Bike Stuff

Mechanical experience I've been messing around mechanically with bikes for decades.  I learned the basics in childhood doing all the basic tuning and repair activities. But it is only in recent years that I've started to take on the full spectrum of work. Recently, I've started building bikes from the frame up ( Litespeed Road ,  Litespeed Gravel , Waterford ) and fully overhauling  old bikes with various generations of technology. Doing this brought in new skills like replacing headsets, working press-fit bottom brackets and hub bearings, hydraulics, and more such that there isn't much I don't feel comfortable doing. But wheelbuilding is scary But there was one major component build that remained scary voodoo to me: Wheelbuilding. I'd been able to true a wheel without screwing it up since I was a kid. But the idea of starting with a hub, a rim, a stack of spokes and a pile of nipples made me very uncomfortable and I avoided it. I avoided it even when the rear ...

  I've long had a couple of local ride fantasies. Ride 'over the hill' to Santa Cruz Ride the Cabrillo Highway through Big Sur. The first has long looked pretty viable, except I really didn't want to do the distance to the coast over the mountain and have to turn around and do it again coming home. That makes for a very long day. The second is, of course, a fairly long distance from home. A bonus for doing it now is that a landslide has Hwy 1 closed not far past Big Sur which should make for a more peaceful ride along the coast south of Carmel. What if we combine the two and make a multi-day adventure of it? That could be the ticket. I figured that two, 100km days would get me there. Conveniently, Sunset State Beach next to Pajaro Dunes (where I spent many weekends as a kid, not to mention Scout overnights at Sunset Beach itself) has a 'hike+bike" camping facility. This is a no-reservations, show up and pay for your $5 camping spot that is available at some sta...

So, I was going to visit Wisconsin in the Summer. It's supposed to be a great place to ride (and previous experience says it's true). So what kind of adventure could I have. How about riding across the entire state?  Well, when I started searching, Google led me straight to an event "Ride Across Wisconsin". Yeah, clear name. Unfortunately, this year's event was a couple of weeks too early. But it did give me an idea of a good route.  So let's look at a ride from the Mississippi River on the west side of Wisconsin all the way to Milwaukee on Lake Michigan, totalling 263 miles and 6900 ft of climbing. It roughly follows the off-road route version of "Ride Across Wisconsin". But where they do it in one or two days (yikes) as a supported ride, I took 5 for a self-supported ride.  I used the RAW course as a baseline and modified it for my purposes to find appropriate day route lengths and places to stay. Two long 'metric century' days followed by ...