Sunday Ride
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.
Bike to Work Day 2010
Yippee skippee, it’s Bike to Work Day 2010. Lots of people are riding bikes and there is much free food at Whole Foods Market.
The bikes (a tiny fraction):
The people:
These folks were demoing an electric assist bike with the battery located in a little trailer. A fabulously clever idea, but they didn’t seem to be generating as much interest as the free coffee and oatmeal (What? No fritatas this year??).
Lots of people will be back to driving to work tomorrow after their little adventure. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, I’m not so sure I want to share my morning commute with all those nice people more than once a year.
Update 24-June-2010 The Day After Bike to Work Day:
Wrong again! I saw more bike riders on this morning’s commute than I ever remember seeing before, especially out in the hinterlands. I must enjoy the taste of my own words since I eat them so often.
Lucky Me
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.
Looks Can Be Deceiving
Saturday I rode to Bingham Hill Road and from there up Horsetooth. There was an accident and the road was closed just south of Dixon Dam (the one by Hughes Stadium) so I turned around at backtracked to Bellvue. I wanted to log a few more miles before I headed home so I rode five miles up Rist Canyon.
This ride elevation profile I got from my Garmin 305 caught my eye, probably because I’ve never seen Rist and Horsetooth together on the same scale.
The first five miles of Rist Canyon is the easy part (it tops out at 8,000 feet six miles up the road) and it may not look it from this profile, but the Horsetooth section was a harder ride than the Rist section.
Looks Can Be Deceiving
Guys and Leg Shaving
I almost hate to admit that I shaved my legs recently, just to see what all the hubbub is about.
First off, there are several reasons people give for shaving; all competitors do it, road rash, massages, embrocating, wind suits, some women like it, etc. None of which apply to me.
You have to understand that no other rider would notice if I rode naked and sprouted dragonfly wings, that’s how unremarkable I am. But I thought my shaved legs looked pretty cool anyway.
It’s harder than it looks, I kept finding little spots I missed and my legs itched.
And once the weather starting getting hot, I felt very self-conscious wearing shorts just walking around.
But the worst of the worst: Now I notice if other riders have hairy legs. I’m going to stay very far away from everyone until it passes.
I probably won’t try it again, but it’s still a good excuse for a poll!
So what do you think: Guys and Leg Shaving? (Answer in the Affirmative if you shaved your legs this year or expect to shave this year)
Fargo with Trailer
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.
Surly Nice Rack Light Mount
I had a couple of people ask me how I mounted the rear light on my Surly Nice Rack. I took a look at the Surly website and noticed they didn’t show the light mount, so I took some quick snaps of mine:
I’m not sure what it’s called, but there is a little barrel kind of thing welded onto the last cross piece and it is threaded.
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Planet Bike sells a rack mount for their lights here and the light I’m using here comes with the mount included.
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Using one of the machine screws that comes with the PB mount, simply screw it into the rack (use Loctite).
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That’s all there is to it.
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I have three or four other Planet Bike tail lights, including a PB Superflash, and they all work with this mount. I have another of these mounts on the Tubus Logo rack on my LHT, so my bikes and lights are all interchangeable.
Brilliant.
Places That Aren’t Fort Collins
I’m spending a few days in Dayton, OH for my nephew’s high school graduation. I’m always on the look-out for signs of bike life when I make similar short trips 2-3 times a year.
Summary for this trip: Not much.
The count after two three days is up to ten 14 bikes. My sister asked me if kids riding bikes on sidewalks count, and I said yes, “Anything with two wheels and pedals count”. Which I immediately violated when I counted a recumbent trike. Besides the trike there was one roadie, one guy pulling a dog trailer, and the rest were either parked or kids killing time.
My sister tells me there is a bike path along a river somewhere here in Dayton, but I haven’t seen it. For that matter, I haven’t seen any bike paths, bike lanes, bike parking racks or a car-top bike racks since I’ve been here. And I’ve been driving in residential neighborhoods and through a college campus, the kind of places where I would expect to see bikes.
08-Jun-2010: I’m back in Fort Collins and I made a 30 minute round trip into town for groceries around 9:00AM. I drove because it was raining and even so, I counted 15 bike riders who all looked like they had someplace to go. I didn’t bother trying to count parked bikes, racks, bike lanes, or car bike racks simply because there are too many.
Dayton is a nice place, it just isn’t Fort Collins.
