Saturday the 6th. was ride day, so we met for a Wailuna ride. Jeff, Sara, and Root were early. Root had the bonnet up on his car, apparently messing with something mechanical. Ckucke showed up as we were getting prepped to ride. The park was full with soccer families. A couple of kids got abandoned in the upper field to play baseball by their parental authority figures who drove off to parts unknown. All geared up, Ckucke pulled his bike off the rack to discover a front flat. Sara had already taken off to get a head start up the road climb, so Jeff took off to catch up to her. Ckucke found a Schrader valve tube in his pack instead of a Presta one, so he borrowed my spare. Continue reading ‘Shoe Breaker’
Archive for the 'bike' Category
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Scat was still in recovery, and Root went home to break his FX, so Ckucke and I went up to do a ronery St. Louis descent. We got to the top a little late because there was something up with the front hub of Ckucke’s new white Azonic wheelset. The axle end caps were dragging against the cartridge bearing covers at the labyrinth seals, galling the unanodized aluminum – shades of my Cane Creek headset! I tried cleaning it up and filing one cap down, but tightening the axle to the correct preload bound the hub. We quickly swapped out to his old front wheel in order to make it up the hill at a reasonable time. We scored the choice parking spot, and we geared up and headed into the park. There was a tall woman getting her white Santa Cruz ready to ride, and some dude in a white pickup who was shadowing us as we rode through the trees off the park entrance, then turned around and went back out of the park. Continue reading ‘Quick Drop’
Ckucke didn’t have golf plans for Wednesday afternoon, so we put a Tantalus pau hana ride together. Jeff and Sara were taking a doctor paddle boarding, and Scat was out recovering from his surgery, so they were out. Root was supposed to be in, but backed out when we called him after waiting until a quarter hour past the start time. I popped a gel before we started for a bit of extra “go” for the climb, but it was really to no avail. At the first left hairpin at the State base yard road, the torment began. The weather was nice and clear, and a cool wind blew in along the shaded road up, but I immediately felt the drag pulling me back. A heavy hamburger steak plate lunch from The Alley Restaurant at Aiea Bowl and several weeks of missing afternoon secret training had made me weak. Continue reading ‘Ronery Road Ride’
“Deth March” was the subject line of the e-mail that went around for this Saturday’s ride, so it went without question that a certain amount of suffering would be involved. The plan was to do the complete Demon trail loop, but heavy rain on Friday made us switch to our backup plan of a long ride at Wailuna. I had it set in my mind to link the Wailuna ascent, Waimano Ridge trail, and Waimano Mystery hills into a loop. We have ridden all of the pieces, but never together as a complete circuit. Jeff, Sara, Root, and I have been up Waimano Ridge from Waimano Home Road all the way to the Wailuna trail. Chris and I have been up Mystery Hills to Waimano Ridge, but we went down the trail to Waimano Loop Trail and sortied that way. Continue reading ‘Mystery Hills Upper Loop’
I hit the jumps up on St. Louis with the boys on Monday. My stomach wasn’t feeling right since lunchtime, and I was still on the weird funk I had all weekend. Saturated with fumes from painting all day at work, Scat was a little out of sorts, hitting the jumps a little off and landing at the edge of control. Ckucke managed to break something in his rear hub, possibly the axle or bearing cup – his rear hub got loose and the back-end felt all floppy. I tried cranking down on his Q/R, but it still seemed the same. Everything seemed relatively normal with Root. Like last week, a hint of a drizzle drifted down the ridgetop at one point, but didn’t get anything wet or sticky. Scat said it had been socked-in at mid-day, but if any precipitation fell, it was all soaked in and dried up by the time we arrived. At the end of the jump session, Scat and I had more-or-less managed to get back onto a somewhat normal footing. Continue reading ‘Jump Until Failure’
I’ve seen some other iterations of this glove design sold by other vendors before, but those have shiny carbon-patterned armor plates instead of the Kevlar-look cloth laminated plates that the Dakine Defenders have. Since I’ve been unable to find armored, box-fingered motocross gloves, when I saw these hanging in the back of McBike, I thought that they might be a possibility. There were only tiny sizes, so I waited a month until the backorder came in and Jarrel left a note on my toolbox that they had arrived! I snapped up a large pair that day. I tried on the XL’s, but the fingers were too long. Initially, the large felt tight for some reason. This was odd, since there was enough space at the knuckles as I could move the armor plates even while making a fist. The fingers weren’t too small in girth, since I could pinch the fabric. Odd. Maybe it was the way the fabric folded when the fingers were bent. In any case, the tight sensation went away after wearing them for a half hour, and it didn’t come back on subsequent wearings. Continue reading ‘Dakine Defender MTB Gloves’
I was at Kuakini Medical Center the other day, and passed the bulletin board where they have rotating displays. It was employee photo contest time, so I slowed down to take a look. This was the second round of pictures. There are often some interesting travel shots, and on rare occasion, a fascinating composition or impressive technical work. This time around, the picture of an older, rounder fellow riding an Ellsworth Truth down a rock face caught my attention. I immediately recognized the location as the angled boulder face along the climb-out after the boulder garden on the Ditch inner loop. It was an unremarkable shot, and the title was like some tagline straight out of the Ellsworth catalogue. The roll-in itself isn’t scary-technical (ride the mystery drop-in for scary), but I’m sure it was enjoyable for the rider. I momentarily thought, “WTF – it’s some old fat guy on an Ellsworth at Ditch,” before realizing, that’s like a third of our riding group including myself! Okay, Root’s not fat. Well, glad to see yet another Ellsworth out at Ditch, in addition to the Toyota truck guy and us three.
A faint drizzle drifted down from the wall of dark clouds hanging above the back of Manoa valley. Unlike last week, the clouds looked settled in their pockets near the mountaintops, so it was unlikely that rain would follow us down the trail. We passed Kevyn and his white Santa Cruz finishing his day in the parking lot on the ride up. After gearing up, we headed off down the mainline. There was a little more light out since it wasn’t as overcast, so I was able to pick out my line better. Root was tardy arriving at Ckucke’s, making our start time a later than last week. To avoid riding down in the dark with only LED blinky lights, we limited our jump session to a few runs, then headed off down the hill before the light began to fade. Dropping the taco jumps then backtracking uphill to do the first left, we essentially retraced last week’s ride. Continue reading ‘Crowded House’
A full moon on Saturday night meant it was time for an evening ride. I met Chris and Root out at Wailuna in the late afternoon. Ckucke, Jeff, and Sara were off-island, and Scat was otherwise occupied. A small group and a fast pace would be advantageous, since I discovered at the last minute that my Niterider battery had an issue. I had plugged it in the day before after Chris called me with the ride plans, but it was still flat. The multimeter said the charger was turning out the correct voltage, but the battery was only outputting around 6 volts. The battery was quite old, so one or more cells had probably gone bad. As we rolled out, the sun was still high in the sky, but the temperature was bearable. A strong wind was blowing downhill. The road climb from the park was quick, and the trail climb went smoothly. Either our pace was a bit higher than normal so I didn’t have time to fully recover, or I wasn’t quite on it. Many of the climbs took the wind out of me and sent the legs into burn. Continue reading ‘Ride into Twilight’
This is simply the best bicycle frame bottle available. Period.
It doesn’t make your water taste funny, nor is it currently known to leach weird chemicals into the water causing man-boobs, cancer, or whatnot. The cap screws on easily and doesn’t leak. My original one is around two years old, and it is still working fine, even though it is looking pretty beat-up cosmetically. Jarrel got some in at McBike, so I picked up a new one. The cap is a little different on the new one. I’ll see how it fares over time, but I imagine it will be as bulletproof as the original one. The cap threads are the same as Nalgene “standard”, so stuff like aftermarket caps or water purifiers that attach directly to bottles will be compatible. It seems that the hardness of the material would make printing on this bottle impractical (the ink/paint would just scrape off), so don’t expect to see it as a logo bottle. Just buy the advertising-free original!
Four out or four skulls
Highly recommended
About $5 USD