Saturday, February 16, 2013

100 Yards on Old Arcata Road



Home bike shop sale.



Ultra-cute Quonset Hut




Beachcomber Bayside, a bike-friendly cafe




Beachcomber Bayside, racy, artistic perspective



Tuesday, January 22, 2013

BikeDreams


My Rivendell Romulus, meditating


Eureka bike parade


Bayside, a few hours ago

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Aleutian Geese, Old Arcata Road

Old Arcata Road has bike lanes on both sides of the road. This was the view to the west today.


Friday, January 18, 2013

Lance, The Legacy


Afternoon TV commercial, 2020


Kid in High School audience: "Mr. Armstrong, you mean you took ALL those pills every day for TEN YEARS?" 

Lance: "Yes, kids but remember, I was in training and I'm a professional. Take it from me, there are no shortcuts. It takes years  of disciplined pill popping to build up to a mega-pill sport. Start with a few pills when you're young, take them on time every day and work up slowly to major meds. Never obsess on dosages or labels; focus instead on quantity. If you want to excel in sports, you need to consume lots of pills on a daily basis. 

Don't improvise. Consult a knowledgeable friend in the locker room or neighborhood pub before adding new pills to your training regimen. And never give up. If I got all those pills down you can do it too."


Sexy female narrator: Pills. They make you powerful like Lance. And they really turn me on! 


Some pills may have unintended side effects including but not limited to hyper obnoxiousness, paranoia, mindless aggression and multi-gendered genitals growing out of the side of your head. 

A public service announcement by The Multinational Pharmaceutical Association



Thursday, January 17, 2013

The Latte Warriors vs. Winter


About 10 am



Clam Beach overlook, later that same morning


The Arcata Bottoms road got a facelift. Gone: 1,000 potholes. 


Friday, January 11, 2013

Great Rainy Day Books: "Beowulf"

If you're like me you don't read enough poetry. You think you can live without it and then you fall in love or you get married or somebody dies and suddenly nothing else will do. Why wait for a life-changing event to turn to poetry? Start with this smash hit from the tenth century.

Ezra Pound: “Literature is news that stays news.” 




from page 15:

"These were hard times, heart breaking
 for the prince of the Shieldings; powerful counselors, 
the highest in the land, would lend advice,
plotting how best the bold defenders
 might resist and beat off sudden attacks. 
Sometimes at pagan shrines they vowed
 offerings to idols, swore oaths
 that the killer of souls might come to their aid
 and save the people. That was their way, 
their heathenish hope; deep in their hearts 
they remembered hell."

Sound familiar? The original Old English (included on facing pages) is so distant that Seamus Heaney had to almost rewrite the poem based on the original. Poetry translators know the problem well: as the linguistic gap widens, say, Japanese or Finnish to English, the roles of translator and poet begin to merge. Here the result should be good for another thousand years at which point somebody will have to translate Beowulf again. 

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Great Rainy Day Books: "Over the Edge of the World"

We've had many days (weeks?) of rain with more to come, a reminder that Humboldt County is in the SW shadow of the great NW rain forest that stretches up to Alaska. Sure, you can ride anyway in a driving rain. Let me know how it goes.

As Albert Einstein famously pointed out, cycling concentrates the mind. But that doesn't mean you're stuck thinking about one thing at a time. The last thing you want to do is "be here now" on a bike ride. Say you're on a bluff with a panoramic view of the Pacific. What better place to listen to "Coltrane Live at the Village Vanguard" on your iPhone--or in your head. Better yet, when you're coming off a long rainy spell, you may have read a truly great book that you can savor on a bike ride. If not let me suggest a few. You don't want to settle for anything mediocre to bring to that moment above the Pacific.

Here's a truly great book recommendation with a link to the author's website (you'll find it online and at your neighborhood bookstore):



The adventure to end all adventures! Magellan is pursued from day one by jealous rivals who plan to kill him--and almost succeed. Utterly lost much of the time, he sails on even though the food stores have spoiled, the ships are wrecked, half the men mutiny and seize a ship, another ship deserts and the natives are hostile. What follows is akin to the discovery of an entirely new planet. Nobody handles it well, least of all Magellan who reaches for his inner Jesus Christ in the Philippines.  It's a tough act to bring off.

Bergreen spins a terrific yarn. I'm not going to spoil the ending--or the beginning--for you but I've never read anything remotely like this astonishing history.

More book recommendations to follow...


Thursday, January 3, 2013

A Small Good Thing


New Year's Day, Eureka waterfront. Indian Island in background. 


Seagulls unaccountably seagulling...


...and a brand new 1.5 mile bike trail! Using surface streets through Eureka's Old Town and this trail at the south end of town, you can now ride through all of Eureka along the bay and avoid Route 101 traffic.



Happy New Year! 

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Review: Rans Stratus: The Ergonomic Difference


Bike ergonomics done right: the bike adapts to the rider. 


After a year and more than 2,500 miles on my Rans Stratus XP I have just one question: why aren't there millions of these bikes on the road?  

Whether you ride a Stratus XP for a few minutes or half a day it sails down the road almost effortlessly. You simply sit back and watch the scenery fly by. You have to ride one to appreciate what I'm talking about: it's the Mercedes Benz of recumbent bicycles. Rans has been working on this bike for decades and it shows. Everything about the Stratus adjusts to the rider: the handlebars, the grips, the seatback and the seat position. The big wheel up front eliminates fiddly small wheel handling. The Stratus XP fits my body like a glove, nothing to "break in." no tedious "learning curve,"no aches and pains. 

How did Rans do it? They thought about ergonomics and put the needs of the rider first. Practically the whole bike industry is headed in the opposite direction: adding cost-be-dammed racing features to minimalist frames. The result: fast bikes with terrible ergonomics that torture riders. I talked with Randy Schlitter, the head of Rans, who put it this way: "Over the years we've refined the Stratus, adding helpful features when we could." That shows too. The Rans Stratus XP is a supremely ergonomic bike.  


Bike ergonomics done wrong: the rider adapts to the bike. 

Yes, this slightly exaggerated version of the familiar "racing bike" is fast. Make sure your medical insurance is up to date. Your lower back, crotch, neck, knees, ankles, neck and wrists will be overstressed every time you ride this bike. Your wrist joints, for example, aren't designed to support half your body weight while you pound away at them. Until the invention of the racing bicycle, nobody had figured out a way to bounce half the body up and down on the large blood vessels and nerves in the crotch--until the whole area goes numb--and call it fun. 

Rivendell and Rans make rider-centered ergonomic bikes. Most other manufacturers cater to the speed at any cost crowd, which put the needs of the machine ahead of the rider's needs. You'll go fast for a few months and then you'll get to know a good Chiropractor. 

I redid the stock gearing on my Stratus XP for better hill climbing, moving from the stock 30 tooth inner chain ring to a 24.  Schwalbe Marathon tires put an end to the rash of flats that shredded the stock tires in my first 500 miles. I also added a brass bell along with a Rans seat bag and rear rack. With that setup you could ride this bike across North America and most other continents. I've done Washington State and chunks of Oregon and California. More--much more--to come. 

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Why does a country the size of New Jersey have 10,000 miles of dedicated bike paths?



Does the first part of this story sound familiar?

Eureka and Arcata are five miles apart. We're now in our 20th year of meetings to argue about whether an abandoned railroad track between the two towns should be converted to a bike trail.

As we begin our third decade of meetings more have been scheduled for next month.

A tip of the helmet to Dick Van Hoose for this important story.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Ernest Hemingway Cyclist

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ImagesNext, Adrienne and I took up cycling under Hemingway's tuition and influence; not that we did and cycling ourselves, but we attended with our professor the "Six-Jours," that six day merry-go-round at the Ve´l d'Hiv, easily the most popular even in the Paris season, Fans went and lived there for the duration, watching more and more listlessly the little monkey-men, hunched over on their bikes, slowly circling the rung or suddenly sprinting, night and day, in an atmosphere of smoke and dust and theatrical stars, and amid the blare of loudspeakers. We did our best to follow what the professor was saying to us, but rarely could we distinguish words above the din. Unfortunately, Adrienne and I could spare only one night for this sport, engrossing though we found it. But what wouldn't have been engrossing in Hemingway's company?



Sylvia Beach, Shakespeare and Company










Images 1NewImage


Sunday, September 9, 2012

A Good Day for a Ride



There are days when the sun is out everywhere on earth except fog bound Eureka, Ca. And then there are days like this that make you wonder why you would want to live anywhere else.

Oyster Beds, Arcata Bay--as seen from the Samoa Bridge



Three bridges connect Eureka with the Samoa peninsula. Happily, they have bike lanes in both directions. Steve Fox stopped to grok the Bay.




We couldn't resist to brief detour to Woodley Island, an easy exit from the bridge. The fisherman statue honors those who were lost at sea. Unfortunately, this fisherman looks like he has returned from the watery deep. I expected to honor the dead, not meet them in person. I thought about it: "you don't get zombies on a sunny day like this.



Eureka's previous mayor lives here. Minutes from the city waterfront, it's reachable only by boat.




The ride back to Arcata on the Samoa peninsula gave us a panoramic view of Arcata Bay and the mountains to the east.



We stopped for an excellent lunch at The Bayside Beachcomber on Old Arcata Road, which is becoming a cycling destination just like its sister cafe in Trinidad.

Monday, September 3, 2012

David Bradley

The Arcata cycling community lost its greatest champion today, the astonishing David Bradley. We all knew this day would come for some time. David had been fighting--no, outrunning--Cancer for more years than I care to remember. He'd go to Houston, Tx. for a chemotherapy treatment and focus not on the treatment but on the ride that would follow the treatment. And as planned, David would rise from the recovery bed a few days after a treatment that can take you to death's door--and ride 200 miles in one day. This sort of thing happened all the time!




David joined my cycling group The Latte Warriors a few years ago and reached out to all of us. If you needed to plan a ride or buy a new bike David had a plan or bike for you. He would organize group rides, repairs and meetings. I expressed interest in a new recumbent. For starters, David sent me into recumbent shops in both LA and Portland. Both owners lit up at the mention of his name. Then when I got close to a decision David offered to drive me round trip to Portland, a total of 18 hours behind the wheel. Why? Because he had a large bike rack on his van and I needed a new bike and it would be fun to ride with his friends in Portland. It was tough turning him down but I did feel obligated to point out that he was still working full time.

To paraphrase the old blues song:

"I don't know where David Bradley was at but the train don't stop there anymore."






Here's David back in 2010 on one of his beloved Bachetta racing recumbents. He formed Team Raven Lunatics and raced all over North America with bikes like this. But it didn't stop there; when David loved something his first impulse was to share. Now our group has multiple Bachettas, all arranged with David's help and advice. Rising from his deathbed just last week (!) he found a rare used Bachetta that was a perfect fit for another one of The Latte Warriors. Neither buyer nor seller had met David but he made a call and the bike was shipped before the buyer paid for it! I'm hoping that Bachetta will name a bike The Bradley after this sweet guy who had so much heart.

Tomorrow morning I'll join a memorial ride with David's wife Mary and son Phillip. We'll head out across the Arcata bottoms and then turn north into the morning fog.

“Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me"        Emily Dickenson

Thursday, August 23, 2012

The Steripen Adventurer – Handheld UV Water Purifier with a Solar Charging Case

If you anticipate a bike ride where water quality may be compromised you have a choice: add evil-tasting chemical tablets to your water or pack a Steripen. How do I know this? I asked Reese Huges, co-editor of Pacific Crest Trailside Reader: Oregon and Washington: Adventure, History, and Legend on the Long - Distance Trail to take the Steipen into the high Sierras, a test that would go far beyond what most bike tourists might require. Little did I know how much he would come to depend on it.


I used the Steripen and the Solar Charging Case as the sole means of purifying water for myself and two thirsty companions on a recent 17-day backpacking trip in the High Sierra. We rotated two batteries always keeping one in the solar charger, had access to relatively clean water (as opposed to turbid or highly contaminated H2O), and boiled untreated water for dinner and hot drinks. We’ve have been off the trail for a week and none of us has shown any sign of harboring giardia lamblia or other parasite.


Throughout the trip the steripen performed well. There is something wonderful about enjoying cool High Sierra water without the taste of chlorine or iodine or the inconvenience of a pump. We were especially concerned about battery life and meticulously monitored battery performance. The Steripen manual indicated that when using rechargeable CR123 batteries, about 30 liters should be able to be treated. We were able to treat 35, 36, and 34 liters between charges.


There are a couple of caveats to the solar charging system that should be noted. First, the manual indicates that 2-5 days are required to recharge the battery. With no way to determine the extent to which the recharge is complete, we always kept the charger exposed. It is hard to know how the system would perform in conditions with less solar exposure than the sunny Sierra. Second, use of a steripen does necessitate that you bring a wide mouth bottle. We would treat water in the wide mouth bottle and then transfer the water to our array of Camelbaks and Platypus containers. Most wide mouth bottles have attached tops that invariably get wet when filling the bottle and we often mused about just how that moisture gets sterilized. And, lastly, in a world where every ounce matters, the hard plastic case does add some weight although it does provide excellent protection for the steripen and, in total, weighs no more than the pump we have usually carried.


A final thought. I have also traveled extensively in the developing world and could see considerable application of the Steripen and the Solar Charging Case in those situations where access to safe drinking water is uncertain.

The Steripen Adventurer Opti (above) performed like a champ!  We were very pleased.

Rees Hughes
Co-Editor, Pacific Crest Trailside Reader: California: Adventure, History and Legend on the Long Distance Trail


So, friends, if you're heading across central Brazil or, say, downtown Garberville, on a bike tour you might want to pack a Steripen.

And whether you're planning a bike tour, hike or just a stroll over to the couch do take one of Rees' books along. These are true stories from the real wild west. Fasten your seat belt...

Monday, August 6, 2012

Another Roadside Attraction

The Worldguy wants to warn the world about the dangers of diabetes by walking to San Francisco with a giant globe and a dog. Bike buddy Noreen and I ran into him on Old Arcata Road where his globe had drifted out into the oncoming traffic lane. Both the globe and the dog were leashed.




Monday, July 16, 2012

Puget Sound Tour, Redux




Tumwater Falls, detail

A one foot waterfall, 
it too makes music 
and at night is cool.
Issa

Riding all day and blogging in the evening didn't work on this tour. Washington was going through a rare heat wave and everything took longer than expected. I can't tell you exactly what 85f in the shade works out to in direct sun, but when you're climbing a two mile hill you get a pretty good idea.

Bike touring took over my life in Washington. I had little room for blogging, let alone music or books. Steve and I rode 220 miles, a rough crescent south through the Puget Sound Islands and on to Elma Washington. There we turned east and finally north to Tumwater at the south end of the sound.



Puget Sound is a gorgeous water world surrounded by saw-toothed mountains. I don't know of any place on earth that's remotely like it. The bike facilities are quite good. We didn't run into any rain but you certainly can't plan on that happening again. People who live near the town of Shelton, Wa, for example, must batten down to ten FEET of rain a year.



I was born here and I plan to return for more cycling.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Route 105 near Shelton, Washington



The road ahead















And to the right...The Hood Canal and The Olympic Mountains



Above




Larye (The Unix Curmudgeon) Our Warm Showers host in Shelton. We were tired of climbing hills in the heat so Larye mapped out a shaded river valley road with little traffic that took us all the way to Tumwater. In fact, Larye's suggested route from Bremerton to Shelton managed to avoid hilly downtown Bremerton and another killer hill along the way. Instead, we rode along the beautiful Hood Canal with a clear view of the Olympic range all the way. 




Leave it to a programmer to find a better route! 




Our hostess, Judy Parkhurst and one of her amazing tapestries

Location:Shelton Washington http://blogs.info-engineering-svc.com/larye/