Cycling Spokane

Bike Swap + Tag from Jason

2008-07-24T22:03:00.001-07:00

Swap

The word from Mr. Blaine: There will be an informal Bike Swap on Sunday August 10th 8am to 11am in the Wheelsport South parking lot at 29th and Regal. No fees or sign up. Buy, Sell or Trade. Tell your friends.

The latest cycling meme... From fatcyclist via 100km

If you could have any one — and only one — bike in the world, what would it be?

I'm pretty close with my hacked RB-T. I call it a Wetmorian: steep angles, low trail, takes 35+ fenders, canti brakes, standard gauge tubing. Same old same old from me.

Do you already have that coveted dream bike? If so, is it everything you hoped it would be? If not, are you working toward getting it? If you’re not working toward getting it, why not?Do you already have that coveted dream bike? If so, is it everything you hoped it would be? If not, are you working toward getting it? If you’re not working toward getting it, why not?

I pretty much do have that bike. Except for the tire clearance and I'd rather have 7-4-7 tubing and bit bigger frame size: 59 cm I think. Some day it will happen. I'm not working toward that specific bike at the moment; I am working on two others. Life is too short to focus on one bike and I have still have a lot to learn about bikes and what I like.

If you had to choose one — and only one — bike route to do every day for the rest of your life, what would it be, and why?

It would have to have a great climb; a great descent. Some good dirt roads; some nice smooth trails. Good views. Maybe an urban traffic section. Good coffee. Good food. Start with the south hill trails to Joe's Marshall Loop then back downtown, up Greenwood, across Palisades, down to the river at SFCC. Up doomsday for a cruise through the park and a stop for a burrito at Neato. A stop at the Scoop on the way home.

What kind of sick person would force another person to ride one and only one bike ride to to do for the rest of her / his life?

hm. meme tax question.

Do you ride both road and mountain bikes? If both, which do you prefer and why? If only one or the other, why are you so narrow minded?

I'll go with the "fat tired road bike" option. I hate this distinction.

Have you ever ridden a recumbent? If so, why? If not, describe the circumstances under which you would ride a recumbent.

Yes. I wanted to try them. I'll keep trying them as long as friends loan them to me.

Have you ever raced a triathlon? If so, have you also ever tried strangling yourself with dental floss?

No. And I have zero interest in attempting it. No.

Suppose you were forced to either give up ice cream or bicycles for the rest of your life. Which would you give up, and why?

I'd give up ice cream. It gives me gas anyway and I'm mostly off the dairy at this point as it is.

What is a question you think this questionnaire should have asked, but has not? Also, answer it.

Do you have goals around cycling? If so what?

Yes. Cylocross in the fall. 2 races. Don't come in dead last.

You’re riding your bike in the wilderness (if you’re a roadie, you’re on a road, but otherwise the surroundings are quite wilderness-like) and you see a bear. The bear sees you. What do you do?

I've thought of this scenario. If there is a cub involved. I don't move. Except for maybe dropping a load. If not, scream yell make noise and hope the bear runs. If the bear stays, the plan ends with me in a fetal position guarding my head/neck and hoping for the best.

Now, tag three biking bloggers. List them below.

Taylor, Hank, Alex. Sorry guys. But please play along.

Spokane to Everett: Day 3

2008-07-22T12:08:00.001-07:00

Done. 80 miles today. Marblemount to Everett. Mostly unremarkable. Full report to follow.

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Spokane to Everett: Day 2

2008-07-22T07:33:00.000-07:00

I slept like a dead man last night. I was on the road at 5:30 this morning. I started by finishing the 5 miles or so of the climb up Loup Loup pass. That's a small pass that packs a punch: about 10 miles straight up on both sides.

That first five miles provided a good taste of the day to come. I spent most of the day climbing. I crested three passes. And I learned that my GPS does actually compute altitude accurately.

The one element that really helped today was the water falls along the climb. I immeresed fully 3 times. It was glorious.

All up: 120 miles. 11.5 hours on the bike. I've got about 80 miles to go tomorrow.

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Spokane to Everett: Day 1

2008-07-20T18:47:00.001-07:00

I wanted to make it to Winthrop. I fell short by about 20 miles. I rode about 175 miles today. That's 14.5 hours in the saddle. I'm damn tired.

I ended up at Sweat Creek Campground. It's "primitive." And no one is here. Which is both kind of nice, and kind of creepy.

The last three hours has been solid climbing. The big stuff is tomorrow: Washington and Rainy passes.

Time for bed.

My 37th Bday

2008-07-18T23:43:00.000-07:00

More front load love

2008-07-17T13:15:00.000-07:00

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Two Things

2008-07-16T14:23:00.000-07:00

#1 Racks

I took this picture yesterday at about 5:45 PM at Huckleberry's on 10th Ave. The guy standing there is gaurding three bikes. There's another 3 in the rack and there was a guy with a X-check pulling a BOB trailer that's outside the picture.

Huckleberries is a ready for another rack.

About a month ago I posted about how the DSP are working to get a bunch of my favorite racks into downtown. Well, they're going to put the order in for a load of racks. If you want one, or if you want your favorite business to get one, then you'll need to pre-pay $260 before the order goes in next week. Interested? Contact Andrew at DSP (ARolwes at downtownspokane dot net).

#2 Sale'n

For those of you slackers that don't have jobs or that don't have to work on Fridays, go hang out with Jacque for an easy ride around the south hill. He's garage sale'n. This will test out your load-carrying-capacity for your city bike. Meet at The Scoop at 9am this Friday morn if you're interested.

Riding to School

2008-07-16T11:09:00.000-07:00

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That Oil Thing

2008-07-15T09:49:00.001-07:00

I don't really like going into this kind of stuff here, but at some point, if you ride enough --especially if it's riding to get to work, store, or other non-recreational riding -- the ridiculousness of our car-culture will hit you like a ton of bricks.

Riding your bike will not insulate you from the rise in oil prices. Clearly, our entire economy is based on the fact that oil is cheap.

There are a bunch of interesting sub-topics around high oil prices: transportation, urban planning, bio fuels, politics of NIMBY drilling, ANWAR, refinery issues, the war in Iraq, oil speculation... the list goes on and all of these issues are connected. And there is very little consensus on what "THE ANSWER" is.

I know one thing: the quality of our children's future relies on our generation to make some changes in our lifestyle. And that's the last thing people want to hear.

Anyway. The guy on the phone in this YouTube clip is Matthew Simmons. The absolute recognized world expert on oil and oil production. He was the advisor to HW Bush and an advisor to Cheney and Co. He's an ex-oil guy with tons of creds on both sides of the aisle.

The look on the faces of the talking heads as he explains why oil is still cheap at $140/barrel and will only go higher is priceless.

He also explains the fix: we need to make some changes in how we live.

Cracked Up

2008-07-12T18:26:00.001-07:00

Click to see a mondo picture of THE CRACK

The careful reader of cyclingspokane will remember that a few days ago I mentioned how I went over the bars on my RB-1. And how afterwards a little creaking noise began. Well, there it is. The crack at the bottom bracket.

Dang. My bike karma is is coming home to roost lately. Wheel issues on the RB-1 and the RB-T (the RB-T needs a new rim -- it's offical); my cranks on my blue RB-T have been revolting on me too. Now a cracked bottom bracket shell.

I guess I'll haul it over to Hairy Gary and see what the cost is for replacing the shell. If I don't replace the shell what'll I do with this bike?

I tried riding it today; I think I could get away with riding it and listening for the creak to get louder. That's the benefit of steel right? It fails gradually. With lots of creaking and groaning and swaying and bending.

Damn!

Mini Epic Ride

2008-07-11T21:06:00.000-07:00

"Mini Epic," I guess that's an oxymoron. That's fitting after today's ride. I feel a bit like a moron.

I was finally able to do the Mica Peak climb I was hoping to do a couple Fridays ago. I had the rare occurrence of having a crummy ride. There were lots of contributing factors.

The biggest reason was that I ran out of water way too early and pushed it too far without water. I was about 3/4 up the hill when I ran out of water. But I was so close. I knew there wouldn't be water at the top -- yet I kept going. Dumb.

My knee has been bugging me a bit lately. Normally I stand on long climbs like this and just take it slow, but there was an inch or so of loose gravel and the grade was crazy steep. So I couldn't engage the rear wheel unless I sat down. My RB-T is not geared for spinning up climbs. For rock stars it would be fine: 30/28; but for me that's grinding. So my knee paid for that -- not having gobs of water didn't help the knee either I assume. So that was stupid too.

After I got to the top I took a quick walk around the buildings to see if I'd get lucky and find a water tap. No luck.

As I bombed down the other side, which was really an old road: bigger than a trail, but narrower than a road, my camera popped out of my handlebar bag. It popped out because I didn't close the pocket it was in. Of course I didn't see it. This required an hour of back tracking UP the hill again... only to find it about 100 feet from where I had started to back track. By this time I was beginning to feel a bit lightheaded for lack of water. Lame.

I finally ran across some water trickling down the side of a hill. I drank two bottles worth w/out treating it. (Sounds lame, but I trust water that comes out of the side of a hill, especially if there's no grazing up above. But we'll see, maybe my next blog post will be about how I stayed up puking all night.)

I got off course and a bit lost for while. I only packed a GPS. I didn't even bring my Spokane County map. If I had a good map, I would enjoyed the ride down the hill after finding water. Instead, I had to rely on my GPS, which is OK, but not enough. You need the context provided by a map. I got lost for about an hour as the trail got narrower, rockier, and steeper. There were also a lot of fallen trees across the path. Sucky.

By the time I popped out on a logging road that appeared to have been traveled in the last 10 years, it was 3pm. I had company coming at 5. The road finally led me out of the woods and to Highway 27. I hammered on the Palouse. By the time I got to the climb to Baltimore, I was pretty shot. At that point, some racer dude passed me and said, "Good job!" That is a damn condescending thing to say to someone when you pass them.

I was home by 4:30.

Here's the GPS output:

Lies. Mica Peak is not 5000 feet. I think it's about 4600. But all the same. The climb is pretty severe and packed into about 8 miles.

There's lots to explore in that area; I'll go back next summer and find a better route. I'll also bring more water and a map.

Even though it was not a fun ride; it was still worthwhile. Lots of obvious lessons there that I'm embarrassed to think that I still need to learn.

An Easy One to Support

2008-07-11T07:37:00.001-07:00

If you are looking for easy money to spend and a good meal on Sunday night, here's a slam dunk.

Jacque smashed out 8 teeth and busted her jaw when she wrecked on her bike a few weeks ago. She needs help with bills to put everything back together. Last I heard this was in the $30k range. The event is a fundraiser at the Wild Sage this Sunday night.

The Wild Sage is hands-down my favorite full-service place in town. And Jacque's step-dad is just a really good guy who loves riding. To top it off, one of the silent auction items is a a Pedals2People Basic Maintenance Class for you and 3 friends, taught by Liza-the-Great.

See you there.

Wheel Woes

2008-07-08T20:52:00.000-07:00

Nice dish!

It's been sort of a crummy few days for mechanicals. On Sunday I did that road bike thing on my RB-1. The front wheel slid in between the slats on the Bowl and Pitcher suspension bridge. I went over the bars; the wheel slid all the way down to the hub. Nothing broken, but the front wheel has a bit of a wobble to it and there's one of those super lame impossible to diagnose little creaky noises coming out of the bottom bracket chain ring pedal area. Errg!

As for my RB-T dirt machine trail rider: I knew I was a bit rough on it last week in Bayview. I was doing too fast descending on rough, rocky, rooty, washed out logging roads. It was really fun, but I can remember at least 3 brutal rear wheel impacts that made me grunt on behalf of the bike.

I really shanked the rear wheel. I trued it up a bit last week and there was still a huge bump in it. So tonight, I attempted another full-on rebuild: loosening the spokes all the way and rebuilding it. There's a good dent (and is that a hairline crack?) in it and a pretty severe flat spot. I can't achieve equal tension, roundness, dish, and lateral trueness at the same time -- not even close. If I get reasonable lateral trueness and tension, there's huge bumps in it; by the time I work out the bumps, it slides out of truness and the tension goes to crap. By the time I fix true that out, the dish is off. It's frustrating and I'm no pro wheel builder. I can do a new Velocity rim pretty well, but this kind of stuff is beyond me.

Oh. And I have a flat now too. Nice.

So, I'm running a 36 hole LX hub with a 700c Velocity Synergy OC rim. I'm wondering if maybe a Deep V rim would be stronger? All other things equal, which is stronger? The beefiness of the Deep V or the OC-ness of the Synergy?

Any opinions out there? Is there a better 36 hole rim to run with this? The hub is fine. Within reason, weight is not an issue. I want strong and I don't want to buy a new hub.

How about the Blunt? It's 28mm wide! Maybe the Dyad makes more sense?

Trails and Climbs - Far and Near

2008-07-04T13:28:00.000-07:00

GDR'er

Mr. Blaine is out. A few days ago David hadn't SPOT'd for about 24 hours and had only a short check-in where he mentioned a stomach problem. He dropped out of the race a few days ago with a high fever. I was thinking of keeping the GDR-links here to see the race through, but when I learned that David wasn't in the running, I sort of stopped keeping track of the other racers. So, if you want to keep track, you best book mark this link: http://greatdividerace.blogspot.com/

However, I am interested to see how Jen Hopkins does. Jen is also a single-speeder. And a woman. Both of these attributes put her in a special class for record-holding in the GDR. She and David were in the same neighborhood for a day or two as they rode. She's holding up well.

Mr. Blaine: you gave it a go and I'm certain you'd be rolling over the finish line next week if not for your fever. I would love to know more about your ride, and I hope you provide a ride report on your blog. My hat is off to you sir for the attempt.

A couple days ago

I rode around the Gov't Way/Palisades Park area. Last time I did this specific ride was with Joe about 4 years ago. It includes a climb up the side of Rimrock. And not the "climb" we normally talk about when we're talking bikes, but a real "climb" where you have to climb about 15 feet of ledge-rock. The alternative is to back track a mile or so of steepish-single-tracky-rocky-old road. And after earning my way up that stretch of hill in the 90 degree heat, I'm not turning back for a stinking rock wall.

The picture above shows the base of the climb. With two people this is easier, but I figured out a way to climb this by put the bike in front of me as shown here. Then, you pick the bike up, set it up the hill an arm's length away. Hold the brake. Climb up closer. Repeat. It works well as long as you can sort of stand on the hill/ledge. When the drop becomes too steep, as it does here at the end, it's a "hope you have good footing and throw-a-bike" kind of deal.

Here's how the bike "landed." Nice Spokane view there in the back ground.

This last picture shows where the road ends. I think many years ago the road went where the erosion/cliff deal is now. Today, there is a trail that leads you up to a bunch of big rocks, which put you at the base of the climb. And that's the easiest climb out of there.

By the way, the picture at the very top of this post is down by the river, just below SCC. There is a great trail from the Centennial Trail. Here's my guess of where it's at:

View Larger Map

This is an old timey trail. I think I first rode it when I was about 16. It was my first intro to "mountain biking." Course now, it's way more fun on a drop-bar'd fattish tired road bike.

Bayview Rides

2008-07-03T20:33:00.000-07:00

Took two fun rides today in the Bayview area.
The first was a solo morning monster climb on logging roads.
The second was a ride around the trails at Farragut State Park with Liza the righteous disco queen. She just loves that $75 bike.
Maddie played and swam hard all day.
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Speaking of Flats

2008-06-30T22:55:00.000-07:00

My brother-in-law is in town for a week. He brought his bike, which he's just starting to kind of ride more. He got a flat today on his way up the south hill. He had all the stuff to change his flat, but had never changed a flat on a bike before.

Some other cyclist stopped and helped him out. Cool. If the anonymous cyclist is reading this: thanks for being a cool cyclist.

I always try to stop and make sure broke down cyclists have what they need. I'm pretty good at it, but I'm going to be better, because my BIL, who is quiet and probably didn't go on and on with thanks, was really thankful. It's a nice way to bring new cyclists into the fold as well.

SmartRoutes

If you want to know what Spokane would do with $50 million dollars for a transportation mode shift to include more cycling/walking, read the SmartRoutes plan. This plan was just released today and will go off to the US DOT for the 2010 Transportation funding cycle.

A bunch of people threw in on this plan to pull it together in the last couple months. The main driver was Eve Nelson at SRTC. It was a herculean effort to make this happen. Nice job Eve.

Italian dude with his folder. Liza took this picture a couple years ago. She asked him if he would mind if she tooka shot of his bike.He said he didn't care, then he struck this pose.

Great Divide Update

Mr. Blaine is hanging in there; he's about in the upper middle of the pack. Sounds like stomach issues are plaguing him. The number 2 rider dropped out today as did another rider. From the GDR update page, it sounds like this is where things go from miserable to gruelling.

Alternate Friday Ride

2008-06-27T17:32:00.000-07:00

Plans change.

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Another Reason To Go to an Indians Game

2008-06-26T10:31:00.001-07:00

Yes, that's a Ute hiding in the shadows

I am not a sports guy. Seriously, I could care less who wins any basketball, football, or baseball game. I don't really care who wins the Tour either. When my buddy Taylor was racing the other day, I really wanted him to win, but frankly, the fascination with major league sports in this country weirds me out.

All that said: I LOVE going to Spokane Indian's baseball games. It's a great family summer time thing. The games are high scoring, the beer is cheap, and all the seats are great, especially the cheap-o ones on the 1st base outfield side.

In addition, the club has a sweet new (secondary) logo, with Salish words in it. That's just cool.

Now the ball park has a new bike rack. The rack was made with the recycled hunks of steel tubing that resulted from the remodel during the off season. And the rack is a good design.

Go to a game. Here's the schedule.

Full disclosure: I got a free Indians coffee cup for my ad-hoc-bike-rack-consulting service. So I guess that officially makes me a shill. I was determined not to take anything in return for going out there and agreeing that the place they had picked for the rack was a good place. But -- the mug, with the Salish language logo on it -- was more than I could say no to.

Exploring Dirt Roads

2008-06-24T13:40:00.000-07:00

The plan. Click to go to Bikely and see the route.

I like finding new dirt roads and exploring areas that are not traveled frequently. These two goals go hand in hand. On Friday, I'm going to check out a stretch of forest that I've looked at a lot online, but have not actually ridden much. The section in the picture above is about 18 miles of logging/back roads between Freeman and Green Acres. From the looks of it, we'll see some good climbs and lots of dirt roads and hopefully some nice views.

Sometimes it's hard to find a route through these kinds of areas. If you go to Google Maps and look at this area, this route is not apparent unless you toggle between Map view and Satellite view. Those are apparently two different data sets of the same area.

I wish Google Maps or Google Earth had an easy way to export paths to a Garmin-compatible format (gpx). Instead, I have to load up the route into Bikely, then output as KML (because the gpx that Bikely outputs is not compatible with the Garmin software I use -- it used to be, but something changed), then use some freeware to convert KML to Garmin-happy GPX, then dump the GPX onto my GPS unit. This will give us a basic route to follow.

If you look at the satellite imagery of this area you see a bunch of dirt roads, so it's important to have something to get through them. I used to have a bunch of maps and carry a compass, which I was only sort of good at using. But now, with GPS, any Nimrod (sorry Tarik) can get lost and die in the middle of nowhere when the batteries die!

Blaine Update

Check out 100km; Jason is doing some good updates there.
Mr. Blaine is holding his own plus some. According to the Leader Board, David was first into Wise River checkpoint yesterday.
I worry for his rest.

Following the GDR

2008-06-22T14:00:00.000-07:00

A GDR race named Simon.

Picture sniped from the GDR update site. Click pic to go to the site.

I've spent a bit of time watching progress for the GDR race. I don't really know David Blaine that well, but it's still more exciting to keep track of the race when you have even a wee bit of a connection to one of the racers.

So, going into Day 3, one racer has already dropped out at 26 hours into the race. His rack broke and zip ties would not fix it.

Check out the links I added up there on the right. I think they are the most interesting.

Here's a run down what they offer:

GDR Update

For daily updates go to GDR Updates. A couple days ago they posted a quick bio/pic of each GDR rider. This is good stuff.

Click on the pics for high resolution pictures where you can see a good close up the bike/gear the riders are hauling. I spent about an hour pouring over those pictures yesterday.

Gear and bike choices for this kind of event are all about trade-offs. I think David's approach of optimizing for simplicity is the way to go. It seems you should minimize the uncontrolled variables. I look at some of these double-suspended mountain bikes with index shifting and carbon bits and I'm skeptical. More complexity means more tools/parts, which means more weight, bulk, and general packing fussiness, which I would think are the biggest enemies of such a race.

Man, that's some serious arm-chair quarterbacking.... apologies. As someone once said: these guys have chunks of guys like me in their stool.

GDR Leader Board

Anyway, For a run down of who is where in the race, check out the spreadsheet at GDR Leader Board. Right now, Mr. Blaine is in 3rd place -- but really, it looks like there are 5 guys at the front within a half hour of each other.

David's SPOT Finder

SPOT shows near-real-time-updates of where Mr Blaine is at. You can also look through the time stamps to get a feel for his speed and rest. He did well last night. Looks like he slept for around 7 hours or so. That's good sleeping. I wonder how his rest patterns will evolve over the course of the race.

Tuesday Bike Stuff

2008-06-17T22:08:00.000-07:00

Item #1 - Jonathon Chung

Jonathon is from Taiwan. He's been riding around North America since last August. He's traveled 7400 miles so far. I've been signed up as a host on the warmshowers list for over 2 years now, and while I've taken advantage of others' hospitality, Jonathon was my first guest. Yay.

What a cool guy; very gracious.

Some facts:

50 lbs of gear
Started from the mid-west, went to Toronto, then down the east coast, through the south to San Diego, then up the west coast to Vancouver BC. Now he's on his way back down to LA via the Great Divide.
His visa expires in August so he's flying back
He's replaced a spoke, 3 rear tires, the rear cassette, and the rear derailleur. Not bad.

Item #2: Bad Lands Summer Twilight Series race at Lincoln Park

My friend Taylor (no. 240) came in 3rd in the "B" class. The first 3 finishers were all within a foot or so of each other as they blasted over the finish line. What a great race. It's fun to watch and learn about racing and the Lincoln Park race is perfect because it's such a small course. You can walk around and see the different sections and the challenges in each section.

Taylor (in blue) and the dude in red broke away from the pack early in the race for a $2 preme. (Cha-ching!) The guy who won the race ended up breaking from the pack in the last few minutes, but otherwise the pack stayed back by about 20 seconds for the entire race after the preme. For the majority of the race, Taylor pulled the guy in red up a slight grade at the back side of the course, while Taylor drafted the red guy on the down grade.

Next Lincoln Park crit is July 15th at 6PM. Put it on the calendar now. This is a great after-work no-money-fun event.

Item #3 - BAB'ing

I wish I could've stayed to watch the C's and A's race, but I had to get down to East Central Community Center and pitch my favorite route to the neighborhood council. The route goes through Playfair, which is going on the auction block very soon.

My mission was to get the neighborhood to make sure bike/ped access is baked into the plan regardless of who ends up with this key connection. The neighborhood ended up passing a resolution that supported access to Playfair as long as it didn't disrupt the sale -- so it's sort of a good thing, but I would've liked a stronger statement with some bite.

Item #4 - Mr Blaine update

According to SPOT, it looks like he's bedding down outside of Libby MT tonight on the southern tip of Lake Koocanusa. The race starts on Friday.

Item #5 - FBC Ride tomorrow night

Meet at Benidittos South at 8. Ride at 9.

Loon Lake Loop

2008-06-15T22:08:00.000-07:00

View Larger Map

Another great day of riding. Today capped a great weekend of riding and hanging out. Joe and I enjoyed the perfect weather today and took a spin out to Loon Lake. We stuck mostly to the back roads. We enjoyed some nice dirt roads. And I got bit by a dog -- on my bum.

This is a typical road that we traveled today. Nice rural roads with low traffic.

This is a tick I found on my ankle as we sat and drank a cup of coffee in Deer Park. Pretty gross, eh? Nasty little parasitic bastard. When I got home later in the day, I took a shower and two more fell off me. Yuck! I expect these little bastards hitched a ride when Alex and I rode through the waist-high grass a couple days ago. I don't know how they survived one shower on Saturday, but not today's? Whatever. I hope I got them all.

Joe's sister-in-law has a cabin on Loon Lake. After lunching at the famed Dinner Bell, we drug out the kayaks and took a quick spin around the west side of the lake. I've not really done any kayaking. I tipped it over instantly and got soaked. Otherwise, I found it to be a perfect complement to cycling. Your legs just lay there while the upper body does all the work. Fun.

This is a typical phone-cam shot: cruddy. The clouds were amazing today. I'd never thought of our clouds until the discussion on MetroSpokane about our amazing Spokane clouds last week. Yeah, we do have pretty sweet clouds.

The area we rode through was really neat in its ruralness. Unlike the south/palouse area, which seems to attract the McMansion crowd, much of the north west area is still more traditional rural. There's a McMansion or McWanky Northwestern Log Cabin here and there, but overall, the region is really charming and still has a lot of original, small churches and lots of grange halls. All of these buildings were in operation.

When I got back to Spokane, I showered quickly and pedaled up to my parents' house for a Father's Day feast (Liza and Maddie are out of town this week). Look at that dinner: corn on the cob; grill roasted asparagus salad; grilled portobello with tomato, sweet onion, basil, and mozzarella; and a grilled pepper stuffed with herbed rice. WORD!

My mom is such a great cook.

-Begin shameless plugs

My mom's cooking company website: Apple Charlotte Cooking Company.

And, P2P dinner-fundraiser with Apple Charlotte

-- end shameless plugs

Alex Visit

2008-06-14T19:04:00.000-07:00

Alex visited over the last day and half. We had a good time.

We went on a S24O on Thursday night. Alex photo'd and blogged the Badger Lake run on his site. We had perfect weather. It was nice to wake up and be able to pack up without freezing. I think the low was in the high 40's. Very nice.

Alex suggested trying a different way back, so Friday morning we discovered a new chunk of a road that I'd not taken before, which turned out to be a winner. If I make the Badger run again this year, I'll take it again. It's neat because it's basically a deprecated road that cuts through some old forest and meadow. Much of the road had grass as tall as our wheels.

Me wrapping bar tape on the newly adjusted bars. Click pic for more Alex pics

When we got back on Friday morning, we replaced the stem on my 520 Porteur build that I've been fussing with. The bars are now much lower and don't force you to sit so upright. It's much better, but I think I may still end up finding a new bar.

We had a BBQ with friends at my house and then took a ride. Alex hauled much of the beer on the porteur, while Jon hauled some in a bucket pannier, and I hauled a tiny cooler on my bike.

This morning we rode Maddie's Bike Friday Family tandem downtown to decorate bikes for the Out Spokane Pride Parade.

Between Alex, his crud, my crud, and me, we had about 400 pounds on the tandem, so it handled a bit differently than it does with Maddie on the back. I wish we had a picture of us on the bike. My dad took a shot. Maybe he'll send it so I can post it here.

Alex and I sort of felt like circus clowns on that bike, but it was fun to get a taste of tandem riding with an adult. Alex demonstrated how by leaning in the back he could really influence the direction of the bike. I also learned that I should adjust the front brake. Stopping at the light at Monroe and 3rd after the fast descent was a bit to squishy for my liking.

As the P2P'ers lined up for the parade, Alex had to get to the airport, so he taxi'd out. I've been wanting Alex to come and hang out in Spokane for a while so it was good to finally get him here.

Loren and David

2008-06-11T20:58:00.001-07:00

That's Loren. I've known Loren for over 20 years. Nice guy - a kind and gentle soul. I caught him today just as he finished riding his bike up Monroe. The steep part of Monroe. The crazy steep hard part. With a full team's worth of baseball crud slung over his back. Strong guy, that Loren.

Here's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow: it's Huckleberry's! There's a rainbow there. Damn phone camera.

New links at the top right. Mr. Blaine is heading for Montana on Monday. A week from tomorrow, the Great Divide Race begins. Check out the SPOT link. David can push out regular notifications of where he's at on the course. Pretty cool.

I'll attempt semi-regular updates of David's progress here.

Good luck to you sir.

Thinking Happy Thoughts

2008-06-10T11:16:00.000-07:00

That was not snow this morning mixed in with rain.