I’ve been using a pair of Oakley gloves that have been threatening to unravel themselves after suffering a slash on palm seam from a tumble on volcanic rubble. To its credit my hand suffered no cut in that incident. But that seam is bit by bit coming apart, so I finally picked up these new Giro gloves to try. Only used on one grueling hot crosscountry ride so far, but my opinion is positive. Continue reading ‘Giro Xen mountain gloves’
Archive for the 'bike' Category
Page 19 of 40
Monday’s St. Louis ride didn’t transpire, so I met Kevyn and Root up there on Thursday for some XC riding. Thursday is usually Tantalus day, but I really felt like riding dirt for some reason. Kevin’s truck was there when I arrived, but he was nowhere to be seen. I figured I’d take a little spin up the ridge trail to warm up then come back down and see if he was back. It immediately became apparent that my legs were feeling the effects of the beer ride on Wednesday, so I dropped it into granny just past the water tank and spun easily to where the trail jogged to the left. Returning back down the trail, I took a little left side trail into the strawberry guava thicket and re-explored the sideline that I had seen over a decade ago on a ride with Chris Clark. The trail along the edge of the ridgetop was still open, but disuse had obscured the line a little with a heavy layer of ironwood needles. I passed a DLNR pig monitoring enclosure complete with rain gauges and automated camera. It was looking rather dilapidated, and disused. Continuing down the tight singletrack, I dumped back out onto the main trail above the moonscape. Continue reading ‘Thursday Dirt’
Today marks the last day of the tax break on ethanol-fortified automotive fuels in Hawaii, so along with the price increases due to the jump in crude oil prices, we have to pay an additional $0.12 USD per gallon in State excise tax. Consider also that to this day, not a single drop of ethanol has been produced in the State of Hawaii – all that ethanol going onto E10 is being imported into the state from the mainland USA or from foreign sources! Even when the first proposed plant opens here in a few years out at Campbell, it will be producing ethanol from imported corn. Where’s the logic in that? Good going, Auntie Linda! I hope you all remember this half-baked legacy of hers the next time an election rolls around (she’s done, but her implied successor, Dook, is aiming for the big chair). Her ethanol junket raised the cost of producing automotive fuels, increased our dependence on foreign or imported products, made our cars run bad, and decreased fuel mileage by around 10%. Continue reading ‘Protest Ride’
Two weekends ago, I stripped out the handle on the front RWS thru-bolt on my DT-Swiss 240 front hub. Everything was tight enough for the ride, but I had to switch the good rear handle over to the front in order to remove the front wheel so the bike would fit in the FJ80. I emailed DT on Saturday night, they passed my message along to DT-USA, and by Monday morning Hawaii-time, I had a response! After confirmation as to which skewer it was, David over at DT-USA’s Colorado office put a new handle in the mail for me. It arrived on Thursday morning and I was good to go for the weekend ride! Now that’s great after-purchase service! Jeff has had extremely good results from DT-Swiss service-wise on previous occasions also. Not only do they make exceptionally good products, they back them up with great follow-up service.
Four out of four customer service monkeys
The group fell apart on Thursday and the weather wasn’t conducive anyway, so there was no Tantalus ride. The weather on Friday afternoon was questionable also, so I sat it out again. After finding myself on the somewhat nostalgic J-pop section of the song rotation on the car MP3 player, I used the bike down-time to go and rewatch my region-2 Anzai Hiroko Resolution and R DVD’s, and the Deeps Visual Diary DVD. Mmm… milk! Next week it’ll probably be all my MAX DVD’s.
(0)Wednesday was clear on the Windward side, so I went for an easy spin to get the cobwebs out of the head and the sluggishness out of the legs in preparation for Thursday’s Tantalus ride. Again, I kept it easy so as not to wreck anything prior to the “real” ride. I played around with the rebound settings on the fork and rear damper to dial in the handling a little more. As is almost mandatory, as soon as I started riding, the sun went into hiding behind thick clouds, shadowing where I was, but still shining brightly down the hill and out into the bay.
D = 12.91 km (8.02-miles), Vavr = 16.1 km/h (10.0-mph), Vmax = 37.3 km/h (23.2-mph), T = 48-minutes
I got stuck in heavy traffic on Thursday, so by the time I got to the top of St. Louis, Root had called Ckucke to say that he was on the way. We waited for him to show, so we would have a complete crew for the full descent. We dropped Upper Dumps through the stunt garden, then climbed out to mainline. Someone had recently gone and chainsawed the perpendicular logs out of the escape route to make the ride up to the inner loop easier. Good job! Turning off onto Taco jumps and continuing across mainline to the rock drop, we switchbacked down to the rock waterfall to agave. Backtracking up to the second switchback sortie, we rode down behind the water tank then connected to the trail above the concrete road to the exit trail. While recovering at the concrete road, JT found a mongoose skull. We rode out to the street then decided to go over to UH for some urban riding. We happened to run into Fabio in the Marine Sciences building courtyard on the way to Kuykendall wall. Continue reading ‘Bone Collector’
The days running up to the weekend grew steadily more and more rainy. It rained hard on Thursday night through Friday morning, but the trades brought blue skies by midday. If this weather held, we would be good for a revisit to the Luana Perimeter trail, but Friday evening brought more heavy rains. In retrospect, conditions might have actually been okay, but on Saturday morning I called Chris and Root and we made the switch to the alternate venue. Ckucke was out camping; JT had a car show to attend; and Jeff, who amazingly expressed interest in riding a bike once again, bowed out at the last minute. Continue reading ‘Cadaverous Cavorting’
The slowly gathering and descending cloud cover threatened to derail my Wednesday ride plans, but I managed to gear up and turn in some distance before the first drops began to fall. The Thursday Tantalus ride was called, so I wanted to get in a good ride today. Other than riding to and from home, the distance was primarily off-pavement.
D = 16.14 km (10.03-miles), Vavr = 16.4 km/h (10.2-mph), Vmax = 48.5 km/h (26.4-mph), T = 59-minutes
I dug out of work as fast as possible to get to the top of St. Louis early enough to get a full run in before it got too late. I arrived first, followed shortly by Ckucke, JT, and Kevyn. After gearing up, we dropped Dumps all the way down to agave. Chris and Jarrel had both mentioned that lower Dumps had been cleared out. It was indeed opened up and groomed, but it was still full of tombstone rocks and derailleur-muncher rocks. It was better, but still not good. Also, the dry, leaf-littered surface was hardly ideal for traction: Both Kevyn and I felt a little washy, but that also may have been from tire pressure. JT and I both washed-out and low-sided off the rock jump that divides upper and lower Dumps. We climbed back up to the first switchback sortie, then bombed the center rocky run to the road and out the exit trail to the street. All of this continues to get worse, but the good sunlight allowed for better line choices. We piled into Kevyn’s Jesus truck – now without the camper shell – and shuttled back up to the top. Continue reading ‘Ochiba’