Day 8, Tarik Saleh Bike Club 100 Challenge

Got up early and snuck out for a little coffee ride on my Mom's bike again. It was actually just below 40 and I had neglected my gloves. Epic suffering ensued. I basically looped around Goleta and stopped and got coffee at a shop in a stripmall.

The suffering...

The shop had a steady streams of contractors coming in for their morning fix, I watched most of them check out the pink folding bike. I then rode over toward campus and checkout out the excellent bike repair stands with attached tools and pump.

And the wonderful views across the acres of bike parking attached to some of the larger student housing blocks.

Also spied this chevoid mid restoration

I got a solid 6.5 miles in which put me at 101.5 for the week. Hurrah! I did it, rode everyday and hit 100 for the week, and certainly rode much more than I usually would have! The total count for me was 11.5 on the single speed Pugsley in snow in Los Alamos, 17 on my Mom's 3 speed folding bike and 73 on the fixie friday. No deraillers were involved in the challenge for me.
I think there were 14 or 15 participants in the end. I am going to let you all self select on whether you achieved any or all of the three parts of the challenge. Remember though, the bar is low intentionally, so even if you did not do what you wanted to, you probably did ride more than normal this week, right? Please email me what you did and your mailing address and I will get a pin or two out to you. If you already have some pins and don't need any more that is fine too. Los Alamos Jerry, I will leave one on your bike at work. I will try to collate a summary of everyone by this weekend...

The family and I left Santa Barbara late in the afternoon, got delayed in pheonix airport for a bit and then made it back to Albuquerque around 10:30. We drove up home in light to heavy snow and increasingly snow packed roads and got back just before 1am in the new year. Huzzah, happy new year on the road!
Pheonix Airport had bathrooms for everyone

So happy new year everyone and I will almost certainly try this again next year!

Days 6 and 7, Tarik Saleh Bike Club 100 Challenge

Day 6 was busy with measly riding right at the end. I started with fresh fish market and farmers market buying of stuff for a combined family birthday party.

Vermilion Rockfish, got it and eated it

Then some shopping and walking around downtown with the wife. Saw a plating shop on state street, right downtown, looks like they do lots of bike parts. Joes plating on lower state:

And snapped a photo of this old welding shop sign, and grills!

Did some massive and fun eating of scallops, thresher shark, rockfish, crab legs and such and then went home with the family. Nearly did not ride, but my wife needed some stuff from the store, so I lit out at night for a 7 mile round trip to the supermarket. These days, most if not nearly all my rides are utilitarian, usually replacing a car trip. Going to work, going to the store, getting some take out, going to the PO. Many longer rides are just taking the long way (or the super long way) on an errand. This was my first utilitarian trip of the week, might be the only one, I have nothing against riding for riding sake, but I have not really had time to do this much in the last couple years, so big thanks to my wife and family for indulging me this week. The 7 miles put me at 74 for the week.

Day seven started with my brother and mom and I shepparding the kids on a ride around campus. The cousins on big kid bikes, Aida on a way too small balance bike, the adults on foot. It was great fun and Aida went much further than ever before on a balance bike.

Later in the afternoon I road the long low route to the harbor and met the family for a walk through the marina and dinner.

A bike rack air station on campus

Good car action

the Friday fits well in old style bike racks

After dinner my Brother, his wife, Elena and I went to see the Hobbit. It was pretty good. Not brilliant, but worth watching. My bro and I started with some severe conversation, then transitioned to the dream world of middle earth and stuff

I put in a total of 21 miles on the day, which puts me at 95 for the week. The last day is a travel day, but I should be able to sneak a 5 mile short ride in in the morning to get the 100 on the week, barely. I am not convinced I will make it home before midnight to get any riding in Los Alamos before the new year, but any which way I am satisfied with the week.

Seems like we have a bunch more participants, Scott from Spokane, Mindful Mule, and SeanM. That takes it to about 13 participants, plus 14 for me. Awesome. Or as my brother says, who are all these people again? CycloTourist seems to be trying to say he is DNF as he is sick, but I am not sure if it is possible to DNF the challenge. He put a nice comment in with a SB bike trailer pic. I accidentally deleted it, but here is his photo:

For some reason the comments have been coming through in bunches and doubles, let me know if your comment never appeared or some such.

Day 4, Tarik Saleh Bike Club 100 Challenge

Got up late, made the baby girl some fried eggs:

had a nice brunch and a belated Christmas with the family and then put together the dirtiest folding bike in the world.

Featuring a melange of (most recently) belgian mud/cowshit, marin and east bay dirt, and uniformly distributed chain oil. This bike is really the ultimate in deferred maintenance. I usually do all the work only when necessary, always on the road, usually in a hotel room. I took the time to change the brake pads that probably had a couple more years left in em, but better safe than sorry:

The whole family went to the zoo together to engage in the christmas family ritual feeding of the Giraffes.

After getting back to my folks house, I left on a daylight ride on my favorite SB miniloop, foothills to the mission. Stopping by the mission canyon Fire depot

Descending Twisty roads

To the nice ocean and island views from the mission

Met up with the family for dinner at a restaurant with a cool old skip tooth cruiser parked out front

And then skipped out on dessert to ride back to my folks house in the dark via the coastal route bike path through campus. It was a really good ride on a really nice sunny day, the ride back was a little cool, but again, noting compared to riding on snow and ice in the dark!

The days mileage ended up just a bit over 25 miles, putting me at 47 total after 4 days and 4 rides on three different bikes. Hope everyone else is having fun riding about.

Day 3, Tarik Saleh Bike Club 100 Challenge

My original plan to get an early ride in Los Alamos in the snow before heading to the airport fell apart due to lack of time and organization, so we had a nice long trip to Santa Barbara, stretching over much of the day. Including lots of drawing

and some walking on the best airport carpeting in the world in PHX:

By the time we got to SB it was really late and I was too pooped to put together the Bike Friday. We had a nice dinner with the parents, put Aida to bed and I snuck out on my mom's pink flowered Dahon Curve 3 speed. Nominally, I was hoping to head to Trader Joes and get some beers for the holiday imbibing, but I could not remember where it was exactly, so I headed over to campus and down to the beach

and back

and saw this excellent bike repair center near one of the infinite fields of bike racks at UCSB

After a bit of noodling around the maze-like bikepaths on campus I emerged next to the Isla Vista Habit Burger and was disheartened to see it closed, I would have emerged with a shake for sure.

All told it was a mighty 10.5 miles on the Dahon Curve 3, which even though it was kind of chilly, (high 40's and humid), and I was pooped, and the saddle was way too wide. it was by far the easiest ride of the week. That puts the total as of Wednesday 12/26 at 22 miles. Over three rides over three days...

There are quite a few more people in on the challenge, in addition to Andy BigDummyDaddy and David CycloTourist. Now we are joined by:
Scott 5 Toed Sloth
Jason Cyclescribe
BikeWRider
JLeddy in Vt.
Someone of parts unknown named Builder,
and I think Los Alamos JerryM is also on board unless I misread the comments.

Also the original pin art creator and TSBC founding member Mr. Jalopy is in on the Challenge as well. He and his Coco's variety crew are riding around the hills of LA:

Anyhow, welcome everyone to the challenge, I am pleased with the numbers. Have fun!

Raleigh Twenty Lamp

Why? Because someone on the internet had them a question.

Front with Child claw

PiFCO, the marque of quality

Lamp received via el Speare many a moon ago.

Praugles in Cobbe

Its moscaline cobbles fortnight, just not on the internet.

Only interesting bike in all of Moscow

Seriously.


In a sea of disc braked mtbs and hybrids, there was this excellent reverse steer folder. I am pretty sure that it belonged to a street performer.



If you were, as I was, expecting a sea of eastern block knockoff Raleigh D bikes, you and I were both mistaken.

Update from the Pfister in the comments:
"""
I rode that bike (or maybe a clone of it) in London about 10 years ago. It belonged to a street performer who would chalk two lines about 20 feet apart and offer rides for 1 pound. If you could ride the bike from one line to the other without dabbing he would give you 20 pounds. He was able to ride the bike around to demonstrate that it was possible.

I gave it a try, and decided to cross my arms to short-circuit any learned body english. But I still only made it about 10 feet.
"""
There you go, thanks Marc!

Our Far Flung correspondents

From Moscaline's west coast correspondent and Santa Barbara outpost manager and brother, currently on location in Korea, come these photos.





He saw virtually no bikes in Seoul, but did see two Strida folding bikes.

Vegas trip - Red Rock Loop - sort of

I have been doing a righteously crappy job in race and travel reporting this year. Maybe I will catch up a bit over Christmas break, or maybe I will just sleep in, but here is what I did the week after Thanksgiving. Business trip to Vegas. Here is the good part:



Ok, I hate Vegas. I have fond memories from the years 1998-2000 or so attending interbike and staying at a hotel on the strip, but boy is it kind of nasty when there is no interbike to distract me. I apologize to everyone who I have scoffed at when they complain about Vegas and interbike being in Vegas. It does suck. My bad. You were right. I think interbike anywhere for me would be fine, but I now agree that interbike anywhere but vegas is finer. Although, I might enjoy interbike in Vegas more than interbike in Anaheim (without a car). But I was not there for interbike, I was there for a work meeting, so Vegas, you suck.

My hotel was just one megablock from the strip, across the street from a golf course. I packed my bike friday and my running shoes with the plan to do some after meeting riding at night and also a big ride planned the day after the meeting, and perhaps some running on the golf course at night. Turns out the golf course was surrounded by, no joke, something like 20 foot fences. Probably to keep dinosaurs out. They successfully eliminated any chance of me running though. So the running shoes stayed packed.

It took about 20 minutes to walk the megablock from my hotel to the strip. It was not a pleasant walk. The good news is that there was a cool monorail going to the strip from just outside my hotel. The bad news is that the monorail costs 5 dollars PER RIDE. While probably more pleasant than walking in vegas, this fails the public transportation model. You can get from Fremont to San Francisco for 5 bucks on BART, no way less than a mile of walking is worth a 5 dollar trip. Unless it comes with a 42 ounce steak. I did go to the strip one night and got stuck in the worlds biggest most empty mall. Glargh. But anyway, lets talk about what i did do and what was fun.

As part of the meeting, I did get to ride in a very cool and very expensive restored landcruiser on a tour of yucca mountain. This was fun, but it takes forever to get there. Which is good. because that is probably where you want to store waste. Forever away.

Me and the really fun vehicle:


Me and the yucca mountain:


The next day I tried to get up really early and ride from my hotel to the Red Rock Canyon loop and back before my 12:45 flight back home. I splurged on a 6 am room service breakfast so I would be well fueled and ready to go by 6:30 at the absolute latest. I got up got ready to go, ate my expensive egg and coffee breakfast, checked the temperature outside and it was 28 degrees at 6:30 with a low sun. Crap. I am used to cold, but I was not packing my subfreezing kit with me, so I waited about twenty minutes. The sun was still barely up, but it was a balmy 30, so I hopped on the fixie friday and went on my merry way. I was staying near the convention center and to get to the main east west bike route (Alta) I pretty much needed to head the wrong way for a bit and then loop north around the strip through downtown and back west on Alta.

Fortunately I had had some email correspondence with Bob from Hawaii from the bike friday list and he gave me some heads up on the route and a link to his map-my-ride map of his route when he rode the loop a few weeks before I did. I also had the chance to stop by a bike shop an pick up a las vegas cycling map and plot out my route. Unfortunately the map considered this a bike route:

That is South Maryland Parkway, three lanes each way with no apparent shoulder due to the fact that they pretty much oil sealed every road in Vegas recently and there were no visible traffic lines anywhere. But hey, look at the photo bigger, see there on the right? Hawaiian food at the Walgreens! Bob would have been pleased. Probably...

Not a great route, but not a big deal at 7 AM. What was kind of a pain were all the traffic lights that take minutes to get through. It took a long time to get to downtown and across the highway and headed west. Alta pretty much starts on the west side of Highway 15 and has a bike lane all the way out to Red Rock Canyon. Just as Alta starts you pass by YAEGB (yet another excellent Gehry building), the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health:


Alta pretty much climbs steadily from downtown out to Red Rock Canyon, it was a slow cold grind on the way out there. It took about an hour for my fingers to warm up as the climbing kicked up a bit. There were at least 4 sections of road construction that required taking a lane amid Los Angeles quality SUV assholes. There were also a fair number of construction signs planted in the middle of the bike lane. Sometimes they were facing the other way. I assume your experiences may vary greatly, but I did not particularly enjoy the ride out on Alta. It is something like 11 miles of stop and go traffic with lots of construction. Feh. Probably would have been fine sans construction, but it was there. After an hour and a half of riding I finally felt like I was on the outskirts of the city:


But there are no outskirts in Vegas really, just varying densities of sprawl. If the economy ever kicks up again, I am pretty sure it will be sprawl right up to the Red Rock Canyon loop. There were lots of subdivisions sketched out in the desert awaiting houses. Anyhow, I think it took about 2 hours for me to get to the visitors center from my hotel via this route. Probably 22 miles or so. Once I got across 15 i was riding pretty hard to try to get to the loop and through it so I could get back to the hotel, pack the bike, shower and get to the airport. Alas. Reality kicked in. I had no time to do the route.

So enjoy pictures of me getting to the Red Rock sign:


Near Red Rocks:


Look mini-joshua trees, lower reaches of higher altitude mojave desert is soooo cute:


I stopped at the really nice new visitor center, got a post card, ate a bar, refilled my bottles and headed for home. My camera ran out of batteries so no pics of the visitors center, but it was nice. It took 1 hour and 15 minuted to get back to the hotel. All told it was 3 and a half hours elapsed time. It would have probably have been comfortable if I had 5 or 5.5 hours to spare for the round trip, but it was too darn cold and it took too long to get out there. Red Rock Canyon, you and I have unfinished business. In retrospect, if I had a rental car, it would have been wiser to drive out there, do the loop and bike some of the scenic highways outside of town, like this one heading away from town from the Canyon loop:

and then just pack up and drive to the airport and go home. Or just take a later flight. Or something. If you are planning to do this loop and you have a choice, I recommend staying at a hotel at the north end of the strip on the west side, or downtown, that will save you some very gratuitous lights and city riding. It was about 44 miles round trip as i did it. That was one of my longest rides of the year, so I am pretty happy I did what I did. I enjoyed it. I hope you learned something. I bet no one is still reading. Here are the rest of the photos from my trip.

Rolling and rolling

Some ditchside rolling in the livermore valley.

Look Ma, I am flying

Made a quick trip to Amarillo this week and got to fly for about 15 minutes.

Hit some sights:




ate some grubs:


The rest of the photos here,
including takeoff and landing videos and lots of great aerial photos of the New Mexico and Texas