gearing, with 120 OLD spacing wouldn't matter for a second. Nor would the fact that it doesn't have canti-posts.

But you just can't run around spreading the rear forks 15mm on an aluminum bike.

And that geometry, where you're forced to set the bars way up there, sure makes standing and grinding difficult. And if you could stand and grind comfortably, it would be nice if the hub didn't make scary sounds when you did.

Click for big and dig those spider treads. Bad ass.

But in the end, I think the thing that is so hard about this bike is the damn tread. And I'm not talking about the Spiders the rubber leaves behind, cause that's about the coolest thing going here -- no, I'm talking Q: I'm talking about how stinking far this thing spreads out your feet. Talk about wide stance. It really gets to me after a couple miles. More than I thought it would.

It's not like I didn't know any of this when I bought it. But it was cheap! And I'm a (cheap) optimist! I'm going to hang on to it for a while longer. I'll try it on a couple commutes, but I'm not hopeful. Actually, if I commute on this sucker, I'll be dreading the climb home all day... but I feel like I must commute on it to give it a final fair shake before it goes away.

In other news. Bill, our buddy with a printing press in his basement, has found himself imposed upon once again. (Recall the MC cards). Dig those coasters. Coming soon at only the raddest boozers in town.

Ouch. Bar tape is messed up.
Note Rory-Style taping around lever. Looks good and saves time.

Finally, here's the worse, lasting damage from when I was Eberlized. Note the deep gouges in my bad-arse Campy carbon. Stuff is scratched up, but it works fine. And if it didn't, I'd still be ok because all that shit's serviceable. Bam!

First bit of snow

2011-11-18T12:04:00.000-08:00

Joe2 and I attempted a bit of trail. We ended up on roads - both paved and dirt- and enjoyed a coldish, wettish, but otherwise lovely morning ride.

How would you like to be the INW single-speed women's CX CHAMP?!

2011-11-17T07:53:00.001-08:00

So there's this:

Click for big. It's the season's results for women cat 4 ss.
You'll note it's quite empty.

Last race of the series is this coming Sunday in CDA.

If you're 5"5' or taller, there's this:

Hey! A single-speed bike.
For loan to any woman who wants to ride it this Sunday!

And you'll be cheered by people in these hats:

Jon, Rachel, Wade, Joe2

The series trophy is yours for the taking. All you have to do is show up and finish the race.

Wrecking

2011-11-15T18:59:00.001-08:00

Jon and I took a short trail ride today. Jon just started riding trails this year. He rides them on his LHT or on an RB-T. Both road-shaped bikes.

In the last 6 months or so since I've started riding with Jon, I've seen his technical ability improve 1000-fold. I've also seen him fall over and wreck a lot.

When it comes to becoming a better rider for trail-dirt technical riding, I think some wrecks are a sign that you are improving. Or will improve. Because you tend to wreck when you are pushing your personal boundaries. That's just a theory. And I don't necessarily think the inverse is true: if you don't wreck, it doesn't mean you're not improving.

I wreck all the time, so this theory suits me.

But the worse wrecks I've seen have been following the best technical riders that I ride with.

Specifically: I watched Ben Tobin explode over his bars and wreck a couple years ago. He puked, then beat his wheel back into a true-enough state. I've only been riding with Glen for about 3 years. But I've watched him wreck at least 3 times. In each one, I was amazed that he popped right back up and kept going. These guys are always pushing themselves and don't back down from tricky spots.

So after Jon and I finished climbing the HD trails, where he fell over once or twice, I laid this theory on him. I probably carried on more than I needed to, as I am wont to do.

On our way home, as I attempted a bunny hop, I wrecked. (Didn't knock my head!) Jon was right on my back wheel. He said it looked like I was banking into a turn when I attempted the bunny hop. That's not a good practice. I'm not sure what the hell I was doing.

Anyway, he's right on my wheel and in one-half of one-half of one second he has to decide: bail and hurt himself, run me over, or run my bike over. Of course he rolled over my bike. I rolled -- taking a bit of skin off my knee and testing the durability of the back of my new Ibex fancy jacket (which held up like a champ, of course).

The only damage was a bent derailleur hanger on my new Legolas. No big whoop. I should get a punch card from Glen for fixing bent derailleur hangers. Fix 10 -- 11th one free kind of thing.

Well, there's also a bit of scraped-up'ed-ness on my super fancy XTR derailleur. ouch. That won't buff out. Next time, just run me over Jon. They don't make XTR's like that anymore.

5 years

2011-11-14T14:06:00.001-08:00

I missed my official 5th anniversary by 4 days -- my 1st post on this blog was Nov 10, 2006.
Weird. It's official: I'm a verbose windbag.

More Walter CX

2011-11-13T12:56:00.000-08:00

Don't miss this race next year.

Walter's Fruit Ranch CX

2011-11-13T12:41:00.000-08:00

The hard corner.

Another NW Passage ride

2011-11-12T17:50:00.001-08:00

From Friday.
Proper ice bike.

Winterizing

2011-11-12T16:57:00.001-08:00

Before we start, let me just carry on about these awesome tires. They're Maxxis MaxLite 310. Yes, they weigh 310 grams. I put them in the vise to show how super thin they are. They're basically a thin casing to hold your tube to your rim. Seriously, these are great all-rounders. I had them on the pump-beer version of the MB-2 this summer and they were perfect for bar rides and tooling around on the trails. I think I only had one flat on these. They're for racing, but they're perfect for a tool-around bike. Fast, supple, a bit of tread for the dirt, and enough plump to allow you to bang around.

This bike proved itself last winter as a perfect work horse winter bike. Recall this particularly cold and wet week. It's ready for winter time trudging now: fenders, rack, studs, generator lights front and back, Thudbuster, Thermos-holder.

I love these grips. Click for big.

So this was the river bike all summer. And it rocked. It was perfect for fishing, beer-runs, day tours, and junk-food runs. It's just such a great bike I couldn't bear to think of it just sitting in a shed all winter long. So, I put the old Hakkapeliitas (going on year 5 now?) on there, flipped the rear wheel to the fixed side and it's going to be the ice bike. But the reality is -- I'll probably ride this bike a half-dozen times this winter. The MB-2 is just so easy and fun and useful.

This is the big experiment. I have to say, I have my doubts on the viability of this bike as a super useful snow bike. I could dump $100+ into some new tires to make it probably, nearly viable, but I want to try these out first. I put a fender solution on there. Those huge-ass tires can throw a boatload of slushy gunk.

The careful observer will notice that the tandem is gone. It turns out the tandem was the logjam. I took it to Glens today and the garage just nearly cleaned itself. I can now hang up most of the bikes, which clears up a huge pile of bikey/hose/tire mess that was against the garage door.

Note the walkable space in front of the garage door. I also replaced 4 bulbs in the overheads. Wow. That makes a huge difference. I don't have a lot of bike stuff in my winter plans -- and what I do have planned will hopefully happen in Glen's garage or Pat's garage. But I probably will re-work Maddie's Elephant with drops and a rear rack.

From the other side. Yes. This is clean. Very clean.

Lest we forget. The wife is certified.

APB

2011-11-11T08:17:00.001-08:00

Any Spokanites know where I can purchase any of the following beers?

I'm really digging the sour thing. It's proving hard to find.

I see the Lazy Boy IPA at some shops-- but aside from the wings restaurant-- I can't find the Belgian in a retail spot.

I bought these super fancies in Seattle.
Left: New Belgium La Folie
Right: Rodenbach
Flipping rad. Both of em.

Of course this is bike-related.

Sunset on HD trails

2011-11-10T16:17:00.001-08:00

2nd Annual BF ride

2011-11-08T09:53:00.000-08:00

Last year, I really wanted to do the NW Passage ride for our 1st Annual Black Friday ride. It's just so perfect. So, I laid out the plan.

As we got closer to the ride, it became pretty apparent that it was going to be a snowy event.

And it snowed.

So we did a snow ride instead. Which was fun and sort of gruelling in its own way (think short distance, deep snow, high aerobic output), but I still feel sort of cheated out of the NW Passage ride.

So. We'll try again this year.

For specifics, refer to last year's plan. But swap out the right date (Nov 25th). And the time (8 AM, not 7)) and the meeting place (Rocket on 43rd instead of The Scoop).

All the other stuff is the same. What I mean by that is all the carrying on about the type of ride and what you should expect if you come on the ride.

Screw it. All up:
-- Nov 25th - *leave* Rocket at 8 AM.
-- Trails/hard ride
-- Assume about 3.5 hours.

Dylan -- if you are in town, and need a bike, let me know.

Bday bike hang - Tuesday

2011-11-06T12:00:00.000-08:00

That, of course, is not Nate. That's Joe.
We went on a cold ride this morning.
I can't get enough of the NW Passage on the new bike.
I've been dragging along anyone willing to go on that ride for the last couple weeks.

It's gNate's birthday. And all he wants for his birthday is a bike hang on Tuesday at a place with whiskey.

Who can say no to that?

The plan:
This Tuesday (8th).
8PM
Hill's Someplace Else

Duct tape wind block.
Use duct tape to cover up all the air vents in your shoes.
Bill showed me this trick. And it works well.
Recommended.

The source of the fender rattle

2011-11-04T14:14:00.001-07:00

Elder Road

2011-11-04T13:37:00.001-07:00

Take this survey. Just do it.

2011-11-03T09:43:00.000-07:00

Do this.

The short story: just go here and take the Mt Spokane mountain bike survey.

Here's one section of the survey asking how interested you might be in the following types of trails:

And yes, there is a "Pump Track" option further down.

Yes please.

Just taking the survey makes me all giddy. Especially with Duthie Hill still fresh in my memory.

I have no idea what the potential for actualizing this stuff is, but I did sign up to donate and help to make it happen.

Here's the official press release:

Mount Spokane State Park mountain bike survey launched

OLYMPIA – Nov.2, 2011 – The Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission invites thepublic to answer an online survey to help us understand what kinds of mountainbiking opportunities people would like to see at Mount Spokane State Park.

In 2009, theWashington State Parks and Recreation Commission completed a ComprehensiveTrail Plan for Mount Spokane State Park. In 2010, the mountain biking communityasked the Commission to develop a plan to specifically address trail issues relatingto mountain biking and to help improve mountain biking opportunities in thepark. State Parks staff have begun working with the community on this plan. Thefirst step is a survey.

The surveyquestions focus on how park visitors use the trail system now and on how toimprove the system to better meet the needs of bicyclists. “We hope to hearfrom anyone who is interested in mountain biking issues at Mount Spokane,” saidNikki Fields, parks planner. “This survey is very important because it will helpguide our choices as we develop a mountain bike plan for the park.”

The Commissionencourages the public to take part in the survey online at http://www.parks.wa.gov/plans/mtspokanemtnbike/.Responses will be accepted through Dec. 16 and are limited to one survey perperson. For more information, email mount.spokane.mountainbike@parks.wa.govor contact Nikki Fields at (360) 902-8658.

Mount Spokane State Park is a 13,919-acre camping park inthe Selkirk Mountains, northeast of Spokane. The forested park features standsof old-growth timber and granite rock outcroppings. It typically receives 300inches of snow in the winter.

The Commissionmanages a diverse system of more than 100 state parks and recreation programs,including long-distance trails, boating safety and winter recreation. The98-year-old park system will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2013.

Washington State Parks is now onTwitter at WaStatePks_NEWS and YouTube at WashingtonStateParks.

Bike hang at Northern Lights

2011-11-01T10:09:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow (Weds) night.
8pm
Because they have good wings.

Rivendell Legolas

2011-10-31T16:44:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned this bike once or twice on this blog, but I've not given it a proper, hearty intro.

Here's the story.

My buddy Rory had this bike. I rode it about a year ago when I visited Seattle for a weekend. I said, "Rory, if you ever sell this bike, let me know first." He said something like, "fat chance; I'll never sell it."

So it was a surprise when he IM'ed me a couple months ago: "Selling the Legolas, want to buy it?"

Damn. And he had a great friend price and was throwing in a Nitto rack and a whole stinking Novara Fusion frame.

Of course I did. And I did.

The story as I understand it, is that there were a couple-few batches of Legolas framesets. This frameset is from the first batch. It's built by Mark Nobilette (btw: he's the guy that had the coolest/smartest demountable bike design I've seen in the flesh -- NAHBS... 4 years ago? Thanks to Alex, here's a pic). Subsequent batches were built by Waterford.

Anyway. Basic specs are this:
Size: 59 cm
BB drop: 70
ST angle: 73
HT angle: 72.5
Offset: 45
TT: 58
CS: 44
Tubing: 7-4-7 through out.

If you're a Rivendell super nerd with real cred, let me know if this is wrong and I'll update accordingly.

Anyway, numbers aside, this bike rocks.

Whoa. How did that get in there?

I swapped most of the bits from my beloved RB-T onto this bike with the intention of racing it. The clot thing happened and the Legolas ended up sitting around for a bit. Justin rode it properly for one race.

Then I started commuting on it. And now, I can't get off it. Every ride is an excuse to ride it. I've been doing some good trail rides on it and it's rad.

It's light, and it just, somehow, expects you to stand on it and go. My RB-T was similar, but this one seems to really pull me into a space where putting out is mandatory. It's probably all mental, but that works for me too. It's pretty perfect as the all-round fast bike: on road and non-technical trail rides.

I've owned some Rivendells in the past: the Quickbeam, the Atlantis. Both great bikes, but both turned out to be stouter than I needed or wanted. The Legolas is perfect in its lack of stoutness. It's OS, thin-walled tubing. And it's really fun to ride. That makes me think that OS, thin-walled tubing may be the way to go. I'm pretty sure that's what my Salsa is -- which is totally different in every other way from the Legolas -- but is similar in its overall feel and the feeling of obligation to push hard that it engenders. If that makes any sense.

Review: MSR Fast Stash 2

2011-10-29T16:43:00.000-07:00

The people at MSR sent me the Fast Stash 2 tent to review.

I've had it for a month or so and finally took it out last night for the first time.

The upshot:

Set up is a bit fussier than I'm used to, but once I figured it out, it'll be quicker next time.
It's huge. For two, it's adequate. For one, as a base camp tent, it's rad.
The sloping walls, combined with condensation, would make sleeping for two-- and staying dry -- a bit of a challenge.
Probably a better tent for hikers than for touring cyclists. But would make a great base camp tent.
Retail $300. Made in Taiwan.

Set up
There's a video on the MSR site that shows how to set it up. I watched a few weeks ago and probably should've watched it again before I set off last night. In the dark. In the rain. So, setting it up for the first time in the rainy dark was a tad frustrating. There are directions on the stuff sack.

See those poles? They won't stand up unless everything is tied down.
Especially in the wind. (Did I mention dark and rain?)

But one step in the directions is whacked. The tent is optimized to be set up with trekking poles. It comes with two light DAC poles for non-hikers. So, it's held up with these poles, then tied down with the guy lines.

The step that's crack-smoking is one where it says something like, "put the poles in, angle them towards the door to hold up the tent, then tie down the guys." It just doesn't stay up doing it that way without help. With help, I'm thinkning there would be no issues. Alone (in the dark rain), you gotta sort of tie it down, then wedge the poles in there.

Anyway -- a lot virtual ink here, but the net: I think after setting it up a couple times alone, or if I had help setting it up, it would be trivial.

Size
For two, on a dry night, I think it would be fine. But it's a single wall tent. So on a rainy night, even where I put my head next to the side screen, in an attempt to not build condensation, the walls were dripping by morning. Given how the inside slopes, if you've got two in there, the person on the sloping wall is probably going to get pretty wet. So for two. Not so great.

Once that wall loads up with condensation, you don't want to be sleeping on it.
I like how tall the front of the tent is. And the door configuration is cool: you can sit with your butt in the tent, take off your shoes while their outside, and you get a bit of coverage over the door. Nice design.

For one: this would work great as a base camp. I'm looking forward to setting this up at the river next year and any National Forest trips we make. It's perfect for one-biker base-camper.

As a bike touring tent for two. I'd have to figure out that condensation thing before taking it on the road. If you did tour with it, you could have one cyclist take the poles and one take the tent to sort of break up the load. It's 4 pounds all up.

Loads of room.

Riverside Park o'er nighter

2011-10-29T10:42:00.000-07:00

Pat, Eric, Jon and I took a quick ride out to Bowl and Pitcher last night. It rained, but it was fun.

This spot is the bike-in site and it rules. It's the best area in the entire campground -- mostly because it's not a proper campground. Just a big shelter with tables and fire pits around it. And it overlooks the river.

Dig this: the shelter has electricity! And (in warm months) running water!! And it's like 5 miles from downtown. Silly silly shit.

What the hey? If you have a pulse and you ride a bike, this has got to be a future super hang overnighter destination.

Pat is rad. He stashed a bit of wood at the site earlier in the week.
Is that cheating?
Is pouring white gas on the needles cheating?

This picture is for Pat Rick. We missed you!

And a little more gas. Just to make sure it starts.

And the match.

Now that's a fire!
My eye brows were stupid looking anyway.

The subtle, "oh look, I'm awesome. I'm on a single speed!" pic.

Behind the back shot.

Fancy early-morning mist shot.

Jon. Top-o-Doomsday.

Temple Road

2011-10-28T10:40:00.001-07:00

Bill, Eric, Jon
Elephant, rSogn, LHT, Legolas

The road is in amazing shape. Best ever.

No point

2011-10-26T15:07:00.000-07:00

Just stumbled across this picture. Taken by Alex on a nice sunny day on the way out to Badger a few years ago. Click for big -- to really take it all in.

Duthie Hill

2011-10-24T11:56:00.000-07:00

Fred, Alex, Andrew

I was in Seattle this weekend for a quick trip with Maddie.

While she explored the Space Needle with a pack of cousins, I headed out to Duthie Hill mountain bike park with Alex, Andre, Andrew, Fred, Jimmy, and Lee.

Click for big.
"Ryan's eternal flow" == the bomb.

Duthie Hill was just a big piece of forest until a couple years ago when Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance convinced King County to let them work it into a bunch of trails.

Fred was rocking the new rSogn.

Super super sweet. Amazingly built trails with bitching corners, drainage. From beginner to huge drop stuff. This place is rad. There were even a couple pump tracks. The most complete one was closed for maintenance and the other one appeared to be in process.

Shit picture. But that's a really fun dip that pushes you up a silly steep ramp.
I couldn't land it right -- kept landing on my front wheel. But I want to go back.
The guy flying through the air with the greatest of ease there is Jimmy.
I was pushing to keep up with him on this route.

As usual, riding some awesome place elsewhere, makes me realize how I need to pay attention to what's going on around me here. Vis-a-vis: I need to do stuff with and for the FTTR folk. And I need to spend more time out at Beacon.

Sours.
Word.

speaking of beer.

BIKE HANG - Weds night. 8 PM. Jone's Radiator.

(breaking the "must have good wings" rule, just this once, since the beer quality is so high there).

Pinch flat at speed

2011-10-23T15:50:00.001-07:00

On fancy-ass worn-down Grifo tires. Thankfully it was the rear that blew out.

Elephant Bikes dot com is live

2011-10-23T14:33:00.000-07:00

www.elephantbikes.com

Design by Klay. Code by Dylan. Most pics by Ben. Great job all.

Check it out. There are a few minor updates outstanding, but it's 88% there.

Note my note on shillitude.

If you've been pondering an Elephant bike, I'd suggest ponying up now and getting in the queue.

www.elephantbikes.com

Dirt road ride

2011-10-21T16:16:00.001-07:00

Any idea what's going on in this pic?

2011-10-18T16:39:00.001-07:00

Cyclocross at 7-mile. Again.

2011-10-16T16:47:00.000-07:00

Steph.

Justin and guy.

Tom

Justin

Jake. He doesn't know this, but watching him a few years ago (and watching Louie) is what made me try my first race.

Tom. Andrew. Andrew eventually caught Tom.

Justin -- whistling along.

Early morning ride

2011-10-15T07:38:00.001-07:00

Fingers got cold.
Come to CX race tomorrow. Emdesports.com for details.

Watch Justin race on my rad new-to-me cross bike.
Eat an omelet.
Maybe have a beer.

A note from a borderline-sociopathic heart

2011-10-11T16:22:00.000-07:00

I've been visiting the Rockwood Clinic a lot in the last few weeks for blood work. And a lab visit. And a CT scan. And I'm pretty much riding the Gifford Elephant every day for the last couple weeks.

I found this note clipped to my handlebar bag when I came out of the clinic today.

*****BIKE HANG ALERT*******

First official public bike hang tomorrow night at the new wing place that used to be Chapala on 29th. Can you believe how lazy I am. I'll just type all of this instead of googling the name/address.

8pm. 2nd floor.

btw: This year's bike hang theme: hot wings. No self-respecting beer place can claim awesomeness without the humble hot wing appetizer. That's just a fact.

Text-book remount

2011-10-09T17:46:00.001-07:00

It's not a jump. It's a slide. Watch right thigh slide over the saddle.
Super smooth.

Old CX photos

2011-10-08T07:46:00.000-07:00

My buddy Bill sent me these. I don't know where he found them.

They're French.

To my comrades heading to Moscow today: good luck!

2011 Ibex Breakaway 2- Initial Impressions

2011-10-06T16:03:00.000-07:00

I've been bugging the Ibex people for at least two years on this. Today when I got home, I found that they had finally sent me a sample of the latest Breakaway jacket. Sweet.

Here's the jacekt on the Ibex site. It's called Breakaway 2.

I've carried on and on and on about previous versions of this jacket. The Dash, the Breakaway, the Vim. This review of the Vim links back to my other reviews. In a nutshell, the original Breakaway was great: good for cold riding in all conditions. As the jacket evolved into the Dash, then the Vim, it went away from its cycling-specific features and became thinner.

Now the new Breakaway appears to maintain the lighter-weight approach, but as the name-change suggests, it's pure cycling: rear pocket, no side pockets, chest pocket, nice reflective bits on the back and the left (turning signal) arm.

The tags inclued on the jacket describe "Climawool" and "Schoeller." My guess is that the front-facing panels on the chest and arms are Schoeller. The rear-facing, corresponding panels are Climawool -- basically a wool/stretch poly blend that is wonderful in its breathability.

The fit of the new Breakaway is under the Ibex "Peak" descrption, which means a more snug cut.

Lame lighting. It's not orange, it's a nice deep tomato red. And it's not black, it's a dark inky blue.

My initial impressions:

As always, Ibex quality and finish is flipping perfect.
Fit is snug for a jacket. I'm a big L, but the beauty of my existing Dash is that a size L still allows me to put a couple thin layers under the jacket.
I'm wondering if this light approach will work for super cold -- given that it's too snug to comfortably layer more than a medium shirt under it -- but, I've turned into a Schoeller believer in the last few years, and this jacket assumes you're humping it. It may suffice.
I like the bikey touches. Ibex is giving us some love here, but I'd like to see a bit more drop on the back panel.
Retail is steep: $275. But, I'll be on my 4th winter with my Dash, and it's yet to pop any stitching or even rip. And for me, that's saying a lot about durability.

Danny and the horses song

2011-10-04T20:27:00.000-07:00

With buddy Pat Rick away in the land of the rising sun, I was reminded of the horses song that he'd play occasionally in the early mornings at the Scoop.

I still watch this video at least 2 times a month. With over 27 million hits, clearly, I'm not the only one.

And it still blows me away every time.

I know it's so 2009. I know he's got newer ones. I know this just shows the parts where he's not wrecking.

But it's so damn good that sometimes when I'm done watching it I'm a tad weepy. The filmer/editor guy is just as talented as Danny. There's a bunch of cool little cinematic details that really show the passion of the guy that filmed/edited it (the observers materializing at 4:15 is probably the most obvious favorite, but I dig the cloud transition at 4:49 and the judicious use of slo-mo throughout, and I see somthing new I like every time I watch it).

The bit at 3:23-3:25 (the bit showing in the still above) just kills me every time. So seemingly simple and lovely, but so damn difficult.

Glory years and my official statement of shillitude

2011-10-03T17:56:00.000-07:00

Glen Copus at Cyclocross Nationals 1986 -- Scott's Valley, CA. I'm pretty sure on that.

Sorry. I just can't stand sitting on this picture any longer.

And there's a story about that frame. It's some frame I can't remember made by a guy whose name I can't remember. Glen found it in the tall grass around Keith Bontrager's garage back in the ice age. Glen fixed it up and replaced the front end and raced it for a few years. He later gave it to some local kid, who ended up crashing it.

I'm helping Glen build a new website for Elephant Bikes. This pic (and others equally awesome -- early BMX, mountain, etc) will go on his site.

This officially puts me in the "no longer just a friend and sort of objective observer of things related to Elephant bikes."

I am officially an Elephant shill. I will benefit from Elephants being sold in the future. It's not clear to me exactly how, as we've not really had a discussion of compensation, but I'll be taking all this work to the bank at some point, so that makes me interested financially in Elephant's business.

Which, even by my low-bar of blogging ethics, requires full disclosure.

So there it is.

Cyclocross at 7-mile

2011-10-01T21:48:00.000-07:00

Opener was today. Even though I didn't race, I had a pretty good time.

Bill arrives for his first race.

Steph. Rocking the run-up.

Mark and Scott. Well-matched.

Glen portaging beers and brats.

Maddie

Camp Run-up

Brian. That color is "Kawasaki Green"

Jon's first race.

1994 RB-T. (Phil's)

John Stone.
3rd in Cat 4.

Dig Tom's smile. This is nearing the end of his second race.

Jon. Jordy looking on.

Bill wrecked in a magnificent ball of dust and glory on a fast corner. Then sprinted to beat this guy at the finish line.

Hank (his camera took all these pics)

Louie. (Pic by Hank.)

Review -- Keen Austin SPD shoe

2011-09-30T08:31:00.000-07:00

I wrote this review a few months back. It originally appeared in the Summer 2011 edition of Bicycle Quarterly.

Keen Austin Pedal
Test distance: about 500 km (300 miles)
Cost: $120
Weight: 533 g
Country of manufacture: China
Availability: http://www.keenfootwear.com/

As a daily cyclist who appreciates clipless pedals, I’m always on the look out for “normal” looking SPD-compatible shoes. There seems to be no shortage of SPD compatible shoes in the world, but like Lycra, most SPD shoes do not blend well in casual non-bikey company.
The Keen Austin hides its utility well in a normal looking and comfortable Oxford-style shoe that is fit for daily use on and off the bike. Like most Keen shoes, the Austin has a distinctively wide toe box and a thick black rubber sole that wraps up over the front of the toe. The Austin’s muted tan color is officially called “Shitake.” Thankfully, there are no garish colors or overtly loud labels to distract from the quiet and unoffending design. In fact, the Keen Austin may be the only boring looking shoe that is SPD compatible. But boring is a huge win in this category, and in the end, the Austin blends well with a wide range of casual clothing and performs reasonably well on the bike too.
The Austin is advertised as a “waterproof” shoe, which is not a claim that should be made lightly to a cycling audience. The Austin does not use a waterproof layer such as Gortex to provide its water resistance. Instead, the leather is mechanically impregnated with silicon. So while the shoe is, strictly speaking, not waterproof, it is impressively water resistant. I have been caught a number of times in hard downpours and I’ve commuted through slushy snowy conditions with this shoe. On a bike with full fenders, the shoe will keep your feet dry until water finds its way through the ankle. On a bike without fenders, the leather will “wet out” when the shoe is subject to constant wheel splash for an hour or so. The Austin has a thick removable footbed that when soaked, dries easily overnight if you remove it from the shoe.
Given the wide design of the Austin, it runs a bit bigger than my other cycling shoes. If you are considering getting a pair, I’d suggest finding a place where you can try them on. If you order them online, size them as a normal shoe, not a cycling shoe.
The roomy toe box is a nice feature in cool-weather riding, as it allows me to wear a medium-weight wool sock without compressing the sock. I’ve ridden comfortably around town in freezing weather with these shoes and medium wool socks. That said, I don’t think I would attempt a long ride out of town in freezing weather with these shoes. But for any weather above freezing, the Austins are an easy choice.
As a shoe – to walk in – the Austin feels like a Keen. While the sole sort of squishes or gives a bit, the Austins generally feel well-supported. They are not overly stiff in the way most traditional racing-oriented cycling shoes tend to be. I wouldn’t want to hike for days in these shoes, but as daily, active, get around shoes, they work just fine.
I’ve had these shoes for nearly five months and I wear them multiple times a week as my daily shoe. Aside from some water staining, they show almost no signs of use. At this rate, I expect them to last for a few years.

My only real complaint with these shoes is that I’d like the SPD cutout on the bottom of the shoe to be a bit better designed. The cutout does not extend far enough to the heel. I position my SPD cleats far back toward the heel. When I initially set up the shoe to put the cleats where I like them, I was unable to clip in easily to my standard Shimano (PD-M520) pedals. The pedal would not recess into the sole without butting into the side of the cutout. With some time and a bit of determination, I’m sure I could remove a bit of the sole around the rear of the cleat, but instead, I positioned the cleat as far back as I could while still clipping in easily. If I used these shoes for long rides my solution would not be ideal, but since most of my rides in these shoes are under 10 miles, my slightly misplaced cleat does not effect my comfort.

Legolas - unoffically

2011-09-29T13:54:00.000-07:00

-- White tires are faster. It's a fact. And they improve the likelihood of planing.
-- I've got a lot to say about this bike. It's from Rory. It's front-end is different than most of my bikes. It's got super fancy campy shifting (10 speed 8 speed hack works perfectly). It replaces my RBT. It's for cross and commuting and trail riding. I can only do one of those right now. It's fancy.
-- oh yeah: And I wish i could take the trails home today on this bike.

space

Cold-weather cycling gloves

2011-09-28T18:35:00.000-07:00

Gloves. In order of warmth.

It's officially not summer. I was wishing I had some light gloves for this morning commute to keep the chill off.

With the exception of the rare CX race, I don't wear "proper" cycling gloves. Especially for commuting. They're just another thing to lose that don't offer me much benefit. I have plenty of high-benefiting stuff to lose (e.g. keys, phone, headphones, knife, money, wallet).

So I have a lot of cold-weather gloves. For two reasons: I loose them temporarily a lot. And they get wet, so it's nice to have a back up. Actually three reasons: And one pair of gloves does not work in this climate, where a given week in the winter can offer super dry cold, lame wet slushy rainy gunk, freezing rain/snow, and warmish cold in the 40's. There are gloves that get close, but the super cold (under zero in these parts) and death zone (wet and near freezing) really test the boundaries of gloves. I offered my functional design services for gloves last year. I'm not seeing any royalty checks yet.

Sorry. There's four reasons: since most of the gloves I like are not cycling-specific, they tend to fail prematurely in the palm. So when I find one I like, I watch for them to go on sale and I buy them. Summer is a great time to buy gloves.

So without further ado. Here's some notes on the different gloves. In no particular order.

Smartwool cheapies. Sold as "liner" gloves. About $12 on sale.
Good: light, super porous. Easy to stuff into a pocket. Wish I had these this morning when it was about 46F on the way to work.
Bad: The palms will blow out after about 20 commutes.

Modified REI gloves. Modification story here.
Good: probably my most used glove the last couple years. Since the fingers part pops off, it has a great temp range, and it allows me to easily fuss with phone, get keys, etc. The thick fleece has held up in the palm over 2 years. Impressive.
Bad: requires modification. The wind-blocker modification is essential for sub-freezing. The pair on the left are awaiting modification. I'll wrap the wind/rain shield all the way around the finger part this year. Not just on the outside.

PI Lobsters.
Good: not much.
Bad: expensive, not warm under freezing, not warm when wet. Not water proof at all.

OR shells.
Good: great in theory. If they were water proof, I'd love these to death. They're not, but they're great with some liner mittens for snowy rides where snow doesn't wet out and cold/windy rides. I wish someone would make a non-gauntlet-style of these in gortex.
Bad: not water proof. Not made anymore.

Dakine Super Fancies.
These were on close out at the end of the season last year. So I'm gambling on these this for super cold weather.
Good: even if the shells suck, the liners are the bomb. I've been looking for simple poly/fleece liner mittens since REI discontinued theirs about 4 years ago. I'll use these a lot this year. I hope the liners hold up better than the REI ones did, cause a super light-weight, simple fleece mitten is a great thing.
Bad: The one time I tried these at the end of the season my hands sweated to death from all the layers of poly. I think you can get away with a layer or two of plastic, but to breath you gotta have gortex or wool somewhere in there.

OR Flurry Gloves
Another close-out bet. I like these. They're wool with poly/fleece lining.
Good: Warmer than they look and they hold up to wet surprisingly well. Good enough for a wettish 30 minute ride. Wool exterior appears to be holding up well in the palm area.
Bad: Nothing yet.

Ibex liners (L) and Ibex gloves (R)
I love Ibex stuff but these liners are always a huge disappointment in how fast the palms blow up. It's a shame they don't do something to reinforce them to make them useful as stand alone cool-weather gloves, cause they're wonderful to wear. I try to save these only for liner duty, but I'm not great at that.
The red ones are just good solid wool gloves. Same functionally as the Smartwools at the top, but these guys have the glue-y little bits on the palm, so they last much longer. My memory is that they cost about $20 on sale? Good buy those.

Cheap rag wool fingerless convertible gloves.
Good: super cheap. Worth having around just in case. Pretty sure I got these when I needed gloves on a shit ride home from Kettle Falls.
Bad: run that wicked piece velcro over your cold dripping nose for a brutal reminder of why velcro should never go there.

Favorite bikes

2011-09-27T22:24:00.001-07:00

I'm a lucky bastard.
Blue: Jeff Lyon
Orange: Glen Copus

It's cross season. And other stuff.

2011-09-27T19:29:00.000-07:00

This incriminating photo is posed. She didn't do this!
Maddie found the spray paint that was used to vandalize this bridge in a ditch.
She came home and used the paint to mark the inside of her tree house.

I'm tired of my clot and tired of talking about it.

I'm riding to work, which is wonderful. And generally taking easy/moderate rides. Soon I'll be taking harder rides. Overall I'll be sticking to the rules outlined here.

Done.

Since I can't ride cross, I plan on being a hanger-on. Tonight for the practice session, I raked. And took some photos.

First race is this Saturday at 7-mile airstrip. My goal is to take some photos. And hang out. I'll be riding out there. Moderately of course. On the Centennial Trail.

If you want to ride along, I'll be departing from the Sandifur Bridge at 10 to make the first race at 10:30.

Midnight Century finishers!
I got some envelopes. If you finished the Midnight Century, send me an email with your mailing address and I'll send you a finisher card. My email is john at phred dot org.

Easy money

2011-09-24T07:35:00.001-07:00

Kid for hire.
Here she's sorting bearings for Glen. $20 the easy way. She says she's saving for a microscope.

Update

2011-09-21T16:09:00.000-07:00

Here's the short version:

1. I will be able to ride at normal "vigor" within a week or so.
2. I have to be a very careful rider.

The long version.

I'm going to leave out a ton of detail and technical terms, mostly because I'm lazy, but also, this *is* a bike blog.
Item 1: I will ride soon
My clot goes from my ankle up to my thigh.
The way these go away is to thin the blood so the clot stops growing. When the blood thins, the clot will sort of solidify along my vein and my vein and body will slowly absorb it over a few months. The whole "don't ride vigorously" advice refers to the chunk of time when your clot can still form. As it forms, bits can break off. Those bits can mess you up: think exploding brains, lungs, heart messy. So I'm taking blood thinners. Right now, I'm injecting myself twice a day to get my blood level to the right number. A couple times a week, I'll be going to the clinic to get a blood test to figure out the blood thinness number. Once I get to the right number (hopefully next week), I'll quit the daily shots and just take a pill to maintain the right blood thinness.
That's when I'll be able to ride with vim and vigor.
Note I also have some dietary restrictions and a requirement to drink 2 beers a day. Really. The blood thinning medication is sensitive to alcohol. So you have to commit: either no drinking or drink daily. But no in between. And no more than 2 drinks a day.
I'll be on blood thinner for 6 months.
Item 2: I need to be super careful
The whole blood-thinning thing is freaky. The concept is simple: it just means it will take longer for my blood to clot if I bleed. That's not a big deal when you cut yourself and the wound is external and easy to apply pressure to, stitch, or cauterize.
But it becomes a huge scary deal when you consider that your brain is just a big ball of fat floating in a delicate web of blood vessels. Apparently, folks on blood thinning drugs can knock their heads relatively not-hard and get internal bleeding up there. That's freaky. There's additional internal bleeding scenarios that are also freaky, but the brain one is the freakiest.
So, this is where the whole risk thing comes in.
I'm going to ride. From a risk perspective, I don't think it makes sense not to commute by bike, but then go and commute by car instead.
I'm not, however, going to ride a bike in the following scenarios for the next six months:

Trail riding/mountain biking. The fact is: the fun of mountain biking for me, is to push my technical limits. As a result, I wreck a lot. Mountain biking w/out going fast/pushing my comfort level, doesn't really appeal to me. This includes pump tracking and drop-bar-off-road-tom-foolery. But it does not include National Forest-type riding, which is really just long rides on dirt roads.
Drunk. On a two-day-a-beer diet, this is unlikely, but for the sake of completeness, it should be stated. To be clear, I don't ride around drunk. But one great benefit of being a bike-riding-beer-drinker is being able to occasionally have one too many at Benidittos and burning it off on the way up the hill. No more of that for the next six months.
Racing. Cross racing is out. That's a heart breaker. But each season I've raced (and I've only raced a few races a year), I've gone down at least once. I'd love to reason my way out of this, but it's not going to happen.
Fast descents. The idea of wrecking in this scenario is scary anyway, but even with a Nutcase dork helmet, going down at 30+ MPH would probably kill me.

So that's the deal. I'd rather not have this freaking clot, but it's not the end of the world. It's pretty painful at the moment, so I don't know how much riding I'll be able to do until blood flow improves a bit.

Also, there are 3 known causes (stasis, trauma, heredity) for blood clots and one unknown (shit happens/life is a mystery). I can't find anyone in my family that's had a clot before, but the pending blood test will clear up the heredity issue. If it's the unknown kind (and about 20% of clot patients fall into this area), then is more likely than not to be a once-in-a-lifetime issue that will go away if I don't screw up the therapy.

2 final thoughts:
- Cars and driving still sucks. I've been driving all over the place for the last 4 days. It's no wonder our world is so mean and angry and stressed. I forget how much I rely on the bookend rides every day. No matter what kind of gooey shit I have to deal with at work or at home, there's always a bike ride around the corner. Not having it has been lame. And imagining it for months on end was making me pretty anxious.
- My friends and family are rad. Aside from the visible comments on the last post, I've gotten emails, FB posts, and calls from tons of people offering support, electric bikes, weekends of rack building, bourbon drinking, hangs, and just straight-up support and "dude that sucks, get better" notes. It's cool and it really mattered. Thanks.

The struggle to re-frame

2011-09-18T18:37:00.000-07:00

When lame stuff happens to Maddie and she gets super mad and angry, I try to tell her to re-frame -- that how we react to lame stuff is a choice. And that we really can't control much. So being able to re-frame a crap situation into something non-sucky, is a choice we can make.

That's damn sensible and easy advice to give to an 8 year-old girl with trivial-seeming 8 year-old problems, but not so easy to dish out on my 40 year old self.

As it turns it out, that lame cramping in my calf is a stinking blood clot. Wtf? Blood clots are for old, sedentary people, right?

Friggin heck.

The bottom line is that I'm on blood thinning drugs for 6 months, which means no bleeding, which is kind of side-hobby to cycling for me. Not that I'm awash in blood on a regular basis or anything, but I fall and wreck quite a bit and I get a bunch of little scrapes and cuts on a pretty regular basis. Especially when I'm mountain biking or trail-riding. So 6 months of chilling the frig out is kind of lame.

But here's the kicker: two months of non-"vigorous" activity. Basically, vigorous exercise could dislodge this clot, or a chunk of this clot, out of my thigh and into my blood stream, which could work its way into my heart or lung. That's super bad. So I'm really pondering the idea of "vigorous."

I know what it means to me. Basically, that's a heart rate that makes me pant and puff. The doctor said riding bikes mellow is ok. But no hammering. Liza, of course, asked the doctor what he though about me commuting daily. And specifically, about riding up the south hill every day.

He said that for even fit cyclists, it's probably not a great idea. But he also made a point of saying that he really wasn't sure. Blood clot patients never ask this question and there's zero research on such stuff as it's pretty much impossible to test. I have another pulmonary doc that I'm going to see next week. I'll needle him with this.

But I'm pretty sure that by riding my mountain bike in low gear I could go up the south hill at a just-above-resting heart rate. Certainly nothing approaching vigorous.

Communing is the biggest hurdle I see for two months of non-vigorous riding. The commute angle just sucks by any other means. But maybe I just need to re-frame.

On a side note -- let me just say this: I'm one lucky mofo to have good insurance. The shot that I need to stick myself with for the next two nights costs $1200!!

Crappy calf-iness

2011-09-16T08:34:00.000-07:00

Hm. well. My left calf is swollen. Really!
And I'm normally a sock-matcher.
I've been remiss about sock-washing of late.

A combination of dehydration and improper saddle height has resulted in a multi-day calf pain episode. I regularly have nocturnal leg cramps in my left calf. Probably once a month or so I wake up in insane pain with my calf fully tensed up and the muscle completely contracted. It's weird.

I strained this poor calf on Tuesday riding my fancy new bike (with a saddle height that was probably about 2 cm too high) on the trails in a mostly dehydrated state. A couple hours later, I met Glen and co for some CX "hot laps" where I could barely do a lap. The pain was just too much.

So I've been trying to take it easy this week. The commute home yesterday though was pretty painful. And slow.

This is where we hot lap on Tuesday afternoons.
5:30-6:30.

So, I'm off the bike for today: drinking electrolyte stuff, hydrating, icing the calf, and eating vitamin I. I'm hoping that will allow me to ride this weekend as normal.

This makes me feel 40. In addition to being more aware of my potassium intake, I'm also pondering yoga.

Thinking. A novel concept, but I've been told that's what 40 year-olds do.

Bike hang for Richard Rush

2011-09-15T08:25:00.000-07:00

If you cycle or walk or transit in Spokane, and you think the city can do more to make these transportation modes safer, more efficient, and easier, then you should do a bit to keep Richard Rush in his council seat.

Even if you don't live in District 2, where Richard is running for re-election, you benefit from Richard's sitting on city council.

My years on the Bicycle Advisory Board taught me a whole bunch about how city bureaucracy works. And without carrying on about it, cause I can you know, let me say this: having a consistent, rational, knowledgeable advocate like Richard for active transportation at the table is critical.

Until recently, our entire history of urban development, from a transportation perspective, has been focused on volume: how many cars can we cram through a given space and how to we make sure there's adequate parking for them. This perspective is super entrenched and hard to change, since it's not even recognized by those who dictate and drive (pud dum pum) implementation of policy.

(Btw: you can always tell when the big blow off is coming when a traffic engineer starts his/her argument with, "I love riding bikes. And in fact, many of the engineers on our team ride bikes too, but...")

Drifting. Sorry.

The point: Richard is there every day with these guys pushing an alternate and more rational view of how we can move people in an urban environment. He's a super policy nerd and understands how efficiently and safely moving people with various modes of transportation can only improve the economic vitality of urban areas. He's elequent, repectful, and respected by staff. We all need him to stay and continue pushing. And we know how this works: it takes money and volunteers to win elections.

To that end, we're throwing a bike hang at our house next Thursday, Sept 22. It's in our back yard at 6:30.

Pat Rick and Elissa will be here scooping ice cream. They're moving to Japan a week later, so if you consider your self "apolitical," then attend this hang to say your goodbyes and goodwishes to them.

I'll have a few jugs of beer too. Coffee Joe says he has a bit of homebrew he may bring. If you brew (ahem, Chris Lattin, ahem) and you are coming, feel free to bring a jug.

The money-hope is that each person can throw in $25 towards Richard's campaign. But if you can't, that's ok, come by and offer to help out on the campaign instead.

I'll have a handful of shirts left. I'll donate the money sales from shirts sold at this party to Richard.

RSVP to john at phred dot org would be so lovely.

Good pairing

2011-09-14T17:15:00.001-07:00

MC finisher art

2011-09-13T20:20:00.000-07:00

Dig it.

My buddy Bill has an old school printing press in his basement. When I discovered that I tried to find a reason to put it to use.

The result: a Midnight Century finisher thing. It's a 5"x5" little piece of radness.

There's one for each finisher. There's 34 of them. I've numbered them to 33 (there are two 23's for the tandem guys). I'll give them out according to finishing time as posted here.

If you're a finisher, find me to get yours. John at phred dot org is the way to find me.

Best bike pic of all time?

2011-09-13T07:01:00.000-07:00

For folks that have been around a while, this image is apparently instantly recognizable as the Boulder Bike Poster that lived in just about every bike shop in the 80s.

According to those who debated the issue back in the day, this is real. That is, it's not a fake jump.

Further, I think that would be a v1 ~~Fox~~ Rock Shox fork (thanks BDD).

This is the photo that inspired the word RAD.

Follow up on S-A S2C hub issue

2011-09-12T19:53:00.000-07:00

I griped about the slipping, lurching, clacking, knocking lameness of the S2C here.

I sent an email to the Sunrace folks (contact listed on Sturmey Archer site), and got a reply that said all the hubs on the Sun Spider AT were screwed.

So they sent me new internals.

And an attachment to the most superb set of bike instructions ever. It's here (650k pdf). Good stuff.

Being the bitchy griper that I am, I can't stop. If the Sunrace guys knew all the hubs that went out on the AT were whacked, why didn't they get in front of this issue? There's probably a rational reason (aside from the cynical and obvious one), and I'd really like to know it.

Anyway -- with the new hub in there, the Spider is pretty sweet. The hub is smooth and creamy and easy and relaible feeling. If I didn't have the super bike going to build tonight, I'd ride the Spider to work tomorrow. Maybe Weds or Thurs.

Mission: Accomplished

2011-09-11T11:04:00.000-07:00

Suck ass broken binder bolt

2011-09-09T17:55:00.001-07:00

Riding a too-low saddle is a knee killer. But it's a lovely ride otherwise.

Pump track season is coming to an end

2011-09-07T20:36:00.000-07:00

Pat and Patty hosted a great session tonight. As the days get shorter, it's looking like this is one of the last night sessions.

As Maddie and I got home tonight I was thinking that maybe this is what some people go to church for. The pump track is great for pumping and riding and skill building. But there's also a community aspect that just rules. The people that show up and dig it and keep coming back are just bikey people. Many of them come at the bikey world with different, but passionate, perspectives but the pump track is a common draw that keeps pulling them back. Hanging out with these folks has been just as much fun as learning to ride the track this year.

On the way over to Pat and Patty's, Maddie and I ran into neighbor-Greg, who just got a new Elephant. Nice color scheme: bronze with orange decals.

Joe trying out the Spider.

Ben Tobin set a new lap record: 6.25.

Maddie hanging in the middle of the 180.
She pumped 3 laps tonight and time trialed at 13.5 s.

Justin: all smiles after a pretty gnarly spill -- the kind where you don't remember the first minute or so after the wreck.

Jon: wears a shit-eating grin pretty much the whole time he's on the track.
He's gonna love cross.

Normalizing the Sun Spider AT

2011-09-07T09:57:00.000-07:00

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I took interest in the addition of a "cheap-ish" option in the fat bike field. It finally arrived yesterday. I've got a lot to say, but I also have a lot of other stuff I gotta do right now so I'll just note the 1st-day modifications, and a gripe.

1. Swapped bars and stem -- from bmx style to Space bars.
2. Swapped saddle for slightly more better saddle.
3. Took off chain guard, which cleared the rolling tire by approximately 1 mm.
4. Added front brakes.

Super gripe: the Sturmey Archer S2C that ships on this bike is a turd, right out of the box. It skips. It slips. It's generally a major disappointment. So far, I'm not finding much love online for troubleshooting, other than some vague recommendations to let it "wear in," which is never a good sign.

Glen tacking on the canti post.

Glen thinks it may be a combination of things: he's not crazy about the chainline. The chain itself looks a bit wonky, though I've not gone through and checked for stiff links.

I'm wondering if the torque is just too much for the hub: the Sun Spider ships with a tiny tiny little chain ring (25t!) and 20t cog.

All I have to say is this: This is my third 2-speed kick-back hub. The Bendix on Liza's old bike, where nothing was optimized on a beat-up ancient bike, worked flawlessly. I also had a Sachs Torpedo. After I ripped it apart and cleaned it: no issues. So, I'm not delighted with the S-A hub at the moment, where it's giving me grief and I've not even had a chance to break it properly.

New art at Palisades

2011-09-05T09:08:00.001-07:00

Beth and Mike

2011-09-04T17:35:00.000-07:00

Beth and Mike came out for a quick visit to the river.
Maddie stayed home with her aunt.
This is Mike. Going up.

Liza and Beth

Laughing and climbing is highly inefficient

Mike, Beth, Liza, Coke-glasses.

Kelly Hill Cemetery.
This was about a mile down the road from the Pia Mission Cemetery.

Mid-ride drink and lunch at Boyd's Country Inn.
As it turns out, greyhounds are a pretty rad hot-day-riding drink.

Mike fly fishing.

Poison ivy.