100 KM

It's pumpkin carving season at the Gilman household.

 <img src="https://cdn.10centuries.org/saacki/cadfdb71a1f9e6ed8cbfbff20bed5fa5.jpg" alt="2007 Pumpkins" align="middle" height="288" width="480" />

 And believe it or not, like most things on 100 KM, this is post has a cycling component. Maybe this picture will help:

 <img src="https://cdn.10centuries.org/saacki/4dfe477419763ad7d3b5e6aabb01ac21.jpg" align="middle" height="180" width="480" />

 Still not obvious?

 Allow me to present the <a href="http://pedals2people.org">Pedals 2 People</a> Pumpkin!

 <img src="https://cdn.10centuries.org/saacki/5454a6a3e3daa4f7843d9b7b8a21344e.jpg" alt="P2P Pumpkin" align="middle" height="640" width="480" />

For Saturday's ride I wanted to get a longer ride in because I knew that a lot of rain was on the way Sunday (little did I know that Saturday would end up being less comfortable than Sunday). I didn't have any particularly ideas initially, but then decided to ride down into Spokane Valley and come back home via Highway 27 and the Palouse Highway. I had been thinking about riding that way in the opposite direction earlier in the month and I remembered John Speare saying that he had come back that way after cutting his midnight century short at the end of July.

I didn't get started until about 9:45 after I made my preparations and waited for it to warm up a bit outside. When I finally left it was still a couple degrees shy of 40° and it didn't take me long to start thinking about turning back or at least cutting my ride short. As usual my knees and lower legs felt fine despite being uncovered, but my long sleeve jersey and vest combination were not doing the job for my upper body. And my fingerless Specialized gloves were compounding the situation for my hands.

Now, while I haven't done any cold weather cycling of significance, I'm not a stranger to cold weather endurance exercise. Back in my high school distance running days I did plenty of training during cold and snowy Spokane winters. It was cold and windy Saturday morning, but it was still doable with a little mental fortitude. I resolved to keep going until I got to 17th and then I would pull over, put on my rain jacket before I descended Carnahan hill and see how it went from there.

Boy am I glad I put that rain jacket in my bag. My upper body warmed up immediately once I swapped it for my vest. My jersey quickly became slightly damp with sweat as it lost ventilation, but it was still warm and comfortable. My hands remained cold, but I tried to modify my grip a bit to shield the exposed finger tips a little more and that seemed to help. Having a warm torso put me in a completely different mindset.

The ride itself was fairly uneventful once I descended Carnahan (fun!) and rode up 8th (I forgot that you have a gradual climb up to Park from Carnahan) into Spokane Valley. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had a bike lane to myself for most of the way. Once I got onto Dishman-Mica and started heading south I had a pretty constant headwind. It slowed me down a bit, but didn't bother me otherwise thanks to my jacket.

The climb up Dishman-Mica to Highway 27th and finally the Palouse highway was nice and gradual. There wasn't too much motor vehicle traffic and the scenery was pleasant if not particularly exciting. Mostly a few farms and sparsely forested hillsides, with the occasional isolated luxury home peeking out of the trees. I knew that eventually there was a shortcut to the Palouse Highway called Sand Hill, but remembered John saying it was really steep. I wasn't sure where it was anyway so I stuck to the highway.

Once I reached the Palouse Highway I pulled over briefly at Darknell to call Mary and have a small snack of pretzels and Graduates fruit snacks (borrowed from my kids' supply in the pantry). I particularly like that combination of sweet and saltiness. Once I got off the phone with Mary (T-mobile has better coverage way out there than by my house!) I decided to throw the remainder of my snack food into my jacket's back pocket so I could practice eating and riding. That worked pretty well and I finished my snack within a couple kilometers.

This is probably an obvious technique to experienced riders, but I had a bit of an aha moment as I was working my way over some of the rolling hills along the Palouse highway. One of the things I like about encountering hills is that if they're steep enough they can give you a chance to stand up, get up off your seat, get your arms involved and give your rear a little break. Usually if a given gear on a hill is comfortable for spinning along while sitting it's too low to be comfortable while standing. It finally occurred to me that if I want to stand up and pedal for a little while on a given hill, shifting up two gears higher is about perfect. I used that technique several times on my way back into town and plan to use it a lot more in the future.

As I was passing Regal Road on the Palouse Highway towards the end of my ride I saw an older rider out on some kind of hybrid or mountain bike with upright handlebars like mine. I had a sudden urge to be friendly so I waved at him. He waved back at me which was cool. Definitely not an exchange I would have had with the majority of the dropped handlebar cycling crowd I see out riding.

For Sunday's ride I did an enhanced version of my Upper South Hill Loop with a few more kms tacked on to bring it up over 30 km total (and break 700 km for September). It started raining almost exactly when I left my house, but it was a bit warmer at 50° than it had been on Saturday.

As I headed east on my usual route towards 65th I passed several pairs of cyclists heading in the opposite direction. They were all pretty bundled up with jackets and full leg coverage. It must have been towards the end of a group ride with some climbing because they were pretty well separated (the leaders were a couple km ahead of the stragglers), but still following the same general route.

Instead of turning left at Yale like I usually do when heading to Glenrose, I did the short steep climb up to Dearborn and did a loop through the lower residential neighborhood on Brown's Mountain before rejoining Glenrose and my usual loop. Riding those short, but steep hills was pretty fun actually.

I didn't see anyone else riding bikes the rest of the way as the rain picked up. Riding in the rain was mostly pleasant, but I need to get some rain pants or something to prevent soaking the tops of my shorts (something along the lines of Rainlegs). It wasn't a problem during the hour and twenty minutes I was riding, but I could see it getting pretty uncomfortable over a longer ride like a brevet.

Overall a good solid weekend of riding and the 80 km I logged over the two days was enough to bring my total distance for September up to a very satisfying 700 km.

Well, it's been five months in the making, but I reached my adjusted total distance goal of 2000 km by the end of September today at the corner of Sherman and Southeast Blvd. Looking back at the daily log I've been keeping since I started in May, I've increased my total riding distance by roughly 100 km a month.

I've really come a long ways since May when I only managed 170 km and two days worth of commuting required a day or two of recovery. Now I can put in a full week of commuting and still get in a long ride or two on the weekend without my body complaining too much.

September has been a really solid month for me. I did my first metric century ride back on my birthday and almost a third of my total riding distance was logged in September. There's an outside chance that I can reach 700 km for the month depending on what I do in the next two days. 650 km is probably more realistic at this point though, especially since I still haven't figured out where I want to ride tomorrow.

The wet weather I've been waiting for all month finally arrived today. I received a new rain jacket back on my birthday and though I've been able to wear it a couple times it hadn't been subjected to a good wet trial run. I actually was able to get in three short rides today, rather than my usual two, and with each ride the conditions got progressively wetter.

The morning commute was overcast and dry, but I confirmed that the jacket is a good windbreaker. The long sleeve nylon jersey I've been wearing recently as temperatures have cooled was actually too warm when layered under the jacket; my arms didn't get their usual ventilation and the air temperature was a fairly warm 55°. It will be interesting to see how cold it has to get before that combination actually becomes viable.

I also got to give the jacket another test run during my second ride of the day when I met my family at the Riverfront Park Carousel shortly after lunch for some rides to celebrate my daughter Eawyn's third birthday. It didn't start raining until I headed back to work, but between the cooler temperatures and the short sleeve shirt I was wearing I felt much more comfortable. The rain was very gentle at that point and my uncovered legs didn't get very wet at all. I decided to go ahead and try wearing the short sleeve shirt on the way home.

By the time I gone on the road after work the rain was coming down much harder and my shorts got soaked pretty quickly. My upper body on the other hand stayed cool and comfortably dry until I started climbing Sherman. Even with a short sleeve shirt on my arms started to get a little sweaty under the rain jacket. I loosened up the velcro around my wrists to increase airflow and that helped a little bit, but it was raining a bit too horizontally to contemplate unzipping the front for further ventilation.

Overall the new jacket did its job and made riding in the rain remarkably comfortable. I still need to determine optimal layering strategies and figure out how I'm going to keep my legs dryer in these kinds of conditions, but I look forward to getting in some more wet rides in the coming months. I'm a big fan of rainy weather and it's great to know I'll be able to ride comfortably no matter how wet it is.

They haven't officially opened Southeast Blvd yet (I think they need finish a couple islands and put up new signage), but it's totally ridable from a biking perspective now. I've ridden up it all the way to 29th a couple times in the last week or so, but hadn't gone the other direction yet. This morning I decided to ride it from top to bottom on my way to work and see how it went.

The ride from 29th to Perry was predictably busy, but not too bad. The bike lane starts up again around 28th and continues down from there until you cross the freeway so it's probably one of the longest continuous bike lanes in Spokane. I ran into construction signs planted squarely in the middle of the bike lane right before the Perry intersection so I had to rejoin traffic, but it wasn't a big deal. The right lane beyond Perry was still blocked by road closed signs so I needed to go around those anyway.

Once I got beyond Perry it was fresh pavement, virtually no traffic and a clear bike lane all the way down the remainder of the hill. There's still some street parking on Southeast now, but it's all on the uphill side so there's no danger of getting doored as you cruise down the hill. I did have to avoid a truck parked squarely in the middle of the bike lane near the beginning of Sherman, but it wasn't really a surprise. On past rides up the hill, I've noticed that truck and a few other cars in that area haven't fully accepted the new layout of things. Perhaps once some Bike Lane/No Parking signs go up they'll get out of denial and take advantage of the plentiful parking across the street.

All in all as a bike commuter I'm really happy with the way that Southeast Blvd turned out. The execution of the bike lanes is about as good as I've seen in Spokane to date. Once it's officially reopened I think it will probably be the most bike commuter newbie friendly way up and down the South Hill.

I had another fun night of bike building at the P2P garage last night. John was off on his monthly job related pilgrimage to Redmond, but Liza (with Maddie in tow of course), Ken and Mike were there holding down the fort when I rolled in. Ben was also there this time around and later Beth showed up toward the end as well. I think I'm doing pretty well on the name and face learning front at this point (and it helps that there are handy blog posts with pictures to reference), last week was kind of a blur.

As far as the bike building goes, I made solid progress on my Norco snow bike project. The main focus yesterday was on pulling the cranks, chainring and bottom bracket from a pretty beaten up Gary Fisher (it always amazes me how many mistreated bikes there are out there). Pulling the cranks was new to me, but with guidance from Liza and Ken I was able to get everything disassembled. The bracket itself sounded gravelly and was quite dirty once I got it out. I was initially a little skeptical, but once I took the bearings out and wiped everything down it cleaned up quite nicely. I repacked the bearings with fresh grease and installed everything into the Norco pretty quickly.

I fiddled around with the stem and handlebars on the Gary Fisher for a while before deciding that they were not right for the Norco. I think I got overly focused on the SRAM twist shifter hand brakes that were in surprisingly good shape and identical to the ones on my Trek. Totally unnecessary for a single speed project like the Norco though. At least I figured out how you install brake cables (from brake lever to brake) while I was messing around with the handlebars, that had been slightly mysterious to me until I began poking around.

It looks like they're going to meet at the garage again tomorrow so hopefully I'll be able to ride over and see about taking care of the stem and handlebars. With just a little more work I should be able to get the Norco ridable by sometime next week.

I had a sore lower back on Saturday that I was unsure of (I think I picked my daughter up wrong Thursday night) and no particular ideas for a longer ride so I decided to do a quick loop that I'm calling the Upper South Hill Loop on bikely. It's a fairly lightly trafficked loop that follows the periphery of Spokane's South Hill from 65th all the way down to 17th for a total distance somewhere in the vicinity of 24 km (my bike computer says 24.5, google says 23.5). It took me just about 55 minutes and my back actually felt great during the ride (although it stiffened up a bit afterward).

<

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Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com

On a bikely related note I discovered two semi-hidden features while I was working on creating the above route: a cue sheet view (here's the Upper South Hill Loop cue sheet) and route elevation graphs. The cue sheet view requires additional labeling work when creating the route, but it works pretty well. I can see myself using this feature in the future to map out a new route and practice navigating by cue sheet.

The elevation graph is pretty cool as well. The upper south hill loop actually has more elevation change and climbing than I had realized. Thinking about its graph also just gave me two ideas: creating a truly hellacious hill workout loop going up and down the South Hill and/or the goal of riding up every significant South Hill north south route from bottom to top at some point. There are a few really busy arterials like Grand, Stevens/Bernard and Ray that would probably best be ridden up on an early weekend morning, but it would be cool to ride each of them at least once just to say I've done it.

Now that I'm starting to get into bike maintenance a little more a bike repair stand would come in pretty handy in my basement workshop. Based on the research I've done online most repair stands are going to cost you $100 or up. That's a little steep for my limited budget so I've been researching some do it yourself alternatives.

While googling around I found a couple pretty good instructables designs. Both use inexpensive 3/4 inch threaded plumbing pipe, but I think I prefer this padded top tube support design to the raised single spring clamp approach. My Trek bike has three cables running the length of the top tube so the spring clamp wouldn't really work with it. I also found a PVC bench-top design that has a cleverly designed (and more conventional) post clamp, but I think I prefer metal pipe for the base.

Also for future reference, here's a metal stand pvc clamp design more along the lines of what I'm looking for.

I crossed 1800 km this morning on the way into work. I didn't realize it until I was off my bike and updating the spreadsheet that I record my rides in. I'm still on track for 2000 km by the end of the month.

Today was the first wet fall day I've seen so far here in Spokane. I wore my new rain jacket, but the rain had stopped by the time I hit the road. The road was still plenty wet though so I definitely appreciated my fenders.

Clothing-wise I'm doing pretty well for the cooler weather. I've got some wool leg warmers in the works, but I still need to figure out if I have any viable rain pants. I think I have a pair of crazy green nylon pants somewhere, but I'm not sure how water resistant they are.

I finally got a chance to check out one of the pedals2people garage nights last night. John Speare invited me to drop in and build up a beater mountain bike to use as a snow bike/winter commuter so I decided to take him up on it. I've done a lot of reading about bicycle maintenance and assembly over the last few months, but I don't have a whole lot of hands-on experience yet. Needless to say, I wasn't going to pass up an opportunity to get some basic instruction and get my hands dirty building up a bike.

The p2p garage nights usually run from 6 to 9 PM, but I couldn't get out of the house until just after 7PM since I needed to get in the usual family dinner. I was excited to do a little high visibility night biking with the bright yellow rain jacket I received for my birthday last week. Unfortunately my plan was thwarted by a completely unexpected flat front tire. The tire had been fine on my ride home. What happened?

A quick check of the tire turned up a tiny thorn between the treads. I had a spare tube, but no spare time- I was already running later than I wanted. After a moments pause, I ruefully put my bike commuter cred aside and opted to just drive over to the garage; changing the inner tube could wait until I got back.

It proved to be the right choice. As I walked down the alley towards the garage I was greeted by a lot of parked cars, the friendly sounds of a college radio station on a cheap radio and bike frames being pounded on. The garage itself is your basic 50s era standalone unit opening into an alley design that is somewhat common to the neighborhood. There's room for about one car plus some work space or in the p2p case a lot of bikes and parts plus some people.

I wandered in and John introduced me to several of the guys (Ken, Noah, a few others that it'll take some more visits to learn) who were busy cleaning up the garage and stacking bike frames. Then he showed me the mountain bike frame and fork he had told me about. It was beat up, black and bare bones. In other words, perfect for my needs.

John got me squared away with a bike repair stand and then directed me to a bunch of spare wheels to find a couple 26 inchers. We found a nice front wheel with a hub that needed loosening up since its cones had been cranked down too tight. A little tweaking with a couple cone wrenches got it spinning smoothly again. The bearings didn't sound bad at all compared to the front wheel on my project bike back home.

I met John's wife, Liza, somewhere around this point when she came into the garage from the backyard. John and Liza's daughter, Maddie, was also about and chomping on some Veggie Booty or Pirate's Booty (I forget which).

For the back wheel we found a really cool super wide rim on a freewheel hub sans cassette. I used a chainwhip and hyperglide lockring tool to snag a 7 speed cassette from a different wheel. Then John dug up a used cassette spacer ring and the monster wheel was in business. Of course all this cassette fiddling was kind of academic since the bike will ultimately be a single speeder, but it was still pretty fun to work on.

With my wheels accounted for, I started finishing up my bike building for the night by tracking down a workable seat post and some v-brakes. It took a couple tries to find a seat post that fit, but I found one eventually. At one point a p2per named Joan (I think), spied a blue bmx bike in the pile I was going through and declared that it was her long lost stolen bike. Apparently it had a unique sticker on the down tube that she had put there way back when. Unfortunately the happy reunion was premature; after taking the bike for a quick spin Joan seemed less convinced that the bike had been hers.

I ended my night of bike building by bolting the brakes on and hanging the bike up on a free hook in a corner of the garage to get it out of the way. Next week I will have to track down a bottom bracket, cranks, stem and handlebars, but the whole thing seems to be coming together quite nicely. I'm already looking forward to another visit to the garage.