Backyard Playtime

Brant and I rode two miles out of our backyard and ended up at the foot of Irish Hills. It was my first time on this trail that overlooks our city. We chased the sun up the rocky path that is encased in black sage and other smelly local shrubs. And it was probably the best way to earn a sunset. 

Laundry Day

She may be a small bike, but she sure is powerful--a sturdy steed one might say. Yesterday was laundry day; Brant started the loads and I finished them. Teamwork. One day, we may own a washer, but until then we get to pedal our laundry around town and pose for silly photographs. Happy Tuesday everybody.

Rohloff Rollout

A quick warning to all of our readers, this post is heavy in "techno-babble", so if you are not interested equipminent information you might not want to read on.

Lauren has enjoyed her early experiences with the Rohloff.  She has found it simple, effective and best of all the chain can no longer teasingly bounce between gears to induce ride frustration.  Another inherent benefit, is the system's ability to readily adapt to different gear ranges.

Much of this post has been adapted from Sheldon Brown's adaptation of Andy Blance's "Living with a The Rohloff Speedhub".  In this post, gain ratios are expressed in gear inches or rollout, which is simply the linear inches traveled for every one full revolution of the crankset.  The lower the number the easier the gear and vise versa.  If you are having a difficult time deciphering this concept please visit Sheldon Brown's site for an explanation.

My original inclination when setting up the Speedhub was to match the high gear of a typical 27 speed mountain bike.  Since the hub gears are predominantly under-drive, the hubshell or the rim rotates less than one revolution for every revolution of the rear cog, I chose to set it up initially with a 46 tooth chainring and the stock 16 tooth cog.

In the table below the first row is the rollout of the Rohloff set up with the aforementioned gear ratio and row "b" is a common "different" gears provided by a fast touring derailleur set up 46/38/26 tooth chainrings and a cassette with a low of 32 and a high of 11 teeth.  The derailleur set up has a slightly higher gear range than the Rohloff's 524% with a range of 537%.

Rohloff gear inches compared to a "fast" derailleur touring bike

In an attempt to get a feel for the low gears needed for loaded touring, we have done a number of local mountain bike rides.  With the hub set up in this manner the low gears do not seem to be low enough.  Through some research and personal recommendations we decided to evaluate the lowest gear recommended by Rohloff, 38X16 to evaluate the difference.  Below the gear inches of the Rohloff with the aforementioned set up are compared to a more typical 27 speed mountain bike, which has a range of  618%.

Rohloff gear inches compared to a standard 27 speed mountain bike.

Removing the crank with the 46 tooth chainring

The bike with the new 38 tooth chainring ready to ride

This set up seems like it will be a better match for the type of riding that we expect to encounter. While you lose the high end gear, bjike touring is not a race and it is more important to have low gears to save your knees.  Stay tuned to hear about the result.

In Love

Happy Valentines Day

I am ecstatic to share my travels with you and curious to see where the road will lead us.

Today I got some practice shooting with our camera.

art pop filter

macro scene setting

Lauren, thanks for the fun and the flowers.  

These photos were taken with our Olympus PL-2 micro 4/3 camera fitted with a 17mm pancake lens.

Dark Roads to Tasty Burgers

We had a jam-packed weekend. Brant and I planned a light overnight cycling trip to San Simeon on Saturday with our dear friends Craig and Jane. Jane, a track star and avid backpacker, has been a little wary of cyclo-touring, until we offered her the use of our tandem.   So the plan was for Craig and Jane to bike on ahead to San Simeon, set up camp, and once I got off of work, Brant and I would meet them for dinner in Cambria. I worked from 8:30-to 4pm on Saturday, came home to find a tuned up pair of bicycles and an almost packed pair of panniers. By 5pm we were on the road, and it was dark by Morro Bay.  The combination of dark and a headwind made for an interesting ride and a long awaited burger...

I had never ridden so far in the dark. And it made me appreciate my epic light system. Two months ago I bought a ten year old Schmidt dynamo hub; and this Christmas Brant bought me a beautiful light for it, the Schmidt Edulux. I won't bring the hub with me on our trip in June but I will bring the light. And on a dark highway, a powerful light made the difference in the world.

Around 7:30 we met Craig and Jane for some fantastic beers and burgers before biking to our camp. 

We got a good night sleep (minus the fact that I forgot my sleeping pad, good thing Brant likes to share). We awoke, made impeccable coffee, moseyed our way to breakfast, and back down the Pacific Coast Highway. 

And by 3:30 pm I was back at work...

Greener Pastures

Monday, January 23rd was the official public opening and ribbon cutting for the California Polytechnic State Universities Algae Field Station.  For the last year and a half I have been working with my advisor Tryg Lundquist evaluating the operability of High Rate Algae Ponds (HRAPs) for the treatment of municipal waste water and production of bio-fuel feedstock.  What started in 2008 with 4 tiny ponds run by one grad student, Dan Frost, has now become seventeen ponds run by several grad students and about a dozen undergrads.  My comrade, Louis, and I have spent the last summer and much of the fall quarter building this new facility--from the ground up, led by engineer and designer, Ian Woertz.

The Team

Lauren and I with the Ponds

The ponds are located on city land at our local wastewater treatment facility. The algae ponds are innovative and appealing because they are simple, use far less energy than the average treatment process and, in the end, produce a usable resource. 

This experience has offered me a great opportunity to gain both a greater understanding of engineered systems, especially in the field of water and wastewater treatment, but more importantly management and delegation skills that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.  Specific skills that I have developed include running an analytical lab, a small understanding of biologically driven treatment systems, data collection, and analysis.

Incredible, right?

Now comes the hard part. Last spring I was accepted into the blended masters program here at Cal Poly.  This program allows you to pursue a masters degree concurrently with a bachelors.  I was all set to produce the next HRAP thesis on nutrient removal when...I left the program.  

For years now I have known that one day I would graduate and at that time I would travel the world by bike.   In the last year my brother and I decided that we would do the first leg across the United States together before he was swallowed the following fall by medical school. My thousands of miles spent touring and the years spent volunteering as a mechanic at the SLO Bike Kitchen have both encouraged me and inspired me to really pack my stationary life up and bike into the sunset. 

This all became incredibly more complex when Lauren stepped into my life.  Never before had I considered the possibility that I would be able to share my world travels with someone else.  This issue, admittedly, was a result of my own stubbornness associated with a desire to have control over speed, duration, and type of traveling that I would be doing.  Lauren put all of these fears to rest with her own traveling ambitions, strong legs and even stronger will.

Now I was faced with a tough decision, travel with my brother and continue on to East Asia with Lauren without hesitation, or be bounded to research and a subsequent thesis sometime next fall, either at the expense of the summer trip altogether or my sanity before and after.  I wanted out.

The good news is, I haven't closed the doors for the opportunity for grad school in the future. I never thought I would say this (in fear of sounding like my lovely mother), but, good grades do pay off, and meaningful recommendations from the PhD smarties are even more valuable. I would just like to come back to it when I can dedicate my focus and my passion to my grad work--not to the open road. 

This trip marks the beginning of my new educational path, one of self discovery from the seat of my bicycle rather than the lab.  Lauren and I want to visit community level water and sanitation projects around the globe.  We want to know what is being done, how the conditions can be improved, and to raise awareness through reporting.

Stay tuned to see what we find.

4 Months 3 Days till departure.

California Rainin'

It's raining. We finally have fenders on our bicycles for a reason. The streets have puddles and the view from our windows is magic.