Midnight Century '12

I don't think this picture does justice to the starting group - it was an impressive turnout, I thought. (In fact, just let me apologize right up front for the krappy pictures throughout this post. Things didn't exactly go my way, on either the bike or photography fronts.)

Rolling down 1st Ave . . .

I started off with Bryan, a buddy from work. This was his first MC and while we've spent plenty of time bullshitting about bike stuff while we're supposed to be working, it was also our first ride together. Cool and cool.

Justin started the ride just a bit late but made up for lost time and caught up with us just at the base of the Idaho Road climb. He mentioned that he might have passed Nate on the CT on the way out. Hmmm.

Shortly after joining up with Justin, me ghetto tubeless front tire began to fail. It would hiss and spit green goop out of one particular hole for a while and then it would be fine for a while. But it was gradually and surely losing pressure and I finally stopped because the drag was getting too high and I knew it was time to put a tube in.

We were at the high point of the climb coming up out of Liberty Lake, looking out over the Saltese flats. Hey, if you're gonna have a nasty pit stop, you might as well have it someplace with a view. Unfortunately, working on a failed tubeless tire is one hell of a mess and I had the sticky sloppy sealant all over my hands and got it all over everything I touched. Including the Autofocus window of my camera, which explains why all the pictures from here on out are super blurry.

While we were pit-stopped, a rider that had been behind us rolled up. I didn't catch his name but we chatted for a few minutes and then he was on his way. A few minutes later, a second rider rolled up. Ben was his name and this was his third MC, I believe. I'd never met him before, but I liked him immediately and we rode together until I bailed out at Barker Road.

Yep, I'm a DNF for 2012. A too out-of-shape guy pushing way too much bike. What can I say. I thought it was doable and the MC schooled me, as it is apt to do. No regrets about giving it a shot, though.

The thing about the MC is that you kind of need to plan ahead on your failures . . . because there's a hell of a lot of work that still has to be done between the time you bail and the time you get home. I was feeling pretty wasted, but I knew I had enough left in the tank to get home if I bailed now. If I waited to bail later, I couldn't be sure that'd be the case.

I cruised north on Barker at a phenomenal rate of speed (someone should have been there to see me) and then west on the CT. I tried stopping to eat something just before I got to the Denny Ashcroft Bridge (jest west of Plantes Ferry Park). But I felt krappy and had no appetite, so I kept moving instead.

On the bridge, I stopped to take a couple of pictures.

Damn fine photo, this next one.

While I was standing there, another rider rolled up, heading my direction. I'll be damned if it wasn't Nate. You never know who you're gonna run into when you're out wandering around on a bike at 4:30 in the morning.

He had also turned around, but at a different place. We rode back into town together.

We were on pace to get back to Browne's Addition by 5:40 or so, and since Tom McFadden's time last year was 5:45, our hope was that we'd be able to catch him coming in. Nope. He and the guy he was riding with did it in 5:15, I was told!  Holy living hell, two years ago I was wondering if it was possible to do the ride in under 6 hours and now he's pushing the 5:00 barrier. Insane, man. Great job, Tom and whoever was with you (we spoke to him briefly, but didn't get his name. Tom himself was not around and had presumably headed for home. On his bike.).

Jake McBurns rolled in at 5:48 I think, with whoever he was riding with (told me his name, but I can't remember, sorry, I'm so embarrassingly horrible with names). They had clearly ridden their asses off. Awesome effort, guys.

And with that, home was calling and I was headed for the climb up the South Hill. It's now just shy of 9:00 and I'm into my 4th beer and life is looking pretty good and I am getting very sleepy. My immediate future looks to be super happy.

As always, the MC was a unique adventure, and as always, I really appreciated the companionship of the four different guys I rode with during different sections. The miles tick off so much faster when you're not alone and things that would be really hard by yourself are not quite as bad when you're with friends. Thanks, guys, for hanging with me and especially  forhelping out with the flat. Justin, the gummy bears were awesome.

I forgot to put my computer magnet back in position after the flat fix and so it didn't show me the mileage between where I had the flat and where I noticed it wasn't working, but my best guess is that I did 65-ish total miles door-to-door. I have the idea of doing the MC on my fatbike completely out of my system now, so that's one very good thing that came out of the experience.  Hope everyone else had a good, safe ride. Looking forward to hearing some of the stories.

More stories and results HERE and HERE and HERE.

I Am So Totally Dead

But I am taking my fatbike on the MC, barring a lightning strike directly to my head tomorrow. Which maybe would be a blessing, and at the very least a definite sign.

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger", according to popular wisdom. What they never talk about though, is that "what kills you, kills you."

What kind of aging, out-of-shape jerkweed would attempt this ride on a slothy fat-tired bike?

Don't get all excited about how smart you are. It's rhetorical. And that's 'Mister Jerkweed', to you.

Blogger is back at its sad little game of rotating photos, apparently. Sorry, I'm at a loss regarding what to do about it. But you get the idea.

Lovely Light This Evening

Reconfig

uration.

Ghetto Fatbike Tubeless Solution Saga

Hi again. It's been a while, I know. I blogged myself the hell out (mercifully, for you) and needed a break I guess, because I haven't felt much like writing. But I haven't had much to write about, either. My head's been in a strange place, bike-wise, ever since coming off the trip. The adventure and intensity of every ride on that tour was so powerful and profound that going for a "normal" ride ever since getting back just hasn't had much appeal. But I'm confident that my riding spirit will return, in due time. It's a little bit of a weird feeling, being less than enthused about going for a ride, but it also feels like a really natural response to an over-the-top adventure. As in, "what in the hell can I possibly follow that up with?"

And I have seriously asked that exact question, and I have some ideas banging around in the hopper. I think at this point that I would *really* like to do another fatbike excursion. Now that I know that 400-500 miles in a week over all manner of nasty terrain in remote country is reasonable, there are a bunch of possibilities. It's the soup stock that will be simmering over this coming winter, and to which I'll add the meat and potatoes as they come to me, maybe. A stew like this can be a fine way to warm yourself from the inside out on those cold, slushy, dark days of January.

But what has been more immediately and urgently occupying the portion of my life that's available for bike time and energy is fatbike flats. Or more specifically, resisting them. Why has this become so important? Well, I guess it's that these bigass tires are just bastards when they flat. Everything is so huge, including the amount of air required to pump them back up, and a flat pit-stop can turn into a pretty major chunk of time and PITA interruption to a good ride.

Slimed tubes proved to not be an adequate solution, IMHO. Regular tubes are a known entity. I do believe that the thick, heavy 26 x 4.0 Surly Toobs are a huge flat-resistant improvement over the paper-thin-when-they-are-stretched-out 26 x 2.8 tubes that some people like to run, and well worth the weight penalty.

And then there is tubeless.

Tubeless is all the rage among MTB'ers and for good reason: Tires are more supple and provide more traction without tubes, pinch flats are a thing of the past, and puncture flats are almost non-existent. I could give a krap about the first two things, but that last one, oh hell yeah. Sweet music.

Thing is though, UST, the system that has been developed for using tubeless tires on bikes requires special tires and rims. Nothing UST exists yet for fat tires and so we fat-bike-owning-tubeless-wannabees must join the special ghetto tubeless (aka redneck tubeless) club. Crazy MTB'ers that are too cheap to buy UST and crazy enough to risk their health and well-being developing cheap-ass, home-brew solutions. I reluctantly joined their ranks because, well, I was compelled.  This is the (mainly) photo journal of what I have been through over the last week or so.

First step is to air down . . .

Second step is to remove those unsightly and totally unnecessary tubes . . .

The rims had previously been set up with a layer of orange duct tape turned shiny-side-out, to provide the dazzling color effect through the rim holes, and then a layer of clear packaging tape on top of that to cover up the "sticky", and then a wide-ass Surly rim strip on top of that.  I left all that in place.

I wiped it all down with lacquer thinner, along with the inside of the tire, to remove any oil and give every component of the ghetto system the best chance to adhere.

The I applied two wraps of Gorilla Tape (unanimous choice amongst loonies) to the rim. I wanted the edge of the tape right up to, but not up on the sidewall of the rim. This is the start of the first wrap, and not a good example of where the edge of the tape should be.

This is better.

You can used valve stems hacked out of old tubes, but I opted to use Stan's stems the first time through, just to eliminate as many wild-card variables as possible. Insanely expensive as they are . . . $17 for the pair. Holy hell.

I burned through the gorilla tape with a soldering iron, to provide a clean sealing surface.

And then installed the stems.

As you're reading through the cornucopia of online knowledge compiled by the nutso pioneers of ghetto tubeless technology, it's clear that the biggest hurdle you must clear is seating the tire in the bead after sealing the rim up with tape.  With no tube to force the bead onto the rim, it becomes a matter of getting enough air in the tire quickly enough to force it up and onto the bead shelf.  There are different reported methods, all involving compressed air, and I tried them all.  To no avail.

There is also a minority lunatic fringe that uses small explosions of combustible fluids/gasses (such as carburetor cleaner) to seat beads. I suppose I was secretly hoping all along that the compressed air method would fail me so that I could justify playing with fire.  I didn't have any carb cleaner around, but I did have aerosol cans filled with all kinds of other krap around and I tried several of those fluids, but nothing was potent enough. And then I remembered: I had a tank of acetylene.

Disclaimer: I would strongly discourage you from trying this. It's inherently dangerous and I suggest you use another method to seat your tubeless beads.



With the job of seating the beads complete then, I turned my attention to filling the tires with sealant.

I bought a coupla these presta-to-schrader adapters.

And screwed 'em on.

Stan's is not without it's problems (expensive, quick to dry out), but it's reportedly the closest thing there is to a gold standard in tubeless tire sealant.

I even bought the Stan's syringe for injecting it.

Once you've injected the appropriate amount of Stan's (approx 6 oz, according to the lunatic fringe ghetto tubeless pioneers), you jiggle/wiggle/slosh the mess around inside your tires, so that every internal surface is well coated with sealant. It's very similar to the unnatural gyrations you go through when trying to coat the inside of a frame with frame saver and if you haven't already closed you garage door, you wanna close it before engaging in this wild dance, lest your neighbors call the cops to report the meth-head behavior next door.  Of course if you had it open during the explosive sealing of the beads, it's already too late . . . the cops and probably the fire department are on the way, so you may as well leave the door open and save everyone a lot of trouble.

Once the sealant has been injected and adequately sloshed, it's time to air up and watch this magical substance magically seal every avenue by which air could possible escape from your tire/rim combination. Of which I had dozens, thanks to flatstravaganza. In theory, a little is supposed to come out and then form a skin that then seals up the leak.

What actually happened though, is that I couldn't get the stuff to seal. This puncture may look big, but that's just the magnification talking. It's a common thorn puncture and just *exactly* the kind of thing that Stan's is supposed to seal.

I tried everything that the lunatics suggested . . . I put the wheels in a stand so that I could better control the rate of spin. I played with all kinds of different pressures. But the bastards wouldn't seal. I'd conquered the supposed hard part (seating the beads) with relative ease, but the part that should have been so easy was taking me down. The frustration was at its peak and so I turned off the lights, closed the garage door, and walked away, lest I should destroy something to appease my anger. New light would bring new perspective and a more patient attitude, hopefully.

The perspective that the new light brought was even more disturbing, it that's possible . . . the acceptance, no the full-on embrace, of the wildly messed up mental processes of a very small group of weirdos lurking in the dark, shadowy corners of the interwebs that are mixing their own sealant. Of which I am now a member.

Upon first impression, the homebrew sealant was delightfully sticky and "cloggy", compared to Stan's. I even had to modify my injection method because it kept plugging up the valve stem.  Trouble was, there were a coupla holes in each tire that still wouldn't seal up above 10 psi, and I need to be able to run about 25 psi in these tires for trips like the JWPT tour. As soon as I would get above 10 psi, they would spew sealant out of the puncture and then seal up again as the pressure dropped back down to 10. Not good enough. Shit.

They've been sitting for a couple days, in hopes that maybe time would help. One was completely flat tonight and the other had lost most of its air, but still had some.  I was able to pump them both up to 20 psi, which is not quite the ideal pressure for riding on pavement, but worked pretty well for our local construction playground.

Bottom line is that the verdict is still out. If I can get these mothers to hold air, that would be a sweet first step. But the fact that I can't just count on them to automatically seal up is not really on the comforting side. And what a bunch of mess and hassle to go through. Plus, you still have to carry tubes so that if you *do* have a flat, you have a way to fix yourself up and get back to town. I'm not sure the advantage is there at this point. One thing I do believe though, is that tubeless is here to stay and that the sealants that are available are just in the infancy stage as far as performance goes.  I suspect that I'll be going back to tubes for the time being, but that there's some tubeless fat in my future.  Whatever the case, I'll keep you posted.

Garbage Day

I'd indicated earlier that I intended to screw around and experiment with the slimed tubes that went through flatstravaganza and I did dink with them for a while to see if I could get them to seal up, but life is short and there is much competition for too little precious time and I got done looking at them. They had signed up to be tissue donors though, so I extracted some flesh before I heartlessly dumped them into a mess of a mass in the curbside container.

My iphone's interpretation of the inside of a slimed 26 x 4.0 tube. Other-worldy, I know. Something Jules Verne would be all about investigating.

The pile of donated tissue. I keep remnants of different tubes around and use them for different things, but primarily, for making rubber bands. I just bumped the size range considerably on the top end of my rubber band factory's capability. Exciting stuff. Along with some salvaged valve stems for which I have the makings of a plan.

This was the first time I'd tried Slime and I'd read gobs of online testimonials purporting its magicality and so maybe my expectations were too high.  I certainly subjected it to the worst conceivable test.

On the other hand, it was a golden opportunity to prove itself as a wonder-healer of all manner of massive flat attack, but it backed away from the challenge.

I guess the bottom line for me is that I'm not all that impressed. It's possible that it may have sealed a puncture or two that I don't know about and saved me from a repair stop, but ultimately it didn't provide the solution that I hoped it would, and in the meantime, it added a bunch of weight.

It's possible that I'll experiment with Slime at some point in the future, but not anytime soon.  What I have been spending time reading about and that has my full attention and hopefulness is a tubeless solution, so that's probably what I'll be playing with next.