Details, Details

I'm still sitting here at home, over 2 weeks after I originally wanted to leave on my epic adventure. The Wilmington trip was great, and an epic adventure in its own right. Strangely, as I was sitting at work the day after I got back, it felt as if it hadn't happened at all. 4 days? It only seemed like a dream... The only conclusion that I could draw was that it was obviously too short.

So why am I still here? Well, I realized that I needed more space, as I had decided to leave quite a bit of the long term gear I intended to take at home (not that big of a deal due to the clear weather forecast and short duration), so I ordered some front racks and bags. I also realized a few modifications I would like to make to my current gear, like adding netted closeable windows to my hammock sock to allow me to peek out and make sure no animals are going through my stuff in the night without exposing myself to any vicious mosquitoes or letting out too much warm air, or for added ventilation on the steamier nights.

I also needed to take advantage of the free tune up REI gives you when you purchase a new bike from them before the 6 month time limit was up. This was to be the start of a long process of getting my bike into its final touring-ready form. REI had my bike for about a week, which seemed like torture. When I got it back, I immediately gave it to Cycles de ORO in Greensboro to change out the 20 tooth back cog with a 22 tooth one, so that I could have some lower gears for the hills I would be encountering. I ordered the part when I turned my bike into REI, so it was ready to go when I got it back, and the switch was supposed to be done that same day. Unfortunately, my internal gear hub somehow broke (the shop said they had never seen one break that way and that the Alfine hub I have is top quality and something like this should never happen again. Shimano sent the shop a replacement hub for free). This added another week onto my trip departure date. At this point I started feeling like I would never get out of here, and fell into a small depression. Not being able to ride for several weeks, as well as some car issues my family was experiencing which left me stranded at the house most days, had me falling back down pretty fast. I needed to pack and clean and finish my projects, but I just couldn't find the motivation.

My front racks and panniers came in, and I eventually got the call that my bike was ready to be picked up. My high school art teacher, who I am still friends with, took me to go get it, and it was like being reunited with a long lost love: I couldn't stop smiling. Unfortunately, my elation only lasted about a day as I realized I couldn't get the racks on myself and the back brakes were causing just enough friction on the disk to not make any obvious rubbing noises but still make the wheel stop after a revolution or two, and nothing I did to adjust said brake was working. I took it back to the shop (the local one this time), and I left it there for a day to put my racks on and fix the brakes. When I got it home, I realized that some bolts needed to be cut shorter and my brakes were still not to my liking. Back to the shop it went.

After getting it back from Greensboro, I realized that my departure was eminent, and began the last minute sewing projects that I had been putting off, as well as started watching the weather, as a nasty cold front was on its way that would drop our pleasant 85 degree highs down to a chilly 65 and 57 degrees for two days (Sunday and Monday). After that it would be in the 70s: not as high as before, but not as cold as those two days either. Fall is definitely here and I need to get my butt in gear! I went for a 28 mile ride Sunday with my rear panniers full of stuff so that I could hopefully minimize any painful repeat of the 2nd days' difficulties on the Wilmington trip, especially since it's now been almost a month since I've done any riding! My new date of expected departure is Tuesday, the 9th. Better late than never.

Ride to Wilmington: Day 1

It was Tuesday, and I really needed to leave if I was going to make it to Wilmington by Friday (I still had to work one more weekend, after all). It was going to be a 108 mile ride starting at Stedman, a small town outside of Fayetteville, NC. I had slept in my hammock the night before to test it out: it had gotten down to about 57 degrees, and I was comfortable till about 60 with the fleece sleeping-bag-turned-underquilt I made, and another fleece blanket on top. As the first two nights of my adventure were predicted to have 55 degree nighttime temps, I decided to make a hammock sock before I left. I had some green ripstop laying around that I had bought for a different project that never happened, so I took it outside and played around with it. It was long enough for the job, but it needed another foot and a half to make it wide enough. Fortunately, I also had some black ripstop laying around. I cut a strip of black, and sewed it all into a long tube. Then I sewed one end up small and put a drawstring on the other. It turned out great!

Once my little project was all done, I still needed to pack. Then I needed to eat lunch (I was too nervous to eat anything but a sandwich). Then I needed to print off maps for my mom and myself. Finally I realized that I REALLY needed to stop stalling and go or I would be sleeping in the woods the first night because the park would be closed!

Stedman was surprisingly far to drive to, as I'd only ridden to it a few times on the back roads. It is along the NC bicycle route #5, which goes from Raleigh to Wilmington, and has a nice park with lots of covered picnic tables, a couple of water fountains, and port-o-potties. It only took a few minutes after arriving to load up and wobble off.

I could give you more play-by-play commentary of my ride to Jones Lake State Park, where I had decided to spend my first night. However, I think I will just list some highlights of the events and what I learned on my first day:
-A big, hard beetle kamikazed my crotch just a few miles in.
-I passed by a diamondback rattle snake right on the side of the road (it scared the crap out of me: my leg flew up onto the top tube and unintelligible expletives were flowing out of my mouth as soon as I saw it). I thought it was odd that it wasn't moving as I passed by, as it should have heard me coming and been scared off.  Then I saw that it no longer had a head. (I decided not to go back for a picture, just in case I saw wrong.)
-I learned that there will be absolutely no 3G internet on my trip for looking up maps, and that calls will be sketchy at best. And that your printed directions/map shouldn't only be useful to you if you are only on your intended route... (I missed a turn somewhere...)
-Getting lost doesn't mean you won't still see some beautiful things.
-You can not be in a rush on a bike. The extra effort you put in is not worth the meager gain in speed for the quicker drop in energy levels.
-Prevailing winds in the fall come from the North (at least for this area), and so going North should be avoided if possible, especially when combined with the lesson above this about being in a rush...

I got to the park at 6 pm: one hour after the offices closed, but two hours before the gates got locked. As the park was pretty much empty, I just decided to set up camp and get it sorted out in the morning.



Distance traveled: 33.391 miles
Max speed: 16.8 mph
Average speed: 10.1 mph
Time spent riding: 3 hours, 13 minutes

DIY mosquito net

One of the things I've found necessary when being in the woods in the summer is a way to keep those annoying mosquitoes off of you. I stopped to explore for a minute on one of my rides a few weeks ago and was unable to stay for more than about 5 minutes before I was doing the epileptic chicken dance to try to keep them off.

I slept under a mosquito net one summer when I went to camp many years ago, and discovered that I much preferred that to sleeping in the old cabins with the gaps in the floor where the spiders and mosquitoes that got in could get at you all night. With the net, I could thoroughly inspect my small bug free zone every night for intruders, and once I tucked it under the mattress ensuring that nothing could sneak in, I got some of the best sleep I've ever had while camping.

The mosquitoes here are vicious. They will bite you through your jeans without a second thought. To me, having a net that draped around the whole hammock was a no brainer. If those pesky blood suckers could get at the underside of my hammock, I would have an itchy backside the next day for sure. So I searched for a bugnet that would do the job. $50+!!! I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I mulled it over for weeks and asked my mom if we already had a net hiding in the garage or attic that I could have, and I tried to rationalize that by the time I leave they won't be so bad (oh the lies I tell myself sometimes).

Finally I went to Hobby Lobby (love that place) and got 8.5 yards of 1mm tulle netting in brown for about 9 bucks. (1 mm holes are small enough to keep out mosquitoes, but they are not small enough to keep out "no-see-ums" such as black flies and midges. You would need fabric with holes that are at most .6 mm for that.) It was what was left on the bolt and I figured that should be plenty. I came home and found this pattern. Fortunately, I had a zipper from when I deconstructed a kids beauty and the beast sleeping bag last fall when I was experimenting with underquilts. The zipper is only 5.5 feet long, but I figure I only need to be able to get in and out of one side anyway, and zippers are freaking expensive! You might be better off buying a cheap sleeping bag from Walmart just for the zipper if you decide to do this too and don't have one laying around in a closet somewhere. Or check a thrift store.

It's still a work in progress, but I feel great knowing that I could pull off an overnight trip soon now without much difficulty. Assuming it doesn't rain. A DIY tarp is also high on my to-do list.

Measuring your sit bones

If you've ever ridden a bike, you will probably agree that one of the biggest problems is a sore butt. Initially, this can be attributed to just not being used to riding. However, after a few weeks you might begin to notice specific things that bother you about your saddle: you keep sliding forward onto your hands which makes them go numb, or your lady parts keep getting squished, or you just can't seem to find a place on the saddle where it seems like your butt is actually being supported.

After taking my bike to the shop a few times and telling them my symptoms of this that and the other and having them making adjustments without any real relief, I decided it was time to look at getting a different saddle. I've had my eyes on a Brooks for a while, simply because it's supposed to be the golden standard of bike touring. However, I don't want to plop down about 100 bucks for something just because everyone else likes it without being sure that I will like it as well. So I decided I should make a genuine effort to measure my sit bones. I found some great ideas here.

I tried the the flour method first, which is basically dumping some flour in a gallon sized plastic bag, placing the bag on a hard surface such as a wooden bench, and sitting on it. I used some old nasty white corn meal I had laying around that should probably be thrown out...

I actually had a hard time distinguishing where exactly the bones started and ended, and tried a few times to get a good impression. After a while, I got the bright idea of using a permanent marker to draw on the bag to take in to the shop with me. I found the dry cornmeal to be very difficult to "read." I tried using less and less, thinking that maybe I could break through the layer of meal and see clearly through the bag where the bones were, but that didn't happen. My next bright idea was to keep only about a cup of cornmeal in the bag and add enough water to it to make it a gel-like consistency that would hold my fingerprints when pressed:

This worked a bit better, although I still felt like there was quite a bit of interpretation going on:

After I was satisfied with my markings, I rinsed out the bag and put a paper towel inside to help it dry faster. Then I pulled out the ruler to put some all important hard numbers to the whole thing. Reassuringly, both my dry and wet method produced the same outer sit-bone measurement of 6 and 1/4 inches.

I also decided to try the damp paper towel and printer paper method. This one was much simpler all around. Put a few drops of water on a paper towel, ball it up super tight to help distribute the moisture, lay it out on a hard surface with the clean dry paper on top, and sit on it for a few seconds.

This is what I got:  

 And look what happens when I put the paper behind the bag drawings I made:

What I'm going to call my "pressure zones" are about 7 inches wide. At just about 6 inches at the widest point, my current bike seat has definitely got to go...


I intend to take my baggie and paper to the shop with me when I go to look for a better fitting saddle. I assume it might even be helpful to be able to lay it over a potential candidate and see how my anatomy will line up on it.

Camping cup lid

One of the things I'm planning on doing quite a bit of to save money is to cook my own food. I looked at quite a few different camping cook sets from various places. I knew that I did not want non-anodized aluminum because, even though it is cheap and light, it is a very reactive material as I found out once when I used some aluminum foil to cover a casserole and the crust got discolored wherever it was touching the foil... I've been a little wary of aluminum touching my food ever since.

I ended up getting the GSI Glacier Bottle Cup from a sporting goods store for about $10. It's made of stainless steel, has a nifty fold away handle, but didn't come with a lid. Fortunately, I found this video on YouTube showing me how to make one:

I raided my pantry and found a can of pumpkin. But I didn't have a side opening can opener. After doing a tiny big of research on side opening can openers, I discovered that I wanted a smooth edge type and not one of those one touch jobs because they actually cut the can and leave sharp edges that you can cut yourself on. I asked around amongst my friends to see if anyone had a side opening can opener hiding in their possessions somewhere, but only one friend had the dangerous electric one. 

So I went to Ross and found one for $10. I really didn't want to buy a can opener to use only once for this project, but I really wanted a lid, and I rationalized that I can use it to help me make an alcohol stove a little later on. And there's always Ebay...

The top of the can was a little bit dented, and my lid doesn't fit on like the one in the video, but it does fit well enough in my opinion. I actually bought a can of chicken that was the same diameter for a second attempt, and it is much "prettier," but it still doesn't fit perfectly. Oh well. Now I just need to get a screw to put in the top for a little handle. And yes, I am aware of the fact that aluminum cans are made of aluminum. I can't win everything... It should be food grade at least since food was stored in it. That should count for something, right? 

Now to go make some pumpkin bread =)

Welcome to the adventures of me: Lady Grace!

Hello! I thought that since I'm planning an epic cross country bike tour and all, I should set up a new blog, you know, to let the people who love me keep up with me or maybe help others get a few ideas for adventures of their own.

I got into biking in the summer of '11 when I was up in Montana without a car. I tried the bus system for a while, but it took a long time to get anywhere, stopped running really early in the evening, and didn't run at all on Sunday. My commute to work was about 7 miles each way. At first it was a real challenge: I had a cheap $100 bike from Walmart, I didn't know hardly anything about bike maintenance, I didn't have a rack to get my stuff off my back, and I was out of shape. However, my determination (stubbornness) helped me get through it, and after about 2 months and a better $300 bike from Walmart (and some know-how about how to make proper brake and gear adjustments), I genuinely started to enjoy it. I'd never felt better.

When the summer ended and it was time for me to leave, I started dreaming about riding my bike down to Sacramento, CA, where I had a few close friends. I waited too long, however (and I was probably ill prepared anyway), and to avoid getting caught in the mountains in the dead of winter I decided to fly instead.

Fast forward a few months: I'm back with my parents in NC. I was trying to keep my biking habit alive because it made me feel so much better, when tragedy struck: I crashed hard near the end of a long ride and snapped my collarbone clean in half. I also probably got a good case of side whiplash, a partially dislocated sternoclavicular joint (where your collarbones meet in the middle under your throat), and a concussion, but those things remained undiagnosed due to my lack of insurance. I ended up getting a bad-ass titanium plate and screws put in to fix the bone (*so* thankful for hospital charity programs), but the whole thing scared me so badly that I swore off biking and got rid of my bike and everything that went with it. It ended up taking me over 6 months to completely heal, including regaining the muscle strength I had lost to atrophy, and I still get sore pretty quickly during really strenuous activities. Neck injuries are no joke. (Neither is genuinely thinking you are going to die on the side of the road...)

 

At some point in the spring though, during the days that the "weird" feeling in my chest, neck, and shoulder was almost easy to ignore, I started to get the urge to ride again. So I bought a new (fancy/expensive, not-Walmart) bike, and took it for a spin around the neighborhood. I couldn't even go 2 miles! I took it out 2 more times before it became a clothes rack in the living room. It sat there for 2 months, every time I looked at it was so mad at myself for buying something so expensive and not using it, and for being so out of shape. So I decided that I was really going to do this cross country tour, dang it!

So here I am. I've worked my way up to 28 mile rides on the flat land on the other side of the river. (I'm going to claim that this was also one reason I didn't last long the first time I went back out: my neighborhood has some killer hills). I've started buying the gear I want/need for long term travel on the road. And as much as I like to think I can afford all the fancy-smancy stuff I want now, when I have a job and am getting paid on a regular basis, I'm far from rich. And I really need to start doing the diy route. But not the half assed "I'm gonna get all this stuff to diy and then not actually finish the projects so I end up spending all this money on pile of half-baked junk" kind of thing. Like, I really need to follow through.

Case in point: before my accident, I bought a cheap hammock because I decided I actually don't like camping, mainly because I don't like sleeping on the ground (and I really like hot showers). Unfortunately, I plan on camping almost exclusevly to save money. So when I found out that some people camp with hammocks instead of tents, I thought "what a great idea!" Well, it was getting to be winter, so I learned about under-quilts. Have you seen how much they are going for? They are pretty darn pricey. But I was determined, so I decided to make my own. I couldn't afford down, so I bought some wool batting. I wanted it to be lightweight, and blend in in the woods, and be somewhat waterproof, blah, blah, blah, so I went and bought some green and grey ripstop nylon, and some grosgrain ribbon for the edge channels, and I can't even remember what else so that I could make it just the way I wanted. Then I hit the wall of "I don't want to mess up. What if I cut it wrong. What if I don't like it. What if, what if. what if." So it never got finished. I would lay it all out and pile it up and fold it in various ways and look at patterns online... and then I would sleep on it for a few days just to be sure, waiting for some sort of light bulb moment of inspiration that never came. Rinse and repeat. I really need to find all that stuff and finish what I started, because I'm going broke fast.

I'm planning on leaving for my epic trip sometime in mid to late September. That gives me about 2 months to get my act together. Before I leave I plan to make a bug net for my hammock, a tarp (either from a plastic painters drop cloth or the ripstop I bought for the underquilt. I haven't decided yet), an alcohol stove, and who knows what else. I'm sure I can think of more things I just have to have. I also bought a food dehydrator, which I had planned to use to dry enough veggies/fruits/meat for my trip, thinking that when dehydrated it would be small and light enough for me to take it all with me. I don't think that idea was very realistic now. Then I thought, "hey, I'll still make it all and just have my mom send me care packages!" However, I'm starting to doubt the legitimacy of that plan as well. I'm hoping once my panniers get here everything will start falling into place. (Cross my fingers)