Issaquah - Portland - Issaquah

It's not until sunrise that I notice that I can see my breath. Since I long ago got my basic clothing dialed in for pretty wide range of conditions, temperature is mostly just something I check on bank signs and not a thing I worry about. Sure, I'd checked the forecast and added an army surplus wool sweater to my torso and a Duofold layer under my nylon pants, but it's not until I see my breath forming little clouds as I huff up the hills that it occurs to me that the cold might be problematic. I'd left my snug place in Issaquah at 5:00 AM for a four day ride down to Portland and back. Since I was planning on spending much of Saturday and Sunday visiting friends in Portland, my thought was to pack the bulk of the riding into Friday and Monday. Hence, my early start this Friday morning.

My basic route, picked by Google using the ever so handy "avoid highways" option and tweaked by me, merged parts of a Seattle International Randonneurs 200K and a bit of RAMROD with a good chunk of the STP route. It was the bits in some of the higher country near Mount Rainier that had me worried. Snow could slow things down.

I reach down to take a sip from my bottle and realize it's an ice baby. The second bottle is similarly solid. "Holy Jill Homer!" I mutter, "it's cold."

What I'd thought was decadence turns out to be providence. I'd also brought along my Thermos Mug full of hot coffee and that turns out to be my main source of hydration for the next few hours.



There are patches of frost along the roadside and the frost in my mustache turns out to be more than just some metaphor lifted from a haiku. My Tringle-speed is shod with rugged Specialized Hardpack II tires and even though I can hear Jan's Germanic voice in my head chiding me "I cannot believe you choose to ride such slow tires," I value versatility over velocity. This morning, it certainly seems like a wise choice.


By 9:30 AM the bright sunshine has warmed the air and my bottles have thawed. I stop at the Kapowsin Texaco for a Cookies and Creme bar washed down with a pint of whole milk before rolling on through Eatonville. There's a good bit of snow along the Eatonville Cutoff Road and the roadside bison watch as I roll by.


I often describe my bike trips as a chance to connect with my "inner hobo" and in the town of Elbe, I see that perhaps I'm not alone in my desire for rusticity. While sleeping in converted cabooses would probably be fun, I think it has only the slightest connection to the true hobo life. Now maybe if they let you sleep under the caboose while the train rolls along at 120 miles per hour and every few hours some yard bull would whack you with a stick and toss you off the train...


There is more roadside snow on the road down to Morton and I decide for my trip back, I'll pick a route that sticks closer to the lower country to the west. After feasting on a turkey sandwich and a pint of milk in Morton I turn west along noisy Highway 12 and eventually turn south again, following the small roads that roughly parallel I-5.

It's dark by the time I cross the bridge at Longview and enter Oregon. A lot of the bridge traffic is logging trucks and the narrow shoulder is layered with bark and wood chips. I'm usually very relaxed on the bike, but navigating this span in the dark, even with wide tires, is the most tense part of the trip.

At 8:40 PM I stop for late supper consisting of a hot dog and a pint of milk and fill my now empty second water bottle with some orange-guava juice. In addition to my various food stops, I've been munching enroute on peanut M&Ms, PayDay bars and Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies. Have I mentioned that I am not a nutritional role model?

My goal today was to get close to Portland without actually being in Portland. At 10:00 PM I see a handy bit of woods on the edge of the town of Scappoose, so I roll out my bivy sack and settle in for the night. Since I've ridden 191 miles since leaving home this morning, I sleep soundly.

I'm up and rolling at 5:00 AM. Highway 30 turns freewayish as it runs into Portland but as I exit onto local roads, Portland's famous bicycle infrastructure guides me in.





At 7:00 AM I'm settled in at Peet's Coffee in downtown Portland, sipping a caramel latte and checking my email. Around 9:00 AM I roll over to Powell's where I park in one of Portland's fancy on-street bike racks and meet up with fellow blogging cycler, Joe Broach.


This is the first time Joe and I have had a chance to meet up in the non-cyber world, but it's just like having coffee with an old friend. Actually, I'm still working on my latte from Peet's but I let Joe buy me a croissant and he has tea while we chat about a wide range of bikish and bloggish things. Joe is a great writer and I urge him to write more about his life in Portland. I'd first started reading his stuff when he lived in Montana and when he'd moved to Portland, I'd hoped he'd write more about the transition and compare and contrast the two places. Alas, life has a way of filling the days and Joe's written fewer words than I'd like to see, so I give him a hard time about that. In the nicest, possible way, of course. The man did buy me breakfast, after all!

After talking with Joe for over an hour, I manage to check out some of the books at Powell's. I'm traveling light so I manage not to buy anything heavier than a Washington-Oregon map. I also skim through Jeff Mapes' book Pedaling Revolution. This one is on my "gotta get this" list and not just because I'm in it. I do the vanity read to make sure Jeff quoted me accurately (he did, the man is a pro!) and it was interesting to see Jeff's take on a commute we shared a couple of years ago and especially see his appreciative comments on the virtues of coroplast fenders.

From Powell's I head over to Clever Cycles. My buddy Colin works as a mechanic at Clever, a job he seems ideally suited for. Colin used to be the shop manager at Bike Works, and he decided to leave Seattle, I took over his old role. So we talk about Bike Works, the bike business and riding in the Portland area. Colin shows me around the place and even lets me test ride a Stokemonkey equipped Xtracycle. My own life is too minimalist to require either an Xtracycle or a Stokemonkey, but I can sure see the value of these things. The Stokemonkey is amazing, a true electric assist. You pretty much use it to get big loads rolling or push the big load up big grades. The sensation is like riding a tandem with the world's strongest stoker.


Also at Clever, I re-meet a kindred soul, Mike Cobb, the fellow who created the ever-so-handy Cobbworks bucket pannier.



Mike sold the Cobbworks business a while back and these days is crafting large-capacity cargo solutions for longtail bikes. But tonight, after attending the Alice Awards, he's hopping the last MAX train east with his bike and then riding up Mount Hood so he can compete in the US Snowshoe Nationals tomorrow morning. Since the roads are icy up there, he's making his own studded tire as we talk. And naturally, he'll be sleeping in a bivy sack tonight, Like I said, my kind of guy!

While I'm at Clever, Jayanthi, another of my pals from Bike Works, calls up. She's in town for the US Barista Championships (she's related to one of the judges) and she also stops in at Clever to see Colin. And next week it turns out that we'll probably all cross paths again at the Seattle Bike Expo.

I'd arranged to meet Scott "Large Fella" Cutshall at 3:00 PM at Clever, but since I have some time to kill and a phone call to make (more trip logistics), I wander around the neighborhood. I'm just rolling back toward Clever when a not very large fella on a lovely Bob Brown bicycle rolls up along side me and says, "you must be Kent Peterson." I admit that I must and that he in turn must be Scott Cutshall.


Despite the dire things I'd read on Scott's blog, at least at this moment he is not being pursued by angry villagers bearing Proofide-fueled torches. "Where to?" Scott asks and I point out that it's his city. "Show me around," I say.

So we roll down one side of the river, across a bridge and through downtown. We discuss bikes and bloggers and the reach and limits of the internet as a communication medium. When Scott talks there tends to be a chuckle in his voice, a twinkle in his eye and a self-deprecating tone that doesn't always come through in print. When Scott or I say something like "being a famous blogger..." we each have a hard time not cracking up. On a good day being a "famous blogger" might get you a free tour around town, a chance to have some interesting chats and maybe a meal or two. On super rare occasions, a virtually random stranger might figure out that you could use a plane ticket home and that'll give you some clue that maybe your words do matter, at least to somebody. And the flip side of this, the darker side, is that when you make some flip remark or are genuinely dark or struggling, those words matter as well and the actions that come from those words aren't always kind. "People sure get worked up over words!" Scott observes. I agree that indeed they do and describe to him my favorite comic strip, whose punchline is "Someone is wrong on the internet."

Scott's wife Amy is a nurse who works nights, so after some over an hour of rolling and gabbing we head over to Scott's place. Scott explains that in the Cutshall world, this is breakfast time and quizzes me about my "normal" schedule. I quote Willie Nelson and point out that "there is no normal, there's only you and me." My wife works early mornings and I tend to be more a morning person myself, so many nights I'm sound asleep while Scott is teaching Chloe, making lunch or riding.

Chloe and Amy are delightful and Chloe presents me with a project she'd just finished, a "Whimsical Charm of Safety", which I immediately strap to the rear basket of my bike.


Chloe is into Animorph books these days and she also knows lots about animals, digging through a field guide when the discussion turns to the red-legged frogs we'd heard singing in the Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge that Scott and I had ridden past on our ride.


Scott and I both are guys who, in the spirit of the character of Kasper Gutman in The Maltese Falcon, "like talking to a man who likes to talk." I think Amy and Chloe are wondering if we'll ever shut up.

I do manage to shut my mouth long enough to sample one of the famous humus wraps that the Cutshalls thrive on. I think if I ate those daily I'd loose weight as well, not because they're not good (they are!) but because they are filling while seeming to lack the caloric density of my normal heavy fuel. Scott is curious about said fuel and Amy and I describe for him the construction of a Payday bar.

After more chat on a wide range of topics, I get ready to head out into the evening. Scott, like Joe had earlier, offers me a place to stay but I explain that I really do value these trips as chances to dial in my gear, be out in the night and "get in touch with my inner hobo." Scott looks dubious, but I think he understands. Scott explains to me that for years he was so heavy that he never went out, spending all his time locked inside, reaching out only to read some words on a computer screen. And some of the words he found were mine, describing a life outside. I think he understands and I go.

I'm ten minutes down the road when my phone rings. The cell phone is something I'm still getting used to, but it helps set Christine's mind at ease and it is handy on adventures such as this one where I'm trying to connect up with a range of folks. When I see this call is from Scott, I think perhaps I've forgotten something at his place. Nope, he's just double checking. "You're sure you're OK camping out? This just seems weird, I mean we have plenty of room here and I feel like I just sent my buddy out to go sleep in a park." "This is weird," I assure him but "weird is how I roll." There is no normal, there's only you and me. "You know this call isn't for you," Scott says, "it's for me. I have to be sure." "Yeah, I know that buddy. It's fine, really. Have a good night and thanks again for everything."

Because I have an uneasy truce with "the Man" (I mostly don't mess with him and he mostly doesn't mess with me but I figure he may read this blog now and then), I'll choose to be vague about exactly where I roll out my bivy sack. There are usually trees involved, and shadows and I always sleep soundly.

In the morning, I head over to my buddy Michael Rasmussen's place. Michael keeps a few chickens in his backyard and he makes great hashbrowns and coffee to go with the eggs. In an earlier email Michael admitted he hadn't ridden his bike at all this year. I figure I can apply a bit of positive peer pressure and maybe get him rolling. At the very least, I'll get a great breakfast out of the deal.



My basically transparent plan works quite well. We have a wide ranging discussion while Michael cooks. Michael needs to head over to Beth Hamon's place to pick up a bike jersey and I'd been planning on seeing Beth before I rolled out of town. Still Michael almost convinces himself that he's cut the timing too close to bike there. His wife Jennifer talks him into leaving the dishes and I volunteer to change the flat front tube on his bike while he dresses. "I need you to navigate me to Beth's house," I lie but it's a lie we both take on as a catalyst for action.

Michael layers on his riding clothes and once he's on the bike and rolling we're fine. Sure he wheezes on the climbs but he's got a grin on his face. The wheezing isn't a result of this morning's ride, it's the result of all those mornings of not riding. Once he's on the bike, he remembers that.





We're at Beth's at 11:30. Beth wasn't expecting to see me this early in the day, but she rises to the challenge. I think she'd been envisioning a more relaxed visit in the afternoon but she offers me a cup of coffee while she tries to fit my early presence into her plans for the day. I tell her that I really just popped in to see her and that I'm planning on heading north a bit earlier than originally planned. The forecast is for snow and I want to get over the Longview bridge in daylight. Michael has to dash off, but Beth, her friend Lynne and I chat for a while before heading out to Beth's work shed where she is prepping her bike for cyclocross.




Hanging out chatting about bike stuff is exactly what I'd wanted to do on this trip, so this is the perfect ending to my stay in Portland.

The skies are clouding up and after saying goodbye to Beth and Lynne, I roll north at 12:30. I roll through north Portland, cross the St. John's bridge and connect up again with Hwy 30.


The spring time change happened last night, so it's still light when I cross the Longview bridge at 5:30 PM. I continue riding north, keeping an eye on the weather and settle in to camp in a patch of woods between Castle Rock and Vader at 7:15 PM. I've just got my bivy stretched out and my tarp strung up when my phone rings. It's Christine, "is it snowing where you are?" "Not yet," I explain, "I'm swinging wider around Rainier for the trip home," I explain, "sticking to the lower country." "Sleep warm," Christine says, and I assure her I will. There's a line from a Kathy Mattea song that says "On the chilliest night though I travel light, it is always enough, for I wear your love." In my case, this is certainly true. My down bag, bivy sack and Thermarest all do their bit, but my wool socks, warm hat and wool gloves are all gifts from Christine. On the chilly nights and days I really do wear her love.

There's a little bit of snow on the tarp in the morning and a bit more snow is coming down at 8:00 AM when I stop at the Little Crane Cafe in Vader.

Over a big breakfast of hamburger steak and eggs and hashbrowns I joke with the locals about the weather. "Yeah," one trucker comments, "a hell of a day to be driving, but at least I ain't riding a bike!"






One picturesque farm features Emus and goats so I stop for a few pictures, but mostly it's time to be riding for home. The day fluctuates between periods of clear blue skies mixed with times when the sky goes so dark I'm running with all my lights on and the air is white with whirling snow. Chloe's charm seems to do it's job because I make through every whiteout without becoming a hood ornament on some four by four. I get home at 9:30 PM.

Half Century

Since this is a cycling blog, you might guess from the title of this post that I'm going to talk about some fifty mile bicycle ride, but today I'm going to talk about another journey. My wonderful colleagues at Bike Works knew I'd be taking today and the next few days off, so they jumped the gun a bit and started the celebration a day early in the way I prefer, with donuts and cookies.

Today is my fiftieth birthday. If right now you are slapping your head and going "dang, I didn't get Kent anything!", don't worry. I really can't think of anything I need. If you absolutely feel you have to do something to commemorate the anniversary of my making fifty trips around the sun, you can always go here and pledge some money to help fight cancer.

Various people have been telling me that these birthdays ending in "oh!" are a big deal and I guess if I was going to follow some mid-life crisis pattern, I should be buying a sports car right now and running off with some sweet young thing. Actually, unless I'm planning on living a hundred years (hey it could happen!), I'm a bit behind schedule for a mid-life crisis, but I ran off with a sweet young thing about twenty-five years ago and she'll always be my sweet young thing. In fact, last fall when I blogged about our anniversary trip, one commenter asked if I'd married Christine when she was thirteen and said that now she "barely looks 24." In fact, Christine and I are of a similar vintage and the single smartest thing I did in the past fifty years was to marry that wonderful woman. I think fifty year old guys get to dispense a bit of wisdom now and then and one bit of advice that my Dad gave me and that I'm sure is true is this: "if you're going to partner up with someone, choose wisely." I've definitely succeeded on that score.

One other thing I've learned in the past fifty years is that we each get given twenty-four hours each day. Many people talk about time in monetary terms, how it is "invested" or "spent" or "saved", but it's most important to remember that it's lived. Lived at the rate of twenty-four hours each day. I try to live as much of that time as I can doing interesting things. Not necessarily always easy things or fun things and sometimes dull things must be done, but I think it's important to have a life that at least interests the person living it. I wrote about this a while back in an essay called "The Fun-Time Continuum". For me, interesting equals fun, but I realize that other people's definitions may vary. And I guess that's another thing I've learned, different people see things differently but learning about how other people see things is interesting, and thus fun, to me.

Years ago my Dad told me a joke, a story really, and over the years I've told that story to various friends. The story goes like this:

One day a fellow is going down the road and he sees a farmer carrying a pig. The farmer lifts the pig up to the branch of an apple tree and the pig proceeds to eat an apple. The farmer then lifts the pig to another branch, where the pig eats another apple. The fellow watches the farmer and the pig do this for a while and then asks the farmer "what are you doing?"

"Feeding my pig," the farmer replies.

"Isn't that kinda time consuming?" asks the fellow.

"Well, I reckon it is," the farmer replies, "but what's time to a pig?"

Over the years the punchline of that story, "what's time to a pig?", has become a shorthand for my friends and I on our adventures. We'll be off on some trail or dirt road and the path will diverge. "If we take this fork, I know it loops back to where we came in, but this other one could be really time consuming," I'll say. Matt or Mark or whomever I'm with will nod and then say, "true, but what's time to a pig?" And we'll take the unknown road. We're not here to take the fastest route through life. A friend of mine once commented on some brevet we were both riding, "hey, you do these things just to get the stories!" "No," I corrected him after I thought about it for a bit, "I do these things because I find them interesting and the interesting experiences make good stories." If the farmer just dumped a bushel of apples in front of the pig, that's not very interesting and there's really no story worth telling.

Today I'll have fun with my family and celebrate my birthday. This weekend, Christine is off on a retreat and I have a few days off from work. Tomorrow, I'm riding down to Portland and I'll spend the bulk of the weekend hanging out with various pals down there. Monday I'll ride back. I know taking the train would be faster, but I like to ride my bike. And besides, what's time to a pig? Or a Mountain Turtle?

Keep 'em rolling,

Kent

2009 Bike Works Auction

The youth enrolled in our Earn-a-Bike program end each graduation ceremony by collectively envisioning Bikeopolis, a near future place where bicycling is safe and widespread, and people are healthy, active and good with Allen wrenches. This year, Bikeopolis is the theme for the Bike Works annual fundraiser where we celebrate our successes as well as give you the opportunity to support Bike Works' future through bidding on fabulous donated items and scrumptious desserts.

As shop manager, I volunteered to host a table and I said I'd use my blogtacular powers to talk some of my pals into joining me. Here is where I find out if my set of friends and the set of people with money have any overlap at all!

Here are the details:

What: Bike Works Benefit Auction 2009

When: Sunday March 29th, 2009 – 5 pm until 8:30 pm

Where: Herban Feast, SoDo http://www.herbanfeast.com/

How Much: Tickets - $70, Purchase Tickets @ http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/50320

I've been assured the food will be good and I know the auction supports a great group of folks. There will be all kinds of bikish things to bid on and I'm donating a full custom set of coroplast fenders & bags that some lucky person will win.

Thanks and keep 'em rolling,

Kent

A few more Dahon bits

I haven't written much about my Dahon D3 folding bike lately, but it continues to be the bike I'm most likely to grab for quick runs around town. I still get this big dumb grin on my face every time I ride the D3. I'm tempted to say it's my favorite bike but other times I say that about my Tringle-Speed or my Retro-Direct or some other bike-de-jour and I realize that I come off sounding like Matt and Trey introducing each episode on the South Park Season One DVD. I guess I just like my life and my bikes. I'd probably get more blog traffic if I wrote one of those drama-filled "how-my-life-sucks-today" blogs, but since I've pretty much succeeding in avoiding the bummer life and tend to see the glass as neither half-full nor half-empty but rather twice the size needed for the given task, I mostly write about the interesting small glasses I've found.

So, yeah, Dahon stuff. The guys at Dahon liked a little poem I wrote about my D3 last year, and they nicely asked me if they could reprint it. I told 'em to go right ahead and they did a little interview with me and put the poem in their new catalog and their online newsletter. I got a little bit of schwag out of the deal but it's not like they are sending me prototypes of the new Curl in order to buy good-will in the blogosphere. (BTW, Dahon folks, if you're reading this, I bet that would totally work! Really.)

Speaking of the Curl, this thread on the Strida forum has a better picture of the Curl and a couple of the patent drawings from 2007. It shows the basics of how the bike looks folded and unfolded. It doesn't give any idea what color the final bike will be. Again, Dahon people, if you're reading this, people like red. Well, this person likes red.

Finally, I like this video. It just shows a guy who really likes his bike, showing off how it rides, folds and how the nifty seat-post pump works. It really captures the fun of riding a bike.

There's a break in the rain now and I don't have anywhere I really need to go but sometimes it's just fun to go. I'm off for a ride on my little red bike.

Keep 'em rolling,

Kent

A Preview from the Taipei Cycle Show

Via the Folding Society, I found a link to this preview document from next month's Cycle Show in Taipei:

http://download.taipeitradeshows.com.tw/2009/cycle/Show_Preview/P30-35.pdf

Now I never know what items that grace the booths of these shows will actually show up at your local bike shop, but here are some of the bits I found interesting in this document.

The Dahon Curl sure looks like it folds up into a tiny Brompton-like package, a feat that I'm sure required a lot of work by engineers, designers and more than a few patent attorneys.

A couple of companies are showing quick release pedals, which are very handy things to have on a folding bike.

Tsai Jung decided to incorporate a kickstand into their pedal. I'll probably stick to leaning my bikes against handy objects.

Kenda is making a full coverage tire liner that'll probably make your favorite lightweight tire perform just like your favorite heavyweight tire. But if you're like me and hate flats, you'll probably give these a try anyway!

For you bar-end shifter fans, you can thank those spandex-clad triathlon folks for keeping your favorite shifters from being historical artifacts. AD-II is targeting these shifters at those tri-folk but they'd probably be happy to sell them to folks building touring bikes as well.

Internal gear fans will want to check out HammerSchmidt's internally geared crankset. I know I'd like to check out that crankset.

There are other goodies in the PDF and I'm sure lots more stuff will be at the show. Taipei is too far for me to ride given the amount of time I can take off from work (I think there is a bit of water between here and there as well), but the guys from Velo Orange will be over there checking things out. Their blog, which always has cool stuff BTW, should have some reports from the show next month.

Keep 'em rolling,

Kent

Dear President Obama,

OK, I was a little hurt when you didn't even ask me to be Secretary of Transportation. Yeah, I'm sure you figured rightly that Christine and I wouldn't be interested in leaving Issaquah to move to the "other" Washington and maybe my plan of making every three block radius around a public school be a car-free zone is too "radical" for America to think about right now. But I still support you on the whole tire inflation issue and some of the other stuff you're trying to do. I know you've got a lot on your plate right now and even though you might be thinking "Hey, this guy could be a good Commerce Secretary!" No, I won't take that post either. Sorry.

Now I know some folks might say that running a non-profit used bike shop in Seattle doesn't qualify me to give financial advice, but I was smart enough to take over managing the shop right as the price of gas was hitting four bucks a gallon. And even when gas prices went down in September and the economy crashed when everyone suddenly realized that if you can't pay the $2,500/month mortgage payment on your 4,000 square-foot home then you really don't "own" it, folks still managed to buy bikes and parts at our shop. 2008, which was a disaster if you were counting on your half-million dollar bonus from Smith-Barney, was a pretty good year if you're comfortable living in 800 square feet and make your living refurbishing bikes and teaching folks how to fix their own stuff. Bike Works had it's best year ever.

So, that economy, yeah that's a bummer. Can we retool plants that made Humvees into plants that make XtraCycles? Or railroad cars? You know that you can move more freight or people cheaper on a steel rail than an asphalt road. Maybe we should build some more rail lines or at least maintain the ones we've got. I remember we used to make things out of steel in this country, things like rails and bike frames. It would be worthwhile to do more of that.

It seems kind of silly that in a lot of places it's perfectly normal to have an acre of golf-course grade grass and a long driveway but if you have a few chickens or a goat or raise vegetables in your yard you're viewed as some kind of unsophisticated hick. I think we should listen more to the hicks and less to guys like Bernie Madoff. Back in World War Two almost everybody had Victory Gardens. It worked then, it could work again.

I know a lot of people are writing you now, asking for this or that part of the bail-out money. You've got a tough job and I don't envy you. But America is a country full of smart people (and a few morons, of course!) but we'll do OK. From what I'm seeing out here, smart folks have not stopped spending money, but they are spending it in smarter ways.

Those silly looking light bulbs Al Gore is always talking about, yeah they do cost more at the store, but our power bill is down. And I'm still buying tools and spending time and money to learn how things work and how to fix things. A bicycle is cheaper than a health club membership and it gets you places. I know a guy who started riding his bike and lowered his blood pressure to the point where his doctor told him he could stop taking his expensive blood pressure medication. His bike more than paid for itself in savings and he used some of the money he saved to become a life-member of the Bicycle Alliance of Washington. That's good economic and good health-care policy.

I know you're going to be giving your State of the Nation speech and you'll tell us that times are tough. That's OK, we're tough, too.

I hope you're still liking your new job. My best to you and your wife and kids. Don't forget that you still owe the girls a puppy.

Kent Peterson
Issaquah WA USA

Ghost Trails

In Ghost Trails, Jill Homer does something very difficult, she tells the story of riding and pushing a bicycle through 350 miles of frozen Alaskan wilderness on the Iditarod Trail. And while the journey itself is epic, what Jill does in this book is far more impressive than simply competing in this difficult race, she never stops being human and she's never afraid to share that humanity with her readers.

As readers, we know that Jill survives this race, but she still manages to tell a page-turner of a story, painting word pictures of the country, the remote cabins that serve as checkpoints, her fellow competitors, the weather and the darkness. But most importantly, she constantly asks, answers and asks again the Talking Heads question, "well, how did I get here?"

She really captures the thoughts that filled her mind on the 350 miles of the trail by recounting tales from her past, the events that made her not a super-human competitor but a human who competes, and completes, on a course that is far less remote now that Jill has taken us along on the journey.

Her humanity shows through in both tears and a wry sense of humor. She questions herself and concludes that she probably wasted too much time training and not enough time buying peanut butter cups. She holds her frozen Camelbak as an "ice baby" and finally thaws it enough to get a single swallow of water. She doubts and...

But there was one other certainty in my mind — the certainty that I could no longer bear the uncertainty. I could no longer linger in limbo. The longer I stalled, the further I sank into dull madness. I was going to have to decide right there whether I was going to push for McGrath or get on a plane back to Anchorage with Ted and never look back. Either way, I would have to accept the consequences. There was no going back to the start, not any more. I knew there was a reason I had planned so diligently for the race, trained all winter for the race, spent all of my free time thinking about the race.

“If only I could remember what that reason was,” I thought as I mounted my bicycle and pedaled into the dark. And with that, I was finally moving down the trail.

Jill takes us all along on that trail and the other trails that lead her to Alaska and that I know will lead her to further adventures. Ghost Trails is a wonderful book, one that I rationed out like a precious supply of peanut butter cups. It is a book to be savored, a book to remind you that there always is a reason to be moving down that trail, even if you don't remember what that reason was.

Peter Meilstrup's 4-speed Retro-Direct Bicycle

Peter Meilstrup stopped by Bike Works yesterday with still more evidence that the Retro-Direct Revolution is well underway. Peter's bike features dual freewheels, a KORE chain tensioner and a front derailleur to give him a total of four unique gear ratios. It's a very sweet bike.

Kim's Special Bike

Over at the Bike Works Blog, I posted the story and pictures telling about Kim's Special Bike.

Iron Horse Trail

Technically where Mark Canizaro and I are riding is called "The John Wayne Trail in Iron Horse State Park." Some folks call it the John Wayne Trail in honor of the Duke but that name always seemed more fitting to me when referencing the drier parts of the trail east of the mountains, where you'll see tumbleweeds and snakes and the terrain really looks like cowboy country. Here in the Cascades, where the network of old railroad grades has been steadily converted to hiking, biking and horse trails by the ongoing efforts of folks like the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy and the Mountains to Sound Greenway, my friends and I have always called the big trail up to Snoqualmie Pass the Iron Horse.

The big tunnel under the summit is always closed in the winter and while we'd just gotten word that all the tunnels along the route will be closed indefinitely, we aren't planning on riding as far as the tunnels today. Only a few blocks from my doorstep we're on the Highpoint Trail and then onto the quiet frontage road to Preston. At Preston we catch yet another rail-trail towards Fall City. Years ago the old train trestle had been knocked out in a flood and not replaced, so we have a steep drop down to the road that connects to Fall City. Just past the tiny town that is a city in name only, we climb up the eastern edge of the valley and onto yet another rail grade, the Snoqualmie Valley Trail. It's a Sunday when we thought that most people would be watching some football game that promises to be super, but rural King County still has a fair number of people who prefer their sports to be of the non-spectator type and we see folks riding bikes or horses, walking dogs, running and hiking all along the trails. It's one of those days when February when the simple fact that it's not raining and not bitterly cold puts a smile on every face we greet.

We ride past the iron ghosts of trains in Snoqualmie and follow back streets and more of the trail to North Bend. At the bakery the locals pronounce us "tough" for planning to camp out, but any day that includes a bakery stop really can't register too high on the tough meter.

We return to the Snoqualmie Valley Trail and ride it up to Rattlesnake Lake where we join the Iron Horse Trail. Since the trail is the old rail bed, the grade is gentle, only about a two percent climb. But that two percent adds up and only a few miles from the lake, significant portions of the trail are blanketed in snow.

Our plan had been to camp at the sites at either Alice Creek or Carter Creek but the snow slows our progress and we're running out of daylight. The snow is getting deeper as we head east and realizing that darkness will descend on us before we reach either campsite, we decide the smart thing to do is to turn back west and back track until we find a likely campsite.

We're looking for a combination of an accessible stream and enough flat space to pitch Mark's tent and my tarp and at 4:30 PM we find the right mix of geography. The Iron Horse parallels Interstate 90, but the trees and the stream mask the noise of the road less than a third of a mile away.

Since we each have brought enough food to feed a couple of men for a couple of days, we feast as soon as we've pitched camp. It's pretty much completely dark by 5:30 PM and after swapping stories of our various travels and solving most of the problems of the world, we each settle into puffy nylon cocoons around 6:30.

In the morning, we're up soon after the sun and after a first breakfast in camp, we pack up and roll back to the world where we keep the stuff that doesn't fit in a pannier. Next to the Raging River (yes, that's really it's name) we see a huge bald eagle that's faster than Mark's camera.

At North Bend we have a big second breakfast at Twede's before rolling back to Issaquah. With 72 miles over the course of a bit under 27 hours, our trip pushes a bit over the strict limits an S24O but we're liberal enough in our definitions to declare this journey a total success.

Grand Ridge Trail

"I need tougher friends," I mutter as I review the feeble excuses and resounding silence that greets my latest "Hey let's go back country riding and maybe camping this Sunday/Monday" message. Noting that the forecast is for temps around freezing together with chance of snow, Christine points out that perhaps what I need is not tougher friends, but dumber friends. Perhaps she has a point.

I scale back my camping plans when Mark comes through suggesting we can go camping the following weekend, but still Sunday morning beckons. Looking for terrain that will let me work the lowest gear combination on my tringle-speed, I point my wheels out my back door and roll up into the hills.

I live at the base of the Cascade foothills, but it's been a few years since I've ridden a trail that is basically right in my backyard, the Grand Ridge Trail. There has been a lot of construction and home building on the Sammamish Plateau in the past few years so I really have no idea what I'll find on this ride. A few years ago I was riding with some friends on one of the high ridges and we stopped for a snack at a spot looking out onto the plateau. "Is that snow over there?" my buddy asked seeing the distant expanses of white. "Nope," I explained, "it's Tyvek. Those are all the condos under construction."

Today proves to be a different story. As I stop at the base of the steep climbing to move my chain onto the lowest gears, another rider pulls up. We both seem to be the kind of fellows who talk to strangers, so we get to talking. It turns out Ross West also lacks dumb friends and hasn't ridden the Grand Ridge Trail in a few years. So we ride and scramble up the steepest stuff together and puzzle over the same trail forks. It turns out that Ross and I have similar riding styles, going slow enough to look around. At one point Ross is leading and says "let me know if I'm going too slow." I assure him that I don't think that's possible and mention that some folks call me "The Mountain Turtle." Ross has to turn back a bit before noon but we exchange email addresses and make tentative plans for some future rides.

The map shows the trail ending at a dead end suspiciously close to the Issaquah-Fall City Road and the good trail conditions, combined with the circumstantial evidence of three riders coming the other way, gives me the hope to press through the swampy, rooty low section and up yet another ridge. Once again the map is not the terrain and the trail leads me to the road. I stop to engage a more road-appropriate gear and I'm home in time to have lunch with Christine and Eric.

Tringle-speed Bicycle

Back in November, Jill up in Alaska wrote:

I was able to get in plenty of bursts of hard effort today after I snapped the rear shifter cable on my mountain bike. I feel bad for my Karate Monkey; only seven months old, and she's already been through the war. But after riding most of the morning with three speeds (and really only using the middle ring), I have to say, I still don't understand the single-speed thing. It's not a matter of being able to push a high gear up steep hills - that I can do if I have to. But I prefer to have my rotations per minute stay the same no matter how fast I'm going. Single-speeders must have their legs spinning all sorts of different crazy speeds. And once your RPMs drop down to two or three, don't you start questioning the efficiency of your one gear?

As somebody whose put a fair number of single-speed miles under his wheels, I guess I'd respond to Jill by saying that crazy spinning is kind of the point. If you only train to turn one range of RPMs, you're only good at that range of RPMs. Kind of like if you only rode when it's 70 degrees and sunny, then you'd only be good at riding when it's 70 degrees and sunny. But what would you if it was below freezing and dark? But then again, who'd want to ride when it's below freezing and dark? Why would anybody do that? Would that be at all interesting? I don't know maybe some people like things to be a little tough.

Me, I like single-speed bikes. While I certainly enjoy fixed gear bikes and I've logged a lot of fixed gear miles, I do like coasting now and then and I like the dynamic of a single-speed, cranking it up a climb, tucking and coasting on a descent, spinning it as fast as I can go on the flats. But still, Jill does have a point. There are times when a bit more versatility would be good. Not necessarily a full-bore derailleur system or the precise clockworks of an internal hub. It's more that it would be handy to have one single-speed that's geared kind of high for pavement riding. And one bike that's geared somewhat lower for general mountain biking. And maybe a third bike that's geared really low, for when I'm hauling camping loads up steep grades or when the snow is deep. Yeah, not a bike that you shift exactly but three single-speeds. Three single-speeds in one bike.

Sheldon Brown pointed me to the answer and I read about it here:

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/fixed-conversion.html

Sheldon states:

Bruce Ingle, a fellow member of the Charles River Wheelmen, has gone me one better, and made a triple-fixed mountain bike. He used a Shimano cassette hub, which he immobilized by brazing the ratchet mechanism together. I am a bit nervous as to the long-term prospects for this hub, in particular the connection between the freehub body and the hub shell, but I think I will have to copy his setup. He's got:

			Gain	Inches	Meters
	48/20	Fixed	4.65	62.4	4.99
	42/26	Fixed	3.13	42	3.36
	36/32	Fixed	2.18	29.3	2.34

I loved the idea of this but I figured I'd skip the brazing part and keep the ratcheting mechanism. As an homage to Mr. Ingle, I figured the logical name for such a machine would be a Tringle-speed. I wrote to Bruce asking for his advice on setting up such a machine. He wrote me back with good advice on selecting components and getting a good chainline. About the name he said simply, "I love it!"

Once again, the near infinite supply of parts that is Bike Works yielded all the components for this project. The design is simple: three chainrings up front, three cogs in the back. The cogs fit on a Shimano freehub body (in my case an old 7-speed freehub) with spacers filling in the empty spots. The cogs are positioned in such a way that the outermost cog is in a straight line to the outer chainring, the middle cog lines up with the middle chainring and the inner cog aligns with the inner chainring. And while the front-to-back ratio is different in each combinaton, the total number of front and back teeth remains the same,. Thus the chain length is the same for each combination and you have three basically perfect chainlines. Changing from one combination to another is not something you do while pedaling, but it only takes a minute to stop and change gears when the pavement ends or at the top of a mountain pass. All I need to do is loosen the quick-release, slide the wheel a bit forward in the dropouts, move the chain to the desired combo, slide the wheel back into position and tighten the quick-release.

This chart shows the gear combinations I have on my tringle-speed.

Chainring	Cog	Gear Inches
48	18	69.3
42	24	45.5
36	30	31.2

The 69.3 inch gear is for civilized conditions, while the 45.5 inch gear is for off-road and hilly stuff. The 31.2 inch gear should let me climb walls like Spiderman.

Now yeah, a derailleur set-up might be easier. So would a Harley-Davidson. That's not the point now, is it? Sometimes you want things to be a little tough. And fun. Really, really fun.

Stay tuned for some ride reports.

Keep 'em rolling,

Kent

The Roads Less Traveled By

We'd been buried in snow a few weeks ago and then we got the warm rains. This weekend promised sun, but an inversion layer locked all the car exhaust and woodsmoke in the low places, so our plan is to go higher. This time we are Mark, Matt and myself. Other candidates for adventure are otherwise engaged. This will be a short trip, an afternoon to put some miles in our legs, some grit beneath our wheels.

Taylor Mountain Forest is always a bit of a mystery, never adequately mapped, a park in process, more primeval than polished, a public bit of green and grey with a mysterious center. Someone didn't sell their land and the park surrounds a very private compound. Signs give dire warnings and I tell the others of my theory that if we trespass, we'll be hunted for sport.

The park trails are closed, but we are not on trails, these are the roads. Roads less traveled by, now that trucks no longer switch-back up the mountain to bring the trees in pieces back to town.

The inversion layer has inverted things, we climb into something almost like summer. We hike where we cannot bike, carrying our machines when they cannot carry us.

We stop and eat beneath old trees and study how wind and water still shape this land. We follow maps and memory, both of which are imperfect, towards a vague notion. If we knew for certain we'd be home by dark, would that be an adventure?

We ultimately figure which turn is the wrong one, and return to a world where the roads are clear but the air is hazy. Wheels roll smoothly on the pavement but we are already thinking of the next trip on roads less traveled by.

The Ride of Your Life

My pal David Rowe just released his latest ebook, The Ride of Your Life. I can't even pretend give anything like an objective review of this book since David's a buddy, some of my friends are profiled in the book and I'm in there as well. I can tell you that the book is focused on the mental side of riding distance. David presents a lot of practical advice and includes some great interviews with riders. Lon Haldeman sums it up this way:

"The Ride of Your Life is an inspiring book that will get you up off the couch and want to ride your bike. So much of the difference between exceptional riders and wannabes is the mental attitude and enthusiasm to go out and set new goals. This book is filled with practical advice from real people who share their passion for long distance cycling. During the final miles of a long ride don’t wish for fitness; wish for motivation. The Ride of Your Life is the kick in the pants you need to raise your cycling results to a new level."

One of the things David managed to do in this book is get me to recount one of the tales I've never gotten around to writing up, the story of my Raid Californie-Oregon ride. As part of the marketing blitz for this book (David is way more entrepreneurial than I am!) David created a freebie, preview edition of the book that includes the introduction, chapter one, and the interview with me.

You can read the preview edition here:

http://issuu.com/readytroride/docs/sampler_edition__peterson_

The full book has a bunch more stuff including interviews with Greg Paley, Jill Homer, Del Sharffenberg, Kitty Goursolle, and John Spurgeon. You can order the full book here:

http://www.roadbikerider.com/royl_page.htm

As I often say "keep 'em rolling." David has created a great blueprint to get you out the door and keep you rolling.

Kent

Bike Rims Wear Out

I'm starting to post some more mechanical posts on the shop blog. The first one of these is here:

http://bike-works.blogspot.com/2009/01/bike-rims-wear-out.html

Tonight's Commute

Today never really warmed up and the snow begins gently, lightly and whitely about a half hour before the 5:00 PM time when Donald and I close up the bike shop. As I wait at the slow light at the turn from Ferdinand to Rainier Avenue, I see pavement already blanketed with a thin sheet of white. The cars are still mostly rushing, their drivers hoping to outrun the weather, but the flakes are gaining ground, gently piling patience onto all our paths.

I don't have the luxury of speed or an OPEC-fueled mirage of mastery to insulate me from this night. I have studded tires, layers of wool under nylon and a single, low fixed gear to get me home. I'm pretty sure it's all I need.

I turn off Rainier onto Alaska, a street that tonight looks like its namesake. In the slightly bluish beam of my headlight, the flakes plus my forward speed draw tracer beams more special than any Hollywood effect. One flake in five-thousand rotates just right and presents a perfect dazzling mirror. I remember Jack Eason's advice and look not at the light, but at the darkness.

Along the lake the snow seems undecided, the flakes are almost rain drops now. The road coating is silent beneath my wheels, as if a layer of white, whipped grease is soaking up every sound. But my carbide studded tires never slip, gradually passing on a confidence that conditions would not seem to warrant. But fixed-gear bikes are truthful beasts, they'll tell you the second you've lost your footing. Special Ed, the bike I'd build for nights like this, relays nothing but the Gospel according to Carbide. We're going home.

The climb up though Colman Park displays a dozens of perfect pictures, but with my camera layered deep inside my jacket, this night is too cold and dark for photography. Only living eyes can capture each shining facet of each switch-backed vista. I meet one driver on the Olmsted-designed road, I'm far to the right inching my way up as he's white-knuckling his way down. We probably both would prefer to have the road just to ourselves, but we each are going home.

After the park, and the crested view looking out over Lake Washington, I turn steeply down, slow pedal motions imparting caution from my legs to my wheels. I turn onto the bridge and roll eastward.

The temperature must be right at the freezing point and the wind is out of the south. This bridge floats on the water, with a low wall separating the bike path along it's northern edge from the lanes of oncoming automobile traffic. The side-loads from wind-shear prevent the construction of a taller wall and even on a clear night, the glare from westbound headlights is a challenge for eastbound cyclists. This is not a clear night and it's just a fraction of a degree warmer on the lake. The wind whips the sleet into needles. Under my helmet, I Yehuda my cap low on my brow, its brim forming a shield against glare and grim nature.

One native story holds that what we now call Mercer Island actually rests on the back of a giant turtle and that one night the turtle will submerge. Tonight is not that night, but the turtle is blanketed in white. I skirt the island's northern edge, thankful once again that geography gives me refuge from the worst of the winds. Hemingway understood that "It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle." I would add that you need not have a coasting bike to appreciate this truth and via the exercise of a daily commute, done in a wide range of conditions, one's appreciation of geographic and meteorologic factors become the most ingrained of knowledge.

The east channel bridge is the last clean shot the wind gets at me tonight and crossing over into Bellevue I know that the vast bulk of Cougar Mountain will keep the wind on different roads than my wheels. The rest of the ride is a little higher and a degree or so cooler. The snowflakes are large and white and hexagonal again.

I climb through Factoria and up the suburban northern streets of Cougar Mountain to Newport Way. Newport is a long, gentle downhill into Issaquah my morning warm-up and my evening reward. Tonight it is especially rewarding, on the whitened road I catch a rare glimpse of another traveler, a coyote running off in search of something.

I'm home now, Christine's concern melting into a smile as she sees me roll in the door. Snow has settled everywhere, not just inches on the street but a good half-inch on my helmet and my jacket. A big hug, warm food, warm clothes, and a warm drink all displace the damp cold that had been testing every chink in my mostly weather-proof armor.

It's good to ride and it's good to be home.

Keep 'em rolling,

Kent

Three Hour Tour

By choice or chance or most likely a combination of both, most of my friends are bike people, people who are happiest when they are awheel or tinkering with what Christopher Morley correctly identified as the "vehicle of novelists and poets." Our devices capture mathematics in metal, casting abstract ratios in solid cogs and chains. Hard roads yield to soft rubber and the resiliency of captured air. Our legs don't pound, they spin. We need not walk or crawl, for we roll with a strength so smooth it seems like flying. Our simple machines, machines that cannot even stand alone without us, come to life when we balance on saddles and dance on pedals and reward us by taking us farther, faster, than we could ever go alone.

I get to ride such a machine three hours each day going back and forth to work. Friends, even some of my bike friends, don't quite get why I choose to live 18.5 miles from where I work and ride my bike back and forth. "Wouldn't it be easier to live closer?" they ask. "Or drive?"

Well, some of this is circumstance. When Christine and I first moved to Issaquah, I worked in Issaquah. My commute was about a mile and I often walked. The kids settled into school and we settled into this lovely little community at the foothills of the Washington Cascades. Over time, I got other jobs, jobs in the big city of Seattle and found I could bike there. I found I liked biking there. I found I loved biking there.

It's not about ease, it's about love but when you do what you love, it's easy.

Yes, it is easier rolling out the door on a sunny day in July than in a rainy night in November but the miles build and what begins as a choice becomes a habit and your habits become your character. I'm that character who rides everywhere.

I've learned a few things along the way. I've learned wool gloves stay warm even when they are wet. I've learned that a cycle cap keeps rain off my glasses. I know where eagles perch on Mercer Island and which patches of road ice up first. I know many of the shades of red and gold that the sunlight shows as it glints over the Cascade and Olympic mountains and I know every day will show me something new. I've changed flat tires under starlight and heard frogs singing in the moonlight.

I get three hours each day to think, to sing (badly) to myself, and write little essays in my head. I get to sweat and work up an appetite or take things easy depending on my mood. Some days I charge up the hills, some days I just survive them. But the ride is always a reward.

My daily three hour tour puts a bit of muscle on my legs and gives me a basis to launch out on longer trips. Riding Paris-Brest-Paris or the Great Divide, I measure not just in miles or kilometers but in memories of commutes, of tiny tours that add up to great distances. How many commutes does it take to reach to Brest and back, or from Montana to Antelope Wells? I know that big journeys are just small steps repeated and strung together.

People work for the weekend or slave for some retirement where they dream of doing what they want. I want to ride my bicycle and I get to do it three hours per day. As Bob Dylan said, "I can't help it if I'm lucky."

Keep 'em rolling,

Kent

The Past Is Never Past

Picture of me riding the 1999 Paris-Brest-Paris courtesy of the Internet Wayback Machine

A while back my friend Jon finally retired the section of the Mile43 webserver where I used to host a bunch of my old web pages. I have all that old stuff archived locally but I haven't gotten around to finding someplace else to host those pages. Every once in a while, I'll get an email from somebody whose gotten a 404 Not Found error while looking for http://www.mile43.com/peterson/rando.html or some other old page of mine. Eventually, I'll get around to revising and reposting the archives, but since I have a big backlog of new things I'm working on, revisiting the old stuff is definitely a back-burner project. And, thanks to the Internet WayBack Machine, I have a place to point people who are looking for copies of the old things.

The Internet WayBack Machine is one of the lesser-known treasures of the web. Hardworking geeks have been trolling the net since 1996, sweeping up all kinds of stuff and preserving our digital past. These folks are thorough, they've even managed to capture my old stuff. For example:

http://web.archive.org/web/20070623032738/http://www.mile43.com/peterson/rando.html

is a copy of my old index page.

The next time you get a 404 error, copy the address and punch it into the wayback machine at:

http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

As Faulkner observed, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

Joseph Frost is a winner!

Thanks so much to everyone who pledged some money towards fighting cancer with Team Fatty. As I promised, this morning I tallied up the pledges and for each $5 pledged, the pledger was giving a ticket in the virtual hat. Using a random number generator I found on the interweb, I randomly picked the winner.

That lucky person is Joseph Frost of Madison Wisconsin. Congrats Joe. And thanks again to everybody who pledged.

Kent

Last Chance to win the TarpTent

OK Gang, it's the day before Christmas and your last chance to Fight Cancer and be entered in the drawing for a TarpTent. Remember the money goes to a great cause and if you don't enter, you can't win. Thanks,

Kent

Hibernation

The softest thing on earth
overtakes the hardest thing on earth.
The non-existent overtakes even that
which has no interstices.
From this one recognizes the value of non-action.


-- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, verse 43