The trip is going great! The climbs are getting more and more intense...but I guess it goes without saying that the downhill parts are pretty thrilling! Definitely the fastest I've ever gone on a bicycle...and for once in my life I passed a car that was going the speed limit!...Blew right by him! In the photos you can see a couple places where I camped at night, a few shots of some little towns that I road through in the West Virginian hills, some of OH's finest highway and me, cooking noodles at the picnic area of an OH McDonalds. By the way, that turtle totally smoked me on an uphill climb and I still owe him a beer. Hope everyone is doing really well and I look forward to hearing from all of you! Love, Pat.
7 comments:
wow great pics! COOL Towns. Keep it up you crazy mother!
Trip #2: Portage and back again, Pat Thurber investigates his roots as well as atmospheric changes in Northwest Indiana.
Good luck man
Oh, also, the pictures look great.
Howdy Pat,
Mike here, the guy who talked to you about touring from Jack's bicycle shop in Monroe. Glad to see things are going well. Saw the article in the newspaper.. it's also posted up front in the shop.
It think it's great that you just did it. Glad to see your up to 100 miles a day. That's good mileage.
I'm off on a little fall vaca of my own tomorrow morning. Going to tour southern ohio and the Ohio River, Muskingum and Miami river valleys over the course of a week.
Great to see your photos... I find it particularly interesting to see where you're camping, what geer you're traveling with and so on. In short it's the details that interest me.
BTW, I think have the exact same Axiom panniers btw... Monsoon I think they call the model. Mine are How are they holding up for you? (you can respond here, I'm tracking responses via email).
I see you're using the MSR Pocket Rocket. Very cool. I'm using the MSR dragonfly myself. We appear to be using the same stove kit too.. MSR Blacklight.
How's the pocket rocket stove working out for you? How long do the cartridges last? How many do you travel with? Where do you get refills? Do you use mail drops... i.e. have a supporter mail packages to a specific destination that will hold it until you arrive?
And how's the Peugeot working out for you? I would think the older road bikes would make superb touring bikes. Was I right?
And how about the tires and seat? Any flats, sore butt, sore writs? Other harware issues?
I'm still going back through your blog posts, so I'll refrain from asking any further questions for the moment. To much. :)
There's so many more questions regarding touring. I only got into it earlier this summer myself.
mike, its good to hear from you, man. your help has been much appreciated on this trip! also, thanks for putting the article up at jack's, any publicity for the ol' RC is good publicity! gear stuff: the pocket rocket has been pretty solid, although if there's a breeze, the boil time goes waaay up. i think the MSR prediction of 1 hour +/- of burn time is accurate. what changes is how long it takes to get a boil...so i'd say i get about 6 large pots to boil for making a big thing of noodles as well as a few more boils for pre-cooked rice packets that i just need to heat up. i went through two refills and now i just don't use it. the thing i didn't really think about on this trip is that now that since i left southern ohio, w. virginia and virginia...there are a lot more cities along the east coast. so i've gone from roadside camping, to state park camping to now, when i've been using hostels and motels. no package drops, i just haven't been far enough out of civilization to run low on much, i can always find a save-a-lot or other cheap grocery place to stock up on things. i've had two flats, no big deals. however, my rear tire is starting to split open (just as i got to key west the other day). so the shop here hooked me up with a tire that should at least let me finish the trip up the gulf coast of florida into alabama. the bike has been fine really. 10-speeds was not quite comfortable going through the appalachians...there were some very hard days during that time and my knee starting giving me some problems. since then, though, things have been pretty great. some big mileage days...i had one run of days where i did 115, 130 and then 105. that was here in florida, nice flat roads and a light tail wind! very decent. my hands have had some issues with pinched-nerve type of stuff, "cyclist's palsy" one guy called it. it's more or less abating, but for a week it really sucked, man. i could barely tie my shoes! i have had literally no issues with panniers. i read a bunch of online reviews and between the reviews and the relatively low cost, they have turned out to be a good call. definitely fully water proof, as i've had several days of all day thunderstorm riding and everything has stayed dry...i don't double bag anything. some other gear stuff: i met this guy doing a tour and he had some cool toys. he had a gps transponder thing that updating a google map link with his position every 10 minutes, so people could track him on his website. he also had a horn...which honestly would have been so awesome during some high traffic riding days...right now i'm think about downtown miami...i would have killed to have a horn just to vent a little road rage at some of those psychotic drivers. this guy also used a gps nav thingy, along with those adventure-cycling brand of road maps. those looked pretty cool but i'm still not sure their worth the money. this other guy said he uses a gps that can upload maps from "mapmyride.com" so he can use other cyclists rides as suggestions or whatever for his own. all cool ideas that i hadn't heard of until this trip! i hope your ride goes/went well and i'd be interested to check out the pics. safe travels, mike! thanks again for the help!
Howdy pat, just got back from a little trip of my own: http://flickr.com/photos/mmeiser2/sets/72157608800045835/
Re pocket rocket: yeah the dragonfly is the same way, a good windscreen is a must. I think most people use heavy duty aluminum foil. I created my own out of a piece of aluminum flasshing that curls inside the pot. The key is because of the crown like cuts I've made in it it slides up and down on the dragonfly stoves legs I like to raise it up a little so more air can get under and it naturally stabizes the dragonfly further, keeps the pot from sliding off and simulateously funnels heat up along the sides of the pot. Seems to work well, but I think it's a tad bulkier and heavier then the aluminum foil or windscreen MSR provides. BTW, I'm amazed at just how much cooking I got out of a bottle of fuel this week. I was expecting to run out and have to use diesel (MSR recommended, second only to whitegas), only used about a half a bottle.
Please be more specific on the rice type and noodles. I ate a lot of ramen noodle this week... perhaps to much. I also suplemented with grits (much love) or instant pancakes in the morning with fried cinnamon apples... which absolutely rules. Oh, I also added some red meat on occasion... and I love instant coffee and good teas. I do the coffee/ tea first... don't even need a boil... then just get the ramen or grits started and let them finish cooking/ cooling to an edible temp while I cook whatever else. I've heard some tourers get fanatical about their camp rituals... I think I understand why. Speed, nothing lost, don't even have to think, can do it in the dark among other things.
Re: accomidations... still very uneasy with the "stealth camping" thing. Still the biggest problem is info and planning with state parks, motels, or hostels. You never know how far you'll get unless you deliberately plan short and I just like to ride. Still I did three nights camping... one hotel to recharge and clean up... and then one night of pretty much riding straight through (wanted to beat a big storm). The all nighter rubbed me a little ragged, not sure if the fact I was on trails the last 60 or so helped or hurt. It compounded the tunnel vision thing I think. Still it was so great to arrive at my final destination just before sunrise. The one thing I have done is stop about once a day if convienient at a small town library. Occasionally these suck, but mostly they rock. This has only redoubled my feelings that an iphone would be the perfect cycle companion... it equals communication, fluid google maps access (location aware), instant sat/radar imaging, wind and weather reports, automatic photo posting online... and on top of it all you can find the nearest accomidations like a piece of cake.
Re tire: can't believe you wore out an Armadillo... perhaps you road alot before you went? Amazing... how few miles? I'm REALLY loving my Specialized Armadillo Borough CX... but boy they're not cheap... perhaps the most expensive tire I've run... but soooo worth it. No flats for me on this trip. Only mechanical issue was I think I stretched my chain a little because it fell off a couple times on the final day... some oil improved that though tremendously. It already had to many miles anyway.
Re: 10 speeds? I thought you had a dew more? Huh. BTW, I'm riding with 9 in the rear (11x36) and one up front (39). The combination suited me extremely well. In fact it made me most happy.
Re Knees... keep them warm and covered in the cold and spin in low gears... conquering a mountain with power / big rings is very harsh on the knees. Using Clips or clipless and pulling up I personally think actually helps the knees and feet too as it uses more of the body and puts less strain on just a few specific parts... plus... when you get nice and in shape it feels like turning on the afterburners... very nice going into a hill and just turning on. :)
Re tail winds: :)
Re pinched nerves: I more have that problem with my feet or used too... I now use road pedals with a little more platform... but not to much! To much can be as bad as to little. The Crank Bros Quatros work great for me... but everyone is absolutely different on this issue. Also... I find good very stiff road or mountain bike specific soles help ALOT. Though... I've seen people use floppy sandals or soled shoes too... I think it's a completely different type of riding they do though.... perhaps more akin to my daily commute or tooling around town. BTW... i absolutely don't have this problem with my hands... probably do having about 4 "favorite" hand positions. I honestly can't say which hand position I use the most and I'm constantly changing. I'd use no bar tape but... my bars would be really cold this time of year. :) I can relate though... used to have this problem more. Riding gloves work wonders... but then it could be bike fit... to much weight on the hands and wrist kills. Oh! I do have this problem big time with one of my mountain bikes... straight bars with only one position suck.
Re panniers and rain: I haven't had the "pleasure" of riding in any heavy rains despite lots of trips. I love riding in rain on my around town bike... but I must admit I worry about hitting a rainstorm touring... since you HAVE to have the proper gear and the only thing that can tell you that is experience. The problem is touring if you don't have the proper gear you can quickly find yourself in for a whole day of misery or even multiple days. Still working on it.
BTW, I have some kayak dry bags that I keep my clothes and essentials in... they just make great pack bags so the essentials are just naturally double protected.
Re GPS: You're talking about "the spot". They're new the last couple years... were used on the GDR (great divide race) this year. I can't believe they've already made it into the cabellas sales catalogue. Something tells me they're going to be a hot product this year... though it's to early to know for sure. I would bet on it.
My bro uses an Garmin Edge 305 dual GPS / cyclo comuputer... awesome thing, very active. There are so many ways to use GPS... active route following... passive data tracking... then there's the iphone. Between "the spot", the garmin edge 305, and the iphone there's virtually no overlap in the services they provide. It's a huge new area.
Re Horn: refillable air horns seem like a very cool idea to me... you just use your bike pump to charge it and an appropriate cheap plastic water bottle for your volume, duration, and amount of use. Still... I'm more "less is more" on this issue. I probably won't go there fore a long time. Besides I think highly reflective and brightly covered saddle bags... and superbright front and rear blinky lights are FAR more effective at buying saftey and piece of mind.
Re maps: I haven't cutom ordered any maps from the adventure cycling association or any others... I just use road maps... this is primarily because I haven't ridden any of their routes and don't pre-plan my trips months in advance. I do think they're probably spectacular and look forward to trying them sometime soon.
Re mapmyride... that's what my bro does with his Garmin Edge... personally I prefer google maps and a webservice called "gmaps to GPX". But this is well outside my experience or expertise area.
Mostly I just like regional state maps... because they have all the roads except in towns and cities which I don't need that much detail to find my way around in anyway. BTW, by regional I mean "NE Ohio"... or "South Central Michigan", but this does not work out as well when crossing many states quickly... then I like to adlib a little more... rely on my compas which is on my handlebars and stick to the major state routes or roads that I know go through using a state wide map.
Tomorrow I hope to list out more of my equipment and review it, post even more pics, and review some others gear list from a site I just learned of called gearlist.com or .net or something.
With touring the pleasure and the pain really are in the details.
Peace, good night and good luck,
-Mike
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