So I actually got permission from the mrs. to head out on another ride Saturday. I’ve been itching to check out some of the rides around St. George, and since it was about 30 degrees warmer than Beaver it was a no brainer. Mrs Scott and the in-laws dropped me off at the trailhead and then took off to do some shopping. Although I had done my research at utahmountainbiking.com, it was still a little unnerving taking off into the unknown. Luckily I was riding the bearclaw-poppy trail that gets tons of traffic, so there were plenty of people to follow.

Anyway, it’s an awesome trail and it was the perfect time of year to ride. Unfortunately, I did have a few hiccups. First, I was alone and unfamiliar with the trail so I didn’t quite feel comfortable bombing it off the frequent blind drops. Also, I left my helmet in Beaver, so I wasn’t as excited to crash as I usually am. Last, about halfway through, my derraileur cable broke.

So, I pretty much was stuck in high gear, which was fine for downhill, not awesome for uphill. I don’t think I’ll ever ride a fixie mountain bike.

My kids are still easily impressed, so I took a photo of this skull shaped rock for them, at the end of the trail. It totally worked, maybe because they just watched Goonies.

Anyway, a lonely, helmetless, broken derraileur bike ride in sunny St. George beats shopping with the in-laws any day of the week. Now I just need to get a good 4 day bike trip to St. George planned so I can hit some of the other rides down there.

So this Thanksgiving with the in laws I decided to take along my mountain bike, and see if it would get warm enough for a ride. Luckily there is less than an inch of snow on the ground here, instead of the foot of snow in Salt Lake. Just before cabin fever set in this morning, I managed to sneak out for a ride as Karen got the dinner ready.

Normally the hills above Beaver are hot, dry and uninviting, but I think this is the perfect time of year to explore them. It was below freezing so the ground was firm and the snow wasn’t bad if I stayed in the tracks.

Anyway, I did a 15 mile loop up Baker canyon to North Creek, and then back to Baker along the ridges. The cabin fever was practically cured by the time I got back, and even better, I was ready to pig out on some Thanksgiving dinner.

Anyway, I’ve been riding my trike to work, 3-5 days a week, for 2 1/2 years now. Before the trike, I pedaled my mountain bike the 6 miles each way for 2 years. I love the trike for commuting, and the tailbox has made a huge difference. It’s purpose is somewhat to improve my aerodynamics, somewhat to improve my visibility to motorists, but mostly to give me a nice storage place for my gear/clothes/whatever I need to haul to work. There is a hatch door on the top that opens, and gives access to the space inside.

You can kind of see the lid here, I’ll have to shoot some photos of the inside sometime. I usually carry my clothes, lunch, some bike tools, and my keys/phone etc in here on the way to work, but I’ve also fit a camera bag and tripod in here at the same time. Recently, I even put new brake rotors for our van, (that was on jack stands in the garage) in the tailbox. Luckily Checker is only about 2 miles from my house. They probably weighed well over 50 pounds, and the box handled it just fine. There is an aluminum bar for support, that goes over the wheel well inside, down to the accessory mounting holes above the hub.

Anyway, the tailbox has been great. Before the box, I used an standard bike rack and panniers. I had a fender, but all that did was keep the spray off of me by splashing all over the panniers. So snowy or rainy days usually meant that I hauled some soaking wet, muddy bags up to my desk. Everything inside had to be in plastic bags so they didn’t get drenched too. The box is awesome. There is a wheel well underneath that acts as a fender and seals the bottom from moisture. I just throw a duffel bag inside with my stuff, and I can pull it out, completely dry, when I get there.

I have been using the tailbox for a year now, and at first I was worried all of the taped seams were going to be constantly peeling off, or it was going to fall apart, but it has performed like a champ. Here is how I built mine:

First step: Pay some little kid to do all the manual labor.

Okay, just kidding. That is my helper Jaxon. First step is to get that old Ikea or refrigerator box you’ve been hoarding and cut it up in to pieces until it fits. I drew up some plans and kind of just kept trimming until the joints came together. Packaging tape was used to hold it together. This was worth the time, because cardboard has similar properties to the coroplast, so I could spot places where the curves were too complex, etc. There were just too many bends, curves and holes where the seat posts had to go through to just start cutting the coroplast without a pattern. In case you are wondering, coroplast is like a plastic corrugated board, used by print shops for things like those yard or election signs. I got mine at a print shop supply house in Salt Lake.

Next step, cut apart the prototype and lay the pieces over your sheet of coroplast.

This is a 4′ x 8′ piece of orange coroplast, with the pattern laying over the top. The large piece with holes in it is for the bottom of the box with a piece that goes up behind the seat. The box is fully enclosed to keep out moisture and so it doesn’t act like a parachute as I ride. The extra coroplast was used to make the wheel well, which I measured from the assembled box, so those pieces aren’t seen above. Once you cut out your pieces, leaving extra for joints, then you can start putting it together. Like I said, this takes a while so, I didn’t stop to take pictures. I had to get it done in a weekend so I could ride to work again monday. Joining the pieces is fairly straightforward. Glues typically don’t stick to coroplast very well or at all, so zip ties were used to join the pieces. A small hole is made with a soldering iron, about 1/2 inch from the edge. Then a  zip tie is threaded through and cinched tight. I placed zip ties every 3 inches or so. I also cut a long skinny piece of coroplast, comprising of 1 rib of the material, and placed that on the inside, along the joint, with the zip tie circling it. I think this has helped so that the holes don’t pull through, and so that stuff doesn’t push through the gaps between zip ties. Once everything was put together, I took orange electrical tape, and taped along the outside of the seams to cover the zip ties. I think it has held so well since it isn’t structurally holding it together, but just cosmetically placed over the joints.

It has held up through the heat of summer, and the cold of winter. I ride just about every day, in the slush, rain or snow, so I feel like it has been thoroughly tested now. Plus, if you thought your trike was a babe magnet before, wait until you put one of these on there. Someday, maybe I post photos of the joints, lid, and inside, if I don’t build a full fairing before that.

So, Dirk had a day off over the 4th so we headed up to the Crest trail. Since it was an odd numbered day, we avoided Mill Creek and went down to the Mill D trailhead. This was my first time on this somewhat technical downhill trail, but that didn’t keep me from trying to bomb it the whole way. I had 3 pretty gnarly crashes, one in to a substantial aspen tree. My ribs are feeling good enough now that I think they are just bruised, hopefully not cracked. Dirk put this video together from his GoPro Hero helmet cam. Good job Dirk. I’ll be ready for another in 2-3 weeks.

So, for my May mountain bike ride I went for an early morning excursion with Dirk, Casey, and Cam up Little Cottonwood Canyon. We got off early and had enough cars to shuttle it twice for extra downhill goodness. The small uphill we did up to the ruins actually was nice. I used to look for any way I could to shuttle a ride, but now that I ride daily to work, I don’t mind some nice climbs now and again. The video is Cam jumping over Dirk on one of the side trails. Not quite Nitro Circus level, but still awesome in it’s own lame kind of way.

Here is the trailhead, looking up at the canyon where the trail starts. It was about 40 degrees, cows were grazing, and it looked like the start of a great ride.

Here is the same spot, after we finished. It only took about 2 hours to ride the 10 mile loop.

This is the climb at the start of the ride. It’s about a mile, steep and rocky. It almost killed me. I ride a recumbent to work every day, but there was a whole new muscle group at work here. This made the rest of the ride, including the snow, seem easy. When we reached the saddle, a light sprinkle started to fall, it was actually kind of refreshing.

Then the heavy clouds and snow rolled in. It just got worse from here. I can’t believe how narrow the trail is. It is only about a foot wide and you don’t ever dare get up too much speed since there are quite a few rocks embedded in the trail. It’s a pretty technical ride, just because there isn’t a lot of room to maneuver and the rocks surprise you along the way. It would have actually been a lot of fun to hang out and enjoy the views of the Great Salt Lake if we weren’t in a hurry to get back to a dry car.

You might think we had a bad case of explosive diarrhea, but that was just the mud.

The super-v was properly inaugurated on it’s first ride. My GT was a hardtail, and I can say I definitely liked the full suspension. It did well for a 10 year old bike. Hopefully this is the first of many rides we go on together. Oh, and thanks Sam for not calling it off, even though we knew we were in for nasty weather.

So last week I visited the good folks at GAC in Portland for a press check of a catalog and magazine that featured some of my photos for Stampin’ Up. It was a good experience to see first hand the limitations and possible adjustments of an image on press. I was just as impressed with the city of Portland itself though. My favorite was this trike outside of Powell’s book store. I can’t even imagine taking my kid through downtown Portland on his trike, still I admire the parent that is patient and crazy enough to do it. I think you could only pull it off in a biker friendly city like Portland. I wouldn’t mind living there myself, being a bike commuter. Anyone have a good photo job for me in Portland?

I’ve been thinking that it would be nice to have a 4 seater bike trailer so I could take all of the kids on a bike ride. Maybe something like this would be better. Why just have 4 seats when you could safely and comfortably take 8-10 kids? By my calculations, we could have 6 more kids and still be set. Thanks Failblog!

So, I have been bike commuting to work for the past three years, and I thought it might be a good idea to share some of the stuff I’ve figured out and maybe encourage more people to do the same. Once I have a few posts, I’ll probably put together a page with all the bike commuting info together, but for now, this will have to do.

Bike commuting in Utah might seem like something you can’t do year round. That is simply not true. I’ve been riding 3-5 days a week for the last three years and it really hasn’t been that bad. Most days it is extremely relaxing and a great workout. Sure, there have been some cold, wet days, but I have also driven to work on the days when the snow is more that a few inches deep. Really, there aren’t many days in the year when the snow isn’t plowed or the rain isn’t sporadic. Most of the time I can just make sure it’s not going to snow/rain during my half hour commute by checking the weather site. I can check what is going to be happening each hour of the day, and if I check it in the morning, it is usually pretty accurate. Anyway, as long as the downpour happens outside of my commute, everything is good.

That is where the bike cover comes in. On days when I think it will rain or snow, I slip this cover on the trike.

The cover is made out of a lightweight, water repelling rip-stop nylon, and when it’s rolled up, it is about the size of a large burrito. It weighs next-to-nothing too, so it stays in my panniers most of the winter. I just kind of roughly measured the trike and came up with the simplest possible pattern and sewed it together. There is a shock cord from an old tent pole sewn in to the bottom of the cover with a cord lock to tighten it up around the trike. So far the cover hasn’t blown off, and it gets pretty windy some days. If it’s really blowing hard I will slip the edge of the cover under a wheel to weigh it down a little. It has even snowed 4-5 inches on top of the cover and it hasn’t collapsed. It is really nice to be able to shake off the rain or snow and ride home on a dry seat.

Anyway, there you go. Speaking of riding in the snow, that is one of the best reasons to ride a recumbent trike. I rode a mountain bike for two years, and snow days were always pretty sketchy. I took a few spills and even broke a finger and my pinky toe once. The three wheels on the ground make a super stable ride on the ice. I have to try pretty hard to get it to fishtail for a little fun. Icebike.org has a lot more info about riding your bike in the snow and cold.

Why else do I ride the trike? First of all, it’s like riding a lawn chair, but you are low enough to the ground that the wind resistance is similar to riding an aero-tuck on a road bike. The comfy seat makes it so I am never saddle sore. On a mountain bike, I am usually so sore by Thursday, that it would take a lot to get on the bike and ride. Now I will ride the trike all five work days and still go for a joyride on the weekend. I also like that my chin is up and I can see what is coming a lot easier than when I am hunched over on my mountain bike. I actually feel safer on the trike because I am always looking ahead. Even if I am slightly less visible to other cars, (because of the height of the trike) I never take my eyes off of what’s coming. I even get a lot more space when cars pass me, I would guess because the trike seems wider than a regular bike and because of the novelty of it all.

Well, there you have it. Hop on a bike, get to work, and lose some weight while your at it.

It was relatively warm today (40º F) so we took the kids for a ride on the Jordan River Parkway trail. This is a great place to spend some time in the fall, winter and spring when there is still snow and mud in the higher elevations. Here’s some video footage of the ride. If you haven’t ever seen a recumbent bike, you are probably wondering what is going on. I ride a Terra Trike Tour which is a three wheeled recumbent bike. It’s actually very easy to operate the camera while riding because you don’t have to balance and ride at the same time. The trike is great for riding with the kids because it puts you at their level. Also, when they are riding their bikes, you can start and stop and ride as slow as they do with their training wheels. Mostly I use my recumbent to commute to work. A nice, comfortable, reclined seat means that I can ride every day without getting saddle sore. I average 4 days a week riding to work and I love it.