Cycle Touring

Four years ago I moved the downtube shifters on my 1988 Trek to the bar ends using Dia-Tech pods
purchased from Rivendell Bicycle Works. I had a touring bike with bar-end shifters, so there was an argument of having similar technologies across bikes. And the Trek was supposed to do double duty as a ride from my significant other when she was visiting, and she is uncomfortable with downtube shifters. In the ensuing four years the bar end shifters have worked well, overall, but the environment has changed. One big change is that the significant other is now my wife and there is no need to have a bike for her at my place since we now have our place. Another change is that my touring bike now has downtube shifters, a change made to make it easier to pack for travel. The final change is my new commute which most of the time includes a train ride. Many days, after exiting the train I find that the bike does a quick ‘auto shift’, sometimes both on the chainrings and the rear cluster. The issue seems to be related to ohter cyclists bumping the bar end shifters as they load and unload their bikes. I had been considering a return to downtube shifting on that bike, and last night the change was made. I knew I would have to do some work on the shifters soon as the ferrule (metal) at the barrel adjuster end of the cable housing for the left shifter had split and was cutting into the housing. Last night, as soon as I got home from work, I peeled off the bar tape, cut off the shifter cables, removed the shifters from the bar end pods, dug out the original curved washers for the downtube bosses, and restored the shifters to their original condition. Tiem to go out for a trial ride, hoping the days of auto shifting after a leg on the train are behind me.

The calendar says winter, but today the weather says late spring. We drove to my in-law’s place in southern San Luis Obispo County this morning, a 4 hour trek on 101. We opted for a daytime drive, since we knew Friday night holiday get-away traffic would be horrendous. We arrived in the SLO area at lunch time, so we downed some small sandwiches before donning bike gear and heading out into a brilliant sunlit day. Air temp when we started was about 83 degrees fahrenheit, definitely a bit warmish for mid-February. My mother-in-law joined my wife and I for the first ten miles as we headed up onto the ‘Mesa’ and wandered down towards the town of Nipomo. Just outside of Nipomo my mother-in-law decided to head back towards her home, leaving my wife and I to find our own way. We turned west and found our way the California Hwy 1, then turned south. A couple of miles later we crossed into Santa Barbara County and the town of Guadalupe. I was a bit saddened as we cycled through Guadalupe; there used to be some nice mosaic fronts on some of the stores in the downtown area, which we stopped and photographed while on our California coast tour in October 2003. In December 2003 there was a major earthquake northwest of Paso Robles, and the tremors caused a great deal of damage to the mosaics and a lot of the old buildings in the Guadalupe downtown. It had been over a year since our last visit to the town and now there is no overt indication of the earthquake damage, but there are no mosaic storefronts either. A pity. Another memory of this leg of our 2003 tour was the British couple, Richard and Rachel, who we met near Oceano and rode together through most of the section from Guadalupe to the Harris Grade near Lompoc.

We did not make the Harris Grade today, though I kept teasing my wife that we should go to either Lompoc or Solvang. We did make a close approach to Lompoc; we turned back north just before reaching the Orcutt grade southeast of the city of Santa Maria, the city made famous as the site of the Michael Jackson molestation trial. The northerly leg back to Guadalupe was into a fairly stiff headwind. At one point I was hearing a click-click-click sound, and I investigated it turned out to be my front mudflap which was oriented horizontally due to the wind and was catching my toes on both feet as I pedaled. Just south of Guadalupe a big rig passed far too closely; I ditched into the rough dirt to the right of the roadway, my wife fought to stay on the pavement and not be sucked into the slipstream. Another example of why we need metrics to determine safe passing distances and law enforcement to crack down and enforce the metrics. We had one more incident as we rode on the ‘mesa’ towards the towns of southern San Luis Obispo county; a pickup truck turning left onto Hwy 1 to head north made the turn wide into us, forcing us to swing further right. It was an obvious purposeful move as he squealed his tires and sent us the 1 finger salute as he straightened out and proceeded north. Unfortunately we did not get a license plate as we were too busy evading this anti-social driver.

As we pulled up to the in-law’s place the temperatures had started to cool, slightly. It was down into the low-70’s as daylight started to fade and the first twinges of spring fever start to set in.

I had a BOB Yak trailer at one point in the not too distant past. I bought it for touring, but used it mostly for around town cargo trips. The BOB has its strengths, and some serious drawbacks. With a single wheel it needs some help at all times the bike is not moving and users soon learn how to jacknife the bike to create a stable self-standing configuration. Another drawback is the design puts weight on the tongue, i.e., the rear axle, which causes a number of ancillary issues. I sold the BOB two years ago to make room for some renovations to my condo, and then for my wife. Since moving to a house 15 months ago I have wanted to get a trailer to make my shopping expeditions more efficient, i.e., be able to carry more on one loop trip.

Friday I took delivery of a Burley Nomad trailer. It is a two wheel design meant to put more weight on the wheels and less on the tongue, so it should not have the same set of problems as the Yak. The first problem was a quality control issue at Burley; the roll-bar that connects the two sides at the top is supposed to be threaded; mine was not. Burley is sending a replacement due to arrive this week. Other than needing to work around the lack of threads on the roll bar it was easy to setup the Nomad; I had it road ready in less than 30 minutes. On the road a second problem became apparent; the hitch, which attaches to the chainstay and seatstay of the left side, is a bit wide leading to a tendency for my left heel to clip the hitch on each pedal stroke. I quickly adopted a modified pedal stroke and was able to continue without further issues. I took the trailer for a 20 mile loop. First stop was Sports Basement for some long sleeve shirts. I then headed southwest to Trader Joes and Peets; not the closer one in Sunnyvale, but the further ones at Homestead and Foothill in Los Altos. From Trader Joes I collected two large bags of groceries for the trailer, and a pound of ‘New Guinea’ coffee from Peets. From there I headed to Grant Rd for the return home. I found the Nomad easy to manuever, much easier than the Yak. The Yak tended to pull on the rear axle when starting; the unloaded Nomad is virtually undectable when starting, and even with about 30 pounds of cargo there was much less ‘pull’ than with the unloaded Yak. It will take some experience to get used to backing up the trailer, and I have to make sure to take the slow speed corners wide enough so that I do not scrape the wheel skewer. The only other negatives noted during this maiden voyage was that one reflector worked its way loose, and there was excessive rattling noise, perhaps caused by the loose reflector. More comments after I get out and give it a bit more time on the road, especially a hill or two.

As a side note, both trailers mentioned are made in the US by small companies.

In October, 2003 we took a short tour along the California coast and have been talking about riding all or part of that trip again but with less baggage this time. We are most interested in riding the Big Sur coast, the section of coastline from Carmel to Ragged Point, a section of rough, rocky shores and extreme beauty. The first part of our ride of this section in 2003, from Carmel to near the town of Big Sur, is quite literally a foggy memory; that section of coast was under a heavy layer of fog on the morning we rode it. This weekend we are at a reunion for my wife’s father’s family being held at Asilomar, a state park on the Monterey peninsula just a few miles from Carmel, and so far the weather has been lovely: clear, temperatures rising into the mid-60’s with not much wind. So my wife decided today was the day to ride part of the coast, again.

The morning, between breakfast and lunch, was devoted to family photo sessions so we were not able to leave on the ride until after lunch. As soon as lunch was over we dressed in knickers and warmer jerseys, got the bikes setup, and headed east on Highway 68. The first section is a steady uphill grade and in a short period of time I was overheating and had to peel off all but a mid-weight base layer. Just past the crest of the hill we arrived at the junction with Highway 1 and started south towards Carmel on a steady downhill run. Highway 1 was quite busy with large numbers of folks taking advantage of the holiday weekend and good weather to visit the area. Past Carmel the traffic remained heavy until we passed the entrance to Point Lobos State Park; south of that point there was considerably less traffic, indicating the popularity of that park. We followed the undulations, up and down, inland and then coastside, of the road through Carmel Highlands and were making good time towards Garrapata State Beach when we realized two things: we would be pressing our luck, timewise, to continue to our original planned turnaround at the Bixby Bridge, and that the wind had picked up and we now had a moderately stiff tailwind. This led to a reassessment and decision to turn around near Garrapata. At the Garrapata bridge we stopped for a couple of photos, then proceeded south another 0.25 miles to a vista point where we turned around for the ride back. The trip back took about the same amount of time even though we were proceeding into a modest headwind most of the way, the only respite being when there was some wind blocks provided by the topography near Carmel Highlands. The climb from Rio Road in Carmel to the Highway 68 junction was a bit of a grind, but we were able to travel faster than the heavy stop-and-go holiday traffic in that section. From the crest on Highway 68 it was a fast descent down to Asilomar and our room. The trip was 34.2 miles, with about 2800 ft of elevation gain.