Fish Lake Trail

There's a well-coordinated and supported effort to pave the Fish Lake Trail from Fish Lake to the Centennial Trail. Personally, I'm sort of in the middle on this one. One of my favorite quick runs is a ride through the unpaved portion of the Fish Lake Trail. I have it documented on Bikely.

I really enjoy riding Thorpe Road, which is a nice dirt county road, and hooking up to the trail at the top of the hill on Thorpe. The trail is some single-track, double-track, and contains all sorts of surfaces: sand, hard-pack, pebbles, "rail" rock. It's an interesting ride -- and fun. Right now the pavement starts about 2 miles out of Marshall and goes for about 3 miles, where you end up on a Burlington-Northern access road, cross two sets of live tracks, and then another mile to the Fish Lake Trail head parking lot, where the trail is paved to Curtis Road/Cheney. I enjoy taking a fattish-tired road bike or fixed gear on this route. So as I think about FLT being paved, it kind of bums me out, because today this is a quiet, under-used, no-traffic bike route.

Folks pushing for pavement here suggest that this will be an ideal commuter route for Cheney-Spokane commuters. Maybe so. The Cheney-Spokane Road is a good route for that too, although there are some pieces that are a bit tight.

The major cost of the project is not in paving, but in putting up overpasses over two live railroad tracks. I can't remember the numbers exactly, but what I seem to remember is that there is about a $6 million cost for this project; $4 million of which is for the overpasses. That's a good gob of money.

It's interesting what draws bike-related money -- people love the idea of multi-use paths with no traffic. I understand the draw, but if I had $6 million for bike-stuff in Spokane, I'd be pretty satisfied with the Centennial Trail. If you're a recreational cyclist; Spokane is great. You've got to be happy.

On the face of it, it sounds crazy, but, thinking about it, I'd blow most of that wad on education: teaching drivers and cyclists that it's ok and normal and lawful for cyclists to use the road. Like the "seat belt saves lives" campaign when I was a kid. There was a time no one wore seat belts. Then we were clobbered for years with TV, radio, print ads that told us to wear seat belts. In addition, there was a threat of fines if you didn't wear a seat belt.

What if we did the same for cyclist/driver-education? What if the message: "cyclists have the same rights to the road as a car; bikes are vehicles; cyclists have the same responsibility to follow the rules of the road as car drivers" was pounded into us everywhere we turned? What if we taught our kids, in school, how to safely ride in traffic? What if parents rode their kids to school, on bikes, while following traffic laws? What if the WSDOT manual and related driver training had more emphasis on bikes-as-traffic? What if your traffic violation doubled if cyclists were in the area, as we do for work zones? What if cops busted cyclists for traffic violations or riding on the sidewalk?

Eventually, I think we'd see a lot more folks riding their bikes in traffic and a lot less need for more multi-use trails.

Oh yeah, and if there was any money left over; I'd be painting some sharrows.

Palouse'ing

Since moving back to Spokane about 3 years ago, I've stayed clear of the Palouse as a riding destination. I think the reason is that my memory of the Palouse is two roads: the Palouse Highway and Valley Chapel Road. The memory of driving around these roads as a teen hadn't inspired me to go and ride them later as an adult. This last summer I spent some time getting reacquainted with the Palouse.

I was pretty much right in my memory of the Palouse Highway. Not ideal -- lots of loud, fast traffic. But it has a nice shoulder and serves as a good arterial to many back roads and dotted lines.

I've not taken a ride beyond 15 miles or so for at least a month, maybe longer. So I decided that Friday would be a longer ride. And I would ride south.

I wake up and it is 23F. If I wait a while -- take my time packing a lunch, have coffee, read the paper, have another coffee -- then it may warm up a bit. It does. By 10AM it is 25F and I have fussed all I can.

I ride a couple miles and begin to rethink my ride. I'm warm, but I just feel so slow and heavy. I'm wishing for gears, but I'm riding fixed today. I'm carrying extra gear because it is so cold: an extra wool shirt and neck gator; my jetboil; a liter of water; an extra hotcup of ginger-water. Plus, I have a lock in my front bag, along with lunch and the other crap that finds its way into my bag. And of course my tool kit. A lot of crud... I am planning on a 5 hour ride in sub-freezing temperatures and I want to be prepared for it. The weight is worth the piece of mind.

As I pass Luna's Bakery, I notice both of my friends are working, so I stop by and said hey. My buddy Joe gives me some input on my route and suggests a couple cool roads. He had driven all these roads during high school with his buddies.

I pedal on a couple more miles to the Palouse Highway. The wind is sharp. I also don't want to listen to the traffic; I need quiet. So I pull on to Ben Burr road instead.

Most of my day rides share the same goal: to find some dirt roads that I've not ridden before. I head up Ben Burr road thinking of this goal. I've been down Ben Burr before. But I remember wanting to check out "Willow Springs Road." It's just a couple miles south. More climbing and Willow Springs leads me to Big Rock Road.

Big Rock Road is a fine dirt road that goes straight up for about a mile. I enjoy the first of 2 long walks as I push my bike up the steep grade. I am rewarded at the top: Big Rock levels out and curves it's way around the side of a mountain; the icy-cold winter views are stunning as I look out across Spokane to the north and the Palouse to the south.

I end up popping out on the Palouse and immediately find another road that I've wondered about: Weger Road. Like any good road, this too starts out with a mile-long walk up a steep hill. The reward on Weger is a long, rolling stroll through the Palouse on frozen dirt roads. The wind is still fiercely cold. Luckily, among the crap in my bag was a pair of sunglasses. Without them I'd be tearing up from the constant cold wind.

I enjoy lunch on Valley Chapel Road, amid high school memories of driving out Valley Chapel to go to "the bridge" and swim.

Lunch is soup: bullion cube with mushrooms, spinach, chopped onions and some dehydrated sun-dried tomatoes. All brought to a boil in an instant in the Jetboil. What a great device the Jetboil is. I also have some caponata; my Sicilian mother-in-law makes this for me. I can't get enough of it. I'll document it sometime because it is the perfect cycling food. Bread, banana, and a hard-boiled egg complete the lunch. Bumble bar for emergency. In this weather, a warm lunch is such a huge treat. I also keep my hotcup full of hot water -- I have a piece of crushed fresh ginger in the hotcup too. This makes for a nice flavor and guards against stomach troubles.

As I finish lunch, it starts to snow. It's coming down lightly and swirling in the wind. By the time I arrive in downtown Spokane, the snow is coming down harder and I'm glad to be getting home. Thanks to the chemical foot warmers and my wool I am never freezing. But I am cold. The ride only turned out to be about 3 hours and about 30 miles, but I found a couple new roads and found a way to enjoy the cold weather. Map of route is on bikely.com.

Tried and Liked - Aught Six

One of the ways I waste a gob of time is reading bikelists online. My favorite is the iBOB list. Google it for more information. Anyway. Every year about this time, people on the list send out the "tried and liked" lists. The title is self-explanatory. Here's my list:
Ride abouts:
Kind of a silly name, but that's what I've been doing a lot of this year. Longish day rides where I don't have a route picked out, just a general destination where I've not been before or in a long time. Things like weather, hunger, flats, sun sets/rises, etc change the course and overall flavor. The general goal is to explore and find new dirt roads -- so these are mostly rural rides.




Bike camping with daughter:
My daughter was 3 years old last summer. We had a few great bike/camping trips at a local campground that's about 13 miles away. We froze on the first one and had a great time when we went with mom on the next one.

Solo S24O (sub-24 hour over-nighter):
Did 3. Loved them. Plan on doing at least one a month for 6-7 months starting in March.





100+ mile day rides:
Did 5 or 6 of these this year. The hardest/longest being 140 taking the "long way" to my father's house up north. I really like this ride and plan on doing the "long way" a few times next year.
That's a picture of my dad there tooling down the "fishing road" on what used to be 395 many years ago. He lives up on the Kettle River. A perfect century (the short way) away.

Blogging:

Just jumped in about a month or so ago. I like it. I decided to just write on what I know, and that's cycling in Spokane, WA.(http://cyclingspokane.blogspot.com/). What's cool is that I was out the other night and I ran into a cyclist who owns a bar downtown and he was telling me about this cool blog he was reading... turned out to be mine!
Fixed:
I got a Rivendell Quickbeam about a year ago, set it up fixed, and I've not rode much else for the last 6 months or so. I'd ridden fixed a bit in the past, but this year I've really enjoyed riding the fixed bike on long day rides. I also find riding single-track to be a much more interesting experience on a fixed gear.
Stuff:

• Bug tent: (http://tinyurl.com/c2mlj) Rain in the Spokane summer is pretty rare. If you know there won't be rain, this thing is a great replacement for a tent where bugs and creepy crawlies roam.
  
• Jet boil: (http://www.jetboil.com/) -- lots of virtual ink spilled on this on the touring list. I have the small one. When I go on a longish ride this time of year -- it's with me. A hot ramen with hot tea this time of year is wonderful on a long day ride. This pic was at lunchtime. It was about 35 degrees out all day and I had a great ride.


• O2 rain jacket: (http://www.rainshield.com/1111_large.html) - Kent has talked this one up a couple times online. He's right. For $35 you can't find a better/lighter jacket that actually-mostly breathes. The Burley may be for sale next year if it continues to go un-used.


• Rack-top front bag with decaluer. (http://www.velo-orange.com/) After touring with Alex and seeing his "pre-release" Ostrich bag in action, I got one. It's the perfect size for a long day ride where you need food and rain/cold weather is threatening. With the decaluer, it's just super easy and usable. It does require either really high trail, or low trail for decent handling. Handling on my mid-trail RB-T with this bag was awful. It's ok on the Quickbeam.
  
  

Music: Wayne Krantz - yowsa. This guy and his players are amazing. I'm on week 4 or so of "Greenwich Mean," and I'm just figuring most of it out now. The musicianship is insane.

Food: Bumblebar - (http://www.bumblebar.com/) another great thing introduced to me by Alex and his touring buddy, Larry. The Bumblebar is made in my hometown and is a great tasting alternative to the awful "power"type sawdust bars out there.

Car'ing your bike

I really hate hauling my bike on my car. For so many reasons. Probably the biggest reason is that I just think "driving to ride" -- in most cases -- is just a silly thing. In most cases there's great riding out your back door if you're willing to explore. Recreational riding that requires driving to the "riding destination" is an easy fix. Especially, *especially* in Spokane, where you would be hard-pressed to find yourself more than 20 riding-minutes from any kind of riding you want: rolling hills, single track, trails, country roads, logging roads, etc etc. Riding through town, going somewhere closer, leaving the car parked... these are all good things.
Anyway, I go to the Seattle area about once a month for my job. Typically, I fly in and my buddy Alex hooks me up with a bike. But sometimes I drive with family and haul a bike on the car.

Usually, it pours down rain and the speed of the car drives the water into every deepest nook and cranny of every bearing race. So, this time it was sort of a nice change to see the bike turn into a giant ice sculpture.

In other news. William, who runs the site at 63.xc asked me to write up an account of my Fuji. You can see the write up here.

Ice

Yowsa. So, we had about 4 inches of snowfall a couple days ago. Then it got to about 40F that night. Everything kind of half melted into a mess of sno-cone-like slush. Then, it froze. I don't think it's gotten above 30F in the last couple days.

Here's what the street in front of my house looks like:

It's not obvious from the picture what's going on here. The ice is solid for sure. It's not a clean, smooth sheet. It's rutty and bumpy. At the moment it's snowing lightly, so there's a film of snow over the top of that.

This makes for really interesting riding. We took two rides today: first, we took Maddie to school. Liza did great. She was on the Fuji and hauled Maddie. No issues. We took it nice and slow. Then, I rode to the doctor's office this afternoon. I tried going a bit faster, maybe 10 mph? I went down in a flash. I guess my front wheel just slipped out from under me. It was sudden: one second I'm just riding along (JRA), the next second my bike, my frozen-solid water bottle, and I are having a little skate down the road -- sliding silently and effortlessly.

Riding on this stuff -- even with studs and on a fixed gear -- really takes equal parts of luck and skill to get around on. I took a spill, I messed up my pants and my knee a little; no harm to the bike. But really, given the overall distance I rode today (probably about 6 miles), and the fact that I'm pretty new at this, I'm pretty pleased with my accident to miles ratio.

I'll be keeping it much slower until this ice melts away. 5 mph tops.

Snow

Yay. It finally snowed with some authority today. Looks to be sticking too. The last word I heard on weather was that it was now going to get very cold. Right now it's just over freezing, so we're getting a bit slushy. It should get down to about 25F tonight, so that will freeze everything up nicely for Monday morning. I'm happy that I ride a bike on days like tomorrow will be... but even happier that I work from home.


Here in the Speare/Mattana household we'll be running fixed gear bikes with studded tires this winter.

The picture above there is Liza getting her snow legs worked in. That miserable Fuji does well in the snow, even though it feels like it's just sucking away your energy at twice the rate of any other bike we own. What a dog.

I also hit the trails on the bluff after the snow had piled up for an hour or so. I was not the first cyclist to hit the trail with snow this year, as I followed some wide mountain bike tracks for a good portion of my ride.

We're running the Nokian Hakkapeliitta W106 studded tires on both the Quickbeam and the Fuji. The tread and stud pattern is optimized for city riding, with a row of carbide studs essentially down the middle of the tire. So, on trails, I wouldn't mind a few studs sticking out of the side of the tire to grip the side of the hill, but overall, these tires are great and I wouldn't want the extra studs on the road where I do the majority of my riding. Tires with carbide studs cost about twice as much as those with mild/normal steel studs. The carbide wears much longer. My neighbor, Dennis, is a year-round commuter, who has about a 20 mile round trip commute. Last year, he left his Nokian's on his bike for about 4 months, so these tires rode on a lot of non-snowy/icy pavement. Last time we chatted about these tires, he said he couldn't even tell the wear on them.

It's going to be a great winter.

High Drive Trails

I don't know what folks call the trails that have emerged off the west side of the High Drive bluff. There is a name; I've heard it, but I can't recall it.

Growing up on 16th and Adams ST--which was pretty close--we simply referred to this area as "the bluff." About twice a year, I would pack up lunch and fishing poles and take some friend down the bluff.

We'd go down at about 21st Ave. There were no trails, but there was an old access road, that you can still see today. The best part was jumping down the side of the bluff where the long sandy hills emptied into the river below. It was an all day journey.

Since moving back to Spokane about 3 years ago, I was thrilled to see that someone has created a wonderful network of trails. I've actually met a couple guys that have confessed to much of the work. They do it primarily by kicking out trails with their boots; since it is a county-owned park, they don't want to get "caught" with tools. In general, they make good decisions on where to put trails, though I do occasionally see posted signs from other trail users asking the trail-builders to stop making new trails. Those posting the signs, cite concerns about erosion.

There is a network of trails directly south of the Bernard/Highdrive area, then there are 3 tiers of trails that run sort of north/south along the High Drive side. I've spent a bit of time in the network section, but the majority of my rides are on the long flat tiered trails that travel parallel to Latah (Hangman) Creek below.
I enter the trail now at the top of Bernard and Highdrive. If I'm just out for a quick lunch ride, I'll take the trail down and I'll pop up on 29TH AVE. That short loop, from my house, takes about 20 minutes. If I have more time, I'll go all the way down to Polly Judkin's Park on 14th. That's about a 40 minute ride.

The trail is wonderful. Except for weekends, it's virtually empty. I rarely see anyone on the trail on my lunch time rides. It's clean. It's got amazing views of Vinegar Flats and the Latah valley below. It's kind of technical, in that you have a lot of different surfaces to handle and some tight weaving with long drop-offs that can be a bit distracting. I typically ride it on my fixed gear, which makes for a much more interesting ride than the mountain bike that I used to ride. The trail network is a wonderful thing to have a mile from my home. I am grateful.