Sleepin' in a scout pit

I attended the Rabbitstick Rendezvous this Sept. in Rexburg, Idaho. While there I participated in a shelter building workshop with a really cool dude named Tom Elpel. He writes some great books about wilderness skills including "Participating in Nature" and "Botany in a Day". In the workshop we built a scout pit shelter. Its basically a shallow grave dug out with sticks. A fire is burned in the pit to dry it out and heat up the ground, then the coals covered with a few inches of dirt. After this we built a roof from sticks, covered the sticks with clumps of grass, and then pulled the dirt over the grass. This creates a roof that is water and air proof and almost invisible. Although, we decided to cover the roof with a log baracade because there were moose in the area and I didn't want one to step on me in the middle of the night! We pushed some dry grass inside to pad the ground with and made a clump of grass to plug the doorway with. I volunteered to sleep in this thing instead of my tent. That night it rained pretty heavily and was probably in the low 40s. I slept without even a blanket in just a t-shirt and long underwear and was so toasty warm that I had to leave the door unplugged. In the morning when I crawled out the earth was still warm and dry beneath me from the coals. When I got back to my crappy, old tent I discovered that it totally leaked and my sleeping bag lay in a big puddle. I was glad to have spent the night in the pit shelter! Try it sometime if you're not too claustrophobic (or however you spell that).

Moab, cause we don't like rain in PA

Ok so Veronika and i decided to go to Moab instead of 7Springs. I think we made the right call. Anyway it rocked. Lots of good things happened. We drank good beer, hung out with good friends and rode killer trails. The last pic of Burro Pass trail started at 8500ft and topped out at 11500. It was an epic 3 hour climb followed by 2 hours of downhill overlooking the desert. It was rad. (OK, so flikr is cheap so you'll have to wait for more cool pics.) OK, here's your friggin slideshow!

those little white dotted lines are not a force field!

How hard is it for everyone to just stay inside that cushy 12' wide lane. I mean come on, the Honda Odyssey the lady was driving was only 77" wide. I mean keeping a 6'5" car in a Interstate highway lane. If you put two of them next to each other their tires would barely hang over the lines. Anyway people are really bad drivers. Be careful. Now my precious 60mpg Golf is going to be in the shop for a while. V and I got to slide sideways down I-70 at 70mph, and do a little NASCAR action over to and along the guardrail. And now I'm stuck driving some Pontiac getting 25mpg, sticking bikes in the back of Veronika's jeep, and nursing a stiff neck and shoulders (with beer). Be safe. Keep the rubber side down. -cory "Tailspin" benson YIIKES!!!! I just got word that i won't get my car back until September 19th. 26 days without my car :(

a domestic or euro crankset?!

OK, so I am building (after many years of lusting and sweating it) a 29er Moots YBB with S&S couplers to travel the US and Europe, and wherever the hell else dr. hot czech and i end up and want to mountain bike. With that I had the idea to make the bike primarily of domestic US production, which is impossible because of tires and tubes and cables and such. But anyway as much as I am an idealist it has more to do with the fact that I don't really want a $500 set of carbon cranks made by a machine in Taiwan on my handcrafted in the US from wholly US materials custom titanium bike. (and i'm even down with carbon) So I'm thinking that with European parts filling out the rest, since this is where i'll be riding, I should be able to make the most of it(outside of my avid disc brakes which i am unwilling to part with.) But I haven't found a good set of cranks. I want bearing durability (ie. no ISIS) so a square taper or external BB and to run a single 38T chainring with a bash guard to a Rolhoff hub. So where do I find this mystery crankset. I'm completely open to anything from a Record aluminum crankset(Casey wants me to use a track crankset, although the availability or bashguards is slim) to some locally machined thing, so long as it's not one of the Kooka deals that likes to snap off. What do you think? Could a forged aluminum road crank be up to mountain abuse?

Larch Mt. Tour

I just checked out "The Golden Age of Handbuilt Bicycles" by Jean Heine from the library. An amazing book that embodies a cycling ideology and style of days gone by that makes me want to ride off to the mountains every free moment I get. Cyclotouring, or "riding for the enjoyment of riding". So I packed up the ol' Peugeot yesterday and set out for the Columbia River Gorge. I decided I would do it minimalist style, no tarp, no sleeping bag. Just some extra clothes, water filter, tools, camera and food. I rode the Max train out of the city to the last stop with my bike. I have ridden from my house to the gorge before but I prefer to just bypass all of the urban/suburban wasteland and just get on the back roads as soon as possible. I got off the train and on the road by 3:30 or so. The route I took descended to the Sandy River where I have been taking the same ride to go swimming this summer. From here I ascended out of the valley on the Historic Columbia River Highway. It was a bit busy until I made it past most of the yahoos on their way to swim at the Sandy. I climb, climb, climbed about 3,000 feet up to Larch Mt. It was gettin late though so I didn't go the whole way to the top, which does have a splendid view indeed. I first turned off a logging road and gave my bike a workout over the rocky, unpaved surface through a clearcut. It handled it well. I thought maybe I would camp here but it didn't feel good. The ground was dry as a desert and the surrounding stands of immature hemlocks were so dense they allowed no light through creating a dark, ominous wood that gave me the creeps. Not to mention all of the beer cans, shotgun shells and other debris left by hunters and backwoods street sign shooters. I decided to coast back down to some more inviting forest I passed on my way up the mountain. I found a spot not far off the road. The swainson's thrushes were cheerily making their spiraling call and all around were red huckleberries ripe for the pickin'! This area had obviously been clearcut at one time too but it felt more pleasant and my mood immediately changed. I remembered why I had ridden out here. I went to work picking huckleberries (and eating them). The simple debris shelter I planned to build for warmth was soon forgotten about as I filled up on berries. As the sun set I found a spot to bed down in some moss under a baby hemlock and some huckleberry bushes. I always seem to think I will fall asleep easily in these situations but I never learn my lesson. Ants crawled up my pants and mosquitoes kept buzzin me. As the night went on my feet became cold and I curled up tighter. At some point I finally slept long enough to have an obscure dream about finding a cougar skull in a pond or somethin but was awoken by the sound of a mouse running around my head. Soon the thrushes were singing again and a new day was dawning. I stretched, ate a few more berries, and made my way back to the road, eyes burning from lack of sleep. The ride back was mostly downhill. I was back to the Max by 7:00 am and home in the comfort of my bed by 8:45. Here's a picture of the Columbia River at sunrise and of my trusty Peugeot.

Antelope pot roast

Ok, so I haven't contributed anything to this blog yet. I guess my only excuse is that I try to spend as little time online as possible. Noticing the emphasis on naturalness and handmadeness on the account of James, I have something pretty natural and handmade to contribute. This is the flyer from a Wild Foods Feast that I hosted last weekend. It was fucking awesome to say the least! Our menu came from many people and included: Antelope, Wild Boar, Bear, Nutrea, Steamed Nettles, Nettle Pesto, Acorn bread and muffins, Dandelion/Chickweed/Miner's Lettuce Salad and Black Berry pie to top it off! My goal is to host these things once a month or so to teach and learn about the real bounty of our land that existed long before we enslaved it with agriculture. Shit, once you know how to survive off the land there's no need for fancy saddle bags. Although, that bag looks really good Mel and James! I want to see more pics.

stick to the soft stuff!

sounds great. don't mess with frames though. they're a bit out of your league. your skill is better suited to selling someone on a funny looking hat or bag your wife made. and it's dumb if you don't make the frame yourself anyway, and i would not ride a bike you made. but i would rock a sweet micro wedge saddle bag, or a tool roll out of some fine recycled sportscoat, waxed by hand in your oven.

james is a jackass

i like capilene. its shiny. and smells funny, like me.

a little rational thought

just so everyone knows, this isn't just about James and his crazy ideas. There are at least three other people here with as much or more expertise and certainly different crayz ideas. But when it comes down to it, we all just like to ride bikes. (and in the end we do pretty much all like cool old lugged steel bikes. some of us just think carbon is shiny too.) and somtimes technology can be our friend. (i don't always want to be on my lugged steel road bike.) -cory