February jaunt to Yankee Jims.

Todd arriving at the Yankee Jims Road Bridge over the North Fork of the American.

Unusually mild weather this February has allowed for a fair amount of riding in NoCal this year. Riding buddy Todd and I decided to have a go at a longer ride, we initially planned to ride around Folsom but changed our minds while en route and decided to head up to Colfax, ride across the North Fork of the American river, then get up to Foresthill.

At an old mining tunnel next to the bridge.

Thanks to the fine weather this year, we were able to finish the ride fairly comfortably, if somewhat slowly.

Enjoy the falls while they last!

 I've probably posted this before, but these pretty falls are a little way up from the river, heading to Yankee Jims and Foresthill. After the long climb to Foresthill, we stopped at Worton's and had a sandwich, then back to Loomis. This is a hard ride, 70 hilly miles, but we enjoyed pretty optimal conditions. Even so, it took almost 7 hours of riding! Well, I didn't say I was fast! What a great ride, the few miles of gravel give the ride a nice flavor of adventure!

Here is a screenshot of the route, as recorded by Run the Map.

Adjustments to the old Mercian.

The old Mercian with mudguards and a revised drivetrain.

The winter lull in riding has beset me. The cool, wet weather and a recent hip injury have restricted my riding so I've been tinkering with the bikes more than riding them. One project is to add fenders to my 1982 Mercian. One of the blogs I have followed is the Veteran Cycle Club, which unfortunately has been inactive for over a year. However, in their archive is an entry describing some minor modifications to the SKS Longboard fenders that caught my imagination. Here's the link to that blog entry. The aim is to make them similar to the old Bluemel fenders of yore, which would be very fitting for my old Mercian. It seemed like a neat project. Also, it seems that the beige longboards are on sale now, I got a pair delivered for around $40 from Outside Outfitters.

The front fender, cut down.

Compared to the classic Bluemels, the Longboards are too long. (Of course, the whole idea of the longboards is to have a longer fender. If you want shorter one, go with their standard road fenders!) However, the longboards do have one feature that the standard SKS fender doesn't; it is available in a lovely cream color! Following the description on the VCC page, I trimmed down the Longboards, first trimming the back of the rear fender, using the finished edge of the removed piece as a template for cutting down the leading edge of the front. I did not replace the rear mudflap, I don't find those necessary, but, unlike the VCC bike, I did retain the small black plastic piece on the leading edge of the front fender. I just thought it gave a cleaner look to the front fender.

A couple of view of the rear fender installation at the bottom bracket bridge.

I had to do a little cutting for the rear fender to fit between the two chainstays at the bottom bracket bridge. Also, the Mercian did not have a hole in this bridge and I didn't want to drill one, so I used a "P"-clamp to secure the fender to the bridge. Nice and clean, but there is no lateral movement, I hope this does not prove to be a problem when changing a wheel.

The final result is a nice retro look with the cream fenders nicely complimenting the golden hued green flamboyant finish. It really looks very British!

My next project was to revise the drivetrain. I had been using classic Campy Nouvo Record derailleurs and shifters but I was not satisfied with their performance. I replaced the shifters with a NOS set of SunTour "Power Ratchet" down-tube shifters. Many years ago stem mounted versions of these had been standard equipment on the first "real" road bike I had ever owned, a Nishiki Olympic 12. I had remembered that the action of these levers was very pleasant, though the stem mount eventually led to their demise. I found a nice set of these in clamp-on downtube style on EBay for $35 shipped, so I snapped them up.

Couldn't call it an upgrade, but these really are nice levers!!

Next, I swapped out the NR rear derailleur for a Sachs "Quarts" model from the 90s. This unit is a much better shifter that the quaint, old Campy.  Finally, I put my Velo Orange New Rando 50.4 BCD crank on the bike. I've finally found the right combination of frame geometry and front derailleur clearance, (using the Campy NR front), that permits this crank to perform to its potential. The secret is the narrow 5 speed spacing in the back, relatively long chainstays and the narrow front derailleur cage.

I've changed out much of the drivetrain for better performance.

I been taking short rides with this bike and have been very pleased with the performance. I'm looking forward to longer rides in the new year.

The bikes of the Camino de Santiago

My wife and I recently walked the Camino de Santiago, an (almost) 500 mile trek from St. Jean Pied de Port in southwestern France across the Pyrenees foothills and across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela near the northwest coast. While the majority of "peregrinos" (pilgrims), walk this old pilgrimage trail, there are lots of cyclists making the trek now, too. To qualify for the compostela certificate in Santiago, you must either have walked the last 100 kilometers, or have ridden the last 200K. I intended to take a lot of pictures of bikes I encountered on the Way, but frankly, the majority were almost identical! I only saw a couple of touring bikes, they looked like Surly LHT's from the distance I saw them. I couldn't get a decent picture of those. Generally, the typical "Camino Bike" was an MTB, either hardtail or full suspension. I also saw a few hybrids. 

Pretty typical rig.

Another.

Much of the Camino is dirt and a lot is rocky and rough. Bicycles are directed to other routes along some stretches which are just too rough for a loaded bike to pass, especially with pedestrians sharing the path. Frankly, I felt that there were a lot of stretches where I encountered bikes that I felt it would be better not to have them there at all! There was often a paved road along side which the riders could have easily taken. Most riders were courteous and many used bells, which should be mandatory for the Camino. But you had a few knuckleheads who swept up behind you with no warning and zoomed by. I was relieved there was no accidents, but there were a few near misses.

Good reason to use an MTB(or the closest paved road).

700C Hybrid style.

Most if not all bikes I saw were equipped with panniers and a fair amount of gear. The great thing about the Camino is that you will have access to really cheap accommodations, so the sleeping gear can be reduced to a sleeping bag! Food is pretty cheap too, so I wouldn't bother with cooking gear, either, (you can use cooking gear at the albergues, too, if you want to cook.) I think you might be able to go the minimalist route and use a Carradice Camper and handlebar bag.

Walking the Camino can be a life altering experience, but to be honest, cycling it would be, to me, just another, albeit interesting, bike tour.

This year's century ride.

The track of my ride from "Run The Map" phone app.

After a hectic early summer I have finally gotten to my century ride! Inspired by the success of the reverse path of my Yankee Jims rides, I decided to reverse direction of my usual route to Grass Valley, going through Auburn and Meadow Vista, then following Dog Bar Road up to Grass Valley.

On Dog Bar Road.

This turned out to be a good choice. The climb up to Grass Valley took place during the cool morning hours, and Dog Bar Road seems to take on a completely different character going from south to north! I was in Grass Valley early enough that I didn't feel any need to stop for food. I did eat half of a PBJ sandwich I was carrying and drank a little.

Next was the descent on highway 20. Going the other direction, this is a challenging, long effort to get into Grass Valley. But going this way, it's a sweet descent with an occasional bump. I left Hwy 20 at the Smartsville turnoff. At this point I made a significant deviation from my old century route, instead of turning on Waldo road and riding gravel to Camp Far West, I stayed on Smartsville Road and proceeded to the valley.

On Smartsville Road, heading down into the valley.

This is a wonderful road. It's very open and you can see a long way. (This is a very good spot to ride a motorcycle...fast!!). Thankfully, there was no strong winds, I could see that being a problem some days.

This road eventually took into the eastern fringe of Linda, then I took some wonderful country roads to Highway 65 just above Wheatland. There I made my only supply purchase of the day at a gas station food mart, some cold water and a Frappacinno.

From Wheatland it was a familiar route to Sheridan, then Dowd road to Nicolaus road and into Lincoln, then 193 to Sierra college and then up and over the hill back to Loomis.

Basic ride stats.

All in all I was very happy with this ride. I definitely prefer this route over my old way. I also noticed that the old way was probably not really 100 miles! But with the long gravel stretch at Camp Far West probably made up for that shorter distance. I felt pretty good after this ride. Even my bottom was in good shape, thanks to the Sugoi Evolution bib shorts I recently bought, and a slight change in saddle position, (I raised the nose of the B-17 just a tad.)

Here's a shot of the Mercian post-ride.

Fiddling with my bikes' set up and post retirement thoughts.

My LHT on Yankee Jims Road with 26 inch wheels and the Ostrich handlebar bag.

 Since I've retired at the end of July, I've been surprised how little time I seem to have. Well, a lot of it is going to preparation for our trip to Spain and walking the Camino de Santiago this Fall. Lots of walking and planning for extended travel abroad.

Still, I have been getting a satisfactory amount of riding in, plus I've been doing some work on the bikes as well. I've been interested in running handlebar bags "Rando" style. To that end I installed small front racks on both my Surly LHT and my Mercian. For a bag, I purchased an Ostrich F-106, a really big bag from Bike Touring News. I've never purchased from these guys before, but I was very pleased with the fast service. The bag is pretty nice, but I did modify it slightly to work for me. First, I used a Velo Orange Decaleur, and relocated the leather strap holder to the back, planning to strap the bag to the "tombstone" of the front rack. This wasn't really satisfactory, so I used a technique I found on the internet, Peter Weigle's "anti-decaleur" method which uses two "R" clips on the rack which are bolted to the bottom of the bag. (See the bad picture of this installation on the Mercian at the end of this post.) However, rather than being an anti decaleur, i use this method to supplement the decaleur!

This method of attaching the handlebar bag seems very stable. I rode the LHT down Yankee Jims washboard and it held beautifully. Handling with the handlebar bag also feels pretty good, maybe a tad slower reacting, but certainly not unstable at all.

Also on this ride, I used the 26 inch wheels with Continental City Tour tires. I bought these 1.75 tires because I felt my Schwalbe Big Bens were just to big at 2.2 inches. Turns out that these tires aren't all that much skinnier! Anyway, they also ride pretty well, and I don't seem to have the problem with tire clearance with these.

As I said, I also added a rando front rack and handlebar bag to the Mercian:

Current set up for long range cruising. Notice how nicely the Boxy bag matches the V.O. Crescent bag. That's purely coincidental!

Installing the Nitto M12 required a 1/4 inch hole on the fork crown which took me a year to do. In the end it wasn't a big deal, and the Nitto rack is really a thing of beauty. For the bag I used an old Rivendell Boxy Bag. Back in the day, Rivendell actually got Carradice to produce this cotton duck bag. They also had Nitto produce a clamp-on handle bar rack resulting in a pretty lousy system to run a handlebar bag! It worked, but took up handlebar space and held the bag too high, and the clamp could loosen and slip. Since I had this bag, it seemed like a good idea to try to make it work with a rando style front rack.

Original configuration was strapped to the M-12.

 Initially, I planned to strap it down to the rack at two points. while this worked, it was kind of a pain to set up and didn't hold the bag super-tight. So I decided to use the "anti-decaleur" system once again, and, along with the V.O. decaleur, a rock-steady system was born!

Velo Orange Decaleur pinned to the Boxy Bag. You can just see the leather patch behind the tombstone which I initially installed for a strap.

Bad picture of the "R" clip holding the bag on the rack.

This is such an easy installation, all you need is a couple of 3/8 inch clips, you can get a pair of steel ones at Home Depot for less than $1.50), a few washers and nuts and bolts. I recommend a "button"head-type bolt, (M5 or M6) and a nylock nut to fasten it securely. The one downside to this installation is that you don't really have a quick-release system for your bag.

A 650B/26 incher Long Haul Trucker

The LHT with 650B wheels.

 I recently decided to do a little bicycle consolidation; I found there were some bikes I didn't ride a lot. After giving it some thought I decided to sell my Surly Pacer and the 700C Long Haul Trucker, (LHT). I stripped off most of the equipment and wheels and sold them basically as frames. In their place I purchased a 26 inch LHT. My thinking was based on reading conversions of the 26 inch trucker to 650B. I was also interested in trying out some really fat 26 inch tires as well, so it seemed like a good fit.

It was surprisingly hard to find a 26 LHT in my size. I initially thought of replacing my 60CM-700C frame, but decided I would be better off going a little smaller. I went with a 58 and I'm glad I did; I probably could have gotten away with a 56, but I prefer larger frames. The way the geometry of the 26 inch version is set, you find there's really a lot of head tube on these bikes compared to their larger wheeled cousins. A 60CM, 26 inch Trucker really looks rather gangly.

Anyway, I finally ordered a "Smoggy Silver" 58 from Universal Cycles, getting a pretty good deal, really good when you consider I only had to pay $2.99 for shipping! I wasn't thrilled with ordering the silver-grey finish, but there really wasn't anything else around in a 58! I have since come to like it, the color kind of grows on you.

I quickly assembled the bike, really no surprises. Surly's are usually pretty clean frames that go together nicely. Really no prep needed at all. I finally got to the point where I installed the brakes and adjusted them for the 650B's. With the Tektro CR720's pushed to the upper limit of their adjustment, I found the rear wheels just made good contact. But the front brakes fell too short, I had to either raise the brakes or lower the wheels by a couple of millimeters! I ended up doing both! By carefully filing away a little material from the top of the Tektro's adjustment slots, I gained a little more upper reach. I then placed the wheel just a tad lower in the dropout. This I accomplished by sticking a slice of rubber hose into the top of the dropout, giving me a consistent spot for the front wheel to be positioned. The picture below illustrated the position of the brake shows in the modified slot.

Brake position for 650B's.

 For comparison, below is a shot of the brakes set up for a 26 inch (559) wheel. This picture also shows the massive size of the Schwalbe Big Ben. This tire is fun to ride on, but it's wide cross section poses a few problems: You can't install an inflated tire on the front! The fork prevents the brakes from opening up far enough. I also had some trouble with the brakes' pads rubbing on the sidewalls, you must be very careful with your brake setup.

Brake position for 26 inch.

As I said, These tires are fun, I took them to the Auburn Overlook trail system and had good traction on everything but the steepest sections of gravelled trail. On pavement they were pretty nice too.

All set up for gravel grinding!

I find the ride on the 650B Panaracer Col de la Vie tires to be very pleasant. I usually run between 60-70 psi in them and find the ride comfortable and not at all sluggish. For some reason, I like climbing with these wheels. I feel like I have good power, and the LHT frame seems very responsive!! That's probably because of the frame's stiffness, but the fatter tires and geometry of the frame seem to allow that stiffness to be an asset, with no discomfort. I don't know, maybe it "planes"!

Initial build with the 650's.

Latest incarnation, with silver stem and trim and the Ducas front rack installed.

So all in all, this has been a fun experiment. The one negative is that it isn't just a quick wheel change to switch from 650's to the 26er's. You have to carefully adjust the brakes too. I haven't used the 26er's much lately, but I hope to later this year. I took the 650 bike to San Diego and rode the Mt. Laguna loop. It was a very nice ride, here's my favorite view point on that route:

What it's all about...

2019 update: My LHT is now long gone, I'm now riding a Mercian Olympic converted to 650B, here's a link: A 650b Mercian

Yankee Jims, the other way around!

Yankee Jims Bridge over the North Fork of the American River

 Got a day free to ride so I decided to do my Yankee Jims Loop which involves some decent gravel road riding. This year I did the loop opposite of my usual route, riding from Colfax to Foresthill via Yankee Jims rather than vise versa. It suprises me how the same ride changes simply by reversing direction, in this case, I'd say for the better! This also gave me a chance to try out my newest ride, a 650B Long Haul Trucker!

Heading down to the river from Colfax.

Being Spring, the colors are still fresh and vibrant. The hillsides are bright orange with the poppies, and there's a bit of purple popping out here and there as well. The poppy-covered hills in the picture above really caught my eye.

A nice suprise to see water!

Despite our low precipitation totals over the water year, the rains of February and early April have provided enough water to allow the creeks to flow quite nicely for this early season. The falls shown above were the first I encountered, a little ways up from the river, heading south towards Foresthill. I'm afraid they won't last for long though, so it's nice to see them!

Another Waterfall!

A little further up I encountered a second, smaller falls. Kind of hard to make out but it goes on for a way back into the woods.

As for the ride, I found I prefer this way as opposed to going to Colfax from Foresthill. The long gravel switchbacks you encounter going down to the river from the south are easier to climb than the are to descend. The descent from Colfax to the river is more even and there aren't a lot of switchbacks. The climb up the river is tedious but I easily made it with a the small gear of 30(front)/28(rear). 

Even for a warm Saturday, there wasn't a lot of traffic and just a few folks parked at the river.  Below are a few screen shots from my phone app, "Run the Map". I've discussed this app before and it continues to be a very useful little program. Of course, it doesn't cover up things like my pathetic average speed, but this is a tough ride, doing it within 6 hours seems honorable enough for me!

Here are the stats from my "Run the Map" app...

...and here's a look at the route.

Just a few words about the bike I used on this ride: I got a new bike(yes another new bike)! I sold my Surly Pacer and 700C LHT and bought a 26 inch LHT. For this ride, I tried fitting the 650B wheels from my Pacer conversion. It takes a little finagling to make it work, but once done, they work quite nicely! I was very happy with the bikes performance and the wheels and the (seemingly now out of favor)Col de la Vies were simply perfect for this ride! Of course, I'll do a proper blog entry on this bike soon.

The 650B LHT is actually a 26 inch Trucker slightly modified. (More in a later blog entry).