Bring it

Wyoming 2018

Our friends invited us to stay at their amazing family compound in Wyoming. The family place is about 10 miles outside of a cool little town called Buffalo.

Aside from good company and food and just general hang time in a beautiful and amazing spot, I have three great experiences to report.

Presented in no particular order. Except for #3, which is the coolest one.

1. I caught my first brown trout. I pretty much only catch rainbow on the Spokane and at Kettle River. On the St. Joe river, it's nearly all cutthroat.

So finally catching a brown was cool. As it turns out, Clear Creek, which is the fishery that runs through the property where we stayed, is jammed full of brown trout. So I caught a bunch of browns.


2. I took the best ride so far this year. Maddie and I have been doing a lot of mountain bike riding together and it kills me how much I love doing that. She's so capable and fast and chilled. We did most of the Weds night races this year -- one lappers -- and she beat me every time. We've been hitting Beacon Hill in the morning and have committed to at least one morning ride there a week for the summer.

The ride we took in Wyoming was a beautiful descent from the family place where we were staying down into the town of Buffalo. It was about 2000 feet of descending over about 11 miles.

Here's the GPS track.

The best part was a flowy bit of single track dropping  between a couple mountains. I wasn't sure which bike to bring to Wyoming, so I brought my NFE -- for this ride, I'd have preferred my mountain bike, but the NFE took care of business. I had the required pinch flat, then took it a bit easier.

The end of the mountain section of this ride included a drop into the creek below -- there was probably a dozen or more tight switch backs... on the NFE I was able to clean them all. Not sure if I could have on the mountain bike.

3. UPDATED:

I *thought* that I caught a Golden Trout.

I didn't.  One plan in my life is to get fit enough again so I can do some alpine lake fishing, which is where one typically finds the mythical Golden Trout.

I showed my pics to Sean at Silver Bow and he broke it to me gently -- that this is a rainbow. The Golden doesn't have the spots under the lateral red/orange line. And the Golden usually has the medallion shaped spots too.

I will not be deterred. Looks like I need to keep working on my fitness after all.

RSP

Mobile post test.

New bike: Elephant CX

I once fancied myself a cyclocross racer. It only lasted for two seasons.

Every summer as cross season approaches, I decide I'm going to race cross. Then I keep drinking beers and fishing and being leisurely in my bike riding. Then October comes and I can't imagine attempting to race. Last year, at the end of the season I went and watched Glen race and remembered how much fun it was. I told him, "Force me to race next year, no matter what I say!"

we took this same picture last time we were here. way more color now. no filter! @maddie_speare #silvermountain

A photo posted by john (@cyclingspokane) on Sep 17, 2016 at 6:00pm PDT

A year goes by. I drink more beer. My bike riding is confined to short trail rides. Maddie and I go to Silver Mountain a couple times and bomb down the mountain there, but that doesn't count as "riding," since we're sitting in a gondola on the up part.

I did do a couple mountain bike races last spring. Those were fun until I got pneumonia. But Maddie raced a bunch of those races and had a great time. And did well.

This year, as cross season approached, Maddie sort of wanted to try it and I promptly broke a rib on a lunch trail ride. So Maddie and Glen started doing some training rides and Glen taught her how to do proper bike dismounts/mounts.

I sort of lazed around on a loaner bike. My super rad awesome CX bike was a Rivendell Legolas. I busted the chainstay on it about a year ago. It's been hanging in Glen's garage since then, waiting to be fixed.

@maddie_speare CDA CX. pic by @christa.copus #elephantbikes

A photo posted by john (@cyclingspokane) on Oct 16, 2016 at 1:19pm PDT

Maddie did her first CX race: last weekend in Coeur d'Alene. She rocked it and looked great. The next race we can make is Walla Walla, so I ask Glen if he's going and he says, he'll go if I step up and race. I say yes, but he's gotta fix my Legolas, cause the loaner bike he's lending me is whacked: it's an old Novara CX that doesn't fit and has a super weird front end. He says, "I built you a bike."

So there's that.

Then he reminds me that he's supposed to bust my ass about racing, which is something I'd hoped he had forgotten. But he hasn't. Maybe that's why he calls it "Elephant Bikes?" Dude never forgets.

So that's how a wheezy-assed guy like me came into a new CX bike: because Glen can knock out a new bike frame and fork in less time than it would take him to fix the chainstay on the Legolas. Or so he says.

SRAM double tap takes some getting used to. After two rides: I got it.

He gave me the bike yesterday. I'd originally planned to build it up with the parts from my old Legolas: the Shimergo 8/10 setup with whatever other old parts I could scrape up. Glen talked me out of that and got me into a SRAM 1x11 with clutch setup. I can't remember the last time I had a bike with all new parts on it. I think the only time was the Pugsley, which Glen also gave me. damn. This guy.

Honestly, the Legolas was perhaps my 2nd favorite bike of all time and most favorite road-shaped bike. (My first fav is my Elephant mountain bike - it's magic). I rode the crap out of that Legolas -- mainly dirt and non-technical single track, though lots of miles on pavement to get to the dirt. I loved the way it fit and how it responded to me and the way it handled and bombed. So, I was silently skeptical that Glen's CX bike was really going to fill that gap. And I was slightly disappointed that he didn't just fix it.

Note fender fixin's. Nice touch.

But after riding this bike I am amazed at how perfect it is. Glen has built me a lot of bikes. And we've done a fair amount of riding together. He knows how I ride, what I like, and what works for me. After bombing the Highdrive trails on this bike a couple times now, I'm ashamed for doubting his plan here. And I'm so grateful that he's pushed so hard on me to ride cross.

First wreck. Ahhh. It rained a metric shit ton yesterday.
The trails at lunch today were a tad soft. I only missed the line by an inch or two.

Riding the trails in yesterday's downpour and during lunch today, I felt the tug that I haven't felt for so long: I love riding light, road-shaped bikes on trails and dirt. And this bike wants to ride dirt and trails. I was immediately at home on challenging climbs and descents that I've done a zillion times on the Legolas or my mountain bike. The SRAM setup with the clutch is like a Swiss watch -- precise and reliable. The handling on this bike already understands me -- out of the box this bike just lets me do my thing. It's weird.

If you're doing it right, then riding cross is hard. I'm thinking it's just as hard if your out of shape than if you are in shape. Because you're going as hard as you can go the whole time. Pain is pain.

We've got a couple races in the queue. I'm gonna show up and race. I'll be killing myself and still probably come in DFL in the 40's Masters, but I'm looking forward to it and this bike is going to egg me on.

Some Kettle Crest Trail

Phone is busted. So no easy instagram dumps. It just so happens that I had just gone back to a normal camera before the phone died... having tired of attempting on bike photos and fishy watery photos with a wet iphone.

this means: I got pics.

And I got a blog. 'member?

So here's a dump and I get to editorialize and carry on too! Bummer is that I had my camera set to take tiny photos.

Some Seattle bros came over on Thursday and joined Glen and me up at the Kettle River.

 You can see two dots in this pic. One is Rory. One is Larry.

We climbed Jungle Hill then descended Wapaloosie Trail on Friday. The climb nearly killed me. The descent was super excellent. One of my favorites. First time was with Alex, who should've been there this time.

Fred. After the climb. Drinking some clamato-jalapeno budweiser abomination, which he explained cheerfully, "has electrolytes."

Rory, Andrew, Lee. Looking solid after climbing Jungle Hill. Lee was on a single speed. Jungle hill is about a 2400 foot climb in under 4 miles. Sucked huge ass with gears. Single speed?

Heading down Wapaloosie Trail. That's Glen and Larry. Here's a photo of Alex at exactly the same spot 68 weeks ago.

Fred wheely'ing. Now this is Saturday. We went up Old Stage Trail, then cut across Kettle Crest Trail to Stickpin, where we descended onto the old S. Boulder Road back to the place on Kettle River. Great route: one I want to do with Maddie. 

Larry yuckity'ing.

Lee traversing.

Andrew. The guy in front? Coffee Joe -- who showed up on Saturday and joined us.

This is the edge of the burn on KCT: about 1/2 mile south of the Stickpin junction. This little section was my favorite of the weekend -- a 1/2 mile or so of twisty interesting single track with some rocks and roots and surprises to keep things fun.

Joe descending through the mist.

Fred working it out.

Lee: pondering his busted brake lever. 

Roll out to the cabin was about 20 some miles of descent on mostly forest road. 

On fat

I've finally got the Pugsley dialed into a setup that works magically for me. I've set it up as the work horse explorer. Aside from the obvious rackage, the bomb change was the swap to the Space Bars. Buddy Alex introduced me to these bars years ago. I borrowed one of his weirdo Rohloff mountain bikes that had these bars and was sold. I'm not crazy for these bars as actual mountain biking bars, but for all other urban/trail/do-it-all setups, I love them.

Speaking of mountain bikes, I've tried that kind of riding on the Pugsley and I just cannot make the tight corners at speed on this bike. I think it's just got too steep a front end for that kind of railing and rolling. But as an all-day work-horse unimog, the Pugs is excellent.

The Pugs has been a slow burn for me. Initially, my thinking about the bike's utility was limited to snow and sand riding. Right away, though, Glen and I discovered how much fun these bikes were on trail riding -- while we couldn't rail as accurately on fast turns, the monster traction and volume of the tires often made up for shitty line picks and the subsequent corrections. At about the time we started riding fat, a bunch of XC-style fat bike  started emerging: slack angles and shocks (!).  Buddy Pat has switched completely to fat for all of his dirt riding. I've got a Soma Sandworm frame stowed away in Glen's garage. It's taking me some time to collect parts for it. Fat components, especially wheels and forks, are still fairly limited in selection and as a result pretty costly.

Relatedly, the standardization (such as it is in the bike industry) across the various fat segments is still being sorted out. It seems to me that a lot of the standardization is driven primarily by QBP via the Surly and Salsa teams. These are the folks that ought to be credited with taking the big, expensive initial risks in mass-productization (is that word?) of fat components. From where I sit, these are some smart folks in both engineering and understanding the market. They seem to be informed largely by a more utilitarian design culture than your average race-first bike company, which is only a good thing. But -- since many standards are still competing -- for example, I can think of at least 4 different rear OLD standards and I'm not a fat bike nerd --- prices are high. If you're reading this and you are interested in buying or building a fat bike, then here's some advice: buy complete.

Anyway, after slugging through a number of shitty snow rides, I discovered that the snow riding thing is not that interesting to me as a primary Puglsey scenario. I should qualify that a bit: if you're talking riding groomed trails in the mountains, I'm interested in that. But if your talking: "hey -- it's like 36 F and the snow is deep, wet, and sort of melting, let's grab our fat bikes and go for a ride." F that s. That's just not fun.

The thing the lit the Pugs up for me was riding it at our place on Kettle River. I ride through the meadows along the edge of the river, over fallen trees, along the rocky shore, through the sand. Since much of the Recreation Area by our property is closed to motor vehicles, the Pugs enables me to expand my fishing reach into otherwise hard-to-access spots.

This sort of exploratory riding requires rackage. For the last couple years, I've gotten along with a shitty alloy rear rack that rattled and didn't set the bucket panniers back far enough. I've been watching for a good cromo rear fat rack for a couple years. They're few and far between and for various reasons those that exist don't work for me. When I discovered that Tubus finally made a Fat rack, I knew that was the one. And it is. I love Tubus racks: steel, smart, simple, and can take loads of abuse.

For front racks, a Tubus Duo will work, but I've wanted a proper porteur style rack for years. Surly just released their 24-pack front rack that is cromo and works good enough. I don't like how it attaches, but I understand that if you are going to produce a zillion racks you need to make them fit a bunch of bikes to sell them, so I get it. At some point, I'm going to hook up with Pat and braze some fixed mounting stays to the otherwise perfect platform. But for now, this is working.

I just bought Glen's small Pugsley for Maddie and Liza to share. With a short stem, and a women's saddle this is a great bike for them. Before summer comes, I'll get another Tubus rear rack for it and put the Duo on the front. We'll be doing some overnighters and interesting exploring.

Exploring

When I was a kid, I loved riding my BMX bike to explore new places. I remember how great it was to ride way up to my buddy's house on my own. It was only about 2 miles away, but getting there by riding through parks and taking the alleys was a major feature of the trip. My father lived up north in Steven's county. Riding a BMX bike around the dirt roads of backwoods Steven's county felt like an adventure. I still didn't go that far, but I have this vague memory of how simple and rad the idea of a knobby wheel riding over dirt was. I was about in 7th grade when I saw my first mountain bike and it seemed crazy to me: like a giant kid's bike with gears. I "got" it on the one hand: this thing could roll over ANYTHING with those huge wheels. But I didn't understand why the middle-aged man down the block would want such a obviously-childish thing. I ended up getting a paper route in 8th grade specifically to buy my first road bike: a used Nishiki from the same guy. Four years later, with a bunch of money I'd saved, I bought my first mountain bike: a Giant ATX 760. It was so sweet. One of the first rides I took was the river trail: out of People's Park, through the backyard of what is now the Mega Church Super Cul de Sac, and then up the old trail to SFCC. Anyway, the mountain bike for me was really about extending my reach and my ability to go find new stuff. If you look at mountain bike ads and books from the 80's, it was all about riding out onto mountains and fire roads and of course, moustaches. I had a "how to mountain bike" book by some joker whose author photo was a picture of him and his mustache drinking beers and smoking a cigarette. Fucking 80's man. So great. So lame.

I think exploring is still my favorite thing to do on a bike. And mountain bikes especially are great for real exploring. And the Pugsley is even greater.

Maddie and I have been in a funk so I forced a bike ride today. I should've done it along time ago. The bike always fixes everything. 

There's an old cut-off road that runs over Sherman Creek at the confluence where it meets the Columbia. The road cuts off right as it crosses an amazingly cool old bridge. Last summer, I parked there a couple times, climbed down to the creek below and fly-fished it for about a mile upstream. It was fantastic. I plan on going there many times next summer.

Anyway, this bridge figures into my past when I used to ride up to the river frequently. I had studied the map for the approach from the south but never figured it out. When approaching from Spokane, that bridge is about at mile 110 or so and I never had the will to drop down and see what the deal was because I didn't want to climb back out if I got jammed up.

So today, Maddie and I took the fatbikes and trucked out over the bridge. As soon as we got to the otehr side and interesting little trail (with boy scout signage) emerged. Maddie was all over that. The trail wound around a giant canyon and dropped us down about 200 feet over the course of a 1/2 mile or so. Maddie was unfazed by the the descent, which wasn't really that technical by any real mountain biking standards, but it wasn't nothing either. The kid has some skilz.

Skilz. 

Anyway, the trail popped us out at a set of picnic tables overlooking the Columbia. It would be an amazingly great spot to set up camp. It's only accessible by trail -- no motor vehicles -- and it's within the FDR National Recreation Area, which means unless posted, camping is kosher.

The trail continued from there to an old ferry landing, which made for an excellent summer camping spot -- on the water for swimming. 

The trail then worked back up to the road -- on a nice, long, mellow grade: another excellent camping spot, this one with a crazy view north.

Big washout.  See next pic for other side of this gap.

Continuing on, we found a National Forest pit toilet. The trail hooked into an old road, which had crumbling asphalt poking through the forest floor. 

End of road. This is the other side.

This whole area is only about 15 miles from our river place. Maddie and I wondered what it might be like in the spring -- when the Columbia is drawn down and river sand/rocks are exposed for 50 feet or so on both sides. We pondered an over nighter from the river cabin -- by road, trail, and river's edge on the fat bikes to this spot.