September | 2015 | Inside Outside

First Bike Trip

May, 1970

After dropping out of school and working as a photo lab tech for six months, I decided to go back to school. Two weeks before the start of summer quarter called for a new adventure: a bike trip.

First I needed a bike. With $50 of savings, I selected a five speed model from a small shop on Lancaster Avenue. They mounted a carrier rack behind the saddle for an extra $5. It never crossed my mind to purchase a pump. In 1970, all bikes had Schrader valves and all gas stations had free air.

That afternoon, I discovered loading the bike with camping gear to be a surprising challenge. Using an assortment of bungee cords and nylon line, it required several attempts to strap onto the carrier rack an army surplus pup tent, sleeping bag, army surplus canteen, cook pot, matches, and assorted clothing. Next day I departed on a 400 mile adventure to visit my cousins in Williamsport, a small town in north central Pennsylvania.

The journey to Williamsport entailed four days. The first day involved navigating the city streets of North Philadelphia, followed by a maze of sprawling suburbs. About fifty miles from the start, I camped somewhere in a field north of Norristown, just as dusk was falling. Supper was canned Spam, cooked over an open fire, and hot chocolate. Breakfast was instant oatmeal and coffee.

The next day found me on quiet country roads winding through beautiful farmland. Just as dusk was falling, the overloaded carrier rack broke, all the gear collapsed onto my rear wheel, rendering the bike useless. I knocked on the door of a randomly selected house to find the owner happened to be a bike mechanic with a shop in his garage. The repair took about a half hour, no charge. That night, I camped in a thicket of trees near Hazelton. My tent leaked when it started raining.

Rain continued throughout the third day, leaving me drenched and cold entering Mahanoy City. Not wanting to spend another night in a leaky tent, I inquired at police station if I could sleep in jail that night. The officer said OK, and allowed me to select one of the four empty cells. He cautioned they would be required to lock my cell if they had to bring in a real prisoner.

Sun returned the next morning, and I recall being exhausted, hot and thirsty all day. I stopped every 10 miles or so at a gas station to buy a Pepsi for ten cents, resting in the shade while I guzzled it. I had to walk my bike up nearly every one of the endless rolling hills in northern Pennsylvania. On descents, the bike was unstable because of the weight of the gear on the rear rack. I arrived in Williamsport in the evening of the fourth day. After visiting, resting and recovering for several days, I retuned to Philadelphia by way of Harrisburg in two days, riding my first century.

Grilled Halibut with Tomatoes, Rosemary and Zucchini

Adapted from myRecipes.com

Ingredients

3/4 pound fresh halibut, 2 pieces
2 medium zucchini, 1 inch cubes
20 cherry tomatoes, sliced in halves
18 mushrooms, sliced in halves
3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
2 sprigs fresh rosemary
2 tsp olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Preheat grill to 400 degrees
Place 2 sheets of aluminum foil on work surface
Divide zucchini, tomatoes, mushrooms, arrange on foil
Place halibut on top of veggies
Brush halibut with olive oil
Add garlic to each piece of halibut
Salt and pepper to taste
Place sprig of rosemary on top of halibut
Gather sides of foil over fish and veggies, seal in a packet
Wrap packets in second piece of foil to ensure good seal
Place packets on grill, cook for 12 minutes
Serve over couscous

Easy Ride, Scary Story

On my easy ride today, my front shifter would not shift onto my big ring. Crap! I puzzled over it for a few minutes, then turned around and headed for B.I. Cycle, our local bike shop. Tom, who owns the shop, put my bike on the stand and immediately saw that the barrel tension adjuster had spun loose. Twenty second fix, no charge. That’s the island way of doing business.

Technical note – This tension adjuster has been coming loose for me continually. I need to tighten it nearly every time I ride. Usually I catch the problem when the chain starts scraping the shifter while in the big ring.

The store was not busy, so Tom and I started chatting. He told me how my neighbor and fellow cyclist Tony was nearly killed when a dump truck towing a trailer nearly clipped him on Fletcher Bay road. Tony was riding along the white line when the truck passed him. It pulled in too soon, and the trailer nearly slammed into Tony. He caught the whole incident in a video recording on his Cyclic Fly 6 camera. It looks like this gadget would be a great investment. I’ll buy one from Tom next time I’m in his shop, even though his price is quite a bit higher than Amazon.

Motorists often complain about cyclists riding too far out into the road, not understanding it’s purely defensive. Riding too far to the right invites trucks and other large vehicles to pass closely, leaving the rider no escape route. I can recount several stories where cyclists have been hit, one killed, while riding on the right side of the white line.

Red Salmon Curry

Adapted from BBC Good Food

Ingredients

3/4 pound fresh northwest Coho salmon, skin removed, cut into 1 inch pieces
1 medium Walla Walla sweet onion, sliced
30 fresh green beans
1 Tbs butter
1 Tbs red curry paste
7 oz (1/2 can) coconut milk
1 tsp fresh Thai basil

Directions

Saute onions and curry paste in butter until the onions soften, about 5 minutes.
Add coconut milk, bring to a boil.
Add salmon and green beans. Reduce heat, simmer until the salmon flakes and the green beans soften, about 6 minutes
Garnish with basil and server over brown rice

Chilly Hilly Route

I rode the Chilly Hilly route yesterday afternoon. Chilly Hilly is an event put on by Cascade Bicycle Club every year on the last Sunday in February. Thousands of cyclists pour off the ferry and ride counter clockwise around Bainbridge Island. I remember doing my first Chilly Hilly on a rainy Sunday in 1982. Yesterday the sun was shining but a stiff breeze was bringing cooler weather as I rounded Point White.

After riding the High Pass Challenge a couple days ago, I feel like I’m in shape to ride the Levi Gran Fondo today. My ride every day program has worked as expected. Now my plan is simply to continue riding about 200 miles per week, perhaps getting a little stronger, before leaving for California.

Out of Gas

July 1967

The first time I remember running out of gas was on the Verazanno Narrows bridge that goes from New York City to Staten Island. I had driven my Volkswagon Beetle from Harrisburg to visit my friend Dennis. The car sputtered and rolled to a stop somewhere near the midspan of the bridge. After about five minutes a city service truck appeared with a can of gas. He charged me a couple bucks and we both drove off. It seemed that running out of gas was no big deal.

Summer 1975

I rode my Honda 360 from Summit to Albany every day to attend class. It was 110 miles round trip. My motorcycle could go 108 miles on a full tank of gas. Even if I had a full tank when I started for Albany, I would still have to get gas in Albany to make it back to Cobleskill.

I think I ran out of gas about once a week that summer. I would forget to stop at the last gas station in Albany, realize 10 miles down the road that I had forgotten, and press on thinking “This time I can make it.” Each time I would end up pushing my motorcycle up the last hill before coasting down into the gas station on the east end of town in Cobleskill.

April 1980

Kathleen got her first driving lesson when she was four years old. I was driving home with her in our Ford Pinto and ran out of gas about five blocks from home. I had her get behind the wheel and steer the car while I pushed. She was a very bad driver.

July 1983

We moved the family from Kirkland, WA to Wellsboro, PA so I could take a job teaching Computer Science at Mansfield University. We packed all our possessions into the box of a 24 foot U-Haul truck, hitched our 1981 Datsun to the back, threw cats in the Datsun, crammed two kids, one barfing dog, one wife and me into the cab and headed east on I-90.

It took four days driving at 55 mph for 15 hours a day to reach Wellsboro. The truck didn’t have a radio or an air conditioner. We could roll the windows down for cool air and to drown out the sound of kids crying or the dog barfing. Martha and I took turns driving. When it was her turn to drive, I would sleep in the Datsun. (I’m pretty sure that was illegal.) Most of our meals were fast food, eaten in the truck while on the road. At night we pulled over at a truck stop, threw our sleeping bags on the ground and slept soundly.

Passing through Chicago on the freeway, I got confused and took the wrong road – the one that was for cars only. Cars behind us were honking their horns. Then we ran out of gas. More cars honked their horns. A nice man with a wife and two kids stopped, picked me up, drove me to a gas station so I could get gas, then got back on the freeway and drove me back to the truck where Martha, Kathleen and Mike and the cats and barfing dog were waiting.

May 2000

I was telling Anne Marie the story about Martha walking around our house at 5:30 in the morning, naked except for a charcoal grill cover wrapped around her. Our bikes were on the roof rack of my Volvo and we were going to Monroe to ride when we ran out of gas. I got my bike off the roof rack, got a gas can out of the back of the car and rode a couple miles down the road, filled the can and returned with five gallons of gas. Anne Marie was laughing. She thought it was remarkable how my “Martha story” turned into another “Karl story.”

High Pass Challenge 2015

I rode High Pass Challenge yesterday. It’s an organized event run by Cascade Bicycle Club, which features 114 miles and 7700 feet of climbing to Windy Ridge. On a clear day, the route provides breathtaking views of Spirit Lake, Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens and the Cascades, while rolling along Windy Ridge. Yesterday, in the middle of a cloud I could barely see the road or a cyclist in front of me. It was a great ride.

Several hundred cyclists started and finished the High Pass Challenge yesterday. Anyone who even starts this ride in conditions like we had must be pretty hard core. Nevertheless, I saw people suffer during a chilling descent in the rain because they were not prepared for mountain conditions. The temperature at the top, was probably in the mid 40’s – not bad at all for climbing, but a bit more taxing riding downhill. For me, this day was like one of many on PacTours. I was a bit chilly coming off the mountain, but nowhere near hypothermia, no where near the worst I have experienced.

A key factor in enjoying a challenging ride in the rain is knowing your body, how hard it can ride, how much heat it can generate by riding for seven hours, and still have some in reserve. How much food do you need, how much water or other fluid, how do you need to dress? Each individual is different, here’s what worked for me.

I wore a light wool shirt beneath a light jersey, leg warmers, and medium thick wool socks, a heavier than average raincoat and full fingered gloves. Expecting I would need to peel extra clothing while climbing, I wore a fanny pack – the raincoat is too heavy to stuff into a jersey pocket.

My key measure to enjoying a ride is finishing strong and not feeling trashed at the end. This means riding my own pace, not sucking wheels of riders who start out faster than I want to go, and finding my climbing rhythm about halfway up the mountain.

HPC features a 19 mile warm-up along route 12. I soft-pedaled with a small group of riders, sometimes trading pulls, but not really needing to. I generally white-line it, meaning riding just to the right of the white line separating the shoulder from the main road, especially when traffic is light and there’s a steady stream of cyclists that would be difficult for a motorist to miss. A few miles from the start, we rolled by several riders who were repairing punctures they had acquired from the debris on the right part of the shoulder, usually much worse in wet conditions. One of the worst causes of flat tires are pieces of tire tread containing thin wires, usually thrown off by trucks.

The climbing started with a short moderate grade just south of Randall. I stopped to pee and peel my raincoat, then began climbing at an easy pace. Long climbs are much different than the short steep hills around Bainbridge Island; you need to find a pace you can sustain. I like to start all hills at an easy pace, not picking up the intensity until well into the climb. Perhaps at the halfway point I find my rhythm and push the intensity up somewhere near my lactate threshold.

This particular day required backing off a bit. It was important to push hard enough to maintain body heat, just as important to maintain some reserve for unexpected surprises that could lead to hypothermia. I chatted with a few riders, slowing a bit to ride with them on the way up, eventually returning to my own pace. The easiest part for me was definitely going up hill. The descent was chilling; I had enough gear but was just starting to shiver on some of the steeper grades.

A litmus test for an enjoyable ride is how I feel at the end. Following the descent, there was an option of a shorter or longer route back to the start in Packwood. Most riders, tired and cold, chose the shorter route. I was happy to go the longer way, riding along a narrow winding road past luscious ferns typical of northwest rain forests. At one point, I slowed down and road and chatted with a guy who knew a couple friends of mine. About 20 miles from the finish, I picked up the pace to what felt natural, and rolled into the finish feeling tired, hungry, definitely not hammered.