Vancouver
Of the regular questions, “what’s the best city for riding bikes?” is a frequent one and I didn’t really have a solid answer until this summer spent in Vancouver during which I filled in well more than half the city and had the goddamn best time doing so. From the early mornings with @campcoffeeclub, to the afternoons and evenings spent rambling with @parkbaggingyvr, the @vancouver_critical_mass and hill climb party with @yvrfixed, and all my my nonsense noodles in between. I’ve never seen more people just _out on bikes_ in a city before nor have I seen more examples of well implemented traffic calming measures and bike lanes to and from places I *actually need to go.* I’d give ya a solid B+ for bikes, @cityofvancouver. It’s too bad your winters are typical PNW wet and grey otherwise you’d be a near perfect bike city.
Homework
Keeping busy has always been one of my favorite methods to overcome grief or tame rage or heal heartbreak sooo this week I’m assigning homework. Go for a ride, find something that most would categorize as trash, and make a bike thing out of it. I found this ravaged cone in an LA industrial park and turned it into fender flaps that honestly work fuggin great and look even better. If any of y’all make something you think is neat, please tag me in it and let’s make this trash-bike-crafts into a thing.
Installation assistance by @foragercycles and @silca_velo. Sticker by @perksandmini.
Takeatrip is best
This is an appreciation post for all the wonderfully strange little things that @takeatripco creates. From the My Little Bungees offered in a rainbow of colors to contain all your chaos to the over the top luxury of the dyneema Ultralunch for snacks carry and the adorable Baby Stem Bag in between. Oh and then there’s also the countless “bag” experiments that are more fine art pieces than something for EDC. The venn diagram of our following is probably a near perfect circle but in case some of y’all need some more whimsy added to your bikepacking game, they’re definitely the place to go.
Fourteen Thousand Mile Tape
@grepp.cc is known for making that very good adhesive free cloth tape that you can toss in the wash to make it brand spanky new BUT I instead thought hey let’s find out how long it can last with no cleaning?? How gross can it get and still be usable??
This week passed 14,000 miles / 22350 km on my tape (also just crossed 40,000 miles on the @omnium, maybe they’ll follow me back when I hit 50k 🤔) and it’s still hanging in there pretty well. The black fade to brown is beautiful. The body grime and grease polished in there is SO choice. Even this worn in it’s still as comfortable and grippy as it was on day 1 when installed at @twobikesknoxville. It’s become so personalized that I’m honestly having problems deciding when to swap it out and what to try next!
If anyone out there has suggestions on what tape I should test next, drop your tips down below. I’d love to see if anything else can hang on during the rigors of my kinda touring like Grepp has over the last 257 days. Also hat tip to @gevenalle for these shifters STILL going with ZERO problems.
Two Years on a Cargobike
Two years and one month ago (lol@me never getting a post up on time) I left Phoenix heading east with only the slightest clue of where I was headed. There was a definite weight of uncertainty in that first little bit rambling along the southern border around Florida and up the east coast stopping just long enough in cities along the way to get a taste of their various bike scenes. Feels impossible to know exactly when the switch was flipped in my head from a light “aw this is fun” to definitive “this is what I’m going to do with the rest of my life” but ain’t no way I’m going back.
There’s an infinite number of paths crossed, tips received, misfortunes overcome, detours to another to another detour, all nudging me in their own unique little ways towards where I am today. Thank you everyone for the last two years. Whether y’all know it or not, whether our bikes kissed or not, it all matters to me. I’ll never know which of the this and that lead to me rambling around LA with Traece for a hundred miles on a random Friday, but I’m grateful for every one of them.
Bike Gear Database feature interview
Excerpt from my interview with Barry Lachapelle, which can be read over at bikegeardatabase.com
Erik (known to many as @truemarmalade) is the first interviewee that I have met in real life, and meeting him made me a bit nervous. I'm a bit of an introvert. I'll admit before Erik showed up on the island, I was putting up walls to protect myself from incoming unknown human interactions. I have been following Erik for a while now and have seen a ton of his content on Instagram. Even though you see a person online, you never really know what they may be like in real life, especially when you've invited them to stay at your house for a few days.
But my pretense was unwarranted. Not only was Erik a fantastic houseguest and immediately got along with my dog, but I learned that he was also a designer, is a descendant of Benjamin Franklin, has bikepacked over 50,000km (31,000mi) in the past year and a half, and has managed to do it as a Type-1 diabetic and eating out of dumpsters. Erik became a fast friend in the few days he stayed with me.
I very quickly understood that not only is Erik smart as hell—he is able to communicate his many ideas and behaviors in an eloquent and convincing manner. We batted around ideas for cycling apps, talked about how he grew up, and everything in between. We spent a day experiencing how Erik lives on his bike. We pedalled road after road, aimlessly collecting Wandrer points and checking dumpsters in Victoria for food and other goodies.
My time with Erik taught me more than a few things. But mainly, I was inspired by his adaptability in embracing a minimalist, adventurous lifestyle through cargo bikepacking. His fearlessness, not just in his culinary and bikepacking adventures, but in how open and transparent he is about it all. If anything, Erik is his own human and seems more comfortable than most people I have met—something to admire.
OTATB / Open Toe All-Terrain
Rode over to Victoria to pay my friend Barry a visit and he let me borrow a very nice WZRD mountain bike for a bit of unloaded toes out off roading.
Spurcycle
I’ve been using this Spurcycle bell across multiple bikes for a total of just under 60,000 miles (~95k km).
When I rolled through Bend, OR I swung by their shop, it was freshened up with a brand new 🍊 hammer, and I don’t believe I’ve ever had this much love for an object this small before. Every bike needs a bell, better believe it!
YVRFIXED
An evening spent in Vancouver watching a bunch of people on bikes with no gears just beat the everlivin heck out of themselves, riding up and down a hill a dozen or so times.
