Author Archives: bikewolf

I am finally ready to set sail. I've spent three days kicking around Paris. Now my bike is built, my bags are packed, and I have a route to start my adventure. First I have to get to the RER station across Paris. This is fine, because I've observed Parisian cyclists and traffic and I'm starting to understand it.

Paris has traffic lanes insofar as there are lines on the road. What those lines intend to signify, no one has stopped to ask. To be fair, more and more bike lanes are being built to support Paris' successful velibre bike-rental system. But neither the pedestrians nor the drivers seem concerned with what is a road, sidewalk, or lane. This might be a flaw in the bike lane system.

Also, Parisians often wear bike helmets, but I don't recognize the style. They only cover a band at the top of your head and your ears. I can't say that these would be too helpful in an accident in terms of brain-protection, but the ear protection is robust. Each ear is covered in a big foam element suspended by the band. Funny lookin' helmet, really.

Tomorrow I will take the commuter train to its furthest point from Paris. Then, I'll follow a bike path along the Seine. I will pass Monet's home, garden, and the land that inspired the impressionists. Hopefully the cue sheet that I found is accurate. Most of the land that I'll be covering is on the edge of a page of my atlas, mostly obscured by the legend.

After this post, I'm sure my posts will become less frequent. I won't have access to wifi as often as I do in Paris. Until then…

A bike in a box at an international airport is not such a bad thing. Normally I travel extremely light. Checking bags is heresy to me. I prefer a backpack with everything I need that can fit under a seat. So it should come as no surprise that checking an entire bike internationally gave me a case of the willies. A strong one.

But everything worked quite well. After lumbering across half the world at a corpse's pace, I arrived in France to find my bags had arrived as well. I managed to utilize some poor French to communicate with a taxi driver. We pushed the bike into the back of his van and left. We sloggethrough rainy traffic into Paris and the doorstep of my friend's apartment.

Although I had slept on the night I left (briefly) and on the plane to New York (briefly) and on the plane to Paris (lengthily), I still managed to pass out once I made it to R.'s apartment in Paris. I'm quite sure I snored with my shoes on, with a half-open bag of Combo's in front of my face. With the sounds of Parisian rain wafting into the windows, who could blame me?

Soon after I awoke, we headed out for dinner and some drinks (for the record, I feel like I've experienced two full evenings without a morning). We took R.'s Triumph to a bistro for some food, and then some drinks in Bastille. There we met some of his Canadian friends. The conversation drifted between more-French portions that I tried to follow and more-English portions that I could participate in.

Paris is best on two wheels.

I notice that Parisian cyclists are a different breed. R. explains that disobeying traffic laws in Paris can cost you points on your driver's license. And it's hard as hell to even get a driver's license here. In San Francisco, your biggest concerns are bodily harm and the extremely occasional ticket from the police. And while bodily harm is the main concern, it sometimes comes at the expense of traffic laws. A good cyclist knows that the safest action is not always strictly legal.

I would explain more about who cycles in Paris and how they do it, but it would not yet be fair–Without further observation. But I can tell you that cycling in this city sure looks fun.

Tomorrow I will get some coffee–long absent from my life–and free my bike from its cardboard cage. More then.

We've all reached points in our life of absolute exhaustion. Hungry, tired, sore, with flagging hope. Rather than focusinga on the task at hand, you sit back and wonder why you're doing what you're doing at all. You could be at the movies, you could be lying in your bed.

Most people reach this point somewhere on the course of a bicycle tour. I reached it while packing.

For two months, this is everything.

I had been considering every ounce of weight for weeks, that wasn't the issue. Having taken a few smaller trips on the packed bike, I knew what I felt was important and it was all in one place. The real afternoon-suck came when I tried to put it into the bike box.

I had planned to disassemble the bike, put it back in the box, and stuff my panniers around it. At first exactly one step of this plan worked. Even getting the damned thing back into the box was an ordeal, and there wasn't much margin for error. Let alone space for my bags.

After hours of finagling, we managed to get the bike somewhat padded and safely stowed. I then took what I could out of my nicely packed panniers and began shoving things into the sides and bottom of the box. We wrapped a fair amount of packing tape around the box, with the intention of using the baggage wrapping machine at the airport. Great idea, but there wasn't a machine at my gate. So now I'm in the back of a very large plane. My bike is in a box on the belly of the plane, no doubt half-destroyed already with another 5,000 miles to go.

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You'll notice in the above image that I've come up with a novel organization system for my on-bike gear. Each plastic bag has the name of a room in your house. This way, each thing has a logical location. Where is the coffee filter? In the Kitchen. The toothbrush? Bathroom. The knife? Shed. I'm actually pretty proud of this system.

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Now sitting on the blue carpet of JFK airport. The late afternoon sun is cutting into the terminal at a sharp angle, blinding anyone who will look. It has been impossible to secure wifi at this place. And beyond that, anyone who is selling anything at this terminal seems downright committed to being mean. I ended up buying a slice of pizza that I was only asking about. My beer came late, with a dirty look. And when I tried to buy coffee, things got worse.

I noticed that a particular café had a password-protected wireless network. To me, that's worth a cup of coffee. But when I ordered one and asked for the password, the clerk poured the coffee but denied the existence of the network. She did it in a way that made it clear that she spends 30% of each and every day denying its existence. The coffee was $3, and I had $2. She refused to take a card and took the coffee back. I left without wireless or coffee

That's when I retreated to the blue carpet to sit in the askance glare of dying yellow sun. In two hours, I board a plane for Paris. It's a grueling trip. I left my apartment at 4am, and I land in Paris at 10:30am the next day. Still not sure how I'll find a taxi for my bike when I get there.

Luckily, I was born with one very special talent. I'm able to shut down my higher brain functions when I enter airports. This puts me into a fugue-state that is perfect for long travel days. I just stand in the lines and sit and stand when it's time to sit and time to stand. People, I think, refer to this as being a “seasoned traveller,” but I think it's just a kind of intentional sleepwalking.

You really don’t notice 1989 silver Honda Civics on the road until you drive one. Likewise, I had no concept of bike touring or bike camping until I starting doing it. And now I can’t cast a sideways glance towards a highway or campsite without catching sight of someone proceeding merrily along, leaden with panniers.

I say this because I (and the very bike-and-camp capable girlfriend) rode the 30-some miles to Samuel P. Taylor state park this weekend. For me, it was the final simulation run before my real tour. For her, the first bike camping adventure. Not only did we run into other bike campers on the way, we actually knew nearly everyone at the campsite by coincidence. Yes, San Francisco is a small city. But even more so, bike touring is a community.

The bike ride from San Francisco to Samuel P. Taylor is mostly a pleasant one. It goes something like this: You leave your apartment with a very heavy bike and collect strange looks as you wind towards the Presidio. Once you make it there, you enjoy the relaxing atmosphere of open roads and actual trees. But more and more you notice the fog creeping in. Nearing the bridge, you would be appreciating startling views of the bay were it not for the blanket of fog fully obscuring said views (this, obviously, is not always the case).

Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge on a bike will either be a battle against the elements, a battle against the tourists, or both. If you’re lucky, you’ll face intense fog and gale-force crosswinds. If you’re not, you’ll be shouting at tourists to please move and trying desperately not to send them into the cold abyss when they casually walk into the path of your bike.

Notice: The Elements.

After the bridge, you descend steeply into Sausalito. By most accounts, this was once a cool bohemian town. In the Kingston Trio era, it was probably a really great place to get a reasonably priced drink, and a meal, and absorb the near-impossible beauty of the bay. These days it’s about as crowded with tourists and over-priced restaurants as a town can get.

Sausalito ends by placing you on a long flat bike path along the marshes outside of Mill Valley. In my experience, heading north is casual and pretty and almost begs you to take your ride at a slow pace. The folks headed north wonder why all the folks heading south look so tired. That is, until they turn around and face the constant headwind blowing in from the bay. Then they look tired to all the folks heading the other way, etc. etc.

The bike path ends and you take a small detour to The Ugliest Bike Path in America (nobody calls it that), which skirts the 101 for a short stretch before putting you mercifully onto some neighborhood streets. For several miles, you take a combination of main streets and back roads through Larkspur, San Anselmo and Fairfax. If you’re shortsighted like me, you’ll grab beer in Fairfax. Then you’ll hop onto Sir Francis Drake and climb the only major hill on the entire ride with a needlessly heavy bag. If you play things a bit smarter, you’ll wait until you descend the hill into Lagunitas to buy beer.

Then, you’ll hop onto the Cross-Marin Trail. It’s an old railway line that was converted into a dirt and gravel bike path. It is smooth enough for road tires and tucked under the trees along a river. There are side paths you can walk down to swimming holes along the way.

The Trail drops you off right in Samuel P. Taylor campground where you can grab a hiker-biker spot for $5 and sleep comfortably in a redwood grove.

We did, it was nice.

I went bike camping in Marin again, this time I did the trip alone. I found the same rocky beach as before and sat drinking a strong stout. The black water lapped against the rocks. It was slightly less foggy than last time, which only meant that you could see some things. A dozen feet out, a few seals popped their heads out of the water. They gazed at me curiously. I gazed back, feeling about the same. I thought about how differently special moments are received alone and with others. When there’s company, you might point, act excited, exclaim the wonders around you. But when you’re alone, you receive the potent gleam of every moment in reverent silence. The very world itself seems different because of how differently you receive it.

E.’s rock cairn had fallen down. I built a new one and headed back to camp.

Rocks + Man = Cairn.

I went ahead and bought a Martin Backpacker before this trip. This small travelling guitar isn’t exactly ideal for bike touring, but it’s close enough. The ideal instrument is probably a harmonica, and the only stringed instrument you’d really want to bring on a bike is a ukelele. The Backpacker straps onto my rear rack and hangs off the back. It probably looks a bit sketchy, but it’s worth the awkwardness to have something to play at camp. And anyway, cars tend to give you more clearance when they think you’re unsafe.

The Backpacker sounds roughly like someone else playing a beautiful guitar and holding it up to the phone for you. Slightly better than six wet noodles and an empty cereal box, in terms of acoustics. And while the sound is lousy, holding the thing is even worse. But again, this is what you get when you want to play a guitar, but don’t want to bring a guitar with you. And it’s worth it to me, to have something to play.

While making my dinner, I scanned my headlamp casually across the campground and caught the eye of a small fox. He was a cute little guy and trotted around a bit before running off. A few minutes later, I was chomping on my food and glanced off to my right. A skunk, who I had not invited to dinner, was milling around several feet from my table. For the next hour or so, he sniffed and tumbled around.

After reading in my hammock for about an hour, I dozed off comfortably. Several hours later–let’s call it 4am–I awoke to a terrifying shriek. At first, being roused from sleep by the sound, it struck me as a woman’s scream. But as I became slightly more aware, I realized it was just a Banshee. You know, the mythological creature.

Actually, I spent some time on YouTube today watching horrifying videos that people had shot in the dark of their own campgrounds. They usually consist of about 2 minutes of a camera pointed towards the darkness, at nothing, and occasionally a blood-curdling wail. It was through these YouTube videos (YouTube is amazing), and the comments thereupon, that I learned that the awful sound I heard was nothing but an owl, or a fishercat, or a mountain lion. In fact, it sounded the most like a mountain lion. But don’t worry, they don’t attack humans who are just lying there asleep. Except when they do.

I woke up, drank coffee, and played a song or two before heading out. San Francisco is beautiful:

It really is.

If there were 6,000 reasons I felt lucky to be a San Francsican, here’s reason #6,001: Bike camping in San Francisco is wildly easy.

I want to take a few small tours to test out my load and my gear before I ship off to France. In fact, this probably could have happened sooner. A mini-adventure is always a great reality check. The best advice I can offer to hikers, cyclists, climbers, and adventure-seekers of any sort who are shopping and researching is to just go. Plan a short trip with what you have on hand and just get out there. Everyone is adamant about their advice and everyone’s advice is different. You won’t know what is important to you until you’re setting up camp.

With that in mind, I set off for the Marin Headlands from San Francisco on what my buddy E. referred to as a “simulation.” I packed more like I will for the actual bike tour than how I would have packed for a night in the Headlands, because I wanted to feel the actual weight of my bike. I reserved a bike camping spot at Bicentennial Camp. This required that I stop by the visitor center for a permit. The visitor’s center closes at 4:30. But my buddy and I had to finish discussing Breaking Bad and eat some falafel. We got out of the city late and in no time to actually visit the visitor’s center. Not having a permit was absolutely no issue.

Fully loaded success.

I felt a little extra prepared with my new handlebar bag. Before I left, I stopped into Sports Basement in San Francisco. They claimed to be out of handlebar bags. Then, walking out disappointed, I noticed a really nice bag on a display bike in the middle of the sales floor. A helpful staff member was nice enough to remove it from the bike and sell it to me. Score. It’s a great little bag for your camera, map, and a little food.

Getting to Bicentennial Camp from San Francisco is easy. Take the Golden Gate Bridge, find the one-way tunnel and basically proceed straight. When there’s a sign for the Visitor’s Center, it will be helpfully pointed away from you. Luckily, you can learn a lot by looking at the backs of signs.

We found our camp site after a few photo-touring adventures of batteries, cliffsides, and a light house. I set up my tent in a spot that would have been a lot nicer to set up a hammock. This was my final indication that it would be smarter to tour with a hammock. This is one of those debates where everyone’s opinion is different and equally strong. I really like camping with hammocks. I spent some time on the Appalachian Trail and carried only a hammock. I think they’re light, easy to set up, and I sleep well in them. If you like spending time in your tent or can’t sleep well in a hammock, they’re a bad idea. For me, they’re just a great way to save weight.

E. and I found a small beach that was dark and rocky. We spent some time staring into the thick gray fog of the bay and then built a really impressive cairn. If you don’t believe me that it was impressive, you’re welcome to go find it.

Find out more about bike camping in San Francisco here! 

Brooks saddles are like mid-90s Honda Accords–a huge target for thieves. And since I’ve already had a mid-90s Honda Accord stolen (I named it D’Accord, but didn’t have the vanity plate made in time), I intend to keep my Brooks Saddle.

Everyone has a different idea of how to best secure a saddle. It’s a little difficult to trust what anyone says about saddle safety because of a really significant sampling problem. If you have had your seat stolen, you think the way you secured it was dumb and bad. If you haven’t, you tend to think you’ve done a pretty good job of locking it up.

Here are the most common methods of securing a bike seat:

1. “Hey, that’s a funny lookin’ bolt.” The locking skewer. These fall into different categories. Some are simply bolts with unique imprints so that special tools are needed to remove them. Others claim to be more sophisticated and require that the bike be flipped over to remove them. Unfortunately, the cycling world is full of stories about how thieves have bypassed these. Vice grips and magnets seem to work just fine.

2. “You wouldn’t want it anyway.” The least sophisticated strategy on this list–just toss a plastic liquor store bag over your seat. This way thieves will have to remove a liquor store bag from your seat before stealing it. Well, they wouldn’t really have to remove the liquor store bag before stealing it. In fact, they would mostly just have a handy place to hide your seat as they leave the scene of the crime. Well, maybe they ‘ll think you have such a terrible seat that you’re ashamed of it and it’s probably not worth stealing. I don’t really understand the theory behind this, to be honest.

3. “What bike seat?” Without a doubt the most effective method of keeping your bike seat from being stolen is to take the seat off your bike. That’s right, don’t leave it outside. Just carry it with you. Hard to argue with this advice, really. The only thing ridiculous about it is that there are probably other parts of your bike equally expensive and equally easy to remove. But considering seats are the biggest target, your risk will be significantly lessened.

4. “If I can’t have you, no one will.” This is the strategy that causes the most nuisance for the actual bike owner. Take a ball bearing and superglue it into the hex imprint on the bolt. It neutralizes the effectiveness of most tools. I recommend you dial in your bike’s setup REALLY well before taking this approach. Dissolving the superglue will take a good 20 minutes with a Q-Tip as you listen to This American Life and your arm gets tired.

5. “Chains aren’t just for sprockets anymore.” I see this often in San Francisco. Riders take an old bike chain and loop it from your frame through the rails of your saddle. Chains are a pain in the ass to cut through. But if you have a chain tool handy, removing a link takes a few short moments. If you use an older rusty chain, this significantly increases the time it would take to remove a link.

6. “What I did.” I wouldn’t ever tell you that this is the best, or even a very good strategy. But considering I want to continue adjusting my bike for a little while before heading off on my bike tour, I needed something more adjustable than a ball-bearing and superglue. Luckily, I had a U-Lock for a motorcycle’s disc brakes sitting around in my apartment. Since I don’t have a motorcycle anymore, nothing’s safety was being compromised by the re-purposing effort. The lock is small enough to fit through the frame without becoming a nuisance while riding. And I’m able to take the cable and feed it through the saddle rails. How secure is this? Not very. I could see it being a secure solution with a thicker cable, but it’s heavy and kind of dumb when compared with the other options on this list.

Mostly stupid, somewhat secure.

An old hiking expression comes to mind when talking about security from bicycle theft: You don’t need to be faster than the bear, just so long as you can outrun your fellow campers. If someone is looking to make a quick theft, you’re normally going to be fine as long as your things are better secured than your neighbor’s. Unless of course the thief plans to steal lots of things at once. Or the bear is really hungry.

Everyone approaches planning differently.

Me, I generally like to do sporadic research about random aspects of something. Then, I stress out about the stuff I didn’t research and agonize about the fact that I should be researching other things I don’t know about. Then, when the actual event I’m planning for, when that arrives, I think quickly on my feet and things work out pretty good. In terms of planning strategies, this isn’t one you’ll discover in any books. That’s because it’s a bad strategy.

Some people think I remain calm and go with the flow.  They’re generally undervaluing just how much I overthink things while staring at the ceiling, apparently seeming very calm.

Luckily, it seems that I’ve found like-minded souls in those people who take up bicycle touring. From most accounts that I’ve read, more than a rough outline of a trip is unnecessary. This is mostly due to the fact that once the rubber hits the road, things change. You meet people, or get sick, or find someplace else you’d like to go. My two-part planning strategy of first agonizing and then adjusting seems perfectly suited to this arrangement.

I leave for France on September 10th, just under a month from now. As of now, the route that I’ve decided on for my French tour could fit on a bar napkin. It’s basically a U. I will start in Paris and head to Normandy. From there, I want to travel south, and then follow the coast of the country. This is based on a couple of pieces of advice. One friend of mine, a native Parisian, mentioned that the middle of France is nothing compared to the coasts. In my ridiculously biased opinion, this is largely true of the United States as well. The good stuff is all stacked on the sides. I didn’t know how logical this route would be, but then I saw that these guys had done it. Sometimes just reaffirming that something isn’t insane is enough to move forward.

I plan to avoid French cities. With enough money and time, I would love to spend time in each city along the route. I love cities. If I ever live in France, it will likely be in a city. But I just don’t have the money to do them justice. Instead, I might roll through but I’ll likely avoid them. There are enough other things to see along the way.

Again, totally no idea what I’m doing.

One thing that my open-ended planning strategy makes difficult is carrying a map. I bought a 1:200,000 French road atlas from Michelin. It has scenic routes and back roads and the stamp of approval of other bicycle tourists. It also weighs about 80 pounds. I could tear out only the pages that correspond to my route, but I don’t know my route. I could also buy individual maps that correspond to my route, but I don’t know my route. A third option would be to photocopy only the pages that I need along my route. But, well, you get the idea.

I’ll likely tear out the pages that correspond to areas that I’ll least likely explore. More on that problem when I solve it.

A couple of months ago, I wouldn’t know a good touring bike if it ran me over in the street. After looking around a bit, and a totally fruitless Craigslist search, I wound up with a 2012 Jamis Aurora. A friend of mine was able to give me a deal on the bike if I bought it unbuilt, in a box. This is what I opted to do for three reasons:

• It was cheaper.
• Building the bike would teach me how to maintain the bike on the road (in theory).
• I would have the box to repack the bike and put it on a plane.

I have no idea what I’m doing.

Assembling the bike wasn’t terribly frustrating, except for the seat post–which I’ll get to in a bit. I went about learning each step of the building process just like any well-educated person does in 2012. I YouTube’d everything.¹

I hadn’t set up derailleurs before, so that took the most time. To a single speed rider like myself, a touring bike looks like The Homer. But I was able to get past my cable-and-doohickey aversion and learn a whole lot in the process.

The 2012 Jamis Aurora comes with mostly decent components, with a few glaring exceptions. The pedals are absolute garbage. They’re plastic with plastic toe cages and nylon straps. Only the most casual of casual riders would be caught dead using these things. And then there’s the saddle assembly. The saddle is powerfully ugly. Why they couldn’t ship the bike with a basic black saddle is beyond me.

The Aurora ships with a seat post that is known to be faulty. I found several forum posts with disgruntled customers griping about how at maximum tightness, their seat still slid around freely. I adjusted my seatpost height, tightened the bolt as well as I could and the seat post still slid from side to side. Frustrated, I stripped the bolt trying to get it tighter and then ultimately trying to get it off.

Luckily, I have a Dremel tool. I cut off the bolt at the center, where there is a break in the frame to clinch the post. The built-up tension caused the bolt to soar across the room once it was finally split in half. It was doubly satisfying to cut the damned thing off. After that, I walked over to my LBS planning only to buy a seat post that actually fit. Instead, I walked out with a new saddle as well. I’ve never had the pleasure of owning a Brooks saddle, and this seemed like a fitting time to try one out.

With a new saddle, it’s a nice looking bike.

Once I had the bike totally set up, I took it for a spin. At 5’9″, the 55cm frame is about as big as I would ever want it to be. It’s certainly at my upper-limit as far as comfort goes. But I’m satisfied, and ready to see what this thing can do.

1
I have a friend who went hunting every day for a whole season without finding a deer to shoot. This is a true story. He was driving home one day and found a dead deer on the side of the road. It was freshly killed, steam rising in the morning air. At any rate, he decides that this is his deer, regardless of how it wound up becoming an ex-deer. He tried at first to lift it away from his body so that he wouldn’t be covered in deer bits, but it was far too heavy for that strategy. Instead, he had to bear hug the thing in order to drop it into the trunk of his tiny Hyundai. I don’t remember if the trunk closed all the way, but either way it’s a pretty unique visual image. At any rate, he gets the carcass home and drags it into the back yard on a big blue tarpaulin. And then he walks inside and looks up a YouTube video on how to field dress a deer. Once outside, he performs the process. After that, he went back to the computer to learn how to harvest the meat. And then he repeated the process again to skin it. Mind you, I wouldn’t had believed this story if it had come from someone unreliable. YouTube is amazing.