2000 mile review - Foundry Auger +

If you've read my initial thoughts on the Foundry Auger "Plus", I fairly gushed about my intents and early thoughts on how it rode.  Now that I've got a couple of thousand miles of road, gravel and

everything in between, I thought I'd share a few more thoughts at the end of a season's riding.
First, I'm still in love with this bike.  I've had a number of bikes over the years, and my riding style/goals have certainly changed as I've aged.  Bikes that felt good 20-30 years ago now are overly twitchy.  What felt just right for crits is not much fun to bump along on backroads.  And frankly, I don't care.  I'm not riding crits, time trials or road races.  The occasional road gran fondo can be ridden just fine on a responsive cyclocross bike (with decent brakes, of course).

One of my original changes was to go with the thru-axle fork, and I've been very (very, very) pleased with the choice.  I like the total lack of ambiguity in steering, and I don't notice any bad habits with jarring or buzz from the stiffer front end.  The overall configuration of the Auger helps here too - good vertical compliance, but rock solid lateral stiffness at the bottom bracket.  I've noticed no click/creak in the BB30 either.  A couple of people have asked why I use the heavier, cheaper Gossamer crankset instead of one of the more svelte carbon ones.  The answer is pretty simple - it's bulletproof.  Not that much heavier, 1/3 the price, no flex, no bad habits.  Understate, overperform.

A couple of changes I've made since the original configuration. I think I'm swapping the saddle back over to my old favorite Selle Italia Flite '91 instead of the more current Flite, complete with center relief.  This thing has just never felt quite right, although it's a pretty comfy saddle most of the time.

15% pavement descent on LaCrosse Gravel race

Also, I have changed tires. I still think the Challenge Almanzos are one of the best tires I've ridden, I've had no problems with them, and no complaints about the way they ride or durability. But then I got on a pair of Challenge Gravel Grinders, 38mm and in basic black.  Whoa...  what a feeling.  These tires are marked '3 bar' for racing on the sidewall, which seems just about perfect for mixed surface use.  I've ridden road paceline at 23-25mph, paved descents at 45+, and gravel drops at over 40.  They fly.  With latex tubes, they don't have a bouncy 'ping' to larger rocks, and really smooth out pavement cracks, rough roads and track through loose gravel amazingly well.  Yeah, these are a keeper.  The only downside is that the tread life may not be super great, which isn't really surprising since they weren't intended for a lot of road use.  I've got to rotate front to back to balance wear.  I'd love a set of 35-38mm road tires with the characteristics, but a harder compound and more of a road profile. Maybe name them IARBGARs or something.

To date, the only adjusting I've had to do was to the brakes.  I *did* find that the bosses for the Whisky 9 match up to a 140mm rotor (options?, don't know), so I added the bar to move it to 160mm.  After a couple of rides, I noticed an occasional clicking, which I finally traced to an slight interference between the edge of the rotor and the caliper.  Huh? What?  So I started to look at moving washers under the caliper - and realized that the bar could be turned around and then it lined up perfectly.  Again, who knew? I'll rack that up to unfamiliarity with proper adjustment...

I've got my bike for the next few years.  Anybody want a really nice Ridley Noah?
Future tweaks and enhancements.
- 1000 lumen headlight set.  Night riding on commuter lights isn't bad if you are in town and there's lots of ambient light.  Pretty sketchy on gravel though.
- Different rotors.  The stock TRP rotors have a tendency to 'sing', and growl/grind under braking.  I'll put on some kind of 2 piece rotor to see if that improves things.
- 2nd set of wheels, configured more for road.  Fewer spokes, smaller freewheel (like an 11-26 instead of 11-36).

Foundry pushes the 'workman' status of their bikes, and I agree.  Not the lightest, not the sexiest, but it tops the 'just a bike' list,  And that's a high compliment in my mind.  No bad habits, nothing to snark about, just a bike. Again, understate and overperform. Chapeau, Foundry.

Southern Rock playlist

I grew up in Alabama.  Never listened to country, never listened to much rock. Mostly it was top 40, American Bandstand type stuff. In high school, it was more Elton John, Eagles, Who, and other groups of the early 70s.  Somewhere along the line in the mid 70s, I started acquiring these 'tastes' for things like country, folk and 'Southern Rock'.  Yep, it's its own genre with a fairly identifiable sound (to me, at least) usually featuring a virtuoso lead electric guitar and often a fiddle or pedal steel harmony.  Here's at least a pretty good representation, in no particular order.

1. Can't you see - Marshall Tucker Band.  Great vocals, Long haired country boys, and a flute.  It's hard to pick just one MTB song.  'What that woman, Lord, she been doin' to me"
2.  Blue Sky - Dickie Betts and Great South. Great guitar riffs.  I originally heard him do this in concert - awesome jam band.  Blue Sky is probably better known as an Allman Bros tune, but they often played the same shows. "Walk along the river. Sweet lullaby"
3. Trudy - Charlie Daniels Band.  Daniels is known now as being sort of a country boy, but in his prime, he had one heck of a Southern rock sound. "Took half the cops in Dallas County, just to put one Coon Ass boy in jail." Still saws a mean fiddle.
4. Whipping Post - Allman Brothers Band.  Like most of the Southern Rock bands, the Allman Brothers had a strong blues influence.  Unlike most bands, they had Duane Allman on lead. Screw the lyrics, listen to Duane.
5. Hurry Sundown - The Outlaws.  "They were waiting on the ghost of an outlaw, Sundown was his name..."  Storytelling, shades of Texas, 1876.
6. Doraville - Atlanta Rhythm Section.  A suburb of Atlanta - I don't think it's the same today, but in the 70s, it was the home of recording studios, bands, and parties.
7. Keep on Smilin' - Wet Willie.  More laid back than the hard driving guitar leads of many bands. "Well they say you've got the blues..."
8. Third Rate Romance - Amazing Rhythm Aces.  A little more country blues.  Really solid harmonies.  "Third rate romance, low rent rendezvous"
9. Heard it in a love song - Marshall Tucker Band. Vocally and musically about as far from "Can't you see" and "Fire on the Mountain" as you can get.  Still big with the flute, but much more fluid, softer style.  "I never had a damn thing, but what I had, had to leave it behind. You're the hardest thing I ever tried to get off my mind"
10. Free Bird - Lynyrd Skynyrd.  Possibly the song most likely to be requested by barroom drunks regardless of venue.  And one of the most recognizable anthems for *any* rock genre.  "I'm as free as a bird, man. And this bird you cannot change, whoa oh oh,"

Enjoy. Comments always welcome.

What am I listening to now?

It's winter out there.  Winter elicits thoughts of bar music, warm nights in front of the fire, maybe a concert or two.  At the moment, I'm leaning toward the classics with a little bit of newer stuff.
As with most of my playlists, this is pretty athematic.  But, I tend to listen to things I find interesting - not necessarily current.

1. Rosalita - Bruce Springsteen.  It's got a great energy and typical interesting lyrics.  Nobody - nobody works harder at a concert than The Boss.
2. Crazy on you.  Heart.  Saw them on TV not long ago.  The Wilson sisters look sort of like suburban ladies of a certain age, but they Still sound great.
3. Smuggler's Blues - Glen Frey(Eagles).  Shades of Miami and Don Johnson, 1985.  
4. Sweet Child o' Mine - Sheryl Crow.  I love the GnR version too.  
5. Doctor My Eyes - Jackson Browne.  ... was I unwise, to keep them open for so long???
6. Hey Joe - Jimi Hendrix.  What more can be said?
7. Wonder - Natalie Merchant.  I think this was her first hit after 10,000 Maniacs.  Great lyrics.
8. Don't look back - Peter Tosh and Mick Jagger.  All sorts of stories about Jagger being smashed, crashing the recording session.  Who knows if it's true or not?
9. Can't find my way home - Blind Faith.  Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton - two of the best artists from any decade.  Winwood has a haunting quality to his voice.
10. Teenage Wasteland - The Who. One of the best, from one of the very best rock groups ever.

And suddenly we're skiing

Wow.  That was unexpected.
On Monday of this week, we got hit with anywhere from an inch to about 15 inches in the Twin Cities metro area.  It is November, and it certainly has been known to snow early and heavy (the infamous Halloween Blizzard of 1991, Armistice Day Blizzard of 1940), but we really weren't expecting it until late last week. Novak Weather started predicting a change in the storm track, and it kept adjusting from 100 miles south of the metro to about 50mi north.
Anyway, we now have enough snow in the Minneapolis area to make riding very difficult without a fat bike (next year's project), running less fun than it normally is, and paddling out of the question.  So even on fairly thin snow cover, ski season starts on Saturday.  It should be a great day to get out, use some muscle groups that have been completely ignored, try out some wax and get a few kilometers in.  With luck, a few pictures after.

Identifying and recruiting talented athletes to sprint kayaking

Give us your tired, your broken of body, yearning to do something other than the sport their parents have been dragging them to since they were four...
Or words to that effect anyway.

I coach Olympic style sprint kayaking.  I love doing it. I love working with some of the best young athletes around.  But it's a pretty limited pool around Minnesota. For one thing, the water's a little hard to paddle on about 5 months of the year since it's frozen 3 feet thick.  For another, a lot of people have this obsession with hockey in this state, and a firm conviction in parent's minds that if little Jane or Johnny doesn't make the traveling team by six, it's going to be so hard to keep up and be on that State Championship team when they are juniors, so that they can take their senior year to try for the National team and... and...

I'm starting to think I need to steal a page from the ambulance chasing lawyers and start hanging out at the ortho clinics.  "Hey buddy, sorry to hear you blew out your ACL, MCL and patella.  Why don't you come out and try paddling? With your power, I bet you can make the National team in 2 years" and "It's OK Mom, it's cheaper than a season's ice time" (not to mention a lot easier on the medical insurance co-pays).
All kidding aside, I am starting to talk to ortho friends and am working with one of the clinics to get a talk scheduled on 'competition alternatives' for their clients.  A couple of target sports are football and hockey, gymnastics, and basketball.  You might not think about basketballers, but anybody who can post up and drive the key has awesome physical attributes.

We've got 2 K-4s --  35 feet long, 20" wide and tippy beyond belief until you get enough core strength to paddle them.  My goal is to find enough athletes to paddle them well that we can take podiums at Nationals this year.

Give me your strong of heart, burning still with desire to compete.  We just might have a seat for you.

Plus one more

Earlier this year I did a post called "Plus One".  Not a meaningful post, more a riff on how garages tend to fill up with bikes, boats, skis, golf clubs or whatever "because they do".
Nature abhors a vacuum, and since I am not coaching high school Nordic, I seem to have time on my hands to look at some other opportunities.  More to come on a couple of those later, but I'm also busily dreaming my way into another bike.  It has to be a 'plus zero' this time - sell one (or two) before building a new one.  I've decided to build a fat bike next year.  I'm still not sure what it will be - single speed, 1x11, internal or just what, but that's part of the fun of doing a build.  All I can say at this point is it won't be some pipe steel clunker with 42 bottle mounts.  I know there are lots of folks who love steel bikes, but I'm not one of them.  I don't miss the BB flex, don't miss the noodle-like response, and don't miss the weight.
To pay for this little exercise, I need to sell a couple of bikes that just aren't getting used.  My favorite road bike, 2nd favorite of all time behind my 1985 Raleigh 531 (long gone), is my Ridley Noah.  Actually, it's not my favorite any more.  My single speed OPAAT CX bike and my Auger Plus have both surpassed it in terms of utility, miles ridden, and likelihood of being pulled out for a club ride.  It's a great bike - fast, non-twitchy, climbs and sprints like a dream, but it's not a bike my well-seasoned butt wants to be on for a long day.  Time to move it along to some young buck who wants a screaming fast ride.  Seriously for sale, make realistic offer!

So follow along over the winter as I agonize over hubs, rims, components, frames and such.  My bike lust can be your opportunity for a little schadenfreude, and in the end we might all learn something.

In any case, it'll be fun.

Carolina Rain

We had to forego our trip to the Carolinas this year - too many other things on the burner, and something had to give.
I'm in love with the 'mountain sound' - not quite bluegrass, definitely not 'trucks, babes and beer' of Nashville.  When it's just right, it sounds like you are sitting around the general store stove, or hanging out in someone's barn listening to a group that's playing for a meal, maybe some gas money and a place to stay for the night.

There are some incredible musicians working out of North Carolina and other points these days.  This post is about some groups that I think help define a 'sound' you are likely to hear from Asheville, High Point or Chapel Hill.  The common points to me are good melodies, tight vocals and harmonies, and great instrumental breaks.  A great base line helps.  In any case, the sound is as old as the hills, but somehow very fresh.
A really good example of this is the bottle rocket group "The Biscuit Burners".  I never fell in love with their later albums, vastly preferring their very first.  The vocals were pure mountains, and from another era - probably more like another century.  Listen to Mountain Lily:
  "Oh wild red, mountain lily. Set on my bedside tonight. Wild red, mountain lily, remind me of my true lover's hand".
Drop most of the hard consonants "wil' red, moun'n lily, 'min' me of my true lover's han'" and sing it with a beautiful Carolina drawl, and  you've got it.
Unfortunately, I think the group is on permanent "hiatus", but their first album "Fiery Mountain Music" still goes down as one of my all time favorites.  "Mountain Lily", "Once upon a time", "Moonshine Whiskey" and probably my favorite - "Mono County Jail".  It took me months to figure out the lyrics to that one.

Some others that are creeping into my regular playlists now:

Deep Chatham - "Carolina Rain" - Banjo, mando and bass.  And solid vocals.

Mandolin Orange - "One more down" - great vocals, understated mandolin lead.  Too often, mando players think they have to be Sam Bush or Chris Theile.  This is so clean, simple sounding and just fits perfectly.

Playing on the Planet - "Waltz of the Thirteen Moons"  and "Thirteen Moons"  Big plug for my buddy Lisa's band - more varied than some of the groups, but the sound comes straight from the mountains.  Listen to the two songs in order - you can feel the sadness and ghosts in the waltz.

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit - "Alabama Pines" - more country or Phil Phillips, but I still like it a lot