Rawland Stag Low Trail 650B

The Stag was not my first choice for a frame and fork. My first choice was a local Seattle frame builder. I discussed details with him, sent in my deposit and was guaranteed a frame in 6 months. So I began to dream and collect parts, a Paul rear hub, a Son delux generator front hub, VO Grand Cru cranks, Grand Bois Randonneur drop bars, leather tape, and a  Brooks saddle. I orders some Pacenti 650 rims, built my wheels and finished them with Grand Bois 42mm Hetre tires. I was ready, my wheels were ready, but while I was building my inventory my frame builder was experiencing a sudden storm of instability in his life. The result was a frame that never came, hopefully one day will come, but might never come.

I had to have my bike so I went here and there in Seattle and searched the web for a 650B frame that I could get quickly and inexpensively. to I would build up an inexpensive frame and wait for my builder to find his legs again. After almost committing to the VO Polyvalent I happened to see that Rawland had just started making the Stag. It was $725.00 and almost exactly what I had envisioned. Almost because it had an unthreaded steering tube and only came in metallic blue. I would work around those two realities. You really can't have everything unless you order a custom frame. Oh, that's right I did order a custom frame. . .

I placed an order for a Medium frame. I'm 5'9"

My fellow randonneur Andy knows everything, has a huge inventory of parts, and at 57 has been working on bikes for half a century.  His advice has been invaluable all along this bike path. You can't just order any pretty part and have it work on your bike. Knowing what will work and what won't is, for the most part, beyond me. He advised me and provided most of the parts for my dream bike. He suggested that I get the steering tube threaded. " I can do that?" "Sure", he said, " you just have to find the right guy with the right tools. That was daunting and resulted in a bit of a run-a-round until the mechanic at 20-20 Cycles suggested  Haulin' Colin. http://www.haulincolin.com/. He has a machine shop in Georgetown and within a couple of days I had my threaded fork. Now I could mount the stem, decaleur, front rack, and Giles Berthoud bag I had my heart set on.

Andy chased the head tube with his beautiful tools and installed the Grand Cru head set and SKF bottom bracket. I took it home and over the next couple of weeks put the rest of the jewelry on my beauty. I was in no hurry to be done. I had waited so long and put so much consideration into each part it was a pleasure to just be able to turn a hex wrench on the Stag. I wanted to say "her" but it's a Stag. I guess I don't have that option unless we do a sex change and where would the relevant bits be on a bike? Any guesses?

So it's done and I've had it on a few short rides. It seems very solid and has a very soft ride absorbing rough pavement due to the larger tires and lower psi. I have them inflated to about 50 psi which seems about right. It tracks nicely with  even cornering. It is not jittery at all, just very balanced. Best of all it is 3 lbs. lighter than my Davidson.

Now the road beckons. I'll be taking some short rides in the next few weeks, and the Winter Solstice 200k ride will be a chance to give the Stag a chance to run in the moonlight and test the Edelux headlight. If you see a rider go by you and his shadow is a silhouette sporting antlers you won't be saying "What's up wid dat"

 

Special Ground Delivery

It happened faster than seems possible, but every unavoidable accident does. It’s only afterwards that it repeats and repeats and repeats in slow motion.

I was riding my bike down a beautiful  hill on a beautiful day in north Seattle. It’s a long incline on a street call Roosevelt and you can easily hit 40 mph just coasting. It must be about a mile in length.. I was about halfway down the hill when a UPS truck pulled out on my left crossing over Roosevelt. The driver saw me at the last second but by then it was too late. I couldn’t stop and it was squarely in my path so swerving wasn’t an option. I was heading directly for the brown side of the brown truck with brown thoughts preparing to die.

As they often do on nice days the driver had both doors open and he was perched on the stool seat that looks both precarious and functional. I was able to steer to my right and when I hit the truck it was right at the delivery side door. My bike stopped and I continued at perhaps 30mph through the open door right at the driver. I just had time to put out my arms as I crashed into him and took him with me cleanly out the other side of the truck. (This is case where seat belts would have been deadly for both of us). We landed on the shoulder of the road which was coated with sand, gravel, glass, and a Sunchips bag. I was on top, he in the less advantageous bottom position which required him to be the sled and me the rider. We went perhaps 15 feet and came to a gentle stop. I could see right away that he was hurting. The Sunchips bag was peering cheerily out from behind his shoulder. His brown shorts and short sleeved shirt were little protection against the glass and gravel covered asphalt surface. I however was not in much pain. He was a plump soft man and had absorbed my forward motion in a way that slowed us both  gradually.

I immediately called 911 on the cell phone I carried in the back of my bike sweater and kept him as motionless as I could until the sirens arrived and someone who knew what she was doing took over. I had a few abrasions on my fingers where they stuck out of my bike gloves. Otherwise I was untouched by the crash. I didn't know whether to thank him or yell at him, but considering his condition I kept my mouth shut. His injuries were superficial as far as I know.

My bike was totaled, but a new one arrived the next week in a brown truck, compliments of UPS, different driver.

 

The above is fictional in my case but probably has happened somewhere.

If you have any short bike fiction send it to me and we will start a collection.

We Live On a Bearing Ball

We live on a bearing ball. A bearing ball is one of the balls in the picture below. The whole diagram below is a ball bearing. Bearing balls and ball bearings are used in almost every machine with moveable parts we have in our lives. But imagine the earth is one of those bearing balls. You can see it right? Around and around it goes rolling as it spins. And we live on it.



We don't feel confined  and earth isn't squeezed between races like the ones above, but in an unseen way we are held in place by centrifical force and gravity. So the analogy doesn't hold up perfectly, but we are riding a cosmic bicycle cruising along an old astronomical railroad grade. All the bearing balls in our bike are spinning, bathed in beautiful slippery grease, moving through the great vacuum.


Riding a bike is like riding a planet. It rolls frictionlessly along, like a bird in flight. The feeling is of doing something greater than it appears. The amazement of going so fast and far with the turning of pedals continually overcomes me. This is the enjoyment of the effort. The effort put in gets multiplied tenfold by the leverage of the gearing and the non-resistance of all the bearing enabled parts - miracle! HILL! OK if we must speak about hills they do exist. But even the climbing of a hill, as testing as it is, reveals our limits to be much greater than we might think. Looking at a hill beforehand is to be discouraged. While we are climbing it we are in pain. But in the context of the whole ride it is balanced by the descents that make our orbital route equally up and down. And balance is that other greatness of our cyclogical exploration. We go fast (or slow) and we stay upright as we do it. Wow! and to say it backwards woW!!! These mechanical miracles are astounding on so many levels, and to ride them is to celebrate the alchemy of a living thing becoming one with a machine. We are riding a planet because every part of a bicycle was derived from the elements of our planet.

Espresso ~ the Aroma of the Unattainable

There is a part of me that is aways looking for a coffee shop, a hangout where I can bask in the glow of wifi, nearby strangers, and the aroma of freshly pulled espresso. I could have just left a coffee cafe five minutes ago and the eyes of my heart will begin roaming, looking for that paradise signed with a red curvy neon espresso sculpture in the window. Yes, a sculpture, because coffee is art, and art is the heart of life, the curves, the spirit, the inspiration. A coffee shop is an art gallery where the insides of your skull are the walls where the caffeine buzz hangs its creations. And yet when I do see another one I know I truly would not enjoy another coffee. I've had enough already.

 

I walk into the hip space and everywhere are open laptops, and the sound is soothing yet cool music behind the hissing gurgle of milk being steamed. Everyone is creating amazing graphics, writing inventive short stories, texting inspiring dialogues. The place is so crammed with a symphony of firing neurons that my own muse begins to speak to me in poetry so original I can barely keep up with my own self expression. In fact, there it just went...  I thought....  there was something I wanted to say. And although I can sense its ambiance like something I was going to say and then forgot, the moment is empty. It was a contract between my spirit and the caffeine which in the end has no content. What is called in your language an empty promise.

The reason is because if you could really see what was on those laptop screens you would realize it is  only emails, and spreadsheets, and amazon.com. The real creators must be at home sitting lonely at their desks sweating out words and phrases, creating imaginary worlds that don't flow like soothing waterfalls from their minds, but are more like pulling nails from old scarred wood and piling up the lumber until there is enough there to build the beginnings of a house. And everyday the writer spends most of his hours looking for cast off lumber and pulling the nails out of it so he can have a few sticks to add to his slowly, painfully forming wood pile.

The cafes are beautiful illusions, lovely promises. Espresso is the aroma of the unattainable, visions of  impossible possibilities, aural dreams of unhearable music. And that is why I love them. That is why I keep one eye out for a coffee house while the other is spying cast off lumber.

 

Paris-Brest-Paris notes

PBP notes

To my Dad who loved his bike. I lit a candle here asking him to ride with me.

There was a thunder storm about a third of the way-280 miles in, 40 miles from Carhaix. It looked like it was moving south away from our route. Then lightning started hitting like a dropped bottle of good French red wine on a tile floor. The first raindrops fell heavy and spaced like artillery testing for range. Then the deluge began. It was dark as I pulled over under a tree to put on everything I had with my rain shell missing. (some way I had convinced myself that the weather was going to continue to be dry). I then thought moving along up the next steep hills (into the lightning) was the best choice. In minutes all my clothes were soaked through. Stop and get wetter with no shelter available or ride into the lightning and get wetter is not a good choice. Riding on for 30 minutes I finally arrived at the top of a steep hill. There were two Quonset tents set up close to each other in a small village. The folks were yelling "zoop, zoop," which I think I translated brilliantly as "soup", and bought a bowl of hot beef broth for a euro. It happened that I was offered one of ten matresses in the side room of a bar. I stripped down to my cycling shorts hanging all the soggy clothes on a chair and lay down. I asked the woman to wake me in 3 hours and my last thought was" this bar is just too noisy to sleep." Then someone was gently shaking me awake. When I opened my eyes there were 4 girls looking at me with strange puzzled looks on their faces. Whether I was proving hard to awaken or snoring so loudly they all had to discuss it at the foot of my bed I will never know. I do know that when I put my cycling clothes back on my socks and undershirt were missing. I couldn't quite fathom going with no socks in wet shoes but I had no choice. Someone probably hung their stuff over mine and grabbed it accidentally so I rode the next 100 miles without socks.   Up to this point everything had gone better than I could have hoped. My muscles weren't sore. My neck and back that ached at the start were now forgotten. And it wasn't because the riding was flat and easy. Every control is in a town and every town is on a hill, because some silly person thought it might be safer to see the enemy coming and arrows fly farther down hill. Also we were riding across a part of France that is bisected by small rivers, so we were constantly going down to the river to pray and climbing back out that good old way. Up and down. And the hills are of all kinds but have the same thing in common with all their hill relatives. At the end of every short or beautifully long down hill run you will be rewarded with another hill to climb. Not to complain because this is PBP. Iit is what it has to be. And there were some spectacular kilometers long bendy downhills to satisfy the speedy riders among us. But enough complaining. We knew going in it would be challenging. But can you really know? Sunday I arrived at the start at 4:30. Many of the Seattle riders were there together and we stood out in the 80• sunshine in our summer- weight Seattle blue sweaters until we left the start line at 8 pm. We all talked, me with an undertone of anticipation and dread. But after almost a year of waiting I was ready to mount up. As we neared the start line (they send off waves of about 500 riders) a young man was speechifying on a stage in what sounded like congratulatory phrases ( my French being limited to a bad French accent) to another group of enthusiastic young people. He then turned to us and had us do a slow rising whoooooooo while raising our arms in a half wave, then more words to the group onstage, then back to us( about 5 times this cycle took place.)Then just as the start seemed imminent , all that was left was to fall off the cliff, more loud parley vouing.Then exactly at 8 pm, we started to move the first slow mass current of water being released from a dam. There is no sticking with anyone one knows at this point. Just the swirling eddies of riders focused on keeping the rubber on the road. However we quickly sorted into a stream 2 or 3 wide as we whooshed through town and all the traffic lights which were cleared for us by a flagger. I think because it would be so much work getting out of Paris with all the street crossings the start is now at St. Quentin en Evylenes about 20 miles outside the city. That first rush at the start of any brevet is one of the best parts of the ride with very little talking, just the sound of rubber on the road, derailleurs changing gears and the breathing of the pack, an elk herd charging across the tundra, as one body the sound of hooves and the sound of breathing.

Off to the start.

Damn! Somehow I made a wrong turn and in my mirror I see riders who followed me turning around. I had a few of the Seattle riders in view but now they are long gone. We were moving at close to 20 mph. I had become the leader when we were finally stopped at a light and I wasn't yet familiar with the reflective signs pointing our direction to Brest. As I rode the route it became instinct to spot the small arrows on posts and buildings.

So settling into a rhythm we pedaled toward the setting sun. As night fell riders turned on their lights and the train of red sometimes snaked out to the horizon. Five thousand riders make a long line. The first night was amazing. I was still flying on adrenaline and I was piloting a steed through unknown lands where the roads were beautifully smooth and the people living along them were friends I had never met. They stood on the side holding up bottles of water quickly filling your bottle and also offering cookies and encouragement. All through the night they stood there and there were some standing out there at 3 or 4 in the morning when the rest of the town was dark and closed up. During the days I even saw a couple of times a lone old person in a wheel chair. Someone had dropped their dad off by the side of the road because he couldn't miss it. In his earliest memories as a boy he watched riders go by on bikes a bit different than those today, but not so much, and he is not about to miss this year. Maybe he even was a rider in PBP not so long ago. Half of the riders in this event are French and I often saw crowds of people surrounding groups of riders you knew were from that village. Chances are they were helmetless too. Many European riders like to feel the wind in their hair.

Arriving at the first stop Montange-au-Perche was a bit of a confusing experience. I felt I needed food but the quick sandwich bar was out so I just bought a Coke and went inside where there was what looked like a line an hour long. So I bought another Coke (I'm not usually a Coke drinker but the CO2 and the caffeine really do it on these long rides). One more Coke and a water fill up and I was off. Montagne was only an official control on the way back. Day dawned sunny, warm, with a slight tailwind. All I had worn through the night was my Seattle short-sleeved wool sweater and my reflective vest. In the humidity that had been plenty and now I just had the sweater which I wore all 4 days and somehow it never offended me or anyone else as far as I could tell. The SIR blue showed up from a great distance so I could see my fellow club riders up ahead.

I arrived at the first official control Villaines-la-Juhel mid-morning. I has some breakfast and discovered that French toilets can be very challenging for a cyclist. They consist of a hole in the floor above which the rider with extremely tired quadriceps must squat in painful anticipation of finishing a task which should be a restful moment of meditation. And there are no handrails, so add a slippery floor and you get the idea. Road shoes would be Enfer. Pardon my French.

Finding my bike again I headed toward Fougeres. The first couple of stages had been somewhat flat, but now the real rolling began. We started traversing river valleys down then up. I continued feeling good, no drowsiness or pain at all. the weather that day was warm and sunny. At intervals I would see someone ditch-napping just lying on the grassy shoulder. The people continued their generosity. One barn I stopped at had free juice, coffee, fruit, cookies and mattresses for the weary traveler. Add the occasional conversation with fellow riders and it was a lovely day of riding. I came through Fougeres right at noon and had my first big meal. The food is served cafeteria style. It is perfectly bland and easy to digest. Mashed potatoes, pasta, and rice can be topped with various meats, fish, pork, chicken, all in their own gravy and the portions are large. I found the rice pudding to be my favorite dessert. The coffee, if you asked for it was served in a cereal bowl. I am now drinking it that way at home. It cools faster for the hurried rider and no having to get up for seconds. They really have the food service down and the lines with the exception of Montagne were at most 10 minutes. I probably got a bit too comfortable in the cafeterias but hey it was fun to talk and see the other riders. A German man I talked with told me he was enjoying the ride "but it is not such a beautiful ride eh?" I was a bit stunned since to me these old town and farms were postcards wherever you turned. "The Black Forest and other parts of Germany are much more scenic." I didn't let his dissent spoil my ride.On to Tinteniac where I met a tandem rider whose stoker ( the rear rider) was blind. There were a few sighted and blind matched up on tandems. He told me he tells his friend behind that they are on a hill and let's up on his effort to get a break now and then.  I also saw a Vietnam vet on a hand bike, and one rider pedaling with only one leg. I’m pretty sure the guy with one leg made it, though I don’t know about the hand bike man.

Between Tinteniac and Loudeac PBP threw in a secret control. They put these there in case you choose to throw your bike on a train and take the easy way to the next control.

By 6:30 that evening I reached Loudeac which was roughly a third of the distance. I had a drop bag there with changes of clothing. I ate, took a shower and got some clean shorts. But I did leave behind that rain jacket. The stage really did start warm as the sun set for the second night, but about halfway in I was very surprised and startled to hear the thunder. I prayed for mercy but none was given.

Zoop, zoop!

Afterwards when I was leaving the bar where I lost my socks it was very dark through narrow winding roads with no markings. My light was  good but my night vision is not. Riders were spread out and I needed to find someone who could lead me down these hills. I started following a rider who pulled to the side to let me pass. When I explained that I needed to follow he was more than happy to help. Johann was a very talkative German rider with great English. He kept me entertained through the night with his great interest in the history and mythology of Brittania, the area of France we were now in. "You Americans talk about the middle of nowhere; this it it in France.This is as far as you can get from anything. Fairies, witches, and ghosts live here." It was the perfect combination of interesting and scary to keep me going through the night. I was feeling revived with the sleep I had, and the stories kept my mind turning. This was Johann's third PBP but he did not finish the previous ones falling ill both times. Definitely a determined man. I did see him, well past two thirds of the way on the return leg, and he said he still felt strong. I continued with Johann and another rider Louise from CA. who was staying at my hotel  in St. Quentin. We arrived in Carhaix at 4am Tuesday and stopped to eat. I always ate at each control whether I felt hungry or not. Here there were exhausted riders every where. I even had to step over a guy lying between tables in the cafeteria. He was sleeping on the hard floor like a baby. All the mattresses in the sleeping area were taken.

Heading out again I knew I was facing the longest and highest climb of the ride, the Roc Trevezel, a mountain on the peninsula out to Brest. And it wasn't so bad. Maybe it was riding through The Forest of Broceliande where Merlin the Magician still lives that gave me the strength to scale the mountain, but truthfully it was a forgiving grade, just a longer climb than we had faced so far. At this point I rode up behind a Seattle teammate Eric Nilsson. At this point I didn't realize that we were teaming up and would finish the rest of the ride together. The weather turned misty and both of us being glasses wearers ended up pulling our frames down and peaking over the top for much of the time in and out of Brest. Arriving in Brest we could celebrate conquering half the ride. We had gone roughly the distance from Seattle to Ashland, Oregon in 38 hours. Now we had to return home. After a stop at the control, some food and some French fries at a nearby McDonalds ( yes they tasted exactly the same as here), and a call home to Dawn in the middle of the night Seattle time we headed back out into the misty sea air. We collected another Seattle companion, Steve Davis and together we made the climbs back out of Brest toward Carhaix. I still felt strong and now that we had a sense of what lay ahead it did feel a bit like going downhill uphill. My legs still felt good though definitely used, but I sensed that I could make it.

I had decided on a couple of people's recommendation that I should carry bottles of Ensure. I really think this was one of the keys to surviving. At the start I had 5  8ounce bottles in my trunk bag. I religiously drank one bottle every 50 miles. It added 2.5 pounds to my load but it was worth it. People say they hate the taste but I really enjoyed each bottle I drank. The vibration of the bike made it a frothy vanilla milkshake. I was able to restock twice from my drop bag, though Claus who transferred the bags said, "Oh you're the one with the pile of bricks."

I think we ate at Carhaix, but I really can’t remember. I was going into my third night with only 3 hours of sleep in over 60 hours so things get a little gummy upstairs. We had decided to try for another sleep break at Mediac(the earlier secret control) where we arrived around midnight. We decided to take 5 hours of sleep! At this point 5 hours sounded so decadent and luxurious. 5 whole hours!! They had a couple of free mattresses and the most delicious quilts. As I lay there I thought “I don’t want to go to sleep because my next thought will be waking up.” They are very systematic keeping track of how long you must sleep with a cardboard clock they set by your bed. It happened I woke myself up and didn’t get the pleasure of having a gentle Frenchman shaking my shoulder “Bon jour.”

Sleeping room

After that refreshing sleep it was off into the dawn of the third morning. I really felt revived by the nap. We passed many people looking like zombies somehow managing to ride in La La Land and keep their bikes on the road. And of course many were ditch-napping in the sun. This hills did seem a bit steeper and longer than coming, but the legs continued to do their job. Eric was experiencing something like shin splints in one leg and got treated with ice and ointments at every controls first aid station. After Tinteniac and Fougeres the hills began to moderate a bit with the occasional killer hill thrown in. We rolled along past many cornfields and pastures with some beautiful long views across miles of the green countryside, a church spire of a distant village across a valley. Climbing up into Villains-la-Juhel we passed under balloon arches and the clapping of hundreds of people. There were more people here than I had seen yet. They stood 3 deep behind the barriers and I felt like they really believed I was a celebrity athlete along with the other 6000 riders.

After a meal and a 15 minute grass nap Eric and I headed out for our last night ride. As dark fell the days without sleep really began to take their toll. While I wasn’t nodding off  or weaving down the road, my brain just felt like it was full of cotton and was begging to give in to the sand man. The French turn off all their lights at night, so, where here in the States you might see lights of distant houses or street lights, there is nothing to give you perspective. You are just traveling on and on through the tunnel made by your headlight and it becomes very hypnotic and difficult to keep your senses sharp This was the moment when I questioned why I was doing this insanely long ride. My legs and knees hurt, my brain begged for rest, my butt begged for mercy, and my foggy eyes creaked in their sockets. Why do I do these things? I guess to really know I’m alive. Maybe to know a bit about the suffering of people who suffer against their will. Half the time life is on auto pilot, a routine to get the things done, but I spend so much time trying to be comfortable, secure, painfree, entertained, not bored. This was the opposite of all of these. Every moment I had to make myself keep those cranks turning.  The goal was to finish and the way was through a bit of pain and suffering, self prescribed. Jim Corbett said, “I love the pain because it feels so good when it’s gone.” Maybe that’s it, but I was nowhere near having it be gone. I knew then I wouldn’t be doing this again.

At one point there were some people manning a table at the side of the road. Without thinking I just turned toward them and stopped just short of knocking over their table.  They grabbed my bike, led me to a chair and sat me down with a cup of hot chocolate and a couple of donuts. Oh blessed sugar! One man took our picture and had us write down our email so they could send us the photo! Wow the gentle encouragement and the treats were just what I needed to get me the last 8 miles into Montagne-au-Perche around 11pm.

I knew we had banked enough time to get one more sleep break, but it would have to be after a steep climb up to the control.  After a meal we were given cots in the gym and lay down for 2 more hours. Again, no problem falling asleep. Waking up we rode through the rest of the night me following faithfully in a revived Eric’s slipstream, arriving into Dreux, our last control, just after dawn.

 Somehow many of the Seattle people converged at Dreux so we were able to ride an easy 40 miles in the warm morning sunshine at a conversational pace into the finish. 87 hours 31 minutes. I thought I might do it in under 80, but now looking back that was dreaming. A total of 10 hours of sleep in close to 100 hours (the start was at 8pm and I woke up that day at 8am) was as close as I would want to cut it. I wandered around in a daze congratulating people and getting my brevet book stamped and turned in. Now I was done. I got back on my bike and rode the 2 miles to my hotel. The shower felt so good, the bed even better. No time limit!

Two days later I caught myself thinking, “I think I would like to stay at this place when I ride PBP again.”  What’s up with that!?

Finish!!!