Author: Bike Hermit®

Categories
Advocacy/Awareness

Adventure Cycling Association’s 40th Anniversary Weekend, 2016

aca Working backwards from July 15 I find that I can make a good case for leaving Boise on the 2nd and riding the bike for about two weeks, ending up in Missoula, MT for Adventure Cycling Association’s 40th Anniversary celebration. In the meantime I can ride with my wife and daughter on the Pioneer Mountains Scenic Byway and attend my sister’s 60th birthday party in Bozeman. Since I always have my bike and bike touring gear ready, when these opportunities appear I am ready. Somebody has to do it.

More about the ride at crazyguyonabike.com 

Adventure Cycling Association World Headquarters is in Missoula, MT because that’s where the four founders lived when they started the Bikecentennial organization, which would later become ACA.

In 1976 bike touring was an extreme sport. Extreme enough that National Geographic would pay for an article written by somebody willing to ride their bicycle from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego.   In 2016 that would be an epic bike ride. In 1976 it must have seemed impossible. Four people started the ride they dubbed Hemistour. Two people finished. The other two returned to Missoula to work on what would become Bikecentennial and Adventure Cycling Association. These four are the people whose stories interest me. Two of them spoke at the reception on Friday night and to me this was one of the highlights of the weekend.

Today, Adventure Cycling Association has 50,000 members and has catalogued over 45,000 miles of bicycle routes in the USA. They have 6 cartographers on staff and the maps of the ACA routes are the best available for bike touring. 100 supported and self-supported guided bike trips are offered by ACA and they publish Adventure Cyclist magazine. Advocacy for cycling and bike touring, how-to resources and the Bike Overnights website round out the most prolific bicycle related not for profit organization I am aware of.

My informal interviews and observations of the attendees over the weekend pointed to two demographics at this event; those who participated in all or part of Bikecentennial in 1976 and those who were not born or were very young in 1976. From this “data” I might interpolate the broader population of bike tourists in the US to be from one or the other of these same demographics.

I wonder if the younger demographic of people traveling by bike nowadays is the same group that rode Bikecentennial 40 years ago. By that I mean what Dan Burden called in his speech, “children of the 60’s” who wanted change. Rebels with no credentials for bike touring or building an organization other than a belief in what they are doing. I want to think they are learning humility and how to suffer. Learning that they are not entitled to anything. Learning patience and how to go slow. Learning how to work together to solve problems.

At least, that idea gives me hope.

 

Categories
Lights and Electronics Touring Bike Accessories

Minoura Phone Grip Smart Phone Holder

smart phone holder fo bicycle
The Minoura Phone Grip Smart Phone Holder (iH-520-STD) is the best handlebar mount phone holder I have found. The metal bar clamp is hinged and comes with rubber shims to fit various diameter bars. There are two versions, the only difference between the two being the size of the bar clamp. Over Size fits bars 27.2-35mm in diameter and the Standard Size fits bars 22.2-28.6mm in diameter.

A solid handlebar mounted phone holder keeps the phone within easy reach when touring and is nice when using the GPS or map apps. If one has a dynamo hub and converter, it’s a simple matter to plug the phone in while going down the road. Even when not using or charging the phone it is nice to have a secure place to keep it.

A base plate bolts onto the bar clamp and the phone holder itself bolts onto the base plate. The disc shaped base plate and the phone holder interface with each other by means of radial grooves allowing the phone holder to rotate in 9 degree increments for adjustment of the phones angle.

Solid clamp and adjustable base.
Solid clamp and adjustable base.

The side wings grip the phone tightly and release by pulling the red lever on the bottom of the base. Pressing the red lever all the way in locks the wings in place. The holder ships with two sets of interchangeable side wings for different phone thicknesses. The tall wings fit my Droid phone with Otter Box case.
Minoura side wings

phone in holder
Width to spare with the Droid phone and Otter Box case

Adjustable upper and lower arm brackets can be locked in place once adjusted to the phone being used to keep it from slipping up or down. For iPhone 6 a longer lower bracket is included. A silicone band is attached to the bottom of the case and can be used as extra insurance that the phone won’t accidentally fall off.

Standard upper and lower arm brackets
Standard upper and lower arm brackets

The extended lower arm for iPhone 6
The extended lower arm for iPhone 6

This gets the Bike Hermit® approval for a solid and secure attachment of the phone to the bars. This phone holder also has a lower profile than some of the other ones I have seen and is less prone to getting snagged on something and broken. It will fit phones from 55mm to 85mm in width and between 6mm and 18mm thick.

Categories
Adventure Cycling Association 40th Advocacy/Awareness Event Coverage

Somewhere in the Middle of Montana

The 40th anniversary of Adventure Cycling Association.
I will be riding my bike from Bozeman to Missoula, MT for the 40th Anniversary of Adventure Cycling Association, which happens July 15-17, 2016. As it turns out I will be following the route of my very first bike tour. I didn’t know it at the time but as I was doing my first tour Greg and June Siple were halfway through their bike trip from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, a little jaunt they called Hemistour. When they were done with that they went back to Missoula and started working for a concern they helped start called Bikecentennial, which later became Adventure Cycling Association.
ideale leather saddle
Back in those days it was hard to find bicycle touring gear, or any bicycle gear for that matter. I think my sister or my mom made my panniers from a Frostline Kit. My Peugeot bicycle came with sew-up tires. I ordered an Ideale leather saddle from an actual paper catalog and it eventually appeared in the mail. Plastic bike helmets didn’t exist, and LYCRA was not yet being used for shorts. There were no cell phones and “internet” was not a word. I would stop at a pay phone when I could to call home and let them know where I was and that I was OK. That puts Hemistour in perspective and squarely in the category of extreme sport.

TOSRV West
The Tour of the Swan River Valley, or TOSRV West is a 220 mile, fully supported, two day bike ride that begins in Missoula, goes through Seeley Lake and Swan Lake to Big Fork and returns along Flathead Lake back to Missoula. Two other Hemistour riders, Dan and Lys Burden, were inspired by the Tour of the Scioto River Valley in Ohio and they organized the first TOSRV West in 1971. In the late 1970’s and early 80’s riding TOSRV West was a chance to see some exotic, for the time, bicycles. Of course the high end bikes were all lugged steel with full Campagnolo or Zeus kits. There was even a custom builder in Missoula at the time; Dennis Sparrow, who drove along the route with a van full of tools and worked as the mechanic for the riders. If memory serves, Sparrow was not built like a sparrow. I also remember that he smoked cigarettes which did, and does, seem like an anomaly. Then again Dario Pegoretti wouldn’t strike one as a builder of exquisite bike frames either.

These are some of the memories I will be taking with me to Missoula next month. There is a contingent of riders from Idaho who will be converging on Missoula the middle of July. I’m sure they all have there own reasons for going and will have their own stories and memories from the trip. I intend to collect some of those stories over beers in one of Missoula’s brew pubs. Also looking forward to getting a chance to talk to Greg, June, Dan and Lys.

Categories
Crossroads Music

Don Van Vliet aka Captain Beefheart (1941-2010)

Portrait of Don Van Vliet

neon plants swim like green seaweed to a deep rhythm of blues

I listen to the music and try to figure out the structure or the time signature and soon realize it doesn’t matter. What matters is the feeling. The music. It throbs and pulses; staggers and careens; stumbles but doesn’t fall; and is completely original. The poetry too puts words together in certain unexpected ways to create a jagged rhythm and to paint a picture.

you hardly know a day goes by in the cardboard cutout sundown 

A young Don Van Vliet used to sit in his mother’s basement with a young Frank Zappa listening to music and, I imagine, getting weird. Zappa later formed the Mothers of Invention and becomes, arguably, a better known musician.  I think his was a self conscious almost contrived weirdness that gets in the way of the music. Van Vliet was truly, innocently weird and was a demanding bandleader. The lineup of his Magic Band fluctuated but all the musicians were virtuosos who could play the sounds Van Vliet heard in his head. Some players, like Ry Cooder, thought he was too difficult to work for and so they left. Others stayed and continued to play together as the Magic Band after Van Vliet’s death.

Painting by Don V an Vliet

the past sure is tense 

Van Vliet’s creativity came through because he refused to grow up. Like Monk, he was able to maintain a child like simplicity in order to only write or play or paint what was necessary and no more. Monk had Nellie and Pannonica to take care of him and handle the tasks of everyday living. I don’t know who Van Vliet had, if anybody. Also like Monk, he eventually quit playing music entirely. He spent his time painting his impressions of the crows and Joshua Trees and the critters, real and mythical, of the Mojave Desert. Now his paintings are exhibited in galleries all over the world.
His music is not for everybody and neither is his art probably, but I love this man. I love to hear sounds that I’ve heard before sent to me in a new way, in a way that would have never occurred to me. It makes me feel all jangly and adds spice to the bland stew in my brain. Or else it’s the coffee.

Categories
Bike Touring Tips Oregon Our Trips

Crazy Guy on a Bike

Here’s a tip; go to Neil Gunton’s crazyguyonabike.com, “a free, independent website for hosting bicycle touring journals, forums and resources”, and read everything you could possibly want to know about bike touring. Our most recent journal is this one about riding the Old West Scenic Bikeway. I suppose everyone who enjoys reading these journals has a favorite writer. One of mine is Leo Woodland. If you go to the CGOAB site, you may get sidetracked from whatever else it was you were doing. You have been warned.

Categories
Bike Touring Tips

A Few Bike Touring Hacks

garbage bag bellows
The DIY air mattress bellows pump: light, cheap, effective and recyclable

D.I.Y. Garbage Bag Bellows Air Pump
The outdoor gear maker Big Agnes makes a combination stuff sack/sleeping pad pump called the Pumphouse. It sells for $19.95 on their website. A quick Google search reveals several videos detailing how to make one out of a plastic garbage bag, an empty plastic bottle and a garden hose rubber washer. Conveniently, the outside diameter of the input valve on many back packing and bikepacking sleeping pads is 5/8″ or so; the same as the inside diameter of a garden hose washer. So the rubber washer will just fit snugly when slipped over the valve. Here’s how to make the bellows:
– The plastic bottle cap to be used needs to have a diameter of around 1″. Drill a hole through the center of the bottle cap just a little bit larger than 5/8″. (drilling this hole is easier with the cap still on the bottle).
– Cut the neck of the bottle off just below the cap and below the little drip ridge on the bottle. Use sandpaper to clean up all the rough edges.
– Cut off a small corner of the garbage sack to make a golf ball sized hole.
– Take the lid off the short section of the bottle neck and poke the corner of the garbage bag with the hole in it up through the neck. Fold an inch or so of the bag down around the threads and screw the cap back on. Now the cap with the hole in it should slip over the valve on the sleeping pad and the rubber washer will create a decently air-tight seal.
– Open up the top of the bag to trap air inside it and quickly fold and twist the top together to make a big balloon. Then squeeze the air out and into the sleeping pad.
Besides being quite a bit easier than blowing up your pad by mouth, this system has the added advantage of not introducing a bunch of moisture into the pad, which reduces the thermal insulation properties.

A Visual (and relative) Way to Gauge Tire Pressure
Our camp the previous night was in national forest about a mile down an unpaved road. After rolling on the asphalt for about an hour in the morning we took a break and I noticed that there was a black stripe around our tires, contrasted against the dust left on the casing and sidewalls of the tires. These stripes defined the width of the contact patch between the asphalt and the tires as the tire deformed under the weight of bike and rider. The stripe on the rear tire of my bike appeared to be a little bit wider than the stripe on the front tire. For handling and tire wear I prefer to have roughly the same amount of deformation and resultant tire contact patch width on both tires. On a loaded bike with more weight on the back tire, that tire will need more air. I put a few pumps into the rear tire to equalize things a bit.

tire wear
Front tire contact patch. You can see the black stripe of the asphalt against the dust from the gravel road on the sidewalls
tire wear considerations
The contact patch of the rear tire as indicated by the black stripe is a little bit wider than that on the front tire.

Riding a Loaded Bike on a Long Descent
At the top of our first summit G. asked if I had any tips for descending at speed on a loaded bike. The only one I could think of was to gain speed slowly to see how the bike was going to handle. If there was any shimmy in the front wheel I suggested he move his hands to different positions on the bars and/or to move his butt on the saddle to redistribute his weight. No gyrations were required on his part however because his Soma Saga touring bike was designed for this type of use and was solid and predictable at all speeds. At the bottom I asked if he had any insights about descending now that he was a pro. He did say he felt like he had more control when riding with his hands on the brake hoods (he uses drop bars). Riding with the hands on the hoods also makes it easy to reach the brake levers quickly in an emergency. Some people recommend this position because the rider is able to sit up higher and create a little bit of a sail effect with the upper body to help scrub speed. And speaking of shimmy; if the bike feels unstable or squirrely at speed it could be a tire pressure issue. A few more PSI or a few less in the front or rear or both tires might cure it. On really long descents in high temperatures rim brakes can heat the wheel rims to the point where the tires will overheat and a blowout could result. This would be bad, but there is not much to be done except to be aware of the possibility and take it easy.

SPD Bottle Opener

pedal as bottle opener

Thanks for reading. Add your own bike touring hacks in the comments.

Categories
Hermit's Workshop The Touring Bicycle Wheel

When To Replace a Worn Wheel Rim

It’s early morning in Moab, Utah when the still air is violated by the sound of a small explosion and the clang of scraping metal. My friend’s rear wheel has come apart and is a twisted jumble of aluminum rim, steel spokes and rubber. For the first time, I realize that soft rubber brake pads can wear through metal. Sand and other grit in a slurry with oil and who knows what other chemicals get embedded in the pads and act like a grinding disc to wear away at the relatively soft aluminum braking surface of the rim. Once the braking surface becomes too thin to provide structure to the rim, the forces of the tire bead can blow it apart. Here is a visual example of what I am talking about.

The braking surface on a new rim is flat, if not a little concave.
The braking surface on a new rim is flat, if not a little concave.

A worn rim braking surface.
A worn rim braking surface.

The concavity of the worn rim is visually apparent, but it can also be felt by the fingertips. Lots of times this is just a judgment call. Some rim makers machine a groove in the circumference of the rim’s braking surface and others create three or four small dots or indented holes at intervals around the rim. Once these indicators are no longer visible it is time to replace the rim.

Check your rim brake bicycle’s rims. If the braking surface feels like it has a little concavity to it, replace it before you go on the next long tour.

Categories
Bags/Panniers/Racks Bike Touring Equipment

Lone Peak Micro – Front Rack Top Bag

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Lone Peak Micro Rack Pack

Years ago Sky King had a Zimbale Front Rack Top Bag. (Some may recall we were the North American Distributor for Zimbale – a company in So. Korea.) This small canvas bag was an excellent size for carrying small items on day trips or for running errands round town. The bag was just starting to get traction when Zimbale ceased production. Fast forward a few years and after a great conversation with Gary Hubbert, owner of Lone Peak Packs and Bags, he came up with this one. We have been really pleased. With our suggestions, this bag’s velcro attachments are plenty long and keep the bag securely attached to the front rack. In addition the slip over the back rail sleeve is nice and snug, plus the perfect size for using as a handle when off the bike.

Attaches securely to your rack
Attaches Securely to the rack

Finally the depth and solid padding allow plenty of room to carry the rain jacket, phone, wallet and other small items.

carries the small stuff
Carry the small stuff

Water proof zipper and high quality fabric and finish couldn’t be better.  8″(20cm) long; 4 3/4″(12cm) wide; 6″(15cm) tall, the bags works well on any style of small front rack – Nitto, Velo Orange, Soma and others (see more info on the store website)

Categories
Idaho Our Trips

Wandering Wheels in the Snake River Canyon 2016

On a map the roads show as thin red lines forming a network resembling blood vessels and capillaries. Or the tributaries to a river. Between Swan Falls Dam and Celebration Park on the south side of the river there is a gap with no red lines. Since a few of the dozen or so other riders here have ridden this route before we know there is a way through.

Crossing over Swan Falls Dam we head upriver a few hundred yards before taking a sharp right hand turn to reverse direction and begin climbing. The surface is generally gravel and/or sand but on a few of the steeper sections larger boulders are exposed and overlain with other, melon sized boulders. These sections most of us walk while pushing the bikes. Then the road smooths out and descends again toward the river. It is nice, fast double track here.
Snake River
Flow
The road-less gap on the map is an area where the canyon walls slope rapidly down to the river. The trail winds up and down and through vehicle sized boulders and the trees and brush that grow along the river. Here everyone pushes and carries their bikes. Then the trail drops steeply back down to the river and ties back into a gravel road which we follow all the way to Guffey Bridge which crosses the river to Celebration State Park. We have ridden about 12 miles at this point. The trail on the north side of the river from Celebration Park back to the dam is mostly level with some sections of deep, loose sand and some rocky sections. Riders with 3″ wide or wider tires should be able to ride everything without much trouble.

Bike photo
29+ = 3″ tires….31’r!
bike
26+ Surly Troll with Rabbit Hole rims and 3″ tires.
IMG_20160221_151046735
The blood. Sky King came into this rock hard with the left tip of her bars and went over the slope by her left foot. She was holding onto a piece of sagebrush to keep from falling into the river, like a cartoon character.

This loop is just about 25 miles and it is less than an hour’s drive from Boise so it makes an easy day trip. We stopped often to tour through the old stone buildings and to look at petroglyphs. The visitor center at Celebration Park is a resource to learn about the geology and history of this country and is worth a stop.

Categories
Lights and Electronics

Busch+Müller Luxos U Head Light Mounting

Almost everybody- or more precisely; everybody- I have spoken to about it thinks the Busch+Müller Luxos U head light is klunky and ugly. I’m not the one to give an opinion on headlight aesthetics though since I still use the Schmidt E6 light on my commuter bike. But I can say that the Luxos U is heavy, and mounting it anyplace but on the fork crown using the provided fork crown mounting bracket is a bit of a challenge. If it’s not tightened securely it has a tendency to slowly droop so that the lighted patch on the road ahead becomes shorter and shorter. I recently upgraded to this light on my touring machine and went through a couple of iterations before I came up with what I think will be a permanent mounting solution.

I have caliper side pull brakes on my bike and I also use a front bag mounted on top of a Nitto M-18 rack, and either one of those conditions, by itself, would preclude mounting the light on the fork crown. (Note: we do have mounts that will attach behind a caliper brake, but they are not recommended for this light) What to do? Nitto makes a light mount which consists of an eyebolt which slips over the end of one of the M-18 rack stays and a clever little scalloped washer which clamps down on the stay for a really solid attachment. There were two problems with using the actual light mounting bracket that the Nitto lamp holder uses though: 1)  The Luxos U is too big to be mounted on the bracket without either being too far outboard or being pushed out of whack by the rack stay. 2) Where the light is meant to mount, the bracket is a single thickness of metal, rather that a U or a fork shape. Simply bolting the light to a flat peice of metal doesn’t seem to be a strong enough connection to keep the light from slipping.

light bracket
The Nitto Lamp Holder for Nitto M-18

I had the idea to thread the 6mm end of a Sheldon Fender Nut onto the bolt of the Nitto Lamp Mount in place of the stock bracket and then bolt the light onto the 5mm end of the nut. While this was a clean and sort of elegant solution, I couldn’t clamp the bolt tight enough to keep the light from drooping, and when the light rotated down it also tended to loosen the clamping bolt, so eventually the whole thing was just sort of dangling there, with the light pointing straight down at the ground.

light mount
This is actually the Gilles Berthoud version of the Sheldon Fender Nut screwed onto the base of the Nitto Lamp Holder.
light mount
Mounted on the Fender Nut.

I wish I could take credit for the next idea, but it actually was presented by a friend of mine. The Gino Light Mount is designed to be bolted onto a threaded hole somewhere on the bike’s fork or onto a threaded mount brazed onto a rack. It is a short (22mm) cylinder with a diameter of 26mm, which is the diameter of a standard road handlebar. Any light with a handlebar mount can then be mounted on the Gino mount. Drilling the mounting hole of the Gino Light Mount out a little bit and then using a tap to create some threads, I was able to screw it onto the bolt of the Nitto Lamp Holder in place of the stock bracket. Now I had a place to mount the light which I could position anywhere along the length of the rack stay. I just needed a mount designed for a  handlebar which would work with the Luxos U. As it turns out, the German company Schmidt makes just the thing. The way the metal band of the Schmidt mount is cinched onto the handlebar, or Gino Light Mount in this case, makes it virtually impossible for it to slip. And the fork in the bracket sandwiches the mounting tab on the light and a through bolt clamps the whole thing together.

picture of threaded mount
Threaded Gino Light Mount
bicycle handlebar mount for light
The Schmidt handlebar light mount.
bike light mount
The Gino Light Mount threaded onto the base of the Nitto Lamp Holder.
light mount
This shows the metal band clamp used by the Schmidt light mount.
Handlebar light mount
For this application, putting the Schmidt light mount on the bottom of the Gino mount places the light where I want it.

So far this has been a rock solid mounting solution and the light is in a good position to light the road with only minimal shadow from the front tire. The downside is that it took parts of three different mounts to cobble it together. Getting the light in the right position and aligned the way I wanted it was pretty fiddly too. You might be wondering if it all was worth the effort. The Luxos U light basically incorporates every technology known to one of the best dynamo light manufacturers in the world. It is not simple and it is not inexpensive. Another post could and should be devoted to the features, advantages and benefits of this light. I just haven’t spent enough time with this light to even do it justice in a review. Giving it a thorough testing, which will require planning some more rides in darkness, is something I look forward to.