Review: Incase Range Backpack

My review of the Range Backpack by Incase was posted to Commute-By-Bike today and, as happens every time I see my byline online, I find myself compelled to share the love with you, dear Reader.  You're invited to have a look at it if you're similarly inclined, as I am, to making a careful analysis of the features and components of cycling bags, packs, and such.

In keeping with recent trends, today's pack review likewise makes mention of zippers and zipper pulls.

Columbines are out this week

The top of my ride, the meadow on Upper Brookbank Trail, looked like this today, which is pretty spectacular, if you ask me.

About two minutes after I rose from this spot, I flatted.  Just like that.  No warning: pssssffffttt!  Everything's so dry, I musta missed a rock buried in the moondust and tombstoned it.  Went flat fast.  Put a little wobble in my front wheel, too.  Gotta whap it pretty hard to put a wobble in your wheel.  That's what I always say.

Columbines are out this week, in case you care.  Lupines are trying hard to get started, too.  Tough going for wildflowers in these conditions, I think.

Rode home down Weenies Walk with the wobble after fixing the flat (snake-bit, natch) and, after washing the stinging sunscreen off my face, set the wheel in the stand to get it true again.

Put some music on, to set the mood; wheel truing's got kinda a focused rhythm to it, so music helps.

It may come as no surprise to learn that my iPod's playlist is pretty predictable: Radiohead, Travis, Wilco, Calexico, Neil Young, Killers, Thievery Corp, Interpol, Zero 7... you get the picture.  But there are a few rather girlie gems buried in there, too, just because I like them... Not ashamed to admit that my regular playlist includes some Rosie Thomas, a little Sophie Madeline, and
The Bird and the Bee, as well.

This song, Y Yo Sigo Aqui, came on first as I set about working on my wheel.  It's such a great, fun song! Can't deny it.  It's the only Paulina Rubio song I've got.  But every time it comes up in the shuffle I enjoy it. Makes me smile and (try to) sing along. My daughter totally loves it.  She's seven.  Wants to hear it again and again and again.

Hope you like it, too.

Authoritatively, the bristlecone pine

Bristlecone pine on Hart Prairie

Authoritatively, the bristlecone pine grows at or above 9500 feet in elevation in Arizona, and only on the San Francisco Peaks and White Mountains, well isolated from it's cousins in the Rockies and Sierra Nevadas.

Today, on my ride with Ken, we rode up the segment of the Arizona Trail which runs parallel to the Snowbowl Road up to Hart Prairie, to around 9000 feet.  We turned around to head back down in the middle of the beautiful meadow which overlooks Alfa Fia tank and the broad expanse of smaller mountains to the west.  It's an incredible view.

Authoritatively, the bristlecone pine should not be found at this elevation.  But they are here.  Interspersed, at random, between the ponderosas and firs there are a few, all much taller and fuller than their kindred which grow at higher elevations and live for thousands of years, with which I'm more familiar.  In fact, Ken and I were both so dubious of the tree's identity, that I took the picture which accompanies this post in order to use my very-favorite field guide when I got home to more accurately and confidently identify it.

Short, furry needles.  Foxtail-like boughs. You can even see the bristles from which it derives its name, on the younger, smaller cone in the center of the photo.  Definitely a bristlecone.

And then the dream was done

I had a dream the other night in which our old dog, Shadow, visited me.  We were lying in tall green grass on a sunny hillside in the mountains, the three of us, my wife, my daughter, and I, and Shadow nosed-up quietly from somewhere behind me, as she was prone to do, and gently stuck her snout in my hand, as she was similarly prone to do.  I saw her vibrant blue-black coat and the so-familiar gleam in her deep-brown eyes, and I knew, in my dream, that she was an apparition, the spirit of our dog, come in this dream to greet me.  I stroked her ears, still as soft as velvet, and the broad furry patch of her scalp between them, and she grunted quietly. Content, as always.

And then the dream was done.

When I awoke, I told my wife about my dream.  "I had almost the same dream," she said.  "About Shadow.  That she'd come to visit us.  She was happy."

I've never been one to put much stock in dreams, except to give credit to the joy that comes, at times, from good, lucid dreaming.   But this?  What is this?  It is a strange thing, indeed, and it has caused us to wonder.  And to be glad.  Glad that we have been visited by a happy, healthy vision of our good old dog, both of us, in our own dreams, but on the very same night.

Peaks pavé

My recently-unbroken fancy-bike and I went on a fine long solo-ride today to celebrate the ending of my most recent grad-class. The ride wasn't fast. Nor was I especially skillful along the way.  But it was nice to be out, freed from the constraints of what has become the standard-fare of my weekend: spending my Saturdays buried under a mound of homework.  

Peaks pavé

I had a little extra-time on my hands today.

My homework was mostly-done, and the day ahead was generally otherwise uncluttered.  So I planned to head out on a somewhat longer ride than I've been on in a while this morning after breakfast.  Two hours.  That's what I wanted.  Just two solid hours on the bike.  Two hours of riding never used to seem particularly long.  But these days, what with work and life and the classes I'm taking, I cannot recall the last time I got out for a ride so lengthy.

The hint of a tail-breeze going up Schultz had me feeling pretty great on the way out. And post-ride, seeing a new season-PR on the stretch from the parking lot to the Lincoln logs, confirms the sense of well-being I had heading up to my climbing-goal: Weatherford.

I typically only ride Weatherford Trail a few times in any season.  It doesn't really connect to much of anywhere.  And it never seems easy.  But it felt especially-not-easy today.  Having recently served duty as a major fire-line, the first half of Weatherford has been trashed and reassembled since the Schultz Fire a few years ago.  But to say the trailwork that got done was an improvement would be to overstate the facts; it's still pretty sucky.  But it's lovely compared to the upper half, which is still just as bony and loosely-cobbled with Peaks pavé as it always has been, for as long as I've known it.  Makes for slow-going and calls for the occasional dab, too.

8880'

Nevertheless, the trail tops out at the wilderness boundary at 8880 feet, the climbing-limit for bicycles on the south-facing slopes of the Peaks, in the middle of a beautiful high-alpine meadow with broad views of the landscape above and below, which tends to make the whole suffer-fest of getting there feel almost worth it.

Got home with a total riding time of 2:02.

Hey fatty!

Need more of this.

I am fat.

Not obese. Not yet.  But fat I am. Fatter than I've ever been.

One-hundred-ninety. That's what I weighed-in at yesterday (and today). After my ride.  After crossing paths with my old friend Tony, the manager at Absolute Bikes where I used to spend my summers, up on Secret Trail out in the middle of nowhere.

"Hey fatty!" he called out as we recognized each other from some distance away.  I greeted him with the same, of course.  Though it really wasn't true; he's as fit as he's ever been right now, I think.

I am not, however, so his greeting didn't shock me. I've been aware of my new bulkyishness for some time; waistbands are good barometers of such things and mine have been growing ever-snugger of late.

When I was fast, years ago, I was 160.  For the last decade or so, I've felt best at about 175.

It was when Tony said, "Look at your legs, they're all chubby.  You've got chubby fat-guy legs, Johncoe!" that I resolved something needs to be done about my situation.  I don't want to be that-guy, all pudgy and stuffed into his lycra.  But right now, I guess I am.

And this.

A lot of excuses can be made, of course, all new-job-related.  But they really don't matter, nor do they change the foundation of my dilemma.  I need to lose some weight.  I'm thinking I need to work on getting back to 175.  What's that, 15 pounds?  That should be doable, right, for someone active and healthy?  How long should it take to get rid of 15 pounds, without killing myself through starvation?  A few months, probably.

School's out in early June, a little over a month from now.  Can I get there by then, so I'm more ready for the Tuesday Morning Ride?  Probably not.  But maybe close.  The days are longer, so maybe I can start getting out on a ride or two during the week after work, before dinner.  If I can just find more time to ride, I think the weight will come off easier than if I try to starve myself back to 175.  I think that makes the best sense: ride more, eat a little less.  Right?

The bottom line: I need more time to ride.  Less time behind a desk. More time on wheels in the woods.  Riding's more fun when you're less fat; exercise is good for the soul; the woods are lovely, dark and deep.  There are a million more good reasons why I need to do this.  And I'm gonna.

Don't wanna be fatty-fat-fat no more.

Old number 64

My fancy bike is broken and I'm too embarrassed to take it down to the shop and admit that I don't know how to fix it.  It's got a bubble or something in the rear brake system which has progressively been causing the brake to perform more and more poorly.  In the course of the 20 years that I've been hanging around at Absolute Bikes, I've maybe had a bike in for a legit repair two or three times.  And I've never filled out a repair ticket in the past 17 years when, as an official employee, I was always able to fix all of my bikes on my own, or hang the broken one in the stand after work and ask the mechanics for help as-needed.

No more.  My new job pretty much prevents me from working for the shop this coming summer, just as it did last summer.  So my opportunities to get free advice or assistance from the pros after-hours, in exchange for beers, are basically gone.  I could take advantage of one of them, and beg for help, but that just feels so lame.  So I'm stuck.  One of the things I like about all the other bikes in my garage is that I know how to fix all of them.  This new bike, with its fancy suspension, indexed shifters, and disc brakes is quite foreign to me.  And, at the moment I've neither the time nor the inclination to learn how to repair these components on my own.

So, as I said, I'm stuck.  My new bike has now been broken, just hanging there, unused, in the garage for two weeks.  Drives me crazy.

Fortunately, when it comes to other bikes to ride in the interim, I'm not without a few pleasant options.

So pretty.
Click to enlarge

Today I rode my Retrotec, old number 64.  It was super-fun!  Up Super-moto and across Newham.  A great ride!  Something about that bike, dunno what it is... the way it handles, the way it rails through corners, that it was my first-bike... Hard to put a finger on it.  But it never fails to disappoint.

Love that bike!

But I've gotta get off the dime and just eat my pride and take the big, broken fancy bike down to the shop and drop it off and let the pros fix it up for me.  Otherwise it's just gonna hang there forever, languishing until it turns back to dust.  It sure as heck ain't gonna fix itself.

Maybe I'll take it in tomorrow.  It shouldn't be such a big deal, huh.

Yeah.  I'll take it in on Sunday.  And then go ride the Retro again!