Another Year

It's almost over!

This year, I am working much later in the year than I have since I started touring, what feels like a very long three years ago. I'm grateful for the work, but I don't get home until December 19, just in time to not relax at all before the holidays.

I've been on a rap/pop music tour most of the late fall and early winter.  I had about ten days off after the big March-September country-pop gig ended, and then headed down to Alabama for the production build and rehearsals for this show.  This show started off pretty shakily, with a lot of gear, and quite a few people getting cut, but we all managed to find our feet and figure out how to manage the load ins and outs.

As this year winds down, I find myself in a place where I don't really know how I feel about concert touring. I love the actual work parts of the job as a PA tech, but I feel like I'm coming to value the things in life that touring pretty directly interferes with. However, there are some very good looking opportunities on the horizon, and I want to work, and save, as much as possible in the early portions of next year, as I'm planning something big for next fall. It's been coming for a while, and after receiving the blessings of a few people, I'm definitely going to take the leap.

Trucker Iterations

I like fiddling with things.

The OG:

Stock build, with Crank Bros. Candy pedals.  Did and overnighter, and rode most of the first fall/winter that I had the bike.

The GAP/C&O Interation:

On-One Midge handlebars, Lame ass rear panniers, Arkel handlebar boner bag.  I really like that handlebar bag. Nitto rack up front for a stuff sack.

The rear panniers made pushing the bike around kind of lame.  Also, a photo of Cass Gilbert portaging his rackless Surly Ogre kind of gave me a hard-on for that aesthetic.  I really like those handlebars, but I think that the actual drop portion of the bar isn't the most usable if you also want to use your hoods as a hand position.

The Current Build:

The obvious huge change is the switch to the Jones H-Bars, I haven't had a chance to add bar tape to the other grippy areas yet.  Super comfy, obviously not as stretched out as drop bars, but I'm considering another 10mm of stem.  Right not it's a 90mm stem, and I'm thinking about going to 100mm.  Paul Thumbies hold the shifters (in super sexy friction mode), and Avid levers handle the stopping.  My Brooks saddle is broken in enough to ride at least 30 miles and feel ok with no chamois.  I'll have to try some longer rides.

The rear rack and Dill Pickle saddlebag are straight up thefts from Gypsy By Trade.  It is pretty versatile, looks swanky, and you have room to lash things in the space between the back of the rack and the saddlebag if you want to.  I carried a collapsing stool and my tent pole under the flap of the bag, and that worked out alright.

The Arkel front panniers kick some serious ass, and they look nice.  That's an Old Man Mountain front rack, and it's fantastic.  I'm considering trying a basket approach to an overnight, so the OMM rack would be vital to that setup.

The front-biased load makes the steering super stable, because I'm fairly upright and already putting a lot of weight on the rear wheel.  I much prefer it to rear panniers, although no panniers is probably the most fun.

I'm not done fiddling, and I really want to find a small Ogre to test ride.  I like the Jones bars, but an actual mountain bike might be a better fit with them, and I like the big wheels.  Plus, the Ogre, or maybe even a Troll or custom built Salsa El Mariachi would probably lend themselves better to the rack-light or rackless set ups.

Through every iteration, this bike has been comfy, stable, and utterly reliable. I trust the bike to go when I push the pedals, and stop when I squeeze the brake levers, and that's what I think is the most important characteristic of a touring bike.  It might not be fast, but I'm not that fast on any bike.

LA S24O

So, I pretty much just looked at the video Path Less Pedaled did about bike camping from Los Angeles, and did the same thing, minus the public transit.

I happened to have a few consecutive days off in LA, while on a big country/pop tour, so I brought along a new acquisition, a Surly Traveler's Check that I found on ebay a while ago, and took off for Leo Carillo State Beach/Park.

I started at the Omni Hotel on Olive in Downtown LA.  The 15 miles of city riding each day were tedious, but I felt safe. I suppose I can write them off as "transport stages."  After making it to Venice, I headed up the various bike paths that run along the beach until they ended, and then took to the PCH.  There was a decent amount of traffic, although hitting the busy parts of the PCH fairly early on Saturday and Sunday mornings meant that I dodged a lot of commuters, and meant that the city riding was also taking place during less congested times of the week.

The PCH was great, except that it's a goddamned parking lot.  No, seriously, you can just park your car in the shoulder and go do whatever, so the PCH is literally a parking lot.  Some people park too close to the traffic lane, leading to some tight squeezes with traffic, but I never felt like the situation was out of control.  Once you get to Malibu, some hills start, but they're not too bad, unless you're an out of shape audio tech from Flatsville Ohio.  I walked the last 1/3 of the first big hill because I messed up my shifting, but for the rest of the trip, including some seriously steep sections of Olive in downtown LA at the very end of the trip back, I stayed on the bike.  The granny gear got a rather extensive workout, and I definitely pushed too hard in too high of gears on some hills on the trip out to Leo Carillo, because my left knee spent all of the afternoon telling me to go do something indecent to myself, and most of the trip back to LA too.  Exactly the same as what I experienced at the end of the GAP/C&O trip.  I think it's just overuse, and if I spent more time on the bike, and maybe did some exercise to specifically strengthen my knees, I'd be fine.  Although it could also be a bike fit issue, but I think that because I have such a sporadic riding schedule, it seems like sudden onset bike touring is my problem.

The Hiker/Biker sites at Leo Carillo are as great as advertised, and although I made it in way before anyone else because I left LA at 7:00 AM, the bike tourists all showed up later in the afternoon.  A trio of friends from Utah/North Carolina, a Californian man that saved up enough to quit his job and bike for a handful of years while he worked on his writing, and an Israeli man, who now lives in Vancouver and was pretty happy to be close to San Diego, where he's ending his trip.  Talking to everyone got me pretty excited about maybe someday cycling the northern bit of the Pacific Coast, which has been in the back of my mind for a while now.  I can do without LA, having seen it now, but Vancouver to San Francisco, maybe with a detour into Portland, sounds pretty awesome.  My knee disagreed with the unstable nature of the sand and rocks of the beach itself, so I spent most of my time burning things in the big fire pit in my campsite and reading.

You might notice that there's something missing from this pile of gear. A real sleeping bag.  I just brought a bag liner because I figured that southern California was pretty warm in the summer. That was a pretty big assumption, and it turned out to be a pretty poor one.  I ended up wearing a t-shirt, a jersey, the long sleeve smartwool bit, and my socks and legwarmers to sleep, and I was still super cold.  I had to curl up in a ball on my thermarest and tuck my head inside the bag liner so that my respiration could maybe warm my legs to not be shivering like mad.  I even put the rainfly on my tent despite the perfectly clear night to try and reflect some warmth back in on myself.  I might have been better off just wrapping myself up in the rainfly.

The Camp Store had beer, not cheap, but about what you'd expect to pay for a Fat Tire at a decent bar. ($2.99)

I do wish that I'd brought the Brooks, but I don't think that on that frame, which is maybe one size too large to be optimal, with the saddle height that I need, I'd have been able to use the Revelate "Pika" bag.  I used all Revelate Designs bags, a harness and large pocket up front, supplemented by a Mountain Feedbag.  A Tangle framebag, and the Pika in the rear. I did wear a backpack, although if I had wider handlebars, and had brought a larger dry bag, I could have probably gone without it.  The backpack was my little REI Flash 18, which is super versatile, and one of the better values in carry that I think you can find today.  I had a small 50 oz camelback bladder, a book, a midweight Smartwool top, and my phone/wallet bits in the backpack.  It didn't feel too burdensome, although biking without a backpack feels the least burdensome of the backpack options.

My new/replacement Benchmade knife was useful for processing some firewood that I had to buy into smaller bits so that I could actually start the fire, but it's a much lighter model, the 530, than my missing Mini Griptilian, and feels a bit less satisfying in your hand when you're working with it.  However, it does look nice.

The GAP and C&O Towpath trails.

From June 4-8, I spent the majority of my waking hours on my bicycle.  I drove to Pittsburgh the morning of the 4th, and then took off towards Washington DC on a route that links two popular trails to connect both cities completely off road, away from motor vehicle traffic.

I covered a lot more mileage each day than I anticipated, largely because the terrain was very easy, and there is almost no thought required to navigate on these trails.  It's a bit of a curvy line, but it's just a line, connecting the two cities, with good signage.  Honestly, I probably overdid it on the mileage, as my left knee began to bug me on the last day, which was nearly 80 miles on the bike, dodging mud puddles, then cars and large crowds of homosexuals (and Allies) in DC (it was Pride Week, and I stumbled into an extremely large Pride parade).

PHOTO TIME!

Sorry for the mix of real camera and iPhone photos.  I experienced two days of nonstop rain, and the real camera didn't come out to play during that.

I generally took too much stuff, but it's a bit misleading because the panniers were not completely full.  Next time, no panniers.  Completely pointless weight to be carrying around on a trip if they're not full. And, on a trip of this length, you just don't need that much stuff.

It was a blast!  I'd ride the GAP again anytime, but I wouldn't ride the Towpath at such a pace if there was weather.  I'd let it dry off a bit.  It's kind of a shame that the Towpath exists in the state that it is compared to how wonderfully maintained the GAP is, but the trail surface and rain added a bit of adversity (and therefore adventure) to an otherwise super laid back route, so I suppose I can't complain too much.

This fall, I'm thinking about some dirt roads and national forests in the UP, or maybe just leaving from home and heading off on the ACA's Underground Railroad route, which runs within five miles of my parents' home.

I also have a journal formatted writeup over on Crazy Guy, which has details on each individual day.
Find it by clicking here: CLICK RIGHT HERE YO!

Colorado in April

Find a bike. Ride the bike. Drink the beers. Look at big rocks, and maybe stand on them.

I found an old, red, Univega mountain bike.  Rigid, with a drivetrain that would serve my purposes for the week, but I replaced the saddle and grips.  I added some Revelate Designs bags and an Arkel handlebar bag to avoid carrying a backpack, and off I went.



I set out on my second morning in town to find the end of the Poudre Trail in Bellvue, and I found Watson Lake.  At the literal "end of the trail" sign, I didn't feel like stopping, so I turned right onto the dirt road that happily led me to the lake.  I didn't look at a map of the end of the trail before I left my friend's apartment, so I really had no idea that this lake existed.  I brought my host back here later in the week, because she also didn't know that this lake existed.

I spent another day riding around Fort Collins, sticking to the trails and doing a bit of reading in the afternoon.  On Friday however, my host's only commitment was teaching in the afternoon, so we left her apartment early in the morning to hike up to Horsetooth Rock.  Strangely, although she has hiked in the park multiple times, she had never been to the top.  It was my second time to the top, and it turned out to be much nicer than my first trip, which was in February 2012, and a bit sketchy due to snow and ice in a few places.

Completely unrelated, but this photo layout is terrible, and I can't figure out how to make it all normal again. BOOOO!

Look at how ridiculous this is!  Positioning things within a giant text box is suboptimal.

Upon reaching the top, I snapped a few more photos and became even more frustrated with Blogger.

The cell towers in the background provided us with perfect 4G service, strange after scrambling up the side of the rock.

We walked back down the multi-use road/trail rather than the foot only trail that we had hiked up, passing a few cyclists near the bottom, one struggling straight up the mountain on a single speed.  He didn't look like he was having a great morning.  These deer, however, looked quite pleased with themselves, although they wouldn't look at the camera.

There were other adventures via bicycle and car that were not photographed, including a nice drive around the Horsetooth Reservoir, and up CO 14.  We returned over Mount Ethel on Rist Canyon Rd, which was pretty fantastic as far as mountain/canyon drives go. I left the bike and the key to it's lock with my wonderful host, hoping to retrieve it in the future. I want to redo the drivetrain and maybe find some Schwalbe Big Apples to replace the no-name knobbies currently gracing its wheels. It handles very well, and I'd like to turn it into my everyday transportation bike when I next move to a city or town.

Hey it's a post!  I declare that the trip was a victory, because I participated in bike riding, drank a few beers, made my host feel like puking during one bike ride, climbed up the side of and stood on top of a large rock, and had pizza from Beaujo's twice.

Charlotte was perfect.

I took no pictures, because I was too busy having the best day of my year.

I spent the afternoon pedaling between a handful of Charlotte bike shops, looking for some sort of SRAM 8-speed shifter to replace the hated low-end gripshift on the Dahon.  I failed at finding anything suitable, but got to meet a few of Charlotte's bike mechanics, and talk about how cool Paul Thumbies and barend shifters are.  I found the first shop, and he sent me down the hill to the second shop, that has been open longer, and has some older parts on hand.  They had 5, 6, and 7 speed shifters, but nothing in the way of 8 speed that would work.  The man there thought for a minute, and then suggested another shop, that might have more SRAM components in stock, and off I went.
It was the most corporate of the day's shops, but not an extremely large chain store, where we briefly considered a Shimano Alivio shifter set, but the left hand would have gone unused, and there was no real guarantee that the Shimano shifter would work properly with the no name derailleur that has been controlled by a SRAM shifter so far.
I talked to this last guy for the longest, including about building up bikes with barend shifters and Paul Thumbies, and then bought a set of Crank Brother's cleats from him, so that I'd have a spare set, and then I took off back towards the hotel.

First day of spring, hilly southwest Charlotte neighborhood streets, getting passed on asphalt by lycra clad men on suspiciously clean dual-suspension mountain bikes, and just the perfect amount of sunshine made the ride back to the hotel quite possibly the best ride that I've had in years.  I wouldn't mind staying here longer, but not downtown.

Reading the last few paragraphs, it doesn't really sound that fantastic, but the entire afternoon somehow granted me a perma-smile that hasn't quite gone away yet.

St. Louis Bicycle Misadventure

St. Louis, I'm not a fan.

I've been to this city on two occasions, and both times I spent a day sick as all get out from some sort of food related bullshit, and was warned about shitty areas of town.

I recently had three days off before a quick two days of shows in the city, and after the requisite day puking my guts out, I decided that I should ride the bike that I spent so much time and trouble getting out here and hauling around in the bay of the bus.

I brought my lovely Dahon Mu P8:

And by lovely, I mean that if I surfed down hills on the Goruck backpack in that photo, it would probably ride better, and be in better condition at the bottom than the bike would be after the same ordeal.  I would recommend that anyone looking for a folding bike buy anything other than a Dahon.  Half of the bolts are SAE, half are metric, and it generally seems inferior to the Dahon offshoot/domestic dispute that is Tern Bicycles in every way.  Sadly, Tern did not exist when I bought this bike, and I knew that if I'd ponied up double the money of that Dahon for a Brompton or a Bike Friday Tikit, my lady-friend at the time would have sold my testicles to recoup the extra cost.

Honestly, the bike isn't that bad, I've just not ridden it in about a year, and have been riding my Surly Disc Trucker, which although it's not a high end bike, has drivetrain components miles and miles better than this dorky chunk of aluminum, and much stabler steering.  The only real complaint I have about the bike, other than the bolts not all being metric, is the gripshifter.  I need to spend some time tuning the shifting I suppose, but I'd just rather have some sort of thumbie-ish friction shifter, and some new grips with bar ends.

But back to the misadventure!

I set out from my hotel near downtown and headed over to the Arch.  My objective was to cross both the Mississippi River, and a state line via bicycle, because I've never done either of those things (via bicycle).

This picture is cheating, this was actually taken from the first day I arrived in St. Louis.  The weather was much worse on the day I rode down here.

I was looking for the Riverfront Bike Path, which I found, next to a lovely abandoned factory of some sort.

I had been pedaling along next to what I thought was the path, underwater, according to Google Maps, but I guess in reality was not yet the path, because I had travelled almost a half a mile from the Arch before I found any signage.  I did however find this nice aquatic sculpture.

The St. Louis Riverfront Trail starts from that nice parking lot behind the sign, where I'm certain that no one ever buys hookers or blow, and then heads off into the nicest part of St. Louis that I've ever visited.  I rode along a fantastic bike lane paved with crushed glass, surrounded by empty lots and industrial buildings in various states of abandonment.  If I had punctured a tire, my plan was to just run the fuck away and try to file an insurance claim for the bike.  I was already super sketched out by the random car with Illinois plates that slowed down to check me out at the trailhead parking lot while I was taking pictures, speeding off after I'm sure that he decided that I was neither a prostitute nor a drug dealer, so I was ready to find the trail itself, where presumably I would only be accosted by bums.  The faded bike lane lines eventually directed me off the street and onto the trail itself.  The start of the actual trail evoked a sort of zany St. Louis City Museum sense of architecture that I'm sure is well utilized as shelter by homeless people in inclement weather.

I rode down the trail for a few minutes, until I came across a "trail closed" sign, a chain link fence, and no signs for a detour going my direction.  I didn't particularly want to rejoin the unbelievably poorly maintained road through post-apocalyptic St. Louis and try to find the next place to join the trail because it had started sleeting, and I didn't think that my softshell would hold out the moisture long enough for me to make it to the end of the trail bridge and state line, so I turned around.  Joining the road back towards the Arch, I encountered some more fantastic bike lanes, and then what I can only assume is perhaps the finest bike infrastructure that could exist in any American city.  It appears that the traffic engineers in St. Louis have decided to fill the potholes in some sections of the city by painting sharrows directly over them, and then allowing the touristy horse-drawn carriages to fill the rest of the holes with shit.

Thank heaven for fenders.

And fuck you too, St. Louis.

On a seriously positive note,  Urban Shark, the downtown location of St. Louis's Big Shark Bicycle Company was a pretty cool store, and has some super helpful employees.  I bought some arm and knee warmers from them, as well as some grip tape because one of their sales associates took the time to produce a St. Louis bike map and direct me towards some nice places to ride to find alcohol, food, and gentrification.  If I hadn't gotten sick, I would have checked out a few more of the areas he suggested, but I was too generally disgusted with the weather, and the piss poor state of the places I did ride to do anything other than head back to the hotel and look at cat pictures online.

They had a Surly Big Dummy in the window, so they also get cool points for that.