The Dr Codfish Chronicles

JRA

2012-02-12T10:11:00.000-08:00

Iput up a rant here recently (I know, .. so out of character for mild mannered me) aboutrando passion, obsession, whatever. Backon our mellow New Years Day ride my pal Brian and I talked about the changes wehave witnessed in the rando scene. I don’twant to make it sound like two geezers rolling along on big trikes pining forthe 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 ofgreat growth in this quirky corner of the bicycling world.

Wefound the rise of the ‘real’ rando bike an interesting phenomena. It seems in a very short time there has beena significant adoption of this specific kind of bike. I could call it a purpose built bike but thechampions 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 milespeed run. You know; a dessert that is hot and cold and sweet and sour. Buy one of these and you’vegot all the bike you will ever need.

Ofcourse when we started out we both had mutt bikes, and so did a lot of the otherriders we encountered. It was true thenas now; you can participate in this sport on any bike that is comfortable for 10hours or more. Of course I’m talking outof both sides of my mouth; I’ve got one of these randoish bikes. It’s not a Rene Singer, or Alex Herse or anyof 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.

Furtherin the conversation we whined about how every ride now has to be accompanied bya route, a time clock, a brevet card, and a fist full of receipts from localvendors. 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 outon.

WhenI started out in this business, we rode the spring series, and then the summerseries, 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 mixthe social and training aspects of bike riding.

Andso it was that I agreed to meet Brian at Kitzles Crazy Delicious Deli in Oly at 10:00am yesterdaymorning for a JRA ride. Kitzels is newto me and I’d say it's as close as you can get to an authentic NY Deli in the southsound. I had a sesame bagel (they make thier own, boiled not just baked!) with egg andcheese and coffee. We talked, politicsand pop culture over coffee as the gentle rain came down outside. There was no rush to get ready for the officialstart time, no tyranny of the clock. Eventuallywe saddled up and only then as we contemplated riding out from the comfort ofthe awning and into the light rain did we even consider where we wereheaded.

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

Herein the south sound we are still cleaning up after the snow and ice storm ofJanuary.

Still lots of limbs and treesdown, 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 givenroad, we could always turn off if we found something a little more appealing.

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

I talked to a truck driver having a cup ofcoffee who said he had already delivered 12 loads to the pile. The material isbeing collected there and then forwarded to a recycle facility where it will bechipped.

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

Hesuggested 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 generalidea 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 wehad stayed in the burger shack just long enough that my sweaty wool jersey wascold and clammy. Pushing into the windhelped generate heat. (Oh yes, so luckyto have that head wind!)

ThroughJohnson Creek I noticed how much storm damage had been done to the secondgrowth plantations. These trees wereplanted by Weyerhaeuser in 1991.

It maynot show in this pic (click to embiggen) but a lot of them had their topsbroken out. Pity the poor young trees.

Itrained 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 outon to hwy 507 and turned north for the run home that monster wind would push usall the way back to town. If you ride bikesyou already know that by the time we made the turn, the wind haddissipated. It could have been worse, itcould have turned 180 degrees to fight us on the way in but it had onlycalmed. After 35 miles of head wind thatin itself was a blessing. Thank goodnessfor small favors.

Sowe got a nice little ride in, it wasn’t one for the books, about 5 hours and norecounting of average HR, total elevation gain, watts, or any of that. Just out to see the countryside, spin the cransnks and chat withan old friend. Those are the metrics ofa JRA ride.

It doesn’t have to be fun …..

2012-01-30T22:43:00.000-08:00

... To be fun.

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

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

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

At any rate, ‘bright’ and earlySunday morning, along with four friends I rolled out on the quest for another100K. It wasn’t bright, it was a classicNorthwest winter day: heavy clouds, temps in the low40’s, about 90% humidity,ceiling about 500 feet. But, it wasn’training (at the time), the wind was calm (at the time) and relatively speaking,it wasn’t cold. The day before I (alongwith Allyson and Albert) traveled to Stanwood to support more than 70 riders onthe club’s third-in-a-row monthly populaire. It WAS cold up there, so cold in fact that there were snow flurries, andthose snow flurries were flying sideways in a day long wind. Wind makes cold temps seem much colder tome. Perhaps I’ll refer to thisphenomenon as the ‘wind chill factor’. Anyway, back to Sunday:

Six of us went out at thestart, the further we rolled along the stronger the head wind became. About 15 miles into it I got a flat, rearwheel naturally. No big deal, flatshappen, it’s winter, all that. Eventhough 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 andgood to get the obligatory flat out of the way early in the ride.

The headwind continued to buildsteam, I found myself occasionally looking for another gear only to be rudelyreminded 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 downthe 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 flatagain, 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 toStarbucks in Centralia where Albert and Allyson were just rolling out. I explained I had flatted again. As a gesture of helpfulness, Albert loaned mehis spare tire in case I might need it down the road. I took the opportunity to give my rear tire asqueeze: it was a little squishy, but I noticed I had left thevalve stem open, gee maybe that was it and all I needed was to air it upagain. We rolled on, a few more milesdown 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 shackwith a row of picnic tables under a little carport type cover. Perfect, a covered operating table where Icould lay the patient out and do open tube surgery without road grit or raincontaminating the glue and the patches.

I decided to replace the reartire with the one Albert had loaned me. On the Quickbeam I have Araya rims, 33mm Jack Brown tires and 28-35 mmtubes. I patched the tube in the seatpack 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 theskinny tire was like trying to slip a wool ski sock into a ballet slipper. I made every effort to be sure that the tubewas not pinched between the rim and tire as I pumped. The tire called for 100psi, which is a choreall by itself with a frame pump. On thelast stroke to get to 100psi, the tube exploded, blowing the tire off the rim.

Ok, now I am down to one (stillflat) 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 tireback off the rim (I have not tire irons, because I’ve become used to big floppytires), put it all back together and roll on. It is a lot of little steps but; all done, put everything back in the seatbag, remount the pump, and as I am rolling out into the weather…. The front isnow flat again!

I admit, about this time Istarted tallying excuses. Who would notbe justified in packing it in, given this bullet proof litany of excuses? No dishonor in that, good old college try, betterthings to do in life than beat year head against a cold, soggy, brick wall,live to fight another day, right? Irevisited 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 foundthat 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 lastpatch. Put everything together andconsidered the options: I was about athird of the way through this thing, badly behind on time, there would be ahell of a head wind down to the turn around, or I could turn tail and heading upwindI could be back at the ranch in short order.

I recalled a conversation I’d hadwith 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 ofgoing for a ride. We used to gettogether a couple times a month for JRA riding; Let’s go out to McCleary for abite at the Bee Hive. Out to Rainer, orthe steam plant, just rolling up the miles and stopping to graze here andthere. No Brevet card, cue sheet, timed controles, or cash register receipts.

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

It was tough down to theturnaround 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, whatevercompass heading you are riding, you are ALWAYS riding upwind. Well Zeus must have respected my bullheadedness because that wind direction didn’t change, and in fact intensified. On the return leg at times I was spinning outon that single speed; drudgery turned to giddiness. I’m sure those two Starbucks double shotsdidn’t hurt.

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

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

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

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

Baking Weather

2012-01-16T10:03:00.000-08:00

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.

The Green Chagoi

2012-01-14T16:37:00.000-08:00

As if Zeus waspaying attention to the weatherman, our La Niña winter is developing according totype.

For us, La Niña generally means awinter with measurably more precipitation and colder temps. As it happens, our December was remarkably dryand mild. Close to, if not the driest Decemberon record depending where in the PNW you took your measurements. And as much as I whine about the weather, itwas pretty tolerable. Let me say though that or trip to central andsouthern California was an eye opener.

The fine details of La Niña however spec thatthe colder and more precipitate part of winter comes in the New Year. It is cold and rainy out now, and theforecast is for snow tonight and tomorrow.

It’s hard on my mind but as I sit here in my heated office looking out at the rain dimples on the pond Irealize it’s hard on the beasts. I’m puttingout more seed and suet cakes for the birds. According to the thermometer, the water temp is just above 38 degrees, and as I look into the pond I seeall my colorful carp lying in a listless stupor on the bottom. So they lie, dormant like gladiolus bulbs, conservingenergy and waiting. All that is, exceptfor the green Chagoi.

Cha is Japanese for brown tea, thus Chagoi, is a brown tea colored Koi. Most Chagoi generally come in various shades of brown. This little fish Ipicked up in late summer at a bargain price. Summer’s end is when you can get deals on Koi; just like lawn furnitureand bikini retailers, Koi dealers here are not anxious to carry stock through thewinter.

Even since I brought him home, thislittle fish has grown. The others stiraway when I peer into the pond, but he turns and faces me. He follows me with his orientation as I walk aroundthe pond. He’s always hungry, always nibbling at the algae on the side of the pond and always ready should I toss afew pellets of food into the pond. I haven’tfed the fish since November, but he hasn’t forgotten. It will probably be late March or April beforeI begin feeding, the others don’t even think about it, but he’s on the prowl.

I love his green olive shade but likeall Chagoi he’s likely to change colors as he matures. Some get more root beer colored, others go darkbrown, but if he conforms to type he is likely to turn ‘blond’ or a latte’ color. Perhaps fitting for his nature: He’s the most mellow, the most people friendlyfish in the pond.

As the rest lie at the bottom,waiting for warmth, the green Chagoi cruises the pond’s far reaches, pecking atanything that looks edible.

Riding into Another Year

2012-01-01T20:43:00.000-08:00

It is sort of a tradition with me. I don’t own it, didn’t invent it, and certainly have not been at it as long as some. But I like to go for a ride on New Year’s Day. My friend Greg invited me to join him and others on a New Year’s day 200Km brevet down in southern California. If we had stayed in California longer I might have taken him up. But we’re here and as it happens, pale yellow sun light is filtering through the oaks out back and lighting up the kitchen on this chilly winter morning.

I’m just about to take my second loaf of Sourdough bread out of the oven. Winter baking warms the house and fills it with that great fresh bread smell. These loaves are heavy, and though I have not cut into them, lately my loaves don’t have the big French bread holes they used to. Oh well, they are giveaway loaves so I probably won’t know what they are like inside.

As I was working up the dough yesterday I got a message from my friend Brian:

Hi Paul,
Happy New Year! It was fun following your California vacation. How did the Solstice ride go? It was cold and foggy on the solstice here. So, are you up to a New Years ride tomorrow?
B.

Brian was up on the top of Mt Si. I replied that It would have to be later in the day as I would be baking early, so we are on for 1:00.

I sent a quick note to John inviting him along. Two guys for a mellow new year’s day ride, two loaves of fresh SD to pass along? It could work.

NOTE: Bright sunlight casting shadows!

The bread is out and I am well into my second cup of coffee. Brian won’t be here for a coiue hours. This give me time to loaf. It is really quite here, I can just hear the hum of the refrigerator and nothing more. Birds are busy out at the feeder, the jays cause a fuss, scattering the doves and siskins when they bomb in. The juncos and sparrows flit off and are back in a moment, they can’t be bothered with the bluster; they just want to eat.

There was a Coopers Hawk at the feeder yesterday. He sat on the arch above the gate for a bit and then flew off. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see him come in, but given that he didn’t have a warm little body clutched in his talons I will assume that he didn’t get the meal he came for.

I have thought about resolutions this year, but nothing has revealed itself to me. Not a very active approach I know. I have plenty of challenges before me so if I just stay even I’ll take that as a win; still, just staying even does not deliver the sense of accomplishment one would wish to attend to a year’s worth of endeavor. Particularly at my age. I’ve had enough practice that it should be a safe bet that I will be able to take my swings and get a few runs. But then, turning the age-o-meter around and looking through the other end, hitting for average just does not thrill. Clearly I have fewer years ahead than behind me, so there is an urge to excel percolating below the surface. I am not sure what my highlight reel for 2012 will hold but I’d like to have a few more oohs and ahhs than I did at the end of 2011. A mindful approach in the next weeks may lead me to a goal or goals for the next year.

The big horse is ready for a little bike shop TLC, and as we will be riding locally I assume there will be no monster climbs so the Quickbeam will be put in to service.

I installed that new front rack and bag I picked up at Riv last week.

It was about as easy as expected, only took me twice as long as the average home handy man. I believe this will be imminently practical for this bike, and given that the bag and the bike are both green, it looks as though I actually thought this through in advance.

Time to get ready, I’ll write more after the ride.

Brian showed, John had another ride in the works: prettier girls, fancier bikes, you know how it is when the cool kids have a party on the same day as yours. As I said earlier, if you are a cyclist, new year’s day is probably as good an excuse as any to get out and spin the pedals.

We rode out on Southbank road, my year round off the back porch ride. We were just a couple of old friends caching up while pedaling along.

The day started clear’ish’ and cool. We were expecting rain in the morning and clearing later in the day but the weather man was way off. Sunny enough to cast shadows.

Same planet and all but very different from the riding we did last week.

We paid our dues on the way in with a surprisingly stiff little headwind. And a new year’s ride just would not be complete without a flat. I mentioned that it was a blessing to have a flat on new years day, that way I should be good to go for most of the rest of the year before I get my next flat.

We had homemade soup and coffee after we finished. Funny we were both stiffer than we expected when we got up from the table.

Hope you have a great 2012.

Winding Up the Search for Sun

2011-12-31T13:13:00.000-08:00

We’re home. At 11:00am it’s about 35 degrees out. Today’s high is projected to be 43 degrees; at least it’s not raining. I could not help myself; I have the weather for San Luis Obispo bookmarked, so I clicked over. It’s 68 degrees in SLO, supposed to get up to 78 later. Ah well, I can imagine what that would feel like that, …. Really, I can.

We left Avila Beach Wednesday morning before the sun came up. It was a good morning to be at the ocean. Quickly, the night turned to a pastel predawn watercolor. The water turned purple, the low line of clouds on the horizon shaded to peach, and the sky above faded from azure to butter. A thin crescent moon hung low in the blue part of the sky and midway between it and the line of rosy clouds the North Star shone brightly.

Though it was still and dark, the air was warm and there was no dew on the ground. It appeared that Avila Beach had a beautiful day in store for the vacationers who came for a midweek get away between Christmas and New Year’s. I meant to go out on the veranda and take a parting shot of that sunrise, but the camera was already packed; in the tote bag on the floor behind the driver’s seat with the other electronic gadgets.

We stopped in SLO for coffee, tea, and road food. We made good time and before noon we were in Walnut Creek where we stopped at Rivendel Bicycle Works to see where all the magic happens. That was a very interesting stop and quite apart from any of the scenarios I might have cooked up. Ask me about it some time.

I inquired about a front rack and bag which I had on back order. Turns out they now had them in stock, but had somehow lost my order. Seems they are in the throes of a new computer system. So picked up these little trifles to spiff up the Qickbeam. I like the paint scheme (Olive Drab with Cream accents) for the new version, renamed the Simple One. I’m sorry Grant, but ‘The Simple One’ as a name for a bike model just doesn’t work for me. Sticking with the Riv theme, perhaps Strider or Ork might have been better choices.

After a brief stop there we spent a couple hours motoring around Fairfield, about a half hour north. Mrs. Dr. C showed me the HS she attended and her old ‘hood’. We took pics of the house and low; the same next door neighbors came out and we had a nice chat with them: who’s come and gone, married, kids, grandkids, etc. Nobody I knew but that same story plays out millions of times when folks take a little side trip in the way-back machine, about 35 years in this case.

We ended the long day’s drive in Red Bluff. It was going dark and once again we experienced flocks of thousands and thousands of small birds, (maybe grackles) swarming, swooping, diving and dodging as fewer large birds (presumably crows) dove in and out and around the huge flocks. Also lots of geese, Canada’s, snow geese, and swans in the rice paddies. And one of my favorites, of the trip; the Snowy Egrets that make blue herons (another of my favorites) look positively drab.

The next day, Thursday, (the next-to-the-next-to-the-last day of the year), we were again on the road before daylight. We wanted to cross the finish line before dark. Mostly to avoid night driving as much as possible, but also to get a daylight look at Mission San Rocky Acres upon arrival.

We encountered the first hint of rain through the Siskiyous in Southern Oregon. It was overcast and we were getting just a few drops,…more than mist, you know, intermittent wiper weather.

By Medford it was rain, Springfield, 20 foot rooster tails off trucks; Albany, car wash showers from SUVs, and from Portland on, direct attack with fire hose, white knuckle and floorboard it past the big rigs. Ahh, home.

Our time and timing were pretty good, except this was a Friday and rush hour, some of those dedicated Portland bike geeks must have opted for the four wheel cage of death, Portland was a crawl at times. The Columbia was wide, high, and muddy; must have been wet recently.

The sky offered us that remarkable phenomenon we get here some of the time: it was raining, pretty seriously, and yet no clouds were discernible above. we are just driving along beneath a saturated grey flannel sheet strung from the horizon in all directions, dripping cold water on us. A formless, grey sky, wringing wet.

It is what it is, this is the feed stock for all those great Raymond Carver novels and short stories. I can already feel that cold gritty street spray soaking through my neoprene booties into my wool socks as I pedal along on my new year’s day ride. Mmm, so good to be back home.

The place was in order, no evidence of Chairman Meow having invited the neighbors and strays in for cigars and sardines over poker, In fact, Mr. A. Loof was actually clingy …. For about five minutes and then it was a bee line to the food dish. I made a quick check of the pond; no one doing the back float but the behavior was decidedly different than when we left. The water temp was slightly above 50 degrees, more than 10 degrees warmer than when we left. At 38 degrees the fish are closer to dead than alive; They lie on the bottom, fins clamped in a cold induced torpor. At 50 degrees they rise to the surface when they see me, and follow me around the pond like a gaggle of puppies begging food. Though they are more alert and active, feeding is not advised and won’t be for another four months or so. All things considered, they looked hale and hearty given the conditions.

On the flip side of whiney, I would say we had a great vacation, maybe a 10 but without doubt the very best vacation Mrs Dr C and I have taken together, maybe ever. Let me explin The only other times we have taken vacations together were out trips to France to ride the big Ol brevet. While those were very special times, as vacations they come with their own peculiar twists: First and perhaps most obviously, there is a moth eaten hole in the middle where I go for a long bike ride and she doesn’t. Her way of bemoaning my absence is to hop the ‘Train à Grande Vitesse’(TGV) to San Sebastian on the Spanish sun coast while I ply the back roads of Brittany via the ‘vélo de vitesse lente’. I must say, when we compare our ‘vacation’ pics afterwards I have on occasion wondered who had more fun. Add to that the joys of international air travel ... with bikes, across oceans and continents and it becomes easier to see why these two experiences don’t compare so well.

In the case of our 2,000 mile quick step in search of the sun we did most of what we did together. For sure I went on some longer bike rides and she spent a little more time lolling by the pool, but there was no 4 day separation. We marveled at the attractions together, shared bites of each other’s gastronomic finds and on more than a few occasions sat together arm in arm and watched the big blue Pacific swallow up the sun.

I checked out the definition of ‘vacation’ and … Orbitz or Bing aside, I think we had a good one.

Chirstmas somewhere else

2011-12-26T09:26:00.000-08:00

It was a little cooler today, barely broke 70 I think, still my kind of weather.

We had a mellow ride on Christmas, and then a peaceful walk on the beach at sunset.

Like most small towns Avila Beach closes up tighter than a clam at low tide on Christmas. We had emergency rations but I was hankering for substance. We went in to San Luis Obispo and found the Golden Gong open and busy. One of the few if not the only eatery open and as I said BUSY! The wait was waaay toooo loooong, but it was the best Chinese I have had in a long time.

Isn't chinese food on Christmas some kind of tradition?

As if this weather weren’t enough …

2011-12-25T11:52:00.000-08:00

... San Luis Obispo LOVES me!

Yes it is true; we came here primarily in search of bright, sunny, sunshine. To be sure warm temps, no rain or fog, tailwinds, great food and fellowship would certainly be appreciated. But in matters such as this, where I have little experience and less success, I tend to aim low, and plan short. So far we seem to be awash in blessings, could it be the season? For example:

I didn’t mention that on my Solstice 200K jaunt I suffered a mechanical but was able to continue. About 30 miles into the ride, as I was shifting through the gears on one of the many climbs I got a surprise pinprick in my right index finger: This is the ‘check engine light’ of bike riding. It means that your shifter cable is fraying, and that sooner, not later, that cable will part and your fancy 10 speed shifty bicycle will become a one speed Huffy. Midnight, half way through the Big Sur coast is no place to pull over for cable change, or any repair of consequence for that matter. Long story short, I nursed it along, shifting less and giving my quads a workout more, and the cable never broke.

One of the locals gave me a run down on the three or four bike shops in town and recommended one. I had visited one the first day we got to town for other needs so returned to them. This is not a big project for a bike shop; however I figured it would be a drop off and pick up later deal. Not so, the guy immediately switched out the cable, and while working on the bike, he gladly loaned me tools to do a little work on the car top carrier. It is awkward to ask to borrow tools to go out in the shop parking lot to do some fixing. Shops usually have an iron clad no loan policy. In this case there was no hesitation. This could have gone any number of different ways, but I got a little dose of SLO love there and I was thankful.

Today (Christmas Eve) we broke camp and moved on to another motel. We rose early, had the motel version of breakfast, then back to the room to load the little Japanese prairie schooner. By 9:00am we were ready to roll out. The plan was for Ms. Dr. C to motor out to Avila Beach (stopping to do a little light shopping along the way) while I and the Big Horse would roll through the country side, taking the long way. Today was forecast to be another gift: sunny and in the low 70’s, my personal sweet spot. Those who know me have heard me pronounce rather sarcastically, many times, “Sunny and 75 with tail winds out and back” when inviting others on a ride. Today it was no joke, even the locals are carrying on about how nice it is, … and my, how very nice it is. Thing number two to be thankful for.

Just as Mrs. Dr. C was readying to pull out of the parking lot, the guy from the room next door looks down and says: “Say, you’ve got quite a big nail stuck in your tire there!” I look down and sure enough, that’s one big nail poking its head out of my right front tire. His buddy, who is a local, sends us to the best place in town, The Tire Store, on the way to Avila beach as it happens. “They’ll have you fixed up in no time!” OK, so, load the big horse back on to the car and drive to The Tire Store. I could be bummed at this inconvenience but there is reason enough for thanks: I could be stuck on the side of “The 101” one of those tourists broke down on the side of the road. Thing the third to be thankful for.

Shortly we arrive at The Tire Store and, … hmmm closed for Christmas eve. Back up the road to the Shell Station we just passed. I never noticed until just today that you can get 27 kinds of beer, 40 kinds of potato chips, deodorant, canned chili, bad espresso from a robot machine, and here in California, a half-gallon of almost any kind of hard liquor at a gas station, but in most such places you’re not going to be able to get a flat fixed. It’s an inconvenience store but flat tires are not the inconvenience you are going to be able to address. My glorious Xmas eve bike ride is slipping through my fingers.

The shop keeper turned out to be really helpful, I mean, really. He thought it over a bit and said there was another place just down the road, Tire Pros and if that didn’t work, Sears (also a little further down the road) would probably be a good bet.

This is now taking on an uncanny resemblance to my Christmas story of 2007: kindness of strangers and all that.

We stop at Tire Pros, they were open but things did not look hopeful: four cars out front, people standing around squinting in the bright sun and two guys working madly. I talk to the guy, he’ll help me but it will be at least an hour wait, and he was hoping to let his guys off early for the holiday. “But try this” he says, ”A little farther down you’ll find another place, Big Brand Tires, they might be able to help”. We roll on down and there it is, a couple cars being worked on, four bays open.

“Sure, fill out this form and we’ll have you fixed up in about 10 minutes.’ And it goes just as smoothly as that. I go in to pay and he says “Flats are free”. I saw the sign but figured that’s probably for folks who buy their tires there, not any old pasty tourist he will likely never see again. We go back and forth a little but eventually he realizes resistance is futile and l return the favor with a little gift from the wallet. Kindness of strangers act number what, …we up to four now?

By now the sun is up and working its magic, the way ahead seems clear and I-think-I-am-going-to-get-to-go-for-a-bike-ride (it is all about me, isn’t it?) MORE thankful.

Get the bike down off the roof rack, send Mrs. Dr. C on her way, with a hug and a peck, head in to the use the men’s room and just as I am readying to roll out: one dull little click and instantly something is very wrong. I look down and there’s the rear derailleur, dangling inches from the ground by the chain. I can’t believe this; somehow I have cleverly broken off the rear derailleur hangar. OK God, what is it you really want me to do on Christmas Eve? Because it is starting to sink in that a bike ride might not be number one on your plan for me today.

This too is a relatively easy fix, but it is going to require a special part that you are not going to be able to get at each and every bike shop. Oh, and let’s not forget, it is now mid-day Christmas Eve. This is no longer checkers, it’s three dimensional chess. I could be bummed but I choose to think, it’s not so bad. I could be out in the boonies, out of cell phone range with a coaster bike at the mercy of the elements, I’ve been there and this is imminently better. I guess I’m thankful.

Phone the co-pilot, she returns and I once again load the bike back up on top of the econobox. Who knew biking was such great upper body strength straining? At this point I declare that I’m no longer thinking ‘bike’ ride but more interested in unwrapping this strange package to see what is inside.

During the tire quest we had driven past Wally’s bike shop several times. This is the one that my friend recommended first. So we check in with Wally to see what can be done. Now I need to make a disclaimer here: I try not to judge a book by its cover, but I often do a very bad job of following this noble edict. This is because I think I am clairvoyant and can read people and their nature with just a glance. This is one of my super powers that gets me in trouble often as not.

That bike shop I went to yesterday is a ‘mall shop’ just off the campus of Cal Poly. It’s tidy, the kind of place with carpet, where you can get an espresso while you wait. Many high end bikes usually of just one major brand, and a fleet of ‘pink bikes’. A place where a soccer mom can feel safe about getting Brittany her first bike and matching pink helmet. Most of the staff are young preppy looking guys. Remember, they treated me well, I liked them.

Wally’s is a different kind place. It’s an old yellow painted quonset hut looking affair on a commercial/industrial route out of town. There is a sign, it says ‘Wallys’ and there is the requisite row of low end mtb’s out front with one strange addition: A very high end Catrike. A Catrike complete with carbon disk rear wheel. A Catrike is a three wheeled (two up front on in the rear) recumbent bike with complex engineering and components. The rear wheel alone adds an extra zero to the price. For a savant such as myself this just seems out of place; like Snow White cavorting with warty dwarves.

So we swing in and before I am much more than through the door this really short hispanic guy with a smile bigger than Bob Barker is asking what the problem is. I lay it out and he says sure bring it in; we’ll have you riding in no time! I’m skeptical as any good savant would be, but who’s going to argue with that.

Not to make too much of it, but the big horse is a ‘custom bike’. Almost a one-off, this bike does not have a recognizable name on the down tube, something that might be considered a snob bike. I am always a little self-conscious about this, but I also really like my bike. Not just what it says about me that I have a ‘custom bike’ but also this bike really fits me, and riding it feels really good. Wally is chattering all the while he’s got the big horse up on the stand, as S and I browse.

This is a very fun place to browse. There are glass cases filled with stacks of old Shimano derailleurs, old campy stuff, more kinds of chamois cream than you can count, old club jerseys marked half off on the racks, and bikes of every caliber. Featured prominently and clearly signed ‘please do not ouch;’ is a Calfee Carbon Tetra, tricked out with aero carbon TT wheels and the latest Shimano electronic DIY shifting set up. I forget the price exactly but I recall it would easily pay for two of my ‘custom bikes’. Clearly my savant system heeds recalibration. There’s an old 50’s Bianchi, complete with a worn pic of someone who looks vaguely Italian crossing a finish line attached, tons of built bikes and more frames. Everything from lugged steel (a very nice Ritchy Breakaway, completely built WITH the travel case for under $2,800!) and lots of Colnagos and Pinerellos.

There’s no carpet on the floor here, but there is one fo those old folding card tables set up with a Mr. Coffee coffee maker and a box of doughnuts. A few guys stop by and chat with Wally or the other two mechs. Just hi, and how are you and have a nice Christmas. Pictures of Wally with pro racers, signed with thanks for his help. As we talk I learn he runs training camps out at Solvang, they’ve become popular with 100 to 150 racers training. He says he makes it hard, very hard, and the harder it is the better they like it. As we say in bike circles, ‘to suffer is to learn’. He’s from Guatemala but has been here a long time.

When we came down, I brought bib nickers and bib tights but no shorts. I am getting by but most of this stuff is fleeced and is just a bit too warm in the heat of the day. A new pair of shorts might be in order and he’s got a few pair hanging. I try them on; is it coincidence or was bias at work. The Wally’s branded shorts fit just right, and they are surely going home with me.

Shortly Wally is going through the gears with the big horse on the stand. He’s making micro adjustments, and getting the shifting just right. The chain is cleaner and better lubed than it has been in some time. As he does this he tells me that one of the gee springs in the shifter needs replacement, the shifting is not as perfectly smooth as he knows it can be. It’s fine to ride now but will need work. Brute that I am I can barely discern that things are amiss; the deaf guy trying to tune a guitar, that’s me.

He calls me over and shows me that he’s installed a universal derailleur hangar because he did not have the exact part in stock. He explains how this will work for now but I should probably get it replaced, and when I do I can just put the Universal unit in my seat pack as an emergency repair part. He can tell by the Brooks saddle, fenders, and the old weathered Carradice that I’m more likely to find myself out in the boonies than the racers. We talk more about our plans and he gives us tips on where to stay and ride in the area. I didn’t know until later than S had told him I had ridden the Solstice ride a couple nights earlier so maybe that garnered me some degree of cred despite all appearances.

I compliment him on his incredible bike inventory, he says that’s nothing so we walk out to the bigger Quonset hut behind the shop where he shows off an enormous stock of bikes. More Colnagos, more Pinerellos, and lots of no name carbon bikes. Presently I’m looking at one of these and amazed at how prices have come down on these light weight high tech bikes. Wally picks up on this and he’s talking about how this this high zoot carbon stealth machine could be built with 105, as opposed to the SRAM low spec gruppo it has. I ask if it would be up to the task of handling a big load such as myself. “Oh sure” he says. “We’ll build you stronger wheels, and there’s eyelets for a rack and fenders! Clearance for 28mm tires with fenders!" We are both sort of laughing as we are having this conversation, … but only sort of.

It’s clear that this guy loves life and he loves what he does. It is also clear that he is very good at it. I swallow hard, back away from the racy bike and tell him not this trip, but who knows? I take his card and thank him and his mech profusely. At times like this, thanks seems such an inadequate gesture. I mean REALLY thanks. He shrugs it off, happy to be of service and all that. We head back out into the bright sun.

Unless I am mistaken I appears that the way is once again clear for me to depart … on the bike … for a ride. I struggle but can find no reason not to actually get on with it. Once again, very thankful to be blessed with the kindness of strangers. Fortunate and thankful.

S. goes her way, and I go mine. We meet up at the motel four hours later. I’m sweaty from the little bit of climbing involved, and tired, but in a good way. I shower and we stroll down the beach in hopes that we’ll find victuals in the little beachfront store, ... and we hope that it will still be open at this late hour of Christmas eve. Most of the shops are closed, but the Merc is open and we find a few things that should tide us over for Christmas. A couple cups of Easy Mac, oranges and bananas, a box of crackers, oh and one of those little ‘travel size’ bottles of Champagne, the classic Christmas eve feast celebrating the newborn. Oh wait, store still open at 6:00pm on Christmas eve? What’s that, muchas gracias el número siete? I’ve lost count.

I had suggested a couple days earlier that we might check the listings for a Christmas Eve candle light service at one of the local Churches. I’m not very religious but I am a little spiritual and I do believe I have much to give thanks for. S. had found a few offerings; we picked one (not far from Big Brand Tires!) that offered a 7:00 pm service.

It’s not the place you would expect to find a church. As I mentioned earlier, the area is primarily ‘light industrial’; warehouses, machine shops, wholesale supply and distribution. We found it easily enough but being that it was a converted industrial building it didn’t have the parking lot access that you’d typically find for a ‘house of worship’. This looks like this could be interesting. As a relative new comer to the Church scene I keep my savant skills in close check, still I have my theories.

We are in tourist garb so are self-conscious but all that melts away the moment we enter: Lots of 10K fun run T Shirts, jeans, shorts, and tennis shoes. The sanctuary s nothing more than a bunch of folding metal chairs (I mean LOTS) and a small stage with a drum set, a piano and a ‘pulpit’ such as it was built from stacked wooden packing crates. No flowing red curtains of giant displays of red and white Poinsettias displayed for the greater glory. The open steel girders, exposed roof insulation, and bare concrete floors all say this could just as easily be a truck repair shop or irrigation pump whole sale center. It is clearly a ‘young’ church and the savant in me suspects it might be just a few followers of some charismatic (here I go again) but it will certainly be interesting to see who shows up. In matters of church, I really do try to make no judgment, I’m way out of my element.

As if on cue in a movie almost ALL of those folding chairs filled. A young women steps to the piano and warms the congregation with familiar carols. The pastor is young, dressed in black jeans, a black shirt(sleeves rolled up), black vest and a red floral tie tucked into his vest: the reverend Mr. Black. It’s all very casual, likebut meeting over at a friend’s place only with 250 of your newest friends. The family seated in front of us introduces themselves. They have two teenage daughters, lived up in Washington for a while and moved back home to California three years ago. The girls miss Washington. It’s odd but I get that, I’m a Washington Native and I suspect everyone has some inexplicable connection to their first home. They say the congregation is mostly college kids, but of course most have gone for the holidays, otherwise there would be a conisderably bigger crowd.

The pastor lays out the program (there are no ‘programs’ handed around) assuring us that it will be a little different (and shorter) tonight and that there will be no service tomorrow, this is it for Christmas service.

We sing a few songs and then he invites a young girl, maybe 9 or 10 years old to step to the stage and give us a reading from her children’s bible. She reads the Christmas story; Mary, Joseph, the Shepherds and angels, and the manger in Bethlehem. It’s quite a long story and she sails through it with confidence. She gets a big round of applause and well deserved.

The pastor then gives us a passage about the symbolic significance of light, specifically candle light. While he’s at this a few teenagers are handing out candles to everyone. The pastor lights five candles on the packing crate alter. It’s the Advent tradition; one for Hope, one for Peace, one for Joy, one for Faith, and one for Love, and the final one symbolizing Jesus as the light of the world. Once he’s done, one of the parishioners steps forward and he lights her candle, she in turn lights one of the seated parishioners candles, who then turns and lights the next persons candle and so it goes.

One of the girls sitting in front of me lights my candle, I turn to do the same for the person seated behind me but see all the candles are already shining brightly. Maybe mine is the last candle? The piano strikes up and we sing Oh Holy Night, and a couple more carols. The pastor winds it up, sending us off with the message to spend a little time on Christmas in devotion, and to have a very merry Christmas, and then we are on our way. I guess when your sanctuary is a concrete floored warehouse and the pews are folding metal chairs you don’t need to worry too much about getting wax on the pews or carpet. Not saying that fancy Churches are bad, but for me, for this Christmas this is just right, more about the content and less about the wrapping. A side of SLO I didn’t expect to see. Again, thankful, and blessed.

It’s Christmas Eve, we say our goodbyes to our new friends and walk out into the cool dark night. I get in and start the car and the check engine light comes on. I check the oil (it’s low) so head to the nearest Seven/Eleven (which happens to be open at 8:00 pm on Christmas Eve) and put a quart in. Light still on, it’s only a few miles back to the Motel so we head out, what else are you going to do?

Am I worried or grumpy that my check engine light will be glowing brightly on Christmas day? Not in the least, SLO loves me!

Merry Christmas to all.

http://www.catrike.com/

Strawberries for Christmas

2011-12-21T08:05:00.001-08:00

Southern California is a land of seeming contradictions. On Tuesday I rode a nice little route on the beach from the place we are staying in Oxnard to Ventura. It was not a lot of miles, still it took me to places streching far across the social landscape in just an afternoon. I could not help but stop (frequently) for pictures. It was a great JRA ride.

Greg had warned me that the prevailing winds were from the north when the Santa Ana’s are not blowing. So my first half was into the wind but not a problem for me: No icy blast, no freezing fog, no frozen mud puddles or frozen water bottles. I wore a SS jersey and bib knickers. My thermal vest was in my seat pack but never needed.

It’s a Hodge Podge along the beach; you can tell this area has been inhabited for many years. There are a few old houses, lots of new and newish places, working, and pleasure boat marinas, even a power generation plant and oddly, a sewer treatment plant. I guess that's not so odd: wherever you find people you will find a "wastewater collection and treatment facility", almost always adjacent to a flowing water body, the big blue Pacific in this case. You know the old addage: "dilution is the solution to polution."

As I rode along the ocean the fancy places were to my left, and to the right there were fields of row crops.

The Strawberries are not only ripe but in the process of being harvested. If you are anywhere west of the Rockies and having fresh strawberries with your Christmas feast, there is a chance that they may be in one of these pictures. Seems so strange that to my left there are million dollar homes, yachts, and resorts while just across the road, campesinos, bundled in hoodies labor to make a day’s pay in the fields. I felt a little self-conscious to be lolling along on a bike ride in the middle of a work day.

There’s a ton of history here, we drove down from San Jose on highway 101. In places six lanes wide, wide enough to hold 3 of our hwy 101’s out on the Olympic Peninsula… that’s six lanes one way, another six lanes headed in the opposite direction (is my red neck showing?) All along the way there are historic markers for the Camino Real, which was the ancient route that connected the Spanish missions. We’d like to have stopped to do the tourist tap dance but in this case it was about the destination, not the trip.

So far, the destination has been well worth the trip. We arrived before sunset on Monday, the place is tres luxe, we were there because Mrs. Dr. C had a few airline points, or club points, or some such which helped bring it down from the ionosphere to the stratosphere. It’s very nice and I like it, but we checked out for cheaper digs after a couple day: it was that or washing dishes and doing the grounds keeping for the next six months.

I am completely enthralled with the local flora. Looking out at the beach and seeing palm trees in the sand, just makes me giggle.

I went around the inner courtyard and took pics of the giant plants that we are used to seeing sitting on the window sills 'en del norte': Calla lilies in bloom, just a few of the many Bird of Paradise plants, roses in bloom,

and then this caught my eye:

Late Last summer I bought a banana tree which was at deaths door and prices accordingly. I brought it home, trimmed it up and repotted in an oversized pot. I placed it near the waterfall in the Koi pond, just outside my office window which is the most protected spot we have on the place. It responded well, putting out four new leaves before the weather took a dive. When the pond froze over last week I noticed the banana palm was looking very bad. This is a picture of the blooms we’ll have if it ever gets tropical again back north.

Before we left I was corresponding with some of my six degrees of separation rando friends about a Solstice ride that they are putting on here. I was mildly interested so put my name on the ‘on the fence’ list. Since that time the emails were flying back and forth and against my better judgement found myself in the company of several other rando goofs rolling out on a 200Km perm up highwat 1 on the Big Sur coast from San Luis Obispo to Carmel.

Fun riding with people from all over SoCal (NorCal too, riders from SF!) It was not the death of me but I was Hors Delay, something about that 7,000 feet of climbing and not getting enough sleep the night before. I did OK for the first 90 miles, but from 90 to 100 miles I was falling asleep on the bike. Those swoopy, swervy descents in the dark while falling asleep on the bike were terifying.

Shawn and and his co-pilot gave us GREAT support!)

Watching the SIR Google list, I noted the discussion devolved to the merits of studded tires for their Solstice ride given the forecast for possible freezing fog.

Today, for a recovery ride we rode 10 miles out to Avila Beach (from San Luis Obispo) for lunch. It was 70 degrees and the more adventurous locals chanced slipping out of their long sleeve fleece tops.

SoCal is definitely a place where they live for their cars. I found these two beauties parked along the streets of Ventura:

And this little number in SLO

As further proof of the auto-bias I spied this uniquely Californian construct:

The Pediestrial Penalty box(?)

I don’t often declare my genius out loud, unless I’ve discontinued my medications for a period. BUT, …. the decision to make this frivolous trip may have indeed been a stroke of genius. True we haven’t been here long but so far it’s two thumbs way up.

Livin' on Reds and Vitamin C and Cocaine

2011-12-18T21:31:00.000-08:00

Here we are in Red Bluff, Cal, about half way down the yellow brick road.

So, what's the best way to prep for an extended road trip? Go see the Nut Cracker of course! Actually, the Nut Cracker was a pretty impromptu decision. It just sort of hopped off the back page of the Daily Zero and into our consciousness. Rather than a torturous, thoughtful, deliberate, decision making process, we just looked at what seating was still available for the Friday evening perfomance, found a couple seats in the mezanine that would give us decent views without breaking the bank and voila', just like in the MasterCard commercials we were there!  Only we didn't follow it with a fabulous 5 star late night dinner, a gondola ride, his n'hers massages, diamond rings and champaigne.

This is a local production at Olympia's unknown Gem, the Washington Center for the Performing Arts. Amazing how they can get what looks like 285 dancers on the little stage with out the kids crashing into each other. It wa a great and festive show.

But anyway, back to road trip prep:

This little culture shot would be completely inapproriate if we had not making slow and steady prep over the last few weeks.  We've been preparing for this trip rando style; you know, start at the start and just go slow and steady. It worked pretty well, and as a result we were rolling away from the ranch just a little behind schedule, say oh dark fourty five as opposed to oh dark oh clock.

The gremlins threw a few curves our way: one of the latches on the car top carrier broke as I was putting the bikes up. I used a couple reflective velcro ankle straps and a short bungie as a substitute hold down, nothing like redneck ingenuity. I will admit to anexiety as strange creaking noises crept into the cockpit whenever passing big rigs, or at speeds much above 75.

In keeping with the theme of this trip, it was cold, rainy, and foggy all the way through Washington and most of Oregon. Breaking over the summit of the Siskiyou's, blue cloudless skies and bright sun flooded the windshield.  We both broke out in spontaneous laughter: Who thought to bring sunglasses?

So far all has gone pretty well, I must say though that those little econo box car seats seem slightly more punishing than the last time I made this trip. That was int he early 70's: 4 guys and a cooler full of animal beer stuffed into a '59 VW convertible between Christmas and New Years. It was like going down the highway in a mobile meat locker: we kept the beer in the cooler to keep it from freezing.

Time to hit the hay and rest up for the final push tomorrow.

PS: another hopeful sign: it was 37 degrees out when we left, when we pulled off the ribbon of concrete, this evening it was 51 degrees.

Change of Scenery

2011-12-17T10:33:00.000-08:00

Weatherman says sunny and 71 degrees in San Luis Obispo today. Ten day forcast is for mid to high 60's.

It's sunny here now, and the thermometer just went above freezing. There will be all day frost in the shady parts. Weatherman says today's 50 degree high is the bright spot for the next 10 days. temps in the low 40's and little sun for the forseeable future.

We're heading south tomorrow.

Partly Cloudy with ....

2011-12-11T12:25:00.001-08:00

Wellactually all cloudy.

Itwas just getting light when I went out to check the grounds. Light enough that I could see that there wasfrost and ice on everything. It didn’t justfeel cold, it was cold. I didn’t checkthe thermometer so I can’t say how cold it was but I know it was freezing.

Ridersstarted showing about 9:20 or so, right on time. This was an achievement as they came from asfar away as Portland and Seattle. I canrelate, many of the brevets I have participated entail a long drive to andfrom.

Well sure, how better to haul a tandem than in the back seat of a Camaro?

Backin October I think, I organized the inaugural roll of the Pie Run, a flat straight100K (or thereabouts) perm. Don Booth andhis wife came down to ride it, as well as several others. We had a nice sit down meal and some goodtalk here at the ranch. I blogged it andnot too long after I got a note from Albert saying that if I were to organizesomething like this again he’d be interested to hear about it and that he mightbring his tandem partner Allyson along. Over time we figured out the best nexttime to ride it and so when I put out the note he was up for it. Much to my pleasant surprise, Lynn and Susancame up from Portland also, and my good friend Alan who lives here in Oakvillewanted to ride as well.

Weplanned to have a bite again after the ride and my friends John and Narayan wereon the fence, both are vegetarians so I set to figuring out a vegetarian mealThis always causes me anxiety, it is sort of like going to someone else’schurch; I’m never really sure of the protocol.

Werolled away from Harry’s in downtown Okville about on time, heading south.

We weren’t much past Rochester when I realizedthat I was missing a couple key ingredients for a successful ride. I carry certain ‘performance enhancing drugs’that help with both cramps and my respiratory issues but apparently my trusty soigneurDonatello, had neglected to restock my Hbar bag. Oh well, have to stick this one out with mootingmore than my natural powers. As we turnedon to Old Hwy 9 at the Maple Lane School for Boys I put my foot down. As I was attempting to clip back in, I got friendlylittle cramp in my Right calf. Not sobad that I could not flex my foot heal down, toe up, but bad enough to tell methat I was on the slippery slope. I was worried;this is less than 20K into the ride. Ahwell, between there and Chehalis my coughing attacks mostly subsided but those littlecramps you get with each pedal stroke became more frequent.

InCentralia the rest of the crew elected to stop at Starbucks for a pottybreak. I told Lynn I was going to rollon, knowing that they would soon enough catch me. About midtown Centralia I passed a little momn’pop health food store. I’d been inthere before and so I doubled back to see if they were open and if they had theHylands Leg Cramps tablets that help me. They were open and they did have the tablets. What’s more the friendly lady pushed a samplepacket of some other tablets that were also touted as having a perfect combination of mineral and traceelements that would help solve my cramp problem, ease my arthritis pain, giveme better colon health, and even contribute to better mental health! She wanted to gab, I wanted to ride. She was still going on as I slipped out the door. This may have saved my ride. By the time we hit the turnaround at Mary’sCorner, the cramping issue was subsiding and as long as I used my inhaler judiciouslythe coughing was pretty much held at bay.

Iwas in and out of the turnaround fairly quick. Descending the one and only hill on the return leg I realized that itwas still cold out. My Thermal vest undermy jacket was a little sweaty and the wind created by my blazing 28mph descentlet me know the temps were still hovering near freezing. It was about this stretch where we started gettingheavy ‘mist’. Not quite rain, but heavy enoughthat you had to wipe your glasses. I wasconcerned as the forecast was for rain later in the evening. Was this an early arrival? As it happened this little nudge in the ribsfrom the weather Gods subsided in less than an hour.

Ithink we all had negative splits on this ride; I know I was faster on the return.I attribute that mostly to getting my health issues under control. Afterwards Albert suggested that we had aheadwind on the way out.

AsI was working my way from Chehalis to Centralia, I came upon Lynn who was ¾ ofthe way through fixing a flat. I stoppedand between us we wrestled the last few inches of tire back onto the rim. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to workthat hard to fix a flat. There issomething to be said for (or against) certain combinations of rims and tires.

Soonenough we were back at Harry’s getting the obligatory receipt (to prove we hadnot cheated the route) and then back to Rocky Acres where the Lovely Mrs. Dr Chad a nice spread laid out for us.

Cooking right along on the homeward leg.

Myvegetarian Penne pasta seemed to go down pretty well, we had a fresh fruit plate,a cheese and crackers plate, another batch of pain au chocolat and Susan hadeven gotten up in the middle of the night to bake a batch of pumpkin muffins.

Wesat around the table, noshing and chatting. It was fun to get to know more of my fellow riders and this is somethingI miss from my JRA days. Brevets and Rando events are fun but an extended eatand chat generally is not part of the formula. I suppose if I were faster there would be more time for that, and I cansee the similarity with a sit down meal mid ride, but coffee and a yuppie bar atthe local barista shack post ride isn’t the same.

Susanmentioned that she noticed a reader board in Centralia that showed the tempo as33 degrees on the way out and 35 on the way back. Likely our high for the day was in the neighborhoodof 35 degrees. I’m considering asolstice ride in Southern California on the 21st. The locals say it may drop to 40 degrees overnight. Now I realize that 40 and 35 arenot far apart, but as I have been tracking the weather in that area I noticetheir lows are about in tune with our daily highs. What is most attractive is that they see sun throughmany of their days. Yesterday all we gotwas that oppressive gray cloud clover.

Wehad fun, and this time next week we will be on the road to southern Cal.

Killah Takes a Beating

2011-12-09T17:32:00.001-08:00

Winters are usually pretty quiet around theranch. Most critters seem to focus onsurvival; getting enough to eat while avoiding being eaten. Chairman usually gets a few fat but slow micethrough the winter (summers he brings in a lot more baby mice, baby birds, andsnakes) but as for turf wars; well that’s more of a summer sport ….usually.

So it was with some surprise and dismay that wewelcomed the feline Lord of the Manor through the cat door the other night bearing seriousbutt whoopin marks. As a younger cat, HisImperial Immenseness did most of his fighting from the rear, meaning most of hiswounds were in his hind quarters. Heeither needed to get faster or bigger.

More recently his wounds are showing up from theshoulders forward. I don’t know if he’swinning or losing but it’s clear he’s standing his ground more. This time it looks as though he was fighting outof his weight class. His whole face andthroat was seriously scratched and his left eye was bleeding and oozing.

I gavehim a once over and determined his eye injury was superficial, but he had atender abdomen and ripped me good as I was poking around. This usually portends a puncture wound and forcats, these are vectors for infections. He released about a pound of hair too which is also a common response tostress.

Next morning he was really on the ropes (he’s likeme, and most males I guess, a scratch and we’re on the couch, next to death) soa trip to the vet was in order.

Chairman is not a patient patient. He’s known at the cat hospital as a terror, andthey have a standing note on his chart: “Request owner to assist with exam”. I couldn’t take him however (Mrs. C did) andhe would need to be sedated anyway for a cleanup of his wounds. (Think shearinga Tasmanian Devil). For the laceration on his throat they glued him back together. He's been stitched up before but he doesn't go for that; he rips the stitches out quick as he can. I’m thinking ofseeing if I can get him on the family healthcare plan, I think vet rates areabout 10% higher than human rates. Those vets must have some fancy boats to pay for!

He’s home but still awfully gimpy and none toopleased to be touched. When he’s down hedoes not care at all for sympathy, he just wants to be left alone (I canrelate).

As you can see he’s going to have some prettyawesome battle scars. If looks count perhaps he’ll be able to scare some of thechallengers off.

Sweet Memories

2011-12-07T21:05:00.000-08:00

The first time I rode PBP I learned many things. It was the first time I had ridden a 1200Km brevet. It was the first time I had been to Europe. I was pretty much a rookie.

Almost everything I learned was pleasant, some things more pleasant that others. It was 2003, our Secretary of Defense had managed to disrespect almost all of Europe with a few choice comments, the “Old Europe” being one of them. Some folks worried that international relations might be a little rocky. All of those ‘old Europeans’ along the route of PBP welcomed me, a bike rider from half a world away as if I were a long lost son come home to their waiting welcome. That was a great discovery; that international relations are best left to people and not politicos.

Another great discovery was that bread, and chocolate were good together. If you had suggested to me before I arrived in France that I would like bread and chocolate together I would have either sneered or politely dissented, depending upon how well we knew each other.
Neither Wonder Bread nor Hershey bars are high on my gastronomic list, and they only sink lower when considered together.

But riding through the rural French countryside I was seduced by a wondrous French concoction known as pain au chocolat. As you transit from village to village, sooner or later you catch the heavy scent of fresh baked goods, and if you are lucky it is a patisserie, and one of the staples will be pain au chocolat.

When I went back and rode again in 2007 I was reacquainted with this fantastic French delight. I must have made an impression on my sister, though I admit I don’t even remember telling the story. Recently she sent me a recipe. She too is a hobby baker, and asked “Is this that pastry you were so wild about when you were in France?”

And there on my dope scope was a simplified recipe for Pain au Chocolat.

Oh yeah, that's runny gooey, bitter sweet chocolate dripping out of the middle of the puff pastry.

These turned out pretty good. To be sure, I have nothing on Madame Chloe, but another try or two and I think I can get it pretty danged close.

Some friends are coming down (and UP even- riders from Portland!) for a ride this Saturday. This has got to be one of the easiest rides that counts for RUSA credit. It's designed to be a 'social ride', doesn't mean you can't rush through it, but I'm hoping we get some socializing in. There will be noshing after and I may try to have a pan of these ready for some riders hungry for a bite and a good chat.

Bonne Route!

We have no life!

2011-12-02T21:49:00.000-08:00

In my last post (which admittedly is as stale as that mumified turkey wing lurking in greasy tinfoil at the back of your fridge) I wrote of the glories of introducing new riders to the rando way; the thrill of victory (over frosty roads) and the agony of defeat (when a torn tire strikes).

I waxed poetic over the simple joys of mingling with old friends and new, the bright promise of a new tradition, born in the cold depths of winter, and the anguish of making command decisions that could change people’s lives forever (should we or should we not postpone the start for an hour?)

Did I get any love for the incredible sacrifice of volunteering? Did crowds rush forward shouting “Me, me, pick me to organize the next populaire!”? Did anyone compliment me on my flowery prose, or near perfect punctuation?

Here’s what I got: no less than five (5!) comments correcting the definition of a populaire! If you don’t know, or didn’t pick up the glaring error, well, at least there is hope for you.

We are addicted! Addicted to rules, to cue sheets, to Km’s vs miles, to hair splitting definitions, and brevet cards. Think about this: bureaucracy is a word with a French root. Randonneuring, … abandon hope all ye who enter here.

Actually,…. I think it might be the weather. I’m a native so I don’t constantly complain about the weather. But now and again, like everyone here my gyro gets bumped off it’s axis. Take today for example. Today was another perfect day, not spent on the bike. But let me describe a ‘perfect day’ in the first week of December here in our world:

I woke to 27 degrees and hard ice, (not frost) on the windshield. I went out to the truck in the middle of a pitch black night, (6:15am) in thick freezing fog, to hack away at the frozen windshield. Pitch dark night still when I arrived at the office at 6:45 am. By 10:30, the thick fog was just burning off enough to expose the soggy gray banket above. There were moments when a significantly brighter spot almost glowed in the overcast. Not bright enough to cast a shadow mind you, but bright enough to cause suspicion that something strange and wonderous was going on behind the damp gray earth cozy. At 2:00 there were actually moments of what we call ‘sun breaks’. The thermometer was already going limp after it’s brief high of 47 degrees. The best of the day had come and gone, and by 3:30 the gloam had once again descended. Not even a bright spot, just a gray flannel blanket 3,000 feet above. And then of course an hour later the street lights came on, and within 20 minutes we were once again plunged into inky black, cloud covered night. This friends, is a good day for riding in my world.

Now I realize that my world my look positively yummy to those who live further from the sun than us mossbacks. But frankly, I do not subscribe to the notion that misery loves company. So if you are more miserable than me, well, could you please keep it to youself, or ragale me with tales of your travels to the tropics (real or imagined) while I whine my song, please?

As I was saying:

So, is it any wonder that a gaggle of geeks could find nothing better to quibble over than the difference between 200 hundred kilometers and zero to 199? Actually, that at least two or three of these poor neurotic soles didn’t go postal is I think the greater surprise.

I may not have mentioned here that Mrs. C and I are planning a sojourn, a voyage to the planet of the Sun. As I correspond with friends in the south I get lots of encouragement and also at least a little gentle buffering of expectations. They suggest that it may be unneccessary to pack a Costco size container of sunblock, that walks on the beach may require a long sleeve Tee or a sweatshirt. That an average day would be sunny and 65 degrees, 67 maybe.

Sounds glorious to me.

PS: I stand corrected:

populaire (pope u lair) - A shorter "randonneuring" event usually run under the regulations and pace of a standard brevet, but being less than 200 kilometers in length, they lack the official sanction of the Audax Club Parisien. Populaires are often 100 or 150 kilometers in length and frequently used by experienced randonneurs for training and/or socializing, as well as introducing new riders to the ways of "randonneuring".

An Imperfect Storm

2011-11-21T19:48:00.000-08:00

Late November, the weekend before Thanksgiving; most people’s thoughts are somewhat removed from riding a bicycle. For randonneurs however, it’s just another day for a bike ride, provided they can sidestep all the responsibilities that have been previously shirked in favor of ………. going for a bike ride.

This day (Sunday, November 21st) we are offering the first edition of a series of monthly populaires. A populaire is a randonneuring event of 100Km or less. From a purely practical sense the notion that people will willingly come out, just after sunrise to ride their bikes in what is more than likely to be somewhat hostile weather conditions is an iffy proposition. In these parts late November is often fraught with ferocious storms out of the north Pacific that deliver howling winds and prodigious rain dumps; Decidedly unfriendly bicycling weather.

Getting a populaire on the calendar requires preplanning: For it to be an actual sanctioned event it has to be put on the calendar a minimum of five weeks before the event date. I’m a local, and I would no more attempt to predict the weather in late November, five weeks in advance, than I would predict whether or not the Congressional budget super committee would come up with three trillion in budget cuts. Actually, I’d bet against Congress before I would make the weather call. (Old news I guess, as might be obvious I was writing this while waiting for riders to finish yesterday) As it happens, we are between storms. Saturday it snowed, warmed through the day enough to melt much of the lowland snow, and that night it froze.

Sunday morning I woke to ice on the windshield, frost everywhere and spots of ice on the roads. The ride starts in Woodinville which makes for a 2 hour I-5 cruise for me. The drive was uneventful (for me) but I did pass three wrecks, one pretty bad (two left lanes closed). I had been worrying about road conditions for the riders for the previous week watching the weather forcasts. The possibility of snow, ice, or possibly both had me over thinking this for the last few days. I personally know three riders who have gone down on slippery roads and suffered hip fractures as a result. All were eventually able to get back to riding strong but that’s a forced time out I would hate to see any one suffer.

I arrived early, it was just starting to get light, but as dawn crept in people began showing up. Some however said it was a little too sketchy and they would elect not to ride. I consulted with our club president who let me know that the ride organizer has the option of postponing the ride start if conditions warranted. My compatriot and co-organizer Narayan and I put our heads together and decided to postpone the start for one hour. Here is the logic:

From a safety perspective, it couldn’t hurt and might result in additional thawing, icy roads being the primary concern.
Riders would still be finishing before dark, which was also something of a safety concer safety concern.
Riders would still be finishing early enough that it should not cause problems with post ride plans, (you know, dashing out to mow the frozen grass just as the sun goes over the hill) and
It would ease my anxiety: Nothing like a catastrophe to serve as the instant buzz kill for your big idea, first ever event.

This news was met generally with little disagreement. A small group of non-member riders decided they’d just head out and ride their own ride, and so they did. For the most part, the rest of the riders drifted away, ostensibly to Tully’s (local coffee house) and I was left wondering if we had just fire hosed the event; we’d know in an hour.

I stood around and kicked at the gravel with a couple of riders and my cohort Narayan. It was cold but we had good talk, mostly about PBP. Narayan still had his PBP high going on and told fantastic stories. In short order, a group of riders came back from Tully’s, and then another group showed up, and before you know it we had a pretty good crowd milling about waiting for the start. We gave them one last warning about the icy conditions, admonished them to ride safe and then like pigeons they flew the coop.

I had to move out smartly to man the first secret control, about 13 miles out on the route. The riders got there faster than I anticipated,

apparently the chill air was motivation enough to keep them moving right along. As they came through I asked about the road conditions and everyone said there had been no problem to that point. I was happy to hear it but was a little concerned about the next little stretch, an east facing slope with lots of twists and turns through woodlots that drops down to the Snoqualmie river valley.

The last of the riders came through in no time and then it was fold the tent, saddle the camel, and head out to find a largish grocery or drug store. My hearing aid batteries were dying (one had already pegged out) and without aid I am pretty close to deaf. Then zip back to Tully’s which would be the ride finish. The four non-ride riders showed up about 45 minutes later, they were fast but they were riding their own rides.

And in the ensuing couple hours all the riders made it back to the finish without incident. A pair on a tandem DNF’ed due to a serious tire problem but otherwise everyone finished with nothing more than wind burned cheeks. A couple riders mentioned that they thought the one hour delay was a good move, and those who may have been put off by it were polite enough not to complain.

I asked a few of the newbies if they would mind completing a survey I had cooked up the night before. Nothing scientific, I was mostly looking for information about how they had learned about the event and randonneuring, what if anything they thought could be done to improve the ride.

I think for mid November we could say it was a success; I collected cards from 24 finishers, and with the 4 or 5 non-ride riders and the two DNF’s, that totals over 30 riders willing to come out on a frosty Sunday morning. The drive home was without incident; I took I-405 to avoid the post Seahawks traffic-pulooza in downtown Seattle., and was happy to find myself back in the sticks where I belong.

Today we continue with the imperfect storm; It poured rain all day and the wind is howling, something we affectionately refer to as a pineapple express; warm (for winter) onshore flow with a continuous progression of wet storms. This creates a rain on snow event in the mountains and portends some flooding in the lowlands of Western Washington for Thanksgiving if it does not let up.

Waiting For the Other Shoe to Drop

2011-11-10T22:11:00.000-08:00

It is now undeniably November here in the Pacific Northwest, and that means really crappy weather could descend at any given moment without having to make any excuses or apologies. November, December too is crappy weather season here.

So when locals see a forecast like this:

Partly cloudy, high of 50 degrees with less than 20% chance of rain

we can’t help but think; “This looks like a great day for a bike ride.” Partly cloudy, high of 59 degrees, and a 20% chance of rain? Oh yeah, this is a bone fide nice day ….. for November.

So on the SIR google group we find a veritable springtime bloom of invitations to join this or that permanent route. You’d think it was April by the activity, further proof that this is indeed a nice day in the eyes of the pasty, washed out, local cycling community. And so being the ‘well seasoned’ local randonneur that I am I made my excuses and took a day off work to bask in the glow, and to get another ‘P’ closer to the illusive P-12. (consistency trumps ability!)

I picked the Chehalis - Tono route for a couple resons. First it doesn’t require a lot of effort for me to ge to the start. More and more I am liking less and less a long drive or ride to get to the start of an ‘event’. I always think to myself “Look how much fine riding you are driving past to get to a place to ride!” Plus, it starts at a Starbux which is a better start location than a pulp ill or slaughter house.

(bacon havarti chibatta breakfast sandwich. I took this pic because steam was rolling off this thing as I set it on the hood of the truck)

More seriously, it is mostly rural, within 20 minutes you are out of the bustling metropolis of Centralia and out in the country.

That is unless you encounter a train.

It was a long damn train.

The Tono hills insure that you will have to work to get to the end, and though I climb like a rhino I know that hills have their purpose.

Getting ready, imagine my glee as I opened the winter booties drawer, expecting to find a collection of worn, but not quite worn out booties, only to find ....

These beauties! Last May I put in enough miles on the commute to work challenge that I got a 'prize'. I was stunned and thrilled to get a nice pair of Showers Pass fleece booties, they even fit! So I stuck them in the drawer, forgetting about them until last night. SUH WEEET!

The 8:00 am start was slightly obnoxiously early, but an early start would mean an early finish and possibly some left over daylight afterward. I noticed last night that it was stoned nighttime dark at 5:15pm! This just seems wrong.

The weather followed form however the over night low of 34 degrees caused me to think that early morning start was a classic case of over thinking a situation. Was I likely to get busy and mow the lawn afterward? .... Right.

But all the elements came together to deliver on the promise.

Early did indeed result in almost no traffic.

Cold resulted in encountering almost no other cyclists, and the wildlife had not been stirred up. The ducks and geese were calm on the ponds, I passed a small herd of deer, they just stared and munched, unpreterbed and the birds of prey went about their business with workman like precision.

Gee, I wonder why they call it the Steamplant?

I saw this strange apparition a couple times. A fog rainbow?

I thought it might be an optical illusion, or the result of some interplay between my photogray, prescription trifocal glasses and the cold and foggy morning. I was glad to see the camera picked it up when I got home.

Always nice to be able to stop by the local Koi shop when out for a ride.

You do see 'interesting' things out in the sticks.

This nice looking Mote Carlo will get you over the jersey barrier in style, but man, that flat is going to be a bear to fix. The fors ale sign said 'runs good'.

And here is a little contest for the mycologically inclined:

Yummy, or yucky? first one with the correct answer gets Satutday off. Provide the common name and you get Sunday off too! One entry per contestant please, these weekends off are getting harder to wangle, the job market being what it is.

For my part, I did what I do. I huffed and chuffed, blew billows of steam from my soggy lungs, and revelled in the reality that in this place and time I can do this as a matter of course. No lift tickets or greens fees, no permits or applications. No military checkpoints, no militia or liberators carrying Kalashnikovs or M-16’s. Just me and my round wheels rolling along making steady progress to get back to where I started. The whole concept of going out for a bike ride is so abstract. How can doing something with so little purpose be so satisfying?

Everything worked great, the legs, the bike, the infrastructure, the weather and my mind. When I ride solo I talk to myself and think through the worlds problems as well as trying to figure why that one electrical cuircuit to the outlet out at the end of the driveway trips the breaker in the service entrance panel.

The big slosh will likely come along sooner or later. This being a La Nina year, the big slosh may arrive in white flurries. In these parts snow freaks most people but I’ll take it over extended torrential downpours any day.

Another Buggy Whip to the Dust Bin

2011-11-09T18:53:00.000-08:00

For more than 80 years the State of Washington has been in the liquor business. I don’t mean regulation, limitation, control or anything like that. I’m talking about socialist style state run, owned, and operated liquor stores where state employees check your ID and sell you hard liquor.

No more. A ballot measure eliminating this anachronistic system passed last night, so starting in June liquor sales will pass to the vaunted private sector. There are good cases to be made on both sides.

Of course for the free marketers state control of liquor sales has been a caustic bone in the throat for years; commercial sales is rightly the province of business in a capitalist society, the state with its inefficient, bloated systems, overpaid, and underworked employees has no business conducting business. And hey, if local businesses will be able to do more business, liquor will become cheaper, and of course, this system will create more jobs and more tax revenue. What’s not to like?

The anti’s hung their hat on the fear tactic of more alcohol related social dysfunction; More alcohol related illness and death, and of course every other TV add featured faux teenagers coming out of a convenience stores at night getting into a car with knowing grins. They had some data but really didn’t offer much else to defend this quirky, last century structure. It was on the ballot a few years ago and did not pass, but this move to catch up with modern times was really a foregone conclusion, just a matter of when ‘common sense’ would prevail.

It turns out that common sense arrived via a Ferrari in the fast lane thanks to a $22 million campaign donation from Costco. Bleeding heart liberals, pedaling fears of what might happen was a lot like bringing a knife to a gunfight. They really never had a chance.

So, in the land of free enterprise, once again money is the deciding factor. I have no doubt that the big money campaign made the difference, and further, the prospect of more profits (and lower costs) were what drove the whole issue to begin with. I mean what the heck, if it’s going to mean I can get cheaper booze, then it's an easy decision.

You will never see a referendum on the ballot that defines what is and what is not the appropriate role of government, and the fact that Washington was one of only eight states with this quirky approach to controlling a mind altering substance is just one more reason that we should catch up with the times, right?

Frankly, if hard liquor is a little more expensive, a little harder to get, and a little more tightly controlled, I don’t see that as a bad thing. All those points that made the case for commercialization were for me, reasons to retain tighter control on this controlled substance. I don’t drink, which may be obvious, but I once did, and I was really good at it, in spite of how hard it was to get a jug. I‘m not a teetotaler, not anti-alcohol; as far as I am concerned to drink or not is a personal choice. But it cannot be denied that there is a social cost associated with this personal decision, and because of that I think society has a right and responsibility to manage the situation. The way we had it, until last night, seemed to me to be a reasonable management strategy.

So, starting in June, you will be able to get really cheap hard liquor (how long before we have Kirkland brand bourbon?) at your local WalMart, Target and of course, Costco. Costco will be the vendor of choice; you’ll be able to get vodka, in a shrink wrapped two pack of 55 gallon drums. Capitalism conquers all!

think I'll go for a bike ride.

Arab Spring ...

2011-11-06T12:31:00.000-08:00

Rando Autumn.

As I go through my days I often encounter blog topics in the rough; a conversation, a picture, or news item that suggests a little exploration. Bike rides are grist for the mill. Why then has it been 43 days since the last widget came rolling off the line?

Believe me, there has been no shortage of material to work with. Consider the popular media: Dictators have been deposed, famous people have made fools of themselves, the season has turned, local elections, and of course there is politics in general; The 16 month one sided presidential campaign to consider. Can you believe that running for president has become a full time job? The whole side show that national mis-governance has become.

What is the difference between the boy scouts and the US Congress? The boy scouts have adult leaders. THAT’S A JOKE - PLEASE DON’T FLAME ME IF YOU ARE ONE OF THE 18 PEOPLE WHO HAVE A FAVORABLE OPIONION OF CONGRESS.

So, obviously there has been plenty of muck for the staff at Codfish Reporting And Publishing to run their rakes through. The question put was why no production? There are a few reasons, maybe hurdles in series contributed. Anyway, in no particular order:

My computer ...

spun off the tracks and came to a screeching halt in a rather unspectacular crash. It isn’t clear why but a major redo was required. I’m not technical, so when I got it home and it was cleaner than a used car on a sunny day … but all my files were on this little portable hard drive, well that is akin to giving a monkey a banana inside of a milk bottle.

Work.

I am at a point in life where almost as many of my friends are retired as are still employed. I am ‘eligible’ to retire according to my employer’s definition but, according to my definition I’m not quite there. (Retirement: that age when you no longer need your paycheck) So I labor for the man. Having been at this for a long time, I have developed some skill at pacing my work to make sure I am done before I am cooked through. (that sounds suspiciously Dilbert doesn’t it?) Long story short, in the last 43 days I have cranked out a bucket full of widgets.

The seasons changed.

That is enormous fodder for blog posts. I love to wax poetic about the ‘crisp fall air’, ‘the big yellow Maple leaves scuttling along the pavement, in the chill autumn breeze, clattering like Dungeness crabs seeking a rock to hide under’. But of course the change of seasons is like the 10Km kite in a euro-pro bike race: Time to grab a lower gear and race through all the ‘deferred maintenance’ around the ranch that must be done before the ground turns hard. A more permanent fix for some of that outdoor wiring, insulating that hard to get to water line, or finishing off that last little landscape project. Removing the rotting tomato plants, mulching the potato patch, heading the annuals, pruning the lilacs, in with the hummer feeders, and out with the suet feeder. Sheesh, where are Pedro and Manuel when I need them? Probably been deported for ‘taking all our jobs” (see foolish politico’s rant above)

Riding my Bike.

Yes I actually have been riding my bike and I know that complaining that riding my bike takes away from time to write about riding my bike is perhaps just a little too self involved. But then, if one must choose, the riding part is clearly the better option than the writing part. Ride now, write later (see change of season rant above).

What to write.

Here is another self absorbed bit; If I have been out of publication for an extended period, what story to lead with when CRAP comes back on line? Ideally in this world of epic postings, I should come out with a recounting of my epic 10,000 km ride down the spine of the Andes, complete with data (thousands of feet climbed, max and average heart rate, steepest and average grade, etc. etc) accompanied with pictures of road rash (protruding bone ends so much the better).

I choose instead to remark on the quiet, possibly invisible revolution developing in the rando universe. Our Rando club, SIR held its annual meeting in early October. An unremarkable accomplishment on its face; a group of geeky bike nerds gather at a local brew pub for lunch, a minimum amount of club business, and of course regalement with friends over events of the past year. So formulaic in fact that it is often a push; if anything else of significance falls on that date then the ACM drops from ‘top priority’ status. I am really glad that I went and not just because it was fun to catch up with other folks I have not ridden with much this season.

More than just the vote of acclimation for the officers, more than the formal announcement of the ride schedule for next season, there was some spirited, and thankfully respectful dialogue about what we do, how we do it, and what we might do to get better at it. You non-bikish readers are probably scratching your heads right now: “they ride bikes, what’s to figure out?”

We had a great discussion of what we might do to attract more, and a more diverse group of riders. It was great to hear people acknowledge that there are certain aspects of our sport that are limiting to some potential members.

This business takes a lot of time. If you want to go out on a weekend and ride your bike for 40 hours, tright. That obviously takes a lot of time. But what isn’t immediately obvious is that you are going to need to spend a lot more time (orders of magnitude) practicing to get good at that. Note the telling word here is time. If you are in your 50’s, comfortably employed (or retired) all your kids are grown and gone, you probably have the time it takes. It is no surprise then that this formula produces a cohort that is pretty old, pretty white, and pretty male. The fraternity of old, white guys on bikes with a smattering of young tattooed dudes (many childless) and a few women here and there (also, by and large without dependent children) who somehow have been able to divine the secret handshake.

It sounds like a scathing indictment but it was enlightening for me. The very nature of the fun we love limits participation for many. But we didn’t just lay it down there and go on with a weak ‘oh well’.

There was an extended, spirited internet discussion after the meeting, also very respectful in its tone. In past years I think people have been reluctant to speak out about the monolithic culture of SIR. That makes sense because it was a much smaller, homogenous club. We always did what we always had done because those big rides through the Cascades, or around the Olympic Peninsula were, well, what we did.

The club is bigger, and more diverse now and what I took away from the meeting was that we don’t need to stop or change what we do, we just need to expand what we do. Sure everyone is invited and encouraged to ride the 5 pass 600K (no drop bags not allowed!) but we should perhaps also offer a few more 200Km events through the summer. We could offer a night start 200Km to help ease the skittish into riding when the sun goes down. My own bias was exposed: I really dislike riding in urban environs. I know this about me, and I know that the older I get the more set I am. But I looked back at the results of our more urban populaires and there is no denying that those rides draw a lot of new and younger riders.

One Theory of change goes like this:

· Recognition of issue

· Identification of strategy

· Connection to tangible results

We recognized a few issues. As mentioned some we can’t overcome (this stuff does take time) but some we will address. One example: We will offer a monthly 100Km populiare, beginning this month. These rides will generally be located in proximity to urban areas with an eye to drawing those younger riders who may be interested in getting a taste of the rando magic, without having to scale Mount Doom. Conveniently, they woll also count toward the P-12 award for current members.

There is one limiting factor that absolutely must be addressed if we are going to have success. All the things we want to do, the things we saw we could do, are dependent on volunteers. If people really want to see change in our club, they must step up and say ‘I’ll do that.’ Of all the volunteer organizations I have been involved with, this one has the highest participation rate. We have a much bigger club than we did 10 years ago so it is not unreasonable to expect that we will get a bump in volunteers, they just have to be motivated and supported. The core group of old white guys can do a great job of helping the newer members learn the ropes of putting on an event.

I hope that at next year’s ACM we can take a look at some tangible results. It will be simple to compare the results year to year. We will not only be able to report kilometers, and brevets ridden but we can also see if our outreach efforts have bumped the needle on the old white guy metric. I’m excited.

Epic ... in Fifty Years

2011-09-24T22:09:00.000-07:00

We had a short sunny ride today; it offered such a poor “ride time to prep time” ratio that normally I would have made my excuses and passed on it. You know, more time to kit up and get the bikes loaded and to the start than we would actually spend riding. I usually eschew these things; if I’m going ride then I want it to ‘mean something’, I want to burn some time, and some fat too. Making a short ride into a long event, it’s not normally my thing.

So last week when my wife asked if I’d help her herd a gaggle of 3rd through 6th graders on a 15 mile rail trail ride from Tenino to Yelm I groaned as if I had been asked to carry a king sized mattress up a spiral stair case while wearing roller blades. I didn’t actually groan out loud (I don’t think) but it is likely that my facial contortions were so severely exaggerated as to distort the time space continuum such as to generate a sub-audible fingernails-on-chalkboard screech.

I had plans, multiple, competing plans actually, for what appears to be the last sunny and 75° Saturday of the year 2011. So many possibilities, and so many responsibilities, and so many opportunities. The menu was extensive and the options ranged from selfish indulgence to noble sacrifice and then ……….this.

This is not an easy spot to wriggle out of, even for those of us deft enough to make ‘flakey’ sound at least plausible if not downright believable. My wife rarely asks for this sort of help, she knows my predisposition, and too given that it is the cusp of the season she knows that like most selfish bicycle bloggers I see these days as the canvass for my next epic creation.

So when she asked, I knew that it would mean a lot if I helped out. I also knew that it would probably mean a lot if I didn’t. Rather than plead and whine and carry on like a sullen spoiled adolescent I sucked it up, earned huge man-points and said something like: “Sure honey, I’d love spend all day on a fifteen mile ride, with eight little kids who can’t ride a straight line, and haul the kids and the bikes to and from the multiuse path. Well, I may have sounded just slightly less enthusiastic, but the bottom line is, I said yes and I meant it.

Amazingly, most of the kids and the parents arrived at the church abut on time. There was less confusion about who would ride in which car, and where the cars would be staged after the kids were dropped at the start. I actually could not see it before we started, there were too many permutations , with a snack break/sag wagon opportunity planned for mid-ride in the little town of Rainier. I just put my faith in the Lord and waited for the adults to tell me who was going with me and where I was to drive.

This may seem like casting your little popsicle stick boat on the rapids but silent and supportive is a strategy that can pay dividends. I drew the long straw as it were. My ‘job’ was to drive to the start in Tenino, help unload all the bikes, pump the tires and get the caravan rolling, and then Alan and I got to ferry a couple rigs (my truck and a Suburban 15 miles up the road to Yelm (the end of the ride) and then we got to ride back down the trail to meet up with the kids and the other adults. This was shaping up to be more like a ride and less like what, me having to do something for someone else?

Mother Nature delivered the goods: It was cool in the morning and then clear and sunny, warm but not hot. One of those fall days that lays before you all of the goodness it has to give, you just have to ride through it. Alan and I made quick work of the deserted MUP back to the group, he on his Specialized Hard Rock, I on the Rivendell of simplicity. He wondered why I had taken all the gears off the bike, I explained that it came that way but really didn’t try to explain single or fixed gear mind, no need for that kind of classism on such a fine day.

And then we were hooked up with the herd. Peloton does not describe it, pack implies more order than was evident, herd is about right. OK, you had your fun, now it’s time to be ‘dutiful’. There were of course two flights, the faster bigger kids and the littler kids. I figured I was all in any way so wen to the back to ride weep behind the littlest ones with Mrs. Dr. C. I let them role by, giving them a little distance, watching the little kids grow even littler as they weaved up the trail in the shade of the overhanging trees. I rolled out and was surprised to see how well the little ones were doing, I went along side to compliment the riding skills as well as the awesome speed and the white and purple and lavender bike color scheme. And this little face looked up at me, pedaling along furiously with a big grin and said “Your bike looks nice too.” And in that quick glance, those shiny little eyes, that big grin on that little pumpkin face peeking out from under the helmet I recognized, unmistakable the joy of a kid riding a bike.

We rode along and talked, she said she doesn’t get to ride her bike much because there is no place she can ride. I knew what she meant. 50 years ago when I was her age, kids rode bikes on the streets of the neighborhood, or rode to the park to play ball, or even to the cornershop for a Snickers or a Dixie cup. But that is pretty much out now, too much traffic, too much risk, too much “danger”. But here, for this brief few hours on this paved rail trail with half a dozen adults floating back and forth as cover between the dozen or so kids it was OK. A little girl could spin her legs, grin and squeal, careen from one side of the trail to the other and actually ride the whole 15 miles from one town to another with no fear at all.

As I drifted up and back between the kids strung out on the trail I saw that look again And again: kids, out on bikes riding along on a sunny day with not a care in the world, just being kids, and experiencing a little more freedom than they are usually allowed.

Shortly we were rolling into the park in Yelm. We loaded the bikes into the pickups and the trailer, had a little impromptu picnic lunch and then it was over: The ride was over, summer was over, that brief, shared joy; the experience of spinning the wheels, shifting the gears, stopping and starting again at the crossings. All of that was now memory, and I hope, safely stored on the hard drive. Perhaps 50 years in the future, when these kids are the ‘adult supervision’ they will ride along with a new herd, and hear about how there are no places to ride and feel good that they are able to help provide, if only for a few hours, the opportunity for these shiny smiling faces to get out and experience the joy of a kid on a bicycle. Perhaps they will remember this ride.

I am so glad I passed on the epic ride, the yard work, or the special end of summer Koi shop sale. I’m so glad I wasn’t whinier, more selfish, and more skilled at getting out of helping out. This was good for me, and I think it was good for these kids too.

PS: This post would have been great with a few pics, but you know ... I had low expectations, shame on me!

If there was any doubt ....

2011-09-18T18:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday’s SIR Fall 200K was proof that it is no longer summer. Oh sure, according to the calendar, the astrologists, the almanac … all the official sources make it clear that this was officially the last weekend of summer but my rando gauges and indicators, every one of them, were pegged way over on the ‘not summer’ side of the readout. Summer is lounging blissfully on the deck of a luxury cruise ship somewhere in the Pacific, heading south for my friends in Australia.

As I sat in the kitchen slurping my hot coffee at 5:00 am contemplating the day ahead I thought, maybe I should switch from shorts to knickers. Given the weather prediction it was clear that we would get rain at some point. The forecast suggested that this would likely come near the end of the ride. There was a 10% chance up until about noon, and then it jumped to 20%, and worked up to 40% by about 6:00 pm. In these parts 10% means you may or may not get wet. 40% means you will get wet and probably real raincoat rain, just a matter of when and how much. Not that bib knickers will keep me dry, but managing rain on a ride is more about temperature than moisture control. A day of bike riding is all about decisions; can I make that light? Does this cue sheet mean the next chance for coffee is (or should be) here? Or 8 miles down the road? In hindsight, that quick change to knickers was a great start to the day.

30 or so rides were milling about in the Safeway parking lot when I rode up. Being a ‘local’ I knew that Vic’s Pizza, the official finish was just a couple blocks up the road so I had parked there. It would be dark and I would be wet at the finish, and after the post ride pizza gorge and cool down, I knew I wouldn’t want to roll back down to the Safeway. Two good decisions in a row and we’re not even out of on the course yet, wooo hooo!

One of the things I like about our far corner of bicycling is the rituals we go through. The pre-ride chat is one of those rituals; Catching up with friends, the weather, and of course on this morning hearing stories of the recently completed PBP filled the air.

Soon we were off, heading for Steamboat Island. I let the crowd roll out and then followed along behind. No sense getting in the way of the faster riders as I knew I would spend the day at the back of the pack, or in racy rider parlance, ‘off the back’. My friend Brian elected to ride with me, he’s been suffering low back pain and figured taking a little speed off the ball might be a good formula for going the distance. It was a nice gesture and though I am sure he could have finished sooner than me, we rode the whole day together.

I know the first part of this ride well, when I lived in Oly a ride out to Steamboat Island was a regular route, and if I wanted to spice it up, mixing in the Gravelly Beach loop was a great way to combine scenic vistas of Eld Inlet and Squaxin Passage with some serious hill repeats. I saw Gravelly Beach on the cue sheet but mercifully, Millison had spared us most of the ups and downs.

It was about 8:45 as we started the drop to Steamboat Island that felt I the first faint drops of moisture. This could be just a little mist coming in off the water, we were after all surrounded by water, or it could be the start of something more. Rain? Highly unlikely, the weather wizards had assured us that we had a 90% chance of being in the clear until at least noon, … right? By 9:00 am my spirits (not to mention my feet) were dampened as we rode through a full on, drops dripping off your nose, rain. Was this it? Had the 3:00 rain come to find us some six hours ahead of schedule? Were we in for a ‘rain ride’ or was this just a cell passing through? We know about rain rides, we know what is in store but we prefer the wade in not dive in approach. Particulalry in as much as the long range forcasts call for another winter of La Nina. I’m happy to report that by 11:00 the rain had abated and ‘The Orb That Shall Not Be Named’ made an appearance, shadows and all.

We stopped in Shelton, and noshed. I had a particularly delicious pizza pocket (I wonder if one would be arrested and thrown in a dungeon if caught with one of these things in France?) and some convenience store coffee. (I’m sure this version of ‘coffee’ would be grounds for deportation in Italy!) The cue sheet said we should provision as it would be another whole 25 miles before we arrived at the next (SIR supported) controle.

I should note here that this route was put together by a ‘new comer’ to our part of the world. In fact Millison is not a new comer, he’s lived in the area for years but as we all know, anyone who arrives on the scene much more than 5 minutes after you is a new comer. It is roundly agreed that Mill has contributed enormously to the improvement to randonneuring in the south sound by all of us ‘old timers’ (the 5 minute plus crowd), He’s probably quadrupled the number of permanent routes but more than that, his routes put us on roads I’ve never ridden before. It is a special treat to be able to explore new country and it usually means a long drive to do so, but with Millison on our team, we get to explore close to home. How do these ‘new guys’ do that? Us locals thought we knew everything there was to know.

Into Shafer State Park (one of those not slated for closure due to the State’s current budget crisis) we found Millison and Ian ready to serve. Pay close attention to this next little bit, it’s exemplifies another of our traditions that I especially hold dear. Rolling up to the picnic shelter Ian takes my bike “Go have a seat, I’ll take care of your bike”. Millison asks what we want to eat, “where’s your control card I’ll get it out and sign it” Ian is quick to get the coffee going. Millison is now filling our water bottles. We are 120 Km into a 200Km brevet and getting treatment as if we had just come 600Km through the mountains; attention to assistance far exceeding our needs, but the standard is high, and of course being the dead effing last riders they’ve already done plenty of work here, but we get the same treatment as the speedy riders. This sense of voluntary service to the riders always gets me. I’ve ridden long rides and come into controles so tired and nearly delirious that I wasn’t sure I could dismount the bike without tipping over, and I’ve also been the guy there to help riders in similar straits. All volunteers are great, but a special bond is created when riders serve as volunteers for other riders. We linger a bit, savoring the coffee and ham baguettes, (nice touch on the heels of PBP) but the clock is ticking and so we mount up and head off to Satsop.

A few miles down the road we roll into the site of the defunct Satsop nuclear power plant. Anyone who is a strong proponent of new-cue-lur power should come out here to our neck of the woods: We have a little field trip that may give you pause.

FS: One nuclear power plant - Never been used!

I’ve been here before, the site has been repurposed as a local business park, but on a Saturday, with no one around it is slightly spooky, and slightly depressing.

Now down off the hill to Malone. At this point I am way closer to home than the finish but home is not even tempting, we are just over 40Km from the finish and already we can smell the pizza. The Korean shopkeeper at the little rural market is exceedingly gracious and thankfully has a pot of coffee ready. The coffee, (see a trend here?) a microwave Philly cheesesteak sandwich (surprisingly good or I was more hungry than I athought) and I am about ready to go. It has started raining again so back on with the raincoat. Just as we are about to roll out the shop keeper asks if we need water. I am down a bottle but actually expect that I’ll absorb enough water along the route that I can get by with one bottle. Ah well more water would be smart and I want to be a good patron so I say yes and head back in to the store. He dashes in and gets us a liter bottle and gives it to us, no charge. He knows that we are the last of these riders in the rain and perhaps he’s thankful for the business of 32 cyclists rolling through, I’m sure others have bought waterday and other treats ahead of us and I'll bet this is a big sale day. Then again, perhaps he’s just a giving soul, a rando volunteer in spirit. We hustle out, bundled and ready for the trip through the last of the farm and forest lands and on to the city lights.

Brian and I finish last but there are still a number of riders and the volunteers there ready to greet us and we get hero’s welcomes and winners salutations. Ron Himshoot taught me something once long ago that I have never forgotten: We had just finished a 600K circuit of the Olympic Peninsula I think it was the last qualifier for PBP 2007. The last riders came in on a tandem and they looked a little disheartened at being the last to finish. Ron told them “We have a title for those who finish last, we call them finishers, just like those who finish first.” That has always stuck with me, another sweet rando tradition. I have to admit on this day, finishing is enough for me, I’ll work on my time but just making the time cut off is plenty gratifying, the pizza didn’t hurt.

It all started innocently enough ....

2011-09-07T18:44:00.000-07:00

A frequent and devoted reader (one of the 8) sent a comment asking about a Dr Codfish T Shirt he had seen me wearing in a photo on the blog. I was surprised to get that comment on that blog post because it also featured a very special piece of bicycle equipment, and a local rando celebrity. By the way, I have discovered that there are limits to the comfort that can be derived from a green Brooks Team Pro saddle: No matter how much you love it, you just can’t get a good night’s sleep with one of these things tucked under your pillow.

Anyway back to matters at hand: I let the devoted fan know that like Rapha, Assos, and Hincapie Apparel, Team Codfish garb is destined to be carried at the more tony retailers worldwide. However, unlike those fashion followers, the Team Dr C line has not yet made it to the front of the house; we’re still ‘in negotiations’.

Actually, … I thought it would be fun to see if I could use the logo graphics to cook up a few items at Cafepress for local consumption. My wife and I had some fun with it: I got a couple very expensive T-shirts, and some neat stickers which I have handed around to the chosen few for favors rendered. And then when Christmas came around I found a few logo branded items under the tree. In response to the T Shirt inquiry I had to let devoted reader number 7 know that these things are priced like Armani, but crafted like the Humptulips 10K Fun Run Finishers Tee. Not bad, just not sure they are $30.00 quality. (I'm not saying Tee's are out, if you want one let me know, I'll give you a quote and can get it for you if you accept the price) Too bad too, I love the idea of Dr C Tee’s popping up in all the après rando ride photos. Another case of world domination derailed thanks to the selfish intentions of a greedy intermediary (sound familiar?)

Cafepress is an easy way to get small runs (including a 'run' of 1)of common items emblazoned with your custom graphics. It’s the typical stuff; ball caps, T-shirts, coffee mugs, thong panties, water bottles, etc. Wait a minute! Water bottles? So I clicked through the ocean of ~~junk~~ priceless treasures that ”you too can have memorialized with your custom graphics” and there it was: An actual water bottle just like we all carry in our bottle cages while out riding. The good news was that getting the logo graphic scaled and placed on the bottle was very easy.

Maybe a little too easy. I think this company has figured out that people are ~~willing~~ anxious to pay 3 or 4 times what an item is worth … if it is personalized, and it's easy. The bad news is if I wanted to buy one (or 11 or less) it was going to cost me $11.00…. EACH. There are of course considerable volume discounts (these people maybe have been doing this for awhile):

Items 1-11 12-35 36-71 72-199
Price $11.00 $6.30 $5.95 $5.60

And so on and so forth. Now I would probably buy a couple of these for $11.00 but I got to thinking: If I could ~~hornswoggle~~ allow those 8 devoted readers to participate in this marketingpalooza I we could get those fantastic, one of a kind, one time only bottles for the amazingly low price of only $6.50 each.

Now, if I were doing this for a charitable cause, you‘d be shocked to find yourself upside down right now as you are reading this while I vigorously shake the coins from your pockets. Believe me, I know how to raise money. But in this case there really is no social redeeming value in this effort so it borders on cheesy, and while I am partial to Velveeta (cave aged), I want to do everything I can to protect the pristine reputation of Codfish Reporting And Publishing (CRAP) Limited. So here is the disclaimer:

I’ve never actually held one of these bottles in my hand, so I have to take Cafépress at their word that they are made of actual virgin plastic and not papier-mâché.
CRAP is making 100% Zero profit on this massive undertaking.
There is no guarantee, express or implied, and
CRAP accepts no liability for any injury of mishap when using these fabulous bottles.

If you want one I can guarantee that the bottle itself will cost you no more than $6.50, plus postage if I have to mail it to you. Don’t worry about payment, we can work that out if and when you decide you want ’in’.

This sound sketchy enough for you? Good, it could be risky but just like a mortgage backed security; this opportunity is not likely to come along again anytime soon.

Act now, operators are standing by to take your call. Actually, we had to donwsize the operators, but you can send me a note on Facebook or an email to pjinoakvilleATcomcastDOTcom. (Someday spambots are going to wise up to this cyber pig Latin and when they do we’ll all be getting offers for vinyl siding and discount Viagra). Let’s say you have until Friday night Sept 9 by 9:00pm PDT to let me know how many you want.

If this takes off as I think it is going to (remember, Christmas, Diwali, and Rwagasore Day are just around the corner) it is entirely likely that CRAP will be debuting the complete line of Dr C Team kit in the spring (look out you scruffy Rapha ‘gentlemen’!) Pink is obviously out, but maybe BDU camo. We could even jazz it up with the addition of some totally new and unique custom graphics: how about fire breathing dragons, some sinister snarling skulls, or even, ... wait for it... lightning bolts! The possibilities are only limited by what we can copy from the window displays down at the mall goth gear shops.

DON’T WAIT! ACT NOW! OPERATORS ARE STANDING BY TO TAKE YOUR CALL! ...... er, send me a note.

A Thing of Beauty...

2011-09-05T12:41:00.000-07:00

This spring I had a little saddle mishap. All ‘cycling enthusiasts’ can appreciate the importance of the saddle butt cheek interface. I dare say that a poor connection for this important contact point may be the most common cause of converting potential enthusiasts to un-enthusiasts. Given time and more than a little patience we find what we like and we tend to stick with it. I’m no different, for me the sweet spot is the Brooks Team Pro.

My problem was solved with a saddle repair that was a real blessing. As I suspected might happen however, there was need for a little adjustment once I had ridden it a bit. Last week on a leisurely ride out the south bank road I noticed that there was a burr in my saddle so to speak. What happed was that one or two of the rivet heads had come just a bit proud of the saddle leather. The craftsman had done a good job of peening those oversized rivet heads but with a little hot weather riding the leather had stretched just enough that the edges of those rivets were now free to shave off anything that slid across them.

The problem was easily solved when I got home with judicious use of a ball peen hammer and a rivet set. You can never know for sure if you have gotten it right until you go for a ride which I did on Sunday.

I took a drive up to Seattle to ride with my friend Don Boothby

and whoever else might show. Imagine my surprise when a group of 17(!) friends, gropies and club mates assembled for a 9:00 start.

It was great to see so many riders, catching up with old friends and meeting new ones.

I have written here in the past with disdain about city riding; please help me stuff this crow down my gullet! It was a very pleasant route, much of it along the Duwamish River, and on several different paved multi-use paths. We were out early enough that bladers and the stroller crowd must have still been at church. The mountain was out in all its glory.

Again, for the third week in a row I rode much of the event in the company of others. It was a good thing too because I had neglected to replace the batteries in my GPS so all I had was a blank screen and a cue sheet printed in slightly too small font. I probably could have made my way around the course but fortunately Jason took pity and rode along with me. He claims to be new to randonneuring but I have my doubts looking at his equipment and his riding strength.

I also got to roll along for a few miles with ~~Charley Miller~~ Robin who had great stories of his epic nonstop roll through the French Country side. Between his stories and this from the local paper about Chris Ragsdale's ride I have a new found respect for those who ride at the front of the pack; really incredible! I also got to suck the wheel of Ralph and Carol on their tandem for many miles. Somehow I thought that most of the riders were ahead but at a stop Ralph suggested we wait for the others and it was then that I figured out we were closer to the front than the back of the pack. New ground for me.

It was an absolutely great day on bikes, I am so glad I took the time to ride with the Patroń of Pastries, Donut Don. The guy had just come through some serious brutality in the name of health care but you would never have known it from the way he rode, and his classic jovial self. Thanks a lot Don and Mimi for a great ride.

About that thing of beauty; how’s that saying go, a thing of beauty is a joy forever? Tell me if you don’t think this is worthy of hanging in the Louvre, or at least some museum of industrial art.

For some of us, this is as near as you can get to the perfect thing, a green Brooks Team Pro, with copper rails even!

I came across this through a friend who made me a deal I couldn’t refuse. Here it is mounted on the Quickbeam.

Doesn’t this just make you want to go for a bike ride?

Riding with Mr Maplebar

2011-09-01T21:20:00.000-07:00

Over the last couple weeks I have ridden several 100K permanents. Not that I am ramping up my mileage or anything, but it’s August (whoops it was August, where’d that go?) the weather has been exquisite, and I had scheduled these events in advance, so might as well ride em'.

Now it is September and on Sunday I’m riding another 100K perm. But this one is a little different for me and as I am going about this I realize I have become something of that crabby old “GET OFF MY LAWN!” grouch: I don’t want to drive for an hour and half to ride my bike; I certainly don’t want to drive that long to ride in a city; I don’t like courses with more than about 10 turns per 100Km; I’m not real excited about riding roads and routes I’m not familiar with; And I don’t like urban riding. (ask me how I really feel about all this) That’s right, I want my favorite flavor of ice cream, in my place, at my preferred pace, and I’m particular about who I eat that ice cream with. (sheesh, what a PITA)

Deciding to drive to Seattle, to ride a 100K perm, including a loop through the industrial part of the city has given me a ‘nose to the window’ confrontation of my prejudices and I am not just thrilled with what I have discovered. I used to have that ”any time, any place, any distance” cycling enthusiasm accompanied by a certain disdain for bike snobs, bike wimps, and bike resistors who had to have it their way or they wouldn’t come out to ‘play’. That’s right, I‘ve looked through the window and I’m not at all pleased with the image reflected back in the glare of introspection. How many times have I said ‘Randonneuring is a big tent’ and what exactly did I mean by that? A big tent because it is filled with a lot of people all about the same? No sense dwelling on the “how did this become me” merry-go-round, better to undertake corrective measures.

Regardless how I arrived at small mindedness, It was a simple pathway to this ‘ah ha’ self awareness koan:

A month ago I put out a note on the SIR forum that I was authorized to do a “group ride” permanent of 100Km starting in Olympia. I made this announcement not because I lusted for company but because it was a requirement. I really didn’t think anyone would want to come along. Much to my surprise three other people elected to tag along, ALL OF THEM FROM SEATTLE (or thereabouts)!

Sheesh, they were willing to drive an hour and half to ride somewhat unfamiliar roads. Stranger still, we all rode together! What is so strange about that? It’s strange because for most of them it meant they would have to take considerably longer to finish this route than normal. I am seriously slow right now, and when Mr. Maple bar said “Hey guys, let’s stick together on this one” what it meant was that even if I went faster than normal (for me) they’d have to slooooow doooown. I’m not sure how satisfying it was for Don, Amy, and Alan, but for me it was like revisiting that old ice cream flavor I used to like as a kid and realizing it is still satisfying. It has been a long time since I’ve ridden a rando event with other people, a pleasant fluke.

Along comes the following weekend, and I advertised another 100K perm (same route even!) and wonder of wonders, four other riders elected to ride along.

Taking it one step beyond, we again rode together. It was Peg who said she and Kris were looking for a leisurely ride. It was great to ride along with old friends catching up. I realized that for most folks this is pretty common fare, but for me it was something I had not done in a long time (not counting seven days earlier).

So, when Mr. Maple bar put out a notice that he and his lovely bride would be riding his favorite 100Km perm, in Seattle I had a brief moment of hesitation as opposed to my standard knee jerk ‘no way!’ reaction.

He had come down to ride with me not two weeks earlier, right? He’d even made the suggestion that we all ride together and stuck to it, and chatted me up along the route, just like old times. Who am I to stay stuck in my rut? Maybe, If I returned the favor it might buoy his spirits a bit, support his goals, and take his mind off the things that are currently bothering him.

Heck yeah! I’m all in, I’ll be there, with bells on! We’ll ride your gritty, Sunday morning 100Km Perm through the Seattle waterfront, I’ll take a ride that will cause me to actually have to read the cue sheet. I’ll mix it up with other riders, and I’ll push it a bit so as not to slow others down, never mind risking getting lost.

I’m there for you Mr. Maplebar, and I count on you to deliver me to the best possible pie eating opportunity available at the finish. See you Sunday morning.

PBP Life Ring

2011-08-20T21:45:00.000-07:00

I have given considerable thought to whether or not to publish this post. Slowly I have learned that putting real names out on social media can have many consequences, frequently unexpected consequences.

Lots of my friends are about to toe the line for the 17th Paris Brest Paris Randonneur. This 1200km ride is the Hajj for randonneurs the world over. I won’t be there this year but was lucky enough to ride it in 2003 and 2007.

The goal of every rider is of course to finish and randonneuring being what it is, the finish is what each rider receives official recognition for. Of course many strive for a fast time and a few make serious attempts to be the first finisher. I wrote in 2003 of seeing the first finishers on their return leg outside of Loudeac, about 400K into the event for me and 800K for them. This would be slightly less than 24 hours into the ride. I was just getting a good start and they were winding it up. Other riders have other goals; you can start with the 90 hour group, or the 80, or 84 hour group. Though the event is officially 90 hours, if you choose one of these shorter time starts, that’s the amount of time you have. There is a Charley Millar award for US riders who complete the event in less than 54 hours, pretty audacious goal.

I am of the 90 hour persuasion. Even in peak condition I would be unlikely to finish in less than 80 hours. I can see lots of benefits to going faster, but I have never taken the sport seriously enough to do what was needed to get dramatically faster. As a matter of fact I am a member of La société Adrian Hands. In order to qualify for membership you must have completed PBP in no less than 88:55. Note that means slower, not faster. Hey, we look for distinction where we can find it, right?

I’ve been asked by a few first timers about how to get to the finish of PBP. It seems odd that I would be queried, I think the best bit of advice I have seen is this blog post by Mark Thomas.

One thing I have advised on a couple of occasions is to watch for Duane Wright, and ride with him! Do this and you have a very high likelihood of finishing. Duane is old, he may even be as old as me, and he is slow too, but not nearly as slow as me. But he has an uncanny knack for arriving at the finish of almost any rando event within the time limit. Sometimes just barely, but under the wire just the same.

In 2005 I rode the Gold Rush 1200K in Northern California, much of it with Duane, it was a very enjoyable experience, Duane and I have a fair amount in common, and I think it fair to say that Duane sees life as a comedy not a tragedy, as do I. We kept each other laughing on the way out and back. There were times when I seriously questioned his judgment, knowing that by extending a break, here or there we would be jeopardizing our chances of getting into the next control in time, So acting on my own ‘better judgment’ I’d go off on my own, into the heat of the day rather than opting for a noon day siesta allowing the sun to settle a little. He always made it.

On that ride he received the coveted Lanterne Rouge award, traditionally awarded to the last finisher. Although he was not the last finisher he did deserve the prize because he was so strategic in his use of almost all the time available.

So when I advise riders to watch for Mr. Wright, what I am saying is this: If your plan goes sideways, and your plan B goes off the tracks, when all else seems to be pointing you in the direction of a DNF, watch for Duane Wright and if you see him, ride with him; You are more than likely to finish, and those last few miles will be funny!

Allez Duane!

PS: I get a few posts on blogs and facebook from the riders in France. I know many people think that relations between France and the US are 'strained', and I believe that is based on what we read in the papers and reports of interactions between highly placed officials. At the macro level, meaning people like you and me interacting face-toface with French people like you and me, in France there is no strain. I picked up this note this morning on the Randon USA discussion group, it is the perfect example of the state of relations between France and the US:

"I was fiddling with the bike at my hotel this morning, adjusting the
height of my saddle, and the seatpost binder bolt broke. This is
about ten hours before my 9 pm start time. It should have been
fairly easy to get the remainder of the broken bolt out, but it wouldn't budge. The bike shop nearby could not fix it except for kludge that looked like it might possibly work for the entire trip. 750 miles with an iffy seat attachment, this is not good. I was about to leave the shop when another mechanic arrived, riding with his Dad. They took me to their house, worked on it for an hour and a half and fixed it! They must have broken half a dozen drill bits in the process. Really nice of them. Of course they wouldn't let me pay them.

My start timke is in about four hours. Time for a little nap."

If we could just tone down the political rhetoric at the highest levels I am certain that international relations the world over would be in a better state.

Back in the Saddle Again

2011-08-14T17:13:00.000-07:00

I mentioned a few months ago that somehow the frame of my Brooks Team Pro bike saddle had broken.

It was mysterious but I knew that I could not ride that saddle much if at all without fixing it lest I destroy the leather cover. I purchased this saddle just after the turn of the century, so in Brooks years (like dog years but without the doggy breath) it is still a youngster: perfectly broken in but with many years of good service yet to render.

These things have never been cheap, except the venerable B-17 which has always been reasonable and if you are comfortable on that saddle you’ll be riding comfy for a very long time making it a bargain in the ROI sense. Of course my Champaign tastes had me up and down the range of Brooks models until a friend sold me a used Brooks Pro. I tell you, once on that saddle I knew that I need look no farther. So I got my first Brooks Team Pro, the very basic model for a very bargain price. I bought another some years later (the saddle with the broken frame) because I wanted a model with bag loops.

Once you get used to something you begin to expect it and this is true with bike saddles more than most other things. So, with one saddle and one bike life aligns. Unfortunately with one saddle and several bikes life aligns like the planets, … only every so often. You have to switch out saddles whenever you ride the ‘other’ bikes. This is really not practical as switching saddles takes more time that I want to spend on the process. If it was as simple as switching helmets then life would be … simple.

There is a range of solutions to this problem:

• You actually can switch the saddle whenever you change bikes, but as mentioned above, this is time consuming and a bit tedious. (Think one set of tires for two different cars.)

• You can just ride one bike; at least I’ve heard that’s possible. Or,

• You can get multiple copies of the saddle of choice, one for each bike.

Being a bike geek in the land of capitalism, of course the ‘more gizmos’ option has the most appeal. There is nothing quite like opening up that green cardboard box and revealing a handmade Books saddle.

There is one glitch: These things (Brooks saddles) are not cheap, and in recent years they have become positively expensive. The low-rent Brooks Team Pro Classic retails for $95.00. This is a real bargain (if it works for your nether regions). It is a fine saddle; it does not have bag loops. You can find aftermarket work-arounds for the bag loops, or you can hack your own, or in a pinch you can mount a bag to the saddle rails:

As you can see this is the less than elegant solution.

OR … you can opt for a model with bag loops.

This is where the price tag hitches a ride on the space shuttle. The Brooks Team Pro I bought years ago had bag loops but at the time, this option only came as part of the “Titanium Rails” upgrade. Oh yes, titanium rails, I’m sure this shaved 4 grams off the total weight of the slightly more than 400 grams for the saddle. Ah well, for me, it was not about weight, it was about comfort on the saddle and a good way to attach a saddle bag. I can’t remember what I paid but I know I had to swallow hard before giving up my credit card number.

Thus, when I broke the frame on this saddle these many years later I was mired in a quandary. For weeks. The price of these saddles has outpaced the rate for mortgage backed securities during the housing boom, and have not taken the dive that those scam packed financial instruments have. Indeed the wise trader would have done well to front load his portfolio with Brooks saddle futures, no need for credit default swaps here, nosiree! Brooks sales or gold ingots, both solid … and both weighty.

I considered switching to something cheaper, but as every avid cyclist knows, the contact points make or break bicycling and once you have found something that works it is awfully hard to walk away. I considered just buying a new one, perhaps we could just skip a mortgage payment, I hear lots of people are doing that. But again the price, and currently there is not a Pro Team model sporting bag loops (they switch things up from time to time). I also considered repairing it myself. I have set copper rivets before and I knew that Wallingford Bike Parts (the best supplier of bike stuff on the planet) carried parts for Brooks Saddle repair but alas, the frame I needed was not available to mere mortals.

But in my search I came upon a fellow who had learned the craft of saddle construction and repair right in the Brooks factory and was willing to make repairs. This was intriguing so I made contact and after some time got a good estimate on the cost to replace the broken frame. Sad to say, it appears that most of the cost of this saddle is in the Ti frame, that part was more expensive than many expensive saddles.

The whole process took a long time starting with my indecision and then the search for the repair option. Then there was finding the right frame, getting it shipped from England to Philly, and then finding some time later that no, the frame had NOT been shipped, but that it would be post haste (GRRR).

Of course just as he was ready to go to work on my saddle, the craftsman broke a bone in his hand! I suspect this is work that actually requires two functional hands; stretching the saddle cover onto the frame, then hand setting and hammering all those big copper rivets, not a one hand operation.

The labor and shipping were cheap; the frame however was almost as expensive as a new saddle. Start to finish, the cost of the repair was about 30% less than the cost of a replacement saddle. If I had elected to replace it with a basic Team Pro model I would have definitely saved a bucket O’ bucks. I paid a lot for those two little bag loops.

Eventually it arrived back on the front porch out here in the sticks. It looks like new, or should I say it looks like old, or, … it looks a lot like it did before the frame broke, which is reassuring. This is one of the few instances where repaired may actually be better than new. For me there is not much of a break-in period on a new Brooks, but for many that process can be long and painful.

As you can see from these pics, the bag loops make a difference if you are inclined to carry more than a credit card and a cell phone.

I’ve been on the saddle a few times for relatively short rides and it is amazing how comfortable, how reassuring it is to get back on my good old saddle. It feels right, it feels the same, but these have been pretty short rides. I am anxious to put some time into this thing to see if there are any noticeable differences that show up after a few hours.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

PS: That seatpost is fabricated by Kent Eriksen.

The bike is badged as a Tournesol from Hampsten, but the frame was created by Kent Eriksen. I bought the seat post as an aftermarket item (he didn't offer them when he built the bike). I like it because it has enough setback to allow me to be more comfortable on the Brooks saddle (they are known for having slightly too short rails) but does not put way back over the rear wheel. Also because it was created by the bike builder. Like the frame, the seatpost is titanium.

Are You Ready?

2011-08-07T12:45:00.000-07:00

If you are planning a ride in France mere days from now, I am assuming you have made just about all the major preparations, both for the trip and the event itself. You are probably down to the little stuff, the stuff that if you don’t get taken care of, it may or may not make a big difference. That unchecked portion of the list might look something like this:

___ Add new selections to I-pod
___ Adjust GPS Track
___ Replace disposable razor in shave kit
___ Replace patch kit glue tube
___ Get two new pair of knee high compression socks
___ Refresh ibuprofen in on-bike meds kit

WHAT? Hey, wait a minute, what’s up with the compression socks? Is that just a hidden one liner to see if you are actually reading this?
Well, actually not; as goofy as this sounds YOU need to be wearing compression socks. Maybe not on the ride, but definitely for the trip over, … and back. Compression socks, really?

Imagine an injury that could take you out of this ride, even before the start: an injury that you could incur just by laying around; which could result in months or years of recovery; that might even result in permanent (as in the rest of your whole life) medical intervention. Scoot up a little closer to the monitor kiddo, you don’t want to miss this.

First, the compression socks or support hose are all about blood clots in your veins, particularly the veins of your lower legs. I can hear your guffaw all the away from here. What is the picture that comes to mind when I mention blood clots in the veins of the lower legs? The little old lady with the dowagers hump in support hose pushing the grocery cart slowly down the aisle at the super marché, right? What in the world could she possibly have to do with you and your splendid planning for an amazing bike ride across France and back? Well, her problem is Thrombophlebitis, or clotting of the superficial veins of the leg. Fairly common but not the injury you are at risk for.

The condition that lurks in your closet is Deep Vein Thrombosis, occasionally referred to as 'economy class syndrome'. To keep spell check happy I'll just refer to this a DVT. This demon is the 900 pound gorilla of blood clots and you very well may be the next victim.

Are you athletic? Do you participate in endurance activities? Do you have a trip (plane, train, car, bus) of over four hours planned? If so, YOU are at risk of DVT. As it turns out, the very work you have done to improve your fitness makes you MORE not less prone to this crippling, possibly deadly malaise. I don’t mean to be overly melodramatic, but deadly is an actual possibility and your improved fitness, won on those climbs and long rides through the night really does elevate (not bullet proof) your risk. What’s worse your fantastic fitness will often mislead medical professionals in their efforts to figure out what your problem is, should you come in to the chop shop complaining of symptoms.

What the heck IS DVT?
A DVT is a blood clot (thrombus) that develops in a deep vein, often in the lower leg. DVT can cause pain in the leg and can lead to life threatening complications. Seriously! Though they usually occur in the lower leg, DVT can occur elsewhere, such as in the arm. When blood clots outside a vessel it is a normal process which protects the body against loosing blood, but if the blood clots within a vessel (DVT) it can lead to very serious complications. In most cases of DVT the clots are small and do not cause symptoms. The body is able to gradually break the clot down and there are no long term effects. Larger clots may partially or totally block the blood flow in the vein.

The Symptoms
You feel a sharp pain, or a dull pain in the calf or thigh that is noticeably worse when standing or walking (or cycling!) Your lower leg may be swollen and take on a reddish caste. A friend who first suffered DVT on a 300K on a tandem described it as akin to having a bad cramp in his calf, which never went away. In standard rando death march style he rode to the finish not realizing that he had a more serious problem. This is a typical scenario; most riders have never heard of DVT and think of themselves as immune to something like a blood clot. We’re healthy right? We don’t get stuff like that.

Another friend on a vacation trip to North Africa described similar symptoms. He‘d been on a ski trip (think long ride in the RV) a few weeks before. By the time he was on his vacation he had been feeling these lower leg pain symptoms for a few weeks and decided to cut the vacation short, fly home, and see what was up. His plane was diverted over the Mediterranean and he spent several weeks in ICU in an Italian hospital as the docs tried to stabilize the blood clots that had formed in his lungs!

This common secondary effect (clots in the lungs) is referred to as Pulmonary Embolism, (PE for short). A PE occurs when a clot breaks loose in a vein and later lodges in the lungs. Symptoms of PE include difficulty breathing, pain when breathing, shortness of breath and weakness or fainting. PE is potentially life threatening and needs to be attended to immediately. In addition to the life threatening aspect, it is a little known, but solidly proven fact of randonneuring that fully functional lungs are enormously helpful when riding brevets. Most often after DVT or PE is discovered you can count on a pretty serious lay off from riding hard (good bye hard won fitness!).

One of the big problems with DVT is that it can be difficult to diagnose. In some of the scenarios above the physicians involved did not immediate arrived at the idea that this fit specimen was suffering from DVT! They considered other underlying issues, often having to do with the misperception of the deleterious effects of over-training or being too fit. Remember the matriarch in the grocery store? Physicians have blind spots too. Your relative youth and fitness may actually throw physicians off the trail. It is on you to employ proven, practical, preventive measures, and to recognize symptoms if you can’t stay out of the cross fire.

The Manifestation
There are many potential causes of DVT including but not limited to:

• Age – people over 40 are at greater risk of DVT
• A past or family history of DVT
• Immobility
• Obesity
• Recent surgery, especially to the hips or knees

But there is a growing body of evidence that other factors may play an important role in the development of this condition. One example is air travel or any long duration travel which includes decreased mobility. Generally the risk of developing DVT when traveling is very small unless one or more to the risk factors is present. Here is where we sharpen the focus; see if you can find any of these associated risk factors tucked away in your carry on.

Research published in 2003 suggests that up to 10% of all long distance air travelers showed signs of raised levels of clot-forming proteins in their blood. These people did not show physical signs of having blood clots, but raised protein levels indicate they may be at increased risk of forming clots.

If you are athletic and you travel it just gets worse. Listen up super-randonneur this may be about you. Approximately 85% of air travel thrombosis victims are athletic, usually endurance athletes such as marathoners and cyclists. 85%, that’s HUGE! Why doesn’t your improved fitness bullet proof you? Here is how it works:

You have dramatically improved your cardio vascular fitness over the last few years; you know this by your general sense of fitness as well as some of the standard metrics:

• Your blood pressure is lower
• Your resting heart rate is lower
• Your LT Heart rate is higher
• Your resting respirations are lower

People with slower resting hear rates (think slower blood flow) are at greater risk of stasis, stagnant blood subject to clotting. Also, they are more likely to have bruises or sore muscles which can trigger clotting. No other risk factor comes close to this. Although over age 60 is a risk factor, these athletic victims are younger, 82% of them are under 60 years of age. Is that you in the mirror? Are you athletic? Are you under age 60? Is there a long distance trip in your future? If so, listen up there are things you can and should do to reduce your risk.

So there you are, slumped over in your 24” of personal space, plugged into I tunes, your big ole heart lub-dubbing away, just enough to keep you conscious. Your circulation is down so blood is pooling in your lower legs.

The Prevention
This is easy, painless, and cheap. Even if you still have that ‘immortal teenager’ mentality you should do this, precisely because it is cheap and easy. Remember this: Preventing DVT=easy. Recovery=painful, expensive, and time consuming.

Step one; compression socks. Yes super Jock, and Jill you need to head to Kroger’s or Rite Aid and seek out those geeky socks that will compress your lower legs while you are ‘resting’. You can go over the top and buy those flesh colored ones if you want, but you know, black or white are OK too. Just for your info, SmartWool offers a decent pair you could also use for riding or whenever. Yes they are calf high but they sport that goofy little smartwool guy, which may save just a bit of the caché for you. Shoot, get a pair of madras Bermuda shorts while you’re at it, celebrate your inner Fredness.

That’s the expensive part, so far so good, but don’t stop there.

• Be active while you are confined. Moving your body will help keep the ticker working which in turn should keep the blood flowing. Literally, that’s what you want, to keep the blood circulating.
• Flex your legs, your toes, your butt, all your major muscles repeatedly, think 15 minute intervals.
• Stay hydrated while in flight, drink enough fluids that you have to get up and ‘go’ from time to time.
• Avoid alcohol
• Get up and walk the aisles, whatever you do don’t just sit there! Do whatever you can to frequently get your juices flowing.
• DON’T snuggle up with a blankee and fall asleep for the duration.
• DON’T just lay there zoning out as the MP3 drills into your cerebellum.

If you are a techno geek this might be a good excuse to wear your HRM for that 7 hour flight. Oh I’m sure the TSA guys will let you float right on through the check point, with your geeky knee highs, your seat post and pedals in your carry on and some sort of strap across your chest that communicates with your ‘watch’. OK, maybe bag on the HRM and chest strap.

Compression stockings? Avoiding alcohol? What’s next? Using Ensure for nourishment? (Oh right, you already do that). The point is this is a very real threat and though some of these preventive therapies may seem an inconvenience for your globetrotting rando life style, or perhaps a little embarrassing, they could save your ride, and possibly a lot more.

Just like riding long, in this case the one thing you can do that is most likely to protect you is to get your head right. Don’t think that because you put in 150 mile weeks year round, or that because you can get to the top of lung buster mountain in under 48 minutes that you are immune. In fact, it is precisely because you are so fit that you are at elevated risk. You are not immune, you are at risk!

This is not just world class athletes we are talking about. When I originally wrote this article four years ago I personally knew three riders in our club who had suffered this crippling affliction. In all three cases the rides were in their 30’s and 40’s, all were very fit and none of them had ever heard of DVT. The number has since gone up to 4 folks I personally know.

I was recently discussing this with a friend who is a planner and statistician and he gave me this advice: He warned me that the plural of anecdotes is not ‘data’, which means he was unconvinced. But he was the prototypical geek so anything less than a regression formula was unlikely to swing his vote.

It can’t be coincidence.

In the Eye of the Storm

2011-08-03T05:18:00.000-07:00

Our club offered a couple brevets last weekend. They came and went mostly without incident. Oh sure there were a few wrinkles and if I had worked a little more diligently, with better pre-planning most of that would have either gone away or never have been apparent to participants. There is also a certain amount of disharmony that just seems to leak through the seams on almost any complex endeavor which incorporates this many people, places, and logistical forks in the road. We were fortunate to have been down those roads (figuratively and literally) enough times previously that in most instances we made good choices.

Then too, if you can’t be just plain good it always helps to be lucky. The weather man smiled upon us, not too hot, not too cold, wet, windy, or … not too extreme anything. Of course that’s easy for me to say, I spent most of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at the luxurious Motel Six in Tumwater. Had I been riding over Wildwood pass in the heat of Saturday afternoon, I might have another tune struck in my head.

Luckily, these two events slipped between the cracks of the county road departments in Lewis, Thurston, Grays Harbor, and Cowlitz Counties. In these mostly rural, mostly ag economy locations July and August are chip seal season. I just figured that somewhere along the way riders would get an opportunity to roll their shiny new tires through brand new crushed road rock, floating on hot tar. As the date for these events drew nigh, I kept thinking this was bound to happen somewhere, but we were spared.

The luck wasn’t all flowing from the horseshoe though. I was ill in the weeks prior to the events which disrupted my preparations. That was frustrating as well as a wrench in the timing belt. And in the last couple days before the event my ISP decided that actually we didn’t have a high speed internet connection and so our WWW privileges would be suspended until we came on board. This is the new ‘ dog ate my homework’. It may or may not be true that your computer or internet connection will go dawn at random moments but of course the ones you remember most vividly are those times when you need your computer to communicate with someone or some other site. You know, just when you are about to submit that proposal or college application or the revised cue sheet to the club website for posting. Oy! That was stressful. Fortunately (luckily?) we were able to impose upon friends and patched together a work around to get the materials posted. Unfortunately ( unluckily?) it wasn’t long until it was brought to my attention that the cue sheet I posted was V3, not the newer and improved V5! There is an old Chinese rando proverb: “A man with one cue sheet always knows where to turn, a man with two is never sure.” The errors were minor but possibly confusing. I felt bad announcing “The cue sheet on the web page is wrong, here is a corrected copy.” I felt worse when I got so many responses asking where the changes were. Clearly many people are tuned in to electronic navigation, more than I realized.

Then too, late Saturday night I discovered errors on the 200K brevet card (which would be needed in the morning). More chaos ensues, I can’t run off to an all night Kinkos to affect the fix, there are still riders out on the course. Once again coming to the rescue was my wonderful, chipper, upbeat wife. The fix required trying several blind alleys, at 11pm before finding our way through the maze. She truly was the calm in the eye of the storm.

For all the things that went well, I owe credit to my wife and most excellent support crew, Things that were wide of the mark, I take full ownership of. Fortunately ALL riders on both days finished! Several DNS’s but many more day-of-ride walk ups. Thou we printes 10 extras, we actually handed out every last brevet card for the start of the 200!

It felt great to see so many old friends and meet some of the newer names I have been seeing on the registration/results pages over the last couple years.

Most rewarding was that in just about every case they all finished with smiles. This I a tribute to “type two” luck. As someone (Will Rogers?) once said, "Luck has a way of finding those who have prepared for it." All riders seemed perfectly prepared. Good job and congrats to all riders.

In Memoriam

2011-07-21T19:57:00.000-07:00

On the last weekend of this month, SIR will put on two brevets, back-to-back starting in Tumwater, Washington. SIR relies on members to organize these events and last winter I raised my hand when Mark Thomas, club president asked for volunteers. I’ll do a little organizing but there is a whole bevy of volunteers who work together to make these events more than just some chicken scratch on the calendar.

These two rides are particularly meaningful for a number of reasons;

• First, they are the last ACP certified events the club will put on before the next running of Paris Brest Paris.
• Second, they are back to back, meaning that riders will roll out at 6:00am on July 30th for 300Km of fun in the (hopefully) sun and then get up the next morning to ride again, this time a 200Km brevet.
• Third, this mini-camp originated in 2003 when a few newish and wildly enthusiastic local randonneurs volunteered to put on just such rides making this the third quadrennial running, possibly a club tradition.
• Finally, in 2007 another newish and enthusiastic randonneur, Steve Hameister suffered a heart attack and died while riding the 300K event.

It was hot on the day, I was riding at the back of the pack, suffering stomach distress, Finding little to eat or drink that would stay down or offer relief, I had resorted mostly to cold ice tea, preferably unsweetened. Fortunately the Adna store had some on hand so I bought two bottles of Lipton’s, and went outside to marvel at the glorious view of Mt St Helens to the east. From the store if you turn and look to the south west you get a good view of the next punishing climb, Cooks Hill road. As I turned to look in that direction I noticed an emergency services vehicle, lights flashing in the bright sunshine near the top of the hill. I had a twinge of foreboding and remember thinking “I hope that is not for one of our riders.” The scene was cleared long before I got there, and there were no indications of what the nature of the aid call might have been. I rode on, the clock was ticking and there were still lots of miles and more hills to tackle before I would finish.

The next morning, one of the ride organizers announced that Steve had died of a heart attack the day before on Cooks Hill road. At 600am, the body and mind are both weakened by lots of riding and not much sleep in the previous 24 hours. This kind of news can be devastating. I was probably no more troubled by the news than any of the other riders but still it hit me hard, I think it was so for all of us. Not because Steve was a long standing club member, or luminary in the world of randonneuring, but because he was one of us; a weekend worrier who had found a comfortable, if challenging home in the randonneuring community.

There was no ’reason’ that Steve was taken on that day instead of me, or any of the other riders. Like me, and the rest of the riders who rolled out that morning, Steve had no idea that he was at any particularly risk of heart attack. He certainly was not planning to die of a heart attack. In that I suspect he was just like me, and probably everyone else who started that ride.

Whether or not randonneuring is officially an ‘endurance sport’, it can be very taxing; many think it is as much a psychological as a physical challenge. No matter how fit a person is, or how easily they try to ride these brevets, there will almost always be a point during the ride when the heart is stressed.

Up until this year the PBP organizers have required riders to present evidence of a physical exam by a doctor that demonstrates the riders’ fitness for the event. Like many others I treated this as just another paper work exercise. I complied and produced a note from my Doctor stating that, in his opinion there was no medical reason I should not participate in the event. Now that the requirement has been dropped I wonder how many riders will even think of seeking a medical opinion about their fitness for the event. We're all randos right? Fit and ready, and like Steve, probably none are planning to have a heart attack.

Before we send the riders out on the 300K event on July 30th I will make some pre-ride announcements; I will remind them that they are required to observe all traffic laws and rules, I will remind them to be courteous and respectful in the little grocery stores and mini-marts they patronize along the route. I will also let them know that this ride is dedicated to the memory of Steve Hameister, a Randonneur not unlike them, who didn’t even know he had a problem but died of a heart attack on this very even four years ago. I’ll suggest that if they think they don’t have any heart problems, and are not planning to have a heart attack Like Steve, perhaps they should consider a visit to a doctor before they head to Paris.

And I will dedicate this ride to the memory of my friend Steve.

Steve Hameister 1954-2007

Just like riding a ......

2011-07-12T23:21:00.000-07:00

Big Horse.

So I rode another perm last weekend.

Wait, I should apologize for the prolonged absence here. Not down or anything, just buffeted by demands from all quarters.

Now, back to that perm. We had planned a nice little ride around the country side on the loooog bike, but Mrs. C was called away on a business assignment at the last minute (and I think there are demands on my time!) She generally doesn’t appreciate how much I appreciate her efforts when we ride the wanted her to ride with me. Together we are more than 1+1. But more to the point, at this particular time, with the Tournesol in the shop for a makeover, it meant that solo I would be aboard my single speed Zen therapy couch. I mentioned earlier that I’m getting a lot of fun out of going gearless but in this case the course runs out past the steam plant and takes in the Tono hills. I could do it gearless, but I’m not in San Fran Messenger shape just now so it would be the symphony of the screaming quads. But wait; there is more to the story.

On my way home Friday night I stopped by the LBS to see what the mech had to say, really, I just wanted to chat, not to rant. Of course I had this dream state vision that someone might say, “Oh yeah, we got that done last Tuesday, didn’t anyone call you?” and there hanging from a hook in the ceiling among all the other bikes needing work would be the big horse, sporting a shiny new fork. In the real world, as I walked in, there stood Corey at the counter looking like he was heading out. “Hey Paul I got your fork back from the painter!”

I explained my Saturday date with destiny dilemma and after a little what next two step he allowed as how he had the bike at his home shop, he’d have it back together in a couple hours, and I could come up later if I wanted. Oh yeah, things were definitely looking up.

We had planned to roll out at 8 am however being solo allows options and I am more inclined to ride earlier in the day, in this case for two reasons:

First good weather was in the offing and I like that ‘cool before the sun comes up’ morning air, and second (and more importantly), Saturday was day one of Seattle to Portland and this this perm route intersected part of that mass of cycling humanity, only swimming up steam (I would be riding against the flow of STP riders, so starting earlier might get me out there before the bulk of the 12,000 riders showed up at Rainier.

The best laid plans are sometimes waylaid by a particularly blissful sleep in a particularly comfortable bed. I still started early, just not as early as I planned. It was fantastic. Clear, and quiet out in the country. No tights, no leg warmers, long finger gloves, balaclava, chemical warmers, booties, toe warmers, soggy raincoat. I did wear a wind vest to start and that was about right but it was off within an hour. It was just me and my old friend, riding along getting reacquainted.

One of the blog posts I didn’t write while I was so busy being buffeted was all about how we have waited, ... so long, and so patiently (some of us not so patiently) for this. Riding a bike is a fine idea in most any situation, but riding out on a cool summer morning, when all you hear is the hum of the tires and the metallic purr of the chain on the gears, that really is top drawer stuff.

And of course, having been in Coreys able hands the bike ran like new, possibly better than new. When I picked it up the night before Corey said “Let me know if it feels any different with the new fork.” I’m a brute, if he had installed the new cast iron octagonal wheels I would have noticed, but subtle changes are generally too, well subtle for me.

Like putting on a comfy old, pair of boots after a long layoff, there is a sense of familiarity, and a sense of newness. I got that but I think there was a little something more. Maybe Corey sprinkled in a little pixie dust with the flux, or maybe he goofed and didn’t want to tell me, but I sensed the bike is perhaps a tad bit quicker to respond to my steering inputs with the new fork. Or not. A month on the QB could account for all the sense of change, add in fresh air, sunshine and 12,000 other riders coming at you and who can really say?

12000 other riders? Oh yes, STP. This annual migration from Seattle to Portland, is a 200 mile odyssey that is hard to describe if you have not had a similar experience. All the harder to describe if you encounter these riders coming at you!

The common (opposite directions) route was only a couple miles, on Hwy 507 between Johnson Creek and the little town of Rainier. When I came out to the Highway from Johnson creek I saw a few singles and short pace lines steaming down the road. At this point they had all the advantages: downhill, tailwind, and a few friends to draft while I would be solo, going up and in to it.

Given the few riders I saw I assumed I would ok to cross the road and ride up the paved rail trail to Rainier. The advantage to me would be that I would be sheltered from the wind as the trail on that stretch was mostly through the trees. Sure I might encounter a few riders but surely this would be a minor inconvenience, as my observance on the highway suggested the bulk of the riders were yet to get this far along the route.

Sometimes I come to the wackiest conclusions, even when the trail of reason is littered with bread crumbs (loaves) of evidence that would lead the average person to safety. I crossed the highway safely and got up on the trail, I scanned ahead and saw a few riders headed my way. At that distance they looked like normal rides, riding to the right, mostly single file. Off I went, but within a couple hundred yards normal rides were replaced with a horde of crazy people who had never ridden bikes before and were either giddy with the new experience or were consumed with the notion of bike roller derby. There was no escape, I was constantly yelling to get the kids stretched out on the aero bars to Look at me. It was harrowing and here I would like to sincerely apologize the 1,872 riders for any inconvenience I may have caused them. Also for all the most personal and vile profanity I hurled at them at the top of my lungs. Apparently, since I last rode SP, they have rerouted it to the bike trail in this area. It was the most exciting 3 miles I have ridden in a long time, silly me.

I finished at the Starbucks in Centralia, it was warm and sunny and felt good to get out of the riding shoes and the sweaty jersey. As I emerged with my iced-double-tall-no-foam-half-caff-half-decaf-skinny-no-room-Medici-with-a-dash-of-nutmeg-and-a-bean I encountered a couple STP riders. I know they were having their kind of fun and it made me think back to the glory days of Team Fish, but the truth is, I was glad to be through with my ride and headed home to some light yard work.

Sorry, no pics in this post, I’m at 30,000 in ‘flyover country’ and all the pics are back home on the desk top.

Like a kid on a bike

2011-06-21T20:32:00.000-07:00

Not Panic, actually more of a sinking feeling as I finish my second and more thorough search of all the places I might have stashed an inhaler at work. That lower right hand pharmacopeia drawer is the obvious first choice. Normally, floating near the top of the wrack of bottles of aspirin, Ibuprofen, Excedrin, blister packs of decongestant capsules, dental floss dispensers and other patent med’s is the little metal canister, nestled in the bright red inhaler mouthpiece. Finding no solace there I head to the plastic box on the bottom shelf of the prison industries faux cherry wood armoire, which is integrated into the faux cherry wood 3 drawer horizontal file and two shelf bookcase. There in the box, among a jumble of paper napkins I find black plastic table wear, a couple packets of faux wasabi and soy sauce from the local China express, a package of Ricolla cough drops, and the twist off lid of some long ago lost or broken thermal coffee cup. Lying at the bottom of it all there is an empty zip loc sandwich bag, containing an equally empty small paperboard box that once, months ago, held a fresh new inhaler.

Most likely the ‘office’ inhaler is at home, safely tucked away in the seatbag of my singlespeed Quickbeam, the bike I rode home yesterday.

Frustrating because today the office environment alternated by zone from steamy to meat locker. The building owner controls the temperature in this leased building and that person, is located somewhere far away (Kansas City? Oakland, California?) and was not available to make adjustments until after 9:00am. Of course my little interior office is out of the general air flow pattern of the building (air flow such as it is) so whatever we have I tend to have magnified, except of course for airflow. I have a fan on the end of the credenza, which seems to have the effect of a loud stand mixer churning warm pancake batter. Without the magic affects of the missing inhaler the air felt about like pancake batter going in and out of my lungs. Something is down there at the bottom of those pillowy air sacks, it feels like the tag end of a damp dish towel, or a baby sock, something I can’t cough up, something that, without the aerosol drugs won’t go away or be calmed. Beads of sweat began to pop out on my forehead, this would be a longish day. Oh the epic trials of the denizen of the cubicles.

Why was the inhaler in the bike bag? Monday was the last day of Spring and given a fairly promising weather forecast and much gentle, but persistent support from Mrs C, I had decided to ride my bike home from work. I had just come off of two weeks of work travel and meetings with really no time for riding a bike. The word ‘brutal’ comes to mind but it’s only brutal in the new century sense. In the old century brutal might have involved long hours in a field or forest toiling alone or with other field hands. It might have involved back breaking labor or 12 hour days in a cramped, dark, textile factory. Spending hours driving across the state, participating in meetings, pushing ideas back and forth across a table, or listing tasks on a flip chart … really isn’t brutal. It’s not even mind numbing except that these days I tend to use up my mind’s capacity before the tasks are all listed and assigned.

At any rate a ride home would be therapeutic, though perhaps more challenging than if I had been riding more consistently. Still it is a challenge I relish, more than the challenge of the next meeting or workshop. This would be pleasant and a fitting way to step across the threshold from spring to summer.

These days when I ride a bike I do fine once I get the initial coughing fit out of the way. This part always requires performance enhancing drugs, thus the inhaler. I have a threshold energy output below which I do fine, but above which bouts of coughing are predictable. That little baby sock gets irritated in its womb of moist lung tissue and it makes its displeasure known. So If I decide to pick up the pace, or am confronted by a serious headwind or sustained climbs I can expect more coughing and more inhaler assistance.

Given that the Quickbeam is a bike with only one gear there was sure to be more intensity. You never appreciate the magic of mechanical assistance so much as when you don’t have gears at your disposal. This sounds like a whine but really it is a blessing. I get to test out my real base level of fitness and dispense with all the foolishness of shifting gears, front and back. On a bike with one gear (in my case a single speed) it is a lot like that kid on a bike, the big rusty hand-me-down JC Higgins cruiser, the only difference being the upgrade from a coaster brake to modern handbrakes.

It is a bit of a lie to say that the QB is a single speed: it has the dubious distinction of having two chain rings. I had it in the shop at lunch for a quick brake adjustment (even canti brakes exceed my mechanical ability!) and a fellow standing at the counter asked “how do you shift that thing?” He noticed the two rings and the absence of any obvious shifters, and was perhaps hoping for a new gee-whiz invisible technology. I explained that the shifting mechanism here was as simple as the rest of the bike: Loosen the rear wheel, slide it forward and lift the chain off the one ring (with your index finger, thus ‘index’ shifting) and onto the other chain ring. Pull the wheel back in the dropsouts and retighten the quick release making sure to eyeball the wheel as straight as possible in alignment with the chainstays. An additional nice touch with the QB is that it foregoes the typical nutted axel for a quick release retention system. Forget about that six inch crescent wrench.

OBTW! while I was at the LBS I got a peak at the new fork for the Tournesol! Nice (didn't have my camera handy, dang) just going out to the powder coat place. (shades of new bike lust!)

Anyway, back to the QB. I used the ‘climbing gear’ to get over the hill at Waddell creek. In the past, once the novelty wore off I would not bother with ‘shifting’ unless there was a sustained climb. As easy as it is, it is easier still to just stand and crank. But the new me needed the easier gear to summit Mt Waddell. It might have been worse, I thought I might have to walk part of it, but I’m not that far gone. There was an inhaler stops however.

It was a wonderful ride home. With only one gear you can easily get into a simple mind set, you pick up a rhythm that fits your body and your fitness, and then the pedals, and wheels just keep turning over. You hear about this from single speed and fixed gear riders all the time, there is something to it. I’m not obsessed but I do enjoy my time on the one geared wonder. On this bike it is especially pleasant because it fits me well and I have it set up just the way I like it:

Those Midge bars are not what most folks associate with a single speed or fixed gear bike. They are closer to drop bars than upright and this lower position is antithetical to riding in traffic, the assumed application for most one gear bikes. Out on the country roads there is no need to keep your head up watching for traffic, and the grips are wide enough and flared so that there is not much wrist strain. Not ideal for others but a great fit for me.

I took my time, I was riding along well enough but I stopped frequently to take pictures. The route is ordinary enough but for some reason it seemed particularly photogenic that day.

The Camas blooms are gone, now replaced with Lupin

and Foxglove.

This route, so bare and stark last month is now lush with new foliage; the trees are leafed out,

and the grasses have been greatly favored by the cool moist spring.

At the Weyerhaeuser tree nursery, next year’s forests are taking off.

Acres and acres of Douglas fir seedlings, occasionally punctuated with a few hundred thousand Western Red Cedars or Sitka Spruce.

This little guy was basking on the sun warmed black asphalt, I had to swerve to miss him but could not resist going back for a photo op. It appears he escaped death some time back by surrendering the tip of his tail.

Finally, shorts, a short sleeve jersey, and no coat, booties, or long finger gloves!

Fishes and Loaves

2011-06-12T12:39:00.000-07:00

Saturday was a goof off day, or a busy day depending upon how you look at it. I traveled much of the week before, which seems to take a little more out of me than it used to. Mrs. C was on the road also, in Eastern Oregon working with her staff in Bend.

About mid week, before the fatigue settled into the joints I made an appointment with a fish dealer down in Canby Oregon to look at some fish he had for sale. In this case he had some AAA fish he’d had since last fall that he was looking to move.

Why he still had them I have no idea, they truly are very high quality fish, normally out of my reach. I have bought fish from him before, my normal ‘pond grade’ selections which he usually has a good supply of at very reasonable prices. He’s a straight shooter and he let me know that these fish which I had ‘admired’ some months ago were still available.

By Friday night I was not sure a Saturday road trip was such a good idea, but the prospect of at least looking at some pretty fish was tantalizing. Still I was a little restless so decided that I would put my newly acquired sourdough starter to work. This new strain has the vitality to feed half the sourdoughs in the Yukon given enough flour.

In SD bread, making the really good stuff is a time consuming process. I knew that the ‘normal’ process would not mesh well (at all) with a trip to Oregon and back that would easily consume five or six hours. I’ve wanted to try a few short cuts to see if I could produce top shelf artisan SD bread while cutting out a significant amount of time. This appeared to be a scenario where opportunity meets inspiration which might produce the new Dr Codfish baking hit: Triple S (Simplified Super Sourdough).

The SD starter was a willing accomplice. Almost the minute I mixed up the dough with the starter things started growing. It took off faster than most doughs do. One thing about SD bread; it is as much art as science so if your science project gets a little out of hand it’s not a failure, it’s a Picasso.

By the time Mrs. C got home and I had the kitchen cleaned up it was about 11:00 and I was truly ready to hit the hay. This would represent about 4 to 5 hours of bulk ferment, which is not quite as long as this mix was telling me it needed, but to leave it out over night would be the short cut to disaster. I covered the dough and put it in the refrigerator.

I have learned that this overnight-in-the-refer element is the second most important stop on the road to great SD. Wild yeast takes longer to do its work than commercial yeasts. Like so many modern ‘improvements’ the advantage of making lots of bread quickly comes at the expense of a loaf with more texture to the crumb. Still, it would have benefitted from a longer bulk ferment before going into the cold.

My long tallied alarm cat went off like clockwork about 5:30 am inviting me to join him for an early morning meal of cat food. Normally I just roll over but in this case he got his way and I moved the dough from the refrigerator to the oven to get it back to proofing. This worked well, by the time I got up at 8:00, the dough was ready to punch down and form into loaves which I placed in the bannetons (wicker baskets that are forms for the dough). So far so good.

The night before Mrs C said she’d like to tag along so we had a loose agreement, (almost a plan) to roll out about 11:00 and as it turned out we were on the road by 11:15 or so. Again, a plan (such as it is) comes together.

We were about to Vancouver when the idiot light (in my brain) came on and I said to Mrs. C; “uh oh, I forgot to put those loaves back in the fridge before we left”.

“Do we need to go back?” She asked with just a hint of concern in her voice. This is not one of those exploding bread dough stories, where the dough just keeps growing like the blob, filling the oven, oozing out the sides, flowing across the floor, consuming the cupboards and the cat.

“No” I responded, “It will just over-proof but it won’t overflow the bannetons.”

Recall I mentioned earlier that the overnight thing is the second most important step? Well proofing ‘just right - not too much but just enough’ is THE most important step. More on this saga later.

It was a beautiful day in Canby. Nicholas was helping another customer when we arrived, (he sees fish customers by appointment, this fish thing being a sideline or hobby business for him) so we had occasion to admire his fantastic collection of fish in the show pond out front. This is a truly pastoral setting, the place is actually a working farm. Nicholas grows and sells Dahlias, wholesale and mail-order retail all over the country. So of course the grounds are impeccably manicured, the courtyard is shady, dappled sunlight filters through the trees falling on the pond. The fish he has in this pond are truly gorgeous and are used to seeing people, they glide languidly through the water to you to beg food.

The fish I had been interested in, Goshiki, were even more striking in person than on his website. I don’t know how the breeders do it but this particular variety have an almost neon like quality to their red spots or Hi (pronounced hee).

Sometimes they are a little muddled with the dark scales showing through and the borders of the hi plates not well defined. These fish however had all the show qualities and few of the defects. I’m not into show fish per se; in fact the proletariat in me displays a certain anti-smugness with my collection of mutts and pond fish. This however was the classic case of a working stiff bedazzled by beauty. The hard part would be deciding which of these fish would take a ride with us. I picked the littlest one, I like bigger but this one had a fantastic pattern.

Mrs. C was really taken with one of the fish in the show pond. It is a black and white fish (Shiro Utsuri) but very sparkly. This characteristic of a diamond like sparkle to the scales is called gin rin. It is a trait breeders can select for. I think of them as normal fish with metal flake paint jobs. Of course the fish in the show pond was not going to be coming home with us but Nicholas had a fingerling that appeared to have promise.

She also noticed another, less flashy Shiro that called to her.

Nicholas offered us a ‘package deal’ so we brought all three home.

When we got home the bread was as I imagined; proofed up to the tops of the bannetons.

To a novice this would look great, you have invested all this time and energy and now you are rewarded with big puffy loaves.

The problem is that if the bread is over-proofed it will most likely fall in the process of slashing and transferring to the hot stone in the oven. Done just right however, the loaves will stand up to the jostling and actually puff up once they hit the hot stone. This is called ‘oven spring’. Can you see that as vividly as I can?

The loaves came out of the bannetons pretty well,

the slashing was the undoing of the oval loaf, the boule however fared better.

More Picasso than bread-two-point-oh, Still, I can’t complain too much. And unlike the failed experiment in the search to cure the common cold, a batch of bread having gone slightly wrong is still, well fresh homemade bread. For a critical analysis; the crust was excellent, not too crusty and just right chewy. The crumb was very uniform,

almost like store bought bread, no big holes, and about perfect for moist. I’m sure the neighbors will be all smiles when I bring bread. I’ll try this again when I am less likely to screw up (whenever that will be) to see how it might turn out with a second rest period.

Oh yes, gratuitous bicycle content here:

Recall I had a problem with my vintage Brooks saddle? I have come upon someone who says he can fix it! (thanks for the tip Charlie). He located a replacement frame and the saddle is off the 'saddle maker' for the makeover. I 'll let you know how that goes. I should see it back in less than two weeks, about the time the Tournesol should be recovered from surgery.

And The Winner Is….

2011-06-04T20:23:00.000-07:00

We rode the Loooong bike on our little jaunt today.

Mrs. C’s schedule cleared up as if by magic, coincidentally with the latest weather report that predicted sunny and 75 for Saturday. It is a good thing too because with a favorable change in the weather the Chehalis gap can be counted on to give a pretty stiff blow in from the harbor. I really needed that stoker pushing me along; I would have been meat in the grinder on the Quickbeam. Funny thing, my wife really has no idea how enormously helpful she is on the tandem. I tell her every so often but not too often, and not too convincingly; the last thing I want is for her to figure out that I’m not a wizard but just some pudgy little geezer shifting gears behind a curtain.

Isn’t she a pretty thing? My wife of course is lovely, but in this case I am referring to the bike. Normally my latent scandehoovian genes cause me to shy away from those gaudy, flashy bike paint jobs. Those 8 color Colnago paint schemes are pretty to look at, but just shout ME!ME!ME! a little too much, and a little too loudly. “So” you might ask “How did you wind up with a candy apple metal flake red tandem?” Well it was the one they had on the floor when we decided to buy and once in buy mode I was in no mood to wait weeks for the build, and too, …. it is awfully pretty.

We really needed sun glasses on this day; the bright sun glinting off this thing is nearly blinding. They say red is a dark color but on a sunny day you can see this thing coming for three blocks. Friday night I was tinkering and lubing and adjusting (I know; I need to tighten up the timing chains) making last minute adjustments getting it ready to roll. I took it for a spin up the block and back. The little kids at the end of the street came running out, silly grins on their faces. “I saw you ride that bike before!” It’s like an antique car, or an old fire truck, it just gets people’s attention. And so it was all along the ride.

And what a day for a bike ride! I reviewed the weather stats for May, April too, and it quickly became obvious that we aren’t whiners here in the ~~Pissing~~ Pacific Northwest. We have suffered a prolonged stretch of seriously crappy weather. Sure, we haven’t flooded, or been swept away by tornados, or been buried in 15 foot snow drifts, we’ve just seen a little too much rain and a little too little sun. Temps below normal, rainfall above normal and number of days without sun considerably below normal. But in the space of a couple days, it’s all forgotten. A constant parade of pasty people with sunglasses and goofy grins, everywhere, including pasty us.

We saw plenty of people out on bicycles and of course lots of people out on motorcycles. There were also lots of people in $150,000 RV’s. We were all out having our own kind of fun and I was quite pleased with how we were treated on the road. It wasn’t anything to match riding the country lanes of rural France, but people generally gave us a wide birth. I’m sure it had to do with riding a bike that is flashier than Elvis:

and looks like it is as long as an RV. Check this out:

It even dwarfs our big honking 4X4 SUV! Maybe people are fooled into thinking that it is not only longer, but wider. It does have about the same turning radius as a Kenworth 18 wheeler.

Yes folks the flying Koi wind sock is standing pretty much straight out in this picture.

True to form we got some wind today. For much of the first half of the ride it was a BLESSED tailwind! Once we turned around at the Chehalis tribal minimart and gas station however, we were pushing through the invisible waves. I’m thinking my pals out riding the Tahuya Hills 600K probably got some wind coming down Hwy 12 but maybe not as bad as I had feared. Hey, any head wind is a pain, I wish them luck.

We went around the course with purpose but also retaining our allegiance to the childish belief that riding a bike should be fun. WE HAD FUN on the bike, on a beautiful day, in a beautiful part of the world. There were no big surprises, and no catastrophes, minor or otherwise. It was the kind of ride that makes you say “We ought to get out and do this more often”!

Plan B

2011-06-02T17:31:00.000-07:00

As you may know the Lovely Tournesol (see photo below) is away getting the bicycle equivalent of a front end rebuild, or a boob job, depending on your frame of reference. You may also have noticed that I’ve had a slight uptick in my bike mileage thank to the Bicycle Commuter Contest last month. Sometimes it takes a kick in the pants to get going, often when it is something you should do and occasionally when it is something you like to do. At any rate since the commute challenge is over and the bike of choice is on hiatus it would be easy to dust off the barcalounger and resort to my favorite pastime of reading Kindle Singles on my little magic book. Imagine Thomas Jefferson, or Ben Franklin coming back for an afternoon and demo-ing this little device that resembles a book, but which has no pages and yet the text proceeds before your eyes. It would be great to be able to time travel 250 years into the future to see what’s new.

Back to the point at hand; Given that the weather is moderating (May came in like a petulant drama queen but went out like a puddle of melted vanilla ice cream) and that I really do have a hankering to bask in more of that two wheeled magic I need to come up with an alternative to the big horse. In years past it would have been as simple as reviewing the ranks of 5 or 6 bikes, airing up the tires and replenishing that bike’s on road tools and spare parts stash and then off we go.

But in the intervening years I have severely pared back my rolling stock. There’s the Tandem, a technological wonder (we have a DaVinci, with independent cranks). I am sure we will be putting miles on that thing this season, but as a solo bike it has some obvious shortcomings. Next up is the Ibis. This bike is a little hard to describe or categorize. I think it is a snapshot in time, when the first wave of mtn bike madness had crashed on the beach and the early adopters were looking around, thinking that a bike which could bridge the gap between the old Puegeot hanging in the garage and the ond Speicialized Rock Hopper might be an interesting ‘concept’.

It is built for 26 inch wheels, so it could be a mountain bike. It is geared with a Suntour triple crank, sports drop bars ad old suntour bar end shifters, and is equipped with cantilever brakes. I got it third or fourth hand and rumor was that it had been owned and ridden at one time by Maynard Hershon.

I put many miles on this machine, I got it for a song in a time when I had not much more than song to my name. This bike could probably navigate the STP route with no inputs than power to the pedals. Good times and good memories on that machine, however, the geometry that was right for me back in the late 80’s/early 90’s seems not to be appropriate for the me in the new century. Hard to believe I was that flexible back then.

That leaves the Quickbeam: Bike enthusiasts’ know that the QB is a single speed, but as Grant Peterson likes to point out:

"The Quickbeam is our silver single-speed that's actually a two-speed and is a quick change away from being a four-speed. That's because it comes with two count 'em chain rings (40t and 32t) and a flip-flop hub with an 18t freewheel on one side and room for another cog on the other. But there's more to it than that." He goes on, but you get the idea.

Yes, I know, gape-mouthed-hard-to-believe that I don’t have other bikes lurking in the shop but as I said, when we moved to Rocky Acres I ‘simplified’. I have not regretted it but not until now have I faced a prolonged period of separation from the Big Horse. It's no crisis, but this could easily be an excuse to add to the stable. Just two days ago I got an alert from Renovo that certain of their wooden bikes will be going on sale soon. Yes, I said wooden bikes. Believe me it would not take much of a nudge to get me to jump off that cliff. Of all the bikes available right now these call to me in a way no other does. They are just incredibly gorgeous:

and apparently they actually are functional as bikes. Good thing the check book is in the company vault with the time release lock.

Looking at this from a more practical perspective, it would probably be easy to pick up a decent back up bike on Ebay or Craig’s list. But The current economic climate has not been kind to Codfish Industries Limited, and while our holdings are all on solid footings, now is not the time for ‘irrational exuberance’, or buying more bikes either.

As mentioned earlier, this is not a crisis. There are bikes to ride and for now. the Quickbeam gets the nod. This bike really is a gem:

If bicycles are the essence of mechanical elegance, the Quickbeam is the blue part of the flame.

A fixed gear bicycle is the perfection of simplicity, It’s what all bicycles were when bicycles first burst upon the scene. The QB, being a single speed incorporates several innovations that represent the early evolutionary steps in bicycle development. They add complexity while at the same time making the bicycle available to a much wider population.

It coasts! If you have never ridden a fixed gear bike, you probably can’t fully appreciate this seemingly innocuous feature. I won’t go into the difference in any great detail but offer you this ‘ah ha’ mind pic: Say you just climbed a big hill, you are at the top and now face a lovely, long descent down the other side. Will you:

A. Pedal furiously all the way to the bottom, or

B. Coast, gliding through the curves recovering from your recent big climb?

With a single speed you have that choice, with a fixed gear you don’t.
Hills are the biggest area of concern with a one speed bike. If you lived in Florida, or Kansas it might not be much of a concern, but where I live there are few routes that do not have me shifting through the gears on a ride of any length. As illustrated, the ‘up’ hills are not the only concern, but they are a big consideration for me.

For mortals, the ability to make way over hills is greatly influenced by any rider’s ‘power to weight ratio’. If you wanna go faster you simply increase your power or (simple in concept) reduce your weight. More than anything that’s why, whenever you are in the company of more than 2 and a half bike geeks you will eventually hear discussions of the weight of bikes, or some new, greatest, lightest, must have gadget. These O/C souls we refer to as gram counters.

Mrs C and I are scheduled to ride another 100K perm route on Saturday. Mrs C is a tentative go, however she has some church duties, yet to be confirmed that may keep her from it. If she’s in we’ll ride the tandem, if she’s not I’ll be riding the QB. The route has very little climbing, but it is not without hills. I expect if I’m on the QB I WILL, at a couple points be using my 24 inch gear (a clever way of saying I’ll be using my two feet, aka walking … pretty clever eh?)

Either way the ride will have some ‘firsts’: First brevet on the QB, first brevet in WA on the tandem, first time out on the bike this year in BIKE SHORTS! (Looking forward to that!)

My pals at SIR will ride the Tahuya Hills 600K this weekend. For many this will be the final qualifier for PBP, I wish them luck. Funny, this ride starts on the waterfront in Seattle, rides out toward Mt Rainier, passes very near by Rocky Acres before they bed down for a few hours of rest in Elma, just a few miles west of here. Then some lovely riding on the lower Olympic peninsula before delivering the riders to Kays Corner, the entrance to the Tahuya Hills. In a 600Km ride the Tahuya hills amount to just over 48Km and yet the whole thing is referred to as the Tahuya Hills 600. Tells you something about those hills. For newbies to this route the really evil surprise comes when you leave Seabeck. Having conquered (survived?) the Tahuya hills you begin to think the trouble is behind you, and then you find yourself making a slight right onto Anderson Hill road. If one were looking for an emblem that typifies the spirit of Seattle International Randonneurs this little stretch (From Kays Corner to the finish at Bainbridge) would make a decent candidate. Finishing this ride will certainly give the riders every reason to feel qualified for PBP!

Definitely not prime real estate for a one speed bicycle.

Bon Courage my friends.

When Stupid Strikes

2011-05-31T18:10:00.000-07:00

Life requires regularly scheduled maintenance, whether it is your cars motor oil, getting your teeth cleaned, or your bike's running gear. It can be a little frustrating to have to replace your bike's cog set especially if you’ve been diligent (or so you thought) about chain maintenance. But you know sooner or later you are probably going to have to replace those little gears, such is the way with moving parts of a machine.

But sometimes you have to replace parts that are damaged because for a brief moment you absentmindedly climbed to the summit of Mt Stupid, just to check out the view, oblivious to the storehouse of banana peels that the evil flying monkeys have dropped there in hopes that the stupids won’t notice as they stare off into the void.

Such a moment befell me and the big horse this weekend. Now I won’t say the big horse is any smarter (or stupider) than the average bicycle, so in this matter it is entirely possible that I bear the lion’s share of responsibility for this escapade.

It all started out innocently enough on Saturday morning: Mrs. C and I chose to ride a 100K perm, starting at the Centralia Safeway. This was to be a significant challenge for my better half: She’s wanted to do this for some time but due to a series of illnesses and ill timed work demands it had not happened, until Saturday. Long story short, we made it around the course within the prescribed time limit. I am extremely proud of her and was really bubbling over as we loaded the bikes up on top of the Subee for the drive home. “Want anything before we head home?” I asked. She suggested we swing by one of our fave MomnPop H-burger spots, Bill&Bea’s, just a block from where we were. Those of you who have your stupid sensors set on ultra stupid alert may already be experiencing a heightened sense of concern.

Yup, you guessed it; I drove the Big Horse into the drive through overhang at the H-burger shack! I could make a myriad of excuses like:

I hardly ever drive the Subee with bikes up anymore, most of my bike transport these days involves the yuppie mini pick up;
I was semi-delirious from the combination of my own efforts and my jubilation over Mrs. C’s accomplishment;
I was obsessed with making sure that the little towel I was sitting on didn’t allow any greasy sweat/lube stains on the upholstery. Let’s see, what else … oh yes!
There was a momentary flash of disorienting sunshine blinding me and causing a hard drive crash.

Well, the metaphorical truth is I was staring out at the wondrous view from the summit of Mt Stupid and doing a little victory jig all the while oblivious to the metaphorical banana peels and the cackle of the evil flying monkeys.

Immediately upon contact I had the two conflicting sensations; The sickening realization that it was the bike hitting some old fairly rotten fascia boards and not the Subee wheel hitting an old crumbling curb, and the hope against hope that comes with the realization/rationalization that I was actually barely creeping along and thus might have done only minor damage. This by the way, essentially eliminates any sensation of hunger.

45 minutes later back at the ranch, I carefully brought the wounded worrier down off the rack. The contact had been primarily with the left ergo shifter. I examined this first and was encouraged to find that all the workings were working, the housing showed no obvious trauma other than a little minor cosmetic damage; Chorus is now horus, oh well. I tried to slip the wheel into the fork and it was a no go. The front fender had been crumpled a bit, it had bottomed out on the bike rack mount. The H-bars had been turned a few degrees on the steerer tube, that ought to be easy enough to fix.

Out to the shop I removed the damaged fender, loosened the stem bolts and straightened up the bars, it all looked pretty good. I slipped the wheel into the drop outs, OK good so far. Now cam the front brake closed and …oops what’s this, the brake pads close in on the rim on one side. On closer inspection the brake pads seem out of alignment with the rim, and the fork legs. Maybe the brake bolt was somehow goofed up? Looking closer at the fork crown it’s pretty clear that the fork legs are no longer parallel, and it looks like they are no longer aligned with the head tube. Uh oh.

Next day at the LBS the problem is perfectly clear, the fork has been bent out of alignment, both legs, just by differing degrees. Looks like the H-bars may be OK. After some discussion with the bike mech/frame maker we come up with options:

Option A: “I could possibly re-rake the fork and get it back close to right, but there’s no guarantee about it’s integrity".

Option B: A new fork.

A is bad to unacceptable, B is painful but provides long term security for a big guy like me. It also portends a multi-week lay down for the big horse.
Damn those evil flying monkeys!

Bicycle Nostalgia

2011-05-28T07:22:00.000-07:00

My friend Kent Peterson recently wrote a blog post that struck a chord with me and like that song that gets in your head, I keep coming back to it.

There are a few reasons I keep turning this over in my mind; It involve old people and try as I might, I can’t reconcile my age, even in dog years with being other than old. I used to say “I’m not old, I’ve just been young for a very long time”, or “60 isn’t old, if you’re a tree”. Recently I had a conversation with my older brother who is retired in Florida. He allowed as when I get old and retire I needed to come and have an extended visit. He said in this retirement community there are all kinds of bike clubs and though they may not ride over mountain passes in freezing rain through the dark of night, there are surely some old codgers with hair growing out of their ears who could drop me in a moment. I reminded him that I would soon be turning 62 to which he replied: “I’m sure you must be mistaken, because if that is true that would make me ….”. It’s true.

Also this stuck with me because it is about bike nostalgia and that is something I can appreciate, precisely because I am old. And it also reminded me that there was a time in my life not too far back when I frequented a senior living facility and being bikish there were occasional Q and A’s about biking.

In her last years we moved my mom to Olympia from her home in Granite Falls. It was something of a necessity; she had been living alone for about 10 years after my dad passed away, her health was failing and there was no family closer than me. Oly is not near to Granite falls (about 100 miles as the Prius flies) but those miles cross the eye of the motorized hurricane that is I-5 through Tacoma, Seattle, and Everett. From a traffic perspective, there is probably no worse 100 miles to travel in Washington State. Getting mom to and from the Dr, and attending to her other needs became an enormous challenge as she lost her ability to take ‘dial a ride’.

My sister who lives near Corvallis and I conspired to get mom to ‘relocate’, so I put mom on the train to Corvallis for a visit. Surreptitiously Judi introduced the idea of moving ‘some place closer’ and took mom on a tour of a few senior living situations in and around Corvallis. In other posts you may have heard me mention the stubborn nature of the McCubbins; If it is genetic my mom must have been a throwback; She could make granite seem as yielding as butter by comparison. A week or so later Judi put her on the northbound and called in advance to tell me it was a no go.

I picked her up at the train station and asked how her visit went. After she blew off most of her steam I suggested we take a look at a new place that was being constructed in downtown Olympia. “No” she said, she wasn’t ready to move. “Well we could just stop by and take a peak” I suggested. “No!” She insisted. “I’m not moving and I want to go home!”

As it happens that McStubborn streak did not end with her generation. I told her I’d be happy to drive her home tomorrow …. right after we took a tour of the Boardwalk apartments. She was livid! Strong willed independent minded people react to coercion worse than most. I won’t say she had a tantrum but it was a good thing she was tuckered out from her trip, she went to bed early that night.

Long story short, she was won over and within a few moths she had settled into her new apartment a few blocks from where I was living, where she lived out the last five years of her life. Of course because I was so close I was a frequent visitor and I often arrived by bike. I always brought my bike inside and parked it either in the day room or in the interior courtyard. At first this caused quite a stir. Old folks when they are cooped together often get a little childish, a little territorial, especially when subjected to surprises that interrupt the routine. Mountain out of a mole hill might be an understatement. It took a few bags of cookies or the occasional bin of Costco muffins but in short order my bike became a tolerated if not accepted fixture.

It also became a conversation starter. Like Kent’s recounting I often caught a glimpse of wistfulness as we would have conversations about bikes. As you know the bike is a magical machine and the magic didn’t just happen when you and I arrived on the scene. I learned that bikes have always held magic. I would tell tales of my randonneuring adventures, thinking pretty highly of myself. Then I’d hear stories of their bicycle adventures, always on bicycles much more primitive than anything I have ever ridden and, I am sure over roads much less suitable. It was good therapy for my badly swollen ego.

I’d have to get out a Washington state map and draw the routes for mom. Big thick red felt tip marker lines, circling the Olympic Peninsula, or slipping across and through the Cascade Mountains. “You mean Wenatchee, where Gene and Jesse live?!” Old folks talk, and over time some of the more friendly regulars would know when I had an event and would ask how it went. When I showed my mom the brevet medals she innocently asked “You are going to wear them aren’t you?” She was serious.

Those discussions down in the lobby, the remembrances that brought more life to their eyes and put a little more animation in the conversation were inspiring. But too there was always some degree or remorse, a sense of longing for things lost. This building was not an assisted living facility or a nursing home, it was just senior apartments. Eligibility for residence was means tested and people had to be at least 55 years old, nothing more. You had to be pretty old and not too wealthy. So, some of these folks were in their late fifties and early sixties. There were always a couple cruiser bikes locked up in the stairwells and I would occasionally see them out on the streets on a sunny day.

There was one woman who was friends with my mom who somehow went on a fitness tear. She was obese but over the period of two years she lost an enormous amount of weight, mostly just by walking around town. In time she asked me about a bike. She confessed that she was afraid to ride a bike because of the traffic and then the whole business of bicycles, gears, and brakes was threatening. I suggested that there were reasonably priced bikes that were very dependable and designed to make riding very simple and very comfortable. I mentioned that it could be just about like walking only faster. That got her attention and within a few months she was rigged out with a bright yellow and white Electra Townie. From then on I would frequently see her tooling along on the sidewalks of Olympia on her bike.

This was a teachable moment for me. In that building there were all kinds of people with all kinds of attitudes. Many were focused on their problems: Their health challenges, their medications, their lack of or diminishing mobility. There were a few who chose to make the most of what they had, to focus on maintaining or prolonging what they had. They were no less stricken by the ills of age or life’s misfortunes, they just chose not to have that be their focus.

Years earlier I had a similar epiphany as a young man living in Roslyn, Washington. Many of my neighbors there were retired coal miners, or the widows of miners. Two such old fellows lived on my street. They were OLD, and decrepit, but once or twice a week they’d take off early in the morning in the pea green Datsun pickup one of them owned to go out and cut a load of firewood or hunt up a pail of mushrooms or wild berries as the season dictated. I worked for the US Forest Service at the time and so would keep an eye open for some easy pickins in the firewood or huckleberry department and I would tip them off.

They loved me, and I loved them. More than the extreme eco-adventures of the day these old guys were my role models. They were the randonneurs of life, enduring against hardship, against the odds to go long in life. A fellow could do much worse than to get up early on his 62nd birthday and go out to scavenge a pickup load of wood with a thermos of hot coffee and an old friend.

I have not ridden a long hard brevet in some time. I believe I still can and do plan to get more of that in the life remaining for me, but this bicycle commuting and Kent’s blog post have reminded me that just keepin on keepin on is a form of success.

Apathy Index

2011-05-23T19:50:00.000-07:00

Apathy:

Lack of enthusiasm or energy
Emotional emptiness

Pathetic

Pitiful
Contemptibly inadequate

A couple items of note here: First, as I mentioned recently I’m riding to work on and off, May being the national month of bicycling. Friday, May 20th was National Bike to Work Day, and for our local bike commute contest, riders were allowed to double any commute contest eligible mileage for the day. You bet I rode to work that day, and home too, giving me a total for the day of 104.4 miles.

In my half asleep state that morning I smiled as I contemplated this on the ride. On the ride home my brain is fully awake (if a bit tired) and I have to admit I struggled with the conundrum of wanting to encourage more people to get out of cars and onto bikes by offering them some sort of sleight of hand gift; allowing them to claim more miles ridden than they actually did. My little bike commute calendar sports an impressive 104.4 miles for Friday May 20th! Actually I rode 52.2 miles. I resolved it this way:

The whole idea is to raise awareness, hopefully to encourage and inspire people to ride bikes more and drive cars less. It brought a smile to the corners of my mouth as I rode in that morning to think that around town and indeed around the country there were certainly others like me, people who do not usually ride a bike to work actually riding a bike to work. To that end, the sleight of hand worked. I am sure more people were motivated to ride a little more than they would have otherwise. One of my co-workers rode her bike to work for the first time, the whole 3 miles. As we talked she made excuses and expressed self deprecation for the fact that she does not ride to work more often. I did my best to pump her up: Any ride is a big ride and she had done her part to help Team Fed Peddlers gain glory.

First I thought this might be trending toward pathetic, but now I think of it as a small achievement, praiseworthy.

Decidedly more pathetic are the recent revelations concerning use of PED’s in the pro-peloton. Over at Red Kite Prayer Padraig said it best: The other shoe has not dropped, it is literally raining shoes. It may be that there is only one solitary human left on the planet who still believes that Lance Armstrong won all those races without the aid of PED’s. And how could LA actually believe that he didn’t cheat?

Tyler Hamilton’s confessions last night on 60 Minutes was poignant because he once was a guy who, until his story started unraveling seemed to be one of the most honorable and perhaps humble pro riders. He was believable … until he wasn’t. And so his ‘come to Jesus’ revelations are tainted, just like all the drug cheats before him who once claimed they were clean in the face of evidence to the contrary. His web is even more tangled than most: He was busted for his Vuelta ride, mounted a vigorous defense and recruited thousands of fans to support his challenge, served out his suspension, came back to the sport, had mediocre results and was BUSTED yet again.
Now some years later he's ‘coming out’. PLeae note this, after having been dragged before a grand jury to testify under oath on the matter AND getting a plea deal. Oh, and get ready, there is a book in the works. Definitely a pathetic subplot.

Tyler’s story isn’t original; it follows a comon formula, just like romance novels or mystery novels, or western novels. The biggest weakness in the formula is that once these guys come clean it is always too late to have any impact. It’s years after their original sins, they are already damaged goods, they usually not only tell on themselves, but also name names of others that have not yet admitted doping, and finally lay it down that ‘everyone was doing it’.

Why doesn’t someone, just once, stand on the top step of the podium, holding up their winners bouquet and trophy and shout at the crowd and cameras: “I cheated! I used PED’s and didn’t get caught!”

Lance’s defense against Hamilton’s charge will also follow a standard script: “They said they were telling the truth when they denied using drugs, and now they say they are telling the truth when they admit they (and I) were using drugs. Which story is the truth?” It does not help that Hamilton has been given an immunity deal for ‘telling the truth’ at the grand jury investigation.

The word on the street is that George Hincapie has testified at the grand jury hearing that he and Lance both doped. Big George is another of the standup guys, not brash, not a spotlight hog, a workhorse and a teammate of Armstrong for all 7 of his TdF victories.

So with Franie Andreu, Tyler Hamilton, George Hincapie, and Floyd Landis all claiming one thing and Lance Armstrong saying something else, it’s asking too much to believe that Lance raced clean.

I have struggled to create in my mind some scenario where this thing plays out to the general benefit of those most vulnerable in the big picture. The riders, the staff, the organizing bodies, the sport itself, will be damaged but they’ll all get through it just fine if you look far enough into the future.

The biggest casualty in my mind is the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF). In an average week I probably get one or more email notes, messages of hope, calls to political action, or pleas for pledges to the LAF. I think of all those pictures with those little bald headed eyebrow-less kids who are smiling their wan but courageous smiles of hope with Lance Armstrong himself there encouraging them to keep up the good fight. The LAF has raised millions and millions of dollars in support of cancer research and cancer survivorship. It is a good cause and it has done good by lots of people. It’s not just theoretical or distant; I have a personal friend who was helped in his cancer recovery by an LAF supported organization as he recovered from cancer.

I suppose once the Icon has fallen the foundation will be damaged and may even dry up, which would be a real shame. There are still hundreds of thousands of cancer victims who could benefit from a strong Lance Armstrong Foundation in the future.

Not apathetic, put perhaps pitiful and thus to some degree pathetic.

Financial Disaster

2011-05-15T20:07:00.000-07:00

I can’t recall if I mentioned, but we were able to refinance the ranch over the winter. The value had stabilized and we had sufficient net equity to qualify. Didn’t change much except the interest rate was reduced …significantly. We didn’t take out an equity loan for a new Escalade or a cruise to Aruba, just stuck with the original plan: To get this place paid off before the end of the century.

Something, big happened last week that makes it look as though we may have to rethink our long term strategy and rearrange finances:

Brooks saddles have been around in the bicycle world for a long time. Brooks saddles are not only iconic, they are built to last so it is always possible that any Brooks saddle you happen upon may actually hail from early in the last century. They are not for everyone, in fact most people have to learn to love their Brooks saddle, and the Brooks will teach you a new dedinition of love. I’m one of the fortunate few for whom getting comfortable on a Brooks was not much of a challenge.

I’ve messed around with a few different models over the years but found the Team Pro to be the sweet spot for me. Unfortunately, on my ride home from work last Friday I discovered that the frame on my Team Pro was broken.

Can't see it? Maybe inserting the Allen wrench pointer will help:

It’s been a while since I bought my last Brooks saddle so I have not kept my finger on the pulse of the market for these retro pieces of industrial art. This weekend I did a little searching and learned that, though the housing market may be in free fall, the Brooks Team Pro Saddle market has rocketed into the stratosphere.

My broken saddle is of course the top of the line model, titanium rails. Not that I have champagne taste but it was not that much of an upgrade when I bought it and as it happens, when saddle frames fail it is often the rails that give up the ghost. Given that I’m a big load it made sense to put a little extra money into the one part that would likely suffer most as I went bumping down the rando road to glory.

I switched the Ti model out for the less sturdy (and less spendy) steel framed model mounted on the tandem.

This is the easy fix, but of course, with nicer weather on the way (we can always hope!) this can only be temporary as I am sure that Mrs. C and I will want to get out and blister the chip seal on the South Bank road this summer.

What to do? My favorite Bike parts dealer in the whole world, WBP used to offer all kinds of replacement parts for Brooks saddles. I guess the inventory cost must have become a factor because now Bill only offers replacement frames for the most common of all Brooks saddles the venerable B-17. This isn’t urgent, but it is important.

I have considered down-specing to something less spendy but similar. I have heard good things about the Giles Berthoud saddles, and Velo Orange has some knock offs that are less expensive.

On the other hand, of all the parts on a bike the saddle may be the one thing that is most ’Personal’ if you get my drift. Sure you have to have wheels, tires, some sort of drive train to actually make the bike go, but even the best prepared and functioning bike won’t take you far if you can’t make peace with the saddle. I’ve tried to wriggle my way out of this dilemma with the 'cheaper-might-do-the-trick' rationale but Mrs. C did a good job of playing defense attorney to my bullying prosecutor.

If one of you Brooks hoarders have a stash of Team Pros hidden in the secret compartment of the survival shelter awaiting the day when quality bike parts will be the currency of first order in a post apocalyptic world, consider sharing the love with a comrade in arms. I’ve got a couple nice high powered rifles and a complete hand loader kit that you might consider as trade. It warps my brain to be thinking about purchasing a bicycle seat that would cost me more that my first VW bug, and that was a nice little rig with doors so tight your ears would pop if you didn’t crack a window before slamming it home, .. and only the faintest puff of blue smoke at start up.

I only hope the Wall street gang does not get wind of this lost corner of industrial equity. Imagine them sweetening the deal on a multi-billion dollar bundle of credit default swaps with a couple of Brooks Team Pros.

Speaking of my ride home from work … I mentioned if only obliquely in my last post that I was participating in the local Bicycle Commute contest. Since that was the first and last mention it would be reasonable to assume that it flopped, a one and done deal and I am back to commanding the good ship Barcalounger.

Not so, while I don’t have an unbroken string of trips to and fro, I was able to commute a half dozen times over the first two weeks for a total of just more than 287 miles. I cooked up a couple half baked posts during those two weeks but the time committed to riding does not leave much time for anything else. I did a little calculation about how much gas I didn’t burn, it wasn’t very impressive but I did my modest part. I was hoping for a 200+ mile week next week but I’ve got a couple day trips around the west side of the state that make for a long enough day without an additional 4 hours of ‘commute’ time.

It’s been going well. If you live in these parts you have no doubt added your voice to the collective whine about the rain. With my brand new Showers Pass raincoat I laughed at the weather, well metaphorically speaking. Those frosty mornings were another matter. Flat tires and other minor mechanicals just make it more ‘interesting’. Last Friday the stars aligned and I had a perfect, trouble free, no head wind ride home. I wasn’t planning to go fast but when it was all over I had cut almost a half hour off my average time. Even for a slow poke, that felt good.

Epiphany

2011-05-02T21:25:00.000-07:00

My friend Brian is a mountain climber. On a sunny day he sees the world as an incredible expanse of rock, ice, snow, green valleys, seas of clouds, and even seas of sea. The horizon’s curve suggests that the world is enormous, almost beyond comprehension, except that now we can get pics of our part of the world (any part actually) from space.

At 4:30 in the morning on a bike the world contracts to a 3 foot circle of light 10 feet ahead, moving along at 11 miles an hour. My peripheral vision shrinks, I can see just past the handle bars, and moving slowly along Gate Road the larger world is lost to me. I’ll guide myself by the fog line or the occasional center line and when those don’t exist, I can keep the gravel should just in the periphery. My heavy breathing and the hum of the chain on the gears is the backbeat to the morning symphony(?) Now and then a dog barks in the distance, closer by there may be the occasional rustle in the brush beside the road as some creature is started into retreat. In the dark, alone on the road I talk to myself. I’m going deaf so I usually talk out loud, rarely do I get an argument. In the middle of the day this can lead to moments of embarrassment as someone unknowingly overtakes me on a bike. At this hour, between night and day there is little chance of that. Not that I’m secretly fast at oh-dark-thirty, there just aren’t many other fools out on these roads at this hour,

Rolling along in that inner state of consciousness I get pulled back into the 3 foot universe as I hear the engine and pick up the first glint of headlights approaching. The bike drifts right and I scan the road and shoulder (or ditch as the case may be) ahead. I’m not planning a bailout move but when the ship’s going down is no time to be looking for the life preservers.

For the most part people here at this hour are like me, rural dwellers commuting to their urban daily grind. They are alert, aware, and generally courteous. The occasional loaded log truck rolls past. They almost always give a wide berth and I reciprocate by getting out of their way as much a possible and offering a wave of thanks. It’s light by the time I hit the junction of Waddell and 128th. The log truck that passed me 5 minutes earlier has pulled over and is tightening his binders and cleaning his load before entering the stream of cars that is I-5. It’s big logs, maybe six or eight on the truck and fewer but bigger on the short log trailer. What used to be an everyday load is now a ‘parade load’ “Nice load!” I call out as I peddle past, the bearded driver says “Thanks!” He’s headed right, off to the freeway, I go straight into the Capital Forest, one of the great parts of my commute, the little climb up Waddell notwithstanding.

The closer I get to town, and the lighter it gets, and the more the auto commuters stack up, the more frequently I encounter drivers who seem bent on ‘making a statement’ wit the close pass. I understand that everyone can’t cross the center line all the time, but there is room enough on most roads for a car to pass a bike comfortably. The difference between comfortably and uncomfortably is often a matter of inches, almost always less than two feet. But even assholes can be artists and show their skill by threading the eye of the needle with an iron camel.

“Here, let me help you with that.” I shifted off along Black Lake, the new (last fall) compact double needs a little adjustment. I was bent over, threading the chain back on the chain ring when another bike commuter stopped to steady the bike. Nice, brothers in arms. It is a flat, straight, and smooth stretch of road so I‘m sure he must have wondered what my problem was.

I’m pitiably slow. As the gray dawn beats back the night this becomes painfully obvious now that I can see the bike computer. Not what I‘d like but it’s OK; a slow ride is no reason not to ride, and string together enough miles, slow or otherwise and the speed will pick up.

26 miles, and two plus hours later I’m tucking the big horse into the warehouse and headed for the showers.

If the ride in was a Zen transit from sleep to mindfulness, the ride home was a debate session with Glenn Beck. The weather man said to expect rain, which came as it does in spring in many forms. It sprinkled, it dumped, it misted. My Showers Pass rain coat bit the dust this winter, I did all I could to revive it but it was all in vain. So I refinanced the house and got an equity line of credit to finance another. Not really, but even though these things cost more than front pocket money it’s the thing to have in a rain storm.

No sense crying about the rain in early May, at least it was a warm rain. More brutal was the headwind. The first half of my ride home is pretty sheltered, the second half could stand in for the Boeing wind tunnel in a pinch. This afternoon was no exception. To use a euro-pro cycling term, I was ‘knackered’ by the time I finally rolled into the garage. 52 plus miles round trip: I’m glad I did it but tomorrow is a rest day. Weatherman is predicting sunny on Wednesday though.

Fleche NW is in the Books

2011-05-01T07:21:00.000-07:00

I didn’t ride this year but we did provide control services to one of the teams here at Rocky Acres.

They rode a particularly challenging route, over 50 miles of ‘un-pave’. We were their 22 hr control, so while they were close to the finish they were also pushing the clock.Still they did have time enough to settle in for a bite. The creamy beef noodle stewp was a hit as were the oven fresh hot rolls.

Love that kooky Fleche.

Super Powers, April Showers, and Rando Ubiquity

2011-04-03T10:11:00.000-07:00

Careful, there’s bicycle content in here!

First let me apologize for the long lapse. I have a million excuses, possibly billions if you count raindrops, but they are all just excuses, and mostly just the usual suspects: work, weather, work, family health issues, work, etc.

Since it is early in the month I thought I would get out for a permanent, I chose Millison Fambles’ Olympia-Rochester-Rainier #887. Though it obligated a drive to the start (most of these things do for me) it would be on familiar roads. I like that as I prefer not to have to think too much on a solo ride.

I am beginning to think I may be endowed with an amazing if somewhat annoying super power! When I went out at 6:00 am to check the fish and load the bike I was pleased to note that it was not raining, the pavement was dry, and there were patches of blue sky above. Such good fortune! 5 minutes later when I took my change of clothes bag out ….rain! I took the day before off work to catch up on projects around the ranch. I had inside and outside projects, the outdoor projects being more pressing. It was then that this annoying pattern surfaced. Most annoying! But this has been going on for the last three weekends. April Showers? I think not!

Ah well off to Olympia, rain or no. In a recent post I mentioned coming across a pack of blue shirts out on the road while I was scouting a permanent route. Like the Borg (and possibly Microsoft), in Randonneuring, resistance is futile. Here is further proof:

I parked at The Bike Stand, the local bike shop of preference. As I was readying myself for the short ride up to Starbux (the official start), a couple pulled in and began getting ready for a ride. He looked vaguely familiar, but I’ve been riding these parts now for more years than I care to admit so assumed we’d crossed paths at some point. As I rode out I bid them a good ride.

At S-bux I ordered my espresso and then headed for the men’s room. When I returned who should I encounter but the couple from the Bike Stand. We introduced ourselves and I asked where they were headed. Scott and Laura were riding a timed event called a permanent, Olympia to Rochester, Rainier, and then back. I chuckled and said I too was riding that perm, and as it happened, we had selected the same start time. The chances are only astronomical if you resist the notion that 'we' are everywhere. We leapfrogged for the first few miles, Scott is in the process of making peace with a new saddle and I just chugged along at my glacial place.

The first part of this route is an old friend. Years ago when I was single (before there even was a Starbucks on the corner) I lived three blocks away. I’d regularly ride up Capitol Way to meet up with friends Cathi and Dave at their place in Tumwater, sometimes Brian, Chuck, Dan and Gina and whoever else was along. We’d ride out for the hinterlands, those were fun times. The stretch west across the shoulder of Tumwater hill used to be through fields and woodlots but now it’s all new houses packed tight together.

Once across the hill we turned onto Black Lake and now we are on my bike commute route. As we rolled along this part Scott and I chatted. He and Laura had ridden the Oly populaire and had taken an interest in randonneuring. About that time my rear tire went squishy and I pulled over to fix a flat, it’s always the rear, isn’t it? It was a remarkably large granite cinder, leaving a noticeable hole in the tire carcass so I booted the tire as cheap insurance. That was the last I saw of Scott and Laura.

In these first few miles we had experienced several of the showers that would continue to visit for the rest of the day. By the time I was at the Waddell creek cutoff on Delphi that SW wind was making it’s presence known right on cue. I figured by the time I popped out on Mima Gate down by the Weyerhaeuser tree nursery I was going to get a workout from the invisible coach.

And so it was; the farther south I rode the stiffer the wind. By the time I was approaching the turnaround at the Chehalis Tribe minimart I was working hard to keep it in double digits. It was raining hard along the last stretch on Highway 12 and as those semi’s went by that swirling vortex they create rocked me and the bike and doused us with 150 foot road grit rooster tails. Why do we do this again?

Into the minimarket there was a line up. Cigarettes must be real cheap there; people were buying them by the carton. The guy at the head of the line had six cartons of Camels, oh, and a six pack of Bud Light (10:30 am, breakfast of champions). Of course he was having trouble with his credit card so was fumbling with his wallet and other options. I could see this was going to take some time so I plunked my bottle of water and bag of smoked almonds on the side counter and headed off to the men’s room. As I was finishing my business it dawned on me that I probably didn’t have a lot of time in the bank. I hurried out to the counter and made my purchase. The time on the cash register receipt: 10:52:35. Holy crap 27 miles into this thing and I was 35 seconds outside the time limit! Mercy please, oh Permenators.

I assumed that when I turned and headed to the west that monster tailwind would just push me along for the next 20 miles or so to Rainier. If you ride bikes much you probably know what comes next: The wind had died off. At least it wasn’t raging in exactly the opposite direction. As I rode on the wind did pick up and I got a little pay-back push. Nice to be spinning along at 18 miles an hour without breaking a sweat.

At Rainier I had plenty of time in the bank so I took a break for a little cup of fried rice and something that looked like pot roast chow mien. It was a strange brew but looked like rocket fuel. There were diced potatoes, peas, carrots, onions, celery, and chicken in a broth that looked like chow mein sauce. I also noticed lots of those little red peppers. I asked the Hispanic counterman if it was hot. He said on a scale of one to ten it was probably a five. Hmmm whose scale are we talking here? I took a chance and was glad I did. I was soaked through and that sharp wind added a distinct chill factor. This warm bowl of spicy goodness made the last 20 miles look positively enticing. Well, bearable anyway.

By the time I rolled into Olympia the wind was howling, though the sun was out (and then rainy, and then sunny again). I had a hot cocoa at Starbucks, "Don't tell me, you need a receipt, right?" (resistance is futile). I called Mrs C who said she’d be delighted to join me for a meal in the big city and then headed back down to The Bike Stand to change into dry clothes.

I am disappointed to say that I believe my Showers Pass rain coat has arrived at the point where is no longer a rain jacket, but just an item of après cycling apparel. I’ve washed it faithfully, even did the steam ironing thing as per instructions but on this day it was about as effective as wrapping myself in terry cloth towels, and has been so through much of the winter. It’s been a great item for years, but as a rain jacket I think it’s past its pull date.

While I was waiting for Mrs. C I browsed the offerings at the Bike Stand. Sheesh! Showers Pass has really expanded their line. I’m wishing now that I had taken advantage of the offering that RUSA arranged with SP last winter. I hope they still offer the make and model I have. I think it is the Elite, a heavy duty raincoat with pit zips. (With any rain garment I need ventilation!) I’m sure it will be expensive but some things you just shouldn’t scrimp on and a cheap raincoat in our country is about like buying a cheap parachute when you are a frequent base jumper.

The sun is out, perhaps I’ll try to mow the lawn … or more likely finish that project inside the garage.

There’s time …

2011-03-07T22:10:00.000-08:00

... if we hurry. (you've probably heard hat joke so I'll keep this clean)

I’m happy to report that the days are now just long enough that if I go in to work early, and then head straight home after, there is ample daylight left to get a nice ride in before dark. Those of you in the southern latitudes probably have been out of the ‘after work swirling vortex’ for some time. But the lengthening daylight has come north seemingly by fits and starts.

Rando obsession aside, it’s nice to be able to get the bike ready to roll and put it away all by the light of day. Even if it is not a shorts and jersey sunny summer day, it’s nice to be able to toodle along, gawking at the spring ~~grass~~ moss, (pity the lawn worshippers in these parts)

the trees recently butchered by the PUD,

and the fleeting glimpses of wild life.

So I hustled home after work and Mrs. C and I went out for an easy roll along South Bank road. (nice looking bike, er... wife!)

This is farm country and there is an active rock quarry too, but this road is driven mostly by locals so we usually get a wide birth and a friendly wave and a smile from the farm trucks and gravel hacks. Even in my fancy pants Seattle Rando ‘bicycle sweater’.

I like that about this country. We're lucky to have chip seal and friendly farmers as opposed to after work rush hour traffic and careless right turn commuters.

Isn’t it appropriate that Comfort Corner road is a dead end?

The sun actually broke through for a bit, though you can tell by the length of the shadow it was getting late in the day.

There is not much bike traffic out that way so most of the wild life was pretty skittish. I missed photo ops on three herons, two bald eagles, and a red tailed hawk with a meadow vole in his clutches. None of the ducks and geese were up for a ‘sitting’.

I stretched it out a little to see if the buffalo had calved. They were way out in the mddle of their pasture (where the hay had been dumped) but it looks to me like there are calves out there.

Too bad they were not closer to the road; buffalo calves are cuter than a puppy. Unlike the wildlife, they could care less about me, noses buried in bales of second cutting alfalfa.

This is how things looked back at the ranch when I came in about 6:15. Still light … sort of.