Travels With Tools

I'm one of those guys who travels with tools. I basically have tools with me all the time, on my person and on my bike and since I actually do get asked about the stuff I lug around, I figured I'd detail it here. This is by no means an optimal kit, it's got quite a bit of belt plus suspenders redundancy. I also can't say it's complete. Tomorrow I may find some gadget that triggers my "ooh that would be handy!" reflex and I'll add it. Or I might go the other way and say "man, I'm lugging too much!" and purge something out. But as of right now, here's the kit.

First up, the stuff that I carry on my person pretty much all the time.



The little carabiner clips to my belt loop and holds my Swiss Army Knife and the two little Topeak wrenches. The wrenches came from a Topeak Survival Gear Box. Many of my tools have been picked from various kits over the years and my big tool box at home has many of the bits that I'm not currently using. Also, I tend to give away bits of kit I'm not using, which makes me feel OK with getting even more tools. And the cycle continues to this day. The knife is a Victorinox Deluxe Tinker and I probably use it at least twenty time a day. The thing on the right is a Topeak Hexus Bicycle Tool and even though I have a shop full of tools at work, a big toolbox at home and a bunch of tools in a bag on my bike, this is the thing that gets used at least as much as the Swiss Army Knife. When it's not in my hand, it's in my pocket. For me, the Hexus hits the sweet spot in terms of weight, function and ease of use.

Moving on to what I have on the bike, as I've mentioned previously, I use and like Topeak Morph pumps. The pump that I keep strapped on my Monocog Flight is the exact same pump I carried with my on my 2005 Great Divide Ride and it's still going strong.

The rest of my tool kit is contained in this bag which fits in the main triangle of the bike along with one water bottle.


Inside this bag, is this stuff.


That's two spare inner tubes, two plastic tire levers, a small bottle of chain lube, a patch kit and a little nylon bag with more tools and stuff inside. Yes, my kit has kind of a Russian nested doll quality. And yes, the Hexus contains tire levers so the levers in the on-bike kit are redundant. One might say that having spare tubes plus a patch kit plus True Goo tubes in my tires is redundant, but you have to remember that I GET FLAT TIRES ALL THE TIME. Remember that you read it here. When I do flat, WHICH HAPPENS ALL THE TIME, I typically swap in a new tube on the road side and patch the holey tube later under more favorable conditions with a handy, tasty beverage close at hand.

My patch kit contains lots of patches as well as sandpaper, glue and a spare battery for my cycle computer.

Inside the black nylon bag is this stuff.

A bunch of the little bits go inside a plastic film canister that has a layer of duct tape wrapped around it. In this picture you can see spare batteries for my lights, the film canister, a bit of chain and a SRAM PowerLink, some weird my multi-wrench that I freed from some random tool kit years ago. The neat thing about it is that the opening on the end is 15 millimeters, so it works for removing or tightening pedals or bolt-on wheels. The Park MT-1 Wrench, perhaps the most elegant multi-tool every made, can fit into one of the hex-shaped holes in the other wrench to form a handle for more leverage. Next to the Park wrench are 4, 5, and 6 mm Allen keys on a keyring (these can fit in some places the Park tool can't and can work in opposition to another tool in cases where that is needed). Below the Allen keys are some handy nylon zip-ties, a Topeak Chain Tool Head (yeah, it's redundant since the Hexus but I like being covered in case I lose the Hexus somewhere), a FiberFix Spoke, miscellaneous bolts, a spare Torx adapter, two sets of brake pads with brake springs and a brake cable.

Wow, that seems like a lot of stuff. And it is. But the whole kit is pretty compact and it's gotten me home every time I've needed it. If I know I'm going to be riding support on some event, I may add some Good Samaritan items like a derailleur cable and some different size tubes to the kit. Kits on my other bikes but often smaller, since they don't have quite the level of paranoia that I reserve for my Great Divide Kit. It's one thing when you break down a few miles from home in the city, it's a different matter when you may be hundreds of miles from the nearest bike shop.

By the time I go on the Tour Divide next year, I'll have posted a complete list of my stuff. I detailed the camp gear here and details of food, clothes, maps and electronics will be described in future posts.

Keep 'em rolling,

Kent "Mountain Turtle" Peterson
Issaquah WA USA

Kinetic Sculpture

This must be the week for odd human-powered vehicles to cross my path. I spotted this machine on my commute home along Lake Washington Boulevard in Seattle. I'm thinking it'll probably be up at Port Townsend in a couple of weeks.

You Don't See One of These Every Day

(OK this post is pretty dang commercial, but you have to admit this is a cool bike. And the shop proceeds go to the children. For gosh sakes, someone has to think of the children!)

One of the many great things about working at Bike Works is that you never know what will roll in the door. Today, my friend Dave's daughter Wendy and son-in-law Matt donated this. At first, I thought it was a Counterpoint Opus Tandem, but Matt tells me he built it and later found out about the Counterpoint.


Whatever the case, it's a cool machine. We (Bike Works) are selling it for $500 and the proceeds will go to our youth programs. Christine and I have figured out that we aren't tandem people, so I think I'm immune to the lure of this beast, but a a couple of random thoughts did pop into my head besides using this as a tandem.

It would make an awesome cargo bike. Remove the timing chain, seat and front cranks and replace it with a platform. The bike is already set up to handle the weight of a person up front, that's a heck of a lot of groceries.

It would also make a really cool art bike. Keep it as is, but strap a full size skeleton to the seat and strap the skeleton's feet to the pedals, The front crank spins with the the rear crank, so you'd have a perfect ghost stoker. Just the thing for Burning Man or the Death Ride.

Anyhow, like I said, we're selling it for $500. If you've priced tandems or cargo bikes lately, I think you'll see that's a pretty sweet deal. I'm betting it's not going to stick around the shop too long.

Kent Peterson, Shop Manager

Bike Works
3709 S. Ferdinand Street
Seattle WA 98118

(206) 725-9408, ext. 3

Tuesday thru Friday -- Noon to 6:00 PM
Saturday -- 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM
Sunday -- 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM
The shop is closed on Mondays.

Trip to Lost Lake

Weekends are the busy days at the bike shop, so my virtual weekend is Monday and Tuesday. Since my days off don't mesh with the days most folks have for adventuring, I often take off on solo trips. But my pal Mark Vande Kamp managed to shake all of Monday and much of Tuesday free, so we plotted out our trip. As is our custom, we had a general, not a detailed plan and we were headed someplace neither of us had been.

In this case, it's Lost Lake. There are probably dozens of Lost Lakes in Washington, this particular one is south of Snoqualmie Pass, 3,000 feet up in the Cascades and just west of Tinkham Peak. Mark and I leave from my place in Issaquah at 8:20 AM and we ride a mix of trails, small roads, a bit of freeway shoulder and then Tinkham and Denny Creek roads to Snoqualmie Summit. We've both managed to pack enough riding into this summer that the climbing doesn't really slow our conversation which ranges from books to philosophy to economics to science. While I'd read the report from the Cyclos Montagnards ride, it's far better to get Mark's straight matter-of-fact recounting. "You know, at the end you wouldn't have bet I'd be the one in the ER. Sure I was throwing up in a trash can, but Ryan was the one on the ground twitching uncontrollably." Damn shame I missed that ride!

After a quick stop at the summit, we follow the frontage road toward Hyak. Mark turns right one turn before I usually do to connect with the John Wayne Trail but I say something stupid like, "This'll be fine, it has to intersect the trail." The little road goes west and up and gets smaller. Consulting the map, we figure out that we crossed over too close to the summit and we had in fact crossed the trail but it was the portion of the trail encased in the closed Snoqualmie tunnel. But this road will get us where we are going.

While the John Wayne Trail overlays the flat old rail bed along the western shore of Keechelus Lake, the tiny road we're on climbs the ridge and follows the power line. One of the things Mark and I had been talking about was the blog cliché of ride reports that have the "I was doing this thing and then this random song came up on my iPod and it fit perfectly!" and how that's more a function of the human brain finding patterns than anything else. Neither of us ride with an iPod but as the road gets higher and less like a road and more like a trail, I can't help but recall the line from the Dar Williams song The Easy Way that says "I never took the easy way, so why don't you take it a little easy on me now?"

Eventually the tiny road tops out with a spectacular view of Keechelus Lake and a look back at what Mark calls "just how stupid we were." Fortunately, the descent that connects us to Forest Road 5480 is mostly rideable and the climb up 5480 seems positively civilized.

At Lost Lake I comment that if a place is called "Lost Lake" it really shouldn't have a sign and porta-potties but this Lost Lake has both. It's an odd bit of federal land with no formal camp sites or fee boxes but not the pure back country experience either. From the looks of things it seems that the folks who bring guns and beer out into the woods aren't big on practicing no-trace camping. Mark and I find a pretty place on the northwest shore of the lake, a place that I think would be prettier without the beer cans and empty rifle cartridges, but the little cartridge Stonehenge is kind of interesting.

We have enough of the afternoon to do a hike around the lake, something that is just possible because the water level is low enough to expose a mostly clear perimeter. In the course of our orbit we encounter a bunch of neat rocks and drift wood, a fraternity of beer cans, one decidedly non-chatty fisherman, a family camping with loud, friendly curious dog, four unpaired socks, and a small raft of loons.

Back at camp Mark cooks up dinner on his beverage-can stove. Part of my Divide practice includes going faster and lighter in the gear department, so my dinner includes Fritos, bean dip and Spam on an English muffin. As I've often noted, I am not a nutritional role model.

Mark's latest bit of gear is what may be the niftiest sleeping bag ever, an Exped Wallcreeper. This compact sleeping bag can become kind of a long coat, letting Mark poke his arms and legs out. "I can get up and pee in the middle of the night without getting cold!" Mark explains gleefully. Damn clever. Mark's ultralight pillow is also clever, a recycled bladder from a box of wine.

In the morning, Mark makes oatmeal without needing to get out of his sleeping bag. I'm perfectly comfortable munching granola bars and wearing my puffy jacket, so I don't think I'll be buying an Exped anytime soon, but if I was building up a camping kit from scratch, I'd sure give the Exped serious consideration.

We're rolling at 7:30 AM, taking the faster roads and trails home. After stopping for a quick coffee at Snoqualmie Summit, we wind our way down Denny Creek Road, follow the freeway to Edgewick and then small roads and trails home. We're back in Issaquah by 12:30 PM.

Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne

David Byrne is a smart, funny, artistic sort of fellow whose talents, inclination and curiosity have led him all over the world. A few decades back, David discovered folding bicycles and since then he's ridden his bicycle along the side and back roads of many cities, riding, thinking, chatting, living life and seeing how it's lived in a wide range of places. His view of the world seen from a bicycle saddle gives him "glimpses into the mind of my fellow man, as expressed in the cities he lives in." Now, his meditations on people, places and the various ways we get along and get around are collected in his new book, Bicycle Diaries.

Bicycle Diaries is the best kind of art, a work that brings the reader along on the artist's journey. Bicycle Diaries is a physically beautiful book, hardcover with no dust-jacket, yellow embossed letters cheerfully identify the title and author while a black silhouette of a rider draws the reader forward. An observant reader will notice a tiny bicycle peeking out from the spine at the bottom of page 11 and on each odd page thereafter the bicycle has makes more progress. Fanning forward through the pages sets the tiny typeset bicycle free, racing across the pages in the oldest style animation, persistent vision holding tight to the bike while the pages blur past. Ever the artist, be it in music, lyric, print, or type, David remembers that a book can be more than just a file on a Kindle.

The tiny animation is just one example of the playful digressiveness of this book. While he casts a loving and critical look at the world, David is always conversational. He ponders, rants, muses and marvels. He reflects on how our cities reflect our minds. We build what we value, but our shaped world shapes those values. In an age where it seems that every celebrity has a publicist and a book that screams "look at me", David is instead riding his bike down interesting streets and pausing now and then to say "Hey, look at that!" He profiles interesting buildings, streets, people, cities and artists. He's structured the book as a series of chapters each concentrating on a city such as Berlin, Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Sydney or New York, but the book is not a mere travelogue. In Manila, he uses the life story of Imelda Marcos as a springboard for contemplation of the way we each build the mythic stories of our lives. In Buenos Aires he considers geography, faith, death, music, art, unemployment, sex, the pack behavior of dogs, politics, football, gentrification, nightlife, and worker ownership. In every place he rides, he finds the unique and the common and connects the local with the global.

Bicycle Diaries is an intensely human and humane book, a book that echoes in print the sense of "My God, how did I get here?" that David expressed years ago in the Talking Heads. To an interesting person like David, all places are interesting and he consistently reminds us just how interesting humans are. We are the ones building the human world -- we don't just travel the world, we make it. David's work takes him out in the world, a world he shapes with songs and images. As he's ridden more, in more places, he's become more of a cycle activist, using his talents to shape the world to be friendlier to humans and bicycles. He's designed and installed bike racks in New York City, he thinks about helmet design and he works with transportation planners. And most importantly, he's written a wonderful book, a book that reveals the simple delight of riding a bike through an amazing world.

Best Jersey Ever!

Even though I usually favor wool jerseys, when I saw a picture of Dave Nice sporting a totally rocking jersey from Over The Edge Sports in Hurricane Utah, I knew I had to have one. I mean, I am the Mountain Turtle, after all!

Huge thanks to Dave for hooking me up with the jersey, socks and stickers. Dave, you totally rock. And stick to drip from now on! I owe you big time and one of these days we'll manage to be on the same trail at the same time.

$1.18 Dahon Carrying Case

The Internet had told me that the big blue shopping bags sold at IKEA would work as a Dahon carrying case, so last night after work instead of heading straight home I piloted my fun little red bike south to the Renton IKEA. On this Saturday night the store is packed with people, many of whom look like college students getting entire dorm rooms worth of furnishings. My mission should be a quick in & out to get a couple of the fifty-nine cent bags but even though the bags are right by the entrance, I have to weave my way through the giant money-shaking rat maze of a warehouse store. It's easy to resist things too big to lug on my bike, but gadgets that pack flat and have terse umlaut-laden names beckon at every turn. I mostly stick to my original, frugal plan of attack, waylaid only by the füd at the in-store restaurant. I'm a sucker for those $4.99 meatballs and 99-cent choklad nöt bars.

Eventually, I break free from the this florescent shrine to global capitalism, buy my bags and head back out into the night. It's a lovely night and by shifting a block or so off the main roads, the roads clogged with all the folks seeking the fastest way home, I meander in the moonlit night. My headlamp picks out a raccoon couple who I'm sure know far more than I ever will about what can only be seen clearly in the dark.


These pictures attest to the success of my trip. Two fifty-nine cent IKEA bags make an excellent case for a Dahon Curve D3. The second bag upside-down forms the cover to keep the bike safe from prying eyes. It's not a bike, it's just a bag of stuff. Nothing to see here, move along. Perfect for the Jedi Mind Trick of getting my bike into all kinds of places.



Keep 'em rolling,

Kent

Trail Work Is So Rewarding

We all know it's fun to ride on mountain bike trails, but those trails don't just happen. I belong to a great club, made up of great folks, who, among other things, make trails. This afternoon I was part of an Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance work party doing trail construction up at Duthie Hill. When Bob lifted up a log, he found this little guy staring up at him. After I took these pictures, Bob relocated the little fella to a damper, safer place off the trail and we got back to work.


It sure is fun to zip down the trails, but in the slow work of building something you get to come face to face with this wonderful world.


Keep 'em rolling,

Kent

Bike For Pie 2009

Sometimes we can love something too much. Take, for example, the annual Bainbridge Island Pie Ride. This is, in my opinion, the greatest cycling event ever. Folks ride around a beautiful island and there is PIE. The Squeaky Wheels folks have been doing this for six years now as a volunteer-run event and it's wonderful. Sure, it's tricky to gauge demand and sometimes the weather can be kind of threatening but in past years they've managed to force extra slices of pies onto riders who don't protest too much. This year, the weather turns out to be perfect and even though the Squeaky Wheels predicted that they might get twice as many riders as last year, they got blind-sided.

There were at least triple the number of riders this year. Maybe quadruple. You give away pie and word gets out. It doesn't help that some idiot with a blog wrote about the Pie Ride here and here and then emailed a bunch of his friends and used that stupid Twitter thing to say:

"My favorite ride of the year is this Sunday: http://www.squeakywheels.or..."

The ride was fabulous. The Squeaky Wheels did a great job. The pies were great and disappeared quickly. A police escort was used to secure more pies. Every pie on Bainbridge Island was secured and consumed. Pies were brought in from Poulsbo. Those also vanished quickly.

Plans are already underway for next year, plans involving advance registration and incentives for folks to bake and bring pies to the ride. The bond between pedaling and pie is a strong one. The Pie Ride will go on.

News from the Poetic World

It would be simpler, I suppose,
to live in a world purely prose.

When I was younger I believed that everything could be explained, should be explained, in a purely rational and logical manner. Kurt Gödel, Lao Tzu and a universe that places duct tape where it needs to be, convinced me that the world is more complex than that. So I live and love in a world where I've learned some facts through fiction, where the real news comes from poets instead of pressmen and I've learned that there are some things I must constantly relearn, some things I must unlearn and many things I'll never know.

William Carlos Williams tells us that "it is difficult to get the news from poetry" and Christopher Morley noted that "the bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets." And it is on my bicycle that I find the time to think, to explore, to see the world at a pace that suits me. For I am still an impatient man, an unreasonable man, whose not quite willing to accept the purely pedestrian pace and range given me by bipedal locomotion. I take both a lesson from and issue with Priestley as I ride my graceful gadget to the wild places, the roads less traveled by that make all the difference.

Every trip brings something to my attention, or removes something from my attention that I've been paying too much mind to. And I never know what lies around the next turn in the trail, even on trails I've been down dozens of times and that, perhaps, is why I keep returning to some familiar places, to see the changes in the world and in me. But other days, like this day, I'm drawn to some place old to the world yet new to me, where I can be at least a bit lost as I follow my wheels where they seem to want to go.

Today, this morning actually, it's the old roads up the west side of Rattlesnake Ridge. There are no rattlesnakes on this side of the Cascades but the name is more evocative than "rattling seed-pod ridge" so that is what's stuck to this chunk of rugged terrain.

My map, as always, is not the terrain, but it is enough to draw me here, to this wonderful network of old logging roads and powerline cuts and winding gravel tracks that lead up to towers that blink day and night and relay voices up and over the solid stone. I pass by the gate that bars the cars, pause by the rusting remains of a once-powerful machine slowly being returned to the earth it once moved. The blackberries are thick here and heavy with fruit. My second breakfast is free for the taking.

I'd told Christine this would be a three-hour tour, but possibly three hours in the Gilligan-sense, so I might not be back until noon. I'd left at seven, it's close to ten when I turn around with many trails left unexplored.

It is down and fast and the way home, like the way up, involves one exit's worth of freeway riding. One exit is enough for today's lesson.

And that lesson is one I've known and forgotten and of which, apparently, I need to be reminded. For when you live in a poetic world, a world of duct tape miracles and soul-freeing beauty right in your backyard, you must remember that there are certain rules, rules not of logic but of poetic justice, which should not be ignored.

"The first rule of flat club is that nobody talks about flat club." Or something like that. If Tyler Durden was a cyclist, I'm sure that's what he would have said.

What I said, stupidly, I said yesterday on this blog. I said (wrote actually) "I hesitate to write this, lest I rouse the wrath of the tire gods, but I've had zero issues with these tires. None. No flats."

"Thwack, thump, thwack, thump." My dad would call the sound coming from my back tire "a hell of racket." A rationalist would call it the screw I'd just run over. I call it the universe sending me yet another wake-up call. I know how the world works, but I forget sometimes. I just have no idea why it works this way. But it does.

The screw keeps the air in until I make it off the freeway. At Preston I stop, fix the flat and take pictures. As soon as I remove the screw, the air wooshes out. I think this is the kind of flat that True Goo would do a good job of sealing but my two brand new True Goo tubes are on my kitchen table back at home.

And now I'm home, reminded again that I live in a strange and wonderful world. I have a tube to patch, some hail Remas to mutter, some balance to restore.

I get flats all the time. Remember that, you read it here.

Keep 'em rolling,

Kent

Barely Broken In

See the tire above? It's the front WTB ExiWolf Tire that came stock on my two month old Redline Monocog Flight 29er. If you look close, you can still see that the knobs are still crisp. The matching rear tire shows only slightly more wear. These tires (and the bike) have 2027 miles on them as of this writing. Mountain miles. Dirt miles. Singletrack miles. And a bunch of pavement miles, as I've been commuting on the Flight pretty much every day since I got it.

I hesitate to write this, lest I rouse the wrath of the tire gods, but I've had zero issues with these tires. None. No flats. No inconvenient losses of traction. None. Gravel, mud, roots, rocks, pavement, curbs, litter, these tires just roll over it all.

See this saddle? It's the stock WTB Rocket V that came with the bike. Still a little flashy for my tastes, still perfectly comfortable after a couple of thousand miles, still comfy at the end of long days.

I don't have pictures of the brake pads in my Avid BB5 brakes or the chain or pedals or all the other parts of my bike that are still going strong after the first couple of thousand miles, but they are going strong and I'm damn pleased with the Redline. Simple. Strong. Reliable.

And did I mention that the bike is so darn much fun to ride? It is.

I've got some upgrades waiting for someday when the stock stuff wears in a bit more. A less flashy Rocket V. WTB Nano Raptors will replace the ExiWolfs eventually. (A set of Nanos is 12 ounces lighter than the Exis, and the Nano is still tough enough to be the most beloved tire on the Great Divide Route). Kool Stop brake pads will eventually go into the disk brakes and the Nanos will have also have TrueGoo tubes in them.

Eventually. Once I get around to wearing out the stock stuff on this bike. Which seems to be happening quite slowly now. Things will wear quicker when the rainy season comes.

Keep 'em rolling,

Kent

Adrian Short is a brilliant observer

I usually try to avoid helmet wars and while this post is the probably the idealogical equivalent of a pint of petrol, a dry wind and a spark, it's too good not to pass on:

http://adrianshort.co.uk/2009/08/24/456/

Thanks to Adrian for speaking sense and my formerly large friend Scott for pointing me to Adrian's words.

The Compact Comforts of Home

My camping kit has evolved over the years and I get asked about it from time to time. I decided this morning to document just what it is that I lug around in that red stuff bag on the front of my bike. By the way, these pictures were shot at a spot in the woods that is a fifteen minute bike ride away from beautiful downtown Issaquah. I live in a rather nice part of the world.

The stuff sack itself is a medium Granite Gear Compression Drysack, which I attach to my bike with a couple of nylon straps. The bag rubs a bit against the head tube of the bike, so I've layered some duct tape on the head tube to cushion against the abrasion.


Here is the contents of the bag, all laid out. From left to right along the bottom of the picture there is the compression bag, an REI Minimalist Bivy, a Small ThermaRest ProLite Pad, and my MontBell #5 Down Sleeping Bag. In the upper left corner of the picture is a Space Blanket cut in half and rolled up around 4 tent stakes, an Equinox Ultralite Poncho/Shelter, and an REI Spruce Run Jacket/Vest.

While in the past I've used a variety of fine camp gear, such as the Hennessy Hammock or Henry Shire's brilliant TarpTent, I've found that for my fast/light/camp anywhere trips, the bag plus bivy plus poncho/tarp gives me the greatest versatility together with the fastest and simplest set-up and take-down.


If I'm not expecting heavy rain, I often don't bother deploying the poncho/tarp. Conversly, if it is raining, the tarp is the first thing pitched and the last thing taken down. I can pitch it with only a single raised tie-point, but the bike, a slender branch, a fence-post or darn near anything can serve to secure the tarp.


The bivy is bug and critter proof. On warm nights, I'll sleep on top of the sleeping bag and use the Spruce Run Jacket as a pillow. In colder times, I wear the jacket to add warmth to the bag. The combo of the sleeping bag plus jacket I count as one of my brighter ideas. Having a light camp jacket is so nice in the morning and cool evenings and it extends the comfort range of my sleeping bag down below freezing.


That's it for the camp gear. I don't have a precise scale, but my bathroom scale says the whole thing weighs about four pounds. Some time in the future I'll cover what I carry in terms of repair tools, food and other stuff.

Keep 'em rolling,

Kent

Petzl Tikka XP

For years I've used and recommended the Princeton Tec EOS as a bike or helmet light and while I still think it's a darn good light, my two EOS lights both conked out a few months ago, after giving years of faithful service on many a dark road and trail. Interestingly, both lights failed in the same manner, they refused to shut off. I tried swapping batteries, I tried whacking them, nothing. As a failure mode, it's a good one, much better than being stuck in the dark. I think the switches finally just wore out.

While I strongly considered just getting another EOS, I took the opportunity to see what else was out there in terms of a similar light. I've been using Planet Bike lights on my bikes for the past few years, but I really like having something on my helmet. The helmet light is handy while riding since it shines on what I'm looking at. Please, if you use a helmet light don't look straight at others and blind your riding companions, convenience store clerks, other road and trail users! But the helmet light really shines, so to speak, when hunting out places to camp after dark.

Like many folks these days, I Googled around looking at options. This favorable review of the Petzl Tikka XP together with many favorable reviews on Amazon prompted me to buy the Tikka XP. I've had the light for over a month now and here is what I've found.

The Tikka XP is almost the exact same size and weight as the EOS and shares the one annoying feature of the EOS, it uses 3 AAA batteries. Batteries are sold in even numbered packs and most chargers charge an even number of batteries, so devices that use an odd number of batteries bug me. But I haven't found a good helmet light that uses an even number of batteries, so I've learned to deal with this. I have a small Planet Bike Tail Light that uses just one AAA cell, so when I charge up cells, I charge the three cells from the Tikka XP together with the single cell from the tail light.

Like the EOS, the Tikka XP puts out a good bit of light and has multiple brightness settings plus a flash setting. The flash is a bit higher frequency than that of the EOS and, in my opinion, a bit more useful. The Tikka XP has a few added features that I've found handy.

On the side of the light is a little recessed LED battery indicator that blinks green, orange or red depending on the state of your batteries. Batteries last a really long time (see this review for discharge curves) and the brightness of the light is good enough that I mostly run it on one of the lower power settings.

The controls are easy to work by touch. In addition to the primary button which cycles the light through it's various modes, the Tikka XP has a boost switch, which makes the light kick out a brief, ultrahigh-powered beam, just the thing for the "what the hell was that?" moments when you here the rustle in the bushes just outside of camp.

The final useful feature of the Tikka XP is a beam diffuser. This is a textured plastic bezel that slides in place to morph the beam from a sharp, narrow spot light to a softer, broad area light. I use Tikka XP as a spot light while riding but when walking around, setting up camp or reading, I use the light with the diffuser slid into place.

I was able to thread the straps of the Tikka XP through the vents of my helmet without modification to either the light or the helmet and the pivoting mount has proven to be solid and nicely adjustable.

After a month of use, I have to say I'm very happy with the Tikka XP and I'd recomend it to my pals.

Note: I am a member of the Amazon Associates program. Whenever you go to Amazon via some link on my blog and buy ANYTHING within 24 hours, a percentage of your purchase price goes to me. It doesn't cost you anything extra, but some of that money does go to me and I use it to do things like buy helmet lights or Peanut M&Ms and next summer I'm planning on racing the length of the Great Divide on my bike. And that costs money. So thanks. And, obviously, it's not in my best interest to give bum advice and talk you into buying something that is of no use to you. So I try to be fair when I talk about stuff and up front about the fact that I make a bit from my online ramblings.


Petzl Tikka XP Headlamp

Forest Road 6700

It was another little red line on a map that brought me here, a tiny series of dashes on page 72 of my Washington Road & Recreation Atlas. Here is Forest Road 6700, a spotted serpent on the map that promises an adventurous alternative route down off Steven's Pass.

And so I pack 280 miles into two days of riding. I carry too much stuff, of course, but that is part of the learning. My camera proves its worth again, while my GPS only tells me useless things like "you are here." I know that, that's why I'm here.

The mountains and the trees are huge, the roads are small and sparse. A view from some summit shows a tiny, sand-colored line far below, the path ahead. It loops back to home eventually.