Commuting again

I can't believe it's been a month since I commuted for real, but thems the facts. I think the longest ride I've been on in the last month was a 12 mile trail ride.

The combination of snow and routing has kept my daily commute restricted to the 5 or so mile-roundtrip between our house and the bus stop. Luckily, there's about 400 feet of climbing on the way home, so I've not completely atrophied, but I'm feeling pretty turdy.

My winter strategy in routing a way home from Cheney is to find the right balance between low-traffic roads and distance. If the Fish Lake Trail was plowed, I'd be on it, but it's under about 18" of snow at the moment, and even with a fat bike, it would be a sucky slog.

That would be the FLT down there. If I was super awesome, I'd x-country ski my way home.

Since the bus route from Cheney to Spokane is mostly on I-90, there's no reasonable route that allows the bus-bailout option. I guess a guy could take some back roads into Medical Lake then board from there, but that's a long way out of the way if you don't want to bail.

So my route favors wide, plowed, slow/low-traffic gravel roads. I do spend a bit of time on Washington Road and Gardner Road, which can have a bit of traffic, but since I'm able to leave Cheney at about 11 AM on Tuesdays and Thursdays, there's not much traffic on these roads.

The Rawland is rocking it. Conditions today were packed snow with sections of non-packed, shifty snow. The fat knob tires on the Rawland were just perfect. Although there are ice patches mixed with snow, studs really don't provide enough benefit to warrant their sloggy weighty turdiness for this kind of riding. I figure my  winter route, which  plan on taking every Tues/Thurs this quarter, is about 25 miles. I'll track it on Thursday.

Going with platform pedals on the Rawland. I'm very happy with this set up. These are your basic Gortex lined leather  boots. All in all: a fantastic set up. No cold toes and I can wear these boots in my daily life. 

The effect that snow has on the audibility of car traffic is real. What we hear when we hear cars behind us are mostly the tires on the roadway. When the road is covered with snow, cars are mostly silent. So, I don't even listen to podcasts this time of year as I ride. And that is a wonderful thing that I need to remember all year round: having time to collect, sort, categorize, and formulate thoughts is one of the great gifts that a commute like this gives out for free.

I don't clean off my bike when I'm done with this kind of riding. It sits in the garage, which is about 45 F for Tiger the Killer Cat. So all this crud melts off. The extent of my maintenance is to check the the chain length once a month or so and to put some Boeshield on it when it starts to squeak or turn orange. 

Madde. Drinking hot chocolate under the Canon Hill Park bridge. 

Much snow

Riding down to the bus stop this morning was more like sledding than biking. I should've taken a picture: super fluffy new tall snow -- about 5 inches.

The Rawland, once again, is proving to be a solid snow bike.

Under the freeway, there was a huge line of people waiting to take the bus (I heard later over the bus driver's radio that it was 350 people). I was able to ride down to the stop in between downtown and the park-n-ride and get a standing-room only spot.

The bus ride, which normally takes about 20 minutes, took us an hour.

It looks like rain slushy crappy nasty tomorrow. It would be nice to have full fenders on this bike for that.

Justin's Rawland rSogn

Nice bike.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I sniped this picture from the Facebook page.

rSogn prototype

Pictures sniped from Rawland blog.

Whoa baby.

If I didn't have my Elephant, which was based on Alex's Gifford, which in turn, influenced nearly every identifiable feature of the rSogn, then I'd be all over this. In fact, the bike wanker hoarder in me really has a hard time letting this guy go.

The challenge: find a more versatile production frame set for $600.  This is a special bike: ability to fit super fat (2.1+) rubber, optimized for front loads, standard diameter 858 tubing, road-bike/quick-handling geometry, and sweet finish details (all the right braze-ons in all the right places, a sweet fork crown, nice powder coat). A perfect commuter, rough stuff, long-distance, and/or randoneur bike.

All this gushing is free btw. I got no dog in this fight, though full disclosure: I did help Sean (Rawland owner) write a bit of copy for the forthcoming press release on this bike. And he did give me store credit for that. So strictly speaking, I guess I have a small dog in the ring. But my enthusiasm here is genuine.

A bunch more nice photos can be found on the Rawland blog.

Brifturd

I put brifters on the Rawland.
I tried a brifter on my CX bike this year for the first time. I dig it. Who says you never need to shift when you are standing? (Well, I know who says that, but what the hey?) Once you can shift while you are standing, you do it all the time. Especially accelerating and when trail riding tricky stuff. It's flipping rad.

When I say "I" put shifters on my Rawland, I mean that in the "royal I" way. More specifically, I watched Glen put brifters on my Rawland. The guy is a Jedi Knight when it comes to indexing.

It's a set of Sora brifters shifting a SRAM chain on Sugino rings with a 105 front and an LX rear over a SRAM 8 speed cassette.

I learned the following:
- Derailleurs have directions. And they matter. Once the shifting wasn't perfect (but it was suitable, by my low standards), Glen read the directions for the front derailleur to make it perfect.
- Housing shouldn't bend too much.
- Housing shouldn't arc too much.
- Cables and housing matter. The name of the indexing game is "reduce friction." Cheap-ass cables and housing can work, but they're not going to make things better.

So, indexing 3x8 works great.

I took a ride today with the new set up. The snow is deep and sort of lame so I had to get in a good washout-turn-wreck, my second in 3 days -- but the shifting was great. I really liek the funny little buttons on the "thumb" side of the levers to drop the chain down. It's dorky looking, but it's easier with gloves and without thinking to shift down than it is with the kind of brifter where there's a second lever tucked under the main lever.

The braking was just ok. The Sora brifters have a different geometry than the normal cheap-o Shimano aero levers. I don't know how they're different, but they were intended to pull calipers, so I'm guessing it's different enough than a generic aero lever that was designed to pull canti's or calipers. Maybe not, but in any case, it feels different and I will need to do some fussing to get the rear wheel more dialed. The front is ok, so I know it's possible.

We put new "organic" pads on the BB-7 too. We'll see how they fare. The other ones that they replaced had a surprising amount of pad left. But once we tore them all apart, we opted to put the new fancies in.

The bummer is the shape of the shifters. They're so huge and weird and clumpy and wide. I spend 94% of my time riding the hoods, so hood shape matters and I'm not sure I can live with these. I'll need to do some longer rides to verify this, or I may need to scootch them down a bit on the bars, but there are adjustments to be made.

Rawland love

Last September or so I put some straight up drop bars (46 cm Noodles) on the Rawland for Alex.  He needed a bike to borrow for a quick weekend CDA NF trip. Before that, I had put flat-riser bars on the Rawland. I didn't like that at all. And before that, I had the Midge bars on it. I liked that pretty good. In fact, I thought that the Midge was a perfect bar for the Rawland, given the crazy-ass huge long head tube and all.

This trail is about 12 minutes of riding from my house.
High Drive trails of course.

By the time I had set it up with Noodles for Alex, I was sort of thinking of trading the Rawland in for a proper, front-shocked cross-country mountain bike (I like the Jamis Dragonfly). But the Noodles made the Rawland complete. I run Noodles on most of my other bikes (747, Elephant, tandem, RB-T cx), so I'm really comfortable riding trails, road, dirt, snow, whatever with these bars.

This is sort of a hard picture to understand. Basically, it shows how hard core I am: I'm stopped by the side of a big drop off cliff thing. One mis-step from certain death. For you, during this holiday season, I take these risks.

So, the Rawland, with Noodles, becomes this weirdo trail tuff guy rough stuff road-ish bike that just works for me in a really easy way. I used to think the big honking OS tubing on the Rawland was a liability, but now I dig it. I like knowing I can put 2.3" knobbies on there and sort of pick a line or not. All of my other bikes require attention and skill to pick through the hard stuff. On the Rawland, with the fat tubing and the stop-fasting disc brakes -- I can really charge through dirt/rock/gunk/snow and not worry so much about finessing my way through it.

This time of year, where one ride may include slushy roads, unbroken snowy trails, rutted snowy dirt roads, and patches of icy snowy pavement, I really love having the Rawland. I love the steep, road-y feeling of the front end (though it's quick to washout on slippery snowy climbs if I'm not on the money with weight and speed), and the disc brakes, which generally, I feel are over rated.

But for snowy wet icy build up on the rims, disc brakes are hard to beat.

So, in a nutshell, during this holiday season I'm thankful for all my bikes. But lately, I've been really thankful to have the Rawland to play on while the snow and slush comes and goes and lingers and surprises me.

First week of a snowy riding

The last week has been a great intro to snow riding. We've had super cold single digits to provide the ice-like experience and we've had good quantities of snow to provide a good range of road surface.

In terms of surface, it's full-on winter mode now. On my commute to the office today, I rode over ice, freshly scraped streets, accumulated/trodden-upon roads, and even some deep uncut snow. I also have a pedestrian over pass that is salted on the ends and provides a nice steep slippery climb and a sleddish descent.

I have three winter bikes going this year: a single speed mountain bike with 1.75" studs (the MB-2), a CX bike with 700x38 studs (the RB-T), and the Rawland with 2.3" fatties.

I like the MB-2 because it's got lights, racks, and fenders, which makes it a nice daily driver/grocery getter/bar bike. I can muscle it through most moderate snow. But once the snow piles up too deep I have a hard time floating the front wheel over the sandy stuff.


The CX bike with knobbies is just for ice. On our BF ride last week we had a couple guys show up with narrow-knobbied 700c bikes and they held up good. Both guys are in good shape aerobically, which I think is the primary reason they held up, but they also had good handling skills, and the snow was relatively fresh, which is easier to cut through with narrower tires.

Once the snow piles up and there are multiple layers which have been driven over, the surface can act weird and grab your front tire. You've really got to finesse the front end/steering in these conditions and narrower tires, I think, increase the finesse factor. Which, of course, makes you a better rider.

The Rawland is great. I think if I had to have just one bike this winter, I would go with the Rawland with the fat knobbies. I really fought the soft spots on the way home last night when I was riding the MB-2. The front tire just kept getting away from me.

Since my commute home last night, it's snowed more and the Rawland just eats it up. As long as you hit deep stuff with decent speed and your weight back, you can power through just about anything on the Rawland. I really enjoyed the ride to work this morning.


I would love to try a Pugsley for a week or two for this kind of commuting. I wonder how long I can put off buying a Pugsley? Especially now that Surly has a built Pugsley that retails for about $1550. And Salsa has the Mukluk, which I can't find a retail price for. But as I've noted before, the more the better -- we want a rich used market for these ultra-fat-tired bikes.

If I could find a way to use the Pugsley in non-snow, I might swing the justification. Maybe if I ratcheted up the Nat'l Forest camping a bit to go more trail than road? What's it like to ride 40+ miles a day on a Pugsley? How does it like moderate loads? It probably likes loading over the back wheel. How about as mountain bike? I think my SOS Sunday ride would not be ideal for a Pugsley. How about a generator hub? Is it possible to swap out the axle on a generator hub and add spacers so it can span the 135 mm OLD of the Pugsley fork?

Velocity P35: Bling it on

I've been running Velocity Blunts on my Rawland for just over 2 years now. Last summer, I had a good spill that resulted in a potato-chipification of the front wheel. We banged it out on the trail and then I trued it up a bit when I got home. So I wasn't too surprised to see some of spoke holes bulging on the front rim a few months ago.

This is a two-year-old, well-abused Blunt rim. The eyelet is bulging, which is a difficult failure to capture on camera.

What did surprise me is that I found a bunch of cracked eyelets on the rear Blunt rim. That sucks. So, I'm going to go ahead and go on record and say I'm not a Velocity Blunt fan.

One of many cracked eyelets on the rear, and only moderately-abused Blunt rims. Easy to capture on camera.

The P35 is a Velocity rim that was designed by Kirk Pacenti. I'm pretty much becoming a company man as far as Pacenti goes. He designed the initial Rawland Sogn. And he designed and sells the Quasi-, Pari-, and Neo- moto tires. My favorite tires for the Rawland is the Quasi-moto.
So, as I pondered my next set of 650b disc-compatible rims, it only made sense that I go after the Pacenti-designed Velocity rims. And they come in red, yo. Check that shite out!


For those who are curious. The P35 rim is much wider than the Blunt. Weird thing is, is that one Quasi-moto slapped right on the rim while the other one required a pinched flat and a ripped thumb to mount.

The P35, like nearly all Velocity rims were easy to build up round and stiff. I used double-butted DT Champion spokes. I guess we'll check back in a couple years and see how they hold up.

rSogn

Alex beat me to it on posting about the new rSogn. This bike is shaping up to be a great all rounder, or as Alex says, a "rough stuff" bike. It's very similar to the Elephant I just got, which was based on Alex's Gifford.

Assuming the bike materializes according to plan, it hits all the stuff I care about in a perfect commuter/trail bike: steepish angles/low-mid trail, fits Hetres and Quasi-motos, standard gauge 969 tubing, 1 1/8th" steerer, canti brakes.

If you have ever been on the fence with trying a low-trail bike, I can't imagine a better opportunity than this Rawland frameset at $500 (for pre-order by mid-Oct).

The only gap is that they're not making a small size. If Liza liked low trail bikes I'd be rallying to get four other buyers - Sean, the Rawland owner, says he'll do a run of Small sizes if 5 people pre-order. I would be in on that if we could get a fork with less rake -- to land the trail in the 60's for Liza.


By the way. If you are in Spokane and you like the looks of Liza's Fuji, it's on the block. We'll start at $400. It's got SRAM 7 speed IG hub, dyno front with E6. Barely used Nifty Swifty Rivendell tires. Fancy Terry saddle. Rear rack and front bag not included. And the crappy front long-reach front brake has been replaced by a v-brake. (Rear hub has built in drum brake).

We're selling Liza's Fuji and my RB-T frameset to fund a new Liza bike. The ideal score would be a 52 cm 1993 Bridgestone XO-2 or XO-3 frameset. Got one?

Pre-CDA shake down

2 day CDA forest bike trip starts tonight. This bike is so wonderful. With fatty Hetres or with knobbie Quasi-motos, it's a pleasure to ride.

The funny yellow turds hanging off the rack are a rain jacket and a synth down vest. In the bag goes food and a water filter. A tool set and an emergency bivvy live in the rear bag.

We'll be car camping, then riding all day, then back to fancy-pants camp with tents, an easy-up, two stoves, beer, ice.

Alex will be on my Rawland. His buddy Andre will be on Pat's new mountain bike, and Pat will be on his Karate Monkey, since the bottom bracket on his Elephant blew up yesterday.

Speaking of Rawland -- check out the discussion on the Rawland blog. Next version of the Sogn is going to use OS 747 and 858 tubing. This will be the go-to recommendation bike, but they're only doing a small run. I'm trying to talk Liza into the small (747) as her do-all bike and a replacement for her Rock. But that's a huge sell.

Badger, again

Patrick and I took a leisurely ride to Badger Lake yesterday. I had this overnighter on my calendar for a couple months, so I was sort of conflicted when Jeff announced a one-off FBC ride for tomorrow. According to Liza (who represented the Speare-Mattana family), Jeff broke all records with last night's ride, so I don't feel so bad for missing it, but it would've been nice to see friends.

In any case, we had a nice time at the lake. Badger is just perfect right now. Swimming temperature-wise: it's super refreshing at the moment. I may make a run out there next Friday just to take a swim for a couple hours, then ride back. If I go, I'm bringing an air mattress and some goggles.

I've done this ride probably 6 or 7 times, but I've never done it on a bike with fat nobbies. The route is mostly rail trail and then the best part is on an abandoned road. These tires (quasi-motos) made it a very comfy and easy ride. The Rawland, set up with fattish nobbies is well-suited for this kind of overnighter.

As promised, the work has begun on the Fishlake Trail. What has been wide single track in the past, is not wide double track and in the initial stages of prep. This compare this picture with this one:


The were taken at the same spot.

John Dunlop's wet dream

All winter long I rode my Rawland with big fat nobbies. That's fun and it's useful for deep snow, but those tires are killers on the pavement. Cornering sucks and you just have to work too hard to get up to speed.

Today, I rode to work on the Rawland shod in my beloved Grand Bois Hetres. These tires are the best. The most comfortable, smoothest, fastest, cushiest, most wonderful tires I've ever been on. I went on and on about them when I got them last summer. But after not being on them for a long time and riding studs, nobbies, Pasalas, and even the Cerfs over the last 5 or so months-- riding these Hetres is just such a treat.

These are what pneumatic tires are supposed to feel like.

New to me rail trail

Since I had my honkin fat knobbies on my Rawland in preparation for snow, I figured it would be fun to go find some dirt and trails today. I rarely find new stuff, so today was a banner day. This rail trail is probably well-known to most mountain biker types, but it's new to me.


View Larger Map

It's a nice loop. You enter on the Riverside State Park part, go up to the grade using the never-ending-infinite-loop that is "Trail 25." Just stay on the grade. There are no fences, no blocked anything.

You pop out at Euclid and Old Trail Road. Which was a surprise to me. Here's a photo at that intersection:



Last February, I found my self at the same spot and took the same picture.

My full coroplast fender didn't last long on the front wheel. I sheered it off a few days ago messing around on the Highdrive trails. These big tires throw a lot of gunk. My coat and pants took a lot of mud/water/dirt today. So, I went back to my old standby coroplast front fender design:



Not as great of coverage, but it keeps the majority of gunk off of me, if not my cranks/bb area.

Snow Bike

For winter I use two bikes: a snow bike and an ice bike. Snow bike is all about fat knobbie tires.

I snowed the Rawland last night.

I took off the super sweet rollin' Hetres and put on the knarly neo-motos.

I hooked up a front nerd light for the generator hub.

And I carved up some coroplast fenders. Specifically, I hacked Mary Verner for the rear wheel and chopped Richard Rush for the front wheel. I am grateful for both of these local public servants, and I saved their signs specifically for fenders.

When it comes to coroplasting, a Kent I am not. But that's the beauty of coroplast; even an impatient hack like me can make a set of fenders with enough zip ties.

Liza hates these fenders. My buddy Joe is abhored by the idea of putting coroplast on this bike. I can understand that. Coroplast fenders sort of incite an instant visceral reaction: yes or no. I think Liza feels the same way about coroplast fenders as I feel when I meet someone wearing a beret. Big no. It's just one of those things.

Really, I'm not crazy about coroplast fenders either. But I'm less crazy about the disc-compatible full fenders I've seen, they are just too rattley. John, at REI, made a good hack on his disc'd townie that is worth looking into:

John's hack

I think next year my goal will be to put 58 mm Honjos on the Rawland. I think I could hook them up so they'd work well -- even around the discs -- by using John's hack in the front and positioning the rear stays very low in the back. The Rawland has the sweet under-the-seat-stay hole for the fender too, the fender will easily clear the top of the mondo motos.

I just set up my first set of Honjos on my 747, and learned two important truths: 1) they are just not that hard to set up. I was dreading it, but it wasn't so bad. However, the genius-artist that made my 747 frame also assumed it would have fenders, so that made it easier. 2) Honjos have now joined the premier level of "best of class" bike component. Why bother with any other fender when Honjos exist? They are lighter, provide better coverage, are way stiffer, and just rule harder than any other plastic turd full-fender. Yes they are expensive, but they're lifers.

I'm tempted to just go and get the mondo Honjos for the Rawland this year -- but it's been a decedent year on bikes. I gotta take it easy. The Honjos will run at least $60. I think I'm into the coroplast fenders for about $1 worth of zip ties.

Grand Bois Hetre

I ordered some Grand Bois Hetre tires from Bicycle Quarterly just over a month ago. When I ordered, Jan had the black ones, but was out of the red-treaded version. I figured for $60 a pop, I would hold out for the bling.

Damn these are nice tires. These are hands-down-no-question the best tires I have ever ridden. Cushy poofy fast grippy. I'd do a commercial. These tires really complete the Rawland as the go-anywhere super John-bike.

The vast majority of cyclists I know judge the quality or greatness of a tire by its ability to withstand punctures. The other ones still cling to the myth that rock hard, high-pressure tires are "faster." It's a damn cryin shame, because both camps (and there's plenty of overlap here) are really missing out on riding great tires that offer both cush and speed.

But no puncture protection.

For the flat-tire-fearers: practice fixing a flat until you can do it (including the patch, which takes 5 minutes to dry) in under 10 minutes. That solves that issue. Riding awful tires like Armadillos misses the whole point of pneumatic tires. (For the 1/2 of 1% of you that ride daily through goat-heads, please don't flame me: I get it, you need flat protection.)

For the "must have hard tire" believers: read some of the work Jan has done on the "hard tires are fast" myth in BQ. And/or ride some Grand Bois Cerfs or some Panaracer Pasalas or some Avocet FastGrips. I'm a believer.

Anyway, back to the glowing review. These tires are great on the road. At 60 psi and 42mm wide, they float over the big cracks and crevices that crisscross our lovely Spokane "streets." They are grippy in their fast descent cornering, and they are good enough for the majority of trail riding I'll be doing.

I went on the White Road trail this morning, up the one side, then over White to try out the rocky-ledgy section. As slicks, they skid quickly on fast rear braking, but that's expected. They're cushiness (still at 60 psi), provides a wide enough contact patch to grind up hard pack and to soak up the rocky baby heady stuff.

I still want some mid-40mm semi-knobbies -- and I have the giant neomotos for snow, but otherwise, these tires will be daily drivers.

Rolling With the Neomotos

I had some wheel woes yesterday afternoon. I was just about to run late for a meeting when I decided to take the trails downtown. So I bombed down the rocky trails way more bomby-er than I have on other bikes. I bashed the rear wheel on a rock and blew the tube: snake bite. by the time I replaced the tube Iwas late to the meeting.

Note: I was running the Fatty Rumpkins. Not the Neomoto's I have pictured here.

On the way home from the meeting, my wheels were making that funny ping sound. I had impacted the rim hard enough to loosen some spokes. I tightened up a few spokes on the road, then trued and tensioned the wheel when I got home. The sucky thing is that I already dented my fancy new Blunt Rim. That sucks!

I decided to put the Neomotos on for a few days. (Until Mr. Blaine's Midnight Century -- where I'll be running the Fatty Rumpkins again).

Wow. What a difference. This bike is crazy with these tires. I was able to squeeze in an hour of trail bombing before work this morning. Then at lunch, I took the trails downtown and bombed again. These tires are just great. Super fun. I especially appreciated them on a section of rail-rock by an active train line. This kind of stuff usually slows me down as I pick through it on narrower tires. Today I just kept at speed.

The tires slow down the handling a bit, but not as much as I expected. That said, I was able to work my way through the rooty-rocky semi technical stuff pretty well. And small rooty-rocky drops were just easy. I usually wince and grit my teeth on those small drops when I'm on my other bikes. The confidence I had in this bike felt a lot like it does when I'm on a mountain bike: Just ride through it and enjoy it.

That said, they are a bit turdy and road riding with them is a bit of a chore. My goal with this bike is to ride to new dirt locations. So a typical ride may be 2 hours of road riding and 2 hours of dirt riding. I don't think I want to ride these Neomotos for 2 hours on the road, unless I'm in for like 4 hours of dirt riding. So they'll work well for some overnighters.

I want about a 42 mm (or so) tire with knobbies and soft rubber. What I want is a 584-42 sized Maxxis Locust CX tires. I love these tires (in 522-35) on my RB-T. The grippy knobbies are just ideal for the sandy/loose dirt trails we have here. And they're good enough on the road.

Hey Maxxis people, if you're reading this, I'd like them in 622-32 as well. The 35mm fits on the RB-T but there's not much room for wobble between the rear chainstays. Thanks.

By the way. The Rawland folks read my blog and responded to the weakish paint application on the forks thusly:

Your comment on the paint job was expected. Just so you know we are addressing this issue with Maxway. We are more than willing to replace the frame and fork if so desired.