A rant about road bikes

What are road bikes anyways?  I can define this in several ways.  A purposeful bike that keeps speed and distance at the forefront of its personality perhaps.  But perhaps also the bike with the most constraints strapped to it.  Tunnel vision.   The truest road bikes can only travel where that web of connected asphalt hold their strongest bonds....or for the daring, only slightly farther into the tierra.  I used to ride road bikes a lot back in the Athens days and if I still lived there I'd probably ride them a lot still.  But in the days since leaving, the nice network of farm roads has become an ever extensive network of rock strewn forest roads and a road bike just wouldn't hack it.  

There are about 3 road rides in Flagstaff according to the city urban trails map.  Snowbowl road: the 2500 ft climb to the ski area, out and back.  I've never done this because trails also lead to the snowbowl parking lot in the summer and riding that road during ski season is just a bad idea.   Mormon Lake:  a 4-5 hour lollipop out to and around Mormon Lake, the largest natural mud hole in Arizona and a nice flat paved road with a huge shoulder/bike lane.  This is the most popular ride here by far.  I've only ridden this on the way out of town to Tucson, a very long and very awesome road ride.  And the Sunset Crater - Wupatki road: 30 or so miles gradual downhill from Sunset Crater to Wupatki National monument starting in craggy volcanic lava fields, traveling past 1200 year-old ruins and ending in the painted desert.  This could be done as a loop with highway 89, a route heavily trafficked with drunk drivers or as an out and back.  The preferred method of travel though is the full-moon downhill shuttle run.  The ride from town to sunset crater isn't all that great anyway so the shuttle run just seems to work out.  This is one of the top two road rides of all time for me.  The other being the Going to the Sun Road in Glacier, also in a full moon.  All the other road rides pretty much feature jumping between descent patches of pavement via interstate highways or dirt roads.  

I began realizing the limitations of road bikes in the days of my beloved Klein.  R.I.P.  I discovered the back ways of Oconee county by assuring myself that roads with powerlines on them, be they paved or otherwise, were through roads.  This logic never failed to get me home, but there were many nights of racing daylight to get to the familiar ground of Milledge avenue.  Oddly enough the Klein never flatted on a dirt road ride, no matter how rough or how many creeks it crossed.  But that beautiful beast obviously had its limitations.  I've never had a true road bike since.  That was 6 years ago I think.  I had a crosscheck for a while, but I quickly realized its limitations too.  The 45c tires rubbed the frame, clogged with mud, and stopped the back wheel from moving when I broke a spoke at the end of a tour.  Plus the geometry was too slack and it fit me poorly.  The bike I built for myself as my new "road" bike attempts to hit on all these shortcomings while hopefully keeping alive the essential elements of a road bike, the ability to go far and fast. 

My commute to work at The Man starts up my driveway and most commonly heads for Elks Lodge trail, a commuter trail that frequently features sad attempts at closure by seasonal residents.  Most folks in town use this as access to the trails of the Coconino National Forest, but for me it is my wake up commute from the sticks across town.  Really, riding this trail every morning to work is my favorite thing about work anymore.  Its a pretty high standard.  I cut right onto a short pavement descent on Quintana and then left on fort valley road or the path that rides beside it to Quinn's restaurant, featuring the best breakfast burrito known to man.  Then its a bit more downhill to town, then across the tracks to cut through the NAU campus.  I tend to hop curbs and cut through parking lots as I see fit.  A few more lefts and rights through the hilly section and up the steep driveway to the Mormon Lake ranger station.  There are infinite variations and other cut throughs, most of them involving trails.  The longest of which would take me 4 hours one way and be entirely singletrack.   My route takes about 40 minutes.  Going home hosts about 500 feet of climbing that can be done all at once or broken up into chunks.  My favorite is doing the elks lodge trail in the dark, nothing but starlight.  There are often large bull elk hanging out in the meadows.  One night I passed two cyclists with headlamps that looked lost.  They said they were just looking around and I rode on past.  They asked how I could see without lights down the trail...I told them it doesn't help when they shine those bright beams in my face, and rode off into the darkness.  Some people will never even begin to understand the ways of a ninja.  

So here's my new rig as it turned out.  Its the only full XTR road bike that I know of.  The wheels are M-950 hubs that came off of Puc's breezer laced to Sun Equilizer 29 rims.  Check out the bolt on conversion.  The cranks I picked up NOS at The Hub a couple of years ago with only the big ring and I ended up running it that way.  The cantis I picked up at the Tucson bike swap last fall for $15 and the levers I bought off a kid when I was in high school and when the shifters failed I sawed that part off.  The headset is a WTB grease guard also off the Breezer and the handlebars are GT brahma bars off the wall of 21 ridgecrest, my old house. They were hanging as art.  And the seat is from the Klein.  I probably have no more than $400 into the build plus the cost of the frame and fork which I may never bother to know.  As it sits here it weighs in at about 20 lbs and it is definitely the fastest bike I've ridden in a long time, and it is definitely a road bike.  It'll take 45c tires with gobs of clearance, gears if I ever want them as well as racks and fenders front and rear.  Keep your eyes peeled for a large hauling front basket.

Tour Log: Baja - Day 11-12...for anyone still reading this...

Today is how I test my mind.  The RV stretch of Arizona.  Come to think about it, snowbirds have been the story for the last stretch since Puretecitos.  This part just gets ugly though.  Up and pedaling before dawn again.  Through Quartzite before 8:00 AM.  Now 30 miles on I-10 to get off at US-60.  The longest, flattest, straightest, most Texas-like stretch of Canadian and Californian RVs in the state of Arizona.  I cracked, knowing that 140 miles to Prescott on the Mochilero fully loaded, sore, and tired is just not possible in a day and stuck my thumb out while pedaling down the road.  No luck.  I stopped along side the road on the way out of some trailer community in the cactus and tried to thumb a ride.  I guess pedaling was the way for now.  I flatted just after another highway intersected the 60 and stuck my thumb out.  The second truck...hey, thanks for the ride..."gotta help your fellow man" in a slow Arizona desert drawl that had spent many years building character in the desert sun.  He said he was kind of in a hurry.  It just didn't make any sense.  He was only able to get me up to the next crossroads four miles up where I changed my tire and bought some donuts.  Sugar diet.  I tried again to thumb it out of town but no luck.  Pedal on.  If I don't get a ride at some point this just isn't going to work out.  A car with bikes passes as I ride.  I'd have to take my whole bike apart.  Bikes are not the most convenient baggage when hitchhiking.  I reach the turn off for Prescott and I'm within 60 miles...that would mean I've done about 80 today.  The thumb.  A guy in a monster truck stops and introduces himself as Nick and I shake his slightly mangled hand.  He's about my age and it turns out once again that the Forest Service is a small world.  We rolled up to elevation @ 5700 ft and I watched all the fun and pretty riding roads go by at warp speed.  Oh well.  I gave Allie a call when I got into town and I met up with her and Laura to go hike to a waterfall.  Its spring in northern Arizona and all the washes are pumping clear cold snowmelt.  The waterfall was awesome as was the dunk in one of its lower pools.  We went for beer.  And for me....meat.  Two meals and a pitcher at the Prescott Brewing Co.  I was falling asleep at the table.  We dropped of the friend and in returning home passed a strange sight and Allie demands her sister to stop so we could help that woman.  She was probably 70 and wearing a white hoody zipped up on her chest and a red one wrapped around her waist.  Bare legs, no shoes, its cold out.  Allie jumps out of the car and before I know it I'm scooted over in the back sitting beside this woman who is terrified and can barely speak from the shortness of breath.  Allie has an amazing way with people in general and has worked with people like this.  The woman talks slowly but isn't saying anything...and now the police have pulled in behind up.  We drive to the nearest parking lot and the police pull in behind us.  The man starts immediately with direct questioning but the woman only gets more scared.  It was interesting to see the cop mentality at work here in a situation where they were there to help both the woman and now us.  Allie requested the cop out of the way when he asked if the woman had been drinking and explained to him that it was us who'd been drinking but not Laura, then she asked to speak with the woman to try her efforts.  We got to where she's a good christian woman and there are people who come from a different sect in their christianity but they are TRULY Evil.  It sounded like the man who runs her assisted living home was one of this other sect.  Hence the fear, panic, and attire.  She still couldn't remember her own last name.  She wanted to go to Albertson's, or Camp Verde where people could vouch she wasn't crazy.  Eventually someone from the home came looking for her and told us where to take her.  Not even a block from there.  She panicked at the sight of the man she described earlier.  The police escorted her inside and made sure we were well today.  Allie, you have an enormous heart and endless patience and I'm glad this isn't lost on everybody. 


We all got up early this morning after trying to distract ourselves to sleep.  I got 5 hours.  Laura was flying back to Kentucky and had to turn in the most ghetto rental car ever...plastic mexican hub caps and a red dome light, and plastic dome lights and plastic bits that would fall out when you closed the door.  Allie and I went to breakfast and i was rolling towards home by 8:00.  After and enormous breakfast and two dinners I was hungry ten miles down the road.  I should have done a little more about this.  The ride is one I've wanted to do for a few years now...Prescott to Flagstaff with about 30 miles of graded dirt road.  The Perkinsville road its called is awesome.  Flat to rolling to long downhill followed by rolly follwoed by long 20 mile uphill.  I thought I'd make it to Williams by 3:30 and decide to do the 30 mile interstate stretch thta the snow on the ground would mandate.  At 4:00 I was still climbing back up the Mogollon Rim...always the task.  I was tired, hungry, and impending bonk status.  I called for a ride and arranged to meet Cole at the Pie shop in Williams.  A fine ending point for the tour I thought.  And it was.

I got home and paced at the thought of that idea.  Home.  My house.  It seemed so weird.  It had stayed right here all the while I was moving.  It was a little discomforting even.   So much stuff that I call mine waiting for me here as I'd left it in our little domicile.  On the bike things that are extra come at the cost of precious calories and weight.  I tend to carry some of these things.  This was probably the heaviest tour bike I've ever rolled.  The real bummers are those items that started and returned to here without being used (rain pants, some bad snacks, winter gloves, tights, a book that would be better read at home).  Some of the unused I will always bring (tools, first aid).  Well I'm glad that's over.  Baja is beautiful and has lots to do but bike touring is not atop that list.  It occupies a lot of your daylight hours.  Tomorrow is the second day of spring.  River trip!

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday....

This about says it all...

Tour Log: Baja - Day 9-10

I got up early and took advantage of my 12:00 checkout time to wander the town and give my butt a rest.  I picked up a bottle of mexican wine, found some fine shrimp chiliquiles for breakfast and fish tacos for lunch and took a spin around the town looking for Evan but to no avail.  Then back on the road.  Two days more of desert riding and headwinds to Mexicali, or about the same to Ensenada.  Save it.  I'm kind of over this tour.  I want to paddle my boat and sit in company.  In being tired, I was thinking that if someone offered me a ride I'd take it.  I wasn't going to stick my thumb out just yet though it had crossed my mind.  Two seconds later on a construction detour a white truck pulls up beside me pulling a trailer.  They asked where I was going and then, "Do you want a ride."  I said yes.  I threw my bike in and climbed in the back seat of the cab to meet Alex, Luis, and Alberto.  These guys were part of a race team for the Baja series that was in San Felipe last weekend.  They promptly offered me a beer and I promptly accepted, and all of a sudden I was in good company speaking a mixture of English and Spanish watching the desert go by ten times faster now.  Before I knew it and about 5 beers later we rolled into Mexicali and parked in front of a high open roofed building with a chainlink fence and gate that Alberto was already opening.  Alex waves me inside and says "This is my shop," he's the mechanic.  Inside we found a slew of high performance race machines including a truck all danced up for the desert, a trike for Alex's son, Alberto's freshly raced (and broken) buggy and a handful of other cars and trucks, the usual tools, torches, compressors, welding equipment.  It made my inner teenager drool all over, and shop talk always works out better when you know what you're looking at.  We kept pouring back beers and bullshitting now in some form of spanglish.  We got to talking about kids and families and how during the Baja 1000 this fall Alex will have to fly back to Mexicali for his son's birthday.  He then told me his son's words for his own life, "Papa, No Paso Nada," and how those words were like my life as Alex saw it.  " Tu loco y no paso nada pinche Ricardo, pinche cabron."  No Paso Nada.  All of a sudden my wanderings in the desert had a theme.  Alex bought me a hotdog that I'd put over any in any other city...Chicago, Boise, anywhere, before driving me to the border and turning me loose on my home land.  Our brief encounter ended in a friendship that was much appreciated. 

I was planning on getting a hotel in Calexico since it was getting late and all, but my drunken sense got the better of that idea.  I found a street with three hotels and went to the third and asked the man how much.  He said $40 and my mind still operating in Mexico forgot the debit card option.  I only had $31 american dollars but more than enough in pesos (I remembered that grocery stores in border towns often take pesos--why wouldn't hotels do the same?)  I asked he took pesos to which he replied " I don't even know what pesos are."  Wow, you really should get out more, explore your back yard.  I went across the street and the next man said $40.  I told him I had $31 and some pesos to which he was offended and responded patriotically by threatening me "don't even make an offer like that in this country."  "Gracias Senor" I told him mockingly and walked out.  Who needs a cheap hotel anyway.  Not this cabron.  Ride on.  I found a small highway heading east out of town, how I don't know.  Celestial navigation maybe.  50 miles to Yuma, AZ.  After about 5 miles I spotted a tamarisk tree adjacent to some farmland.  My hotel for the night.  I was quite impressed with the sighting of it actually; Bike and I were very well concealed.

I got up before dawn hung over and still impressed with my sleep spot.  Today will be spent pedaling.  I ate my pan from San Felipe while pedaling and stopped only to change a flat and to necessitate.  My road ran out after 20 miles and put me on Interstate 8...ride on.  An exit to Blythe came 16 miles outside of Yuma and remembering the girls' trip in the fall too them through this town, and having no map, I took it.  Blythe marked about 100 miles of desert riding with fortunately favorable winds all on seven doughnuts, a very small bag of chips, a soda (orange, Sunkist), and a very large milkshake in the town of Palo Verde, CA whose local paper (a single sheet) boasted that "Church for Palo Verde may be a reality."  Whoa.  I stopped for a proper meal in Blythe and managed to hitch hike about 5 miles down Interstate 10 before pedaling off again.  The fire fighter that gave me a ride said there was a power-line road to the south that parallels the highway and would take me all the way to Quartzite, RV central, Arizona. [Two groups of people who I find to be particularly good with directions are firefighters and bicyclists.]  For some stupid reason (remember, I do dumb things) I took it.  The sun was down and it wasn't worth it to change my tires.  The road ended up being a rocky, sandy, steep gas pipeline and I'm riding what I can of it on my hundred pound pony on road shoes in the dark, avoiding border patrol encounters al to make it another 5 miles closer to home so tomorrow I can get up before dawn and do it all over again and be home in two days so I can raft the Salt river on Sunday.  No Paso Nada.  This is how I test my bikes.

Tour Log: Baja - Day 7-8

The grind continues.  I'm reminded on last fall's rides with Wenger and Lynn.  Headwind, washboards, sand, solitude.  Again, victories are small.  Like when the only group crazy enough to be driving this road in a car, a Subaru with 3 sea kayaks bouncing about up top hands you a cerveza out the back window.  They had Nevada plates and were no doubt headed south for spring break, but I didn't stop to talk.  I figured it would be much more classy to open and drink the beer without breaking stride.  Eventually the road mellowed to a rocky hard pack...and then pavement again, much before expected.  Somewhere around this transition someone yelled something out the window of a truck that sounded like there might be another rider behind me.  The truck was northbound so that would make sense, but I couldn't really hear him...wishful thinking maybe?  I made sure to take the rest of the day slowly...I couldn't have done much else, the headwind was brutal and I was getting desperately hungry.  Unexpectedly I came across a southbound pedaler and his partner...Matt and Lyn...and we stopped to talk.  They had been riding/hitching/couch surfing since September and they started in Washington state.  Definitely taking their time.  Matt was very much checking out my bike...and maybe soon they'll encounter Evan.  It was good to see some fellow pedalers.  I made it to Puertecitos in some state of delirium and pick up some food and not wanting to ride another inch was convinced to pay to camp.  250 pesos with a crappy wind break and a descent natural hot spring.  The hot spring is marked private property and is somewhat set off in a gated community of crappy houses and California plates and fat gringos with round but wrinkled skin.  And I'm sitting here at a picnic table barely shading the street lamps that beam down on this "camp" waiting to be locked in at precisely 10:00 while listening to the diesel generator that will surely run all night long.  Feels like fire camp!

Puertecitos to San Felipe - 75K of headwinds and those fat wrinkly Californians buying up the Mexican desert along the Sea of Cortez.  This is truly the armpit of Mexico and at this point I'm over it and so is my body - mostly my butt really, it has saddles sores the size of peaches.  I finally made it to San Felipe expecting to find a spring break party but instead found Panama City for the snowbirds of California.  Fat wrinkled gringos that make no slight attempt at learning spanish and a beachfront strip that caters to them.  I was considering going out that night but by the sight of things it wouldn't have been worth the time anyway and so instead I ended up in my room passed out at 8:00.

Tour Log: Baja - Day 6

Day 6:  Day of Decision.  I woke up to wind before dawn but I waited for the sun to come up.  No great hurry today.  Wind.  Veering off the road.  I made it to Rancho Chapala and had breakfast and looked but no Evan.  Its becoming the where's Richard tour.  I asked about the dirt road to the north and the man said I should have no problems on the bike.  So there it was, my decision, go north.  The south option just got overwhelming....too much to see and do, too many logistics.  Save it for its own proper exploration.  Ride north on dirt.  Test the fork.  Head for home....or back to Ensenada.  All said today was a grind.  Victories were small.  Turning up the dirt I was met with a sustained 20 mph head wind.  20K of this followed by 20K of washboard.  I stopped to change my tires and was reminded of the kindness of people.  A man in a Bummer with his family offered me two beers (which of course I accepted) and looked at my map to figure out where HE was.  Onward.  Grinding away slowly into the peril.  By the end of the day I'd gone 60K on dirt plus the first 20 on pavement.  No sign of Evan.  I made camp on the Sea of Cortez off some maze of dirt roads that found me by the water.  All to myself from sea to shining sea...in two days.  The fork rode marvelously with a load in these conditions...my only worry was the rear rack.  The road however would have its way with my cargo.  At camp I found my spare gallon jug of water was now a murky pool in my water tight pannier.  In the front my cookies had been turned into a pasty dust that stuck to everything else.  I feel like I'm in that old game Oregon Trail...I'm riding along through the unknown, the nothingness, and all of a sudden a message pops onto the screen:  "Grueling pace has wrecked half your food and water supply"

Tour Log: Baja - Day 5

Where's Evan?  (Evan rides Moustache number 5 and he is touring in Baja somewhere also.  All I know is he took a ferry across the Sea of Cortez from the mainland and was intending to head north.  I don't know his plan if he has one, but he left four days before me).  I didn't really expect to see him today but I did envision it...in the perfect world.  We could be on par to meet up or in reality he could be up to 3 days ahead of me heading north to San Felipe.  Either way I have a decision to make tomorrow, and I'm glad.  At least then I will have some direction or destination on this trip, something I could use more of in life.  After 5+ days I will at least have that.  Today was another long day in the saddle.  Dawn to dusk and then a few more K.  160K total today.  Greater than yesterday (only by a few).  That's like back to back centuries.  El Rosario was a good stop before going into the desert.  It is the first stop on the Baja 1000 race and has been every year since it started in 1967.  This desert is the most beautiful I've ever seen.  Cirios shoot up like spears from the rocky landscape as well as plenty of cardon cactus and chollas.  I was blessed with a tail wind most of the way across, but I'm tired and my butt hurts from two long days.  My dinner: Can of beans, can of tuna, cheese, cold corn tortillas.  My lunch:  cookies, peanut butter.  My body:  tired, wants fruit, unreplenished.