We call these outings S24Os: Sub 24-Hour Overnights.  The idea is to get outta town for a night, head up to wherever, and camp out for the night, then head back to town in the morning.  It’s a great way to go, ’cause if all you have is a tent and a bag, or heck, even a tarp and a blanket, you can go.  You can bring pre-made food and head back down to town in the morning to break the fast.

The Bike Doctor team refuses to make simple things simple, however.  Brian decided to rig a front rack and generator light at the last minute. Brandon decided to pack a huge 4-man tent for 1 person.  John brought a few pounds of gourmet chocolate.  Jay brought Sardines, Rice w/ Onions and mystery meat, and we all brought 20 links of sausage for the communal camp fire. The essence of cycling is boiled down in our S24O philosophy: bring lots of gear that may or may not work, ride bikes barely suited to the task at hand, suffer up endless hills, struggle all night to keep a fire going despite the fact that all the wood is sopping wet and it’s pretty hot and humid out already so the fire is more of a thing to stay away from than to gather ’round, and do it all with a grip of friends who share a similar skewed idea of fun.

Of the untested gear brought was a grill made of spokes and aluminum square stock.  The idea is simple: stick the grill betwixt two rocks and rake some coals under it and grill up your whatever.  Instead, the grill was placed high above the flames on burning sticks that precariously balanced against other smaller burning sticks.  The whole set up was listing like a torpedo wounded-ship, and the sausages placed thusly barely started to sizzle before they started to abandon ship into the fire.  Despite the constant shaking of this writer’s head, the grill and fresh sausages were placed in various locals of a dubious and capricious nature.  The lemming flavored sausages found myriad methods to commit Hari-Kari.  The only ones rescued and devoured were precooked vegan sausages, to the later regret of he who consumed them.

A further foible was found in Don BranDon’s tent and plans therein.  After setting up his Taj Mahal of a tent, he parked his bike in its spacious interior, vowing to keep the bugs off of it.  Immediately the bike toppled over, collapsing his tent.  The bugs had an immediate laugh when a huge shining brown boa constrictoresque millipede quickly climbed on his saddle, mocking him with a gleaming wormy luster.

Mmm.  Wormy Luster.

And Mel fell of her bike and had to get 1000 stitches.  The end.

What:  July 3rd Alley Kat

Where:  The bell tower in Baker Park, Frederick City MD.  Afterparty at Krugs Place, on east street.

When: 6:30 PM

How much?  8 dollars.

Prizes?  Hell yes.  Crappy Prizes?  only for the losers.

What to bring:  A cell phone, a blinky light, a messenger bag.

Last November’s Alley Cat brought people from DC, B-more and of course Frederick out to race around the streets of Frederick, doing log pulls, making up raps on the spot, getting porn clerk signatures, and betting on virtual horses at 7-11.  We have more mad ‘nanigans planned for this summer ‘kat, so head on out, bring your bling, and see what the back streets of Frederick are about.

Prizes for: Overall Winner, Mens.  Overall, Womens, Skid Comp, Track Stand Comp, and DFL.

Questions: ask in the comments, suckers.

joe and julie and mel and i headed out to the C&Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh for a quick camping trip. joe and julie rode down from frederick (suckers) and mel and i took our corporate jet, and met them in point of rocks. mel and i ate a bunch of ice cream, and then we all headed out.

the ride down was more or less eventlessful, aside from the roving hoards of wankers on walmart wheel’d machines. we arrived at our campsite morally stricken but otherwise unscathed, only to find 5 other people were there before us. bastards!

one couple was our age, and were immediately found to be approachable. a father and son were also present, son being stricken with some sort of stomach bug, henceforthly puking his brains out every five minutes, more or less all over the eating area, much to mel’s chagrin.

it’s 12.25 AM as i write this, so, bear with me.

the other fellow would seem on the surface to be ok: salsa touring bike, bearded, nice. little did we know…. he was a cigar smoking monologue of horribleness who trampled an otherwise almost nice evening under his cheap hiking sneakers of oppression.

this fellow, we’ll call him rick (cause thats his name) said the following phrases, more or less with out end, at least 2953 times thru out the evening: ‘…cause i ride a fixed gear single speed….’ & ‘check this out….’ followed by something you clearly did NOT want to check out, like a tale about the world’s largest vending machine, or a story about a custom van shop. a custom fucking van shop. a custom fucking van shop. let me say that again. a. custom. fucking. van shop. what the fucking fuck?

my next post will be on campfire etiquette.

dont: smoke a huge cheap cigar.
dont: endlessly talk about yourself
dont: interrupt people by jumping up off your log, waving your arms around and saying, loudly, ‘check this out’
dont: be a D bag.

well. back to my story.

within minutes of arriving, rangers showed up and busted the nice couple for possession of some beer and a modicum of pot. just a 500 dollar fine, but, fuck off, rangers. 1 beer and a tiny bit of hash?

they carted off puke’y mc’gee and his dad, leaving us with the couple (good folks) and rick (not good).

we ate in harpers ferry (creepy in many ways) and julie drank 2 pints of river water masquarading as beer. i didnt spell that write but, go piss up your leg. its almost 1 AM.

the morning found rick trying to entice the nice people back to his van to see his ‘tall bike’ which i still think is a euphemism for his stack of BETA cassette 1985 porn stash.

mel got a flat. joe got a flat. we ate fried chicken and ice cream and life carried on.

check the flickr stream for more photos, if ya want.

Jeezus.

s24o, april 10th
frederick watershed.
bring some grub and semi warm clothes
maybe a few beers.

leaving, probably, at 5 pm from my house. if dont know where that is, ask. jamesjohnsonart at gmail dot com

you should come. really.

this is of course, dave’s beautifully crafted ‘cherry chucker’, his cherry bomb launcher WMD.

i dont know if he drew it just cause i asked where the cocktail napkin drawing was, but he sent me this rad drawing too.

the place to see it: my house, saturday night, around 8pm.

trump tight

departing from the house

jay, john, dan and yours very truly set off saturday evening for some stealth camping.  upon arrival, i noticed with some chagrin that my chosen stop was kinda close to the road, a fact that went unnoted last time, cause there were leaves on the trees.  this caused mild paranoia, but we set up shop, started a small fire, cooked some grub, grilled some sausages, drank some bourbon and beer, and settled in for a quiet night.

quiet night. so far...

then the rednecks showed up.

and rocked our world.

we heard trucks/drunken shouting/music.  a tiny headlamp started to bob its way thru the woods.  we dowsed the fire by jumping on it, and killed our headlamps.  still, they kept coming.  in retrospect, they were looking for a quiet place to fire up the bowl.  in the interest of not getting beat or shot, i called out: did you smell the bourbon?  and they came running.  eventually about 10 or 12 of them showed up, one bearing a 3 gallon container full of drunkade, aka cheap cheap vodka and some sort of mango orange gatorade.  there was a mythical cooler of beer that they had supposedly tried to start a fire with, but it being white styrofoam, it rejected their advances.

soon, the drunkade was consumed.  about… a gallon of it.  this, after we had had a bottle of wine, a half liter of bourbon, and a couple few beers.  then the captain morgans came out.  thank god it wasnt flavored.  then the cheap ass weed came out.  and so the night progressed to fire jumping, and the eventual dissolution of our fire wood.

world. rocked.

after much yelling and laughing and much much drinking, they departed, and we slept the sleep of the dead.

now.  who’s up for some bob evans?

the morning after.

all fotos from jay’s excellent photostream.

the what what:

frederick city alley cat, w/ checkpoints, contests, challenges, scavenger hunting, and rad urban cyclist prizes.

Where: meet at the big bell tower in baker park downtown frederick.  you know it.  MAP HERE
all the normal crap too: skid competion, track stand comp, rapping comp.

do we all know what an alley cat is?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleycat_races

the saturday after halloween, as in nov 7th.  meet at the baker park bell tower….

extra points for rad post halloween costumes.

other stuff:
bring a cell camera or a camera
a sharpie
tail light
beer bucks
messenger bag or basket
$6.66 entrance fee

In 1903 the Wright brothers flew for a few seconds in a heavier than air craft of their own design. They worked outside of typical aeronautics thought, reworking and recalculating established thought. The wooden propeller they developed, hand hewn from laminated wood, was 83% efficient. Modern Propellers, the most advanced among them, are a mere 2 percent more efficient. The Wrights had no computer models, no expensive wind tunnel testing facilities. They were just bike mechanics from Ohio with some spare time on their hands.

In the early days of the century, racers looked down on 3 speed hubs and derailleurs with pulleys. It was thought that the bend in the chain and the rotation of the pulley wheel added friction (with requisite loss of efficiency) to the chain. 3 speed hubs, with their complex internal workings, were indeed less efficient than derailleurs, although they certainly had advantages including a straight chain-line, sealed against the elements, no derailleur to snap off. Fortunately this paranoia of friction had some good outcomes: the invention of the quick release (to change cogs in the back by flipping from one fixed gear to another) and time. Time for the tourists to perfect and explore the concept of multispeed shifting without the undue influence of racing.  Racers in those days prized simplicity and low friction over all other factors.  They were willing to sacrifice ease of use, smooth shifting, and even low weight in this quest for the cleanest, slickest (friction-wise) and more durable gear changing equipment.  This often lead to ridiculous shiftering systems like the Campagnolo Paris Roubaix, the Vittoria Margeita, and the Egg Super Champion.  In fact, there were numberous durable, low friction derailluers on the market, being used by tourists daily.  These cyclotouriste derailleurs saw a range of conditions, and endured incredible distances.  The Cyclo Standard was used on four and seven thousand mile tours, with only oiling and adjustments needed.

Interestingly, hub gears have regressed in efficiency over the years: pre WWII Sachs 3 speed hubs, lubricated with oil have an efficiency of around 95% averaged across the 3 speeds. Contemporary hubs are about 3 percent less efficient. Oddly, the Rolhoff, with its precision machining, is only 88% efficient on average. (Berto, The Dancing Chain: 351-352)  This is mainly because of the sheer number of planetary gears it contains.

Tourists, from say, 1900-1985, knew another established fact of efficiency that has been lost to contemporary cyclists: Bigger cogs are more efficient. The current trend towards eleven and twelve tooth rear sprockets not only prematurely wears chains down (and cassettes and chainrings by default) but also has an adverse effect on efficiency. 12 tooth cogs are 2-3 percent less effiencent than 14 tooth cogs. This is why the old french tourists ran 14-16 tooth cogs as thier smallest cogs in the back.  The current micro-drive rage has come to its logical conclusion in the world of the BMX drivetrain.  Eight tooth cogs and 22 tooth sprockets are the norm on contemporary bikes, and the resulting strains on the chains is seen in the ridiculously overbuilt chains that are needed to withstand the added stress.