A successful test
I had everything I needed to load up on the bicycle last night, so that I could just hop out the door this morning and ride the UGB 200k without fuss, muss, or bother.
Well, everything except one thing – I forgot to eat breakfast, and this had the undesirable side effect of causing my legs to convert into powerless noodles when my body had scavenged all the food value out of the cookie bars and (small) lunch I’d eaten. The result of this mistake was that I spent about 35 miles of the loop slowing to a crawl if I hit any sort of sustained climb (fortunately the randonneurs I was riding this loop with – Bill Alsup and Ed Groth – were taking a fairly leisurely approach with extended stops for fud and/or coffee, so I managed to catch up with them after they zoomed away on hills between Champoeg State Park and Gaston (I loaded up with orange juice at Gaston and got my oompf back for a short while, so I managed to catch up with them after I stopped for a phone call halfway between Gaston & Cornelius. And when we stopped at the Rock Creek Tavern I bought and ate a large pile of tater tots, which kicked in about 45 minutes later while we were going up Skyline and resulted in me shooting ahead like I was shot out of a cannon. On an uphill. Note to self: carry baked potatoes along along with the cookie bars.))
But even with that (and 20 minutes of thumbtwiddling in downtown Portland as we waited for two trains (One Amtrak, one transfer freight) to clear our path) I still finished the loop with a 13.9 mph moving average and 9h03 moving time. This is almost a hour less than the best moving time (and almost a mph better than the best moving average) that I got on the Trek (and the final loop time, including the many stops and me not actually bothering to get a receipt at the ultimate control until after I’d been there for 25 minutes, was 11h20 minutes)
And, to add that additional bit of joy in mudville, it turns out that the mlcm – with its el-cheapo Nashbar 25mm tires – descends faster than the xtracycle does.
This is very unlike the loop I attempted with 650b wheels, which, after averaging a princely 12.8mph moving average combined with a flat tire and many stops on the runcreep up to Highland Road (reaching the summit just in time to realize that I’d have to average 22mph into Canby if I didn’t want to DQ the loop. I bailed out at that point and just went home) turned out to not be even close enough to actually finish a R200.
I will need to replace the prototype#2 handlebar bag (which appears to be sagging forward; I’m going to have to adjust the Nitto F15 so that the handlebar bag sits level) with a prototype#3 bag (and replace the tiny saddlebag with something more like the Frost River Echo bag so I can move my spare clothing back and keep the front bag for fud, fud, and more fud (plus my pentax,) and it would be nice to replace the high-trail fork with a low-trail one (for the porteur rack I’m planning to braze up (but haven’t because (a) I don’t own a brazing torch and (b) I don’t know how to braze yet) for the bike (because if I go up to Sandy for donuts, I need a way to carry them back,) but other than that this bicycle is pretty much what I need for going stupidly long distances stupidly early in the morning.
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One of my cycling frinds carries a baggie full of baked new potatoes (the little round red ones) for snacks en route.