Vacation Part 1

I have a week off. But I'm staying close to town and doing stuff. Part 1 was going up to dad's place on the Kettle River.

Very little bike content here.



Well, except for Maddie's mastery of the giant trike. Once she got it figured out, she was able to haul a load (her 2.5 year old cousin) in the basket about 1/4 of a mile to my dad's place.



We did a ton of swimming in the Kettle. Which is a great river. And one of the last clean ones. I've been swimming there since I was younger than Maddie and I love that river - especially this time of year. It's cool and calm.



We framed out a sort of complex wall for my dad's addition. Note the angled top there. 17.5% to be exact.



Maddie drove the ancient truck. As he let me, Dad let her just drive off the road. Liza was not so sure of that, but she played along as Maddie concentrated on keeping us away from the (big) trees. Maddie is so much braver than I ever was. Not sure if that's a good thing or not.

We ate a shitpile of junk food. Nothing like having a small local general store just a short ride away. Oreos, Nutter Butters, chips, Budweiser, ice cream... good stuff that. Ugh. I'm feeling it.



Part 2 of vacation will consist of a couple day rides and at least one wheel build. There may be a bike build (bi-annual single speed mountain bike build) in there if I get the wheel done quickly.

Part 3 will be hanging with my brozers on the lake this weekend. Likely no pics or official documentation on that part of the vacation. It already has never happened. Knowwhatimean? Nudge nudge wink wink.

The lesson: listen to Jeff

John: wanna take the trails home?

Jeff: no, my legs are tired. Don't you have eggs in your bag?

John: yes

Jeff: uh... be careful on the trails. Ya know, with the eggs.

John: It's fine. see ya

Midnight Century 09

The Results

Turn out this year was about 20 riders, with 12 finishing.

I took notes on finishers:

Tom McFadden (sp?) blazed the course at 6:20.

The group I was in rolled in at 7:55. This group also included Michael Sullivan, Willy Keane, David Goode, and Ron Dykes.

Second group, Ben Tobin and Jake McBurns came in at 8:12.

Then Jonathon Hawkins and Roger Young at 8:21.

Then Jayce Robertson rolled in at 8:44. I think he came in from Spangle via 195, though that's not verified.

Dan Nortondale came in at 8:49.

DNF'ers that I know of:

Pat S: to Sands Road

Patrick S to Palouse

Glen C, Eric E, to ?

Noah S, Theo P, to Palouse

Tom to ?

Gus M, to Spangle

DB ?

If you rode and have more info to share let me know. If you don't want your name up here, let me know that too and I'll take it off. FYI -- midnightcentury.com is pending as a place to provide ride details with gpx downloads and year by year finishers.

The report

As I assumed I would, I had a harder go of it this year, though I beat my time by a hair. I've not been riding as much this year.

We left the Elk at 11:59. It was 83 degrees.

Right at the start the ride broke up. Tom (the 6:20 guy) just took off. The last I saw him was when he turned off of 1st Ave onto Bernard.

From there the ride broke into 3 groups. I was in the second group. As we got to state line some of the first group was waiting. I kept going. My plan was to stop at the top of either the first climb or the second climb and do food so I just kept on riding.

The group shifted members a bit at this point as we climbed the first hard dirt climb on N Idaho road. Glen was over geared and really had a hard time pushing up the steep grade. Another rider, Tom (whose last name I don't know, but he's a cyclocross guy) really hammered up this hill. My legs felt ok but my stomach wasn't right and it never got right. It pretty much felt like shit most of the night.

It was on N Idaho road that we saw the first of many smiley faces left by Tom. On this road the smiley face was made up of pine cones. I was never able to get a picture since my camera has to "think" so long before it fires.

The descent into Liberty Lake was great. It's a twisty steep hill. It's fun to go down behind a pack of well-lit cyclists and watch the various cyclists descend. Pat flew down this hill with amazing grace and speed.

At the cross roads of Liberty Lake -- right before we started the next climb up Molter, we ran across a couple guys (Noah and Theo) who were waiting. They showed up to the Elk a couple minutes late and we'd already left, so they hot-footed it out the Centennial Trail and hooked over Liberty Lake overpass to cut us off. As we chatted, more cyclists came down the hill from N Idaho climb and joined us. We must have been about a dozen when we started the climb up Molter.

At the top of Molter, I got a call from Erik, who was asking me directions. He mentioned some names I hadn't heard of and I wasn't much help. I told him to find Molter: go to the west side of Liberty Lake and find the climb out.

Molter is a long steady grade that pays off with a great descent. We pedaled through and down to Saltese and connected with Linke. At this point, the our group solidified: Me, Ron, David, Willy, and Sully. We climbed up Linke then down the other side, where we stopped for about 5 minutes and shuffled water and fussed a bit. The next stretch to Sands Road was uneventful.

Sands is always eventful because you climb and climb and then climb to Bruna. On the descent from Bruna, David pinch flatted. He was running 28mm slicks. Although he only had one flat, David's tires made the second half of the ride pretty hard for him. He's a strong rider so he was able to keep it going, but unless your small and super fit and super skilled, I think this course requires fatter tires.

Ron and Sully were both on cross bikes, running about 32 or 35 mm tires. They held up great. Ron is a super strong rider and comes from a mountain bike background. Watching him descend on Elder Road down to Valley Chapel, it's clear he's got some skills.

By the time we got to Spangle Creek climb, it was getting light out. I was really sucking on climbs and the other four guys waited for me (thankfully). We rolled into Spangle at about 5:30 where we sat and ate for about 10 minutes. This was our longest rest. The sign at the bank said 59 degrees.

The piece from Spangle, over Jenson road and onto the Fish Lake Trail was rough. Jenson was really rutted with washboards and had sections of deep gravel. The FLT is a mess right now and pushing through that deep rocky crap after 90 miles of hard pedaling was difficult. David finally gave up trying to push his 28mm tires through the rocks and deep stuff on the Fish Lake Trail and bailed at Marshall Road. Sully, Ron, Willy, and I continued on the trail to Sunset Highway.

It was glorious to roll into Marron's and have a meal. Unlike last year, where just 3 of us finished and ate our victory breakfast, this year, teams of guys rolled in as we sipped on coffee and carried on. Each person rolling in was greeted with applause. It was fun.

Tom's time was amazing. That's a really hard course and I'm going to stop saying it's not so bad. It's bad. There's a lot of climbing and a lot of hard dirt and gravel. But anyway, I think the "Whoa baby" award goes to Ben Tobin who pushed his single speed 29'er over this course. I can't even imagine. If I had a single gear that would allow me to get up the climbs I would've spun out at about 8 mph on the flats. Anyway, Ben was all smiles and happy.

Great job all. This is my favorite ride of the year and I look forward to next year. If you rode this and I screwed up a detail or messed up a misspelling or if I missed something important, please let me know so I can get the details right for midnightcentury.com. If you've got pictures, send them my way.

What I don't know does fill volumes

Hubs

Last night was the first volunteer mechanic class at Pedals2People. I sort of hastily arranged it and one two of us showed up to learn about hubs from Willy. The idea with these classes is that we bring in pro mechanics and gurus to teach the volunteers more about wrenching.

I've always hacked my way through bike fixing. I break stuff; I reassemble it in the wrong order; I might read some Sheldon Brown if I get really stuck. Generally, though I know just enough to keep stuff basically running. Not necessarily running well or optimized, but just running.

Last night we disassembled and overhauled a Surly hub with cartridge/enduro bearings and a basic Shimano bearing hub. We looked at the guts of a high-zoot Bontrager that had failed and we finished by looking at Willy's Hugi hubs (a great hub, worthy of a dedicated post).

I've yanked apart and repacked hubs before, but going through this exercise with Willy sort of puts a rational order around the process. I learned a lot of details and I have some notes, but the big money item is my Surly lesson.

Let me start by apologizing to the people at Surly for being a total jackass who doesn't know shit. Not that they ever read this blog, but I dissed their hub and bitched about how I couldn't get the cartridge bearings out of their hub. If you read that post you'll see that since I didn't know how to use the enduro bearing puller I ended up bang and beating and heating the hub to get the bearings out. Then when I put the new ones back in, (this part is not documented), I put them in stupidly (hammer, etc) and ruined them. Then when I couldn't adjust out the play (because I destroyed the bearings when installing them), I bitched some more about how the hubs suck. I will go back to that post and point to this post for people that find it on a search. Now that I know how to remove and install these bearings, I'm looking forward to getting a new set of enduros for my fixed/free hub and getting my wheel going again.

Generally speaking: I really need to overhaul all of my hubs. That's my project for the next week or so.

Disk Brakes

I've had my Rawland for over a year now. And the front disk brake has always been super touchy to set up. I just assumed this was the disk brake trade off. Whenever I removed my front wheel, I had to readjust the entire disk caliper so it wouldn't rub.

Last week, I got to the point where I couldn't adjust the rub away. When I leaned on the bike and put a bunch of load into the left side, the disk would ring. Very annoying.

Enter Dan the Man. Dan Webber is one of the mechanics at REI. I explained my predicament to Dan as he gave the bike a quick shake down on the stand. "Have you faced the disk tabs?"

Huh?

As I mentioned when I got this frame, the finish work on the Rawland is pretty standard for a production frame. Nothing was faced or chased and the powdercoat was sort of applied unevenly. For the record, Sean at Rawland Cycles, offered to swap frames out for one with a nicer paint job, as the initial batch apparently had a few boners in it. Anyway, the disk tab had a pretty sizable uneven build-up of powdercoat that made it impossible to get the caliper installed in a way that is perfect and true.

Dan faced the tab and I'm in disk bliss. I should probably apologize to Shimano now since I've been grumbling and bitching about how temperamental their disk calipers are, but I've not been too public about that -- since I think deep down I figured it was a frame issue. I'm glad to report it was only a paint issue and not a misplaced tab issue.

My buddy Patrick has the same issue on his front disk tab. Hmmm. He rides a Surly Karate Monkey, a frame that is also made and powder coated at Maxway.

See you tonight!

Maddie anticipates a shift

Maddie and I find ourselves riding up to Super 1 about every other Sunday for some reason or another. Now that she has a bike with a shifter (6 speed freewheel on a mid-90's girlie Giant 20"-wheeled "mountain" bike...whew!), she's slowly warming up to the idea of shifting.

It's really all I can do to shut the hell up. I want to tell her to shift all the time, but I don't. Well, hardly ever. I suggested a shift the other morning as she grinded up a small hill. I think she had forgotten that she had gears. She downshifted and took off.

When you approach Super 1 from the Pear Tree side, there's a steep little hill that runs about 40 yards or so. On Sunday mornings there is very little traffic, so a couple weeks ago, Maddie figured out that with a good run-up to the hill, she could get to the top without walking it. She hit it hard and then grinded out the last 10 yards or so. It was a big achievement. She was psyched.

This week, just as she finished the big run up -- right in front of the entrance of the Pear Tree, she downshifted. It was so smooth and so natural, I assumed that her bike ghost-shifted. But it didn't. She anticipated it, and shifted as smooth as any veteran rider: no clanking or overloaded stress, just a smooth downshift, whereupon she sailed up the hill as gracefully as can be.

When she told me that she did in fact shift, I was, and still am, amazed at the grace. Maybe it was all luck and it just as easily could've turned into a mis-shift and wreck (as she did a couple weeks ago on flat ground), but I'm going to believe, and I'm telling her, that it was a flawless shift made by a skilled rider.

Badger, again

Patrick and I took a leisurely ride to Badger Lake yesterday. I had this overnighter on my calendar for a couple months, so I was sort of conflicted when Jeff announced a one-off FBC ride for tomorrow. According to Liza (who represented the Speare-Mattana family), Jeff broke all records with last night's ride, so I don't feel so bad for missing it, but it would've been nice to see friends.

In any case, we had a nice time at the lake. Badger is just perfect right now. Swimming temperature-wise: it's super refreshing at the moment. I may make a run out there next Friday just to take a swim for a couple hours, then ride back. If I go, I'm bringing an air mattress and some goggles.

I've done this ride probably 6 or 7 times, but I've never done it on a bike with fat nobbies. The route is mostly rail trail and then the best part is on an abandoned road. These tires (quasi-motos) made it a very comfy and easy ride. The Rawland, set up with fattish nobbies is well-suited for this kind of overnighter.

As promised, the work has begun on the Fishlake Trail. What has been wide single track in the past, is not wide double track and in the initial stages of prep. This compare this picture with this one:


The were taken at the same spot.

Round up

Last Friday, Willy, Patrick, Joe, and I rode the first half of the Midnight Century. It was too hot for that kind of tomfoolery. Joe was smart; he bailed at Liberty Lake and went back to Spokane on the trail. Willy, Patrick, and I pressed on. It was about 98 F. I drank lots of water. Probably about 2 gallons. But I only peed once at the end of the day. Not good. Coming up Sands Road, I was getting a bit rummy and sort of spacey. A couple miles later we came to the top of a hill where someone was watering their lawn. There was also a fruit tree in the yard. We broke our "don't stop longer than 5 minutes rule" and soaked in the sprinklers and hung out under the tree. That made all the difference.
The t-shirts are hanging in Object Space, they are part of a show that Bruce Hormann has put together a show, "Punk Art Retrospective 197?-2009". I lease a space in the Object Space building from Bruce for my day job so I've been watching this show come together. I wasn't into punk when I grew up here in the 80's, but this collection is still really fascinating to me. Spokane had (and still has) a rich sort of underground culture. I don't know how else to classify it, "underground," "punk," "non-mainstream?" I don't know, but looking at the zines and band fliers that span the last 20+ years I am sort of regretful that I didn't explore more of the edges of the music scene in Spokane as I grew up. This show captures a local piece of historical perspective that I think is important. The care that Bruce takes in cataloging the hundreds of pieces that have been dug out of attics and basements and back rooms by his friends is impressive. You should go and you should donate a few bucks to the donation jar so Bruce can continue to do shows that no one else in town would or could do. Opening reception is tomorrow night and the show runs through the end of the month. Hours are 4pm till late-ish. It's at 1818 1/2 E Sprague.

This is Jens. He's German. He's 23 and he's travelled more miles on his bike since he was 16 than I'll probably ever travel. He rolled through town on July 18th, which was fortunate for him since it was my birthday and we were having a backyard movie and cake. It was also fortunate since July 18th was also his birthday.

A couple interesting Jens facts:

• His first tour was across Europe when he was 16
• When he was 19 he rode from Turkey to Vietnam, via Iran, Pakistan, over the Himalayas, through China, and Laos. I needled him for a couple hours on this trip. Amazing stories. His way into China and how he had to work the visa system is impressive and took some serious guts.
• Zoom in on his bike pic there and you'll see a little box taped to his head tube. It's a recharging unit his buddy made for him. It contains a couple cell phone batteries. During the day he charges the batteries with his dynohub, then at night he has a bit of juice for charging his phone or other small devices.
• His bike is hearty. Tried and true stuff there.

Here's a porteur from Specialized. It's called the Globe Live. Whoa Nelly. I don't want to say I told you so, but I called this one.

On paper they've done a really good job with their first attempt. We can't give them too much credit, since the design has been well-known for over 50 years, but the fact that they got the essential details right is heads and tails above what other big bike companies have done when they attempt a practical bike (ahem-Simple City-ahem). The Medium and Large sizes have low trail to handle the front load. It ships with fattish tires (35mm) and full aluminum fenders (that's a big deal); it's got nice components, not junk - a chain guard. The fancier versions have 8 speed internal hubs, with the fanciest running Alfine and disks.

In my opinion, there are two screw ups. Clearly, it should be a steel bike, but that's really just my preference and not a screw up. Though, some would argue that a properly raked and tapered steel fork would make for a much smoother ride than the fork that ships with it and I'd agree with them.

But here's the nits:

1. The Small size uses 700c wheels. It's got to be expensive to spec different sized wheels when your doing huge runs on these bikes, but you can't get the front end right on this bike when you shrink it and put 700c wheels on it. The small size looses the low trail and therefore looses the handling characteristics of such bikes when you load them up. If you buy it. Don't buy the small.

2. The rack will wobble if you put too much weight in it. It's not triangulated properly. As Jan Heine noted on an iBOB thread discussing this rack:

some people still don't understand triangulation of racks - this one is a  perfect parallelogram with slanted sides. Put a heavy load on it, and  it'll try to flatten out, going down and toward the back. And since  it's not supported at the top, it'll tend to swing sideways, too. 

All the same, I think this is a great effort by a big bike company. At $600 the single speed version is tempting. The multi-geared versions use an eccentric bottom bracket for tensioning. And the super version uses a belt drive! Pretty sensible, that.

I had more to say. But for the love of Pete. I gotta stop. If you read this far. Thanks.