JRA

I put up a rant here recently (I know, .. so out of character for mild mannered me) about rando passion, obsession, whatever.  Back on our mellow New Years Day ride my pal Brian and I talked about the changes we have witnessed in the rando scene.  I don’t want to make it sound like two geezers rolling along on big trikes pining for the good old days. The truth is I have not been at this all that long.  It may just be that we came along at a time of great growth in this quirky corner of the bicycling world.

We found the rise of the ‘real’ rando bike an interesting phenomena.  It seems in a very short time there has been a significant adoption of this specific kind of bike.  I could call it a purpose built bike but the champions of these machines claim it to be the ultimate do-it-all bike: capable on rough roads, fast as the fast bikes, good for all day, or a 20 mile speed run.  You know; a dessert that is hot and cold and sweet and sour.  Buy one of these and you’ve got all the bike you will ever need.

Of course when we started out we both had mutt bikes, and so did a lot of the other riders we encountered.  It was true then as now; you can participate in this sport on any bike that is comfortable for 10 hours or more.  Of course I’m talking out of both sides of my mouth; I’ve got one of these randoish bikes.  It’s not a Rene Singer, or Alex Herse or any of that but it’s got most of the characteristics, including a price tag that matches most of the run of the mill cars I’ve owned in my life.

Further in the conversation we whined about how every ride now has to be accompanied by a route, a time clock, a brevet card, and a fist full of receipts from local vendors. I am guilty of this as much as anyone.  So much so that my friends often ask which permanent route I am about to head out on. 

When I started out in this business, we rode the spring series, and then the summer series, and maybe some of the Terry Z winter rides.  But we also did a lot of JRA riding.  JRA (just riding around) is a great way to mix the social and training aspects of bike riding.

And so it was that I agreed to meet Brian at Kitzles Crazy Delicious Deli in Oly at 10:00am yesterday morning for a JRA ride.  Kitzels is new to me and I’d say it's as close as you can get to an authentic NY Deli in the south sound.  I had a sesame bagel  (they make thier own, boiled not just baked!) with egg and cheese and coffee.  We talked, politics and pop culture over coffee as the gentle rain came down outside.  There was no rush to get ready for the official start time, no tyranny of the clock.  Eventually we saddled up and only then as we contemplated riding out from the comfort of the awning and into the light rain did we even consider where we were headed.

Rainier was offered and so off to Rainier we rode.  Funny thing, for the most part we followed the route of a once favorite summer populaire that starts at the Fish Tale brewery, but along the way we took a few side routes, less direct but more scenic and less traffic, something not allowed on a rando event.

Here in the south sound we are still cleaning up after the snow and ice storm of January. 

Still lots of limbs and trees down, adding to the mess on the road shoulders.  No big deal, we were not on the clock, and if it got too bad on a given road, we could always turn off if we found something a little more appealing.

Once at Rainier, we stopped at the little hamburger shack for a brief respite from the rain and sustenance in the form of a cup of coffee and a shared order of French fries.   Behind the place there was a huge pile of limbs and tree tops that people in the area had been building. 

I talked to a truck driver having a cup of coffee who said he had already delivered 12 loads to the pile. The material is being collected there and then forwarded to a recycle facility where it will be chipped.

Where next?  I was a little knackered, we had been riding into a steady headwind with on and off rain from the start.  The thought of turning north to catch that tail wind back to town was alluring, but this is democracy in action so I waited to hear Brian’s take.  

He suggested we continue south, taking in Johnson Creek, and then Skookumchuck creek.  OY!  More headwind, more miles, and the rollers on Johnson creek.  But this is winter riding and the general idea is to get in some 'base' miles.  “Sure” I responded cheerily and we wandered out into the weather.  The head wind was stronger than ever, and we had stayed in the burger shack just long enough that my sweaty wool jersey was cold and clammy.  Pushing into the wind helped generate heat. (Oh yes, so lucky to have that head wind!)

Through Johnson Creek I noticed how much storm damage had been done to the second growth plantations.  These trees were planted by Weyerhaeuser in 1991. 

It may not show in this pic (click to embiggen) but a lot of them had their tops broken out. Pity the poor young trees. 

It rained on and off, but the wind was constant, value added base miles (agin the benefit of a stuff head wind).  We hoped against hope that once we came out on to hwy 507 and turned north for the run home that monster wind would push us all the way back to town.  If you ride bikes you already know that by the time we made the turn, the wind had dissipated.  It could have been worse, it could have turned 180 degrees to fight us on the way in but it had only calmed.  After 35 miles of head wind that in itself was a blessing.  Thank goodness for small favors.

So we got a nice little ride in, it wasn’t one for the books, about 5 hours and no recounting of average HR, total elevation gain, watts, or any of that.  Just out to see the countryside, spin the cransnks and chat with an old friend.  Those are the metrics of a JRA ride.

It doesn’t have to be fun …..

... To be fun.

I rode another 100Km perm on Sunday, it was one of those affairs that is ‘character building’.  I considered ‘epic’, but I recently recalibrated my epic meter, and this was most assuredly not epic.  Not even close, but more on that later.

Sunday, February 26^th being the last non-work day of February, and pretty dang close to the end of the month too, I did the classic Midnight Christmas eve shopping spree version of getting another monthly P-12 qualifying ride in the books.  How does this happen?  Do the numbers in the little boxes on the calendar randomly hop from box to box?  Is it a surprise that February is not composed of six, or seven weeks this year?  Did I not notice the days ticking off, one by one this month as they do each and every month?

I have my excuses, but, …they’re just excuses.  I have always subscribed to the notion that failures find excuses, while successful people find a way.  It’s a harsh and simplistic indictment, one I have assigned myself frequently.  Not true in every instance, but occasionally you see this along the way on challenging brevets.  More on that a little later too. 

At any rate, ‘bright’ and early Sunday morning, along with four friends I rolled out on the quest for another 100K.  It wasn’t bright, it was a classic Northwest winter day: heavy clouds, temps in the low40’s, about 90% humidity, ceiling about 500 feet.  But, it wasn’t raining (at the time), the wind was calm (at the time) and relatively speaking, it wasn’t cold.  The day before I (along with Allyson and Albert) traveled to Stanwood to support more than 70 riders on the club’s third-in-a-row monthly populaire.  It WAS cold up there, so cold in fact that there were snow flurries, and those snow flurries were flying sideways in a day long wind.  Wind makes cold temps seem much colder to me.  Perhaps I’ll refer to this phenomenon as the ‘wind chill factor’. Anyway, back to Sunday:

Six of us went out at the start, the further we rolled along the stronger the head wind became.  About 15 miles into it I got a flat, rear wheel naturally.  No big deal, flats happen, it’s winter, all that.  Even though I was riding the singlespeed I worked through the fix fairly quickly, Albert and Allyson on the tandem stopped to lend a hand, much appreciated and good to get the obligatory flat out of the way early in the ride.

The headwind continued to build steam, I found myself occasionally looking for another gear only to be rudely reminded that, the single speed is so named for an obvious reason.  A light rain is piling up on my glasses, thanks to the headwind.  Five miles down the road, another flat; this time thankfully on the front.  OK, now I have used both of my spare tubes.  So this means it would be best not to flat again, because patching tubes on the side of the road in a cold windy rain, well that’s character I don’t really need to build.

Shortly I rolled up to Starbucks in Centralia where Albert and Allyson were just rolling out.  I explained I had flatted again.  As a gesture of helpfulness, Albert loaned me his spare tire in case I might need it down the road.  I took the opportunity to give my rear tire a squeeze: it was a little squishy, but I noticed I had left the valve stem open, gee maybe that was it and all I needed was to air it up again.  We rolled on, a few more miles down the road there was no question that I had a slow leak on the rear.  Unfortunately, not slow enough.  Through Chehalis, I found a hamburger shack with a row of picnic tables under a little carport type cover.  Perfect, a covered operating table where I could lay the patient out and do open tube surgery without road grit or rain contaminating the glue and the patches.

I decided to replace the rear tire with the one Albert had loaned me.  On the Quickbeam I have Araya rims, 33mm Jack Brown tires and 28-35 mm tubes.  I patched the tube in the seat pack and muscled the tire onto the rim.  It has been a loooong time since I have put 23mm tires on a rim.  Getting that big, floppy tube in under the skinny tire was like trying to slip a wool ski sock into a ballet slipper.  I made every effort to be sure that the tube was not pinched between the rim and tire as I pumped.  The tire called for 100psi, which is a chore all by itself with a frame pump.  On the last stroke to get to 100psi, the tube exploded, blowing the tire off the rim.

Ok, now I am down to one (still flat) spare tube in the seat pack, it’s raining harder, the wind is howling, I’m running out of patches, and I’m bleeding time.  No sweat, patch the tube, muscle that tire back off the rim (I have not tire irons, because I’ve become used to big floppy tires), put it all back together and roll on.  It is a lot of little steps but; all done, put everything back in the seat bag, remount the pump, and as I am rolling out into the weather…. The front is now flat again! 

I admit, about this time I started tallying excuses.  Who would not be justified in packing it in, given this bullet proof litany of excuses?  No dishonor in that, good old college try, better things to do in life than beat year head against a cold, soggy, brick wall, live to fight another day, right?  I revisited my commitment to the ‘successful people’ approach.  I still had what I needed to finish this thing; all I needed to do was patch that one remaining holey tube. 

I pulled the tube and found that the last patch I had put on was leaking.  I also gave the tire another close inspection and found the THIRD teeny, tiny sharp cinder embedded in the tread.  I patched the tube, and noticed that I was now down to one last patch.  Put everything together and considered the options:  I was about a third of the way through this thing, badly behind on time, there would be a hell of a head wind down to the turn around, or I could turn tail and heading upwind I could be back at the ranch in short order.

I recalled a conversation I’d had with my friend Brian back on our New Years day ride.  We both noticed how in the last few (many?) years we had become somewhat obsessed with randonneuring as the definition of going for a ride.   We used to get together a couple times a month for JRA riding; Let’s go out to McCleary for a bite at the Bee Hive.  Out to Rainer, or the steam plant, just rolling up the miles and stopping to graze here and there. No Brevet card, cue sheet, timed controles, or cash register receipts.

Rather than wrap myself in the plethora of excuses. I decided to ride on in the general direction of success.  It won’t be long that I’ll be in a rocking chair at the home, unable to ride a gramma trike around the parking lot and I don’t want to have to remember the time I could have been riding my bike but didn’t.

It was tough down to the turnaround at the junction with Highway 12.  That wind and rain kicked my butt.  We all know the third universal rule of randonneuring:  On a bike you are a wind vane, whatever compass heading you are riding, you are ALWAYS riding upwind.  Well Zeus must have respected my bull headedness because that wind direction didn’t change, and in fact intensified.  On the return leg at times I was spinning out on that single speed; drudgery turned to giddiness.  I’m sure those two Starbucks double shots didn’t hurt.

The caffeine also electrified the grey matter.  It occurred to me that since I was not riding the big horse with the bomb proof tires, and since we had just come through a week of heavy snow and ice (with accompanying road sanding), and since that ice storm had littered the shoulders with tons of splintered tree tops and limbs, perhaps it would be wise to AVOID riding through all that sand, and limbs, and shoulder garbage. 

Long story short I made it back to the finish with 16 minutes to spare.  John suffered physical ailments, Alan was waiting at the finish for me, and Allyson and Albert had come in a few minutes ahead of me.  JRA, or perm, I got a ride in.

We headed back to the ranch and had a warm meal (and warmer conversation) prepared by the lovely and talented Mrs. Dr Codfish.

About that epic meter I mentioned earlier?  I had trouble sleeping the night before (sinus trouble) so I sat up late and finished an interesting book, Kiss or Kill by Mark Twight.  Twight is an extreme alpine style mountain climber.  I‘ve read lots of books about mountain climbing, I always thought I’d get into that but it never happened, I wound up on a bike instead.  Having finished that book I came to the stark realization that our bike rides are far from epic.  When you fall off a bike there is rarely a chance that you are you’ll fall 1,500 meters.  “It doesn’t have to be fun, to be fun” … that’s one of Twight’s quotes.

Baking Weather

A few of my 'cyclist' friends rode their bikes this weekend.  The big horse is in the shop for a major spa treatment (BIG savings on ovehaul at The Bike Stand in Olympia now!) Anyway, when there is snow on the ground I tend to think of it as baking, not biking weather.

I made my standard three loaves of SD French bread.  Normally I give these to the neighbors, so far no one has said no thanks.

It's been long enough that I thought I ought to cut one open and give it the taste test just to make sure the SD was fit for human consumption.  Part of the SD ego requires that your crumb is riddled with those big holes and tunnels so typical of classic SD French, and there is only one way to know for sure. It passed the test.

I also tried my hand at SD english muffings.  My sister has been urging me to give this a whirl.  She says they are waaay easy and waaay better than store bought.

She was right on both counts, this could be a problem.