thatmattbone.com

Yesterday I received my xtracycle, and today I finished the assembly.  Sort of.  I’m still lacking proper shift cable and housing so I’m rocking a single speed xtracycle right now, but I took it on its maiden voyage in the middle of our giant snow.  First off, the xtracycle handles beautifully in the snow.  The bike is so long you can actually get the thing sideways and control it quite nicely.  More importantly, though, this beast can haul anything.  In the photo above, I’m hauling punch ingredients for our work Christmas party.  I can’t wait to haul crap.  If you need a large object transported by bicycle, just let me know.

And now gratuitous roller shots:

hold on!

dan is teh roller rockstar

I’ve got gears, panniers, a can opener, and, as of today, a hammock.  Time to pack up, head out on the bike, and do some stealth camping.  We’ll have to see how managing life, etc, goes, but I’d really like to do this soon…like this coming weekend.

(yes the hammock is not properly setup in this photo, but I was at a public park and people were staring at me like I was a crazy…and while I am a crazy, I started to become self conscious and packed up and left after a quick test of the hammock)

Today I struck out for a ride and got a bit lost. It ended up being 47.4 miles, which is well beyond what I’m comfortably capable of. A map:

I started out on Rockport which is bike heaven and hell. There are some tremendously steep hills, but most are quite short. The flipside is the descents are terrifying. However, the views cannot be beaten. This may be the road that shows up in Breaking Away. It sure seems like it, and it goes by quite a few quarries.

Riding through the country is great. There are many things to see that I’m not used to. First, I saw a bunch of silly cows standing (and some appeared to be squatting) in a muddy little pond. They had curious looks on their faces. Then I saw a huge rooster run across the road. I stopped a bit later to take a breather and noticed a sign that read “God Bless America and Homemade Pies.” mmm….pie.

At one point in the ride I was running short on water, so I stoped at a fire station and they let me fill up my bottles (I figured a fire station has water). The fireman were nice, but gave me strange look when they found out how far I was from home. At my next break, a couple on bikes passed me, and I caught up with them a few miles up the road looking at a map. I stopped to chat and make sure I was going the right direction (I need a map). They had also made a wrong turn, but seemed to a bit more seasoned than I. We parted ways and I stopped one last time at a gas station for some gatorade (I was pretty miserable at this point). A few miles later I was home, writing this incoherent posting. I need a nap.

Update: 2800 feet of elevation change! A bit more, and I’d be ready for the hilly hundred.

This past friday I had a bit of an incident when the front rim on my bike came apart rather violently. Everything was fine (i.e. crash free), though it was a startling experience. The rapid decompression of a tire pumped to about 100psi is…dramatic.