Category: Bikes and biking
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Blue bike tales
Last week, at a yard sale, we saw this pretty blue Trek Antelope 850, and for $40 and in excellent condition I just couldn’t not take it home. A little digging reveals this Trek is from 1990, close to the vintage of the Bridgestone MB-5 which was my first real bike. Functionally identical performance between…
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Layering in 2019: mid and wind layers
Since 2011 I’ve owned around two dozen windshirts, and while a third of those were for larger reviews and garments in which I didn’t have an inherent interest, this still amounts to an extravagant total. As of today there are only four in regular rotation. In the same period I’ve had at least the same…
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Layering in 2019: introduction and baselayers
Any discussion of layering has to start with it being somewhat of a misnomer; the point of a good layering system is to provider a few solid pieces which cover as great a range of conditions as possible. If you have to swap, add, or remove layers often, you chose poorly for the day. That…
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Angles
In the last few days, winter has finally caught up with us. The forecast for the past 24 hours was impressive, 45 and sunny falling to a few degrees (F) below 0, with close to a foot of snow, maybe some rain, and winds up above 20 miles an hour. At my 5000′ camp only…
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That day 11 years ago
11 years ago today Chad, Craig, Fred and I did a dawn to dusk bike ride. You can read the original post here, and the more extended forum thread here. I’ve always ridden bikes. One vivid early memory was also in autumn, during eight grade, when I endoed my Bridgestone riding down a steep sand…
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Premium baselayers: what you get
For the last three years my one-sized solution to any temps above really cold has been the original version of the Sitka LW Core hoody. With ~100 grams/meter 100% poly bicomponent (grid inner) and a trim, simple fit it is the shirt I spent close to decade waiting for. A decade ago baselayer fabric wasn’t…
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Shoe requiem (Altra King MT 1.0)
As with most things here, this isn’t really a proper review, though the first version of the King MT is still available if you wear a men’s 8, but a discussion of one thing as a salient example, of several trends playing out in the world of trail running and hiking shoes. The first thing…
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Planning the 2019 Bob Open
It’s time to start planning the 2019 Bob Open. If you want to cut to the chase, click here to take a 1 minute survey. Until recently the process of picking a route across the Bob has been simple; I pick out a few places I haven’t been and want to go (often this had…
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Known doubt
The best thing I’ve done for my learning in the outdoors was one of the earliest. In the early 90s seemingly no one in the US, or at least southern Ohio, did anything other than clip bolts, so it was up to me and my set of hexs and stoppers to figure it out. Gym…
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Panic in the Elkhorns
A few days ago I went for a bike ride, on many of the same trails featured in this video from last year. I didn’t bring a camera, and snapped only a few vague photos with my phone along the way, having no intention of discussing specifics. As I wrote last June But what I…
Bedrock & Paradox 
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