Notes from the support team

The first decision was where the heck to go to find good bike information, resources, suppliers, and good vibe. Vancouver bike shops overwhelmingly recommended Mighty Riders, even MEC! And it turned out to be a great recommendation.

Once it was all agreed that a touring bike was what was needed, the next decisions fell like dominoes. Basically the eventual choice boiled down to choosing a tire size which would be suitable for this trip, and future trips over the Himalayas, or over to Manitoulin Island. We went for the very common 26” tire size, thus eliminating a few bikes and leaving a Brodie (none in her size available), a TREK (and Ed does not sell Treks), or a Surly. Eventually, Merryl bought a Surly Long Haul Trucker. Easy. Next it was sized and outfitted for the trip……butterfly handlebars, better breaks for those white knuckle grips hurtling downhill fully loaded at 50kmh WITH the breaks engaged! A new seat, and mountain bike style shifters instead of road racing. Nice kickstand addition Ed, and now we are looking good!

For Lee, we decided early on to take her triathlon bike and fit it out to handle the trip and the gear. Her bike is a custom made Cyclops touring bike – made by M. Mulholland – but just not custom made for Lee. We managed to find it second hand seven years ago when Lee needed to replace her mountain bike with a road bike to give her any chance at all at a good showing in her first triathlon. The extra retrofitting involved replaced the racing drops with some pretty rad butterfly, on steroids (or radiation), handle bars; replacing the Shimano 105’s with Deore XT’s to give a better climbing range of gears, and also the brakes and shifters to better suit knuckle busting, finger clenching power needs for the big down hills. This resulted in very much improved climbing power, with a pretty good 19.5 gear inches in the low gear, and a who-the-hell-cares-what-it-is-at-the-top-end gear inches. Going down the Oregon 12% grade hills would be bone jarring speed enough.

So, contrary to the logic that helped determine Merryl’s bike, Lee’s bike tires are 650 x 23C. Not an ideal match for Merryl’s, but later on we did at least find tubes that could be shared.

Presta or Schraeder valves you ask? Indeed. Well, Lee’s bike already had Presta, and it was not going to be easy to convert to Schraeder, so Presta wins. As it turns out, it is not so common in rural America, but Wal-Mart did come to the rescue. And once we found Presta to Schraeder converter gizmos, that meant that filling up (with air) at a gas station was a possibility. Very useful since hand pumping to achieve 100+ psi into the tires with a compact pump on a rainy day, with transports roaring past within 3 feet on a shoulder with nothing between them and a 100 foot drop into the Pacific is not as easy as it sounds. Well, maybe it does not sound easy at all!

But where to put all that gear? This led to the discovery of one of the greatest unsolved, marriage wrecking debates since the chicken and the egg: trailer vs. pannier. After all my research and testing, I don’t think that there is a right or wrong decision; let the debate continue. We chose a combination of both: a BOB Yak trailer to allow Merryl to carry more weight and compensate for the difference in power and endurance; and panniers for Lee. Enough said. A few Craiglist searches later, and voila, one BOB Yak trailer. We looked at the BOB Yak dry bag, but decided to go with our existing assortment of dry bags, and separate bags for separate stuff.

The BOB Yak comes with a 16” Schraeder tire/tube, so now even more complex spares issues. We at least replaced the tube with a Presta valve to eliminate that one variable. The three tire sizes all had different air pressure needs though, so that meant finding a hand pump with an in-line pressure gauge to range from 35-100 psi. Thank you BELL.

Of course there is the inevitable pannier dilemna, but I settled on Ortliebs (Back Roller Classic) to keep things dry. Hey – we like our dry stuff to stay dry. Forever as it turns out. After some torrential rains to test the marketing and engineering the result is – great stuff. Typical over engineered German quality! I have some, ok a lot, of hypalon material from a Zodiac RIB that did not make the QA cut, so some day I may make a few more on this design – improved of course; and future bike trips calling. On the other hand, there seems to be an innovation revolution going on with panniers, so check out some of the major manufacturers to see what is new: Ortlieb, Axiom, Arkel.

Lee and Merryl each had a reasonable sized waterproof handlebar bag which proved to be very useful for need-to-reach-quickly items. We bought some material to custom make a dry bag for the MacBook, and that worked out wonderfully.

The team may have looked a little like the Beverly Hillbilly’s moving to California, but for the most part, the equipment and gear worked out for their unsupported trip. More efforts and research will be put into lighter gear, dry bags, etc, which can have double (or more) benefit while backpacking or canoeing.

We transferred Merryl’s racing Cateye bike computer to the Surly. Easy enough. All the normal functions, plus cadence. But, for all that elevation, I figured that there must be more choice, more functions, more fun – after all, I are an engineer. There just had to be some biking geeks out there that wanted to know, like I do, the solunar fishing tables, horoscopes and the likeliest six winning 6/49 numbers. Well, I could not find that exact match, but after quite a bit of searching, I settled on the Bontrager Node 2. The functions are too numerous to list here. But added to the normal cycling stats are: altitude gain/loss per day and per trip; % grade (max and average) – that’s cool. And also a heart rate monitor so that you know what your pulse was just moments before your heart blows up on a 20% grade cycling uphill at an 85 cadence pushing out a measly 5km/hr. Add all wireless technology, temperature, and altitude, and and and……. well ya just have to check out their site. In the field – it has worked out to be great stuff. Highly recommended. And it helps pass the time on the painful uphill climbs.

A very useful, almost essential reference for the trip is the book titled Bicycling the Pacific Coast, published by The Mountaineers Books. This book has been revised since 1984. Kudos to authors Vicky Spring and Tom Kirkendell. Their text and mileage info is terrific and their maps are very useful. With newer technology like GPS, altimeters and inclinometers becoming economical and available, I can see further improvements to the hill descriptions similar to what Lee has documented. Knowing the days’ vertical profile will help you plan the stash of chocolate needed enroute, and prepare for how much beer will be needed at the end of the day.

We have lists of the stuff: spare parts, tools, clothes, first aid etc. If you are interested just email.

In retrospect the team should have done an unsupported weekend from Vancouver to say Whistler to test everything out. Or I should have planned to spend the first week with them fishing for steelhead during the day and maintain bikes by night. And, to get used to the narrow roads and roaring traffic, a fews of day scooter riding in Hanoi would cure any lack of nerves. Lesson learned. As a support team driver in the VW camper, I spent many a hill chugging up in third gear at 60 kmh. I always wondered how it could be done on a bike.

All in all, this turned out to be a tremendous experience and not disappointing at all. The equipment selection worked out really well. And overall the legs managed to handle almost everything encountered. The back of my mind says “Mr. 101 – we have unfinished business”. It’s great to be 39.

Thanks to everyone who read the blog and took the time to add comments; it was a new thing for us, but I can see that with the right material and audience it is a great mode of communication. Your comments made a huge difference to Lee and Merryl. We hope we can return the favour some day. I will sign off with what I think is a pretty good quote that lets us all know why trying anything new at all is better than any adventure you can have sitting on your couch.

It is not the critic who counts,
or how the strongman stumbled and fell,
or where the doer of deeds
could have done better.

The credit belongs to the man
who is actually in the arena,
who knows the great enthusiasms,
the great devotion,
and who spends himself
in a worthy cause.

If he fails,
at least he fails while daring greatly,
so that he may never be
one of those cold and timid souls,
who know neither victory nor defeat.
- Theodore Roosevelt