The BipedFred Blog

I went exploring north of Fort Collins aiming for the unpaved Owl Canyon road.  This is the stretch of road to the west of where Taft Hill Road ends. It’s a nice surface, great scenery, but way too many fast moving cars and it only goes 2 miles before it runs into CR72 which is worse. 

No big deal, there are plenty of other interesting roads. I’m not sure what this was, but it looked tempting in the heat.

Here’s what the country looks like on the north end of Taft Hill Road; wide open spaces.

And here’s a cornfield just north of Wellington.

I’m experimenting with Syntace C2 SL aero-bars since I’ve seen pictures of Fargo’s set up with them.  So far, they make the front end feel very heavy, it’s nice to be able to flop over and take the weight off my hands, and you can hang all sorts of crap off them. 

They may be a huge pain-in-the-arse for commuting, though, so I may use them as “Special Occasion” add-ons.

Sunday (today) seemed like a good day for exploring the dirt roads East of I-25.  Here’s one (it was looking rainy, but it didn’t).

 Here’s another.

It occurred to me that my Fargo would be worth the price even if all I did was the occasional back road ride like this one.  And it would also be worth the price if all I ever used it for was commuting.  Lucky me, I get to do both.

I hooked up my Burley trailer to my Salsa Fargo for the first time and made a run down to Wal-Mart just to try it out. The big Coleman hinged box is probably overkill (heavy) but it is nice to be able to lock it closed when shopping at more than one store.

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Pulling it with the Fargo feels a lot more solid than it ever did with my aluminum bikes. I don’t use the trailer very often, but like a pick-up truck — it sure is handy to have sometimes.

I took my Fargo on a little mixed terrain jaunt Sunday, heading for the Soapstone Prairie open space which is north of Fort Collins on the Wyoming border. I packed a lunch planning on spending a full day exploring.

I never got there.  Rawhide Flats road turns into a nasty combination of loose gravel and washboard and I don’t have a clue how to ride it. The only other bikes I saw out there were on the tops of cars so maybe it’s just not rideable (or maybe I just lack the experience and skills to handle it? Probably). I tipped over (I was going too slow to  claim I skidded out) about five miles short of the entrance to Soapstone and that completely drained my enthusiasm for the project so I turned tail and headed back the way I came.

Red Mountain is another open space adjacent to Soapstone so I headed west and found the approach road was much, much more to my liking. This is wide open country with unlimited vistas, many cows, and only one house that I could see.

I rode eight or nine miles of it and flatted my rear tire. I couldn’t find the hole, the wind was blowing so hard I couldn’t hear anything. I had only seen two cars in the last hour so I decided that thirty miles from home in the middle of nowhere was no place to tempt fate. I mounted my spare tube and headed for home (slowly, that headwind was COLD!).

So I didn’t make it to either of the open spaces, but I don’t care. Red Mountain road was beautiful, and there are hundreds of miles of other roads just like it and I’ve got all summer to explore them.

I get most of this blog’s referrals from search engine phrases in two categories.

The first is (paraphrasing) “Salsa Fargo + Commuter”.  I find it a bit surprising that so many (well, a more accurate term would be “several”) people are seeking information about a specific model of bike for the generic purpose of riding to a particular location on a set schedule (commuting).

I bet these visitors are looking for some way to justify buying a bike they want, even if they aren’t quite sure why they want it so much. 

So, Salsa Guys, if you include the word “Commute” in your Fargo web-site and maybe a picture of a Fargo with fenders and a Surly Nice Rack you would help push a few more buyers over the top.

(Here’s my brief review: Fargo — the best commuter bike ever. The pictures are here.)

The other search phrase includes “U-Lock + Carry”.  Which doesn’t surprise me in the least because I used to obsess over the best way to haul a U-lock on my bike. Here is the best way.

I’m reluctant to admit that I no longer carry a U-lock (but the Walnut Studilio holster is still the best way to carry one) since Fort Collins is not a high theft risk area for those who don’t park overnight near the CSU campus.

 I’ve been using an ABUS Steel-O-Chain which is altogether much handier than a u-lock; it’s easier to use and chains up to almost anything.

Thanks for the traffic, please send money.

First off, I didn’t buy my Fargo with commuting in mind, it was more of an afterthought. But I don’t think about a better, or different commuter bike anymore;  I’ve found mine.

The rest of this post is just filler.

My one-way commute consists (roughly) of two-three miles of semi-rural shoulder lanes, two-three miles of residential arterial bike lanes, and a varying amount of bike path. The total is seven miles and I could ride up to 4 miles of it on the bike paths, but they are MUP’s and way too slow.

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This morning (Sunday) the sun was shining and I needed to kill an hour or so before lunch.  No problem, I just hop on my Fargo and go for a ride.  I started wandering around and ended up riding on the Poudre River bike trail from Timberline to Lincoln.

I thought the trail simply ended at Lemay and you had to get onto the surface streets and dodge the heavy traffic on Lemay to get to… I dunno.  The trail picks up again around Mulberry, but I never knew how to make the connection.

Oh well, you come up on the wrong side of Lemay, and then ride downhill on this sidewalk, against traffic, and join up with the trail at the river where it goes under Mulberry.  What I can’t figure out is why they built this giagantus ped/bike bridge along Mulberry over the Poudre and who ever uses it? And why can’t they add 100 feet or so to the bike path so it’s continuous and you don’t have to ride on the dang sidewalk??

Some things can never be explained.

There are some really pretty spots along this trail, but mostly the river is hidden from view. And there are some really crappy, bumpy, and narrow sections that are miserable even on a fat tire bike, but basically the Poudre River trail is a huge asset for riders and would be a great place to put a super bikeway.

This is a section of good pavement.

Anyway, I can’t think of a better way to kill an extra hour on a sunny Sunday morning.

I haven’t bike commuted a single day this year.  But spring time is approaching and this year I’ve got a great bike to commute on and it’s all set up and ready to go. (Here’s what I think of my Fargo after a couple of weeks of commuting)

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