Hawkins Family Bike Tour: Day 2

Dear Friends,

So for our second day in the saddle, and knowing that we had a bike locked up at the Pt. Defiance dock in north Tacoma, but knowing also that bike shops don't open before ten, we took a leisurely morning and had breakfast at Shari's. I'm not typically a fan of the place and the potato pancakes were pretty heavy on the potato, but if you get an omelet with pancakes and add the strawberry sauce and whipped cream as Claire did, you can pretty much forget about bicycling disasters and threatening rain.

Once the bike shop opens however, you must face reality, the reality of the bicycle, the reality of tools and weather, and hills, and scheduling your ride time around baby feeding and naps. The family bike tour is super fun and very bonding, but keeping Thorvald happy is of primary concern, enjoying the ride yourself secondary, and mileage goals come in somewhere around 7th, right after, heck, I can't even think of what fits in the middle but I sure know it's more important that mileage.

So Chip (my father in law) drives me to the bike shop where I pick up a chain tool (eureka!) a new chain, and come to think of it, nothing else, drives us back up to the dock, drops me off to fix my bike, and then I ride a more or less stripped down tandem from Point Defiance to Lakewood.

Now I have to say that Tacoma's idea of bike accomodations borders on the silly. Pearl St is beautiful and wide and flat and runs right down through Tacoma. Vassault Way or Narrows Way or Mildred Ave or whatever it happens to be at any given point is a hilly, chip sealed mess. Note to all road contractors: If you have to chip seal a road, you don't have to pour gravel on the shoulder/bike lane because that part doesn't wear out. Save your money, short the city a little bit, and only hit the lane. Everybody comes out ahead! Got that contractors? Good.

The hills are fun though and I much prefer them to most other bicycling difficulties because they get me out of the saddle, change up the gears a little (sometimes a lot) and provide me with short term goals. Just don't ride the Burma Road on Vashon without a chain tool. Mark my words.

I arrive in Lakewood, around 12:30 but not before the drag brake cable snaps and I have to replace the now missing bolt assembly (and I thought STI was high maintenance!) and get a new cable (back at the same bike shop; they were quite happy to see me again and see the rig. Bike shops take great interest in people doing things that bike shop employees dream of doing themselves) and put it all together and then ride home. I'm talking about you, adventure lovers!

We get loaded up and take off, deciding to skirt the hills for a while, and head through north Fort Lewis, I-5 for 2/3 of a mile, Nisqually and Pac Highway (old 99), and then up the hill to east Olympia where Claire's cousin Joe and family reside.

Joe works for Intel and has recently replaced his Lexus convertible with a white Ford Econoline with flame decals so we know that at 36, he is well past his midlife crisis and is embracing a new, more adventurous life. His wife Coriell has not been told that we are coming but we have a nice visit anyway. The kids are beautiful.

The ride into Olympia is a whole different cycling universe and is far and away better than anything I've seen in Seattle. Whereas Seattle has one real bike trail with stop signs all the time and political impasses keeping it from being finished, Olympia is in full bike path nirvana with interlocking trails that get out into and out of the city with complimentary bike pathed roads along the way. The signage is a little lacking but they really have it going on. We took wide street to the Chehalis Western Trail, which then intersected with the Olympia Woodland Trail, which then took us to a wide, pathed road, to another pathed road, to the Capitol. Don't tell me government can't get anything done!

We futzed around the Capitol and found a woman with a shiny Co-Motion who directed us out of town to the southwest toward Littlerock, and then found a biker going our way who works in fish biology for the state. I don't know why so many engineers and scientists ride bikes, but they are some of the nicest people we know (you know who you are) and we love riding with them. John Forrester has a convincing theory, but I think it's just because those types are deeper thinkers than the rest.

So we ride a very flat, very straight road down almost to Littlerock, turn right into the Delphi valley, and then visit with another of Claire's cousins and his family, wherein we also stay the night. They have a hot tub, lovely children, and being contractors, lots of fun machinery to talk about. This would be Jordan and Jill, and their three girls. Life is pretty great. We get in around 6:30

Thorvald up to this point has tried to time his naps perfectly to our riding time and thus took two 2 hour naps, covering our 4 hours of riding time. He's so understanding that way. What a nice boy. He's turning 1 this month too. Come to the party if you can.

The weather was a little odd. We got rained on twice but not convincingly. The strange part is that that a blue patch kind of followed us along the whole way. We would ride though areas that had just received a deluge of water and our bike is a dirty mess, but we had a great time and ducked inundation with the best of them. No real breakdowns today except that I had to true my rear wheel a little, oh and I fixed the chain at the beginning, and dealt with a broken cable and a bolt assembly. At least we didn't have to walk today.

Mileage: about 40 miles, broken up into two roughly equal sections, with a 13 mile pre-ride shakedown without the gear. Life is pretty cool. Don't wait for late summer for your bike rides. These are just the greatest.

Brad

Hawkins Family Bike Tour: Day 1

Dear friends,This will be put into a larger format but yesterday was quite the shot in the arm.

Claire got slammed by work on Monday so we got a late start out of the house. We left around 3 PM for West Seattle and the Vashon Ferry. This was nice enough. The Paselas that many scoff at ride just beautifully in their 35 mm form, and the tandem seemed immune from the massive wind gusts along the waterfront as we made our way south through the industrial district.

Thorvald needed his seat adjusted so we stopped and moved things around only to discover that I had not pumped one of his tires up enough. I went to the location where the pump is held and lo and behold, it was not to be found!. What the....? Going on a bike tour without a pump? Crazy! There was still enough air to get places so we climbed into West Seattle and stopped in at Aaron's bike repair, and excellent resource by the way. They have more X-tra cycles and cargo bikes than anywhere I've seen and while in, Aaron was working on a customer's new X-tra as well.

I got a pump, and got it situated and we bounded off into parts unknown along Fauntleroy towards Lincoln Park. Upon arriving at the ferry terminal, I bought tickets and then we waited for the cars to load. Presently, up comes a very nice, be-tattooed young guy bearing my credit card. He had brought it down from the shop. Fantastic. We bid our good tidings and many thanks and then boarded, knowing full well that things were looking up.

Being last off a ferry is one of the nicest things to do. You don't get passed while trudging up the inevitable hill from the dock, and you never see any of those infernal motorcycles who seem to enjoy cutting lanes with cyclists. The hill out of the Vashon ferry dock is, shall we say, perfect for the contemplative. You just climb and climb; not letting any shoulders assist or passing dump trucks destroy.

We reached the top and looked for a fun little road which G-maps thinks is just dandy for bicycles, that being Burma Road. Now for the uninitiated, Burma road is an unused, twisty, west side road of Vashon that hooks conveniently into the West Side Hwy on the way to the Tahlequah ferry dock. To a fully loaded tandem with a trailer and kid, this is one of the craziest roads I've been on. We should plan it as a training ride, and no, I will not bring my fixie. No way. It's one 25% hill after another and it was hard on our gears. So hard in fact that I ran the chain into the spokes on one hill, and then two hills later, I broke the chain. You read that right. We sat there, three quarters of the way up a crazy hill, with the drag brake on, the caliper fully closed, incredulous.

Well, wouldn't you know it, I had brought extra chain, a master link, but no chain tool! How about that? Thankfully, Thorvald was still asleep.

So we pushed the bike up and down two more hills, pushing up, and then coasting down, until we reached Cedarhurst, where we climbed up to the Vashon Hwy. On the way up, we stopped a guy in a pick-up who offered some advice and some help, but we declined, thinking we would run into a cyclist who might have such a wonderful tool, and finished the climb up.

We walked along the Hwy into Vashon (the town) and and after about an hour, this same guy comes along and stops, waiting for us. At this point our determination towards self sufficiency had softened and we tore the rig apart and put it in his pick-up. (pictures are coming) His name was Gene and we soon found out that he had just moved out here from Wisconsin, was into living off the land, had 7 kids, and was pretty handy. When he mentioned that he had found a place to stay through church, we inquired and found that he is Mormon. Well, isn't that dandy?! A real mormon. Well, so are we! We had a good laugh about the lost missionary opportunities (we are, as a religion, famous for our missionary zeal), and then found our way to the south ferry dock.

We had a nice 20 minute wait for the ferry, and then pushed our still hobbled tandem down the plank and onto the ferry. The ride was nice and Thorvald had a great day with us. I might interject that while pushing the bike, Thorvald just giggled and gaggled the whole way. He though this was a fantastic game we were playing!.

I locked up the bike and trailer down in the marina, stripped it down for a night alone, and Claire's dad picked us up and we had nice Mexican at a place on Proctor, the Wallingford of Tacoma.

So now, I'm waiting around for the local bike shop to open where we can get a chain tool, and extra chain, and a ride back up north to the ferry dock.

Mileage for Monday: 15 out of a possible 34 miles. Special thanks to Gene, Chip, and the nice guy who brought my credit card down from the bike shop. We're off to a rip roaring start. Oh and I've got to say, the weather was fantastic!

Brad, Claire, and Thorvald Hawkins

Carfree Mom

Bike commuters are familiar with the "How can/do you it it?" question. Really though, riding your bike to work is pretty simple. For an example of dedicated cycling you need to look elsewhere. Today I'm looking at the example of Marion Rice, carfree Mom.

Marion has a five and two year old she takes to school on her Xtracycle enhanced bike. Two kids and/or four bags of groceries are typical loads on her 10 to 16 miles of daily riding for daily life. Marion is going to be writing a regular column on "Carfree Families" on BikePortland.org.

Sasek RULES

Can't help but notice that over to the right there is a book by one of my FAVORITE AUTHOR/ILLUSTRATORS OF ALL TIME.
How amazing to have him there, next to me.
Back in the day when I had "Life In The Fat Lane" (BIKE magazine in the mid-1990's, when we all were awash with cash and bonhomie) my 'neighbor' ad was SIMPLE shoes....I rather liked it...despite the fact they were made in China, and smelled horrifically of rubber for the duration you kept them in yr closet, they were a shoe company with a very interesting way of supporting at least two artists, me and the much more talented creator of Moonlight Chronicles, a sort of sketchbook/diary that was if anything, a print version of a blog.
A chapbook if you will.
The makers of Simple shoes paid him to keep on drawing...and the man, (forgot his name, twill arrive in my head tonight) would duly observe his very richly arrayed surroundings...he lived in a hut, or a tree stump, I forget which...had a son, not a baby but not grown either...very very interesting...
So anyway eventually 'my neighbor' changed from Simple to....a switchblade knife manufacturer...then....a gun!!! I complained to Rob Story...
Then the coup de grace: a Porsche ad, right next to my story about how cool our magazine is, because WE DON'T TAKE AUTOMOBILE ADS.
Well, I guess they DID take that ad, but they sure didn't tell the idiot that had written that column for the previous five years, month in, month out...
Profiles in discourage...
BUY ANYTHING by M. Sasek (I have "this Is Edinburgh" and have borrowed all the other dozen books, Hong Kong,London, New York, Ireland, San Francisco, Paris, even TEXAS .... from our library which has the sense to keep these classics, only just now re-issued by Universe, a subsid of some other big house.
Really. You deserve to learn what mid-century cities of the world were like through that man's eyes...

Cycling toward the future

(Originally posted at FortOrangeCycling.com)

So.

Over the next weeks and months, I'm probably going to write here about my wife's and my attempt to get back to the values we started with as a married couple. Ever since we had our two lovely boys, I think we've been sliding away from the course we had charted as we are being slowly but surely co-opted by modern cultural "norms."

For months now, I've had this really positive, hard-to-pin-down feeling that something good is coming. I told Jen then other day that I feel like I'm simultaneously riding many tributaries on the way toward a great river, and that once I hit the main body of water things will be clearer and brighter and better. I think the way to get there -- the way to find the river -- is to take intentional action, not just to be swept along by the current.

One intentional action we're going to take is to severely limit our car usage on the way to eliminating it entirely. I have a car that's provided by my work (as I've written about here and here) and we also own a 2001 Subaru Forester that's a year from being paid off. I think we're going to get rid of our car and park my work car except when I need it for work, which is very seldom. In addition to the workers I represent in downtown Albany, I also represent two hotels in Schenectady. I discovered that it's a fairly easy bike trip to Schenectady if you go straight there, so that cuts out another need for the car. And I can take my weekly trip to Saratoga Springs by train and then walk a mile to the office.

Anyway, I don't have this all fleshed out in my mind yet. But good things are afoot. Positive change is happening. Life is starting to come into focus in a way it hasn't before. And bicycling is part of this new world.

Whenever I want to remind myself about the beauty of the bicycling lifestyle, I ride my bike. And I watch this:

So why bike?

Musings on unconventional travel: Day four, Sept. 17, 2002.

The morning arrived with the soft glow of sunlight shimmering off dispersing storm clouds. The night before we had met our first storm, wind and rain pummeling the ground as we rushed to cover our bikes in a tarp. But the morning is blue and warm, and we only have 22 miles ahead of us to our next destination - Telluride, Colo.

Just over two miles outside the mountain resort town, the highway turns away from the canyon and the pleasant incline of the San Miguel River. All we can see ahead of us is elevation, 1,000 feet to Telluride, and a steady stream of cars winding on the narrow highway corridor climbing toward it.

A so we climb, two miles over a tenuous shoulder in the shadow of heavy traffic. The ever-steepening San Juan mountains cradle the highway in virtual suspension, and the only thing between us and a thousand-foot tumble down a rocky slope is a few inches and a mangled guardrail.

Over a mile and a half goes by before we even reach the first pull-out to stop. My lungs are burning from a combination of exhaust and the thin air of high elevation. I stand by the side of the road, wheezing - I’m still out of shape. A couple of mountain bikers, bicycles still strapped to the top of their jeep, greet us. We tell them we’re on our way to Telluride, and they tell us they just came from there. They point out a network of trails weaving their way to the river, now several hundred feet below us. Beautiful single tracks that rip through trees, bounce over rocks and generally make for one exhilarating bike ride - one that my IBEX roadie will never experience.

And as I glance up at the half mile we have yet to climb, the envy sets in. Oh, the convenience of being a day rider - the effortless exhilaration of a one-way downhill trail, the weightlessness of full-suspension, the cool comfort of the jeep waiting below. I lean over my 90-pound bus of a bike and try to focus on something positive.

So why bike? Why load every heavy thing you need to survive on a two-wheeled vehicle powered solely by you? Why the effort? And why, in this fast-paced age of information, would anyone waste so much time moving at 12 mph?

In a word, sustainability - the very essence of survival. Short of throwing on a backpack and walking into the wilderness, there is not a more self-contained mode of travel than a bicycle. Everything that you put into it, you get out. All those backward aspects of living that have been lost over generations of progress become essential again.

Calories, rather than an enemy, become a necessity, and you cherish them. You learn about the excess of modern novelties such as iceberg lettuce, which, at 45 calories per pound and nearly no nutrients, won’t get you very far. You rediscover simple mechanics and learn to fix your bike. By spending vast amounts of time outdoors, you become dependent on nature. You observe the movement of clouds and rotation of the sky, and use them to gauge weather and time. You no longer have computers and TVs and magazines to tell you what to do all the time, and you learn to trust your instincts. You hold your body in the highest regard - it’s your only means of movement - and all of your other possessions become secondary. You discover the contours of landscape and develop an acute sense of place. And through it all, you learn to love the land and yourself in ways that modern living has adamantly denied.

So why bike? Because biking is the only means to escape civilization in a civilized society. Biking is the only way to crawl along the car-choked Interstate and still feel like part of a natural flow. And, short of hiking into the wilderness with a fishing pole and a Swiss army knife, biking is the shortest route to independence in an increasingly dependent world.

And damn if these mountain bikers didn’t catch a glimpse of that feeling as they barreled down the trail - I know they did. But the reason we suffer the uphill battle is to sustain that feeling, to slow progress down a little bit before it passes us by

Getting Started

Pretty cool stuff you've been able to read about here on Veloquent. Riding stories from the tropics to the arctic, beloved bikes chosen from lust or reason, epic tours forging relationships, adversities (pain!) overcome, great achievements and experiences from exceptional people. It makes you want to, want to ... well ahem, maybe, um admire those superhumans!

Or maybe even be one of them by riding your bike, kinda like they do.

First though you have a huge obstacle to overcome. It's an obstacle shared by the vast majority of the people you encounter on a daily basis. That obstacle is just getting started. You've got to go out and ride your next (or is it your first?) ride and pedal closer to making that ride.

Getting started really is the hard part. Keeping going is so much easier. Even if you've already ridden, today!, further than you've ever ridden before riding the little bit further is easier than starting for the first time. When you read the Veloquent stories of travel and pedaling and adventure and you think about you'd like to, how you wish you could, ride like that ask yourself "can I go out and ride my bike now?" and answer the question not with wistful words but with physical action. When you make that physical answer, you've done the hard part, you've started.

I first formed this thought to share with you about three blocks from my house as I puffed up the broken Boise street pavement between 42nd and 45th streets. I hadn't wanted to get on my bike to commute to work. It took about an hour to jolly myself into getting dressed and getting on the bike. Yet here, four blocks from my house, after just a very few minutes of pedaling I was feeling the spreading glow of enjoyment. The temperature was close to freezing, but I was warm. Well, warm enough. I almost turned around when I opened the garage door and felt the morning air. Now, just three blocks later there was no way I was going to turn around and go home and not ride to work. I'd already done the hard part.

A daily commute or an epic journey have only one real impediment to being accomplished: getting started.