Cass Gilbert’s Surly Troll review based on the ride from Nicaragua to Ecuador on dirt roads and singletrack. He’s got it set up with a Rohloff speedhub drivetrain. I’m such a fanboy. I think I’d basically buy anything he recommended.
Tag: touring
Hero Biking to Fort Collins and Back
The Boulder Bike Culture Meetup‘s first little social intro to bike touring went pretty well I think. Didn’t lose anyone, no injuries that I know of, no major mechanical issues, only one flat tire. Tail wind and gorgeous weather on the way up. Good food, good beer. Naps and gracious hostesses. Tail wind and deteriorating weather on the way back, capped off by hail and sleet. A well rounded taster.
Oh yeah, and I took some pictures… It takes a while to load, but I think it’s worth it.
Getting a first taste of bicycle touring
I don’t even remember how I got the idea in my head that one could go bike touring. I must have heard of other people doing it, but growing up in Sanger, California I certainly didn’t know any of them. By the time I left home for college, I’d decided I wanted to go on a bike tour the following summer. I saved money I earned by working as an usher during my freshman year. I hadn’t been prepared academically for Caltech by my rural high school. I’d never had to study before. By the spring I was frazzled and depressed. I’d had mononucleosis, and had almost failed out entirely. But I had a bike.
At the time I was afraid of riding alone in the US and ended up buying a cheap ticket to the UK at the last minute, intending to spend the summer riding around the British Isles. I ended up meeting other bicycle tourists, and riding all the way to Turkey, via a newly open eastern Europe. I didn’t make it home until December, after five months of riding gravel roads through the Champagne vineyards of France, drinking cheap wine and eating baguettes and cheese before napping in the shade in the mid-afternoon.
A Weekend Bike Tour to Fort Collins
I’m organizing an overnight bike tour from Boulder to Ft. Collins and back the first weekend in April (weather permitting of course, who knows what it will do). If you’ve got route suggestions or know anyone in Ft. Collins that might be interested in letting some weary cyclists camp in their backyard for a night and take showers… we could cook them dinner or take them out as thanks! And if you know anyone who might be interested in giving bike touring a bite-sized try, let them know.
Links for the week of May 22nd, 2010
If you want to follow my shared links in real time instead of as a weekly digest, head over to Delicious. You can search them there easily too.
Continue reading Links for the week of May 22nd, 2010
Links for the week of May 12th, 2010
If you want to follow my shared links in real time instead of as a weekly digest, head over to Delicious. You can search them there easily too.
Continue reading Links for the week of May 12th, 2010
The Spatial Absorption Spectra of Bicycles
I spent three-ish weeks riding around Mexico’s Sierra Madre Occidental on roads worse than the fire roads in the San Gabriel Mountains with Bryan. Las Barrancas del Cobre. Para conocer el otro lado. It was incredible. It was also I think, somewhat beyond the original design specifications of our rigid frame bikes (a Surly LHT for me, and a Traveler’s Check for him). The bikes performed heroically though, and we got through the whole trip with nothing more serious than a flat tire, a lost bolt (for which a replacement was had), a broken chain, and some worn out brake pads. With some bone rattling descents taking half a day, and spanning 1400m vertically (not unlike the Mt. Wilson Toll Road, except steeper, and in much worse condition) I got very familiar with the different sizes of rocks and ruts and hills and other topographic obstacles, and what they would mean as far as the ride. I also had a lot of time to think about why the hell Bryan was already up on top of the hill ventilating his nether regions by prancing around in flip-flops and a turquoise sarong, while I was still hurling obscenities at the inch thick layer of obstacle obscuring volcanic ash dust covering the road and often obligating me to push the bike up a 10% or steeper grade.
Ultimately, I figure it comes down to the absorption spectrum of the bicycle and rider in question.
First Chantry Flats S24O
Michelle and I went on our first S24O (sub-24hr overnight) bike trip last weekend, up in the San Gabriel mountains, above Chantry Flats on fire roads. Despite some ill-timed road maintenance in Santa Anita Canyon, everything went wonderfully. We got checked out by a fox near the ranger station for like half an hour, as little as 6 feet away, and had a beautiful full moon ride all alone the whole way. Our dynamo powered headlights were plenty bright too, even for the dirt road, which I’d been worried about. Read the full post for photos (and my first attempt at embedding a Flickr set in a post…)
Shared Links for Feb 12th – Feb 15th
- Simon Johnson of the IMF on the ongoing financial bailouts – Simon Johnson works for the IMF, and what he sees in the US approach to its financial crisis is much more similar to say, Indonesia or Russia, than a "normal" developed world economic mess. He sees a clash between the government, and an oligarchy, in which currently, the oligarchy is winning. Hopefully we'll get our act together here… as the IMF isn't going to be stepping in anytime soon. (tagged: financial economy pbs moyers crisis economics politics geithner imf )
- Bicycling's Into the Wild – Screw school, ride your bike into the forest and disappear. Almost sounds like me! Except instead of racing, I got into… grad school. Uh, hmm. (tagged: bicycle nytimes touring wilderness )
- Roubini, Taleb, Marx, Lenin, and Python – Indeed, asking Taleb and Roubini for stock tips is like asking Karl Marx who won the English Football Cup in 1949. (tagged: roubini taleb montypython krugman economy blackswan finance )
- The Orange Line Bike Path Buck Stops…Where? – Apparently there's a bikeway that parallel's the Orange Line bus rapid transit in the Valley. Who knew! Not the contractors who were paid $160,000 to maintain it, as it turns out. (tagged: ladot bike bicycle transportation bureaucracy )
- Whither the War on Drugs under Kerlikowske? – Wouldn't it be nice to have a sane drug policy? Seattle's notoriously reasonable police chief has been nominated to the position of Drug Czar. I wonder if the Senate will confirm him? (tagged: drugs marijuana obama politics war seattle kerlikowske czar )