Been on a bicycle kick lately. I begrudgingly started it as a way to help with my less than gung-ho dieting I’ve been attempting. In that time, I have discovered I really enjoy it as a hobby. As I told a friend, it’s like jogging for fat people. You reach a point where you stop focusing on the difficulty of pedaling, and just glide with the bike and enjoy the scenery.

It’s also given me a chance to explore the area where I live in more detail and appreciate the great beauty around me. Today was the second time I made a circuit that took me half on a country road and half on a packed rock trail. I bought a gps mount for the bicycle and was able to see the trip was a full 10 miles. A much more enjoyable ten miles that last week’s mountain trail ride with Jason. My average speed was 10 mph, and somehow I got up to a max speed of 35 mph.

At the end of the trail I ran into this only piece of obvious graffiti.

I’m willing to forgive the persons enthusiasm at riding the trail on fixed gear bike as I just purchased a fixed gear bike myself. It’s a brand new Redline 9-2-5 2008 model in a very retro tan and burnt red paint scheme. The 2008 models haven’t even shipped yet, so it may still be another week or two before it’s delivered to my local bike shop and assembled.

As with many things in this world of ever increasing complexity, people are rebelling against the push and moving back to a cleaner, simpler way of doing things. This push has reached the bicycling world in the form of fixed-gear and single-speed bikes. Both use a single sprocket in the front and rear of the bike. They are lighter, easier to maintain, and free the rider from constantly having to break concentration to focus on switching gears. My Redline 9-2-5 has a flip-flop rear end that allows me to ride in fixed-gear mode, meaning a zero coasting always spinning pedal, or single-speed mode that has coasting. I’ll start out with the single-speed mode and maybe try the fixed-gear after a while.

Either way, I look forward to my first “new”, “real” bike and the oneness with the bike and the road I’ll hopefully derive from the simplicity of a single speed.

Well, the bike and hike was canceled, as Jason’s dog was sick and Jason couldn’t camp overnight. We were able to do the 5 mile bike in, then turn right around and bike 5 miles out.

However, Jason’s memory of the trail was completely and utterly wrong. This trail was all uphill, all rocks, and even some ledge climbing and fording streams - with our bikes on our backs.

After we actually survived, I decided it was a great adventure. During the times I was planing over beds of rocks, or dodging grapefruit size boulders, I wasn’t too sure.

I took only one dive at low speed on an uphill. Jason fell so many times I lost count. His only damage was his pride and an old GPS unit he had in his backpack. To his credit, he was riding a bike with egg-beater pedals and thin cyclocross tires. His new 800 dollar bike he just had to test out. I was on my trusty 50 dollar Trek 820. Only one on-trail repair, a screw fell out of my luggage rack.

Onto the photos:

These first three are the first bridge we came upon. Lovely small rocky waterfall and clear pool below.

We actually thought we hit the end of the trail here. We were confused though as the GPS said we traveled only 4 miles, not five. As we climbed some very large boulders to the left, we saw a small stream, then a very narrow trail continuing on. We had to climb carrying our bikes to reach it.

Trails end, at least for us. Shortly after this the path becomes hikeable only. The picture doesn’t do the waterfall justice. It’s a massive rock face climbing to the sky with water pouring powerfully down it. Below is a large crystal clear pool that leads off again as a stream.

After a rest and some food and drink, we turned around and did it again. Returning was downhill and much better going except for a few very rocky patches. We ended up completing the 10 miles in about 4 hours.

The view on my after work bike ride….

Friday at work Jason brought up the idea of a combination biking and hiking adventure. He said it would be an “easy” 6 mile bike and 6 mile hike to some particular wonderful lake. We’d camp over one night, then hike back to our bikes (that we left chained to trees) and bike the rest of the way out to the parking lot and our cars.

While this sounded to me like something a tri-athlete would do, not doughy tech industry guys, Jason assured me it would be easy and fun. I mostly agreed to it since Jason is just about as doughy and inactive as me. I imagine the point he would start crying and curl up into a fetal ball begging for his mommy to be roughly fifteen minutes after me.

So, first step was to buy a cheap but decent mountain bike for the adventure. One that we wouldn’t be too crushed about if it walked off during the night we camped over at the lake. I was the first to strike gold with a very nice Trek 820 from a 10 minute old craigslist posting. Googling shows the overall opinion of the bike to be a nice entry-level “real” bike. Definitely better that any K-Mart or Target bike. What really sold it for me was the brand new tires, brand new pedals, and a rear luggage rack. All for only 50 bucks..

Here’s Sarah taking it for a spin today. This ones mine though. She can get her own…

Arrived home to find the parts to my windshield bracket sitting at the front door. Of course I had to install it right away and head out on the highway for a bit while the memory was still fresh. And of course, yes, it makes a huge difference. The trip would of been a much better if I had had it..

According to the trip display of my insanely useful Garmin Quest GPS that I used on this adventure, I traveled a total of 1,106.8 miles. My moving average speed was 57.3mph. I was moving for a total of 19 hours and 19 minutes. I will never take another bike trip without the Quest. It was like having Google Maps whispering in my ear the whole time. I used it once when I reached critical gas levels to find the closest station, several times to reroute me to motels and hotels after previous ones were booked, and a overall pace meter for the best times to stop to stretch or get gas…

I suffered only a oddly numb thumb that has mostly faded and a stiff hand from trying to not to fly off the bike while going 75-80mph on I-90. US2 was nice for a while in Washington state, but really not too impressive in Idaho or Montana (not to mention some nasty road construction I ran into while on it). I-90 home was a surprisingly gorgeous ride which would of been perfect if I would of had the windshield to stop the constant struggle I had with the wind. Overall, a nice little “end of my vacation” trip.

Big bad biker guy could only find vacancy at a Victorian B&B…. Feather bedding down in Davenport, WA…

MILES…

Is what I traveled yesterday. On Friday the 10-day forecast showed me ten days of sunny weather. By Sunday it was revised to 9 days straight of rain after a dry Monday.

I was planning a long bike ride into Montana to pass the last two weeks of my vacation. I planned on getting my saddlebags in the mail on Tuesday, and leaving tuesday afternoon. But after the forecast change I quickly whipped up a nice dayride that would take me over two mountain passes, never seeing the same scenery twice.

(click to see it in google maps..)

It was a quite enjoyable ride that had me pulling back into the driveway at around 6pm. Oh, I did finally get the saddlebags in the mail today and got them installed, after a few problems, around 7pm. The ten-day forecast has changed once again though, and I might be able to get a full week of riding in just yet. Now at least I’ll be able to bring clothes. :-)