Last pair of favorite Shimano sandals

My love of the old-style Shimano sandal is pretty well-documented on this blog. A couple years ago the new Shimano sandal had 3-straps instead of two. As my buddy Alex once noted, with the additional strap, the new Shimano sandal is more shoe than sandal. Now, the latest model looks like it's gone back to two straps, but with more material around the foot. Still very shoe-y.

I've patched and cobbled this pair for a couple years now. I think they're about my fifth pair. With this new rip at the arch, they're nearly done now. I'll cobble again, but they're pretty shot.

I thought this was my last pair before being forced to figure out a new sandal, but alas! Loren showed up with a nearly new pair for me a couple weeks ago. I'm saved for at least another 18 months or so.

Check out Mark Fenton tomorrow night

This is an event worth checking out.

It's a community meeting hosted by national pedestrian advocate, Mark Fenton. He'll teach you how to audit your neighborhood to rate its walkability. He'll also discuss how we can make our community a better place to get around by both bike and foot. Public officials, city and county employees, and citizens that are interested in challenging our myopic reliance on SOVs-at-any-cost, will be there. So if you read this blog, then you probably should be there too!

Tuesday, Sept 29
6:30-8:30
Lincoln Center, 1316 N Lincoln St

From the OTM notice:

Mark Fenton is an entertaining, persuasive, and knowledgeable walking advocate; one of the nation's foremost experts on the activity; the former editor-at-large of WALKING Magazine; and host of the PBS series, America's Walking. Mark is a vocal pedestrian advocate and recognized authority on public health issues and the need for community, environmental, and public-policy initiatives to encourage more walking and bicycling.

This isn't a walking/ped thing only though. Any discussion of making a community better for pedestrians must include how to make biking better too. Cyclists, represent!

Spokane to Barstow

Ok ride. Perfect perfect weather.
About 75 F.
About 115 miles.
About 10 hours.
About 2 long lunches.
About 1/4 gravel.
About 3/4 back roads.

Newton Road.


Horses in the Colville River outside of Chewelah.


Addy Cemetery.


Cool place. About 5 miles outside of Colville.


Columbia River. There's two ways across this river: blast across balls out for 1/2 mile and hope the guy behind you is nice, or ride across this tiny sidewalk. Busy Friday afternoon: I took the sidewalk.


Columbia River.


Best junk food store in the world.

Long ride opportunity

Totally unrelated picture of an Elephant bike, since last month's article in OTM didn't have a pic of the inverted forks. Here they are.

I get to take a long ride on Friday. I'm taking the long way up to my dad's place on the Kettle River. I've really not made long rides a priority this year and I've missed it.

Generally, I'm sort of in a funk at the moment, so the timing is good. There's nothing like a long solo ride to sort things out and put stuff in perspective.

I'm not sure yet on the route. I'm torn between the Springdale-Hunters-Barstow route, which has a great climb; or a new route. A new route would be bits of 395 + some dirt and side roads that I've wondered about in the past. In either case, I'll have very low traffic and nice scenery.

The bike I take depends on the route. Or I may pick a bike and let the route fall out of the bike choice. Fixed? Fast? Fat-tired? I've no baggage, so the options are wide open.

Decisions, decisions.

Fallizing

This weekend has been a whirlwind of family activity and apple-related goodness. The apple hunt on Friday was pretty good. My two favorite trees were barren, but my buddy Patrick found a couple to replace them and my parents' tree had a banner year. I've had pieces from two apple pies. I made 40 pints of apple sauce. And 5 pints of apple butter. And I've still got about 20 pounds of apples to process.

Liza says we're also getting a pile o tomatoes this week too. And the plums will be ready in a week. And Joe tells me that he's got pears for the taking. Yikes.



Here's some random stuff.



My new Deep V is already dented. I'm bummed. I think if I try to fix it I may break it. I think I'll bring it to Glen of Elephant Fame and see if he can work some magic before I destroy it. I've been running the black CX'y RB-T on the high drive trails just about every morning. I've been really enjoying it and I've progressively been getting more and more comfortable bombing down a section that I used to pick through sort of carefully. I know that's where this wheel found this dent. Erg.

The good news is that the wheel is still true. These rims are tough.



I gave the daily commuter a shake down today. I really neglect this poor bike for how hard I treat it. But not today. I repacked the rear hub (even put new bearings in it. Thanks Willy). I put a new chain on it. And I put new brake pads on it. I don't know of a single bike shop in town that stocks Kool Stop Salmon brake pads for cantilever brakes (smooth posts).


I rarely order from the online price divers, but I this year, I ordered my brake pads from some online-mega-whore-shop. With shipping, I paid about $9/pack for 10 packs. If I order through an LBS, it's a pain for them and me and then they charge me around $12. So there.



Maddie took this pic.

On being Noted, fruit, and the Historic Iron Bridge

Take note, I've been noted. Traffic to my little blog has spiked over the last 24 hours to over 5000 hits. That's a lot. Hello world.

Weird.

Apples
It seems the apples have come a bit earlier this year. On Friday, Liza and I are going to ride the apple circuit and collect from my favorite mostly-public-space fruit trees.

It would be cool to have an interactive map that shows where the good mostly-public fruit is around town. The way it would have to work would be to have a map that is not visible until a user provides at least one good source for fruit. The hard part is verifying the source of fruit a user submits. There's a scale issue there.



This is a small haul from one of my favorites last year. Lunch: Natural Start.
In any case, there are hundreds of apple trees that are fit for picking in this area. Any cyclist that keeps an eye out is sure to see many apple trees. What I've found in the last couple years are two or three great apple trees: crisp, sweet, non-mealy, not wormy. The money trees are pear (I know of one that is mostly public and many that are private) and apricot (same deal there). Plums are interesting, but not money.

So, we'll pick on Friday and on Saturday, we'll make apple sauce and apple butter. You can throw any old apple into sauce or butter as long as you lean towards the green/tart for the majority.

Iron Bridge

My favorite project looks to be complete next Summer. It's the key piece of the East Sprague\Chief Gary connection and will make getting to the new Pedals2People space (1802 E Sprague) way easier from downtown.

From our esteemed bike/ped coordinator, Grant Wencel:

"The funding we received from the WA State Recreation and Conservation Office includes design and construction.($530,000). The detailed design work will begin this fall/winter by outside consultants, with construction planned for 2010."

SpokeFest 2009

I really like this event. It's the perfect perfect place to tell the Pedals2People story.

The big P2P news is that we just signed a lease on a new space. Starting November 1st, we'll be at 1802 E Sprague.

Anyway. SpokeFest is cool. I really enjoy seeing a bunch of friends and meeting new bikey friends.

Maddie and I ran the kiddie lap with Jon and his kids. I bailed after one lap and Jon, Maddie, and Theo did another run.

Liza did the 20-miler with friends. I wish I got pics of them. But I missed the boat there. I didn't take nearly enough pictures today. I'm not sure who took this picture of me -- Mike must've snatched my camera for a minute. The guy on the right is Nigel. I just met him. He's a Wheelsport-er.