A Pretty Fantastic Weekend

For a guy who doesn't even ride anymore, I'm sure having boatloads of bike fun.  This weekend was particularly over the top, though.

As John mentioned, we road-tripped over to the wet side, the main purpose being to pick up Alex's original frame jig. He's planned and now fully implemented the rad v2, and his offer was to place v1 with me, at not even his cost. It wasn't an offer I took lightly, as it wasn't about the amazing deal, but about making sure that I could actually put it to use.  I ended up being pretty sure that I could/would, and that maybe this could be the raw beginnings of cultivating some hobby frame building here in Spo, since we seem to have a bit of interest and such a killer pro resource to draw off of. But that's getting way ahead of things - first step will be to just build something.

You'll be seeing lots more pics and details, but just to give you a rudimentary idea of what it looks like, here it is in Alex's shop . . .

And here he is, demonstrating some of the setup details . . .

There are a few parts I need to fab, and that effort is already underway . . .

While in Seattle, we visited the rad Pies and Pints and I was able to catch up with Andre and meet Rory and Andrew and Betsy. Sorry, no pics, but it was righteous. The next day I met Alistair and Jimmy and we all visited the R&E Cycles open house. Holy living hell - what's going on in the basement of this bike shop is something that's gonna take me some time to process.

On the way back to Spo, we stopped to check out the bridge over the Columbia at Beverly.  Just as a service to someone who might be considering a cross-state bike tour on the John Wayne Trail and who might be thinking about this way across the river. All I can say is that it's closed and don't even think about it.

Once back in Spo, the order of business was moving my lathe over to Glens's shop. Yes, I just picked it up a year ago, but it makes sense for two reasons: First, the environment in my shop is killing it - lack of temperature control + massive amounts of moisture lead to rust . . .

Second, though, is that I'm over my skis in terms of what I can manage, time-wise, and while I'd like to throw myself into learning the machine, it just ain't happenin' right now. Meanwhile, Glen's business is at the point where he could really make use of it, so it's kind of a no-brainer.

Moving out . . .

Settled into the new digs . . .

There was also the checking out of John's new Elephant and a visit from Eric, sporting his rSogn and talking all manner of tours and fabrication.

I have not the blog energy to do it all justice, but it was a splendid weekend.

Progress

Shop night. Things are coming along mightily.

This picture was carefully composed so as not to prematurely reveal any facial hair modification details.
The pressure I put on myself was tremendous; the relief at having accomplished my goal is indescribable. 

Complicity

When you're about to doing something you're not supposed to do, and you know that it's wrong, but you still really really wanna do it, and you know you're gonna do it, you don't go around asking the question of whether you should or shouldn't do it from people you know will give you the answer you don't wanna hear. Which is why I didn't ask Patty what she thought about my idea of blowing off doctors orders to stay off my bike and seizing the opportunity presented by this bit of glorious late-season snow and taking my fatbike out for a spin in the park.

What you do wanna do when you're in my situation, is to seek out enablers, those who will support your bad decisions and perhaps even accompany you on your journey down the wicked path you have chosen. Which is why I turned to Brandy. And while I had solid confidence about which side of the argument she would come down on, I was in no way prepared for the extremity of her viewpoint: whereas I anticipated it to be along the lines of "it probably can't hurt to take a ride", what I got was more in the vein of "doctors orders aren't worth the paper they're written on!" Whoa. Settle a bit there, girl.

Whether she was playing me for a fool to get me down to the park (not a difficult task and probably the most likely scenario) or whether she really feels this strongly will probably never be known for sure, but as I now ponder some of her bizarre behavior during various visits to the vet, it occurs to me that there is a strong possibility that she may truly be philosophically opposed to the idea of healthcare in general.

At any rate, we did succeed in partnering up on this crime, just as evening was turning to night (we like to fly a bit under the radar in order to soften the impact of our off-leash digressions).

Low light mode on the Canon S95, not bad considering how low the light was (snow helps, I admit)

Another good low-light, flashless shot.  Think I'll hang onto this camera.

Alien at 12:30

Towards the end of the ride, on the east side of the park, I came across a few hundred feet of another fat bike track. That's mine on the right, his on the left. The forensic evidence was day-old and therefore cold, since we had some more weather activity today - I couldn't even pull a tread pattern off it. But a fat track for unmistakable damn sure. I followed it for as long as I could, but lost it at a busy intersection of cross-country ski and foot tracks. That's not much to go on, but I know for sure he's/she's out there. Who doesn't love a mystery.

My accomplice is now resting comfortably and appears content and at peace with her actions. As for me, does my back hurt just a little more? Yes. Am I glad I did it? Yeah. Hell yeah.

Something Really Special

Not to presume you even care, but if you were to wanna know what my bike head is totally consumed with these days, the following vid would pretty much cover it. I will never do anything this epic, but I have a plan to emulate the concept on a smaller scale.

I'm not here to tell you how to live your life, but if you dig bikes and nature and epic adventure, it's really amazing, so my advice is not to watch it when you're all rushed.  It's ten minutes of pure candy.  Save it for when you have some downtime, and can really get into it.

That said, I know you'll ignore my advice, but you can always watch it again.  I know I will.

P.S. The video quality is awesome, so do yourself another favor and make sure you watch it in full screen.

Performance Enhancing Drugs

Go ahead. Test me.

Just let me tell you though, you're wasting your time.

Because . . . ehh . . . I'm guilty.

Yep, it's true.  Reluctantly, I must surrender my role as your idol image.

Methylprednisolone.
aka corticosteroid.
aka 'roids, baby.  Four days in and I'm happy as hell.  Actually, first day in I was happy as hell.

The particular performance that has been enhanced is my ability to stand, sleep, tie my shoes.  I'll gladly accept whatever bans and sanctions are issued.  Along with relinquishing my status as a squeaky-clean role model for your kids.

To be totally serious for a minute, I'm extremely grateful to my care providers (which now include a chiropractor and an MD, along with radiology, pharmacy and insurance people), who are helping me effectively and efficiently deal with my problem.  I now understand, firsthand, what serious shit back problems are. These pills aren't curing me, they're just reducing the inflammation and pain to a level that allows the real healing progress to occur.  But yay!

When you've never been through back problems before, it's really tough to sort out your choices.  You get opinions from friends and go on the web and read, and make the best decisions you can based on your limited knowledge, but at some point you have to put your trust in someone who knows way more than you.  A little over two weeks ago, riding a bike wasn't even on my radar because I was fully preoccupied with whether I could function well enough to go to work.  As of today, my back problem has very little affect on my daily routine and all I can think about is how soon I can get back on my bike.  I know that I'm not there yet and that I need to be patient and do the work, but holy krap: Things looked pretty hopeless not that long ago and now there's a bigass light at the end of the tunnel.  And it's of none of my own doing, so all I can attribute it to is what tremendous quality of healthcare we have access to.

I realize that not everyone in this country can get to it and that truly sucks. I hear all the political mess around the subject and I'm not smart enough to even have an opinion on how to fix it.  Because there's no simple answer - it's a supremely complicated issue. Tonight I'm just selfishly really grateful.

Reminiscence

I was playing around with some new photo software tonight and accidentally came across some pics from a recent winter not too far past.

'Twas about this same time-a-year, 'cept four ago:

Yes, this was pre-snowblower (best money I ever spent btw, after last winter),
and  so yes, those berms were all hand-built.  I was a badass machine, obviously.

This is what we were riding on:

When that didn't work out, this was a pretty good alternative:

Snowbike aside, I'm not complaining. Just happened to notice.

Justin's New Deck

A smallish (7 x 9-1/2) porteur deck for his Rawland rSogn. The result of a solid block of Saturday shop effort. Quite rad.

He's on the downhill side of this project now - it'll quickly become a rack.  The eyelets out front are for some planned future modularity.  In case you're wondering.