Monday, December 22, 2014

Breaking in a 'New' Bike (2014-12-20)

While riding in some horrible rain, I spent a lot of time in the first half adjusting the saddle of this bike until it was perfect. The rain also did a great job of breaking in this Brooks Swift.

This bike is actually used, but half of it is now either new, new old stock, or used from other sources.

Since it was pouring down rain all day, I didn't get to take too many photos. Some of the below albums represent the areas through which I've ridden, though.

This ride was a slightly longer version of a previous ride I was using to test out another bike for touring. This one worked out far better, of course.

More after the break…

Sunday, November 23, 2014

Nico Nico Douga Download

It's been a very long time, but here's the stuff I just grabbed. I had to update my script since Nicosound is gone.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Highway 9 (2014-11-15)

The brass monkey ride: 130 miles in starting and ending in bitter cold.

Relevant albums:

More after the break…

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Checking out Foothils Trail 'Missing Link' (2014-11-08)

After viewing a blog post about this after having bemoaned the lack of connectivity despite its being advertised, I finally checked it out myself.

Pierce County hopes to connect it all up once they get the funding.

Relevant albums:

More after the break…

Monday, October 20, 2014

Snohomish Bowtie (2014-10-18)

A fairly mundane ride centered around the city of Snohomish.

NOTE:A fairly mundane ride centered around the city of Snohomish. I was having trouble getting my camera to focus, so I manually sharpened a few of these after the fact.

More after the break…

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Salt Lake City (2014-10-10, 11, 12)

Snapped a bunch of photos while visiting a friend. We walked quite a bit.

NOTE: My GPS was not functioning on this trip, so I was only able to approximate locations on some of the photos after the fact.

This is mainly just a gathering of tweets from the trip.

More after the break…

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Sequim III (2014-10-04)

Headed out to Sequim again.

Some related albums:

More after the break…

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Dream Log 2014-10-05

I remember two of my dreams from last night.

In one, I somehow found some sort of recent awards/profile page featuring my best friend from early elementary school. Her first name had been changed to Ephrata, and her last name to something else I can't remember. Later, I came across a new plant that somehow ended up indoors at where I was staying. Boy was I surprised to find that plant to be sentient, communicating telepathically, and moving of its own accord. As it turns out, that friend had turned herself into a plant.

The second dream was much more mundane: I promised two separate people that I was going to meet them at the farmers' market, and they were surprised to both be waiting for me at the same spot. I have this odd feeling that this dream actually fed into the first one, but I can't recall how.

Monday, September 29, 2014

Monday, September 22, 2014

Nobody Escapes the Red Miles (2014-09-20)

Finally managed to get something of a real ride.

I only got in about 12 miles on a ride starting in the morning until a seat post clamp bolt gave out and left me without a usable saddle, and thus a usable bike. However:

After that failure of a ride, I took that bike to my local bike shop, only to find out that my touring bike was ready to pick up.

More after the break…

Saturday, September 20, 2014

The Ride That Wasn't Meant to be (2014-09-20)

My plan was to ride to Tacoma, but due to the bolt in my seat clamp breaking, I had to cut it rather short.

Three bad things happened:

  1. When I took my touring bike in for smaller chainrings, I found out that the rear wheel was cracked around the spoke nipples. This meant I had to use my 'spare' bike.
  2. I accidentally dropped my camera last week and it was still out for repair. I got an old E-PL1 to use in the meantime, which was pretty good since I could still use the same lenses.
  3. The real kicker: the bolt for my seat post clamp broke. Also, the bolt that holds my seat's clamp itself was stripped.

I've only had one ride fail due to mechanical issues before, but that one was more understandable. Unfortunately, I won't get the chance to ride again tomorrow.

This was my route plan. Nothing too difficult, but I wanted to be careful in case I ended up with any joint issues as this bike likely needs to be fit to me again since putting clipless pedals on it.

I found out something unfortunate when I got home:

I apologize in advance.

More after the break…

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Dream Log 2014-09-10

I had some odd dreams last night.

  1. In the first, I was hired to perform manual copying of data from documents into a database. The computers in use all ran DOS. I offered to write a program that'd automate the whole process, but they wanted to do it the manual way in order to keep people employed. I tried to explain that people would still be needed to maintain the program, but they wouldn't listen.
  2. The second dream was pretty much an episode of King of the Hill, down to the characters. It was some sort of holiday episode with a visit to a commercial slaughterhouse in order to obtain meat.
  3. The third dream starred some sort of cat-people, siblings of them. There were attempts to instill despair, followed by incest, and later murder in order to prevent the mother from stopping what was going on.

Monday, September 8, 2014

Trails Galore (2014-09-06)

A long ride covering a number of bits of bicycle infrastructure.

The trails involved:

  1. Burke-Gilman Trail
  2. Interurban Trail
  3. C Street Trai
  4. Foothills Trail
  5. Cedar River Trail
  6. I-90 Trail
  7. West Lake Sammamish Parkway Trail
  8. Sammamish River Trail
  9. Burke-Gilman Trail

And relevant albums:

Note: I recently updated my system, and the new version of Viking I ended up with is unable to generate the large maps, so I had to do the one above in pieces. Due to the time required for just that one, there won't be per-section maps.

More after the break…

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Bellingham (August 2014)

A two-day ride to Whatcom County.

NOTE: Since this ride is two days, the maps will be below the break.

Some other albums that cover areas through which I rode:

More after the break…

Monday, August 18, 2014

Eatonville II (2014-08-16)

Why not go to Eatonville again?

You'll find more photos of the area in this album.

More after the break…

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Filling in the Monroe Gap (2014-08-06)

I tried out an alternative route for exiting Monroe.

More photos of the areas covered can be found on these earlier albums:

More after the break…

Monday, July 21, 2014

Portland 2014 (13-16 July)

After my ride on the STP, I stayed it Portland for a few days.

Here's my post about the STP. Unlike last time, however, I didn't have my bike shipped back to Seattle on the truck and had it with me the whole time. Similarly to my STP post, this'll mostly be tweets and photos. You'll find even more photos from last year's album, too.

More after the break…

Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic 2014 (12-13 July)

My second time doing this.

You can find last year's on Storify.

This post is mainly going to be tweets and photos with little bits of other things here and there.

More after the break…

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Olympia (2014-07-05)

I've been wanting to do a ride to and from Olympia for a while now, and upon discovering the route of the former US Route 99, I found a better way of doing so.

Map: 167 miles

With yesterday's ride, I got in about 234 unsupported miles on this weekend.

More after the break…

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Snohomish Loop (2014-07-04)

A short ride to make sure my parts are still working.

Since this ride was rather short and I frequent the legs used, I won't go into too much detail.

More after the break…

Friday, July 4, 2014

Yakutat 2014

I went fishing with my father and some of his coworkers in Yakutat, Alaska.

More after the break…

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Simple Afternoon Ride (2014-06-25)

A nice simple ride while getting cleaning done.

Just tweets this time.

More after the break…

Monday, June 23, 2014

Skykomish (2014-06-21)

I decided to celebrate the Summer solstice with a ride into the mountains.

More after the break…

Monday, June 9, 2014

DuPont and Nisqually (2014-06-07)

My original plan for this ride was to only go to DuPont, until I realized how it wasn't far enough.

More after the break…

Monday, June 2, 2014

Oso (2014-05-31)

I was curious about how things were after the landslide, so I headed in that direction.

More after the break…

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Bozeman (May 2014)

A little visit to the city of Bozeman and its vicinity.

The map below shows some hiking, some walking, and some cycling in addition to destinations reached via short road trips (easily noticeable by waypoints not connected by lines).

Unlike my cycling blog posts, this one will be more of a summary than an in-depth story.

More after the break…

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Carbon and Green Rivers (2014-05-17)

I probably should've turned the difficulty down after first switching to clipless pedals.

Due to the pain from last week, I converted to clipless pedals, making this the first long ride with them.

More after the break…

Friday, May 16, 2014

Tacoma and Graham (2014-05-10)

It's a lot of fun connecting known corridors in unexpected areas.

Throughout the ride, I was dealing with the pegs of those beefy pedals of mine causing some serious pain in the soles of my feet. See the epilogue for details.

More after the break…

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Verlot (2014-04-26)

The Mountain Loop Highway is nothing to sneeze at!

More after the break…

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Mt. Si and Snoqualmie Valley (2014-04-12)

This ride was rather difficult for a few reasons, but the heckling by motorists didn't help.

More after the break…

Monday, March 31, 2014

Covington and Lake Tapps (2014-03-29)

I'm really getting tired of rainy Saturday after rainy Saturday.

Before the Ride

In the last hour before starting off on my ride, a thunderstorm started to dump a lot of rain.

I kept a close eye on the hourly forecast, and it looked like it was going to be only rainy for a few hours later on in the day after this. That forecast had little to do with what actually happened.

More after the break…

Monday, March 17, 2014

Tahuya II (2014-03-15)

I had to check out the ride to this place again. The winds and rain were generally cooperative, but my rear derailleur was not.

More after the break…

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Granite Falls and Arlington (2014-03-08)

I had to use my GPS to generate a route, as I had accidentally loaded the wrong one. It rained constantly for the latter half of this ride.

More after the break…

Monday, February 17, 2014

Stanwood and Lake McMurray (2014-02-15)

I took very different routes outbound and inbound on this ride.

More after the break…

Monday, February 10, 2014

Whidbey Island, Kitsap Peninsula, and Snow (2014-02-09)

I was hoping for a normal ride, but I instead got bicycle issues and snow.

Monday, January 27, 2014

Carbonado (2014-01-25)

The last town before Mount Rainier.

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Eatonville (2014-01-18)

Did you know that Eatonville is difficult to access?

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Snoquamie Valley Storm (2014-01-11)

A ride during a wind advisory and an areal flood watch.

Monday, January 6, 2014

Sequim II: Dungeness (2014-01-04)

I've been in the area before, but I explored further this time.