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Maybury!

Published April 23, 2011

After picking up parts for new wheels from Trail’s Edge I headed out to Maybury State Park to ride the trails there. Most of the trail was fine to ride with only intermittent wet spots, but one section around 300′ long was sloppy, wet, and even difficult to walk around (photo). After my first lap I wanted to ride more, but stopped just before this muddy section and rode gravel / pavement back to the trail head. Along the way I passed the creature seen above, a raccoon who had clearly seen better days.

It was very nice to get out and ride at Maybury again. At first I wasn’t feeling too great about riding there, but by the second lap I’d remembered what I like about it. I only wish I’d been able to ride it a bit more. While I normally don’t mind walking past a messy section of trail, a 300′ walk through soft leaf-covered mud puts a pretty big damper on things. I’ll just have to go back once it’s dried out a bit more.

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Wheel Parts Are Here!

Published April 23, 2011

For my first lesson in wheel building I’ll be following Jobst Brandt’s book The Bicycle Wheel and building up the following parts into what are hopefully a good set of single speed wheels. I’m intending to use basic motor oil for spoke/nipple lube and no locking compound. Hopefully with sufficient attention to detail I’ll be able to build a solid, true, appropriately tensioned, and very reliable set of wheels.

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Another Half-Mile of Trail…

Published April 17, 2011

Today some folks and I headed out to River Bends to do some more work on the new segment of trail, and now it’s open and ridable. There’s still a bit of line trimming needed and the park has to cut out a few trees, but it’s otherwise ready to go.

An Eagle Scout candidate, Spencer Wood, is also doing some work on the trails as part of his project. While we were out working on the trails today he had a crew of people installing these footings for a trail head kiosk which will hold a trail map and other relevant park info. Once this is done, the trail is ridable, and a bit more signage is in place this is going to be quite a nice little trail system.

If you’d like to see the new route, the most recent version of the map can be found here: River_Bends_17-Apr-2011.pdf.

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Hubs for Single Speed Wheel Rebuild

Published April 16, 2011

After ordering new rims, spokes, and nipples I disassembled the wheel I damaged a week and a half ago and it’s front counterpart, and here are the hubs. The front is a WTB LaserDisc Lite and the rear is a WTB LaserDisc Single Duty. These will be rebuilt with butted DT Swiss spokes and Salsa Semi 29’er Disc rims.

This will be my first full wheel build. About two years ago I built a truing stand and replaced the nipples in the 26″ wheels on my Specialized, and despite taking a while I seem to have gotten it right. The wheels have stayed true and I haven’t had any problems with them. This should be very similar, with only the addition of having to lace the wheels first. I still have to get my head around doing this properly, especially on disc brake wheels, but I hope (and expect) that it’ll work out pretty well. I can’t ride my single speed until it does, so I’m a bit anxious.

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CamelBak Bottle Cleanliness Issues

Published April 16, 2011

The biggest design failure of CamelBak Bottles for cycling (the Sport line) is the difficulty of cleaning the burst valve in the cap. The above photo shows the black mold / mildew that I found after removing the mouthpiece and plastic retaining ring which holds the burst valve in place. This portion of the assembly can only be flushed and can’t be mechanically cleaned without this (slightly difficult, and not designed into the bottle’s use) disassembly.

Note that the burst valve (seen on the right) is made of a rich blue color rubber (seen around the edges) and the inside of the valve assembly (seen on the left) should be a solid silver color. I was able to clean this with a toothbrush and some soap, but it surely won’t be long before this has to be done again.

Even after this I’ll continue to use some of these bottles, but I definitely won’t buy any. (I happened to get this one and an insulated one for free. They are nice, but at ~$10/ea and with this cleaning difficulty I don’t think they are worth buying.)

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High Winds and a Clean Garage

Published April 11, 2011

I went home early from work today because I was motion sick due to the swaying of the building in the high winds. I didn’t expect this to happen as I don’t normally get motion sick, but an hour after arriving at work I felt my head swimming, my stomach churning, and I was unable to think clearly. Even eating a bit of lunch didn’t help, but walking around for a bit at ground level seemed to. So, around 1pm I headed home and finished up the afternoon working remotely, which isn’t a particularly challenging thing since most of my work is remote, but instead of being 35 miles away I’m normally about 300′ away.

After getting home it took almost another four hours before I was feeling better, but after that occured I decided that it was a good day for cleaning the garage. This hadn’t been properly done in two or three years and was long overdue, so it was quite satisfying to finally wash the floor. It only took about an hour to empty the garage, sweep it, and hose it out. After letting it dry out (which was helped by the wind) I put everything back in, and now the garage floor is as clean as the basement floor. I can once again walk outside with bare feet without needing to brush then off before coming back in.

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…and then there was a bridge!

Published April 11, 2011

Yesterday I’d expected to do a bit of trail work with some friends, but after posting publicly on the MMBA Forum an unexpectedly large group of volunteers showed up to help out with a new segment of trail that I’d flagged. The result of this was that most of the new trail was roughed in, accomplishing roughly 75% of the work needed to finish this new half-mile segment of trail.

A lingering piece of this trail’s construction was a bridge over a narrow (but very wet) area, and today Mark Senyk picked up the wood for it, and he and I were able to place it this evening. With a few more evenings worth of work I may be able to finish up this segment of trail and get it ridable. One end of the bridge still needs more dirt to further bury it and there’s a bit of raking / vine clearing / brush clearing to be done, but it won’t be very long until this segment can be opened.

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Ridable Trails!

Published April 10, 2011

While River Bends made for decent riding earlier in the week today’s beautiful weather and rumors of good conditions at Stony Creek convinced Nick and I to head out to ride some trails. Danielle joined us, then split off at the beginning to go find her own route on the two track.

We ended up riding all of the single track, and all of it was in prime condition. It was slightly tacky to try, and there were only a few very small muddy spots, none of which caused difficulty. Nick had no problem repeatedly dropping me which caused me to push myself a bit harder than I was ready for, but that’s probably a good thing overall. It helped make for an excellent ride.

Now, to try and finish off River Bends before the sun sets… Also, here is a photo of my Titus and Danielle’s Motobecane 29er on the back of my car.

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…An Axe To Grind…

Published April 9, 2011

This is the Pulaski that was used to chop out most of the roots on the single track at River Bends. I’m heading out tomorrow to do some more trail work, so tonight I set to sharpening the axe side with a file. The adze side is quite dull, but that’s acceptable for trail work as it’s mostly used for bench cutting. There isn’t a great edge on the axe side, but as this edge sees most use being plunged into roots buried in dirt it should be acceptable. After another four hours of trail work it will likely be rounded over and quite nicked up.

With the weather turning nice I took a look at River Bends’ current trail layout and found an area where roughly half a mile of trail could really add to the system, and now that a nice route through it has been identified it’s time to get building. If things go according to plan this will expand the single track by roughly half a mile using relatively flat land on a somewhat-plateau above the paved paths and may even offer nice opportunities for log piles and other trail obstacles. I flagged the route tonight, so as long as the tape flags aren’t pulled down by noon tomorrow we should be able to make good headway on this piece of trail.

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New Trail Work Saws

Published April 6, 2011

Last year I purchased this bypass lopper from Corona and I’ve been very happy with it, so when it was time to purchase a small(er) hand saw I went with one of their models. This afternoon two new tools arrived, the Razor Tooth Raker Tooth Saw – 21 in (RS 7160) (seen above) for serious trail-work sawing and the Razor Tooth Folding Saw – 6 1/2 in (RS 4040) (Photo) to keep in my backpack for small jobs. These were purchased as a replacement for the Sven-Saw which I left behind on the trail after Erik, Nick, and I cleared some serious post-storm deadfall from River Bends.

I’d considered buying another Sven-Saw as it was quite convenient to carry in my backpack and only pull out when needed, but the setup/teardown made it a little difficult to use, and the cut depth limitations inherent in a bow saw occasionally caused problems. I’m hoping that this saw, particularly with its raker teeth, will be perfect for most of the trail-side sawing that I have to do.

Since the 21″ Raker Tooth saw doesn’t come with a sheath and its blade is quite pointy I decided to make one out of some salvaged Coroplast. While not as durable as a dedicated holder, it should suffice to keep things safe from it in the trunk of the car and keep me from cutting myself while carrying it.

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