Cool things on RAGBRAI:

You baggers. You guys rock.  Thanks for the water, whoever that bagger who had the house that was on Old Highway 92. I'm bad with names and insecure at times.  I was off the course and out of water and was worrying I was going to have to go to a muddy stream, when your little oasis popped up. 

Those so utterly physically conditioned baggers hauling rigs that had to be much heavier than what I was carrying, and passing me effortlessly.   The smiles and nods, that I got from you baggers on the days I rode.  

You definitely give me something to look up and aspire to. 

Down Trails and shaded glens

I've been riding, just kind of low key instead of outright hyper on the bike culture-thing like I was last year.

Zwartehond, my Workcycles / Azor   Kruisframe/Pastoorfietsen has some updates, after correspondence and business with Henry Cutler.  Gone is the ridiculously heavy and complex Nexus 8.  Instead mounted is a SRAM automatix, a 2 speed hub that jumps from 100% direct drive to 131% or so, once the rear wheel is spinning around 11mph.  The Automatix also features a coaster brake, and is not particularly heavier or larger than the stock standard Shimano CB110 coaster hub.  Supposedly the Automatix is based on the older Fichtel and Sachs, and is generally designed to last forever.  I'm liking the simplicity.

The crank went down to 38T and I upped the rear sprocket to 23, so everything is nice and easy to pedal at in the 100%.  Front nexus rollerbrake is retained.  I added a Travel Agent to use more classy looking Velo-Orange levers.  Grips changed for coke-bottle. Crane bell added.

Gotta be about 10lbs lighter at least. Also removed the cafe-lock, as I don't operate in a particularly high crime area. I can use the cable, or U-lock or even still attach the cafe lock, depending on circumstance required.

I took the trail north for 40 miles last Sunday, to check my endurance. Of this only 1/3rd of the total 83 miles was paved.  Gravel, or even just grassed double-track got old pretty quickly.   Lots of food, lots of fluid.  My butt was sore, by the end of the ride, and I courted bonk at one point.  My Garmin GPS said I burnt 3311 calories.  Yow!

I originally intended on taking my new bike, a Virtue "Ortho" on Ragbrai, based on the assumption I'd lose lots of weight this summer, getting back down to a trim 135-140.   Yeah, didn't happen.  Still 190ish.  So Zwartehond it is, self-supported.  To increase cargo carrying, I purchased a Carradice Nelson Long Flap, and moved it to the aft position, moving the Carradice College up front.

This bridge could probably still carry a model-T, which was the car en vogue when it was built. Nowadays...

Carrying the bare minumums, Tent, Amana 6pt wool blanket, waxed chore coat, camera, film, tool kit, 2 pairs Wool knickers and Linen shirts, stockings. few toiletries, lights, a book and a sketch book, opinel, some soft canteens, powdered lemon, sugar, a good book, and whatever ad-hoc snacks I score en route.

'Was initially planning on doing the whole week of Ragbrai, but driving all the way out to Council Bluffs, and then suffering an 85 mile 4000ft climb day in the sun-blasted west prairie seems more like an exercise in masochism.   So I'm just going to pick it up in much closer Des Moines, and ride the remaining 4ish days.

 Hopefully I won't get completely zoned out, while being surrounded  in the sea of lyrca.

One of the things that bugs me about Ragbrai, is that the course hours are generally 6am to 6pm. 6am is fine-  but in July, in the midwest, it is essentially still light to 9:00pm and typically cooler in the evening.  Seems like they should be encouraging mid-day siestas and evening riding.  Oh-well.

Tweed Ride?

2nd annual Iowa City Tweed Ride.  Okay, basic summary:

Enjoyable meet and greet with old bicycles at the beginning, dissolves rapidly into biking 2 miles to a bar, then to a park (for more alcohol), to another bar etc.  So actually not much of a ride.  I bailed out right at the point that intoxicated riders began to find it funny to walk around in their undergarments.

I mean I don't have a problem with a pint or two of a stout, I mean liquid carbs? Yes. But decorum and excess and all that.

Rode to a nice used book store. Riding in Iowa City is so fun. Traffic is calm and always neat places to ride.

I eventually finagled the pigeon back into the car and drove the hour or so back home. Having to basically re-tweak the front rod brakes every time the front wheel is removed to fit the thing in the car, that's a real hassle. If it wasn't 50 miles down and back on shoulderless 55mph byways I would've just rode it.

Then the next day I took the Pigeon and rode 40 miles out into the country. Much more enjoyable. I need to start packing actual nutrition, as I got a little ragged at the end.

met an otter at his creek. 

Still around

I kind of switched over to using film cameras again, and the downside of that is, that I barely managed to use up a single roll of film in three months- and then because I want to bundle development and scan to CD costs together... etc.  

Good stuff:   Another new bike, details soon.  The weather is now warm enough to ride in, without worrying about sweating then freezing to death. Layer management is such a pain.  My commuting was hurt by the excessively snowy winter and lethargy, but in the past month, I've managed lots of bike commuting and two 40 mile rides.  Both of which were informative in the 'what did we learn' sort of way.  

More regular type updates and some reviews soon!

New Years Resolutions...

PIGEONWOBBLE.GIF

And then the sun came out and melted all the snow away, long enough to turn the trails into a muddy morass,  before the temperatures dropped back down into the single digits, freezing ruts, footprints, and what snow-ice remained into hard ugly stuff.  But dry ugly stuff, and that's conditions enough for the Pigeon to come out of  hibernation and get me to work.  Single speed still feels achingly more efficient and connected than any of  my hub gear bikes.

I was gifted a Garmin Edge 200 GPS bike computer for the holidays, and I love it. No wires or anything, just turn it on, and it picks up the satellites in 10 seconds, and provides climb, average speed, speed, odometer, all of that stuff. It came with two mounts, so I can just stick it on whichever bike, or even just keep it in my pocket, as I ride, so the miles add up.  I really just care about the odometer...

So my resolution is try and do 1000 miles before RAGBRAI.  And hopefully if conditions permit, to attend that ride, and bike across the merry land of Iowa, self supported. (excepting water and food of course)  This shouldn't be too hard.

Last year, my resolution was to do 500 miles.  I picked 500 because it seemed big and impressive but not unobtainable. I honestly had no idea just how much riding I would be doing, I had only gotten a simple wired cateye computer on the Felt, and had put 124 miles on it before January 2012.   I rode 2012 with the Cateye only on the Felt, and missed counting any of my Flying Pigeon or Kruisframe miles.  I made 624 miles on the Felt alone by August or so.  On the Pigeon and Kruisframe, I made five or six 50+ mile trips, and lots more regular commuting.  So I'm thinking I probably ended up towards 1500 miles, casually.

I just want to make sure I can string 80 mile days back to back and enjoy myself.  Pack light and just go. 

Snow Studded Commute

Thursday morning I was greeted with the fact that my car wasn't starting, probably ice in the fuel lines or similar.  I dashed back into the house, and changed my clothing entirely to wool, pulled out the Felt and rode into work, braving the ice and snow again.

This really got me interested in studded bicycle tires, particularly since some of the commute had me going down streets that consisted of nothing but compacted sheet ice, two inches thick. Scary.

I checked my LBSs prices on studded tires, then checked Amazon's. There was a not discountable difference, I could get them for half the price from Niagra Cycles. (before shipping).  But my LBS is 200 yards from my workplace, and I could get the tires and have them put on the bike over lunch.  That was just too convenient.

Local Bike Shop for the win. I rode up, and of course being the middle of winter, they had no shop backlog, had the tires, and were able to put them on in about 20 minutes -  the time it took for me to eat lunch at the McDonalds across the street.  (yech)

The 45North Polara tires immediately turned even the worst offending sheet ice into entirely manageable surfaces, and improved purchase in snow and mush additionally. When I would skid or break one of the wheels loose, the rate of slipping was consistent and easy to counter. It made a hilarious difference. So much so that rather than carpool on Friday, I biked to work again.  The rolling resistance is maybe 15-20% higher, but heck that's just exercise.

All of this also has me extremely enamored of my Felt Cafe 3 again.  Light, simple and versatile. What a great catch-all bike.

Cable-tie snow chains.

... somewhere on the web I saw this technique of banding bicycle tires with cable ties / zip ties, to provide extra friction and control-ability in snow and ice.   I believe the practice started in the Pacific Northwest, but I'm not positive.  

I decided to try this out on the rear wheel of my Felt3, starting Christmas Eve. When I got back home after a short 5 mile circuit, I noticed I was short a few cable ties.   Well today I commuted by bike, and ended up picking up most of the cable-ties I shed on Christmas Eve.  Don't want to litter, and all that.   By the time I was at work, I had shed all but three or four out of 30 something.

Upon examination of the broken cable ties, they had failed not at the zip-locking mechanism, but had snapped clean in the center of their bands, where they were being overridden by the tire itself.

Seems that while cable ties might stand up to the somewhat warmer winters of the PacNW,  the plastic becomes embrittled quickly in the 10F and below temperatures of the north-central midwest.  Ping!

I haven't really noticed a degradation in performance without the ties. The bike handles about as well as you'd expect on stretches of compressed snow or compacted ice sheet. Which is to say, marginal. :)