Alex Wetmore is always busy with something…

I promissed some bike subjects again, and you can’t get too much geekier than this one.

I’m (slowly) working on converting my Bike Friday Tikit to use a SRAM i-Motion 9 internal hub. This bike will have drop bars and I want to convert a Shimano 9sp barend shifter to work with the hub. To do so I needed a way to measure cable pull very accurately.

I built two devices to do this, but I only took photos of the second and far more successful one:

And here is another shot of the back of it:

This was really easy to make. I used a digital scale that came off of the Digital Readout for my mill. These scales are just like digital calipers and can measure how far the slider in the center moves up and down along the ruler. I drilled and tapped a hole in a block of aluminum that fit a cable housing stop that I had lying around. The block is bolted onto one end of the scale. The center (sliding portion) of the scale has a cable clamp. The other side of the clamp connects a spring to the far end of the scale.

Twist the shifter (or move the lever of a barend shifter) and the scale moves and reports how far it went. These digital scales read out in millimeters or inches and let you reset them anywhere, so it is trivial to measure the motion per click.

I did that and generated this spreadsheet (yeah, it is lame to embed this as an image):

A Travel Agent is simply a cable pull amplifier using two concentric pulleys. It looks like this (image borrowed from Amazon):

The stock pulley amplifies cable pull with a 2:1 ratio. To make the i9 work with the Shimano shifter I need to make a new pulley with a 1:3.6 ratio. You can’t fit a much larger pulley on the Travel Agent, so that means a 32mm outer pulley to 8.9mm inner pulley. That isn’t a hard item to make on the lathe.

I hope to report back on how the whole system functions soon. I still need to build the wheel and install it into the bike.

I reported on a car accident that we had recently. I just wanted to followup and say that the other driver’s insurance company came through and totalled our car. We got a pretty fair settlement and spent a weekend car shopping. I think what convinced them to total the car was having me meet them in person and talking about the situation. They called back later on that day and said that they had rechecked and the car was now going to be totalled. I expect that when they first looked at salvage value they had neglected to mention that it was a diesel (VW diesels are in high demand), and meeting with them got them to look at it again. In the end the adjuster at the insurance company really did seem to be on our side, and that was helpful.

I hate car shopping. Our car is an expensive item that I personally don’t care too much about, but I also don’t want to end up with an expensive lemon. We were buying used (it’s hard for me to justify the cost of a new car) and it was 3 days of chasing ads on Craigslist, trying a variety of cars, and getting over the fact that we wouldn’t be buying anything that had similar fuel economy to our old TDI (which got around 30mpg around town and 45mpg on the highway). I didn’t sleep well for 3 nights because I kept wondering stuff like “should we buy X or Y?”, “is car A too old and going to be unreliable for us?”, “do I like VWs just because they seem familiar?” and “can we fit our kayaking or camping stuff in a sedan instead of a wagon?” (wagons are harder to find).

We ended up with a Subaru Forester. This is the first car that I’ve bought which burns gasoline (instead of diesel) and which isn’t made by VW. We got a nice deal on a 2006 model that looks like this (this isn’t our actual car, but it is the same color). It’s comfortable, holds lots of stuff, isn’t too big, is fun (perhaps too fun) to drive,and gets average (ie. bad) fuel economy:

If anyone in Seattle is looking at used cars I can recommend a good mobile car inspection service that we used. It is called Kar-Chek and the owner is named Jim. For $100 (price probably going up a bit soon) Jim came and gave the car a thorough inspection. He was available on weekends (which most garages are closed) and did a good job of checking everything over,finding a number of issues (all small) that I had missed. I hope we don’t have to buy another car anytime in the next decade, but if we do I’ll use his services again.

Fuel economy rant: 15 years ago Honda Civics got fuel economy close to or exceeding what the current Civic Hybrid gets. The Forester that we bought is moderately small (about the size of our old Jetta Wagon) and it sounds like we can expect around 20-22mpg in the city and 25-27 on the highway. That’s pathetic.Current versions (and the current Impreza, which is smaller) are even worse. Even the small cars like the Smart, Honda Fit, and Toyota Yaris get worse fuel economy than the best small cars made 15 or 20 years ago (such as the 50mpg Honda Civic VX). None of the small/midsized wagons that we considered (VW, Subaru, Volvo) were rated for more than 30mpg on the highway. I hope that turns around before we buy our next car.

The odd part is that when I do the math, MPG is a small deal for us because we don’t drive much. We were driving 7000 miles per year and getting 35mpg over the year, so using 200 gallons of fuel per year. The fuel that we used (biodiesel) cost $5/gallon this year, so about $1000/year. Now we’ll probably drive 7000 miles per year, get roughly 23mpg, and buy fuel that costs $4/gallon. That is about $1200/year. $200/year is not a big deal in the total costs of car ownership. Giving up on using a renewable fuel (biodiesel vs petroleum) and the idea of driving a gas guzzler is worse than the economic reality of driving a gas guzzler.

Anyway, this blog will now return to it’s normal discussions that aren’t about cars. I have a few bike projects starting up again, and some new fun tools on the way.

Our summer vacation this year was sort of 3 vacations right after each other. You’ve heard about the two smaller ones, our 3 day weekend on Lopez Island celebrating our 9th wedding anniversary and the 3 day Bumbershoot Festival. The highlight of my summer vacation time off started right after Bumbershoot when we rented a house in Mazama, WA for a week.

Mazama is the first town that you get to when crossing the North Cascades Highway from west to east. It is about 15 miles from Washington Pass and is surrounded by National Forest, National Park, and Wilderness. The town itself is tiny and basically consists of a general store (but the best general store that I’ve ever been to), a post office, a climbing guide service, and a couple of hotel/inns. We stayed about a mile out of the core town in a nice rental house that overlooked this big alfalfa field:

It was a great vantage point from which to watch birds, deer, and sunsets.

Rising up to the north of our house (just barely north) was “Goat Wall”. This is a cliff which climbs really steeply and then turns into Goat Mountain, with Goat Peak at the top of it.

One of the great things about Mazama is that it is the western end of the Methow Valley Sport Trail Association trails. This is a set of cross country skiing, walking,and cycling trails that criss cross the Methow Valley,and they went right by the door of our rental house. We used them every day to get to the Mazama Store or to the river and often just for walks or relaxing bike rides. The roads were nice too, but the trails were great.

A highlight on our second day was when we were walking along the trails and saw 3 black bears (two cubs and their mother). We kept a safe distance and watched them for a minute before retreating back to the road. I only had a small P&S camera in my pocket, so the photos aren’t great, but here are the bears:

The trails were really well built and had some cool features such as this suspension bridge over the Methow:

The big attraction of the trip for me was all of the nearby hiking and mountain biking. I brought up my new (to me) Rocky Mountain Hammer mountain bike, my IvyCycles with knobby tires, and our tandem. On most days I went for a mountain bike ride in the morning and a hike in the afternoon. It was great to be near so many great trails without needing to drive much.

There were two hikes that were real highlights for me. Sadly we forgot the camera on the first one, but it was a hike that started at Hart’s Pass and went out to Grasshopper Pass. The whole time you are hiking on a ridge line with fantastic views down into the valleys on either side. There were fires in some of these about 5 years ago and it was interesting to see the patterns of what the fires got and what they didn’t. The wildflowers were out (even this late in the year) and it really felt like we were on top of everything.

The other great hike was up to Blue Lake just past Washington Pass. I did this hike twice, once with Christine and again with our friends Larry and Kathy. It’s a quick hike (5 miles round trip, about 2.5 miles each way) with good views of the pass near the top and a stunning lake. I hiked it with Christine on a Saturday and the trail and lake were both quite busy. When I hiked it with Larry and Kathy we went on a Thursday morning and had the lake to ourselves for well over an hour.

The hike up to Goat Peak was also a good one, but challenging. I did this solo and early in the morning. The trail isn’t long (around 2 miles), but it climbs almost 2000′ in those two miles. It felt like I was walking up stairs for much of it. There is a fire lookout at the top, so I knew there would be good views. I wasn’t disappointed, but I think that the views from up by Hart’s Pass and Grasshopper Pass were even more stunning.

The mountain biking was also really good. I did a bunch of trips, some solo and some with friends. The first group of friends to visit us were Ben and Vanessa and their kids. Ben brought his mountain bike and we went riding up the West Fork Methow River trail. This was interesting because we could look down into this valley while driving up to Hart’s Pass, and it is one of the valleys that was in the fire 5 years ago. The underbrush was eating up it’s new found sunlight and was really thick. The trail is 8 miles out and back, and we went about 5 miles before turning around because the brush was too thick. The trail was the right mix of technical and fun, especially when coming back and riding it downhill. Sadly I seem to have mis-placed the memory card with the photos from that one.

Larry also brought his mountain bike when he visited and we went up to Sun Mountain Lodge. That is 15 miles away in Winthrop and is well known for it’s mountain biking. The trails up there were a little too easy (not very technical, ridden out as my friend Rory put it) but it was still a great day of riding bikes with Larry. I also forgot a camera (do you sense a theme?). We did a roughly 20 mile loop suggested by the bike shop in Winthrop which covered most of the trails. There was a lot of climbing in the middle and the ride ended on some nice downhill singletrack that was a lot of fun.

When we didn’t have friends visiting I still got some riding in. On my first morning in Mazama I headed up to Cedar Falls on my IvyCycles with slick tires. I just rode up to the falls and back, so it was mostly road riding on SR20 with a little trail riding at the end. The trail was a lot of fun though, and I wish I had gone back with the mountain bike and rode the whole thing. The falls were spectacular, but you can only see them from the top:

A couple of days later I tried to find singletrack in the Rendezvous Ski Trails. The roads that lead up there are easily accessible via the MVSTA trail system, so it seemed like the best option for a full dirt circuit from the rental house. There was a lot of climbing, some good views, cattle trying to block my way, but no singletrack. I asked later at the bike shop in Winthrop and they said that the Rendezvous area was better for XC skiing than cycling. It was still a nice loop for the morning, all on pretty good dirt roads. I would like to have more time to explore some of the side roads up there.

The final solo MTB ride that I did was up to Cutthroat Lake and back. This is the closest legal to bikes trail near Washington Pass. The lake wasn’t too spectacular, but the trail was good and there were a lot of good views.

All in all it was a good week of hiking, riding, and relaxing. I hope we can return again next year.

Full set of photos

This is what our car looked like when I got home on Monday after work:

Christine was rear ended by a large SUV. She was stopped at a crosswalk, waiting for a pedestrian, and the SUV didn’t stop and plowed into her. Luckily Christine only had minor injuries, but the car is a mess. Basically everything rear the rear tires is bent or broken somewhere, both inside and outside of the car. The trunk and rear passenger door don’t open.

The SUV driver’s insurance took the car to their body shop on Tuesday and we got a call from them today. They didn’t declare the car a total loss and are going to fix it. However they did say that the frame is bent, so they need to cut out part of it and weld it back together. The amount of damage is about half of the car’s value. I’m pretty nervous about such repairs both because I don’t know if the repairs will give us as reliable and safe a car as we once owned, and because I’m sure it will diminish the value of the car.

Our car is a VW TDI and has unusually high value for it’s age (it is a 6 year old car, but the blue book value is about 80% of it’s original purchase price, on craigslist it is probably worth even more) due to being a diesel and a station wagon.We don’t drive much, so the mileage is very low for a 6 year old car. It’s a rare combination.

I’m hoping that someone out there has been in a similar situation (close to totalled car) and can give me a little advice. Here is what is running through my mind right now:

1. Insist that the car is moved to an autobody shop of our choice. There is one near our house that we’ve worked with in the past, and another near our house which specializes in German cars and claims such as this. It makes me nervous that shop currently holding it is tightly related to the insurance company.
2. Claim diminished value on the car. A repair this large it will show up on CarFax (and I wouldn’t feel comfortable hiding from potential buyers anyway) and will lower the value of our car. I don’t know how to calculate this. There appear to be services on the web which will do it for you, but none list their fees for doing so.

What would you do?

We really like this car,but we liked it in it’s pre-major-surgery state. I don’t want to screw the insurance company,but I do want a fair settlement.

If you don’t like leaving comments then shoot me an email, alex (at) phred (dot) org.

p.s. I’d use this as a reminder that I don’t like cars too much, but riding a bike doesn’t save me from insurance claims.

Our friends Matt and Oralea flew up from San Francisco to spend the weekend at Bumbershoot 2008 with us. Bumbershoot is a huge arts and music festival that takes place in Seattle at Seattle Center (most famously the home of the Space Needle).

This was probably the 10th Bumbershoot that I’ve gone to, the 5th that I’ve bought full passes for, and the 4th that I’ve gone to with Matt. The last is amazing since he has never lived in Seattle. It’s a great festival though — crowded but manageable, a good lineup of music, and a bargain at $80 for a 3-day pass. Most similar festivals that I’m aware of cost $80 per day.

The lineup this year was good. Matt and I missed getting to see Neko Case due to the new rule of no SLR cameras in the stadium. Christine and Oralea did go and said the show was great. It sounded good from outside. We spent the rest of Saturday with Mono in VCF, The Walkmen (who I first discovered at Bumbershoot — I’m sad to say that their 2008 show didn’t impress me like their 2004 or 2005 show did), and Nada Surf (who were fantastic).

The Sunday schedule was a bit slow and so we didn’t spend much time at Bumbershoot. We met some of Oralea’s friends for breakfast downtown, explored Bumbershoot’s visual arts (there was a stunning and sobering exhibit of photographs of servicemen disabled by the war),and caught bits of a few acts. The Tripwires were a fun local band,sort of alt-countryish, and the Tiptons Sax Quartet brought us into the evening. There we parted ways with Bumbershoot and headed home for dinner at Pies and Pints.

Yesterday it was just Matt and I at Bumbershoot and we had a pretty full day. In the morning we saw the “Made in Seattle” segment of the One Reel film festival. One Reel is a show within a show at Bumbershoot of short films, none of which are duplicated during the 3 day weekend. I wish they’d do a recap in the winter or put out a best of DVD. Then we caught Two Gallants (a favorite band of mine in recent years), DJ Cheb I Sabbah, Del the Funky Homosepian, and then Mike Dougherty.

I can’t really finish off this post without a bit of ranting. In the last few years Bumbershoot has done the following very frustrating things:

• The Seattle Center Opera House is no longer a venue. This is a major loss, it had the best acoustics at the event and it was nice to see some performers while sitting down. Some of my favorite Bumbershoot memories are from the Opera House: Beth Orton, Cat Power, Low, and Robyn Hitchcock come to mind immediately.
• The EMP no longer lets you access the bar between shows. EMP tends to get good smaller/newer bands during Bumbershoot and was sort of our home camp in years past. We didn’t spend much time there this year due to the lack of seating, the painfully hard concrete floors, no bar, and security guards who wouldn’t let you even sit on the floor.
• No SLR cameras at the mainstage and removing the lockers in the Center House was a really annoying combo of events. This kept us out of the Neko Case show.

Despite these things Bumbershoot was tons of fun and I look forward to next year. It was also great to see Matt and Oralea again.

We’ve done a lot of camping this summer (much of it car camping…not something that we normally do)and I this is my summary of camping gear reviews.

Feathered Friends PenguinSleeping Bag

Last year we bought a Feathered Friends Penguin sleeping bag. It is a made in Seattle rectangular down sleeping bag. The cool thing about this bag is that you can buy an accessory ground sheet which holds two sleeping pads, making it into a double sized sleeping bag. Our bag is an older model (it was a rental)with thicker fabric, but it still packs down to a reasonably small size. It is larger than my down mummy bags, but smaller and lighter than two down mummy bags or any single synthetic sleeping bag that I’ve seen.

We’ve used it for 5 or 6 nights this summer so far and it’s been great. Our bag is rated to 15 degrees which works well for me, but Christine finds it a bit warm. That isn’t too much of a problem because the bag has zippers on each side, so we can each adjust the blanket as we want. We’re using it with Exped DownMats which are really thick (7 or 9cm, vs 3cm for a “luxury” Thermarest) and which also pack down to nothing. The groundsheet was made for Thermarests, but works fine with the Exped pads.

This bag wasn’t cheap, but it is really well made and the design is great. The whole setup (Feathered Friends Penguin, ground sheet, and two DownMats) is the closest thing that I’ve had to sleeping on a real bed while camping.

Kelty Trail Dome 4 (and REI Garage Sales)

The Seattle REI has an Garage Sale area where returned items are sold at a vast discount. I always check this area first when I’m buying something. REI has an incredible return policy and people return things for all kinds of insane reasons. A couple of months ago I bought some Sidi Dominator 5 cycling shoes there for $10 (that is 4% of retail)because the returnee couldn’t get the cleats off of the shoes.

For our trip last weekend there was a forecast of rain. I thought we might want something with more headroom than our TarpTent (by far the best backpacking tent that I’ve used) and which was freestanding for this and other car camping trips. The REI Garage Sale area came through again and I picked up this tent for $50 (normally $170, currently on sale for $120). It had been setup once and then packed up and returned. The rain fly hadn’t even been unfolded.

I think it was returned because the sizing is really misleading. The 4 implies that this tent can hold 4 people. I don’t think that is physically possible,but it is a nice size for 3 people and very roomy for 2. As with all of the Kelty products that I’ve owned it is well made. Nothing too fancy,just nice basic construction and design. All of the seams were sealed and it came with a nice little gear hammock which is useful for holding a flashlight at night. The biggest downside is that the rain fly has no vestibule of any sort. We tucked our shoes under the tent to keep them dry overnight.

It did rain on us during our trip and the tent kept us dry. It breathes well if you tie out the rainfly. At $50 it is a bargain. At $120 it is still a bargain for someone who wants a decent car camping tent. At 10lbs it is too heavy for me to consider taking on a bike or hiking trip, but maybe it will become our kayak camping tent of choice.

Hennessey Hammock UnderCover and UnderPad

I’ve been using these hammocks for about 6 years. They are really great for solo camping. The hard part is keeping warm from underneath because the sleeping bag compresses underneath you. A sleeping pad can be used inside the hammock, but is sort of fussy and doesn’t wrap around your sides (like the hammock does), so you get cold spots there. There are dozens of websites on methods for keeping warm in a hammock.

This year I’ve been trying out the Hennessey Hammock UnderCover and UnderPad. The UnderCover is a tarp (like the rain fly) which fits underneath the hammock. It hangs down slightly lower than the hammock, creating an air pocket. The UnderPad is just a piece of thin padding which fits there to add insulation.

The setup works pretty well at keeping me warm. I’d say that it makes the hammock good to around 40-45F, where I find it chilly much below 60F by itself. Combined with a sleeping pad I’m sure it would be good down into the 20s.

It makes setting up the hammock much more complex than just using a pad. The UnderCover kind of gets tangled up in the stuff sack and you need to sort it all out again. The side lines for the hammock need to be threaded through the UnderPad and UnderCover before being staked out. I always mess it up. Getting in and out is also more complex. The UnderPad has a slot in it that you climb through, just like the hammock. Then you push the pad aside and get through the hammocks slot. Then you push everything back together.

Packed up the whole thing is great. I can fit my sleeping bag, the hammock, the underpad, and everything else related to sleeping in a moderate sized saddlebag.The saddlebag, hammock, pad, and sleeping bag together weigh 6lbs.That plus a handlebar bag up front for my camera, food, and a change of shorts is enough camping gear for a couple of night bike camping trip.

So I’m torn on this setup. It is a lot more complexity in setup for minor gains in comfort compared to a sleeping pad. It is more compact when packed than my sleeping pad, but the difference isn’t huge.

Primus Gravity EF Stove

REI-Outlet and Sierra Trading Post both have this on closeout for about $45 (normally it is $75). Sierra Trading Post has two versions, I bought the slightly more expensive model with a piezo starter. I was attracted to this stove because I wanted something which could better support large pots (for group backpacking orcar camping trips) than my Jetboil. I also wanted it to use the same fuel canister type as the Jetboil. The Primus delivers on both fronts.

I tried to measure fuel efficiency of this vs a Jetboil and couldn’t get reliable numbers. If I used a Jetboil GCS pot (1.5 liters) on both stoves and measured how long it took to boil 500ml of water then the numbers were pretty similar. It takes around 2:30 and 3-4 grams of fuel. With infinite time I would do more accurate testing.

The Primus stove has a much larger burner so the heat is better distributed (nice when making oatmeal or rice) and it also simmers quite well. It isn’t as no-fuss as a Jetboil for packing and unpacking, but it is a lot easier than the gasoline/white gas type stoves. You just unfold the legs, thread on a fuel canister, turn it on, and press the ignition button.

It works great with large pots and frying pans because the fuel canister is remote from the burner. This stove was used to make our favorite camping breakfast and it does a better job than the Jetboil at it. That breakfast is steel cut oats (soak them overnight, 2.5:1 water:oat ratio) served with sauted apples and raisins on top. The JetBoil tends to burn the oats in the middle of the pan, but the Primus did not.

The JetBoil PCS is still my favorite stove for backpacking and cycling due to it’s small size, no-nosense setup, and fast and efficient boil. For car camping (and maybe kayak camping?) I think we’ll get a lot of use out of this Primus. Having both along is nice for larger meals.

A side rant. It is really hard to find camping pots and pans that aren’t coated with Teflon. I’m surprised, since the dangers of cooking with teflon have been known for many years now. The dangers go up with heat, and the camping stoves and thin pans tend to make concentrated hot spots.

Light My Fire Mealkit

At $20 it is expensive for a few pieces of plastic, but I had just won a $100 visa card in a drawing (I never win anything, so that was a nice surprise) and decided to splurge.

The MealKit is triangular plastic bowl with a plate that fits on top. Inside you’ll find a spork, a little cutting board, another bowl/tea cup, and inside that a bowl that seals. It all packs up neatly into a 6 or 7 inchtriangle.

The teacup is kind of ridiculous as a cup, but works nicely as a bowl for oatmeal or soup. The spork is fine, although I prefer my Snow Peak Ti one. The surprise winner for me is the little cutting board. It has holes which let you use it as a colander to drain off pasta water. It is the perfect size for cutting up an apple, mango, or a piece of cheese. On a bike camping trip I could see bringing the cutting board and no other part of the kit. Lots of practicality, little weight, and it takes up almost no space.

Would I buy it again? Maybe. My only complaint is the price. If I didn’t buy one I’d probably make a copy of the cutting board.

Conclusion

I own too much gear. It’s hard coming up with one setup that works well for backpacking (usually as a couple), bike touring (usually solo), and car camping (usually in a group). This is the summary of what I’m using for each:

Backpacking (for two):

• Shelter: Tarptent Rainshadow II
• Bed: Feathered Friends Penguin, two Exped downmats
• Cooking: Jetboil PCS

Bicycle Touring (for one):

• Shelter: Hennessey Hammock with Super Shelter under-pad.
• Sleeping Bag: Western Mountaineering, 20F
• Cooking: Jetboil PCS

Car Camping (for two):

• Shelter: Kelty Trail Dome 4
• Bed: Feathered Friends Penguin, two Exped downmats
• Cooking: Jetboil GCS plus Primus stove plus a stainlessfrying pan from our kitchen.

Christine and I spent the last 3 days in the San Juan Islands (a group of islands in Puget Sound, a couple hours from Seattle) celebrating our ninth wedding anniversary. We camped at Spencer Spit State Park, which is one of my favorite campgrounds for it’s private campsites and good location and scenery. We had a very relaxing weekend.

I think the most exciting aspect of the weekend, and the one that triggered the title, was picking up a used tandem sea kayak. We’ve been talking about getting one for years. We’ve taken paddling classes, rented them, gone on guided trips with them, but we’ve never owned one. Now we do.

We went on three different paddles over the weekend and enjoyed the solitude, quiet, and wildlife. Spencer Spit was a great place to re-aquaint ourselves with paddling as the waters were gentle and the scenery and wildlife were plentiful. Last night we took it across the island to MacKaye Harbor and that was a bit more challenging and probably above our skill level until we re-take the kayaking safety courses.

I look forward to many years of kayaking and kayak camping with Christine. I don’t think we could have had a better ninth anniversary.

This past weekend Christine and I met our friends Nate and Sam for some camping and hiking near Mt St Helens. We met Friday night at a public campground with the goal of hiking Saturday up to Vanson Lake, camping there,and hiking around the area. On the map the area looked like it had many possibilties with many small lakes and potentially good views to the south and into the Mt St Helens crater.

The Vanson Lake Trailhead is a challenge to get to. You have to drive about 20 miles(over an hour)on logging roads, most of which are private and not very well mapped. Our guidebook had limited directions and the road numbers were often missing or disagreed with the numbers printed on our maps. Luckily I had a new GPS with detailed topo maps of the area and it helped out greatly. The most frustrating and also humorous part of getting lost on these logging roads was finding both sides of a locked gate — why lock the gate if both sides are freely accessible? One benefit of traversing this maze of logging roads was the promise of solitude, not many folks seemed to get this deep into the forest. This is unusual for an area just a couple of hours from both Seattle and Portland.

We got to the trailhead around 11:30 and started the hike in. The weather was chilly (around 45F)and damp, but there were hints that the clouds were lifting or burning off. The trail started in very nice forest, it appeared to be second growth but wasn’t too thick with underbrush. At about half a mile into the trail we started to see snow. I was expecting snow at some of the higher elevations (maybe near Vanson Peak), but it what remained appeared to be at the lower elevations.Luckily none of it was too deep and it was pretty easy to follow where the trail ran underneath it.

We pretty quickly reached Vanson Lake and found the best (and I think only) camping area. It was even chillier here than at the trailhead and damp, the clouds were just above us. The lake was small and beautiful. The camping area was next to one of the streams that feeds the lake and had three or four good tent spots and a couple of old fire rings. Christine and Sam were chilly, so we set up the tents so they could hang out in the warmth of their sleeping bags. Nate and I made some lunch and then hiked to the top of Vanson Peak (700 feet higher) to see if there were any signs of the clouds lifting. The trail up to Vanson Peak was nice with no snow (odd that the last snow was at lower elevation) and tons of wildflowers. Unfortunately the visibility was terrible. The trail sides were steep and dropped away quickly, it looked like there would be some wonderful views.

When we returned to the camp we found that the clouds were dropping and rolling in above the lake. It was incredibly beautiful, but not helping Sam and Christine get any warmer or lifting their spirits. We decided that the fog had won,so we packed up and hiked out.

On the way down the logging roads we looked for potential places to camp instead of going back to the campground. The best candidate was on an open bluff with nice views looking down to Riffe Lake. There was a stream to gather water from nearby,but it was covered in brush and completely inaccessible. So we ended up back at the campground, one spot over from the one we had stayed at on Friday.

It was a good weekend, even though it didn’t go as planned. There was a little disappointment at not actually camping at Vanson Lake and missing out on the great views that were hiding behind the clouds. On the other hand it was really fun to see Nate and Sam and to spend some time in the woods with them. I’d love to explore this area some more and even hike up there again. It area might be a good candidate for some weekend bicycle touring/exploration. The views from the the logging roads looking south to Mt St Helens reminded me of my bike tour in the region a year ago, just about 15 to 20 miles south of this point.

While walking to the bus this morning I was thinking about the tag game that Fat Cyclist started.

I was wondering what kind of questions I’d want to ask the world. It probably sounds strange given the other 99% of content on this blog, but I am much more passionate about good neighborhoods than good bicycles.

My neighborhood (Roosevelt, a long thin neighborhood sandwhiched in between Green Lake and Ravenna in Seattle) was recently recognized by WalkScore as one of the most walkable neighborhoods in Seattle. I had forgotten about WalkScore until our neighborhood association got excited about this recognition. The tool itself is too simplistic because it doesn’t have any way to rank the quality of what one can walk to. A 7-11 and a Safeway and a Whole Foods are all grocery stores in it’s mind. McDonalds counts as food, even though I would never eat there.

This got me thinking though. What do I like about my neighborhood?

The Good

Whole Foods is 3 blocks away. I’m not entirely a Whole Foods fan, but they do sell the kinds of food that I eat at good prices. Having a good grocery store 3 blocks away means that I can stop by almost every day and am almost always eating fresh food instead of stuff that has been sitting in my kitchen for a week. I routinely realize that I’m missing something that would make a good meal great and quickly run over while other stuff is cooking. I can’t imagine living far away from a grocery store.

In the same vein the University District Farmer’s Market is 13 blocks away. I think this is the best of Seattle’s wonderful farmer’s market. It isn’t padded out with crafts and soap and things that don’t matter, it just has great local, mostly organic, food. It went year round a couple of years ago. I visit 2-3 times per month and in the summer almost all of our produce comes from the market.

Since I’ve moved here the number of places to eat breakfast have grown. I like eating breakfast out. The newest additions are Cowen Park Grocery and the Racer Cafe. Cowen Park Grocery used to be a cheap beer and cigarettes type of store, but a few years ago they completely renovated it. The new CPG has a great little cafe with good healthy food anda nice staff.Best of all much of my neighborhood is eating breakfast there on weekends, so showing up on a Sunday morning always gives me a chance to chat with some neighbors that I haven’t seen in a while. Racer Cafe is a little more greasy and gritty but the staff has a great sense of humor. It’s tiny and the kitchen is next to the bar and it feels like you are eating in someone’s living room. Since it is a tiny place everyone sits together and chats. It’s a fun place. We also have the Sunlight Cafe (good vegetarian food), Varsity (greasier than CPG, less so than the Racer) and others that I’m forgetting.

A direct bus to work is 5 blocks away and only has 3 stops to where I get off.

Third Place Books moved in about 4 years ago and has been a great addition. They have a nice pub downstairs and a great selection of new and used books upstairs.

Scarecrow Video has to be the best video store in the country and they are less than a mile away. They have a larger video selection than Netflix,a good staff,cheap rentals (2 for 1 if you are a KEXP member). We spend lots of money there. If I lived anywhere else I’d probably join Netflix, but as long as Scarecrow is close by I’m going to be renting exclusively from them.

We have a great park only a block away. Cowen Park/Ravenna Park (I don’t understand why one park has two names) has nice walking trails, a good play ground, and nice fields. My favorite thing is that most of the park is in a deep ravene and in the trails in that bottom it’s hard to remember that you are in the city.

The Bad

I wish we had a hardware store a little closer to the house. Normally I go to the Maple Leaf Ace Hardware which is a great store but about 35 blocks up hill. It’s an easy bike ride, but I’d love for it to be closer. Downhill I can go to the University District True Value (the closest one within walking distance) and Hardwick’s (which has the best hand tool selection of any hardware store that I’ve been to). 2 blocks away is R&R Hardware, but it is owned and run by our neighborhood slum lords who hire dangerous people.

It’s too far from work, and a no-bikes bridge prevents me from easily biking the whole route every day.

We have great public transit access to everywhere but Seattle Center. It irk’s me to drive to music festivals.

Amazingly (because Seattle seems to have Thai food everywhere) there is not good Thai food very close by. We go to Krittika which is3 blocks from our old house and 13 from the current one. Royal Palm is close to us and used to be okay, but it’s recently gone downhill.

The Map

I took a map of our neighborhood and drew dots on the places that we frequent. There are tons more commercial establishments within walking distance (especially along Roosevelt and 65th), these are just the ones that we go to at least monthly.

Not too shabby, especially for a neighborhood with mostly seperated houses. I should finish up by saying that Christine and I really wanted to live here. I think our real estate agent thought we were crazy when gave them a 6 block area that we wanted to buy a house in.

What do you like and dislike about your neighborhood? What would be the ideal one for you? What stuff do you like to have within walking distance (nothing is a reasonable answer if you prefer to live away from civilization)?

Some cycling blogs are playing this tag game with a series of questions about bikes. I was just tagged by John. I’ve also read the same set of questions on Tarik and Kent’s blogs.

I think this tag thing is kind of stupid, but I’ll play along (mostly because John was so polite about it). I also think there is a more interesting subject to talk about which I’ll post later.

Here goes.

If you could have any one — and only one — bike in the world, what would it be?

My IvyCycles. Basically a low trail bike, moderate sized porteur rack, Rohloff hub, clearance for fat tires that work on-road and off. A frame that is lively and fun to ride. Not too heavy. One bike that can do everything I enjoy doing on a bike.

Do you already have that coveted dream bike? If so, is it everything you hoped it would be? If not, are you working toward getting it? If you’re not working toward getting it, why not? Do you already have that coveted dream bike? If so, is it everything you hoped it would be? If not, are you working toward getting it? If you’re not working toward getting it, why not?

I’m thinking about building a second version of this over the winter. It’ll be the same concept,but 650B or 26″ wheels instead of 700C,eccentric bottom bracket instead of sliding dropouts, and probably fillet brazed. The workmanship won’t be as nice as Brandon’s, but it’ll be a frame that I built. Overall the changes are very minor, so I think I already have that dream bike.

If you had to choose one — and only one — bike route to do every day for the rest of your life, what would it be, and why?

This is ahard one. It needs to be rural riding in abandoned forests but start and end up in an urban center with good food and good people. Ihaven’t found it yet. If I had to guess on where I’d find it I would say Wellington, NZ.

My dream route would start at a nice breakfast placewith good home made granolaand yogurt. The ride would be around 30 miles/50 km with challenging climbing and descents on a mix of logging and paved roads. It would end with ice cream.

What kind of sick person would force another person to ride one and only one bike ride to to do for the rest of her / his life?

hm. meme tax question.

Do you ride both road and mountain bikes? If both, which do you prefer and why? If only one or the other, why are you so narrow minded?

John said “fat tire road bike” and I agree. On the other hand I’m trying a mountain bike again this summer, so I guess I ride both. My cycle truck is sort of a mountain bike too.

Have you ever ridden a recumbent? If so, why? If not, describe the circumstances under which you would ride a recumbent.

I’ve owned three. Great for loaded touring, not so great for urban riding. I like the urban riding. The tandem was the most fun of the three.

Have you ever raced a triathlon? If so, have you also ever tried strangling yourself with dental floss?

No. The only competitive cycling that I’ve done are a few cyclocross races. They are a lot of fun, but I am missing those competitive genes and don’t really care about winning. I think that just makes me filler on the course. I also am not a big fan of paying $30 for 30 minutes of riding.

Suppose you were forced to either give up ice cream or bicycles for the rest of your life. Which would you give up, and why?

Wait, I just had to pick a favorite bike ride and it finished with ice cream!

I’d give up the ice cream. I don’t eat it very often anyway.

What is a question you think this questionnaire should have asked, but has not? Also, answer it.

What does your dream neighborhood look like with respect to cycling?

My dream is a dense enough neighborhood that I can walk to all of my regular shopping needs. There are dozens of good resturants within a 2 mile biking distance. Within 5 miles I can get away from the city and suburbs and into the mountains for good riding. My block might have a community workshop where everyone chips in tools and knowledge and works on projects together.

You’re riding your bike in the wilderness (if you’re a roadie, you’re on a road, but otherwise the surroundings are quite wilderness-like) and you see a bear. The bear sees you. What do you do?

Make lots of noise.

Now, tag three biking bloggers. List them below.

I’m ending this game by tagging the three people who I’ve know have played along. John, Kent, and Tarik.