Adventure Lab 2017

Most of the time it's better to ride bikes than to talk about riding bikes. Occasionally, though, and especially when it's cold outside, it's kind of nice to sit down with a bunch of friends and a few beers and talk about riding bikes. 

Earlier in January, a few folks headed up to Yawp! and we did just that. Our friends Tiffany, Kristen, and Joe were kind enough to share some photographs and regale us with accounts of bikepacking trips past.

Rather than try to recount their adventures second hand, I'm just going to post their routes and some of my favorite pictures from their presentations. If you want to chat with them about their bikes or their routes, I'm betting they'll be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Tiffany followed the Great Divide route through Colorado on her Surly ECR. She had never bikepacked before, and decided to set out on her own for a week. Here's some of what she saw:

These were the only other two people she saw on bikes that week, and they were on ECR's, too.

If you see Tiffany around town (and you will--she rides through it every day) give her a high five.

Kristen and Joe have done a lot of bikepacking in this country and others. You make know Joe as the man behind J.Paks. (If you don't think you've heard of J.Paks before, you actually have! Scroll back up and look more closely at Tiffany's framebag.) Last summer they took two weeks and rode the Colorado Trail in its entirety. 

It was a real treat to have these folks share their stories with us. It's our hope that if you came to the Adventure Lab and heard their stories, or even if you simply enjoyed their photographs, you'll spend less time talking about the adventures you want to have and spend more time having them.

Fat Biking and the Problem with Type 1 Fun

Humans like knowing what to expect. I was recently talking to my friend Chris at Call to Arms, and he said a brewery has to offer a few beers consistently, year-round. People like trying new beers, but most of them need to know that they can count on the availability of a certain beer before they'll become a taproom regular.

An adventure is by definition an unusual experience, which means we sometimes won't like what we get. Snapping your handlebars in the middle of the Colorado Trail is for sure an adventure, but it sucks. Like beer drinkers, cyclists like to take certain things for granted--that their bike won't break--while being open to a certain amount of unusual experience.

Two friends and I recently rode fatbikes near Ward, Colorado because, you know, adventure.

I almost never make it up to the trails around Ward. I once spent a week near Ward on an adventure of another sort. My rural high school sent five of us from a Leadership class to a weeklong camp that we thought was a Leadership Camp. It was instead a retreat for urban teenage gang affiliates and other troubled or homeless kids. For an introverted, dorky kid who liked to read, solve crosswords, and listen to Sting, staying in a dormitory where there was knife-throwing, bicep-measuring, and a lot of Insane Clown Posse was perhaps the most unusual experience. 

That is probably a story for another time.

Fatbiking lends itself to adventure because conditions are constantly changing. No two days are quite the same temperature, and snow forms an endless number of surfaces, textures, and consistencies.

It was busy for a Monday, and to our surprise we were the only people on bikes. Perhaps this should've been a clue.

We emerged from our heated vehicle with warm fingers and toes, but by the time we situated our gear and set our tire pressure--which required removing gloves and applying pliers to frozen valve stems--we were cold. Because the stoke was high and the day was young, this didn't much matter to us. We assumed that once we got moving we'd warm up. That was mostly true.

Yukon Cornelius: the greatest prospector in the north!

Conditions were strange and the going was slow. New snow had obscured the packed trail underneath, so it was difficult to get moving, difficult to stay moving, and once moving was easy to bust through the crust and sink up to the axles and fly off the bike and make a fatbiker's snow angel, which is a special version of the snow angel that resembles the silhouette of an angel that someone dropped a piano onto. Despite the slow going, there were extended, pleasant interludes of real actual bike riding.

We followed the road for awhile, which involved some walking and falling down. Then we tried singletrack, which involved constant walking and falling down. Here is where we encountered the problem with Type 1 fun, which is the type of fun we'd set out to have without discussing it or even thinking about it. On a day ride like this, Type 1 fun is simply what a person expects.

If you aren't familiar with the different Types of Fun, here's a brief explanation. 

Type 1 fun is simply "fun."

Type 2 fun happens often in cycling--it's not fun until you get to reflect upon the experience (or brag about it if that's your MO) after the fact.

Type 3 fun is an expedition you barely survive. It's not even fun, later, to reflect upon how you lost all those toes. Then there's Type 0, which is fun at the time but not fun to think about later (tequila).

Type 4 is where you deconstruct the paradigm of fun and conclude that the notion of fun is meaningless.

Some people argue that Types 1.5 and 2.5 exist. Having such an abundance of fun that it must be classified and qualified and hairs must be split about it seems a little bougie to me, not to mention a Type of analytical anti-fun in itself. However, I'm going to try to make a point about Type 1 fun here in a minute, so let's take a breather and look at a picture for a minute.

The problem with (some) fatbiking and Type 1 fun is that fatbiking is often strenuous in a way the other kinds of cycling are not. Yes, pedaling through deep snow is strenuous in the good old-fashioned, calorie-nuking way. However, you sometimes have to deal with "unusual experiences."

Simply mounting your bike and making it move forward can be difficult. Really difficult. It often takes 5-10 attempts to get rolling. The foot you have on the ground may sink into the snow or slip, causing you to topple. Because your gearing is so small, one-quarter of a pedal stoke is enough to move the bike forward about an inch, so you have to hop on and immediately get your feet going like Scooby-Doo's. Once you mount the bike and get your feet going, your rear wheel may dig straight down instead of rolling forward. Either wheel may slip off the packed trail into the powdery abyss. You often have to ride with your front wheel turned sideways like a plow while you fight for balance and traction, and that can at any moment throw you into the woods.

If that sounds frustrating and exhausting, it is, and frustration and exhaustion are the two supports upon which the bridge between Types 1 and 2 fun is built.

The Fatbike Paradox: they stay upright until you ride them.

It took us something like two and a half hours to ride five miles. We pushed our bikes a lot. We sank into snow up to our waists. I probably threw my leg over the toptube 200-300 times. Was it Type 2 fun?

Only open seasonally for Type 2's.

Motor boat, snowtor boat.

But here's the thing: this ride was Type 1 fun--it just didn't take the shape of the fun we expected. It's like buying a bag of cookies you think are chocolate chip but are actually macaroons. You might be upset because you wanted chocolate chip cookies and don't have them, but odds are the macaroons are good, too, if you can get around your expectation to taste the cookie in your hand. What could be bad about riding through country like this, even if we rode 20 feet at a time?

Cue the piano:

Chad rides a Twreck! Har-d har.

Cornelius finds more silver than gold.

"An adventure" is not something I knew I was having when I was curled up on my bunk at the "hoods in the woods" camp I had expected to be something else. I learned invaluable lessons during that week that I never would've learned playing icebreaker games at a leadership camp. Perhaps this is proof that the best of adventures can be simultaneously disappointing and epiphanic.

That was what is known as Type 2 philosophizing, or Type 4 BS.

In the end, we survived, we had fun, we had coffee. Whatever kind of fun it was, it was the right kind.

*By the way, if you didn't already know the Surly Ice Cream Truck is a Type of Fun all its own (Type 5"), you can read more about it here.

**And if you're curious about what fatbiking is like when it's regular ol' fun type fun, read this.

***Chad also wrote about our ride. Check it out on the blackriver website.

Yawp! Company Vs. the Whale*

Call us the Yawp! Company. Some weeks ago--never mind how long precisely--having nothing on our schedles and little or nothing to interest us in Colorado, we thought we might shuttle about a little in a van and see the sandstoney part of the world. It is a way we have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever we find ourselves growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in our souls; whenever we find ourselves involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and passing more hours in front of teevees than miles on a bicycles, we account it high time to get to Moab as soon as we can.

Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all our curiosity. 

We always go to sea as sailors because of the wholesome exercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck. 

Thus to and fro pacing, beneath his slouched hat, at every turn he passed his own wrecked boat, which had been dropped upon the quarter-deck.

The next day was exceedingly still and sultry, and with nothing special to engage them, the Pequod's crew could hardly resist the spell of sleep induced by such a vacant sea. 

It was my turn to stand at the foremast-head; and with my shoulders leaning against the slackened royal shrouds, to and fro I idly swayed in what seemed an enchanted air. 

The whale now lay at a little distance, vertically thrusting his head up and down in the billows as he leaned to the push--the now rising swells with all their confluent waves.

If to Starbuck the apparition of the Squid was a thing of portents, to Queequeg it was quite a different object.

"No bones broken, sir, I do hope," came Stubb's honest remark.

"Breech!"

Rising with his utmost velocity from the furthest depths, the Whale thus booms his entire bulk into the pure element of air, and piling up a mountain of dazzling foam, shows his place to the distance of seven miles and more. In those moments, the torn, enraged waves he shakes off, seem his mane; in some cases, this breaching is his act of defiance.

But ere this was done, Pip, who had been slily hovering near by all the while, drew nigh to him where he lay and took him by the hand; in the other, holding his tambourine. 

The helmsman who steered that tiller in a tempest, felt like the Tartar, when he holds back his fiery steed by clutching its jaw.

He was one of that crew, his shouts had gone up with the rest, his oath had been welded with theirs; and stronger he shouted and more did he hammer and clench his oath.

*All of this text is either stollen directly from Melville or stollen and then mutilated. Why? Because one of the trails we rode is called Captain Ahab, and I don't believe a gag can go on too long. 

Cycling Goals are Trivial; Try Setting One Anyway

In school it seemed like I couldn't go for a month without being asked to complete some kind of worksheet about goal-setting. I always hated it. What are your goals for this course? What are your goals for this semester? Are you happy being you? What kind of person would you like to be? My impulse was to fill in the blanks with answers like, "In 100 years we'll all be dead."

These days I like to pretend I'm not quite so fatalistic, and in many ways setting goals has been helpful for me as an adult. I tend to make poor decisions in the moment. If I didn't set goals, I'd be at the mercy of my impulses.

For instance, while I do own a car, I've set a goal to not drive it unless I'm driving to a trailhead. If it weren't for that goal, I'd drive everywhere because I'm lazy and because it's cold outside. However, because I've set that goal I almost always ride my bike around town, and am happier and likely healthier for it.

Part of the reason I remain resistant to cycling goals is that most everyday riders don't have them. Riders who enjoy racing seriously have them, and because I am not fast and never will be I am outside of the cycling subculture most congruent with goal setting. Know what, though? I'm going to set one anyway, and you should think about setting one yourself.

Yawp! is therefore going to offer a goal completion program. All you have to do to sign up is fill in the brief form below. Share your riding goal for 2017. Your goal could be to ride 10,000 miles. It could be to bikepack for a week, or to race the Iditarod. It could be to commute by bike 250 days this year, or 200, or even 12. Maybe you want to learn how to wheelie for 100 yards.

Anyway, at the end of the year, we'll have a prize for anyone who's reached their goal. You might not like setting goals, but I'll bet you like prizes.

You may be thinking that trying to ride 10,000 miles in a year is just silly. It is silly. It's a meaningless number (no matter how many miles you ride in a year almost no one will be impressed). However, if you're like me you spend a good portion of your free time seeing things on teevee that don't really need seeing and fretting about dumb things that don't deserve your attention. Maybe setting goals will remind us to go outside and enjoy ourselves instead of queueing up yet another compilation video of cats falling into fish tanks. While I think riding 10,000 miles is a pretty fine goal, it won't be mine. I have no idea how many miles I ride in a year because I've previously taken an ethical stance against buying a bike computer (I went so far as to buy a tiny abacus that I zip-tied to my handlebars in order to make fun of bike computers, but it rattled so obnoxiously that even I, with my appetite for all things obnoxious, tired of it). I've changed my stance, and this year I'll be using Blackriver to track all of my stats. Not because stats matter or because I care, but simply out of curiosity. (Blackriver isn't competitive, like other popular cycling apps, and it focuses on the dissemination of quality rides, which is why I like it).

Here are some of our goals (thanks for asking):

Levi: Finish the Land Run 100 and then conditionally, maybe, the Dirty Kanza.

Scott: Commute by bike 200 days this year. Bikecamp for a weekend.

Brian: Gain over 500,000 feet of elevation (and also get faster than Cullen).

Some Fine Print

Challenge yourself. If commuting 12 days this year will not be a challenge, set a different goal.

Buying a new bike, getting your touring rig all situated, or finally getting your brakes dialed are all good goals, but they don't count toward this program. Your goal must have to do with riding.

Set as many goals as you like; only one prize per participant.

Ideally, we'll have a party at the end of the year and distribute prizes at that time. However, if you want to get in on this and don't live nearby, we'll ship your prize to you if you're willing to cover the shipping. 

You have until January 31st to submit your goal.

To sign up, just fill out the form below. If you want to share your goal publicly, you can additionally make a comment in the comments section below. 

Yawp! Cyclery's 2016 Gift Guide

Yup, gift guides are often pretty useless, but they're fun to make and fun to look at. Here's ours! Some of this stuff we sell and some of it we don't, but we like all of it. If one silly gift guide isn't enough, you can see last year's guide here.

TIMBER BELL

Front range trails are getting insanely crowded, especially on weekends. I have yet to use this bell without being thanked by hikers. It eliminates surprises, and helps you communicate your presence far in advance. I had to wrap the inside of the bell with tape to mute it a little, but it's brilliant for keeping all trail users safe and happy.

B is for bicycles

It's an alphabet book that's all about bikes, and there's an owl on every page! We here at the shop have now learned our alphabet up to R.

Singletrack maps

At Buffalo Creek this past season I saw six dudes all crowding around a single tiny GPS screen. Someone who was not lost was trying to explain to five people who were lost where to go, and it didn't seem to be going well. Also, paper maps never run out of batteries. Not only that, but Singletrack Maps is a Colorado company.

Frame bags by J. paks and oveja negra

 Tired of carrying a heavy pack? Yeah, there's no reason to. With a billion frame bag options out there, you can put the weight on the bike where it's more comfortable, and where it lowers your center of gravity. Both J. Paks and Oveja Negra are here in Colorado, and their bags are of a higher quality than "off the shelf" bags.

(Also, please enjoy our "prom" backdrop).

torque wrench

For folks who enjoy working on their own bikes, a torque wrench is a necessity. Both under- and over-torquing can lead to disaster, so this little tool will prolong the life of your bike as well as your body.

adventure knowledge

Salsa has been into bikepacking for a long time, and they have lots of helpful tips to offer. This is a great resource for people who are looking to get into riding with their stuff. 

tool roll 

North St. Bags are handmade in Portland, Oregon. They're lightweight and very tough. 

North st. bags backpack

Many of the cycling bags I've used are tough but don't offer options for organizing the little stuff. I've been using this bag for a few months now, and I love it. It's lightweight, exactly the right size, and holds everything I need exactly where I want it so I never have to fish around in one giant compartment for a pen or my headlight. 

ibex wool cap

Do you like cold ears? Nobody does. This merino wool hat fits under a helmet and will make your ears happy.

socks

Do you like cold feet? Nobody does. These will keep your feet warm so that maybe you won't have to put your cold feet on your poor husband when he is trying to sleep. Ahem.

Sweet Bloom makes some of the best coffee anywhere, and they roast it just down the street from us. 

handmade Cards and prints

My July is here in Denver, and makes some great greeting cards. Link to her Etsy page to get you some.

Ratchet Rocket multi-tool

This is the most versatile and efficient multi-tool I've ever carried. It's not awkward or bulky to use like other tools can be, and with the extender you can easily access any bolt on the bike. If it included a chain tool, it would be perfect.

Surly junk strap and loop strap

These straps are infinitely useful. I keep one in just about every bag I own. Here are just a few of the ways I've used them over the years: pet leash, belt, attaching stuff to bikes, attaching bikes to vehicles, bathroom stall lock, shoelace, lasso. The ingenious Loop Strap is fairly new, and you can read about it here.