After yesterday’s ride up to Magglingen showed that singletrails were in no condition to be easily ridden uphill, I opted to ride a loop I almost never do - riding around Lake Biel. The lake has nothing interesting to offer for a mountain bike and on a road bike the loop is about as exciting as riding a home trainer. So in the past, this has never been a ride I ever considered doing. The current Siberian temperatures however, added a challenging element to the loop and on the cyclocrosser I was able to stay off the roads for a big part of the ride. I crossed Biel and headed straight to the lake, then followed the lake along the south side all the way to Lüscherz. Here, despite the law requiring public lakeshore access, no trail follows the water. The straight stretch of road to Vinelz was too boring to take, so I climbed up to the Hofmannsfluh and found some real fun singletrack. Once in Vinelz, I followed the marked bike route to the harbor in Erlach. At St. Johannsen I had to jump on the road to cross the canal, where I turned right to ride through the old town of Le Landeron and to La Neuveville. Here, I got back to following the marked hiking trails through the vineyards. Ligerz approached quickly. The climb to its famous little church proved to be too steep on today’s icy patches. Past the church it was an easy ride to the entrance of the Twannbachschlucht, though occasional ice required to take the speed down a notch. I was happy that the last leg to Tüscherz and Vingelz included a few more short climbs. My toes were frozen to the point of falling off and each climb pumped some warm blood back into them. Those minus fourteen degrees added a good portion of challenge to the forty-two something kilometers. Despite the fact that I could barely walk the four floors upstairs at home, I would not want to miss out on such a small adventure.
Today, I set the timer on my iPhone to 35 minutes and took off from the office riding a trail from Pieterlen up to the Bözingenberg. I had no idea how far I’d make it in the snow, gave myself 35 minutes to climb, which would give me enough time to return to the office, get out of my gazillion layers of bike clothes and change back into office attire (jeans and sweater). When the alarm of my iPhone beeped through the back pocket of my Specialized winter jacket, I stopped, took this photo and went back down the way I came from. An hour lunchbreak isn’t quite enough to reach the top of the hill - at least not on a snowy fire road.
As January ended with lots of bad weather, time was better spent working on the bikes rather than riding them. The cyclocrosser had suffered the past few months and the last couple of rides in the wet and in the snow ultimately killed the last bit of shifting smoothness. As a singlespeeder, I have forgotten how shifter cables don’t like mud and water. The cyclocrosser painfully reminded me of that fact. One reason my mountain bikes don’t and won’t run geared drivetrains. Anyhow, this week two packages arrived with some speedy weaponry by Zipp. A seat post came via Ebay from Cycle Club Sport and a handlebar was acquired somewhat locally from the good folks at bikespeed.ch. The carbon seat post replaced the stock aluminum post on the Mares CX and the handlebar was going to trade places with another Zipp bar on the Alize. The old bar joined a Service Course SL stem to form an all Zipp cockpit on the Mares CX. While swapping bars, I tossed all the brake and shifter housings and cables and replaced them with new ones. Smooth shifting again. A butt-friendly Antares was bolted to the new post and some deliciously red bar tape wrapped the drops. The crosser’s ready for action again. A bit of cable work went into the road bike as well as its new VukaSprint bar runs brake and shifter cables internally. Here, I was able to re-use the black Specialized bar tape and only wrapped the drops ending the tape shortly behind the hoods. The bike’s ready to fly. Will the weather get good enough for take-off?
| Stem: | Silver Thomson Elite, 1 1/8”, 5 deg. 120mm, 25.4mm |
| Fork: | Pace RC31 C-Type, 420mm AC, 7 3/4” steerer, 1” dia. |
After having spent the last three days on the saddle, twice on the cyclocross bike and once on the singlespeed, Sunday was a day to take it down a notch, do some laundry, vacuum and let my MacBook Pro process the video I stitched together with Saturday’s footage of the mountain bike ride to the top of the Chasseral. The laundry machine spit out the clothes in no time, the vacuum choked on several weeks worth of cat hair without going up in flames and the kitchen clock had only moved to an early afternoon. The Mac was humming “Don’t touch me”, so I spontaneously decided to add another workout to the weekend. The legs felt great and the sun was out. I grabbed my FiveFingers, which I’ve only used once so far on my old running trail in Shiloh, eager to test them on home soil. After my first run in California, I had ended up with sore calves for a week. My muscles were not used to striking forefoot first. Years of running with traditional running shoes have programmed them to touch down heel first. I easily adapted to running on my forefeet, but I totally ignored Vibram’s recommendation to only run 10% of my normal running distance. Well, I paid for that mistake. Today’s run was only my second wearing FiveFingers and it went really well. I chose the trail through the Taubenloch gorge and jogged at an easy pace. I focused on learning that new athletic skill of running with a forefoot strike and had lots of fun reading the trail. Interestingly, my mind found no time to wander off in thoughts as it was busily paying attention to what my legs and feet were doing while scanning the trail for the best landing spots at the same time. I’m hooked. For now I’m not running as fast as in the past, but I’m engaging muscles more, strengthen my feet, run smarter and probably safer as well.
| Distance: | 7.8km (4.8 miles) |
| Elevation: | 320m (1’050 feet) |
| Time: | 54:01 |
Back in December 2010 I started looking around for an handy action cam mount. I found some rubber velcro mounts that are sold as flashlight holder for bikes. They work great to attach the Replay XD cam to a bike’s handlebar and seat tube. Velcro is the right thing as I want to be able to quickly change the cam on the trail without needing tools, but those simple mounts weren’t quite enough. I needed something that would allow more frame attachment points. I spent hours browsing the web for ideas, found a really neat camera mount for hang-gliders, continued to kick around other ideas, then sacrificed a lunch break to wander through aisle after aisle at a local hardware store. I left empty-handed.
At home, I grabbed one of those velcro mounts and disappeared into the basement to dig through boxes filled with all sorts of odd bits and pieces. Hidden far in the back of a drawer, I found an old, blue DT Hügi box with an ancient hub body and a couple of steerer tube cut-offs. The moment I pulled out a 4 inch long piece of a 1 inch titanium steerer tube and held it in my hand, I had my adjustable camera mount. All that was needed was to shorten the thing. The tube was taken to work the next morning and another lunch went without food. Instead of eating chips I was making some (of the titanium kind). After cutting, chamfering and polishing the mount was done. It extends the mounting possibilities to the seat tube, the seat post, along the fork legs, stem and handlebar allowing to point the camera in any angle desired. A couple more rubber velcro mounts are on the way, this time type “same direction”. These will be handy for under-the-chainstay camera positions. The newly built adjustable mount weighs 70 grams. Obviously, it could be built a whole lot lighter using a plastic or carbon tube, but nothing would look as classy as a piece of brushed titanium. Stay tuned for some life-action video footage or keep an eye on my Youtube channel.
A couple of vacation photos taken mostly by Geo.
Christmas and New Year was spent in Sonoma County, a region I called home for a period of 10 years, to visit friends, shop and eat out a lot, go wine tasting, hang out and simply take a break from work together with my wife. It also happened to be a short break from cycling and this blog. Not entirely though, as I decided to rent a road bike for the last weekend and head out to revisit an old time favorite climb of mine - Pine Flat Road. An old riding buddy and I started in Healdsburg to hit this quiet out and back climb into the Mayacmas Mountains northwest of Mount St. Helena. A deep blue sky, miles of earthquake cracked pavement, a charred forest midway, a huge buck in the middle of the road while descending and two old guys rejoined for a ride after four years made this a day to remember.
| Distance: | 54.8km (34.0 miles) |
| Elevation: | 1’126m (3’694 feet) |
| Time: | 02:26:22 |
| Speed (avg/max): | 22.5/62.5 kph (14.0/38.8 mph) |