Later February Updates

The irony of this image is the playground no longer exists, usurped by the housing going up on the left.

Hello to all my followers, all four of you! You may have noticed a downturn of blog posts over the course of, oh, the past two weeks or so. There are a number of reasons that can be boiled down to three core ones: busy with other life things (like working up to five days a week at the hostel), a dearth of doing fun bike things, and not much inspiration to write. I do have my ever-growing running list of stuff that I want to write for this blog, but nothing’s grabbing me right now. Hopefully that will change soon.

While it’s been a while since I did a fun bike ride, lately I have been doing a heck of a lot of planning for fun bike rides. Besides hostel work, illustration work, and Doctor Who viewings, this seems to be all that I’ve been up to as of late. So what bike fun do I have in store?

• Right now I’m mostly working on the next Three Speed Ride, which is less than two weeks away (Sunday, March 3rd) and the associated Society of Three Speeds. Anyone who shows up on the ride will get some fun stuff as being “founding members” of SOTS. So check out the attendant links for more info.
• In the same vein, I’m once again helping with Portland’s Tweed Ride, slated for Sunday, April 7th. This one promises to be quite fun. Not only are we doing the ride, we are having a Tweed Clothing Exchange on Tuesday March 5th at Velo Cult to help everyone get ready for this dashing event.
• And another bike fun organization that I happen to be involved with is Cycle Wild. We finally hammered out the majority of dates for bike camping in 2013. You should come along on a ride if you can. The next one is on April 13-14 to Sunset campground in Gifford Pinchot National Forest (Washington State). I should be leading that one up.
• I’m also trying to sort out the other bike rides I’ll be doing from now up until Portland’s big-up bike fun festival, Pedalpalooza, in June. In the interest of keeping things fresh, I’m planning some new and different rides this year. Of course I will post info here when it becomes available. And in related Pedalpalooza news, I’ll once again be on the committee to pick out this year’s artwork. (To get on the committee, you have to have done the art at least once. And once you’re on, it’s a lifetime thing like the Supreme Court.) Info about submitting art for 2013 will be coming out shortly.

In bike news, I’ve been riding the heck out of the Raleigh Crested Butte. On Thursday I’ll be doing a bunch of stuff to it with my friend Ed Groth. I’ll fill you in with the details when they are done.

And I’m also starting to do some stuff to the Rudge Sports. I haven’t ridden the bike in eons* and I want to do some more stuff to it to get it ready for both the Three Speed Ride and then the Tweed Ride. I just had the bottom bracket overhauled along with replacing the left side crank, both of which were long overdue. There will be more tweaking in the next few weeks, which I’ve started with playing with handlebars and stem. When riding to the bike shop the other day, the first two blocks was “What the heck is this weird bike I’m riding?” followed by “I’ve forgotten how fun it is to ride this bike.” After the updates I should be riding this bike a lot more.

But of course the big thing is I need to ride my bike more. Hopefully my schedule will open up on one of my days off next week (and the weather will hold out) to allow me to go for one. Spring has been tantalizing us, with a high of 61F/16C on Friday. I can’t wait.

*Also to note, I don’t think I’ve ridden my Long Haul Trucker since November, which is the longest stretch of not riding it since I got it!