Occidental, I think that I just fell in love with you

After spending several days doing some climbs around Napa, we finally checked out of our motel in downtown Napa, loaded up our panniers, and headed west, aiming for the tiny community of Occidental. We only discovered after returning to Boston that Tom Waits now calls Occidental home.

Ice Whine in Napa

So just a few days after I post a picture of a 100 ml tube of sunscreen that was being rapidly used up in New England, I head off to the airport to fly to California where TSA threatened to take it away from me! In some wicked twist of fate, John had some vacation time to use up before April 1st, and we decided to head off the Northern California to do some early season hill climbing in nice weather. We booked our trip long before realizing that the world had flipped and Boston was now in the tropics. In the week before our departure, we starting crying over the forecasts, as Boston was to be 80F and sunny while Napa and Sonoma were to be 50s and rainy, as it should be in Boston at this time of year. We packed up warm clothes, but optimistically threw the sunscreen in anyway.

Signs of Spring

It's about 40 F and raining here today, a pretty typical spring day in the greater Boston area. Fear Rothar calls March the cruelest month. We start to see signs of spring. We get warm days with sunshine, and then, it seems on our days off, we get the dreary rainy days! Well I can't really complain. It's been a mild winter, although with some pretty good swings in temperature. But we are seeing lots of indications now of spring...

Emily and I were having a mid-ride lunch at Verrill Farm recently where they are starting to sell some seedlings.

 

Mud in yer eye!

A combination of too much work and fine weather have kept me away from the (non-work) computer this week. However, last weekend's weather led me to write the following:

The unusually mild and dry winter we have experienced in New England this year was book-ended (although it may be a little early to use that term yet!) by snow storms in October and on Leap Year Day. The latter was followed by a day of rain and, for some reason, that seemed to suggest a spin on dirt roads to your truly. The idea must have had some merit, as David Lafferty was happy to accompany me into southern New Hampshire. Perhaps, though, he was just trying to maximise culture shock, as he and wife Emily were planning to fly to Mallorca the following weekend. Have fun, you two!

But I digress, we tried to establish the theme of our ride early on.

Gloves

We have had very strange weather in New England this winter. For the most part, it has been relatively mild. But we've had a few bitter cold days as well as some balmy ones. The problem is that the two extremes have come one right after the other. The high temperature can vary by 40F from one day to the next, making getting the right clothing choices a bit of a challenge. A little layering and judicious use of zippers usually are enough for me to adjust to changing conditions.  Normally if I am under-dressed or over-dressed on one day, I can tweak my clothing choice slightly the next day and be comfortable. But since conditions have varied so much day to day, this hasn't really been the case this year.  Most of the time when I have misjudged, the issue has been my hands, and so far I haven't inflicted permanent damage, but I do find I am now carrying extra gloves a lot!

Sunshine, snow squalls and round towers

All this talk of a mild winter is starting to annoy the weather gods. So they huffed and puffed and blew a gale force wind our way this weekend, providing another excuse to take out the tandem. So while John's mates were off sheltering from the wind in the woods, we headed out on the tandem. We only made it a few blocks before stopping into the new George Howell Coffee in Newtonville. 

 

Nawth Shaw riding

I don't know Boston's Nawth Shaw well. So, when Beverly native, Matt Roy, suggested, in one of his infamous Bad Ideas (TM), dragging David Wilcox and yours truly on some of his favourite roads in that direction, I leaped at the chance.

Matt had the decency too, to lay on simply splendid February weather. It was sunny, dry, if breezy and a smidgin chilly. However, it transpired we were going to cover a large portion of the North Shore in our day out, so there wasn't much hanging out and chillin' to be done!

Presidents and Purgatory

Astute readers may recall that at the end of the Festive 500 challenge last December, John and I declared ourselves so far beyond redemption that we felt no need or desire to serve additional time in Purgatory (Pamela had already been to Purgatory Falls, NH earlier in the week), so we bailed on our planned final ride from Framingham out to Purgatory Chasm. This is probably why we didn't win! That and the fact that we didn't have epic blizzards to ride through. But try as I might to ride in snowy conditions this year, global warming seems to have arrived in New England, and we've been blessed with some pretty amazing winter cycling this year.

But it is also a presidential election year, and we've been bombarded with news stories that try my patience and insult my intelligence and make me feel I'm in some sort of presidential purgatory. I'm really hoping to emerge into a state of grace soon. So seeing as how I like my theme rides, we decided President's Day would be a fine day for Purgatory.

"Snowy" trail riding

The forecast predicted 3-6" of the white, fluffy stuff. While sensible types might have stayed at home and provided laps for cats in front of a nice, warm fire, Messrs. Roy, Wilcox and I decided to go slip, sliding in the woods instead. The plan called for stringing together as many sections of trails in the Fells as possible, with Matt leading the way.

Things started according to plan when I awoke to find a dusting of white outside. The forecast still seemed accurate as I made my way to Gnarlington through white coloured precipitation. However, that was to be the extent of it for the day, as you can see from the following photos:

Fender Update - SKS Raceblade Long

[Look here for our newest post on fenders]  


Last week in my Fender post, I mentioned that I had some of the new SKS Raceblade long fenders on order. (I have updated that post now with this information).

They arrived over the weekend,  and I eagerly opened the box and tried to mount them on the bike that currently sports the original raceblades.  But I found several limitations, the primary one being a max tire width of 23mm. I had missed this detail before I ordered them. 

Not the longs!

Fenders

[Check here for our newest post on fenders]


Mo Bruno Roy looks great all the time, but she really carries off the muddy look with style and grace!

Photo by Matt Roy

I can't say the same for me!

And while it may be fun for an hour, I bet it would get a bit uncomfortable on an all day ride. And it might not be such a good idea to show up to work this way, or to try and get a seat at any coffee shop other than Ride Studio Cafe. Even there, you might be offered a big bucket of water and a towel at the door!

Why Tandem?

I always enjoy the chance to tell the story of how I used a tandem to snare Fear Rothar. We were both participating in a cross-USA bike tour on single bikes, but due to our speed difference, we rarely saw each other on the road.

We had met a year before when Fear Rothar came from Ireland to do BMB in 1992. We had emailed occasionally, and he was the first person I told when I decided to do PAC Tour the next year.  I really didn't remember that he had previously told me of the same plans. Whether it was fate or accident, or some plan on my sub-conscious' part, we ended up on the same trip.

Inspiration

Back when I was in high school, I did a week long backpacking trip on the Appalachian Trail (AT). It was not terribly long, but a good challenge for me at the time. And it was just enough to whet my appetite for backpacking in the future.

I had never done anything like it before, and had to prepare from scratch. I used a large part of my allowance for the year to buy boots and pay for the trip. I borrowed a backpack from a friend, who had done the trip the year before. She had raved about how much fun it was, and encouraged me to go. I had my own sleeping bag - all kids do, right? In retrospect, I should have tried to borrow a proper one. The rest of my gear consisted of shorts, a pair of jeans and a couple of t-shirts, pretty simple.

At Least it's Not Raining

-Forbidden Topics of Conversation on Bike Rides-

As you may know from reading a previous blog entry, I like my bike rides to include lots of conversation. But there is one subject I just will not tolerate being discussed during any ride, and that's threatening weather. RAIN is a 4 letter word. There is simply no disputing that. And it is just imprudent to discuss rain out loud (or even think about it) during any bike ride.

Bring on discussions of politics and religion. By all means, we should get our heart rates elevated occasionally on a bike ride. The more controversial the better. And don't hold back when talking about your favorite sports team, especially if they aren't local.  Although don't expect me or Fear Rothar to have a clue whether the team you are talking about is in a sport with a large round ball, a small round ball, a large odd shaped ball, or a puck.

OK, for real this time...

Yes, I must live under a rock. I don't watch reality television - so I'm not terribly current on the whole public vote-for-me thing. I just signed up for facebook to get some photos from a friend last summer. But we have had the website for a while, and I would occasionally get a query from someone asking if we had a mailing list or a way to notify folks of updates. I finally realized that blogging would be the best way to 1) get me to post photos from trips and rides in a more timely manner and 2) allow folks to subscribe or get notified when we have something new. So we started the blog.

It was quite timely as the Rapha Festive 500 - Ride to Redemption came soon after, and gave me something to write about for a while, and provided some inspiration for using the new camera, as well as a chance to possibly win some swag.