The Triple Dip 20.25

Welcome to the Triple Dip 20.25...

the event where everything is made up and the points don't matter.

Keeping with my recent theme of poorly timed upgrades, I got my new Fox 34SL on Thursday.  There was no way in hell I wasn't going to install it despite having no time to assure that I had it set up properly before a forty mile day interspersed with who knows how many hard efforts on unknown trails.  My excite could be easily palped and could also be easily blamed for my oversight of not adjusting my saddle after putting on a 10mm longer travel fork.  

Meh.

I'll write more about the new front squish when I've had more time on it.

There's probably no point in writing anything close to a blow-by-blow of the six race stages.  The fastest guy on the entire day was not me, and the rest of us barely had a chance. 

I have underwear older than this kid.

Flat stages, sandy beaches, punchy climbs, rooty descents, downed trees,... nothing was slowing this kid down.  Once it was realized that not only was cheating basically ok, it was whole-heartedly encouraged, and that's when the real race began.  Creativity was rewarded and possibly slightly penalized, but the more visible the alternate line selections were to the spectating party pacers, the better...I guess.  If you cut the course and nobody sees it, what's the point?

Pretty sure I got to finish one stage a lap early for the win by taking a half hot dog hand up directly to the mouth. 

I only got lost on the course once.  Another time, Bryan, Basil, and myself missed the cue to head to some start line, and although we weren't technically at the start, once we found the course, we were encouraged to hop in whenever we felt good about it. 

We woulda won had someone not been even better at cheating than we were.

I collected some beads that were meant for something, and then traded those beads for more finisher points, which more than likely (assuredly) did not matter in the least.

Coming outta a steep ditch that if you were 75% likely to make it, the jubilant cheers from the crowd brought your odds up to 100%.  Conversely, if you were only 50% likely to make it, the resounding jeers brought your chances down to a big goose egg.

No shame, Bryan*.  This just shows how stupid deep the ditch was.

Happy to bring home some hardware regardless of efforts, expectations, and extemporaneous obstacles thrown in my path.  I am the second fastest man person (that showed up).

What a wonderful day to once again ride around with a bunch of people whom I more than likely have a shared deep appreciation for some of the finer things in life.  Not great prep for the upcoming Bootlegger 100 garvel race, but better than watching Joe Rogan trying to glean useful health tips.

Oh, and if you're looking for the same kinda fun (with slightly more rules), this is coming up in May:

* Okay, mebbe a little shame.

Sticking a pin in it

Just because it's what I'm doing and what I'm gonna do and something more excite later this week (that mebbe, this is my Saturday plans:

The annual dad joke on wheels and literally hot dog fueled event is once again a thing to do.  It's fun.  It's hard.  It lasts the better part of a day.  It ends with beer in the sun.  I may have a chance to make a perfectly fine bike better and/or worse before the week is out (depending on the timeliness of a UPS delivery and my desire to take on yet another poorly timed "upgrade"). 

Also, there's this:

I told myself that after finishing last year, that was enough.  I did it on my noodle bar shifty bike because the year that I got hypothermia and quit (on my single speed) was stuck in my craw for too long.  

I wanted to ride with a frand all day long last year, and that didn't pan out, so it just became something to do so I could say it had been done.

Well, then the 108 mile route gets chopped (due to Helene damage to the Blue Ridge Parkway?) down to 85 miles and a frand says "you wanna do this?" and I say "yeth" because I convinced myself the only hard part was the ride up to the Parkway (duh) and then I also decide that I need to do it on the Vertigo Meatplow V.7 with garvel wheels and tires (or just garvel tires on MTB wheels?) and I order tires better suited to the duties of the day and now I'm fully committed.  I'm just going to assume that freezing rain only falls on the Parkway.

I look forward to spinning out a 32X18 on the way outta town and getting passed by people with huge hydration packs and fat bikes again...

And then hopefully catching them all back when things go up and down.

Of course, all of this is just training for...

Of course, everything is training for PMBAR.  

EVERYTHING.

But first, this:

Sober Stinkfist

I'm gonna talk about tools...

shitty, not shitty, somewhat imperative, and mebbe not so much?

I wrote some time ago about a regrettable (for ethical reasons) purchase I made from Temu because I allowed myself to fall for the tactics they use on feeble-minded consumers.  Feeble or slightly beer-addled... same same.

I bought a super poopy "$75" derailleur hanger alignment tool for $3.74.  I only own one geared bike now, and I've not used this tool out once since I bought in in January '24.  I took a stick to my hangdown on my garvel bike a few months ago but didn't bother breaking out the tool because it was only causing one funky shift on the cassette that I could mostly tolerate.  After the Watts van trip, I decided to finally put it to the test.

It was as poopy as expected.  There was a lot of play in the arm that had to be accounted for, but it was 85% better than eyeballing it, and I felt very "mechanical" when I was done.  That said, I've used a real DAG before, and this is no real DAG.  If five outta six of my bikes weren't single speeds, I'd buy a decent one.

I meant to swap out the OG Forekaster 2.35 rear tire on the Vassago Optimus Meatplow V.10 to a more Florida-friendly 2.4 Aspen before the trip, but... le sigh.  I decided to prioritize the task upon my return, but I found out that these had fallen outta my oh-shit-I-hope-I-don't-need-these-things drawstring bag that resided in the recesses of a cupboard in the van:

I swear by these clever things, and I missed my Birzman tubeless tire levers suchly:

Of course, the liner makes it all the more challenging.

I managed to get it on with only a minimal amount of swearing, and I got so caught up in the success that I forgot to put sealant in before getting the tire all the way on the rim... so, more swearing.  Obvs.

I member culling the herd of Dick Support on the sidebar late last year.  Topeak was one of the things I dropped because I hadn't heard anything from them in some time, so I assumed I was persona non grata.  

I was wrong.

I got the "whatcha want" email a couple weeks ago.  Honestly, one of my wants was pretty meager.  

I had been using a random drill bit that was just the size of the core end of the stem, but some of the valve stems I'm currently using have an inner diameter that's a bit narrower at the base.  That means I can't get full insertion with my bit.  In comes the Tubi Valve Cleaner into my world.

I didn't have to look beyond the pegboard in front of me to find my first victim.

One end of the tool has a valve core remover built into it.  I now have an even one hundred different valve core removers at the ready at all times.

Anyways, a few seconds of reaming later...

As Standartenführer Hans Landa would say, "THAT'S A BINGO!"

I also started futzing with this:

I wish I had the slightest clue why I have a complete rear XTR brake master cylinder/lever in my possession.  Anyhoo, the used brakes I bought to "downgrade" the Vassago Optimus Meatplow V.10 had a beat up looking rear, and I saw some fluid that belongs on the inside on the outside, so I wanted to learn a thing or two about the last bit of innards I wasn't familiar with, the bladder.  It's a way too long story, but after some head scratching, swearing, and moments where I was pretty sure I did a bad thing, I was able to assemble a whole lever and use this new toy to finish it off:  

More about that after I point this out...

I love that I now have an 8mm crow's foot to put on a torque wreck to squash my olivers down proper like, but also... guess what?

I guess I now own one hundred and one valve core removers.

The entire kit offers up a conundrum for me.

I like the handy travel case... but I don't think I'll ever use the Phillip's head, flat head, or 5/6 of the T-bits.  I hope to gob I never have to use the crow's foot when traveling (although if I'd had all the pieces-parts, it woulda came in handy the night before the 2024 PMBAR), and I can't remember what a 10mm Allen key goes into bike-wise (removing a 1999 XT free hub body?).  That said, I'd definitely want the 60nm ratchet with the speed sleeve attachment for extra leverage for things like Paragon sliders and pedals.

So, I kinda wanna break the kit up for my purposes, but I know that you should treat your torque tools like a Stradivarius violin and only take it out of the case to use it, and then IMMEDIATELY return it to said case before anyone can breathe on it sideways.

Meanwhile, my bathroom ceiling needs repaired, the roof has a leak (unrelated), and my HVAC unit needs its spring cleaning.

The women do not find me handsome.  They do find me handy.

The Van with Two Brains (give or take) Tour

I really needed that trip...

to never end.

Monday was a hard reentry into the real life.  I'll get over it.

I love van/bike trips with Watts.  I go into them with little to no expectations and very few questions.  I assume we're going to go on many rides.  At least two of them will last long enough for me to run out of both food and hydration, even if he did tell me beforehand how far we were going.  We'll push the limits of daylight at least once, and I won't mind it one bit.

Of course, I'm skipping over the fact that the whole thing started with a Watts Fappening two Saturdays ago, which would normally get its own post... but won't this time.

The night before the Watts Fappening, I installed this OneUp drooper remote for no other reason than it just happened to show up that morning.

First of all, yeth, I ignored my larger problem of dropping chains and focused my mechanical energies into this non-problem.  I didn't wanna take on such a relatively complex endeavor the night before leaving for a trip that required this bike to function when we got where we were going.  Considering that where we were headed, a drooper post was not really necessary, I still couldn't help myself.  My stupid plastic bike is the two-wheeled equivalent of my Honda Fit of Rage.  It is a utility vehicle, and I don't like putting money, effort, or time into it to improve it 1%. 

But here I am.

The saddest liquor store on planet earth.  Too bad it was a Sunday, and they weren't open.  I would have loved to meet their Gimp.

Watts won the prize for finding the first (and perhaps only) craft beer can in a ditch.  So.  Much.  Bud.  Light.

I found out that my favorite gravel is not gravel.  It's clay roads and sand.  Like lots of sand... deep sand... that goes on and on way past the point where you think you can keep a bike upright and you just keep going because walking is failure (I tell myself).

This ride sun burnt my lips.

Corner of New Hope and Hicks... mebbe you had to be a J6 Hearing fan to really get the joke.

We camped amongst sheep and chickens and pig and peacock and horses and this little bird came into the van just to take a shit on the dashboard.  Probably just because he could.  Mebbe the smells emanating from the van were indicative of a shitting place?

Oh... we rode mountain bikes too.  Plenty of places.  Some memorable for being super bueno and mebbe one for being pretty close to dog poop.  One day, we rode 25 miles of trail to pop out in Santos and say hi to Foye from Shimano, have a beer at a bike shop, and then ride 25 miles back.

At some point on the trip, we were just buzzing along the highway when the van made a loud "WHOOOOOOOMP" noise.  We just looked at each other, around the back of the van, at the bikes still Kuat'ed in place... nada.  Then we looked up.

The window part of the sunroof blew off.  We turned around and drove slowly back up the four lane road while looking in the ditches and median for a piece of clear plastic.  Nothing.  Parked the van, jumped out, grabbed a couple bikes, and rode backwards up the highway until we couldn't see the van (and the unlocked bikes) anymore.  Watts turned back to retrieve the van (and hopefully the unlocked bikes)... and then there it was in the median... at least the parts I was able to collect.

Toss it in the van and realize that this is our somewhat immediate problem.  We think of a million different ways to fix it involving wood, brackets, bolts, screws, a cordless drill that we don't have, makeshift "ladders," but opted for the simplest solution.

We ran outta Gorilla Tape, but this sufficed to keep the raccoons out of our sleeping area for the night and get us to a hardware store the next day for more tape.  I'm not suddenly tall.  I'm standing on an unstable cooler sitting on the end of a very heavy picnic table.

I truly fell in love with this kind of "all-road" riding.  Loose dogs per mile numbers were on the tolerable side.  The "being nowhere in the real world" feeling was palpable.

I didn't take my phone out to take pictures very often.  Aside from some doom-scrolling in the van to make sure I wasn't recently drafted to go fight Canadians or Panamanians or Greenlandians, I tried to stay in the moment.  Poopy work life means that I gotta make the most of my time away from Charlotte, and my phone sometimes equals work (which as I said before, has been poopy).

There was down time.  Beers were had.  And salty things (saltier than Watts).

We had access to private docks for private things, like raising ocean levels.

We visited Watts's buddy Drew's shop, Super Corsa Cycles, and there was so much interesting stuff, history, and high end bikes... and that's the only picture I took.

I got some of my Fu Manchu caught up in my rear (non-Hydra 2) hub.  I don't think it's a warranty issue.

Dare I say that some of the quiet times between the rides were the best of times?  I'll dare.  Drew and his wife were pleasant company, and they will be our first guests on Watts and I's podcast, Bitter and Jaded: The Problems of the "Industry," How Two Middle-Aged White Guys Can Fix It, and also Pringles Recipes.  Coming soon.

Had to hit pause while Watts called his agent to see if the bid he put on Jerry Seinfeld's Ferrari at the Amelia Island car show was accepted.

It was not.

Home of the most disgusting looking hot foods counter I've ever seen, unless you like three day old baby diarrhea chili and deep-fried breaded mud clumps.  I'll give the place a pass for having Zingers tho.

I guess car show people know who this guy is (guy on the truck, not the guy on the bike).  

So many trees from Jurassic Park.  If Florida wasn't so flat... and hot... and flat... and buggy... and Trumpy, I could totally live here.

And that's it. No blow by blow.  No "we stopped here" and "we rode there" specifically.  Another memorable week of riding, food, beer, getting gas and ice, sleeping in strange places, Pringles over-consumption, staring at the skies and natural wonders, and breathing it all in.

Now, back to life.  Back to reality.