I should have taken my camera yesterday, since it has been beautiful for February. I'm not sure what to make of it. Many of the camellias throughout Corvallis have already bloomed out. I've always loved camellias - they are like a rose without thorns on a lovely broadleaf evergreen. The flowers are among the earliest spring blooms, reminding us we still have color in the world after months of gray Oregon rain. Now I'm sounding like my old landscaping and gardening self. In any case, the trees think it is spring already, but we typically have at least one more month of winter at this point. Leaves are popping, and I just hope we don't get another freeze that would hurt the trees.So, the break in the weather this week allowed me to finally make it to the top of Bald Hill in Corvallis. I had been getting about half way up the hill each day I attempted it, until yesterday. The paths have been pretty slick, and I was too out of shape to make the final push to the top. This week has dried out with a lot of sunshine, and this 42 year-old body is getting in shape remarkably fast, so after five straight days of increasing exercise, we made it to the top without much difficulty. Pedal Poppers has made this climb several times in the past two weeks, taking various trails up, but my body was a little slower to adapt to this push, no matter which trail I tried. Of course we see many people jogging up and down right past us (even lapping us), and we're slow, but it doesn't change the feeling you get when you reach the top.
Today, I'll be sure to remember my camera since it is another beautiful day. More on that later. Right now we're really looking at three different steel touring bikes and doing lots of homework on them. I am partial toward the Surly Disc Trucker (see pic). Pedal Poppers is likely to opt for the Trek 520. The weight capacity of these bikes is important to us since we will start training on them at 250 pounds if we can afford them at that point, and then we will be adding touring gear and weight from there. If necessary, we're hoping not to break them with 300 pounds combined of rider and gear weight.
The bikes we have now are a Trek woman's commuter (my bike, pictured to the right) with a thick heavy frame. For some reason, the brake cables and brakes require daily adjusting and somehow stop working every time I ride back down Midge Cramer Bike Path toward the fairgrounds. Perhaps for fun, I'll post pics of me sailing out of control toward pedestrians after today's adventure.
Pedal Poppers is currently riding a Schwinn Trailway (pictured to the left). It's a nice towny bike for a few things, but it's older (this was Pedal Popper's bike while we were camp hosting on the beach for three years while I finished my undergrad degree), and it's well-maintained, but having regular problems. We've had to replace both front and rear hubs which snapped from just regular road riding use - we're not jumping curbs or mountain biking here, folks, we're just trying to ride to get in shape on paved paths. The derailleurs had to be changed out, tires kept suffering thorn punctures (ah, blackberries lining the bike paths!), so we opted for wider, stronger tires - a Schwalbe Marathon on Pedal Poppers' rear wheel (this is a 38x700) and a Bontrager (35x700 which we got a deal on at Corvallis Cyclery). In the end it is probably best to stop wasting money on upgrading various parts on this Schwinn, since this would eat into our savings for a touring bike. The Trailway frame is great for what it was intended for, and an inexpensive solution to getting a person on the road to fitness no doubt, but not really comfortable once you've gone about 5 miles, and it's a bit undersized for Pedal Poppers. So sure, folks might say these bikes are not quite right for what we're trying to do on them, but they are helping us get in shape here at the start, and they're what we can afford on a grad school budget, so this definitely works for now!
On the bikes we are saving for, disc brakes will be preferred, making stopping easier considering our training weight and eventual touring loads. In addition to the Trek 520 and Surly Disc Trucker, the Salsa Vaya 3 (see pic below) is the other bike we are deciding from, which comes in a lovely salsa green and reminds me of my favorite Mexican restaurant, Ixtapa (how I miss their shrimp fajitas now that I am thinking about them).
We've ruled out the Specialized AWOL (although I've always been partial to Specialized - but the top tube on the AWOL is just too much for my short reach when paired with the right standover height. The wonderfully all-purpose Kona Sutra also unfortunately did not make our final list (too short of a wheelbase to keep our giant feet from hitting the front fenders, and I'm hoping to avoid some of that road bumpiness that a longer wheelbase works to absorb), but both of those bikes are otherwise beautifully set up. I was surprised to find that Cannondale no longer makes a nice touring bike. Cannondale touring bikes were a mainstay in the market when I was a youth.
So, I'll head out for work now with some exercise later and post some pics of Bald Hill later, with some pictures of us at the top. I am sure we will make this journey this afternoon given the sunny weather again today.
Catch you all later,
Sprocket
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