Category: Projects

Eat, Sleep, Ride is English journalist Paul Howard’s account of riding the Tour Divide mountain bike race in 2009.

I was pleased to see this book at my library, and picked it up. I’ve followed the GDR and Tour Divide off and on for several years, much more than I’ve followed any other bike racing, but had only read Kent Peterson’s Dirt Rag article peoples’ blog posts on it.

I recommend this book to people who’ve never heard of racing the Great Divide, and to people who follow it year-to-year.

Paul Howard ups the suspense of whether he will finish the longest mountain bike race in the world, by admitting he had never owned a mountain bike before the trip, and downplaying his cycling experience and fitness.

The book jacket calls the book “hilarious,” but I don’t hold that against the author. The book industry appears to be in the grip of a Humor Bubble; I’m reading a much funnier book now, which the jacket has to describe as “occasionally hysterical.” I would call Eat, Sleep, Ride “witty in a pleasant English way.”

Howard brings a sense of history to the land he’s cycling through. The stories, some of which I knew (the cannibal ones), complement the experiences he and his ad hoc group of racers have on the Trail.

While the Tour Divide is a solo race, riders of similar ability clump together for mutual morale and social support. Sharing physical support would get them disqualified from the race.

We get to know some of the riders he rides with and encounters, focusing mostly on the underprepared, which is inspiring and interesting, but slightly disengenuous. I’d do a little more research before making my plans for next year’s race. Non-super humans complete the race every year, but I wouldn’t approach it lightly.

I would have liked to see more on the leaders Matthew Lee, the winner, and Jay and Tracey Petervary in third on a tandem. Since Howard finished second to last, his group’s interaction with the leaders was mostly hearing that they’d passed through a town a week before, or that they were “only” one state ahead.

I also wanted to know more about Deanna Adams, and her experience in the race. She is the first (and only, so far) finisher of the Tour Divide on a fixed gear bicycle. I ride fixed offroad some, and I’ve been disappointed every year that the fixies had to scratch. I think riding the route on a fixed gear is even harder than it sounds, and this is the category I’m dying to see inaugurated. Unfortunately, Deanna was relegated (disqualified from official standing) for a route error. The next finisher will be referred to as the “first official fixed gear finisher.”

Recommended.

I liked this book, and now I want to see the movie “Ride the Divide” that Kent promotes on his blog.

This is the series of stuff what don’t fit other stuff; what we call Esoteric Equipment Mismatches, or EEMs. In this episode, we realize that our kick-ass Jethro Tool, which I love except for the gratuitous and stupid bottle opener, does not fit the super-long nuts* on my Sturmey Archer S3X three-speed fixed hub.

This is me poking at it monkey-style. (“??”) The design of the Jethro Tool is very cool and interesting – the interior void is not one nut-shape all the way through; it’s two nut-shapes perpendicular to each wrench face that intersect in the middle. So it only works on nuts of normal track-nut depth, and the hypertrophied bell housing of the S3X is too deep to mesh with the wrench.

Ever since I switched tires (I got a sidewall cut riding with Scott and Chloe, and had to boot the tire with a dollar bill, which was the only tire-changing paraphernalia I actually had), I’ve had a heck of a time keeping the darned axle from slipping. I blame the pinner engagement of the anti-rotation washers, but the axle’s been fine for months, so I really don’t know.

Anyway, Jethro Tool no good for this application; I definitely need the 15mm line wrench I want. The cutout in the wrench would go over the cable, and the six-point engagement would keep from rounding the nut.

*That’s what Steve Albini said.

Bruce Gordon Cycles is putting on a “Bike Show and Framebuilders Garage Sale Handbuilt Whoop-de-doo,” at his place in Petaluma, with a bike ride beforehand. The rides (18 or 27 miles) leave at 8am sharp. June 26, 2011, from 409 Petaluma Blvd South.

I sure would like to go – I hope some of my Northern California friends will be able to make it.

 

38.5 lbs of dogfood, originally uploaded by BikeTinker.

This was my second grocery run of the day. Taking the car to the second store would have been wasting the 2 Mile Challenge, since the two stores are right next to each other. Go to one by car, shoulda gone to both.

The saddlebag holds four M6 hex screws. It should be holding some flea medicine, but isn’t.

The first run of the day was pretty good, too, since it involved a half-rack of beer and 6 bags of chips. Almost everything went into the saddlebag, some in the basket next to the beer, some in a bag on top of the beer case, and then the 6 bags of low mass, high volume Kettle chips in another bag out front.

The cheese, mushrooms and beer are mine. Everything else is for the child. Even the coffee.