Tag: biking

Stormriders!

I’m hosting a “summer camp” retreat at my cabin this week (led by the irrepressible Kimberly) – while the weather has been less than ideal, we managed to sneak in a short tour of the Western Maryland Rail Trail by bike.

Statistics:

  • Number of flats I’ve had on that trail over the course of about 400 previous miles: zero.
  • Number of flats we had collectively in 11 miles yesterday? 2.
  • Amount of rain forecast during our 2 hour period according to radar: zero.
  • Percentage of time we were rained on: 80% of the ride.

Moral of the story: always bring your full repair gear, learn to change all sorts of tires, and remember it’s supposed to be fun. Luckily we had all of that. I present to you, the stormriders of summer camp 2012…

 

Preparing for my ride

I’m still processing my World Domination Summit experience, so more on that sometime over the weekend I think.

Let’s talk bike tour. I’ll be doing a lot of that soon.

The current insanity plan is as follows:

  • Fly to PDX August 1st. Stay at my brother’s place in NE.
  • On 8/2, take the morning Wave bus to Tilamook, Oregon (“ride the WAVE!”) and meet up with mysterious James (mysterious because he has no social media presence and only reads your stuff. Yes, yours.)
  • Go south a few hundred miles.
  • Stop in San Francisco, because that should be enough.
  • Pack up bike and ship it back to my brother in PDX, where this bike lives.
  • Get on a plane on the 15th from SFO to DC.

Seems easy enough. There’s only like 6 bullet points in there and half are all in one spot!

I bought a used touring bike in Portland this week, mainly because I cannot justify urinating away* $200 to United airlines for the pleasure of potentially damaging my primary bike. Instead, I’ll give a great local Portland bike shop $300 for the used bike and an overhaul, support their business and have a great excuse for returning to Oregon for future rides. It seems classy and recycle-ish too. And I’m nothing if not recycle-ish.

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*Is it classier to say it that way or too clinical?