Marriott Basin - home of THE RAD HOLE

Gadzooks, it finally snowed. It didn't snow very much, but at this point I'll take what I can get. 

An intrepid crew of eight passed through the mystical snow-portal of Pemberton, pausing only to eat chili, brink beer, and sleep for quite a long time. Two of the adventurers were missing at this point, but the were with us in spirit, and on the phone. The plucky band braved the not-too-early start and excellent road conditions to reach the hallowed wilderness entry known only as "the pullout opposite the snow shed". The crew (still missing two at this point) strode forth into the mild temperatures and sunshine. Along the way they made elaborate signs to beckon their missing compatriots forward along the true path. This turned out to be entirely ineffective - but never mind. 

After a fair bit of striding forth, the mysterious and fragrant edifice of the Wendy Thompson Hut loomed over the horizon - or a pile of snow at least. The partial gang awaited the arrival of their missing members, and avoided intoxication by the heady vapors of the hut by doing some things outside. One of these things turned out to be most excellent.

The first thing was walking up a small hillock, which wasn't all that really.

This second thing was borne from necessity, but rose to become something truly radical which the happy band had never dared to dream of before. I am speaking of the creation of the world's first RAD HOLE.

Yes! It's a hole for filling buckets... but it's RAD.

You can't even imagine how exciting this was - seriously, you should have been there.

During the excavation of the RAD HOLE, the eight were united, and drank some beer to celebrate. Then we played Frisbee before dinner time and the evening descended into playing Cards Against Humanity, which is best left un-described.

Seven of eight - because I took the picture.

It's amazing what 10cm of snow on top of horrible re-frozen crust can do. A couple of laps above the hut and the ski out were my first real skiing of the season. Hopefully there's more where that came from...

Backcountry ski report for the Coquihalla Summit region

Recent lack-of-snow conditions have resulted in persistent frustration for skiers and isolated irrational events of size 1 to 2. Observations from the Coquihalla Summit region on Sunday 11th of January showed it to be mid-spring at an elevation of 1200m. Beneath a loud surface layer, at a depth of surprisingly little, lay an Earth layer approximately 12,700 km thick. This layer was not reactive in shovel tests. Backcountry travel is only advised if you are well prepared with sandwiches, and maybe a thermos of tea.

That is all.

It would be, it would be so nice.

And so finally, I made it to the end of my holiday blog post. This one is positively busting with photographs, so brace yourself.

Having fled the arctic wasteland of Sedona (it was actually quite pleasant - but that ruins the drama), we arrived in the land of Elvis, ridiculous hotels, and a thing made out of 2.5 million cubic meters of concrete. Seriously, that is a lot of concrete. It turns out that two things happen when you make something out of 2.5 million cubic meters of concrete. The first one is that the concrete artisans get thirsty and as you'd be doing this in the prohibition era (obviously), an elaborate network of trails to deliver illicit booze from desert stills must be set up. It's this kind of detail that people often overlook in construction projects. Then, 40 years later a bunch of hippies in California start riding old bikes down gravel roads and before you know where you are you end up with...

So there's that.

There's also all that pesky water that backs up behind your nice new concrete wall. Then, 20 years after the bike thing, some pro-surfing legend decides to re-discover surfing on a really big board with a paddle so he doesn't have to deal with all that getting up and down nonsense. The people see this and think "hey, cool... now I don't even need a wave to go surfing", and before you know where you are, you end up with...

So there's that too.

And then, as if we hadn't had enough already, some Canadian in a pink onesie and a British-import Canadian come to visit and... (you get the picture).

Haha, "picture" - can you see what I did there?

Enough with the sponsor-pleasing photographs already. That last one's pretty good though, right?

Three things were particularly memorable to me from our couple of days in Boulder City and Vegas. 1) Breakfast at the "World Famous Coffee Cup", which certainly deserved to be world famous, because it's great. 2) Riding in Bootleg Canyon - whilst all the trails were close variations on a theme, the theme was a catchy one so no complaints there. And 3) walking around "The Strip" for hours whilst being assaulted by endless bizarre (and often illuminated) things. Here's what I'm talking about:

Predictably, there are more photos here.

Just one day out of life

Part two of my holiday reminiscence is here. Hooray!

Having enjoyed the delights of southern California, it was time to move on. The weather had taken a turn for the Canadian and there were reports of snow in the desert. Being unafraid of snow, we went to Sedona (Arizona) anyway... which didn't work out quite as we expected.

It turns out is does snow in the desert. Maybe not very often, but this was not the skiff of white stuff we imagined. I had left the winter tires on the Elephant, so we were the most mobile (and least terrifying) vehicle on the road, but biking on any of that photogenic red dirt was going to be out of the question. Fortunately we found the Olde Sedona Pub which featured a crowd of fun locals, "DJ Pedro", a pool table, and so we ushered the new year in one hour earlier than expected as we had left PST. Semi-success!

Fun, but not ideal for mountain biking

Red, white, and blue.

It's not supposed to look like this

Frosted cactus

The White Stripes

Having exhausted the taking-pictures-of-snow-on-rocks opportunities, we decided to go in search of mountain biking and slot machines in the City of Sin. More of that in the the third and final (phew) installment.

Have Elephant, will travel.

Pictures of more of that, but mostly just the same are here.

Holiday, celebrate.

Happy New Year!

Before we get into into my festive reportage, here's a picture of Pippa and I going mountain biking in Squamish. I forget what we were discussing. That happened last year, but not so long ago.

Now, let the holiday rehash begin. To make this an authentic hash, I have uploaded the pictures in a random order. Ok, that was not really on purpose. To kick things off for this trip, we drove pretty much the entire length of the United States down to southern California. We spent Christmas Eve in a rest Area outside of Los Angeles, sleeping the the back of the Elephant. How's that for Scrooge?

Once we were there, an assortment of sunshine-fueled activities too place. Here's a Christmas-stocking full of such things:

In this carefully posed diorama, we see Lina expressing wonder at a majestic palm tree, whilst clinging to one of the pillars of the casino on Catalina Island.

Now we are transported by the Ghost of Christmas Past to San Onofre beach, where SUP surfers are allowed to huddle together next to the nuclear power station so they won't bother all the real surfers too much. Except when one of the real surfers comes over to the SUP ghetto to be weird. I don't know why they do that.

No, no, no.

Collective noun for young SUP paddlers?

When you have a paddle, you can surf a ripple.

Apparently we rode bikes at some point. This was probably Wood Canyon, behind the Howsen's house, where we stayed. Most excellent people in a most excellent place.

The Elephant, holding steady in a foreign land.

Some kind of fool enjoying Wood Canyon.

Apparently this was cold weather for Laguna Beach. I think I might need to become a snowbird.

Visiting Crystal Cove on one of Robert's scenic mountain bike tour of the Laguna environs. I need to do more of those some day...

Even more photos, as if that was even necessary, can be found here. After some truly A++ times with the Howsens in Laguna, we headed east for Arizona, where it failed to be arid at all. You're going to need to stay fascinated for that part of this thrilling saga. And also part three! Now I've promised it, I will have to deliver.

Just like John Lennon, but without the music or the talent.

I think it was him who said the best song is one which is written in the morning, recorded in the afternoon, and out by the evening. Brief research reveals that "All The Young Dudes" was written in a day - not be John Lennon though. It is however a great song, and that makes it worth mentioning.

In the sprint of this "in one day" thing, and because I wanted to go for a ride today, I welded my favorite old frame back together, built a bike on it, and went for a ride. The welding is pretty shocking, but that's because I am not very good at it yet, not because I did it in a day. Words are too wordy, so here are some pictures:

Notching it (I cheated and did this yesterday after work).

I did a drawing and it ended up almost the same shape as it was supposed to.

I added some length, and removed some broken.

Mock-up #1

Mock-up #2, with clever magnet things kindly given to me by Marc and Nikki.

It might just work

...even from this angle, it still might work.

This is the least-ugly part of the welding. I am rather ashamed, but at least I got some practice.

Voila.

I went for a ride, and it didn't break (yet). I think I like it better with my revised geometry too... so that's good.

100% exciting update... I went for another ride and it didn't break! Thanks for the day out Paul and Alex.

If it ain't broke.

Before getting into the the meaningful (well, I suppose that's debatable - but whatever) part of this bloggery I want to make note of the clever joke that I made with the title. You know, just in case I forget that it was a joke this will remind me to laugh next time I read my own blog. That is a thing I do incidentally, and it's much easier than actually remembering what I have done, I just read about it on the internet.

As I recently wrote to my hand-picked team of bicycle advisers, "You will be pleased (or perhaps indifferent) to hear that I have taken up the challenge of building this fixie". There's that joke - see? I then continued, "I have set the budget of this enterprise at $50 plus whatever I can find in my parts collection".

Now I have to back-up a bit so I will remember what the heck this was all about when I've forgotten all about it and read it on the internet. Mark (no, not Marc) gave me a bike frame, intended to be a singlespeed or fixed-gear road bike that he had ended up with. I've never wanted a fixie, because I don't like riding them. I also have nowhere to keep another bike and generally prefer off-road bikes anyway. As an aside, I am running at an all-time low of off-road bikes at the moment. Seriously... I have just one mountain bike. That's going to change though, mark my words.

I think it's worthwhile making note of my bicycle adviser's fixie heritage here. Jacek has ridden a fixie to work every day since before he was able to walk, and recently crashed on it because he was pulling up his trousers. He's also stripped the threads off every fixed-gear hub known. Paul had a mixed wheel-size 1990's mountain-fixie mashup thing that he rode to the pub for a while. I tried to ride it down the lane behind Tracy's house and nearly died in several hilarious ways. Both of these highly-qualified advisers told me it was a good idea to build a fixie. Now I read that back to myself I'm having doubts about this project... but whatever. Onward!

So I was given this frame. Then, I looked at all the bits of bikes stashed away in my bicycle treasure-boxes. Some mental-configuring later I realized that I was "that" close to having all the parts I would need to build a bike out of this frame, and what better kind of bike to build, than one I don't want? You see... then I might not keep it. Clever, right? Like my joke.

Predictably, I didn't quite have everything I needed, so I bought a pair of Chinese hubs from eBay and a fork from OCB. I have all the other wheel materials already from a pair of road wheels I built for Kermit when I thought he might be a road bike - and then he became something far more practical. The only part I know I am missing is a brake lever, and I am confident I can bring that in on-budget by rummaging in the bin at OCB. So that's good.

The internet's finest cheap fixie hubs.
Chosen to work with some spokes I had already,
and because they had sold out of blue.

During my rigorous mental preparations for this project I discovered that all fixies need to have parts that don't fit, bodged together with shims. So I did some of that. Shim #1 attaches the vintage Syncros seatpost of indeterminate diameter into the shim that was already stuck in the seat tube. This shim-shim-(shiree) was fashioned from a coconut water can, which appropriately is a hipster-approved beverage.

Shim #2 was an interesting one. By almost sinister chance, OCB not only had a 700c fork with canti-brake bosses and a long-enough 1" steerer (which is what I wanted), but it was threadless. It is a true fact that the prospect of finding a 1" threadless steerer fork when you actually want one (pretty much never) is approximately equal to the number of times you will want to find that fork, ever. Figure that one out. Compound this with the fact the threadless 1" headset (an item that is actually constructed from an infinite number of hen's teeth) had been thoughtfully stashed on the fork, and you have some might long odds. I'm surprised the universe didn't spontaneously evaporate at that moment and condense back into the exact form it was previously, just to prove a point. Or perhaps it did. Anyway, back to this shim. Having the mystical forces of the universe align once already that afternnon, I decided not to try looking very hard for a 1" threadless stem. I think if I had found one of those at the same time as all the other stuff, the law of entropy would have been so convincingly disproved that I would have needed to spend the rest of my life on top of a pole... like that Simeon Stylites. A lucky escape indeed. Existential crisis avoided, I decided to use a chunk of cut-off 1 1/8" steerer tube to fashion a shim and use one of the pile of 1 1/8" stems I already had, and a cable-hanger whatnot for the front brake. An agreeable solution all-round.

It's upside-down because it actually was upside-down.
This photo does fail to show any of the interesting tinkering I did though. Oh well.

The fun thing about this shim is that it preloads the headset via the top-cap, and you can fit the stem anywhere you like on it without any spacers... and I didn't even have to spend the rest of my life sitting up a pole to figure it out.

Where does that leave me? In the larger sense, almost exactly where I started from - with a pile of bits of a bike that will assemble into something I neither particularly want, or need. I am looking forward to building the wheels though, when the internet's finest hubs arrive.

As if that wasn't enough, this weekend I finally got around to starting another project (and actually riding bikes too, incidentally). A while back a sad thing happened to my favorite bike, with the result that what was once one became two and the sum of the parts was less bicycle-shaped than the whole. In an attempt to resolve this situation I have put my name down on the list to get a new favorite bike from someone very good at making frames. Simultaneously, someone not so good at making frames (me) is going to repair the old one. I am confident that at least one of these will provide satisfaction. If I get on with it, I might actually beat the real frame builder too, ha!

Can you tell what it is yet?

Yes.

I'll just wrap this with duct-tape and it will be fine.