First of all it's important to know that when you ask the weather godz for snow you better keep your wits aboutchya cause you don't know what type of response you might get. That's exactly the scenario from last weekend at Bear and Fox's Winter Shakedown. Bears and Fox is comprised of Jill Martindale and Dan Martinek, a rad couple who are pillars in the local and national biking world (Jill is a dope winter ultra racer who has set records and raced with other renowned women across the U.S. She races for Salsa, 45 North, and Velocity Wheels, where she also works!) Read more about them and the shakedown here on their website. (Dan is the head mechanic at my shop too which is cooool) Due to my connection with these guys I offered my help for the weekend, to volunteer and to also see what the hype of fat bikes and winter ultras was all about. The weekend of January 17 was all about dialing in your gear, learning about and getting stoked for fatbike ultras.. oh and riding with friends in the beautiful woods around Yankee Springs. And it was all that, plus so much more. On Friday night people began to check in and pull out their gear to get it checked over. They were to bring everything on the given check list. This was to simulate how ultra races begin. It was really sweet to see everyone's bikes and gear and learn a few tricks too! Once everyone was settled we headed out for a night ride on the single track loop. Oh by the way this was my first time fat biking, so I was a little nervous and didn't know what to expect. I was borrowing a demo Salsa Beargrease from work and had just picked it up that same day. But as we rolled into the entrance of the trail I didn't second guess anything and had a blast. I was so surprised by how light and fast that bike could be and it wasn't as uncomfortable as I had imagined either. Good things! We rode about 10 miles and headed back for a bonfire. As we were out riding it started to snow. Like realllly snow, it was so beautiful! And when we woke up the next morning there was like.. 6 inches(?) of snow! It kept snowing all through breakfast and prepping the bikes. We were really looking forward to riding in all that lovely powder! But dumm dumm dummmm.... there was rain in the forecast! We rolled out of camp around 11 and we were off. We followed the route, 32 miles of gravel road, two track and single track with 3 checkpoints along the way. The first checkpoint was at mile 8 or 9. By that time we were already soaked as the rain set in soon after we started riding. 35 degrees plus rain, after a night of snow makes for a very interesting day of riding. Everyone rode with a fully loaded bike, a sleeping bag, a stove... anything you might need or want when you're outside on your bike for more than 6 hours. Most of us were out there for that amount of time, or longer! I rode (and walked) for 6.5 hours, didn't even make it to the second check point and only rode about 22 miles! I started out riding sag in the back of the group, making sure everyone was good. This went well up until we left the first check point. We picked up our friend Jenny Acker there, who we saw running along side another rider who had crashed, and needed to get back to the car. The five of us rode together, then one split off and went ahead, and then another, as he was able to ride while the last 3 of us started to do a great deal of walking. If you know Barry State Game Area, Yankee Springs, SW Michigan in general, you know there are some notorious and gnarly ORV roads that even on the best summer day takes a good amount of effort to get through. It was on these roads we found water running down the road, the snow melting from the rain and the hilarious splats in the snow just off the tracks where we could see where our friends had bailed as they rode through before us. It was funny, but it wasn't all that bad. We were wet but warm, shout out to wool, and the walking kept our feet warm. We finally made it to solid gravel roads! I was so stoked that that we could start moving at a decent pace again! We were really starting to look forward to the second checkpoint which held the promises of a bonfire and grilled cheese. I pulled ahead with renewed energy. At the crest of a hill I stopped and looked back, waiting for Jenny and our new friend Sonja to meet up. But I didn't see them coming! I wondered if there was a mechanical, or a nature break. As much as I wanted to wait for them, I decided to keep moving, rolling slow was making me cold and I felt the need to gain some miles after the slush hell we just conquered. The course kept on some fun rolling gravel and things were really looking good! But as I kept racking up the miles I was growing more concerned that I had missed the lunch spot. I knew the route but I didn't know where the checkpoints were. But since it was lunch, ya know.. your mid-day meal, I figured I should reach it by 3 or 4 o'clock. 4 came and went. And the nice roads ended about that time as well. I had hit another ORV road and had to walk a lot again. Woods in the winter get dark fast and my lights were starting to show low battery. I was going to wait to change my socks at lunch but it needed to happen now. I pulled over, sat on my dry bag and changed my socks, put my hat back on, smashed some trail mix and decided this was my final push. Next paved road I found, I would take it back to camp. Convinced I had missed lunch and everyone was done and waiting for me there I figured this was the best move. I finally hit pavement just after 5o'clock. This wasn't an ideal riding situation either. The road I was on, Gun Lake Road, is pretty hilly and people drive super fast on it. I got buzzed by a huge black SUV. I was very ready to be done riding at this point. So when a huge white truck going the opposite direction of me stopped and rolled down it's window I really wasn't stoked on chatting. But it was someone from camp! They had started driving around and picking people up. Oh my god this was it. I was so close to camp but I could be done riding right now!? Hell yeah I'm in. I crawled into our cabin (yes so lucky to have a warm cabin to return to!!!) and my friend Emily was there! She was riding sag out there too and we had lost them at like mile 3! I was so happy to see her! She had just gotten picked up by the big white truck too. I stripped down out of all my wet clothes, put on everything I had that was dry and sat in front of the heater shoving so many snacks into my face. Emily and I were just shouting to each other 'Oh my god what was that!? What just happened!?' and we just giggled and yelled with exhaustion. For real!? What was that!? That my friends, was U L T R A !!! We recovered with warmth and snacks and met up with other people who had finished before us, or got picked up too and laughed and talked about our experiences. About two hours after I had been back, the last group of 6, fondly nicknamed the 6 pack, rolled into camp, having completed the full course!!! It was so badass! It had started to snow hard again and just out of the dark trees, bright lights grew closer, they stumbled into the lodged and we all freaked out and cheered for them! Everyone made it back to camp! No one died! We had learned so much about ourselves as riders and what our bodies and minds can handle in wild situations. We tucked in early and slept through breakfast, still wondering what we had just gone through. We packed up and rolled out, after two people helped me pump up my low car tire. What I thought was going to be a fun chill weekend volunteering with friends, turned into something so much more, into something so ULTRA. (yeah imma keep making that joke) I have never done anything like that before. And it was so fun to do it with such a rad group of people, chatting with everyone about what they had learned about themselves, and what they saw out there. Now just imagine doing that for 3 days, or a week, just pedal stroke after pedal stroke. I don't know if I would want to do that, but I know some badasses who do, and do it with zeal! I'm grateful I just got a little taste of it. I am just thinking about that Jimmy Hendrix song .... Just if you can get your mind together.... are you experienced? Well, I am. I am and even a little more now after this weekend, but there's always so much more to learn.. and experience! I can't wait to see where else I ride this year. I know that I am not going to let bad weather tarnish an opportunity to ride and that if I think I have found a limit, I just have to look past it and keep the rubber side down. Thanks so so much to Jill and Dan, and all the other people who were there to share their knowledge: Matt Acker, Johnny D, Chelsea from 45 North, and all the participants, volunteers and sponsors who helped Bear and Fox make this a very awesome and memorable weekend. Thanks so much for letting me be a part of it! Ride on!!!! The following photos were taken by Jill and Garret our photographer for the weekend!
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This past Wednesday, The Wrenching Wench and Grand Rapids Bicycle Company (the shop I wrench at), hosted a Women, Trans and Femme specific panel discussion. The topic of the evening was bike commuting, specifically in the winter. The group met at Terra Firma, a local climbing gym. (I wanted a 'neutral' meeting spot, not at a bike shop or a bar, some place where anyone would feel welcome and not pressured into buying something or drinking if they didn't want to.)
This whole event stemmed from a response to my instagram post about how I ride to work in 20 degree weather (read the post here) My friend and fellow commuter Ryan Welsh commented on the original post, first saying "Inspiring" and then later wrote again "Ok, I thought about this a lot on my way home. I would be very interested in an actual Ted talk type thing about winter cycling. The tips, the clothes, the bike setups.... I've got experience, but would love to see what other people do too. " We continued to talk back and forth about this idea and landed on the idea that we would only have women talk. That's how we landed on the WTF nature of the event. As all this talk back and forth was going on I began thinking and reading about all the benefits of riding bikes for daily use. And why these benefits are important to share to wxmen and marginalized people. As a female wrench in a male dominated shop I often wonder where all the other ladies are. As men walk through the door to get work done, ask for advice or just to hang out I always wonder why more wxmen aren't coming in to do the same. Like.. I'm here, why don't you wanna hang out with me!? A few conclusions I came to were that other wxmen are also tired of entering a male dominated space to ask for help. And there are many reasons why they may not want to do so. Getting talked down to and getting hit on are only two major obstacles a wxmen may have to face when they walk into a bike shop. (I KNOW men would argue with that and say that's never their intention but shut up this isn't about you.) It's a very real concern. So I wanted to get all the WTF peers and pals in the city together, despite loyalties to types of riding or other bike shop affiliations and talk about how we ride every day. And why we ride daily. I want to build a sense of community so that we don't feel as alone while we're out here braving the cold, twisted patriarchy. I had never put on an event like this before. I have my degree in drawing so I wanted to design the poster. I rode my bike around and posted them at coffee shops and stayed up with the event on Facebook. Once we determined who our panelists were, we found a free space to meet and then we were all set for the event! The night of the discussion, we were supposed to start at 7pm. Like only 5 people were there by then and I started to worry. But like all good and kind bike people, the rest of the crowd was late and we had 20 people seated by 7:15. The discussion went on without a hitch. There were unfamiliar faces which I was so excited about. The panelists were very relatable with their responses to the questions and very helpful and encouraging to people who may be starting out. After we were done I received some great feedback from the audience and met some of the people I hadn't known before! It all played out just how I had hoped. One woman came up to me and thanked me for putting the event on and told me that she hadn't been to a bike shop in years because of the poor interactions she has had with males in those spaces in the past. It was encouraging to me, and validated job. I am so excited to see what other avenues I can follow, and meet people who share the drive to help further the growth of wxmen bikers. My Dad gave me this book for Christmas and wowee is it good. I read it in one sitting while at the dog park with Mel-Dog. It's a graphic novel so you can move through it relatively quickly, but once finished, you'll want to go back and look at it again. The story follows Eleanor, the author, on her bike tour from her parents in Tucson AZ, home to Atlanta GA. Documented in the style of a daily diary we see Eleanor experience the hardships and joys a bike tour can bring. She speaks to the power of riding a bike, getting somewhere through your own power. This mode offers mental clarity but also stirs doubts and fears about being good enough, 'will I ever make it?,' and what will happen when it's over. I love the style of her illustrations, they are loose and gestural but capture a whole feeling. These drawings were done while on the road and have a sense of urgency, to convey the thoughts of the day quickly. Paired with her daily thoughts and writings many pages could be separated out and read like poetry. The individual words could be applied to whatever journey you personally are going on. And I think that's another reason why I am so drawn to this book. Not only because it's about biking but as I read it I began to think about it through the lens of my experience I had moving and living alone in Virginia for a year. The mental tenacity it takes to keep going when odds are against you is great, and hard to come by. Traveling through new spaces is awe inspiring but odd and lonely. Meeting new people is hard but when you connect with someone, it means a great deal and sticks with you, even if you're not around them any more. I look back at my sketchbooks from that time and read through it like a timeline of emotions. If i didn't have that documentation, or photos from that time there, I feel that sometimes it would be hard to verify that experience. Because no one else was there with me. I was the only one who saw what I saw. I had so many calls home crying, talking about the what ifs. I don't want to spoil the end of the book but her ending feels similar to my ending of my time in Virginia too, unexpected. I really can't recommend this book enough. Even if you don't bike, you'll love the imagery and the brave and awesome Eleanor. And if you like it once you're done, she's written a few other graphic novels along with completing a bunch of illustrations for the New Yorker and other publications. You can check out her website here: http://doing-fine.com/ Below are some pages from You & A Bike & A Road 1/2/2020 0 Comments My First wheel buildDec. 11. 19
I BUILT MY FIRST WHEEL THIS WEEK! All the boys in the shop build wheels, whether for customers or themselves. My boyfriend's shop is kinda the known wheel building shop but it's something cool to know how to do. As we've been slow now in the winter season I decided building wheels would be a good thing to help take up time. I've always wanted to learn so I asked my co-worker Tyler to show me! He graciously offered up a hoop and rim he had, showed me how to calculate the spoke length and begin lacing. As I'm figuring out, there are a lot of ways to build a wheel, once you've got your way down, as long as it's a wheel in the end, then it is a valid building method. Dan, the head mechanic at our shop is pretty hands off, so when he told me people are gonna try and tell me their ways to build it I believed him. Tyler was a great teacher because he set me up with the instructions to follow along with and then was just there for questions. When different coworkers or customers came in during the day though they definitely shared their opinions. Take everything with a grain of salt, or 5. After you determine what you need and get set up and ready to rock, the first step is four rounds of lacing spokes. I was lacing a 3 cross pattern on a 32 hole rim with a front track hub. This means that I have 32 spokes total and the weaving pattern is over, over, under. Hence the 3 cross name. There are other patterns and many other rims with varied spoke counts, rear hubs that need two different length spokes and on and on it goes. (In the resource section there are links to articles and explanations of all this and more.) So I started lacing the first round, then the second and as I began on the third I was noticing that some spokes wouldn't reach, and that the pattern of spoke holes I was lacing to was off. After some deliberation with Tyler we figured out that I had made the mistake that led to this back at round one. I had to undo all the spokes I had placed and start over. This is was not as daunting or disappointing as it may sound. It wasn't to tricky to reverse my work, and it was a really good learning experience to figure out how something can go wrong and that paying attention is important. Once that was solved I continued back through the rounds and eventually had the rim all laced up! After that process, the next step is tightening all the spokes equally, bringing them to tension, checking how true the wheel is radially and laterally. So how straight the wheel rolls up and down and side to side, and checking the dish, how far the axle is being pulled one way or the other according to uneven spoke tension. This process for me was a little mix of all of those things, going back and forth to keep things in check. Just like painting, you have to bring all of the elements up together. In the end I had a wheel! And a new skill under my belt. I am really excited to build my first wheel set for my mountain bike and continue to grow my wheel building skills. Below are some pics of my wheel!!! To read more about al this wild stuff, go to my How To's page. Click here. |
AuthorLiz is a bike mechanic in Grand Rapids MI. She is one of two female mechanics in the city. She holds a Bachelors Degree in Drawing and has one dog and one hedgehog. Archives
March 2021
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