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6 & 12 Hours of Stony Creek

Published May 16, 2010

Today a bunch of the Trail’s Edge Racing folks† and I did the 6 & 12 Hours of Stony Creek race. This was a rather convoluted route through the mountain bike trails at Stony Creek Metropark (warning, PDF) which was ~11 miles in length, with ~1000′ of climbing per lap. There were a couple of new and race-only pieces of trail used, with one of the newest pieces containing a particularly steep, unexpected climb. Even more difficult, the most challenging (long and grueling) climbs were at the end of the route.

Bob and I rode as a team, with me starting at 2:00 PM and us alternating laps relay-style until the cut-off of 7:30 PM. In this time I was able to get in three laps, with each taking right around one hour per lap. Unfortunately I returned from my third just minutes after the cut-off time so Bob didn’t get to go out on (was spared?) a third lap.

This was my first “real” race, and I think it went quite well. Everyone that either I passed (not very many people) or who passed me (a fair number of people) were nice and courteous, with all passing arrangements working out well and no observed conflicts. Then again I was likely riding at a relatively typical pace for those later in the day, with the result being that during my second and third laps I didn’t really encounter anyone else on the trail. During the first lap some confusion at the start resulted in me ending up in the first third group of people heading out, which meant that I then got passed by all the fast people.

Oh, and the Specialized Phenom that I tried out today? I think it’ll work well. I had a little sorness at a few points, but as the saddle is harder than my previous one it’s to be expected. I had absolutely none of the previously experienced numbness, which means that its likely doing its job.

† Bob Costello, Nick & Marty Shue, Erik Silvassy, Kristi Heuvers, Tak Kakiuchi, and Bill Edgerton.

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Trying a Specialized Phenom Saddle

Published May 14, 2010

Back in December I traded the too-narrow saddle that came on my Titus Racer X 29er for a WTB Laser V. This has seemed okay, but I’ve found that I occasionally get numbness problems when on longer rides where I spend more time in the saddle (and less standing). I’d heard good things about the Specialized Phenom and just when I decided to try one someone posted one on the MMBA Forum at a quite-reasonable price as he’d tried it and it didn’t work out right for him.

It arrived today so I fitted it on the Titus Racer X 29er and took a quick mile-ish ride between puddles and over every curb and rough bit of pavement that I could find to try it out. It’s definitely a firmer saddle than my previous one, but it seems to be more supportive where it should be (under my sit bones) and not where it shouldn’t (under the perineum).

On Saturday I’m supposed to do a six hour bike race at Stony Creek with Bob (we’ll ride as a team, each person riding alternate laps) so I think I’ll give it a try there. I’ll bring the previous saddle just in case this one doesn’t work out so well, but thus far I think it’ll be all right. If not there are a few other people from the aforementioned forum will gladly take it off my hands.

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Amsterdam Photos

Published May 12, 2010

A couple days ago I finished captioning the photos of Amsterdam from my recent European trip. The original plan was for Dominic and I to meet up with Sarah and Danielle on the morning of Saturday, April 17th, but due to the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull and subsequent closing of European airspace they didn’t arrive until Tuesday morning. This left us with only roughly 18 hours to spend in Amsterdam together before we went our separate ways. (Dominic and I on to Germany; Sarah and Danielle on to Brussels then France then Spain.) Because of both this and Dominic’s damaged feet† this we ended up not doing that much, instead spending lots of time just hanging out in the apartment that we rented and wandering around the center of the city.

Before you ask, no, we didn’t go to any coffee shops as neither of us were particularly interested. We did have some very good coffee and cake, but that was just in a place called Coffee Connection which we happened by while wandering after visiting the Anne Frank House.

Here’s a few of the more interesting photos:

· Fields of flowers as seen from the train between Brussels and Amsterdam.
· German-style toilet. Yes, the shelf is unpleasant to use.
· Looking out the window of Floor 1 of Bed And Net. It’s very well located with great food and such right near by.
· The second building from the right is Bed And Net, the guesthouse where Dominic, Danielle, Sarah and I stayed.
· This boat on a canal was full of people from the US and/or Canada who were stuck in Amsterdam by the volcano. They were enjoying their time drinking and cheering about wanting to go home.
· It seems that 9/11 Truthers / Alex Jones fans can be found anywhere.
· Jamon Iberico hanging in the window of a pork shop.
· Cheese and tomato sandwich which Dominic picked up for me from Bakkerij v Eijk, across the street from where we stayed.
· Looking down a canal roughly across the street from the Anne Frank House.
· Carrot cake and a latte in a coffee house (Coffee Company) after visiting the Anne Frank House.
· Sarah and Dominic the morning that Sarah and Danielle finally made it to Europe. We were all sitting in a cafe eating breakfast.
· Glasses of La Chouffe with breakfast.
· Danielle’s breakfast was fried eggs, cheese, and ham on toast.
· Very large cone of frites with garlic mayo, which Sarah, Danielle, and I shared.
· FEBO, an automat-like place in the Netherlands which sells food from vending machines.
· Looking down a canal at a bridge around sunset.
· Standing outside of the train station, passing time, as my coffee cup drips on the sidewalk. It was poorly made.

Yes, I do have video of the failings of the German-style toilet, but I have yet to post it. The issue is not so much with the insult being exposed and sitting on a shelf, but that the water frequently fails to wash it off of the shelf, necessitating a brushing. As such its apparently common to have a toilet brush by every toilet.

One nifty thing that I hadn’t expected is that most people in The Netherlands, or at least Amsterdam itself, seem to speak English with a US accent. They also seem to know English very well, so I never had a language problem ordering food or generally going about things there. I definitely would like to go back there, and perhaps Danielle and I will on a better-scheduled trip. Maybe this next time we’ll rent a houseboat as well, staying on a canal somewhere and spending a bunch of time traveling out of the city and possibly over to other countries (Belgium, Germany?) as well.

† Note to the world: Do not wear Chuck Taylor All-Stars when spending a few days walking around London. They are not good shoes for walking long distances in, especially if they don’t fit well and/or are worn with inappropriate socks. Doing this will seriously damage your feet.

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W. C. Wetzel State Recreation Area via Richmond

Published May 9, 2010

Being Mother’s Day I headed over to Richmond to visit my parents. Being a nice day I wanted to get in a bike ride as well, so I combined the two deciding on W. C. Wetzel State Recreation Area as my destination, as I’d never heard anything about it before and it supposedly has trails. I figured that I would ride there, check out the trails, then head back.

Save for the steady, strong winds out of the north/west and the disappointment of the rec area this was a fairly nice ride. It turns out that this is a quite small/flat area consisting mostly of grass and gravel trails surrounding a few ponds in a low-laying piece of typically flat southeast Michigan farmland.

This rec area has odd signs at the trail entrances, some indicating “No Wheeled Vehicles” and others saying “No Motorized Wheeled Vehicles”. I made a point of entering at the ‘motorized’ varient of the sign, did one casual lap of the trails (roughly a mile or two) then headed back to the roads to check out the radio controlled aircraft field further down the road at the park. This ended up being a quite nice place to visit, as it had super-clean portable toilets, nice benches to sit on, and a man to watch as he flew an RC helicopter.

After a brief break to eat a bit (I’d only had two bowls of cereal and two bananas to this point today) I headed back to Richmond, taking a slightly different route due to some dogs that I encountered† on the outbound route. This slightly different route involved 30 Mile Road, one of the many east-west grid roads here in SE Michigan. This one, contrary to what Google has to say, actually is broken in two pieces with a supposedly-out bridge in the middle. It turns out that the bridge (located here) is this one from HistoricBridges.org and is very much passable, but only to foot and bicycle traffic. It’s an old wood surface bridge that I wish I’d spent more time looking at, as it supposedly has quite-rare stone abutments.

Not far beyond the nifty bridge I actually got stopped by a train (CN 8802) at a crossing. With the train traveling particularly slow (~25 MPH) I could have very safely crossed the tracks it if I went around the gates, but I thought it’d be neat to watch the train go by. Unfortunately this train took a bit more than five minutes to pass, so I spent quite a while just standing at a gate watching chemical tankers, wood haulers, car carriers, and steel coil cars pass by with cars stacking up behind me.

The ride after this point was very uneventful, with me taking a quick trip through downtown Richmond then back to my parents house, where I found my mom having brushed and fed Roxie, who I’d brought along with me. We had pizza for dinner, talked a bunch, and then I headed back home right as my dad was laying down to sleep before a midnight shift at work.

† Two Rottweilers who started running towards me and barking. I quickly sped up before they got anywhere close, and didn’t slow down until I could no longer hear them. Having no ready dog defense (OC or ammonia in a squirt gun) I took a different return route to avoid actually meeting the dogs.

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New Belgium’s Skinny Dip

Published May 9, 2010

The beer I’m sipping tonight is New Belgium’s Skinny Dip, another one of the beers from Erik and Kristi. I like this. It’s a nice lightly hopped beer with (just barely noticeable) Kaffir lime leaf in it. As suggested by the brewery this would definitely make a nice summer beer. It’s too bad that the mercury is sitting at the 50°F mark with tonight’s forecast threatening frost tonight. Were it a hot summer night I’d sit on the porch with Roxie and this glass.

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2010 Island Lake Bike Demo Day

Published May 9, 2010

Today was the 2010 Island Lake Bike Demo Day out at Michigan’s Island Lake Recreation Area. At this event a number of local shops and bicycle companies showed up with all manner of bikes to try out on a ~2 mile segment of relatively flat single track. Despite the on/off rain and mid-40s weather it ended up being a rather nice day as I was finally able to try out a number of different bikes and components that I’ve been curious about.

Specifically, I tried five bikes today; all 29ers:

· Mike Flack / Trail’s Edge‘s Pivot Mach 429 (Formula brakes, SRAM twist shifters)
· Marty’s Orange Vassago Jabberwocky (32:18 29er steel single speed, White Brothers Magic Fork)
· Niner S.I.R. 9 in A&W Rootbeer Brown (32:18 aluminum fully rigid single speed, Hope hubs)
· All Carbon Fiber Cannondale Flash (Lefty fork)
· Specialized S-Works Stumpjumper Carbon HT 29er (SRAM XX 2×10 drivetrain, Specialized Phenom saddle)

Out of all of these, the only bike I didn’t care for was the Specialized S-Works. Being a super-light race bike I think it was just a bit too stiff for me. Having a not-quite-right drivetrain didn’t help matters either as shifting wasn’t great in half the cassette but I imagine that’s just something that happens on demo bikes, especially towards the end of a demo day, which is when I tried it out.

I liked all of the other bikes that I tried. Each would have needed some minor adjusting to be something that I’d be able to ride frequently, but that’s just part and parcel of any new bike. I would have liked to try some road bikes, but the wet roads, cold weather, and on/off spray kept me away from it. It also would have been nice to try out a cyclocross bike, but there were very few of them present and I just didn’t really get around to it. After all of this I’m thinking that I might like to get a 29er single speed. However, that’ll have to wait for a bit, as I just recently picked up a new bike and I can’t actually justify one. Thankfully I may be able to borrow one from time to time.

This was also a nice day for hanging out with people, both those that I regularly see and others with whom I haven’t crossed paths in a while. I also happened to meet a few new people (including the frequent-replier-to-these-posts Ali B. and some other folks from the MMBA forum, including someone from whom I bought some tires and pedals.

Anyway, here’s two more photos from today:

· Erik on the Pivot Mach 429 as we headed down the pavement to the demo single track section.
· All of the Trail’s Edge demo bikes, tent, and work stand area fit in the back of Mike’s van. He packs very well.

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Silverton Brewery’s Ice Pick Ale

Published May 8, 2010

After a long (but good) day I’m enjoying a can of Silverton Brewing Company‘s Ice Pick Ale, a 6.8% (ABV) IPA that’s fairly mildly hopped. It’s quite nice, and I appreciate the bottle-label-on-can marking technique, showing that they are probably just getting started with canning operations.

This is one of the beers that Erik and Kristi got for me, and is something that I’d definitely buy in the future if given the chance.

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Ranger Skinny Dip, Old Chub!

Published May 6, 2010

While out west on a recent trip Kristi and Erik brought me back some really nifty beers for my birthday. Here they all are: New Belgium‘s 1554, Ranger, and Skinny Dip, Oskar Blues Brewery‘s Mama’s Little Yella Pils and Old Chub Scotch Ale, and Silverton Brewing‘s Ice Pick Ale.

Tonight I am having the eight percent Oskar Blues Old Chub Scotch Ale along with a plate of hastily assembled nachos for a late-night dinner, as most of my evening was spent doing a walk-through of the neighborhood with Dave, one of the other people with whom I sit on the homeowner association for my condo complex.

This beer is quite tasty, and once again reminds me that cans are an outstanding way to package beer, as its lightproof, more airtight, and more compact than a similar volume bottle. They aren’t good to drink out of, but just like a good beer in a bottle it’ll be poured into a glass. Here’s the Old Chub poured into one of the nifty glasses acquired for the New Year’s Eve party.

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Germany!

Published May 4, 2010

Continuing with presenting photos out of sequence of events, here’s the gallery of images from when Dominic and I were in Germany, visiting Dusseldörf, Aachen, and Ralitza / bumblebee (from the #llamasoft IRC channel) / inkscar.

We started off by taking the train from Amsterdam, then met up with Ralitza who showed us around Dusseldörf after we checked into our room at A.O. Hotel (also a hostel)†. After wandering and eating some outstanding pizza in the Altstadt (old town), and wandering some more she took us back to her apartment where she made us pancakes for dinner, which we ate with jam while sitting around and talking and drinking tea. The following day we went and visited Aachen, then once again met up with Ralitza to walk around more of the city, eat at Curry, and see all sorts of nifty things while walking along the Rhine after dark.

On this last night we also happened to walk past a building which I was told was the center of Nazi steel production during World War II. In my life I’ve seen and touched a number of old Nazi items, from flags to coins to busts of Hitler himself (some bearing bullet marks) and visited holocaust museums and the Anne Frank house, but seeing this foreboding building in person had a completely different, disturbing feeling to it. It was almost as if the interesting, curious, fascinating bits of the story were removed and replaced with the frightening reality which can only be detailed by seeing part of the bureaucracy and mechanisms which allowed such a system to function.

Here’s some of the more notable photos, although as with the Brussels photos you’ll need to look at the Germany album itself to see all the photos:

· The toilet at A&O Hotel Düsseldorf is a modern style and does not have a shelf. This is good.
· The soap / shower gel provided by the hotel is Tricky Ricky scent.
· A man making pizza at Colopic, a very tasty pizza place in the old town part of Düsseldorf.
· Pizza from Colopic in Düsseldorf. I had an Artischoken, Dominic had an Italia, and Ralitza had a Napoli mit Oliven.
· Füchschen Alt with Ralitza peeking over the glass.
· Apparantly one’s coaster is marked with the number of beers consumed, then the individual or table is charged for these.
· For dinner Ralitza made us pancakes. We ate them with jam and they were very, very tasty.
· Non-blurry image of Ralitza in her kitchen cooking the last of the tasty, tasty pancakes.
· Looking back at A&O Hotel Düsseldorf.
· This airplane contrail is the one of the first obvious signs we had of normal flights resuming in Europe.
· Wandering around a nice looking neighborhood in Aachen.
· 20*C+M+B+10 decal on the door to a shrine. This appears to be a way of blessing those who pass through the doorway.
· A DB train coming into station, taking power from the high voltage lines.
· Going up the side of a wall I think this hopscotch playfield is a bit ineffective.
· Somewhere in Aachen someone has lost their pineapple. Beneath a bicycle.
· Bicycle lane stencils laying on the sidewalk.
· This political sign confuses me. I think it is trying to promote a German politican based on the behaviors of a US LaRouche Democrat. I think.
· Another view of Rhine Tower.
· Another view of the red Gehry building in Düsseldorf, with the moon.
· Currywurst and frites, with mayo! I’d ordered aioli (garlic mayo) but received plain. That’s all right, though.
· Looking over at the table next to my bed, with the Vodafone Nokia 1661, earplugs, bottle of Tom’s of Maine Mint Soap, Nalgene bottle, and Ikea lamp.

After this nice trip I want to return to Germany, both with more time to spend exploring and a better command of the language. Despite my four years of German classes in high school I’ve forgotten most of what I’d learned, and generally seem to lack the ability to do much besides order beer and a bit of food, find the toilet, and apologize for not speaking German.

† I would definitely recommend trying A.O. Hotel / A.O. Hostel if you are looking for a clean, nice, basic room for cheap in most major German cities. Our room was €92 for two people, for two nights, with a private bathroom. And it was in a nice neighborhood, within walking distance of the train station (Hauptbahnhof / Hbf).

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