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.

Summer thoughts

As it snow/hails/rains buckets out side my window on this late April day, here are the bikey summer thoughts that are sustaining me:

• Colville Nat'l Forest: I'm gonna rock that forest this summer. Rock it man! I'm going to dial in the river property set up and fill all gaps with Barstow hangs.


• Quickie overnighters. For the itty-bitty gaps, I'm going after the S12O. We've identified a very good potential spot. It's only 13 miles away. This means that I can go on a whim, after I put Maddie to sleep. It also means we may have a great 1st-timer destination. 13 miles!! Anyone can do that.


• Midnight Century. I'm pondering a tandem run on the course this year. We simply need better photos of this event. A good stoker would be able to push me up all the good hills AND get sweet photos (not of my ass of course).


• Pump track building: Hopefully this phase will go quickly.


• Pump track riding: I'm really looking forward to getting better at riding a mountain bike and I'm putting a lot of eggs (which represent skill building) in the pump track basket. (You know you have a bad metaphor if it requires parenthetical explanation.)


• Early morning trail riding on the bluff. One of my favorite summer time happiness logs on the fire of radness is riding the Highdrive trails in shirtsleeves at 7 AM. Verily.


• A few all day rides. This may be combined with the first bullet. There are a lot of great routes up to Barstow.


• At least 3 proper S24O's.


• At least one proper 2+ day bike camping event. Preferably in CDA forest. Preferably with Alex and co.

I'm curious -- what's sustaining you?

SMKPMMR this Sunday

Ice. Snow. Near-zero temps.

Because we must.

Leave the Foutain at 8:42.

Slow and social. But not really fit for kids.

High And Outside

My brother John is far more skilled with tools 'n' such than I am. Just for grins he decided to make a pannier of sorts from an old piece of luggage. The mounting bracket on it is attached to a 1/8th inch piece of plexiglass on the inside.

He says it looks funny, works okay, and weighs in at 4-1/2 pounds on the Safeway vegetable scale (more funny looks).

The title of this post? That's where the center of gravity is once you load this bad boy up with beer and snacks.

Friday Sept 24th

Chilled bike ride with Patrick. We connected with that super bumpy rocky rail trail that goes from Euclid Road, above Riverside State Park, and pops out near Trail Road.

We came down a trail that was too rough for my poor Elephant. I felt bad for abusing it, but everything held up ok. That's Patrick behind the blade of grass.

My MIL, Maria, prepares olives every fall. I asked her who taught her the method. She said she just watched her mom do it while growing up in Sicily. But her mom never explained it or let her help. Maria cooks/prepares a lot of yummy food and she learned it all like this -- just watching. I find that interesting. I'm such an annoying question-asker, but that's not how it worked in the old country in the old days I guess.

Her sugo recipe is here. This is the first fall in at least 6 years that we're not making sugo.

While Maria crushed olives, I laced up the new dyno-drum wheel for the cycle truck. Shit lacing up these little bastards is a pain. Luckily, a buddy has my tensionometer so that gave me an excuse not to finish the job today.

When Maddie got home we climbed the neighbor's plum tree and harvested. I think if we didn't eat the plums on this tree, the neighbors would've cut it down by now. We have a nice shoot on our side of the fence that should start bearing fruit in a couple years, so if they chop it, we'll be ok.

Maddie can eat an amazing number of plums. We'll end up drying most of these. Tomorrow is apple day. We'll be making apple sauce and apple butter. I love fall.

Surly love

I mentioned hording in my last post. I've said (and un-said) lame and wrong things about Surly hubs. Some person started following my blog who is a Surly guy. And Surly has just put up some new stuff on their site. All of this Surly-ness prompts a quickie.

Hording: God I know I have a problem with hording. I am unloading though. In the last few months, I got rid of my two RB1 frames (well, one was Liza's; one was mine), a Kogswell frame, a fully built up RB-T, and my beloved Trek 720. There's probably more, but a lot of bikes find me and then go away, so I don't keep exact track. Next up is another RB-T frame and another RB-1 frame.

The point: there is a frame I'd love to horde. Because I fear it will go away. I fear it will go away because people don't get how rad it is and it will go the way of the Instigator. Anyway, it is a 58 cm Surly LHT with 26" wheels. That's the frame set I want to horde. I don't need it now, but someday I will and I fear it will be gone. I am strong and I will not horde. It is the old way. But I'd trade an RB-T and/or an RB-1 frame for one if that worked for someone. Doh!

Other interesting Surly new stuff is on their blog (thanks for the link Ventura).

• There's a new trailer that looks overbuilt in that Surly way. Hauls up to 300 lbs.
• There's a bike called the Troll which looks to be a direct competitor to Salsa's Fargo.
• There's a new Pugsley rim which is drilled and light looking. (For a giant rim)
• And there's a Pugsley complete bike for $1550. Which is great. Since Salsa just released a Pugsley compete that ships for about the same cost. I've been wanting a Pugsley forever, but I just can't justify it. Which is kind of weird. We need to encourage everyone who thinks they want a Pugsley to buy one. Then in about 3-4 years, I should be able to get the frameset, wheels, and tires nice and cheap ... used.
• And there's some other minor updates to Steamroller, KM, Longbike, etc.

Anyway, the point here is to show some Surly love. The Surly people make solid, high-value bikes. I don't own any, but whenever someone asks me what they should get as a commuter, I always say a x-check or a LHT: best value around for a daily single bike-owner commuter.

Soft break

I've got some heavy stuff going on at the moment. For the 12 people that follow this blog religiously, you may have noticed a sharp drop off in posts. Expect more of the same for a bit. I'll be posting, but not much for a few weeks.

Rachel, Hank, Mike, Curmudgeon, Barb, SRTC folk, Justin, Glen, Mike, gNate -- if you've been sitting on a post idea for a while, now would be a good time to let her rip.

And if someone else out there has though that it would be cool to post their cycling-related Spokane perspective here, send me an email with your draft post and if I like it, I'll give you perms and you can post too. If you read this blog, you know I'm not looking for Shakespearian prose, but if you send me a post on why you think people should wear helmets, don't be hurt if I don't post it.

My 39th birthday

Friday birthday lunch at mom's. That's apricot btw.

Watching this morning's tour stage with Patrick at The Scoop.

Joe, Patrick, and I took a great trail ride this morning: an extended version of the Sunday morning SOS loop.

My 39 year old mug. Liza says I look smug. Actually, I'm just not the most photogenic guy on the planet.

Joe and Patrick minding the rules. It was busy at Bowl and Pitcher this morning.

Yay. Maddie made me a double-sided poster and a card. And was super rad to me all day today: for example,, when she brought me a mid-day beer, she delivered it with my favorite glass.

I sat down to string up a wheel. I started it on Friday, but it appeared the spokes were too long so I set it aside after stringing up the first set of spokes.

Thinking on it over a couple days, I figured it was just the odd combo of tiny rim with honkin' hub that made the spokes seem too long: maybe everything would work itself out when I tensioned it up.

Nope. The spokes are too long.

The issue? The Sturmey Archer specs page says the flange width is 58mm. And it is. But Spocalc wants distance from center of hub to flange. I just put 58mm in the flange field and should have put 29 for both left and right center-to-flange measurements.

Damn. So I ordered another (ahem, my third) set of spokes for this build.

Liza made a great big pot of puttanesca and some green beans with garlic scapes. I made a Caesar salad that was a bit disappointing. I'd give anything for the Caesar dressing recipe we used at Patsy Clarks a million years ago. I probably made 100+ gallons of that dressing when I was in high school and I'll be a monkey's uncle if I can remember the details.

The puttanesca was great.

Maddie provided entertainment with the mud pie. Beth is clearly riveted.

I'm a lucky guy.

Indaba Coffee

I like drip coffee. In my mind there's two kinds of drip coffee: the high-falutin' kind and the diner kind. Both can be great in their own way. I love the Farmer's Brothers (?) coffee up at The Chalet. Their coffee is simple and requires no commitment. It's like pop music or lager beer: simple and satifying.

As for the high-falutin coffee, for some reason the Spokane region is blessed with many roasters. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a roaster. So, of course the region is filled with high-falutin coffee drinkers that are very opinionated when it comes to defending their favorite. And many high-falutin coffee drinkers only drink espresso-based drinks. And they'll assume that if a roaster makes a great espresso roast, then they must have a great drip. I've not found that to be the case. Very few coffee shops appreciate this -- or, they just have different taste opinions than I do. But my sense is that they buy a roaster's bean based on the esspresso bean, and then just take whatever they have for the drip.


My opinion: drip should be served in small, hot cups. Not soup bowls with handles which act like giant heat-sinks.

Back when Bittersweet first opened, they had two coffee suppliers: one for drip (which was really good), and one for espresso. And they had free refills. What a great thing. Soon after though, they fell back to single-supplier mode and their drip became not rad.

I'll drink an Americano only if I'm not sure of the drip flavor. If I don't know the drip coffee, or if it's one of the many local roasters whose drip blends I don't like, I'll just go for the Americano.

And let's not even talk about Joe's Coffee. He introduced the "drip coffee can be insanely good" concept to me about 6 years ago. He used B&B out of Olympia and Joe was very very into his drip coffee. Damn good stuff. It was a crying shame when he closed his shop. Because that boy can bake too.

Today, my favorite drip coffee is The Scoop. They use Bumpercrop coffee. These guys are serious about their drip coffee. All of the drips that The Scoop sells are single-source beans (not blended). And free refills. One thing these serious-drippers do, is use small consumer coffee makers. It's more labor intensive, but it seems to make a difference.

I'm so thankful that The Scoop is just a couple minutes away.

Joe. Not baking or brewing coffee.

So, this is all the context, the preamble, to introduce the hands-down, best coffee in town. It's at Indaba. Which is down on Broadway.

These guys are geeks about their coffee. They French press their coffee. They time (with a little nerdy digital timer) each brew for 4 minutes, then they pour the coffee into a (pre-heated) carafe and serve it in pre-heated cups. They use Bumpercrop.

If you like drip, you'll love the French press. I rarely make coffee at home, but when I do, this how I make it. (Liza loves the old percolator -- which apparently in the coffee world is a crime, since it boils the water, but the perc is damn handy, and it's chrome!) Anyway, the Indaba coffee is just silly good. Stupid good. Great stuff.

Add to the fact that Indaba is the only place I know of that is open before 10 am on a Sunday in the downtown region that gives a hoot about good coffee. Since discovering Indaba, our Sunday morning rides have morphed into trail rides that always end at there.

If you hang at Indaba, you may see Patrick. On his way to The Scoop. Good coffee makers apparently hang together.

They've got some food there. The baked goods do not stand up to the greatness of their coffee, but they'll also make you a pannini-type sandwich deal with Bouzie's foccacia. Pretty good stuff. But it's the coffee that will keep you coming back.

Freds rejoice!

This just in.

Shimano has gone back to their original 2-strap sandal style for the 2010 version. Hallelujah.

I've carried on endlessly about the demise of the 2-strap Shimano sandals on this blog. And then there's the Keen Commuter woes.

Everytime I talk sandals, I fear the wrath of BSNYC, or his/her followers, but I am proud to speak for the wool-sock-with-sandal-wearing nerds of Fredom.

Thank you Shimano for making your sandal look and act more like a sandal again. Now if we can just get Ibex to bring back the Hybrid...

Rickshaw Radness

How long has this been here? I go by here 2+ times a day and just noticed it today.(The rickshaw, not the market.) Gnate, you need one of these. I think there's enough room in the seat for Barney.