some stuff

I think we need a longer stem on this bike. This picture doesn't illustrate the need for it. I think we have one more season on this frame. 

The river is wonderfully high right now. I've got the old mountain bike rev'd up. I took it out a couple times this weekend. If all goes as planned, this bike will be swapped out for a new Elephant hardtail 650b mountain bike this spring.

This is a great bike. I'll be taking it to Orcas in about a week and a half for a few days of single track funnery with some friends. It's the next year's version of this ride. 

First SOS ride of the season happened this morning. Rough stuff. We're all wheezy and shakey and weird. But I love this ride -- we came home through the park to check out the flow, which did not disappoint.

Some SOS pics

More remote art.

It can be too easy to ride by these kinds of views without looking. This is a great time of year for color.

After a bit of rain the river trail is in great shape. 

I love this bike. I need to spray it down.

Tony. He's showed up for 3 or 4 weeks now. He's pretty new to trail riding and crashes sort of frequently. That's a good sign in my opinion.  

SOS ride pics

Two years later: Review of Pearl Izumi X-Alp Seek -- there's some love here...

A couple years ago, I got a pair of Pearl Izumi X-Alp Seek shoes to review. I published a quick review of these shoes in an article in Out There Monthly in Sept 2011.

I'm always on the lookout for normal looking SPD shoes. I've reviewed the Chrome Kursk (look great, fit kind of weird -- the heel likes to slide out), the Keen Austin (excellent daily driver for crap weather, but I'm not crazy about the style -- apparently, these are discontinued, which is a shame), the Shimano MT-60 (best Gortex all-rounder for sure) and the DZR sneakers (my favorite "normal looking" SPD so far).

These Pearl Izumi's are more running shoe in their styling than I prefer, so I was never that crazy about them from an aesthetic point of view.  But... over the last couple years, I've found myself grabbing these shoes for my all-purpose recreational riding shoes. When I go to the river, these are the shoes I bring. When I go on the SOS ride, these are the shoes I have on. They've sort of wormed their way into my heart the way our Subaru has -- there was really no love to start with, no spark -- but over time the reliability, comfort, and the understated performance that just works have made these daily drivers.

After two years, these shoes are showing some wear, but I'm thinking I have another year or so in them. There are no pending catastrophic failures forming around the soles and all the stitching looks good.

As for features, they've got some water-resistant stuff going on that makes them as good as any ankle-height shoe for water events. I don't wear them in the cold winter like I do with the MT-60's, but for the other three-seasons, they're good. There's some reflect stuff going on that makes them useful for commuting.

My favorite feature is the lace-holder: there's a little pocket on the tongue that you cram the laces into. You can see the red pouch in the first image above -- the top shoe still has the laces tucked into the pouch. I don't like straps/Velcro, so laces are good -- and having a good holding solution is a smart move. This solution is the best I've seen.

So, while I feel no lust for these shoes, I certainly do feel some love for them. Given how well-built and designed these shoes are, I wish that Pearl Izumi could direct some of their SPD attention to a more "casual" styling.

SOS Ride: Ferry County edition

Joe.

Justin's bday ride

Justin, Joe, Bill, Pat, me

Normally, being Sunday and all, I'd advocate for the SOS trail ride. But Pat pointed out that the weather wizards were saying 100% chance of rain. He further suggested that perhaps a be-fendered dirt/back-road ride might make more sense than a trail ride.

How right Pat was on both accounts. What's nice about a Sunday road ride is that it's more social than a trail ride. A guy can chat and carry on.

We didn't have much of a route planned -- except to go up Greenwood and tool around the dirt roads up there in that Deno/Euclid area. As we passed Euclid the rain had stopped for a minute, so we decided to loop it out around Riverside State Park, which requires a bit of trail riding to find the Centennial Trail.

Bill and Pat walking down the hill -- this was right after Bill slipped.

The trails were slippery, muddy, wet, etc. Our descent into the valley where Centennial Trail lives required traversing a trail that was rockier than I remember... assuming I was remembering the right descent. Anyway: lots of big bouldery wet round rocks littered the descent. I had worked on my bike last night, so of course my front brake failed as I tore down this section. Bill "slipped."

But it was it all worth it... it's nice to put some dirt and double-track on a ride, especially on Sundays. It feels right.

Paths like this are why I like finding a reason to cut through Riverside State Park.

Post-ride, Justin, Pat, and I celebrated Justin's bday by having him buy us breakfast at Central Foods. The rain picked up a tad as we ate and the wind knocked over our parked bikes.

That's all the relevant detail.

Thinning

 So it's come to this: once a week blog posts with almost no content. I've just been too slammed to put anything up here. And bikewise: I'm barely doing anything. A guy can only write so much about the boring-ass flat 20 miles on a multi-user trail that is my commute.

Highlight of last weeks' commute: coal train.
Not to be confused with a soul train.

However, now that I'm in academia (ahem), I will get big gobs of time off throughout the year. In about two weeks I'll start a nearly month-long break. My buddy Bill (of Bill's Ass fame) asked me what I was going to do with all this time and I didn't have a good answer, except, "Well, I plan to catch up on writing a bunch of product reviews."

And that's true, because they're piling up; I'm obligated, and that's pretty much my game plan for maintaining my high-zoot, high-maintenance wardrobe over the next few years.

One thing that's interesting about this end-of-quarter thing that never struck me back when I was a student 20 years ago, is the finality of it all. After being in the software business forever, my take on schedules is that they are always these negotiable, slippery, hand-wavy, mystical, enigmatic guessing games of chicken.

 But in school: the end of the quarter is a hard f'ing date that is REAL. And that is both a mutha of a reality biter and a wonderful thing of forcing-function beauty.

So while you're in the overwhelming depth of work with more crushing down upon you and wondering how you will ever get it all done, there's an underlying calm in the knowledge that it will all be over and done in just a handful of weeks. It's a wonderfully liberating place to be, especially if you've been in a similar work-crushing scenario where you just can't see an end or solution in sight. Ever. I'm in heaven here.

Anyway. "Thinning," is the title of this post. The point. And thinning is not what I'm doing unfortunately. Pat is. That dude is slimming down.

We went riding a couple weeks ago and he was on his new tires that he was so excited about. We were resting at the top of a particularly difficult climb when I asked him, "How are your knards?"

And that was in earnest. I didn't even think about the double entendre there until he sort of paused, tilted his head a bit, furrowed his brow, and then broke into a laugh, "They're great. They really stick."

The next weekend, as I rode behind him, I couldn't help noticing that his ass was shrinking. My verbalizing that fact, in the context of the previous weeks' fox paw, turned out to be a bit awkward.

And now I'm realizing that I started this post off with an off-handed reference to Bill's ass and I'm  feeling sort of odd about it all.

The fact is, the thinning refers to some work that is going on down on the HD trails, which, incidentally, are just friggin teaming with runners, hikers, and dogs on Sunday mornings. Joe and I rode down there this morning and were reminded why the SOS River Trail ride has become the standard Sunday morning route.

They're taking out a zillion little scrawny trees and chipping them up across the forest floor. It's a good plan, as a fire down there is just a matter of time.

V2 thoughts

I got the v2 right in the heat of the Grand Fondo funk, so I was pretty much spending all of my non-commute time on the 747.  So for any road/non-trail riding, I've been defaulting to the 747 for months.

I see the v2 as all about S24O's, exploring dirt roads, commuting, overnight hauls, and moderately loaded touring. But I haven't been doing any of that in the last month or so.

So, in anticipation of summer, I ripped off the fenders, put the taller rack on, and mounted the super bad-arse Quasimoto tires.

Can we just talk about how f'ing rad these tires are? I got hung up on some rail road routing on my SOS ride today. This required riding about a mile on some rail rock, which at times was off-camber and/or dotted with deeper sand and/or bigger jagged basalt chunks. The Quasi's just ate this up. They're huge - volume-wise, and they're tacky, and they bite just enough on the dirt. What's weird is how well they roll on pavement -- they're no Hetre, but they are suprisingly fast on the road, given how uncompromising they are in the dirt.

I need to bring these bars in one centimeter. The wanker in me wants to swap out the stem and bars for the Ritchey WCS versions to get this centimeter w/out changing the length of my stem. I did that on the 747 and it's all perfect and wonderful. The issue here is that the Campy brifters push my reach out about a centimeter more than the aero levers I had on there for v1. But I'm working the austerity angle at the moment, so I'll be strong and just try putting a shorter stem on there with the Noodles.

Anyway, this bike, with the drops and the fatty knobbies really comes into its own. When Pat is done and recovered from his cross-state journey, I'll get over there and get a lasher rack built for this bike. That will allow me to put my bulky light stuff (sleeping pad and bag) on the rear wheel, while carrying my basics in a bag above the front wheel. (A lasher rack is yet another Alex-idea -- see hint of implementation at on this Pat post).

I've got mid-July through mid-August off of work, so I plan on doing a bunch of bike camping and exploring with Pat Rick (and anyone else who wants to come and hang at the river) in the Colville Nat'l Forest.

The v2 will start seeing some good action.

More flowers

 SOS ride with Cory today.

The HD trails are crazy with flowers. Crazy.

And there's now a giant set of platform-style stairs leading up the west slope from the suspension bridge at Bowl and Pitcher.

I didn't get a shot of the river, which obviously is raging right now. There were a couple small spots on the Mega-church trail that were submerged. And a few bits of trail underwater on the east side river trail.

Something witty and irreverent

This should really go on the Elephant site, but it was among the pics on my phone. This is a bike that was just finished last week. Bling!

The HD trails are not even close. There was about a 2.5 day window a couple weeks ago where they were drained, non-tacky, and fast. I hoped the bit of warmth and sun we had yesterday might have cleared them up. No luck. It was a super slog on the way home up the trails.

This pic was supposed to show the little pellet snow hail things that were falling. They may barely be visible on "big," but I sort of like the view shot that resulted instead. Moody windy day yesterday on the trails.

What's this? That would be Elephant v2. With luck I will be riding it  tomorrow afternoon or for the SOS ride on Sunday.

SOS classic

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

Another hare-brained idea

Pat Rick. On this morning's SOS ride.
 He's not hare-brained.

I plan on taking this ride next Saturday or Sunday.

As far as Nat'l Forest rides go, it's sort of an odd duck. It's a hybrid ride: the first half is paved and all climb to the top of Sherman Pass. The second half is all dirt. Most of the second half (I'm thinking about 25 miles or so) is dirt road descent.

The dirt part has a lot of different surfaces: nicely graded bits, super smooth shady bits, rocky off-cambery sections. There are random mud holes, wood chunks, and fallen rocks along the way that make for wonderful split-second decision making (ride over it? go around? bunny hop?)

Visual foreshadowing.
A sophisticated literary device.

So that's the context for the hare-brained idea. Normally, I take my Rawland for National Forest rides. With big fat 58mm Quasi-Moto tires, the descent part of the ride is just fun; you don't really have to do the micro-line picking. Generally: point and go and ease into the sharp turns.

The climbing part of the deal though is a bit more of a chore. Especially on paved roads. The Rawland is a beefy bike and as much as those Quasi's will pretty much out-roll any other knobbie within 10mm width, they're still pretty turdy for 25+ miles of paved road climbing.

Enter. The CX tubulars on the beloved hacked-to-hell-RB-T.

What's not to love? This bike is so rad.

That's the hare-brained idea. I can run these bad boys at 60 psi for the climb, then drop them to about 40 psi for the descent. I'll have to be a hair nit pickier and a tad slower on the bombing sections than I would on the Rawland, but not  by a huge margin.

I have one spare. And if shit really goes north, I have a sewing and patch kit. But really, the flats I would worry about as I bomb dirt roads on 34mm tires would be of the pinch variety. The dreaded snake-bite potential drops a shitload with tubular tires. You with me here?

Phone-cam doesn't really capture the pretty violet flowers.
This is from the middle trail on the HD trails.

I may have hit on something here! I've been riding these tires around the bluff for a the last couple days and they're pretty much all-that in the corning and fast department. And on pavement, they're good enough. I wouldn't want to lean into hard fast paved turns with them on a rainy day -- but for getting up hills, this set up is a good one.