Tried and liked - 2010

Stuff


Elephant Bike
This was just a matter of time. I never seriously considered a custom bike. But when Alex finished his Gifford, and there was no such thing as the (now) pending rSogn, then I really had no choice. This is a great bike and I don't have a single regret about getting it. It's fast enough. It's comfy. It's pretty. It's versatile. I'll ride it for a long time.


Fake down, micro puffer
I just reviewed this vest a few weeks ago. The shocker here is that fake down works well. I've avoided it for a long time. This scrawny little vest is just as warm as any comparable down I've worn. I'm going to try and get my mitts on a down sleeping bag this year. The whole "wet/rainy with fake down" scenario is an interesting one for me. I've been caught a number of times in light/medium rain with this vest. It gets wet, but doesn't lose it's insulative properties. I've had wet issues with my down sleeping bag, especially with the bivvy. For one-nighters it's not a big deal, but for multi-dayers, it sucks.

Bivy
Last December, I froze my ass with Patrick. The night I sat freezing, I promised myself that I'd get a bivy. And I did. I got a basic REI middle-of-the-roader, the REI Minimalist Bivy. I'm going to do a proper review on it by end of next camping season, but generally, I'd recommend it to a friend.
I did 4 or 5 overnighters with the bivvy this year and it was great. On two of those nights we had rain, one was solid rain and I had a rain fly too. An early year overnighter got pretty cold. In all cases, I was happy. There were some minor condensation issues, but nothing impossible. For quick overnighters when it's not super warm, I'm thinking a bivy is hard to beat.


Sew-ups, aka Tubulars
About a year ago, Glen let me borrow a bike with sew-ups on it. I think they were about 26mm wide, which is off-the-charts-narrow for me. And they were just really comfy. And fast. And cushy.

This year for CX, I found a crazy deal on ebay on an old tubular wheelset in great condition. I ran 34mm Challenge CX tires on it and loved it. Same deal: fast, comfy, cushy, and really grippy.

I'm pondering building up a tubular wheelset for the 747 and running the Challenge Paris-Roubaix 29mm tires. Just pondering at this point.

Stuff that's not stuff

National Forest cycling

How this obvious method of recreation has escaped me for so long is a mystery. I've done a short tour in a National Forest before, but it was a full day's drive to get there. We have great NF land all over the place in our own neighborhood and it's great riding: low traffic, great vistas, easy camping, water everywhere. I carried on about NF riding some more in Out There Monthly.


Even lower air pressure
I've never been one for skinny high pressure tires. My "fast" bike has skinny 27 mm (real 29 mm) tires at 80 psi. By road bike standards that fat and sloppy. But mountain type bikes should have fat tires and lower pressure and this year I've really embraced lower pressure for trail/off road/snow travel. The obvious low pressure application here has been the Pugsley, but the sleeper has been with my Rawland.

If you've ridden with me then you've heard me go on and on and on about how much I love the Quasi-moto tires, and I do love them -- for fast trail riding and dirt road exploration, I maintain that they can't be beat: fast and supple and easy handling. But later in the summer, I put the old Neo-motos back on the Rawland and ran them low and it's been rad. For snow and for trails, low pressure (I'm guessing about 25 psi) just makes for a different ride. Even on familiar trails.

Rack building
Like buying an Elephant, I always figured building a rack was also a matter of time. And Pat dialed in a process and opened his shop up to us, so this was the year. I really enjoy the process. I need to get in there and ramp it up so I can finish and let the next guy start - a queue is forming. But man, I need to figure out a way to keep doing this. Liza's bike needs a proper rack. Once you see the possibilities, the idea of hacking an out-of-the-box rack on a nice bike is unacceptable.

Producing stuff isn't the only reason to enjoy building racks. It's like baking bread or any other skilled activity -- the process is really satisfying, so is getting better at it and learning how to do it efficiently.

I asked Glen last night which he likes more: the process or the product. He said "yes."

And hanging out with Pat in his garage and enjoying the company of other rack-obsessed people is hard to beat too.


Air travel with bike
Taking the coupled RB-T with me to a family trip to Alaska was a beautiful thing. The whole travel-with-a-bike thing was easy and I didn't run into any of the issues that I feared or that you read about online. The bike survived. I didn't get charged extra by the airlines because it was a bike. It was easy to set up and tear down. What's not to love?

Publishing bikey stuff outside of Spokane
This is pretty-horn tooty, but this *is* a blog afterall, so I'm going to indulge. This year I decided to ramp up the bike-writing stuff a bit. I have an endless supply of bike-related opinion to impose upon the world so it only seems natural to extend my reach as much as I can.

The first thing was an article about Elephant Bikes in the April edition of Road magazine. Thanks to Pat, we have a soft copy of the Road article here. Getting this published was the result of Ben Tobin's magic. Ben took the pictures for the article. Really, anytime you have words next to Tobin-pics, the words are just filler. But I'll take what I can get.

Emboldened by the Road column, I sent off a piece to Bicycle Times about building up Jon's Kogswell. Again, my ace in the hole was to load it up with Tobin photos. That published in September of this year. You can download the pdf of the article here.

I've got some heady goals for this year and even headier goals for a couple years out. I'm keeping them to myself, but check back in a year and I'll let you know if I'm on track.

Tried and liked - 2009

Commuting

I didn't realize how much I missed commuting to work until I started again at the beginning of the year. My commute is often the highlight of my day. Anyone who bike commutes a lot must think the same thing I often ponder: "Why don't more people do this?"

Seriously, I see people all grumpy with their coffee and cell phones blasting around in their little bubbles of talk radio and climate controlled all-wheel-drive living rooms and I wonder what it would take to get these guys on a bike? Man, they're missing out.

Cycle Trucking

I'm pretty new to the cycle truck, but so far I'm amazed how well this bike handles, loaded or unloaded. This bike will live mainly at the Pedals2People shop so it can be put to good use and lots of people can ride it.

We'll be doing regular loads to Earthworks Recycling center with this bike.

Tandeming

Maddie and I or Maddie and Liza logged many an hour (if not many miles) on the Bike Friday tandem back in the day. But this year is the first time that Liza and I did some tandeming. We only did a couple rides, but they were good. And our overnighter was one of my favorite trips ever.

We're looking forward to doing more of these next year.

Shimano MT60 Shoe
I need to do a full-on review post on these shoes. They rule. Alex alerted me to these beauties: they're Gortex and they're relatively normal looking spd shoes. They're good in cold down to around 20 or so. They hold the water out. For daily drivers and commuting, they're hard to beat. I hope Shimano continues to make them. For some reason, the bike industry as a whole doesn't seem to appreciate simple good non-flashy products like these shoes.

A super well-made bike

Even though I got the 747 just over a year ago, I really didn't get to ride it until this year. Looking over the last year's posts, I don't really go on and on about this bike, which is kind of a shame. Mileage-wise, this bike sees way more miles than any other bike I own. I ride it to work frequently and it's the bike I grab when I want to go long or fast. I really try to keep it off the trails though.

This is a custom bike in that it was made as a one-off by one of the most respected frame builders in the business (Jeff Lyon). But it's not "custom" in that it was made for me. It was made for the Bike Quarterly double-blind planing tests. I was lucky to get my mitts on this frameset for a pretty good deal.

It really rides like no other bike I've ever owned. That's partially due to the fact that it has standard diameter tubing that is very thin (747 refers to the butted profile of the tubing: 7/10 mm tapered to 4/10 mm) and therefore flexy. It's also due to the steepish front end and mid-trail. And perhaps it's due to the fact that it was built by a master? I don't know.

I do know that I love riding this bike. I love climbing on it and I really love fast descents on it.

I keep breaking spokes on the ancient rear wheel. The bike has therefore been out of the line up for a couple weeks. I finally bought new spokes and I'll have time to re-build the wheel some time this week.

Tried and liked - 2008

Stuff

Grand Bois tires - I've gone on about these tires in previous posts. I have the 42mm Hetres on my Rawland and the 28m Cerfs on my 747. I'm ruined forever now on the tire front. I'm a true tire snob now. Add that to the list. I'll still run the Panaraer Pasalas on my "urban bike," but only because I have about 4 pair.

NiteRider MiNewt - Liza bought this light for her commute and I borrowed it on the Midnight Century. It lasted 7+ hours and lit up the dark country roads of the Palouse like a stadium. A fantastic light.

Ibex Dash Hybrid jacket - My buddy Alex turned me onto the vest version of this jacket, which I also love. The design is a pretty normal bikey jacket design: weather proof in the front and breathable in the back. But the Ibex uses wool in all the right spots, so it breathes well and doesn't stink so bad. And it keeps you warm when wet. This jacket made the "best of" list on my long, cold, rainy ride to Kettle Falls a couple months ago.

Rainlegs - Kent sang the praises of these ultimate dork gear pants a couple years ago. I finally got some this year and they rule. I also use them in this crazy single-digit weather as a way to block the wind.

Experiences

Century ride -I've done a few 100+ mile days, but until this year, I'd never done an organized century. Mr Blaine's Midnight Century was an intriguing idea and I'd done part of it in 2007, but when he organized the Midnight Century as a country, dirt-road ride, I was in. This was the single best ride of the year for me. The route was wonderfully remote and challenging. I had the new Rawland, which turned out to be the optimal bike for the combination of pavement and dirt. The company was great. I'm looking forward to next year.

Cyclocross - Ever since watching the races a couple years ago, I really wanted to try racing cyclocross. I'm a convert. I had a great time. I look forward to doing better next year. I even bought some running shoes to do some cross training. Crazy.

Daily commute - This is new for me. It's been about 4 years since I've had a daily commute. So far I'm really enjoying it.

Mountain biking - I bought a mountain bike from 2 Wheel Transit (when it was up on 29th) when I was a senior in high school...uh, nearly 20 years ago. I skipped school with my buddy Lucas who showed me the trails out to Riverside State Park, when you could ride all the way out there on trails by the river. Over the last 10 years or so, I've not really done much mountain biking. With the Rawland this year, I've really been doing a lot more trail riding. I've always enjoyed riding dirt roads and easy trails on my other bikes, but it's been fun to have a fat tired knobby bike for faster runs through clumpier terrain. This year, I also met Ben, who showed me some new trails and gave me a crash course on downhill riding. I'm not a downhill convert, but I really enjoy finding new trails. I want to finish my "perimeter trail around Spokane" project next year.

Riding with Maddie -Now that she's an expert bike rider, it's so great to ride to school with her. She's really gained a lot of confidence and she loves being one of only two kids in her preschool that can ride a bike without training wheels.