Pressing the pause button

Bicycles & Icicles is going to enter a sleepy spell for a few weeks due to real-life responsibilities. Please check back for less-frequent updates until the silliness resumes on a regular basis.

Besides, you should be riding your bike.

Overcoming Homerphobia

Hannah on the Beach

After pulling into Homer last Friday evening, my daughter and I headed to Bishops Beach, where tiki torches were illuminating a snowy obstacle course with stunts made of plywood over huge pieces of driftwood. Darkness was falling, and the bonfire was soon surrounded by my favorite kind of bike riders – the kind that wear fleece and Carhartts, and talk about beer instead of training plans.

Thanks to Hannah, who talked me into this escapade, we were at the first Big Fat Bike Festival, and local riders were thanking us for making the four-and-a-half-hour trip from Anchorage. They were pleased with the response from out-of-towners. At least 40 people had registered for an event put together by a town where, according to one local, snow biking is exploding: She told us there are about fifteen fat bikes in Homer this winter!

Grassroots bike events are the best kind, and this was definitely grassroots. Fun and simple, but well organized.

Fat-bikers on the move

On Saturday morning, 40 bikes and riders were hauled to Anchor Point, where we started a rolling fat-bike party along a 16-mile beach route back to Homer. With sand and saltwater, it was bike abuse for a good cause – fun.

There were fat bikes with panniers and homemade fenders, and riders wearing Xtra-Tufs and backpacks. We rode on the beach at low tide, over and through fields of boulders, and past otters, sea lions and bald eagles. Best of all, nobody was in a hurry. Not anyone within sight of me, anyway. People were just riding because it was a damn good time.

Bumper sticker of the year. (An unofficial
contribution by Carl from Seward.)

Congrats to the Homer Cycling Club for a successful event. Saturday night’s dinner and prize raffles were a hoot, too.

The Big Fat Bike Festival will be on my winter schedule again.

Homerward Bound

Damn, those Homer fat-bikers know how to show people a good time. Thank you to everyone in the Homer Cycling Club for the hard work required to put together the first Big Fat Bike Festival, and to Mother Nature for providing good weather for a four-hour beach ride from Anchor Point back to town.

I'm catching up on bike repairs and dirty laundry, but I'm sure there's another post coming once I get some rest and think through the weekend. But the short version is simple: This was the first-ever BFBF, but it won't be my last.

Vocabulary Expansion

Meateor crater: Impression left on the Earth’s surface
by the impact of a terrestrial biological mass,
usually of the mammalian variety
and often traveling at great velocity prior to contact.

A long way to go

Leonardo on Paper Plate.
2.19.12

I was watching sunlight on the Kenai mountains yesterday, and thinking about the massive amount of snow in the high country. That’s when it hit me that we might not be riding over passes until July. Hell, I’ve walked across big snow patches on Resurrection and Devil’s passes as late as Fourth of July weekend, and that was after winters milder than this one.

It’s been a big snow year in Southcentral Alaska. Anchorage averages 63 inches per winter, and we’re over 100 inches so far this season. That’ll mean wet, sloppy conditions for road biking this spring. And unless we get a couple of months of freakishly warm, dry weather, we can pretty much forget an early taste of riding Anchorage dirt on Memorial Day weekend. We’ll be lucky if the Hillside trails are dry enough for the traditional June 1 opening.

Right now, singletrack conditions might be the best we’ll see for the next four months. March is usually the greatest snow-bike riding of the year, and we’re primed for a great month as long as Mother Nature doesn’t hit us with a bunch of nasty, late-winter storms.

I plan to savor the conditions while I can, because the snow trails will be fading in a few weeks, and we’re still a hell of a long way from summer singletrack.

Respect your elders

There were a bunch of impressive performances from Alaska mountain bikers this weekend, but I’m going to mention my favorites first. This is my blog, and I can see the headlights of 50 coming at me through the tunnel of life, so forgive me for being most impressed by my friends who have already rounded that corner.

Janice Tower—second place in the women’s solo division at 24 Hours in Old Pueblo. And that was no age-division ranking. She slayed the entire field except for one other rider. We all expect this kind of thing from Janice because she has a long record of doing it. But it blows me away how she keeps doing it. I was at her 50th birthday party what, four months ago? She’s still faster than most of us have ever been, and will be for a long time.

Mark Davis—eighth place in the men’s solo division of 24 Hours in Old Pueblo. I know he’s fast because he can rip my legs off on a recreational ride, but I don’t usually even think of Mark as a racer because he doesn’t enter that many events. But when he does, he really moves. And he’s got an extra year on Janice. Finishing in the top 10 in Tucson? Badass.

Mike Morganson—just finished his, what, 15th Susitna 100? Some day, that race should start presenting an annual tenacity award, and it should have Mike’s face on it.

And congratulations to the rest of the Backcountry Bicycles team that went to Tucson for 24 Hours in Old Pueblo this year. In addition to Janice and Mark’s great races, Tony Berberich claimed fourth place in the men’s solo division, and Pete Basinger took seventh in the men’s singlespeed race. Backcountry’s women’s relay team placed fourth, and the Backcountry riders earned a special mention at the awards ceremony for their impressive trail etiquette.

Congratulations, all of you. Have a good sleep.

Tool in a tube

Nothing attracts attention like a brightly lit rear end.

I don’t care much Alaskans love duct tape. This stuff is 10 times better. Epoxy mix has been a standard item on my workbench for years. You can fix damn near anything with this stuff.

I always scoff when someone suggests using “super glue,” which is useless. I’ve tried it dozens of times when trying to fix broken toys, plastic bike parts, ceramic mug handles and all other stuff to which the manufacturers claim it will stick.

It’s like some cruel joke to make you hold a freshly glued thingamabob in place until you think it’s safe to let go, only to watch it stick to the sweat on your fingers instead of the thing to which you were attaching it.

Super glue is shit. But epoxy is The Shit. Especially the easy-to-use version that comes in twin tubes that work like a syringe. You pull off the cap, squeeze out two same-size globs of goo (one the glue, one the hardener), mix ’em, and then slather it on and stick two things together. Within a few hours, they’ll be permanent partners. Especially if you prepared the surfaces properly.

My latest epoxy project was born when I dropped my old quick-release Topeak trunk rack onto a concrete floor and destroyed the integrated reflector. I had a NiteRider Trailfazer light that I found on a trail a couple of years ago, so I knew they were meant to be together.

The first epoxy job was sloppy and careless, but it still worked fine for a couple of weeks until my daughter borrowed the rack and knocked the light around while loading her bike into her car. It fell off, but I recognized my mistake.

To make sure the new repair held permanently, I drilled a few tiny holes at odd angles in the connecting surfaces to give the epoxy some anchor points, then mixed up a new batch, slapped on a generous amount and pressed the light to the rack firmly to force the gooey stuff into all the nooks and crannies. By morning, the rack was ready for the ride to work. If that sucker ever comes off, it’ll be in pieces.

I love repairs like this. I dramatically improved the rear visibility of my bike while recycling a good (and free) light that was otherwise useless because I didn’t have the original mount, and the whole thing took less than 10 minutes.

When you have a tube of epoxy sittin’ around, it’s almost worth breaking stuff just so you can fix it.