More pittin' out and tandem cockpit setup v4

The turn into this hill is a hard transition. A bit off-camber with loose gravel. She's really finessing the brakes there.

This is the turn into the descent. Check out the concentration. Rad. It's bad enough I'm  all  weird and excited about her riding, but how neat am I for sitting there with a camera and snapping shots while she does this? Pretty neat. That's what. But I can't help myself. It so satisfying.

So... she told me that she has a right to take shots of me while I spin around the pit.
Fair enough.

This is right after I landed a sweet jump.  She totally missed it. I probably got like 10 feet of air.

I'm actually riding backwards here after manualing my front wheel. She missed that too.

I took the Albatross bars off the tandem. They were too wide, too tall,  and too wrap-aroundy.

I've loved the Space Bars on my MB-2, SH-80,  River bike, mini, fishing bike, RB1, and probably others... So I figure they were worth a try on the tandem. This the fourth set of bars I've tried. It came with regular flat bars. Then I put drops on it. Then the albi's. My shoulders always hurt. I didn't have a normal stem that was long enough -- IME, you gotta push these bars out and put them just below the saddle. For laughs I put the Softride on there. 

I'm pleasantly surprised by how nice this Softride feels for this application. Granted, I've only taken a spin around the neighborhood, but the bit of cush combined with my Space Bar love might just have finally been the sweet spot combination. I'm going to Space Bar the stoker too.

Albi's on the tandem

I'm thinking through my list of winter fussing projects at the moment.

And I'm pondering putting Albatross bars on the tandem -- for el capitan (me).

Liza really wants to emphasize chilled out rides and my back always hurts after man-handling that thing around, even for just a few miles. The Albi's may be just the ticket.

It's a super pain swapping out the bars on that tandem. If I do the swap, I think I'll put couplers on the cables and use a faux-threadless setup so I can use a stem with a removable face plate.

'Course putting Albi's on the tandem will require swapping the B17 from the tandem with the B67 that's on the cycle truck. Not sure how I feel about that.

The goal is to do at least one 2-night "tour" on the tandem next year, but hopefully a 3-nighter or a couple 2-nighters will happen.

Just thinking out loud here.

Idle tandem

A guy named Mark emailed me last week and asked me some questions about my tandem. In my response, I sent him a link to this post from last year. One thing that's interesting about a blog is looking at how you thought exactly one year ago, two years ago, etc. I found it interesting to go through the list of stuff that I wanted to change on the tandem after Liza and I took our first overnighter on it.

I actually accomplished two of the items on the list:

• I laced up a new rear wheel. Dare I say "bomb proof?" It's a 40-hole, 7 speed ebay special hub laced to a mongo Salsa Gordo. The last Salsa rim I had was a mongo pain to build up, but this one was easy. I went with 7 speed since the NOS Shimano tandem hub was only $40! And my old Burley is 135 OLD and I didn't see a need to get a newer 145 and spread it out. Whatever. Let's be clear though -- show of hands for those who would blame the Salsa rim before the hack wheel builder?
• Bought a Thudbuster for Liza. Wow. If you are on the fence with a Thudbuster and if you're not sure if it really will make a difference for your stoker, get off the fence. It's an easy $160 (!!) to spend for a seat post to keep the stoker happy. Especially if the stoker is your S.O.

As for the rest of the list. I still need to put a mountain crankset on there, fuss with my bars, and figure out a kickstand solution.

The tandem bummer is that we just don't get out on it enough. We had a plan to do a two-day overnighter this weekend, but Liza's mom (aka: Nonna, aka: "the sitter") got sick. So we down-graded the plan to a lunch-destination ride, which got utterly rained out. Erg.

So instead of riding it, I took it down off the hook, stared at it for a while, took a few photos, and wrote this. All in all, not nearly as satisfying as taking off with Liza for the weekend.

Here's proof of the rain we've had:

I really need to put a proper roof on the tree house.

Siphoning is easy with 10 feet of drop. And a mouthful of pollen'y rain water beats unleaded any day of the week.

Pump trick

I've seen pumps carried on the seatstay before. It's a great spot for a pump if you can find a way to keep it in there. Unlike the top-tube location, with the pump at the seat stay, you can shoulder your bike without fussing. And you don't need extra space between the seat tube and rear wheel that is required for the behind-the-seat-tube-mounting.

When I've tried to cram a pump along the seatstay, it just doesn't fit right. Glen's solution is nifty. In addition to a little strap up top, the devil's in the detail:




Nice.

We were on the Palouse yesterday and it was super windy. But it was great, because Liza and I took our first ride of the year on the tandem. All up, we ended up riding around 20 miles. We both had stiff necks and shoulders last night, so we need to spend some time getting the fit dialed in.


Justin got a flat. Which provided a nice opportunity to sit around and chat.

Tandeming bliss

A few people have asked me offline about how the tandem riding was going. I guess I sort of went silent after the first post on it. The fact is, our first ride was just ok and we didn't prioritize giving it another shot. Too much other stuff going on.

Liza's mom offered to watch Maddie last night so we decided to try a tandem overnighter to one of my favorite destinations: Badger Lake. This is about 35 miles away with a mix of road, trail, dirt road, and rocky "summer" roads.  

The trip was an unqualified success. We had a great time and we're trying to figure out what's next, and how to include Maddie. A friend of mine (owner of Silver Bike Tours) has offered to let us borrow his 3-person Bike Friday. It may be time to take him up on that offer. We're also thinking about borrowing a trail-a-bike-tag-along number and hooking it to the tandem. 

It would be fun to do some short overnighters with Maddie on the Centennial Trail or the Trail of the Coeur d' Alenes.

The Burley tandem is just the bomb. It's so suited to this trip. It's got big fat 26" tires on it so it was really good on the dirt and deepish sections of gravel. The drum brake is essential for the steep dirt descents. Overall, the bike just felt solid and capable. We gave the bike a good beating on the trip, so we learned a lot about the bike. 

Of course there are some changes I need to make:

• Thudbuster post for Liza. She also needs to find some padded shorts she likes. The stoker gets banged up a bit bouncing around back there. We're also going to try swapping out her Terry Liberator back to the sprung Brooks Conquest.
• New rear wheel -- I don't like the idea of running a freewheel with all that weight; I want a cassette, with the drum brake (which will require spreading the rear frame to 145). 
  
• I need to mess with the bars/height/etc. Running my standard set up doesn't work so well. I had some wrist, arm, shoulder pain that I never ever get. I think I'll wear padded gloves too. It's a bit of a workout to hold a tandem in line for many miles, especially over dirt and soft ground.
• Mountain triple crank. It's running a 53/42/28. I'm going to put on 48/36/24. Then when we upgrade the rear wheel we'll put an 8-speed cassette on there. Probably 12-32.
• Spare stuff to bring along on rides. In addition to the standard tool kit, we need some spare M5 and M6 bolts, a folding 26" tire. I want to swap the 14mm chain ring bolts with 8 mm hex's. Those are the biggies. 
• It would be nice to find a kickstand that works with this version of the Burley. The internal cable routing makes it hard. My double Pletscher doesn't fit. I wonder if a rear wheel stand would work?

We got our essential communication worked out. Basically, there's "bump" -- which usually means stop pedaling and ride light. Unless I want it to mean "pedal through and brace yourself." Liza's not figured out how to read my mind on that one yet. "Coast" means stop pedaling. That's about it. Really. 

Then there's the shifting discussions:

"Why are you shifting to the big ring?"

"Cause I don't want to cross chain"

"It's not cross chained, you're in the middle ring"

"But it will be cross chained -- strictly speaking, if I go to the small cog from the middle ring"

"That's not cross chained." 

"It is to me. It bugs me."

"But it's too hard, you need to shift down"

{down-shift rear derailleur}

"Now you're cross chained."

"(grumble)"

It was fun to rally up hills. Especially the rollers, where if you dump the chain to the highest gear on the descent you get the next climb for free. Momentum really means something on a tandem that it doesn't on a single.

Our packing looks like a lot. We had two panniers and two buckets for the overnighter. Each pannier held a pad and a sleeping bag. Each bucket: clothes and food. Our two-person tent laid over the buckets in the back. Tool kit under Liza. And she had a little bag for sunflower seeds, camera, and binoculars.

Mainly, Liza pedaled hard and took in the scenery it worked great. We had great discussions and long happy bits of silence.

A different tandem

After two seasons of riding, Maddie grew tired of her tandem. So we sold it a few months ago. I regretted it (as always) when we sold it. But it's one thing to stash a bike in the basement or sort of work around it in the garage, but a giant tandem that is not being ridden is really hard to justify in our space. So out it went.



The tandem in the picture is one that I got a pretty good deal on it a few years ago. It's a Burley Rock n Roll. A solid, 26"-wheeled machine. I made a few changes to its budget-mountain bike setup: I put drop bars on it, made the drum brake into a drag brake by putting a thumb-shifter-actuator on the bars. I also put some lights, racks, and decent saddles on it: a B-17 for me and the sprung version of the B-17 (champion?) for Liza. 

The plan now is that Liza and I will give this a go.

Tomorrow is our inaugural ride. I have the day off from work, Maddie will be at school, and we have some Paris-Roubaix fliers to distribute around town. I just hope it's not pissing down rain the entire day.



I'm really excited to try tandeming with Liza. We've both captained a lot with Maddie as the stoker, but we've never ridden more than a few blocks together on a tandem. My approach to the tandem is all about hanging out with Liza. It's not about hammering or doing a bunch of distance. Liza is a stop-and-smell-the-roses type. She's a cruise along and look around rider. Hence, the platform pedals on the captain's cranks. If we enjoy it, then maybe we'll seek out longer rides, but the primary goal is to enjoy each other's company.



If it sounds like I'm convincing myself or her here, it's because I kind of am. Liza is on the fence with the whole idea, but is willing to give a honest effort. So, we'll see how it goes tomorrow. Hopefully, I won't have a listing here for a tandem for sale tomorrow night.

Opportunistic Thursday Ride

Stuff weirdly worked out today where Liza and I got an unexpected couple hours to take a ride. Liza wanted to shake down the new build of the RB-1 before we take a mini-credit-card anniversary tour in the next week or so.

We took one of my favorite loops: Joe's Marshal Loop. This is a great ride: it has dirt roads, some single track, a chunk of rail trail, good climbs, fast road sections, and a nice descent or two. And it's only about 20 miles. I couldn't believe that Liza had never been on this ride before, as I ride it at least once a month or so. But thinking about it, she hasn't had a bike that would be much fun on this ride until now. The "Fat-Tired Road Bike" is the bike to end all bikes in my mind. And Liza is becoming a convert with this 650b-afied RB-1. She had a great ride today and was full of energy while I was bonking and suffering up the last few hills on the way home.

Part of the ride is on the Fish Lake Trail, which is slated for a full paving in the next year or so -- once some more money is secured. It will be interesting to see the bike traffic increase on that trail once it becomes paved. It will be a road-bike highway on the weekends for sure. Hopefully, we'll see some commute traffic on the weekdays too. I'll miss the dirt, but it will make getting out to Badger Lake and beyond a bit quicker for the last-minute S24O.

On the way to school this morning, Maddie said that she wanted "those things" (drop-bar brakes) on her tandem. I think I'll work up some small drops with dummy hoods for her. Yay.

Cycle the Bridges

Yesterday was the Cycle the Bridges event. Even with the rain, there was a great turn out. Last year it poured buckets and there no more than 20 people. This year, there must of been more than 50 or so.

Liza had to work, but Maddie and I enjoyed the ride this year.

I forgot my camera and I didn't even take a phone pic. Lame me.

I'll bullet-point the experience:

• Maddie and I had a pre-ride breakfast at Frank's.


• Lots of familiar faces. And I met a couple new folks. Maddie had a couple friends there too.


• I found it curious that my buddy Bill's "rain" bike did not have fenders. His commuter does. Roadies: I'll never understand them.


• Speaking of fenders: I didn't see many. I saw a lot of really muddy/striped riders. And riding behind the non-fendered folk in the rain doesn't rule. But I knew that. It's mostly dry here, and year-round fenders are not required. I took the fenders off of two bikes this summer. But they went back on the RB-T this morning. And they'll go on the fixed in the next couple days.


• Mary Verner has a sweet old (pre-war?) bike. But she could use a more robust/"gearful" commuter.


• The route was really good; only one 1/2 mile or so section where the innies shared the route with the outties. Cops/volunteer cops at key intersections made the route easy too.


• Saw another Bike Friday tandem with father/son team. Cool.


• Maddie is getting strong. She wanted to go fast the entire time. And after hammering the course, she helped grind up the south hill. We're slowly developing a riding language to communicate shifts, standing, hills, etc. It's so cool.

Tomorrow is 3rd Tuesday of the month. BAB meeting. All are welcome.

Last Minute S24O with the Family

We'd been talking of doing some bike camping this weekend. Friday didn't work out. Saturday came and went. Then Sunday, at about noon, we decided to give a go. It was a huge success. We left home at about 4pm. We were at Riverside State Park by 4:45 or so. We got home this morning at about 9 AM.

The S24O's I've been doing solo have helped hone the camping process quite a bit. We brought just the right amount of stuff. We were warm and comfy and did not want for anything.

The one bummer is that the guy working the pay station at Riverside State Park hadn't gotten the memo on the biker sites. I didn't feel like trying to work it up the command chain on a quiet Sunday afternoon and there were plenty of sites open anyway. But it was disappointing that the hiker/biker site policy has not been baked into the overall training program for the front desk folks.

Regardless, we enjoyed a nice night: an hour or so chatting while Maddie played on the sandy river bank, followed by dinner, some minor exploration, and to bed. We were up at 7AM and having coffee at The Scoop by 9 AM.

We all decided that it was so easy and so low impact -- that we would do this very regularly this summer.

Loaners for Life

I've run through a number of bikes in the last few years. I do what a lot of bike geeks do, which is buy bikes or frames and end up building up the same bike over and over again. It's a weird phenomenon and I've seen other bike nerds do it.

In most cases, I end up selling off the redundant bikes/frames -- sometimes painfully, and always at a loss it seems. But some bikes are special. In these cases, I've figured out a way to keep them without storing them. And even better: a way to keep them so they are used. It's depressing to me to see a collection of bikes that rarely get used. If you're a bike nerd that's an easy situation to get into. I know lots of bike nerds who have a huge collection of bikes, some of which get ridden once a year or less. I'm guilty of that too.

So, my solution is to do "loaners for life."

The picture above shows 2 Bridgestone RB-T's, my favorite production bike of all time. The black one, a 1991 RB-T, is my daily driver. It rules. The orange one, a 1992 (repainted) RB-T is my spare that is a loaner-for-life to a buddy of mine.

Our Xtracycle was a great bike for the last couple years and I've got way too much time and energy in that bike to just sell it off. Luckily, another buddy of mine with two kids can now use that bike. They love it.

I have a great Burley Tandem that I bought about a year ago with the idea of putting Maddie on it this year, but it was just too big and it will be a few years before she can ride it. I was going to sell it, and as I fixed it up to sell it, I realized what a great bike it was. It's well-made; made in Eugene; sturdy. I just couldn't sell it. Some day this will make a wonderful trail and touring bike for Maddie and me. Another friend and his son are borrowing that one.

The loaner-for-life rules are simple: take care of the bike, use it as long as you want, and give it back to me when you're done or when I need it again. Everyone wins. I don't have to sell off a great bike (at a loss, always at a loss); the bike is put to use; folks that might not otherwise try out or buy a particular type of bike can get a long experience with the bike.

Tandeming

(Note: The pictures here were taken on the way to school yesterday -- my old camera has a busted LCD view finder, so the pics aren't ideally composed.)

Maddie is doing great on the tandem. Toe clips are essential for her as she gets used to sharing a drive line with another rider. It's been a learning experience for all of us, since none of us have really spent much time on a tandem.

Maddie took a fall on Sunday when she was standing up on the pedals. Other than a little scrape on her cheek, she really wasn't hurt. It did scare her though. I'm not much for the fear-based school of teaching, but she certainly got the idea about not standing up on the pedals. And she got right back on.

We're digging it.

After a couple days of riding, here are the upcoming mods:

• Fenders - Planet Bike is back ordered on 20" rear fenders, but a front fender will go on in the next couple days.


• Racks - The rack that is on there is more rigid than I expected from the pictures, but I will be putting the Tubus Cargo on there to hold up the grocery and camping loads we'll be putting on there. My buddy, Alex, is learning to braze, so he's going to build us a front rack some time this summer.


• Forks - The folks at BikeFriday will sell me a new fork for $75. Right now the front wheel is running a drum-brake. I'd rather run a dyno hub for proper, no-brainer lighting. So, we'll get a new fork with canti posts a put some V-brakes on the front.


• Lighting - I've got a 20" wheel with a Schmidt dyno hub just waiting for this bike. We'll wire the trusty E6 up front and a home-made LED light on the back fender. Since we'll be running the Tubus, I'll also put a DT-Toplight on the Tubus for an always-on rear light.


• Handlebars - I'm not a huge fan of the straight bars. Liza is ok with them. I'd like to put drops (Noodles) on there. One issue with that though is reach. So I've been talking to the folks at BikeFriday about making an adjustable stem. Co-motion makes a nice one. That's what I want on there. We'll see. Putting drops on there would be a considerable expense since I'd have to get the fancy adjustable stem and new brake levers for the v-brakes.

First Impressions

Got the tandem. Liza and Maddie took it for a couple turns up and down the alley yesterday, then a couple laps around the tennis courts today.

Me: Maddie, do you like it?

Maddie: I don't like it. I love it. It's awesome.

That is a direct quote. She's 4. Liza likes it too. Score one for the old man -- a bike purchase the whole family loves.

This bike will change our lives.

We need to do some fendering and lighting and baggaging and handlebarring and general fussing, then we're good to go. But it is ridable now.

I foresee many an overnighter at Riverside State Park this summer.

So excited.

Waiting Through the Big V

The long-awaited update on my personal reproductive heath status: I got the big V today. One perfect child is enough. Now I wait to ride. The doctor says one month. I think he's suppossed to say that. My plan: play it by the book and be super hard core with the ice pack for 3 days. Minimize the movement and maximize the frozen pea contact. From there, we'll see where we're at. In the meantime, I can think and plan about the riding I want to do this summer.

The Basics
To start, I'm going to kick up the gear on the fixed gear. Since I busted my 40t chainring, I'm going to inch up to a 42. At the moment, the smallest 110 bcd chainring I have is a 46t biopace. I've had that on there the last couple days and that's good for a vigorous heart-attack-inducing workout. I may keep it on for a while though. Keeping such a high gear on the fixed will pretty much keep me off the single track for a while, but it may be just the ticket for getting my fitness level up a bit to the next level. I'm not really a whacko about "fitness levels" but I do feel like I've been in a rut the last month or so, unable to really enjoy the longer non-fixed rides as much. It's weird because the harder I ride the fixed, the more fun and chilled out the non-fixed rides are.

The S24O and Family Camping
I think I'll start doing at least a once-a- monthly S24O in March. S24O == sub-24-hour overnighter. Grant Petersen over at Rivendell has honed a basic overnighter idea into a very compelling story with a cool name: the S24O. I did a few last year and I want to do more this year. It's still freezing at night. I think 40F will be my threshold for low temps. So we'll be good to go in a couple weeks. Last year I did Bald Knob on Mt Spokane, Williams Lake, Hunters, and a couple at Riverside State Park. There was one S36O up at Pioneer Park too. This year, I'll do Bald Knob again; I want to explore some areas on the Spokane river between the confluence and the Tum Tum area. I also want to check out a potential spot in the Badger Lake area. I'd also like to find someone who knows the Selkirk range area and get up there.

As for family camping, we'll be picking up Maddie's tandem next week, so we'll have a good bike that we can load up with equipment and do a run to Riverside State Park. I'm hoping to get some other families going this year too. So, if you have a young one or young ones and want to give a family overnighter a shot, get in touch. The ride to RSP is about 10 miles from the South Hill and this year the park will hopefully have Hiker/Biker sites available on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Longer Tours
Last year I was only able to get in one longer tour. I went with a couple buddies up to Vancouver Island and had a nice ride around the southern part of the island for about 4 days. This year, we're planning on tooling around the rural highways and logging roads of Mount St. Helens for 5 days.
The picture there is our planned route. This will be a fun ride. Lots of dirt roads, lots of swimming, lots of great views and remote camping.
Liza and I are also going to try and squeeze in a 3 or 4 day ride up to BC. The idea will be to drop Maddie off at the Grandparents' Speare house up there on the Kettle River and ride up to Castlegar, then come back through the US around Northport and do some dirt roads back to the Grandparents house. This will be a "credit-card" type touring trip, where we'll stay in hotels and B&B's instead of self-contained, where we camp and stink more.

We'll also try and get a weekend or two up in Bayview where we have access to a float house. We did this last year. Although Bayview isn't our favorite place in the world to hang out, we've found a pleasant route up through Athol that puts us in Bayview for the first night. The next morning we ride down to Coeur d' Alene and spend the day tooling around the city, have a nice dinner, then ride back to Spokane the next day on the Centennial Trail. It's a nice two and half day jaunt.

Finally, there's a chance I may take a few days in September with another buddy who wants to try some loaded touring. I'd love to hit Hiway 20 that time of year, but I think we'd need longer than I'll be able to take from work at that point. I think a loop up to upper Priest Lake and over to Metaline and back would be a fun ride, especially if we could find some cool logging roads on the way back.

It'll be a fun summer.

Rolling Along

This has been a good bike weekend:
1. Liza started working at Two Wheel Transit on Thursday. She's legit. She likes it so far. I think having a knowledgeable woman in a bike shop can only help sales. I guess we'll see. Maddie and I had a great time on Saturday while Liza was at work. We rode in circles most of the day in the Wilson playground or on our back patio.

2. I took a nice shake down ride on my new Trek with David on Friday. I wanted to get some trails/rough surfaces in. We took the Fish Lake Trail out to Cheney, had a cup of coffee and rode back on Curtis rode. That is still one of my favorite rides. The Trek is great. David asked me if I could really feel the difference in the low trail as I hoped I would, and I have to say I don't. It doesn't feel bad. It certainly doesn't feel like my Atlantis, which is super trail, but I can't detect the "low trailness" of the ride. I'm not disappointed, but I think I'm a bit surprised. I also think we just adapt to different nuances in bike handling pretty quickly and I don't have the experience across a wide range of bikes to feel such subtleties. It rides nicely and I am beginning to drink the 650B kool-aide: there really does seem to be a nice balance of cushy-fast there.

3. We had some friends over on Friday night who are really interested in building some tall bikes. We've got a good pile of steel frames that I wouldn't feel awful about cutting up and we have access to some torches and welders. We may just start hacking something together here. I sure would like to find some other like-minded freaks. We've got a group of four now.

4. My buddy Alex picked up our new-to-us tandem in Seattle. We'll be getting it in April. The tandem we have now is just too big -- for both Liza and Maddie. It could work, but the Bike Friday is a great little tandem and they are super reasonable when you buy them used. Out of the box, the bike is ready for Maddie; no fussing required. It's pretty nifty: it has a Sachs internally-geared 3 speed hub with a 7 speed cassette attached to it. So all the shifting is in the rear wheel and it has the same (or similar -- I don't know the exact range) as a 21 speed. It breaks down into two pieces so you can carry it in standard (no extra fee) airline luggage. Maddie and I looked at the pics of it this morning and we're both pretty psyched.