After riding the Big Dummy all over the place, with the bare minimum maintenance straight into the ground since I built it up in 2008, it was high time to give it the overhaul it deserved. I want to thank my buddy Steve Pickle at 30th century bike in Iowa for helping me with some advice and sourcing some xtracycle bits for the rebuild, and old friends Mellow Velo for helping me get the bike in the first round of Big Dummies way back in twenty-ought-eight
Pre redo, I think all I have replaced is the disc brake pads 3 or 4 times over since I built it the first time
The original snap deck had seen better days
Stripping it down, time for that ancient bluemels metal fender to go
Down to the frame, re frame savered, new rings, shifters, cables, chain, matching planet bike fenders
Holy Roller Tires to replace the well worn big apples
Flight Deck and Hooptie added, new xtracycle bags as well, also new glowing green grips
Neighborhood kids aboard
Aida Likes it, me too
We can get along pretty well on and off road, and use it for establishing hiking basecamp
She can't nap on the back, but a towel and some shade is all we needed
Still does the hauling
With the addition of the magic carpet seat pad, we can do some reasonable mountain style bicycling
But it carries the recycling nonetheless
All and all I still love this bike, it has now entered its new life as even better family adventure hauling mobile. I am soon to add a dyno hub and a special front hauling addition. Stay tuned.
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!
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.
Scored yet another arrow (number 4 or 5?) and whole pile of marking flags.
Arrow found right at the intestine and diamond on the lab side. I imagine someone realized they were heading to work with some weapons and jettisoned them out the window. Alas it had been run over, it now is carbon trash. Flags found in bike lane on canyon. Picked em up mostly so they did not become pokey wires in the bike lane.
Aida and Wink256 took a chariot ride around the block. Wink did not freak. Aida might be a bit happy
Got even more wood. Mostly Cherry and Apple. Will need to season the living crap out of it before it goes in the fire, but it will burn for a long time. Spent about half an hour cutting it down out of a massive brush pile on the other side of the neighborhood. Pretty easy 1/2 mile ride back to the house afterwards.
Went to the opera in bandelier last saturday night. It was fun. Aida was entranced for 10 minutes and then happily played in the dirt for the rest of the hour and a half. We got to take the bus 4 times on Saturday, Aida was thrilled about this too. Click the panaroma to see on flickr.
Found this feller on my road bike. I thought is was a big wasp, but I think it is a black and yellow party beetle:
After studiously avoiding a smartphone for a while, I have to say, I am digging the iphone and all the photo options. I also like having the pocket GPS, I have been using Run Keeper to log walks with Aida and neighborhood cruises and I jumped on the Strava moronwagon to help log the local punishing climbs for both running and riding, helps me be a bit more rigorous in my self monitoring. I don't really care to share em, nor will I facebook spam out all my rides, but I will be making up dumb new segments for myself, as I am pretty sure there are a couple road bike rides and runs that that no one else does. The greater quality pocket cam will help on the blogging documentation probably, see gratuitous coffee picture:
It has been a reasonable to great garden year. We had a reasonable winter, very dry late spring/early summer, and then a really good monsoon season starting in July and continuing through the present. The fire season up here was mercifully brief, especially compared to last years disaster. Fruit trees are doing great. The mule deer continue to be a problem and we put in some raised beds.
We had a sandy gopher and ant ridden patch in the middle of the front yard that we were able to grow some corn and pumpkins in last year. This year the ants were out of control and became extremely swarmy. After a couple of years of slowly escalating ant control methods we finally called an exterminator. I feel bad about that, but it allowed us to go in the front yard without getting swarmed and bitten by the ants. The ant/aphid combo was also killing all the aspen trees in the yard and many of the flowers. Anyhow, with that done, I blitz in the raised beds in a week and planted some rootbound pumpkin and squash that I had delayed planting. I also put in some beans to see if I could get something out of this summer.
The mule deer mowed down all of our tomatoes repeatedly (even though they were in pots on the porch), until we wrapped them in chicken wire. We have a few corn coming up. We got lots of apricots, one peach and are in the process of harvesting apples and plums.
Anyhow onto the photo dump:
Apricot gathering in early July:
It was a good, not great apricot year. We at many fresh, froze the rest for smoothies and ice cream.
more apricot phots here
The raised bed.
Helper spawn helps clear and flatten
Scoping exercises
More betterer
Gopher guard, 1/4 hardware cloth
Second layer
Inspector Spawn making sure I did a good job
Fill with sand, dirt, compost etc...
Mule deer help trim everything
Rain and boots and family and cats help grow the squashes
A couple of Fridays back I had to drop the old car off for service down in the way other end of Santa Fe. I took the opportunity to bring the pugs to do some arroyo honking back up to town and have some fun while they replaced the fuse box on the Golf.
in the wild intersitials of Santa Fe
I used to ride the arroyo a bunch before Aida was born. Elena would drop me off in south santa fe hell while she did some errands and I would ride up the arroyo to the bike trails and head downtown for some coffee and such and then she would pick me up on the way back home. Lots has changes since then. The Lamy trail between Siringo and downtown is completely paved now. The Rail Runner, passenger rail from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, was added in the last few years. As such, all the interesting stuff and single track on the trail is gone. Including Hunter and the Zia Caboose, for those of you who were long time readers. The path is really well used now, which is good, but the old path was good too. For old times sake, check out old ride reports Santa Feans with mad sand skills, Lack of Big Rides, Caboose Home, Return to the Zia Caboose, Return of the son of the Zia Caboose, Boring Same old Folding Bike Santa Fe Post. Anyone know what became of the Zia Caboose and Hunter? I think he was set up along the tracks diagonal across second from the Brew Pub for a while, but no sign of the caboose or even where the hell it would go.
Wheeled Detritus! my favorite thing to find.
Anyhow, when I have ridden the arroyo before, it was mostly hiking and riding, only really riding during monsoon season when the sand was a bit more packed. It is rough going on a normal MTB, and virtually unridable on the picnica. On the Pugsley, it was completely feasible. Just like the snow, lower the pressure until you can ride. Between the Santa Fe auto maul and Rodeo drive, it is pretty soft slow going, above Rodeo all the way to Siringo, it was pretty ridable. Hard work going up arroyo into the wind that day, but pretty easy coming back down. It was dry enough that I am pretty sure it was more or less unridable on a normal MTB. It was pretty smooth on the pugsley. I fell over in the deeper sand a couple times, but for the most part the section from Siringo to Rodeo was completely ridable and eerily clean of crap. There must have been a big arroyo clean up day. Good job peoples, the arroyo looked grand in this section.
Cruising down arroyo
There was still good stuff here and there to see. It was hot and smokey from the big fire down in the Gila, so I did not take quite as many photos as usual of the sights. But there was some wheeled detritus and other good things along the way.
Land Cruiser and pick up with engine in it parked at the Second Street Brew Pub
Once I hit the Lamy trail and went through the railyard, I got lots of comments on the pugsley. Mostly of the "look at those tires" variety, the winning comment of the day was from a slightly inebriated looking fellow fixing a car in a parking lot. He ran up toward me yelling "does it float?". I did get the chance to talk to Santa Fe fixture Ray for a bit. We chatted about bikes and some other stuff. He graciously let me take a pic of him and his service dog and his Worksman Trike. He loves the wheels as they don't need truing. The wheels did sport some damage was from someone backing into him in the Trader Joes Parking lot.
Ray and his rig
I stopped in the other Second Street brewery Railyard edition for some lunch and a beer. It was pretty fun to watch all the cyclists pass through the railyard on the way to wherever on a fine Friday afternoon. I picked up a growler to deliver to the fellers at Mellow Velo. It sort of fit in my musette, but I used another bag to kind of tie it in there.
Pugsley, Raleigh International, fully loaded Surly LHT. A great rackful of bikes.
When I got over to Mellow Velo, I delivered said growler checked out David's latest acquisition, a Schwinn Hollywood, to go with the coveted Schwinn Flying Star. Dammit, covet, dammit. I was also able to watch the shop van get painted in its new Wonderbread/Mondrian livery.
A side
flip side
So anyone want to give me their Flying Star or Holywood?
After chatting a bit at the shop, I took a nice easier ride back from whence I came and picked up the car. Total riding was probably about 16 miles or so, maybe 6 or 7 in the arroyo. It was a good day.
I picked up 700 billion goatheads getting out of the Arroyo back at the automaul. Fortunately I had slimed the tires that morning. Fortunately surly thought to put removable cores in their fatbike tubes. I am not really sure if any of the goatheads actually made it through the tires, they are pretty thick, but I will probably spend some time with a pocket knife prying out thorns before winter. While I was removing thorns in front of the service area, most of the mechanics came out to check out the Pugs. I probably should have let them ride it, but I was worried that the tires were going to go completely flat due to all the thorns. They are still holding air two weeks later, so maybe next time fellers.
A small fraction of the 700 billion goatheads
I drove back through town stopping at Trader Joes for supplies and was delighted when a previously unknown to me blog reader stopped me and introduced himself. Whats up Rick? This has happened to a few times and it always makes me really happy. It is hard to find the time to blog about stuff anymore, and I always wonder if it is just me, my ma, the seven of you who comment regularly and random google searches providing all my traffic. Stuff like this tends to spur me to slightly greater blogging heights. Anyhow, if you see me and know me through the blog, please say hello, then I can take your photo and have something to blog about. I will even hook you up with some Tarik Saleh Bike Club stuff if I have some with me.
Me and loyal(?) reader Rick in Trader Joes
After I loaded up with frozen pizzas and coconut oil infused dessert products, I headed home to the family. I grabbed Aida and plopped her in the trailer and rode downtown for the Red Elvises show at the duck pond. Aida really liked it.
