I am Tim

Dormancy

2011-03-27T06:57:00.000-07:00

So I let this thing sit dormant for over a year - oops. I hope to resurrect it and keep this going, as I want to be able to show my travels and how to do them.

I just fixed a few of the components, adding a "SPOT" page that will allow you to see my location when I have my SPOT device on during trips, I changed the colors to make the blog a bit more readable without searing your eyes, and I updated the list of things I want to complete this year.

Work is picking up quite a bit for me, so several of my trips will be work related - Neng Gao Shan in December when I visit Taiwan for work, Birkebeinerrittet when I go to Europe for the Eurobike show. Adam, Justin and I will do our annual trip this year, but to the Oregon 3 Rivers trail instead.

My next travel will be April 4-8, I will fly out to Colorado/Utah to shake out the early season legs in GJ, Fruita and Moab. SPOT should be on, but it will just be day riding, no touring or bikepacking.

Until another post, I will leave you with some pictures from the last year.

A few more pieces of gear

2010-02-22T17:23:00.000-08:00

Just finished off a few more peices of gear. Starting with a Mountain Hardwear Phantom 45 sleeping bag, I put together a 2lb, 9oz sleeping kit. The bag is a nice light down summer bag. The pad is a Therm-a-rest 2/3 ultralight from a long time ago. Its sub 400g which is very light for a pad, but its thin so I may yet change that piece out. Then rounding out the kit is a Granite Gear silnylon stuff sack and a Tyvek groundsheet.

While the weight is very good, I am most pleased with the size that this set compresses to. It will be really easy to add a silnylon or cuben tarp to this kit, and still keep it very small on my handlebars.

New Bike is done

2010-02-13T12:43:00.001-08:00

My bike for this trip is done being built and ready to go through a few hundred miles of shakedown. I can't show pictures till April though, so hold tight.

It was fun getting it set up, and its a pretty simple, durable setup of XT and X9 parts, King wheels, Reba fork, Cane Creek headset and Thudbuster, and Salsa bar/stem. All good stuff designed to last a long time.

With the days getting longer, I am really getting cabin fever. Now with the bike done, I am ready to ride more than ever!

Day 4

2010-02-06T17:59:00.000-08:00

After a night in Moab, it will be back out for three more days, this time the White Rim in Canyonlands National Park. Even though this is a relatively easy ride, almost entirely of dirt road, I feel special to be able to ride it as it is one of the few places in a National Park that a bicycle is allowed off-road, and I believe the only that combines this with the ability to camp in the backcountry. Some people criticize National Parks as too touristy, and they avoid them for other places. I like them, even though they can be chock full of idiots piloting RVs and are mired with restrictions, I find them interesting and a good testament that America can actually do a few good things with its' land.

I will head out from Moab on the road, turning onto Potash road and following it out to the Potash plant. Right near the plant, I will leave the pavement and begin a long slow climb up into the mesas. It will get a bit steeper, as I found out one of the Canyonlands regulations is that for the camping permit to be valid, I MUST check in at the ranger station, even though it is several miles and 2000 vertical feet out of the way. Oh well, a detour up the Schafer trail cannot be that bad, if even for the view and to chastise the ranger at the top.

After complying with all government regulation, I will descend back down and continue out onto the White Rim, camping at the "Airport" location, even though there is no actual airport anywhere nearby.

This day should be relatively uneventful, with no technical sections to speak of, mostly roads, a bit of climbing and around 60 miles total. However, this should be the beginning of the very scenic section of the trip, which is just as exciting to me as riding the bike.

The Route

Riding in the National Park brings me to one of the best Abbey quotes of all time, for this one I completely agree with and believe it should be the basis by which rules and legislation in our parks are decided upon. The funny thing is, you talk to rangers today and they think the same. The only people that want to pave and port-a-potty our National Parks are the brainless lawmakers in Washington. Ugh.

"No more cars in national parks. Let the people walk. Or ride horses, bicycles, mules, wild pigs -- anything -- but keep the automobiles and the motorcycles and all their motorized relatives out. We have agreed not to drive our automobiles into cathedrals, concert halls, art museums, legislative assemblies, private bedrooms and the other sanctums of our culture; we should treat our national parks with the same deference, for they, too, are holy places. An increasingly pagan and hedonistic people (thank God!), we are learning finally that the forests and mountains and desert canyons are holier than our churches. Therefore let us behave accordingly." - Edward Abbey

2010-02-04T12:27:00.001-08:00

We are very pleased to announce, another great addition to the assemblage of midwestern endurance events, the Chequamagon 100. One Hundred miles of sweet northern Wisconsin dirt, the great majority of it on singletrack, and the first endurance event to be held on the great CAMBA system trails.

Based on the self-supported ethos that has gained popularity with other events, the Chequamegon 100 will continue the tradition of self-reliance, riders that finish through determination, and best of all, NO ENTRY FEE! Limited to the first 100 people, all you have to do to sign up is send in an email

www.Chequamegon100.com has been set up to provide all the race details and create a central place for riders to communicate. As we draw closer to the event, organizers TK and JM will be providing details on camping, meet up locales, and the final route selection.

Check it out at www.chequamegon100.com

When a picture is worth more than a thousand words

2010-02-02T20:08:00.000-08:00

Toys

2010-01-30T08:09:00.000-08:00

Everyone knows, half the reason we are into cycling is playing with the big boy toys. Its fun to buy gucci stuff, dream about riding it, talk about it and generally geek out about titanium, anodizing, carbon fiber, weld beads and fatigue life.

I fully admit, I am in this camp. I love bike parts. Art and function together, plus I get to ride the parts to some really cool places.

So part of the fun with this trip is getting the bike ready. Buying all the toys. Assembling the steed that will take me to these wonderful experiences.

The moving parts. These are what excite me the most. Its probably because there is such detail in the high end bike industry. We get parts of such precision that they should be on an F1 car or a rocketship. Think about it, if a car was built with all its parts being as precise as a King hub, that car would cost a million bucks. Because bicycles are relatively cheaper than cars, we can afford to invest more into high-end stuff.

King hubs. I have owned various sets of King hubs over the past 12 years, and I have never had a problem. They are a natural choice for this bike due to their durability, and of course, bling. Now they are offering them in all kinds of axle choices, so I can match them to my fork and use a stiffer QR in the rear.

Because of their reputation, I am also choosing the King BB. Never had one before, but it should work. And its blue. Gotta match.

Finally, for moving parts, there is the headset. The Cane Creek 110 is my choice. Why choose the CC over the full bike of King? The CC is clearly better with a compression ring to hold the fork in place without squeaks, and who can balk at a 110 year warranty? WOW.

All products I mentioned were purchased by me with no influence from the manufacturers.

Up next? Drivetrain!

Day 3

2010-01-25T20:39:00.000-08:00

On the third day, after camping near Onion Creek, I will wake up and begin the long gradual climb up into the La Sal mountains. I had to move my trip up a bit to the beginning of April, so there may be snow up there. Just part of the adventure I guess.

But the most important part of Day 3 for me will be near the end. Rather than take the boring finish of Kokopellis by coasting down Sand Flats Road, I am going to turn off on LPS and take Porcupine Rim all the way down to the road, and then ride into town.

Sure, cliche, tacky and maybe overdone. But I really like Moab. It has a good feel. I plan to stay in town this night for a shower and a beer before heading back out for 3 more days. I like good ales, and who would have thought you could find them in Utah?

A few of those should help after a few of these:

The route: (the bumpy part is Monument Valley for those that don't know)

This could be one of the more challenging days I have with the greatest amount of climbing, but then it could also be the best as it has my favorite piece of Porcupine singletrack integrated in.

Just hope for no snow.

Day 2

2010-01-22T11:06:00.000-08:00

So I talk about Ed Abbey alot. I studied him and read every book in college. It used to be an escape for me to bring my mind back to the beautiful canyon country.

This blog has done the same. Everytime I write a post, my mind goes to canyon country, envisioning every mile of this trail, what it will be like to have coffee at sunrise, when you can feel the desert in the spring. The drastic shift from frigid cold to sunlit warmth as the sun rises is a wonderful feeling, especially with coffee. In fact, there is a certain flavor of coffee that everytime I taste, it brings me right to that experience. I don't drink it often to make sure that the experience is not worn.

Speaking of trail coffee, Meiser did a great write up and video of how its done. I used to do it a bit different and go cowboy. I might be getting soft as I get older, now I use one of these:

Yep, I went out and bought one a while back for $17 or some such crazy number, only to find recently that high-end tea shops sell the exact same thing, sans MSR logo for about $9.

For Day 2, I am looking forward to this feeling once again, awakening to the desert twilight, making my coffee and feeling the tremendous warmth as the sun rises and shines down.

This day we will be riding from the campsite on the Colorado to a campsite up past Onion Creek in Fisher Valley. This day has the hardest climb of the trip, in my opinion. Sure, its not as long as some, and doesn't reach as high of an altitude as others. But its steep. Really steep. Like walk my bike for the last mile kinda steep. It killed me last year. With a lower gear on my bike, I hope to kill it this year. Take that Rose Garden hill.

Profiles and TopoFusion outputs:

I dream of being the desert solitaire with every post that I write. Without all the destruction stuff. If the FBI is reading this, take no worry, I don't advocate or envy that side of Abbey.

"Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while, then a layer of scum floats to the top." - Ed Abbey

Day 1

2010-01-18T17:33:00.001-08:00

I decided that to truly know what I what getting into, I should plan this out day by day to make sure there are water stops and if there are not, be able to plan for the specified amount of time without water. Carrying enough calories is not really an issue, my main concern is water.

Day 1. I have ridden this entire section before, and then an additional 20 more miles in one day before (last year), so I am not concerned about the distance. This will be 58 miles in total, from the Kokopelli's trailhead in Fruita to the Fish Ford campground on the Colorado River. Some guidebooks state there is water there, some say no. Either way, there is the river and I have the filter. Sounds good to me, and its not a "normal" campsite so it shouldn't be busy.

I haven't yet figured out exactly what I am doing in regards to getting the bike to Colorado, or how to get it put together and get to the trailhead. So an early start may be out of the question. This is why I chose to take a slightly lighter mileage the first day since I am not sure I will be able to start with the sun. Also, this is a fun trip, not the failed attempt of last year trying to ride 10,000ft of climbing in one day.

From Desert Solitaire by Ed Abbey, specifically the chapter "water":

There are rumors that when dying of thirst you can save your soul and body by extracting water from the barrel cactus. This is a dubious proposition and I don't know anyone who has made the experiment. It might be possible in the Sonoran desert where the barrel cactus grows tall as a man and fat as a keg of beer. In Utah however, its nearest relative stands no more than a foot high and bristles with needles curved like fishhooks. To get even close to this devilish vegetable you need leather gloves and a machete. Slice off the top and you find inside not water but only the green pulpy core of the living plant. Carving the core into manageable chunks you might be able to wring a few drops of bitter liquid into your cup. The labor and exasperation will make you sweat, will cost you dearly.

When you reach this point you are doomed. Far better to have stayed at home with the TV and a case of beer. If the happy thought arrives too late, crawl into the shade and contemplate the lonely sky. See those big black scrawny wings far above, waiting? Comfort yourself with the reflection that within a few hours, if all goes as planned, your human flesh will be working its way through the gizzard of a buzzard, your essence transfigured into the fierce greedy eyes and unimaginable consciousness of a turkey vulture. Whereupon you, too, will soar on motionless wings high over the ruck and rack of human suffering. For most of us a promotion in grade, for some of us the realization of an ideal.

The data below.

Long time, no post

2010-01-13T21:13:00.000-08:00

Its been about three weeks since I have posted. I need to get in the habit of this blogging thing a little better. I typically ride for solace and to think. For this, I typically ride alone. I prefer it.

I am a sucker for books and words, and spent a good part of college reading and studying the writings of poets and novelists and other such hippies. When I ride, I typically think of the imagery around me as it could be conveyed. When I read poetry, I think of these places and how I could get there for the experience.

So today I will leave a poem from Gary Snyder. I need to get on the bike.

For the Children

The riding hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

Making bags

2009-12-28T21:39:00.000-08:00

Although I have stated that I am a die-hard pannier fan at heart, I have taken to frame bags being much better for off road travel. I have owned a Epic Designs frame bag for about a year, and it really does work well for carrying gear.

I wanted to try something a little custom, as I still have a "unique" feature in mind that I am trying to work out. For Christmas, my wife and I ventured up to Saskatoon where she is from, and stayed with her mother for 9 days. Well...... her mother is an accomplished quilter with a few different sewing machines, so we purchased around 10 yards of assorted coated nylons and decided to give it a try.

First, I started by cutting some shapes out of a scrap cotton fabric to make sure we had our patterns figured out right. As you can see, my trusty friend El Mariachi is my companion that I am making these bags for.

After making sure they fit properly with the proper amount of extra for the seams, I transferred the pattern to the good coated nylon material that I wanted to use.

Cut out all the panels and sides......

And did a little bit of double checking......

I then went to make all the "small parts" for the bag. Cutting out the panel parts was actually the easy part. Making all the small straps, reflective piping, zippers and baffles is time consuming and tedious.

I also made a second set of everything while I was set up. The blue bag is made from a very light, almost waterproof ripstop nylon. It feels like tent material with a rubberized layer. The yellow bag is made from the same exact material as kayaking dry bags. Probably a bit overkill, but the fabric place had it on closeout for $7 a yard. Cant pass that up, plus it is sturdy enough that it functioned as the pattern too, hence all the writing on the parts.

A few more physical checks to make sure the parts fit the bag and the bag fits the frame.....

And we have two frame bags, ready for sewing.

Water

2009-12-15T19:55:00.000-08:00

For my trip, Water will be a large hurdle to overcome. I will be flying out there, so pre-setting water caches is not really possible. Nor is it really what I want to do when trying to be self-sufficient in the backcountry.

So I will choose the filter and/or carry route. I felt that 340oz is probably the most that I would carry at any given time, being that amount would last me for 2 days (plus safety), which is the longest time I can see being away from a water source, this will be during the stretch from Schafer Trail all the way around until I get back to Hwy 313.

Back from my climbing / camping / kayak days, I became a fan of the MSR Miniworks EX filter. I have owned this for about 6 or 7 years now, and it is still going perfect. It is rebuildable and cleanable with just your fingers, and has cleaned water from the silty Colorado in the past with little effort. This makes it the first obvious choice for taking with. Woohoo! 456 grams added to the gear list, its the first item!

Next, I need a system to carry this water. I will put a drinking bladder in my frame bag, a drinking bladder in my backpack, and one storage bladder in the frame bag as well. For these bladders, I chose the MSR CloudLiner 100oz bladders and the MSR DromLite 140oz storage bag. The reason I chose these bags is that the screw-lid interface was designed to work with the MiniWorks filter, so there is a nice tight design with no adapters or hoses between the filter and receptacle. Also, when I talk about frame bags, there is a little trick I am trying to figure out that will make this feature more attractive.

The 4 liter DromLite is 145 grams and the CloudLiners are 176 grams each. They will weigh much more when wet. This brings me to 953 grams for the water system, just a hair over 2 lbs.

When I read back through this post, it sure seemed like I was a shill for MSR product. I assure you, I am not, and I purchased these products with my own money and have no affiliation with MSR. I purely chose them on the past performance I have received from their products, and the usability between the pieces.

Where?

2009-12-09T18:27:00.000-08:00

Someone asked where this is.

Well, I recently acquired TopoFusion, and with the help of the functionality in that program, I was able to stitch together partial GPX tracks for Kokopelli's Trail, Porcupine Rim, the White Rim trail and Gemini Bridges trail, as well as draw in the road sections.

These trails are near Fruita, CO and Moab, UT. While Moab can be a bit of a cliche for a mountain bike trip, I have spent a total combined of about 4 months of my life riding there, so I feel as if I know these trails decent. This will help on my first trip to have a decent familiarity with the area and trail types. Also, because I want to ride in April and there will (probably) still be snow here in Minnesota.

There you have it!

(thanks to ScottM for making this great software. I have been trolling the software sites for over a year since I bought my Garmin 605 to find one of them that could stitch and draw GPX tracks. I found this one, and it was very inexpensive to boot!)

The Ride

2009-12-09T07:51:00.000-08:00

This is what it is all about. The Big Ride. I will invest hours of my time over the next 5 months planning, making and gathering to be successful on this first big trip.

288 miles. 26,496 feet of climbing. 5 days.

I can't wait.

What am I gonna write about?

2009-12-08T17:54:00.000-08:00

What exactly will this blog be? Well to start with, you can see below that I like to carry gear. Lots and lots of gear. But because of a few friends, and a drive to try some new trails, I will be making an effort to try lightweight "bikepacking" this year on a few different routes.

Rather than copy someone else's gear list, I am going to try and learn as much as I can, make some educated decisions, and pick gear here based on what little I know about bikes, my experience with loaded touring, and some info thrown in from my rock climbing and sea kayaking days. Strangely, there is actually a lot of shared gear between these sports and bikepacking now.

Rather than just provide a gear list and a route, I am going to work through this one piece at a time, and try and "explore" my way to a cohesive 20-25lb package for my first solo bikepacking trip in April.

The old me

2009-12-06T07:42:00.000-08:00

I was digging through some photos recently. This is a good representation of the old me. This was in Ireland, 2004.

Goodbye panniers. I am nervous, but welcome the thought of travelling 60lbs lighter

is this thing on?

2008-08-14T20:07:00.001-07:00

testing testing one two