Day one of my tour turned out to have many of the problems I was afraid it might have. But a defining trait of an adventurer is how you deal with the problems that will inevitably happen. If you react by wishing you had luxury accommodations, panicking, or giving up, you are probably not an …
Tag: gear
Cycling Tour of Big Sur / Central Coast California
In May 2017, the Mud Creek Slide came crashing down on Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) in California, turning an 80-mile section of highway with no exits into two separate 10-mile and 50-mile dead-ends. As bad as that sounds, the details made it even worse. Additional slides and a bridge failure isolated the tiny and beautiful …
Mud Bogs and Seaweed Clumps
I like to call my fat bike a surf bike. It is not a perfect name, but it conveys what I like to do with it, which is ride on beach sand. A properly set up fat bike can ride along the beach all day in the right conditions. What are the right conditions? One …
The Strand On the Los Angeles Coast to Sycamore Canyon Overnighter, July 2015
The Plan This is another throwback blog of a ride I took a while ago. The route was simple: to ride the entire length of “The Strand”, continue along Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) to Point Mugu State Park and camp at a Sycamore Canyon, then retrace my route back the next day. [activity id=338607581] [activity …
Tour of California 2017 Stage 7 By Moto
The time had come to once again follow a stage of the Tour of California on my motorcycle. I have done this once before: Stage 6 of the 2010 Tour, following the tour from Palmdale to Big Bear CA. I will put up a retro blog about that soon. When I say “follow”, I don’t …
The Math Behind A Wide Range 2×11 Drivetrain
I recently modified a mountain bike that came with a 2×11 drivetrain. It was nice, but I wanted a wider gear range. The result was a 10/42T 11 speed cassette paired with a 40/24T 2x crankset. I can hear the cries already: “A 24×42 granny gear? That’s madness!” “You will never get shifting to work …
Interbike 2016 Report
I decided to make a short visit to Interbike this year. They have customer appreciation day now, and I am appreciated I guess. This is not meant to be some exhaustive industry report of Interbike, you can get that from various magazines and such. This was just me having fun. I made the decision to …
Chino Hills Overnighter / Bikepacking / Sub-48 Trip Part 2
This is a continuation of my previous blog entry about this ride, located here, as you might guess by the title. If you are scrolling down the blog you probably want to skip down and read in order. This picks up in the middle of day 1 of a two day ride. This was my route, …
Using a Shoe Stretcher on Cycling Shoes
Shoe stretchers are hardly anything new. But I have never heard of anyone using them on bike shoes. I thought it might help the fit of some of my shoes. I tried it and I had good results, so I want to share it here. A little background: I was having issues with shoe / pedal …
A 29 Plus Ride Along The Ocean Bluffs And A Few Repairs
It was time for a shakedown ride of a pretty new set of chainrings and chain on my 29 plus. The coast had recently been battered by a big storm, ripping away much of the beach, and in some cases, all the beach and frontage parking lots. [ride id=568740764 map_width=”500″ map_height=”500″]
