Category: outdoors

…to Richmond

Published September 3, 2012

It’s been a while since I last rode to my parents house, so with family plans in the afternoon I set out from home just after 11am, hoping to arrive a bit after 1pm. The last time I did this ride it took me just shy of two hours and I was left very winded with sore legs. This time I beat my previous time by twenty minutes and felt like I could have pushed myself harder. Sure, I was on a different bike, in different weather, and dressed differently^†, but I figure all of that riding earlier this year has actually made a difference.

Here is the ride data uploaded to Strava, if you’re interested. No, I don’t have a wheel sensor on that bike, thus no cadence and GPS-only speed.

Here’s a few more photos that I took during recent rides:

· Start of the east loop at Holdridge, known as Gruber’s Grinder. This is a slow, rough, but fun ride.
· Mushrooms found somewhere along Gruber’s Grinder.
· Ducks in a park in Lake Orion while stopping near the end of a ride with Scott.

Now, back to work for a couple of weeks, then off for another two. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a bunch of autumn riding (read: hopefully cool, dry weather) in during that time.

^† On the last ride I was wearing typical winter riding wear and on a full suspension 29er with a knobby front tire. This time I was in typical summer jersey and bib shorts on my older Specialized Rockhopper Disc with a 29″ front wheel and two Small Block Eight tires. I doubt the suspension and clothing was responsible for 20 minutes, though.

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Hammer-based Water Bottle Repair

Published September 3, 2012

The water bottle seen above was given to me during a Fun Promotions race at Bloomer a couple years ago when I was on a team with Nick, Marty, and I believe Kristi. It’s a rather nice stainless steel bottle, and I’ve regularly used it since then, quite frequently while working on mountain bike trails. Finding itself stuffed in bags with tools and tossed on the ground in the woods it has become quite scratched.

When out at Addison Oaks a couple weeks ago doing some mapping of the new connector trail it slipped out of my bag a couple times, landing on corse gravel. Dents from this are visible, and they resulted in the bottom becoming so domed that the bottle was more like a Weeble.

With a couple of carefully placed blows from a dead blow hammer flattened it back out and now it’s as good as new. I’ve got half a mind to remove the remainder of the finish and have a brushed stainless steel bottle, but for now I think I like its distressed character. I also prefer this bottle over SIGG and other similar bottles, as the inside can be scoured, and the threads are very large and round. SIGG (et al)’s fine threads scrape my upper while drinking, and I don’t like having to worry about not scratching the liner.

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Addison Oaks MTB Route in OpenStreetMap

Published August 19, 2012

With the upload of OpenStreetMap changeset 12787189 I have finished adding all of the hiking and equestrian trails, intersection markers, and mile markers needed to draw a second generation version of CRAMBA’s Addison Oaks map. This data includes the still-under-construction connector trail which’ll create a new park entrance at Indian Lake and Lake George and provide a safe route to Addison Oaks East and Oakland Township’s Cranberry Lake Park. I also added all of the named routes through the park as found on the official park map, including the specific hiking, biking, and equestrian permissions and restrictions.

If all goes according to plan, the next version of the map will show the actual locations of the C and D trails, shared hike/bike/equestrian (on C only) areas in the west of the park while highlighting the MTB route. The mountain bike route (trail F) frequently crosses these trails and occasionally shares their route, so I want to better illustrate the interplay between them all. This next version will also be based on OpenStreetMap data, which beyond the benefits of being CC BY-SA licensed should make it easier to update and use for future planning.

The only things I have left to add to OpenStreetMap before it’ll be usable for drawing a complete map of the park are a few campground roads and the B loop, a relatively flat and straight hike/bike loop around the campground in the northeast of the park. I’ll probably record that route the next time I’m at the park.

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The Circle of Life

Published August 16, 2012

This is the scene on the sidewalk near the front porch: a group of ants eating the remains of a squished cricket full of orange pulp-looking eggs. I wonder if this is the cricket that I’ve been hearing at night when falling asleep.

Nature takes care of its own.

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Fat Biking in The Thumb

Published July 15, 2012

Yesterday some friends and I had plans to meet up in the tip of The Thumb to do some fat bike riding, which resulted in two separate rides. For the first, Bob, Rodney, his friend Gary, and I met up near at Danielle’s family’s cabin near Sleeper State Park and rode along both Sand Road and some of the forested dunes near there. This went well, but wasn’t really much different from riding typical sandy two track, and after an hour of this it was time to drive down the road and meet James for some beach riding at a park he’d picked out.

Arriving at Jenks County Park we found a rather nice beach heading in both directions, along with rocky shallows extending quite a ways out into the lake that we could ride on. This worked out quite well for almost two hours of riding, doing everything from super low tire pressure (~5 PSI) plodding along in the sand, riding in the edge of the lake, cruising over dinner plate like slate, and riding in 4-8″ deep water along small boulders. Being on the beach the average temperature for this ride was 97.3°F with the peak up at 102.2°F. The water helped temper this a bit, but it was still hot and very sunny out there.

Riding in the water seems to have been a bit problematic, as my chain is pretty gunked up and resulted in some frame-scratching chain suck that was really frustrating me. Per this article (a pretty authoritative source) this shouldn’t happen even with a dirty chain, so now I have to figure out how to repair (mostly recolor and cover) this damage and keep it from happening in the future.

After riding we chose a restaurant mostly-randomly (based on proximity and sane reviews via Google Maps) and ended up eating at The Farm. While not cheap (entrees were $15 – $30), the food was outstanding. I was quite glad we were able to find a quality restaurant somewhere up north. It was a very nice end to a fun day.

If you’re interested, here is the GPS plot + stats from this ride, and here is a small album of random snapshots taken at various points along the way. There is also this video of James riding his fixed gear Pugsley through the outflow of a river in Port Crescent State Park. It was a bit too deep for him to keep going, as the buoyancy of the tires and thickness of the water seemed to keep him from moving forward once the bike got to the top tube.

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Broken Bell, Punctured Saddle

Published June 22, 2012

Tonight in lieu of a ride at Pontiac Lake I stopped off at River Bends on my way home. The ride itself was pretty good and uneventful, except for a sudden fall about 3.5 minutes into my ride, right at the original start of the single track. This is a somewhat loose corner where one has to weave around a tree while entering off of two track, and I did so wrongly, washed out my front wheel, and hit the tree.

I ended up hitting the handlebar with my thigh, breaking off the bell (as seen above), catching my ankle somewhere on the downtube, and landing on my hands/chest. Except for some bruises on my legs I’m just fine, but it was very frustrating. In the process of falling I also tore my (relatively new) saddle, turned the seatpost, and turned the stem a bit. Oh well, at least I’m okay.

Later on in that same ride I came across a deer with new, fuzzy antlers who wouldn’t move off the trail for me. I decided to turn back and go a different way, as I’d rather not have a deer decide it wants to make me move.

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Lumberjack 100 Weekend

Published June 21, 2012

This past weekend was Lumberjack 100, the race that I signed up for back in March. For the past three months I’d been riding a lot to try and be ready for it, but I didn’t do enough. After two laps I felt rather beat, and despite Erik and I heading out together on a third lap I gave up about 4-5 miles in, just after all of the hard initial climbing. A light rain had also started at this point and it didn’t help my lack of interest in continuing.

I suspect that the dust, heat, and sandy trail played a part in making it hard, but I think that I just wasn’t properly prepared for what the race entailed. In the end I logged 73 miles, about 27 short of finishing. My quitting was almost entirely due to general fatigue, not any particular soreness. Even the day after the race my legs weren’t sore and just felt a bit tired, and three days later I had no problem riding hard on a single speed. The data from that day can be seen here.

Looking back on it I’m frustrated with myself for not carrying on, but at the time I felt amazingly tired and at the end of the previous lap I’d stopped having fun. Part of me thinks that I could have finished, while the other part of me really isn’t sure. I really wanted to finish, but I didn’t. Maybe I’ll give it another go next year… I’m just not sure I want to do the months of riding again to get ready. At least next time (if there is one) I’ll have a good idea of what I did wrong.

The weekend overall was a really nice time up north with Danielle, Nick, Marty, Erik, and Kristi. Without them I wouldn’t have even made it up there. From the super-fun long rides to keeping me excited about it, from cool weather dirt road rides to fat biking in the snow they, along with many other friends, played a huge part in keeping me going to even try the race. They are great.

The day after the race, after we’d all had breakfast at Dagmar’s Kozy Kitchen (yes, it looks weird, but they have good food) and parted ways, I took a few detours on the way home. My first stop was at the Mortimer E. Cooley Bridge over the Pine River along M-55 just east of Wellston. This somewhat historic bridge (seen above and also here) was quite nifty to see. I’d driven over it a number of times previously and realized just how high it was, but had neve stopped to look.

There are some rather nice wood and metal stairways leading down to platforms along and beneath the bridge, specifically to allow for easy viewing. While nicely maintained, the foliage along the stairways could use a bit of a trim as much of it was poison ivy growing up through the slats (photo). I had to tread carefully to avoid stepping on any, as squishing it against the metal grating would surely leave uruishol on my shoes, leading to it ending up all over the car, house, etc. That’d be bad.

Finally, after visiting the bridge I headed over to Cops & Doughnuts in Clare, a surprisingly good bakery from which I purchased a doughnut (apple fritter) and coffee for myself, and a cinnamon roll which I dropped off with my dad on the way home. Being Father’s Day I wanted to be sure to stop by there. It was surprisingly easy to get to their house on the way home, so that worked out well.

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MTB Trail Mapping Workflow with OpenStreetMaps

Published June 5, 2012

With recent map drawing activities (1, 2, 3) I’ve been asked about the process I use for creating maps. What follows here is the workflow I used with OpenStreetMap (OSM) for the CRAMBA Stony Creek MTB Trail Maps, and hopefully others will find it useful.

I expect I’ll be following this same workflow for the next maps created, and even possibly revising previous ones using this process because it provides more solid base data than my previous method which consisted of little more than manually tracing SVGs of GPS tracks in Illustrator. It also helps get more map data in OSM, which is basically the cartographic version of Wikipedia.

One note, using OSM data in your maps requires that the resulting map be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) license. This basically means that anyone else can redistribute and reuse the map (or portions thereof), as long as they provide appropriate attribution and license their version in a similar way. As I’m intending these maps to be freely used by the general public (as part of my work with CRAMBA) I’m happy to do so, but others should be aware of these restrictions before getting too far along in the process.

Here’s the workflow:

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New Stony Creek MTB Trail Maps

Published June 5, 2012

I’ve been unhappy with Stony Creek’s official mountain bike trail map for a while now, as its routing is a bit physically inaccurate and missing some trails used during races. This led me to want to draw my own, and with recent forays into OpenStreetMap proving quite successful I’ve been able to get working on the map itself.

Tonight everything came together and I was finally able to publish the maps, and as a bonus I also documented three of the more popular routes. The more-formal announcement for these was made over on CRAMBA.org, but each map can also be seen here:

· Regular Map
· Fun Promotions 6 & 12 Hour Race Route
· Tailwind XC Race Route
· Wednesday Night MMBA / CRAMBA Group Ride Route

I’m sure some changes will be needed down the line, but for now I’m quite happy with how they came out. Making maps is fun.

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100 Miles, Turtle Rescue, and Rain

Published May 27, 2012

In preparation for Lumberjack 100, the training plan that I’d been following dictated an 8 hour ride today. Erik also had to ride today (but only for seven hours), and we ended up planning to meet at the Clarkston Road crossing of the Paint Creek Trail at 6am. This got pushed to 6:20am as I had to run back home and pick up a forgotten bottle and my shoes (two separate return trips), but eventually we were on our way.

The ride involved laps of Bald Mountain, Addison Oaks, and the Four Corners (Indian Lake, Barr, Drahner, and Lake George), which worked out well and tended to put us back in Addison Oaks right around the times that we were due to mix up more drink stuff. Due to a bit of slacking (and frequent pee breaks) and talking with Shari at Addison we ended up with almost two hours of downtime during the ride, so it was good that we started out so early.

Just after the 7 hour (moving time) mark we were near the cabins at Bald Mountain and Erik headed back towards his car while I started thinking about what I wanted to do for the next hour. With my computer saying I’d already ridden ~82 miles, I got an itch to try and go for a full 100 miles (often referred to as a century). I finished up the lap of Bald Mountain then rode back over to Addison Oaks, as mental calculations told me this should put things at just past the goal.

Despite angry looking clouds and a beautiful front passing over us this morning, we missed getting rained on. Half-way through this final lap of Addison Oaks the skies once again darkened, but this time I wasn’t so fortunate. Heavy winds gave way to drips, and by the time I got back to Bald Mountain a solid rain was falling. This lasted throughout the rest of the trail and for most of my ride back, but ended just as I reached the parking lot, which was fortunate as it made putting things away and changing much easier.

All said, this was a really good ride. I ticked off just over 100 miles, for the first time ever. While tired I still could have ridden more, as my legs were (and still are) feeling pretty good and not too much of me is sore. Reviewing the post-ride data I think I should probably have kept my heart rate a little higher to conform to the training plan requirements, but hopefully things will be fine in a couple weeks.

One odd thing from today’s ride: we kept encountering turtles, some of whom needed a bit of help. Two of them were on roads (and bound to get hit), with one having clearly fallen down a dirt embankment which it wouldn’t been been able to climb. These were relocated off into the brush in the direction they had been going. Three more were found on trails where bikes could easily hit them, but only two of these were moved as one was a basketball-sized snapping turtle (seen above). Finally — and unfortunately — there was a sixth turtle on Indian Lake Road which had already been hit.

Now that I’m home and having finished a large meal from Khom Fai I think it’s time to consider a shower and then bed. I’ve been up since ~4:05am and sleep is sounding good.

Here is the GPS plot and stats for today’s ride: link.

Here’s some photos from today’s ride:

· Erik and the snapping turtle found along the two track at Addison Oaks.
· Detail of the snapping turtle found along the two track at Addison Oaks.
· Another view of Erik and the snapping turtle sitting along the side of the two track at Addison Oaks.
· 101 miles in 08:46:10 of moving time, shown on the Garmin Edge 500. My longest ride to date.
· Gang Gai (red curry) from Khom Fai, a nice post-bike-ride meal.

If you’re interested here’s a few more photos taken during yesterday’s ride on the dunes southeast of Sleeper State Park. This was a fun ride, but I found that I couldn’t keep going in sand over ~4″ deep:

·The Mukluk on some dunes just southeast of Sleeper State Park.
·Sand along the power lines just south of Sleeper State Park. This was too loose for me to ride.
·The Mukluk leaned against an old barbed wire fence somewhere southeast of Sleeper State Park.
·Somewhere along the way I picked up a stick.
·Closer view of the large stick in the frame. It was easy to remove and basically fell out.

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