Cycling

ARC (Advocacy for Respect for Cyclists) in 2003.
Time for another one?

Last year, fed up after what seemed like an endless number of flat tires, I decided to pay real money and get some durable tires.

I paid a ridiculous retail price at a local bike shop for a Continental Gatorskin, because I had heard so many good things about them — mainly, that they resisted flats.

I liked the Gatorskin so much, that I bought a second one for the front — ordering online at a much lower price this time. As a full Gatorskin bike owner, I was now set.

I gotta say, they’ve been great. A big difference between the Gatorskins and previous brands I’ve owned — Specialized, Vittoria, Hutchinson — is that they seemed to resist the normal cuts and gashes tires get in normal everyday riding conditions. Let’s face it — it’s a jungle out there, with broken glass, radial tire wire, and microscopic metal shavings all waiting to take your tire down.

The knock against these tires is that they’re heavy, and slower than comparable tires. But if you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you know I’m no speed demon, so that doesn’t matter to me.

Just the other day, I was inspecting the tires for cuts, and there just weren’t any to speak of. Oh, a couple of really tiny ones — but you’d expect more than that after 1200 miles.

Today, my luck ran out. I was on one of our most popular local routes — the Mopac Expressway — when I heard a “pop — whissssh.” The best tire I’d ever owned fell in combat against a glass-littered shoulder.

I felt around the inside of the tire, but couldn’t locate the cause of the flat. The new tube went in easily, and I used my trusty Topeak Road Morph pump to inflate it to 105 pounds. Then I saw it.

The first big gash I’ve ever seen on my Gatorskin.

I must have hit a dandy shard of glass, because the gash across the tire stood out like a boil on a baby’s butt. When I ran my finger over it, I could feel it protrude up from the surface of the tire. There was a space between the cut tire edges. If I’d noticed it before I did the repair, I could have added a boot to the tire — I keep strips cut from ride numbers in my seat bag just for that purpose — but the last thing I wanted to do was pull the tire off and put it back on all over again. I got on the bike and pedaled gingerly for the remaining four miles home.

Later tonight — or maybe tomorrow morning, depending on my mood — I’ll take off the cut tire, boot it, and put it on the front. I’ll rotate the front tire to the rear.

Then, just to be on the safe side, I’ll go online and order another tire. It’ll be a Gatorskin.

Filed under: tires Tagged: flat tire, Gatorskins, tires

Continued from Part II

In this section, I press Jobst to talk about his online persona. People have mixed feelings about him. One side has it that he’s an interesting person with an immense wealth of knowledge and experience. Another side is always wary of his crusty, irritable personality which they feel can be off-putting and hard to work with. What does he feel about all that? Well, find out.

11. There’s the real Jobst Brandt, and then there’s the online Jobst Brandt. The latter portion in your claim to fame seals your status as a no-questions-asked guru of bicycling, if you will. I was interested in knowing where all this began. Did someone invite you to compile these words of wisdom and archive them online or was it self-started?

JB : I started writing them long ago to fill voids in mechanical understanding that I perceived. Becoming a guru was from the attacks that responded to my explanations of natural phenomena. The impression probably comes mainly from bikers who believe in their “common knowledge”, that is mostly misdirected. They feel they need to defend that position and go on the attack. Just search how many so called engineers insist that my analysis and instructions on the bicycle wheel are all wrong. I’m used to that. It’s the story of my engineering career. I hear similar stories from other engineers.

For years, there was just one newsgroup before splitting up into tech, misc, rides, market, etc… Back before it grew out of its pants it was a pleasant place with only rare disagreements. Once the place became noted, the BS artists realized they had a rostrum from which to spread their religion.

12. You also have an almost cruel stance against irrational statements. You are popularly associated with this wise, very experienced man with meticulous attention to detail, but also moody and cranky and perhaps a little myopic to suggestions while sticking to old fashioned advice. Do you agree with some of these views?

JB : I have little patience with people who write anonymously, mainly because their reason (incompetence) for doing so. Well they don’t explain why it is “old-fashioned” advice. Much of that comes indirectly from my bicycling that is not racing. That Sierra ride that is on someone’s web site is a classic for iconoclasts.

They feel that I am not giving them their due when in fact I don’t mention their style that they are trying to claim is the only way. Another earlier point is that I was a faster and stronger rider than most of the locals and that irritated newbies. I am old and slow now but still go on long rides.

13. Coming back to this idea of people having misdirected knowledge, what’s your pick for one that you find having to straighten out often?

JB : A classic is that a hub of a bicycle wheel “hangs from the top spokes”. That struck me when I first got a high class Cinelli bicycle. I realized that this ignores pre-stressed structures and that most people wouldn’t recognize a pre-stressed structure if they ran into it. I once took a train to Budapest solely to see the worlds first significant suspension bridge, the “Cain Bridge”:

This bridge was built without suspension cables that Roebling had not yet invented, so all elements were long steel pinned bars. Click on center picture second row and see some of the beautiful structures engineers have built. The last shot in that sequence is the Chain Bridge. I was not disappointed.

14. I’m curious – do you personally know any of these online folks you exchange all this information with?

JB : A few who are pleasant, yes. That’s where I found the German (Klaus Schmidt) who assisted me in proof reading the German translation of my book. He once wrote off and on to rec.bicycle, but when it got big and broad and rude, he bailed out. The same seems to have happened to Bruce Hildenbrand whom I mention in one tour report.

15. Which brings me to probably one of most important questions to wrap up. How well did you know Sheldon Brown and could you write a little about your relationship with him?

JB : I got along fine with him and we talked at InterBike for a few years until he said he was coming out my way in the summer to visit his daughter Tova, who was attending UC Santa Cruz. I met him at his motel in Santa Cruz, 65 miles from my house, from which we took a great ride along the coast and up through big redwoods before he descended to Santa Cruz from Summit Road while I rode home. He took the FAQ title page picture of me standing over my bicycle on that ride and I took some good ones of him that I am sure his wife has suitably saved.

Jobst Brandt and Sheldon Brown in Santa Cruz in 2006. This photo was borrowed from the latter’s journal, where he had documented the day’s ride with Jobst.

16. He was a renaissance man. Do you feel the cycling world is a little emptier without his presence of mind?

JB : I liked him a lot and found him to be no mechanical dummy. As you may recall, The London Times wrote a glowing obituary after his sudden death that came after the second time he came to Santa Cruz on which he and his wife had a lovely ride around the place. He was already suffering from deterioration but didn’t let it take his bicycling away. The next time I saw him he was on an electric three-wheeler at InterBike, no longer able to walk. A great man! As you see, he believed in the stuff I wrote and put it on his web site.

Part IV to be continued…

Topic : Bicycle Wheel Loading (1999) : Eric Salathe initially wrote : “The Bicycle Wheel is beautifully written, but the persistent lack of acceptance of this idea among its readers, as well documented on this list, shows that the ‘wheel stands on its lower spokes’ slogan does not accomplish its function.”

JB’s reply : “I chose not to condescend and state anything other than what is engineering fact, explaining why and how the wheel works. I know that many people have great difficulty visualizing this and I believe that is why the wire spoked wheel remained misunderstood and not analyzed until “the Bicycle Wheel” was published. Previously many authors wrote extensively about what they believed took place. None of these recognized that the top spokes or, for that matter, any other spokes of the wheel were affected by the vertical load except the bottom few in the tire contact zone. That loads only unload spokes was also not understood. When a wheel is overloaded or crashed to destruction, none of its spokes are overloaded (other than possibly being kinked after becoming slack).

I am fairly sure that the whole subject is still a mystery to most people who should understand it. I overhear conversations and see postings here that reveal these misconceptions. Even people who seem to grasp the concept have said as much as “I crashed my wheel and have to get all new spokes”. Progress is slow in coming.”

Topic : Anonymous Postings (2009) : “Dan O” initially justified to Jobst the unseen value in anonymous postings by writing : “What’s in a name? You must assume that any information you make available on the internet will be harvested, stored, and used indefinitely and completely outside your control. This information can be accessible to any and every wacko ‘in the world’. The availability of information can even affect the security of other people who might never have chosen to make it publicly available. So it is a sensible basic tenet to not provide unnecessary information to systems outside your own control.”

JB’s reply : “I suppose you don’t take off your dark glasses when introduced to people with whom you exchange thoughts and ideas. That and chewing gum is something one once learned not to do in polite societal encounters. I realize that this forum lost all that about 15 years ago and now we occasionally read about newsgroups that have vanished for the large volume of rude and anonymous postings.

I hope you noticed that the least civil postings come from a raft of secret agents. Even Sheldon Brown had no effect on the genre in his days in spite of his courteous style of asking these writers to sign their work with real names. I guess this is like many other fads that people follow without cause or reason, like wearing dark glasses in all weather and night time too to have the I-spy look.”

Continued from Part 1.

Thus began the interview with Jobst Brandt. Note that each of these ’sessions’ are appended with some of his interesting writings that I found on the web. I have chosen them carefully not only to stay with the topic, but also to bring to light Brandt’s wavelength of thinking that is very unique to him.

Pictures : Standford University. Source.

1. We mostly know the man Jobst Brandt through online articles and a book, but what are the missing links in the story? Firstly, where were you born and was the bicycle a constant in your upbringing?

JB : I was born in NY and moved to Palo Alto in 1938 when my father took a position at Stanford University. I have a BS in Engineering from the same. I started bicycling at age five and found it useful to go to school and to the community center and swimming pool that was more than a mile away. We even did outings to the yacht harbor, five miles away. I was gifted with big lungs and strong legs and so I enjoyed it.

2. What did you like about mechanical engineering that made you pursue it? Did you always feel math and science was your forte?

JB : I suppose one is born with a preference for music, sculpture, or science in various forms. At preschool age I was always interested in how things worked… mechanically and otherwise. Electronics was not one of them.

3. What were some of the most memorable things you did in your engineering classes at Stanford? Were you involved in extra-curricular activities and such outside classes?

JB : Not much, my interests were in practical things. Railroads and steam engines were a large attraction for their mechanisms and how they worked. The same went for cars that needed much mechanical assistance in my youth.

4. I see. So tell me where this passion for the physics, mechanics and failure of bicycle parts come from anyway?

JB : These are standard failure mechanisms of machinery that I watched with interest starting in my mother’s kitchen and our cars and bicycles.

5. Do correct me if I’m off a bit here in reading you. Would you consider yourself frugal? Did you parents ever bring you up this way, cultivating in you the need to be conservative with finances or was it the engineering career that taught you that money and resources are limited, hence design must be based around that.

JB : I think you are jumping to conclusions. As a youth I lived through the days of the second World War in which many things were scarce (due to the “War Effort”) so we were careful about what was thrown away or repaired. I don’t see a great frugality in my habits, I think they are more in line with not being a conspicuous consumer. I know many bicycle riders who are embarrassed to patch a tire tube because they don’t want to be seen as poor people or cheapskates.

6. Have you ever considered teaching?

JB : Yes and no. I seldom have time to develop a routine. Guest speaker is a better venue.

7. Would you kindly share a little about your professional background for my readers? I’ve read that you’ve had a stint at some big names such as Porsche, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, HP, Avocet etc? How do you explain a famous bicycling personality working in all kinds of places, from premium sports car company to computers to particle physics before jumping into the bicycle industry? I mean, you must have picked up on a considerable wealth of knowledge from all these experiences.

JB : I think you confuse bicycle technology with general engineering problems. Be that a cogwheel mountain railway or a sewing machine, failure occurs for the same reason, that of misunderstanding of the mechanical demands by the designer. My work at SLAC introduced me to computing and enabled me to develop cam shaft design programs as well as graphic display software that most people at SLAC and HP used.

The wheel drawings in my book were drawn with my own software and along with that, I wrote the finite element program to analyze wheel deflections and spoke elongations. That program came from a pressure vessel analysis one of my colleagues wrote for his masters thesis at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

8. Remarkable! You’re probably more than qualified to put forth an opinion here. As an engineer, what do you feel about the state of engineering these days? How do you compare engineered designs now to those in your times?

JB : I believe it has always been poor in most places with singular exceptions, and those names certain engineers don’t forget… like Leonardo, Tesla, and Van der Waals, whose work is mainly misunderstood. Some people have heard of Van der Waal’s forces but that’s all. It involves, among other things, adhesives that are a mystery to most technical people. This gets close to tire patching and why patches won’t stick.

9. Do you have any examples of poor engineering in our current atmosphere?

JB : Toyota is a good example of bad technical management. Managers who manage technical people must understand the technology they expect from their people. Many of my managers recognized my understanding of machinery and assigned complex problems to me that others in the group did not master, be that in the US Army Corps of Engineers (weapons assembly, demolitions and bridge building), Porsche, SLAC, HP Frequency and time (Interferometers and optics), opto-isolators or memory disk friction and other mechanical problems.

Those Toyota cars should never have gotten this far if the designs were reasonably reviewed and subjected to proper road tests. They weren’t, probably under the belief that competitors were not operating any differently. This is a top management failure that reaches down to the lowest levels.

I am dismayed at the press analysis of the whole affair, instead of recognizing it as bad technical management. Having seen such design problems I think I have a feeling for this.

10. To wrap up this session…you’re probably retired now, is that correct? What do you do these days?

JB : The work at HP ended and did not get renewed so I am on vacation full time. I ride the bike when I can and see how my friends are doing. I live alone and my sons live nearby, but even closer is my former wife. One of my brothers lives in London and keeps in touch by email.

Part III is continued…

Jobst Brandt during his traditional tour of the Alps in 2008. Image Courtesy : Source

If you will forgive my black and white comparison, there exists two categories of people – the purists and the pragmatists.

Purists go strictly by the book. They are conservative about new methods and much comfortable in being a step back from the rest, never wavering from first principles. Pragmatists do what is necessary to be practical and are ready to push the boundaries into new knowledge. They follow experimental evidence, rather than strictly following someone’s theories as to why the world behaves the way it does.

I’d like to think a good bit of both is needed when one is an engineer. Not only do you have to be conservative with designs that are stable and cost effective but you must also be results oriented and ready to accept or apply something new if that’s what a correct interpretation of data reveals.

I must admit it was a bit difficult for me to wonder where I’d place Jobst Brandt, a Stanford alumni and legendary author of The Bicycle Wheel. This work is widely regarded as the bible of wheel building.

For starters, Jobst is a resident of Palo Alto in California. While he is a graduate of a reputed institution and an acclaimed author, his experience is also quite rich through an engineering career that spanned from Porche automobiles, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and Hewlett-Packard to Avocet bicycle products. For others, he is a person of many words, opinions and very colorful Apline cycling memories. Perhaps nothing may be more famous about him than his myth busting advices and recommendations on everything cycling.

Getting back to my point earlier, reading this book entertained in me the notion of Brandt being the quintessential engineer, you know, the idea I talked about earlier. Guided by both theory and observation of failure rates, Brandt documented in simple English how to build the most durable wheels at one’s leisure.

A highlight in this work was in how he managed to convince readers that the bicycle wheel is an unusual structure that beat intuition, hence conventional wisdom and folklore would not work in understanding it. It was the precise scientific method with which he approached the subject that was most fascinating to read.

But even three editions later, as reviewers say, the book didn’t expanded itself to absorb the current advancements in wheel building. The book didn’t explore new methods in finite element analysis in novel low spoke count designs, came the complaint.

Then there were others who remarked that the book was the work of an opinionated pedant, a cranky Luddite, a hard headed, pompous individual resistant to change. That the book didn’t correct erroneous statements, graphs, calculations and so on and so forth.

Brandt himself has not shied away from his critics, some of them engineers, and has been fighting back with nothing less than outspoken defense. When asked about this, his understatement would be that he is used to this. Yet, you get a sense that there’s frustration somewhere when he admits it is the highlighting story of his engineering career.

I suppose it is easy for someone to be enveloped in other people’s criticism of Brandt and his ideas. But it was hard for me to read him as I have not known him personally.

A few weeks back, it dawned upon me that I must engage in learning where Jobst Brandt and the geography of his ideas and opinions sprout from. I thought that might be a rewarding experience and it was to a degree, as he was very forthcoming in reply to my barrage of questions. The secondary objective of this exercise was to have the enigma of Jobst Brandt as a person stripped away and have this brought to the readers of this blog.

A dated image showing Jobst Brandt navigating unpaved sections on the Gavia Pass

This week, I will present to you the conversation I had with the interesting and sophisticated personality that is Jobst Brandt. Topics range from his personal life, his professional career, his cycling achievements and some of his steadfast opinions on engineering and the state of cycling today.

RELATED :

Jobst Brandt : Part II

OTHER INTERVIEWS :

Conversations With David Gordon Wilson (Author of Bicycling Science)

New Work by URS
UrbanRepair Squad
Harbord Street.

Saddletramp wrote: "The action-hero drama of dodging obstacles and potholes, escaping devil-may-care drivers in super-fast cars, and braving the fierce, temperamental elements, may seem, and feel, quite comic. Unless you’re face-down on the pavement.

With some wit, we endeavour to provide warning with humour; suggest danger with comedy;

Continued from Part II

In this section, I press Jobst to talk about his online persona. People have mixed feelings about him. One side has it that he’s an interesting person with an immense wealth of knowledge and experience. Another side is always wary of his crusty, irritable personality which they feel can be off-putting and hard to work with. What does he feel about all that? Well, find out.

11. There’s the real Jobst Brandt, and then there’s the online Jobst Brandt. The latter portion in your claim to fame seals your status as a no-questions-asked guru of bicycling, if you will. I was interested in knowing where all this began. Did someone invite you to compile these words of wisdom and archive them online or was it self-started?

JB : I started writing them long ago to fill voids in mechanical understanding that I perceived. Becoming a guru was from the attacks that responded to my explanations of natural phenomena. The impression probably comes mainly from bikers who believe in their “common knowledge”, that is mostly misdirected. They feel they need to defend that position and go on the attack. Just search how many so called engineers insist that my analysis and instructions on the bicycle wheel are all wrong. I’m used to that. It’s the story of my engineering career. I hear similar stories from other engineers.

For years, there was just one newsgroup before splitting up into tech, misc, rides, market, etc… Back before it grew out of its pants it was a pleasant place with only rare disagreements. Once the place became noted, the BS artists realized they had a rostrum from which to spread their religion.

12. You also have an almost cruel stance against irrational statements. You are popularly associated with this wise, very experienced man with meticulous attention to detail, but also moody and cranky and perhaps a little myopic to suggestions while sticking to old fashioned advice. Do you agree with some of these views?

JB : I have little patience with people who write anonymously, mainly because their reason (incompetence) for doing so. Well they don’t explain why it is “old-fashioned” advice. Much of that comes indirectly from my bicycling that is not racing. That Sierra ride that is on someone’s web site is a classic for iconoclasts.

They feel that I am not giving them their due when in fact I don’t mention their style that they are trying to claim is the only way. Another earlier point is that I was a faster and stronger rider than most of the locals and that irritated newbies. I am old and slow now but still go on long rides.

13. Coming back to this idea of people having misdirected knowledge, what’s your pick for one that you find having to straighten out often?

JB : A classic is that a hub of a bicycle wheel “hangs from the top spokes”. That struck me when I first got a high class Cinelli bicycle. I realized that this ignores pre-stressed structures and that most people wouldn’t recognize a pre-stressed structure if they ran into it. I once took a train to Budapest solely to see the worlds first significant suspension bridge, the “Cain Bridge”:

This bridge was built without suspension cables that Roebling had not yet invented, so all elements were long steel pinned bars. Click on center picture second row and see some of the beautiful structures engineers have built. The last shot in that sequence is the Chain Bridge. I was not disappointed.

14. I’m curious – do you personally know any of these online folks you exchange all this information with?

JB : A few who are pleasant, yes. That’s where I found the German (Klaus Schmidt) who assisted me in proof reading the German translation of my book. He once wrote off and on to rec.bicycle, but when it got big and broad and rude, he bailed out. The same seems to have happened to Bruce Hildenbrand whom I mention in one tour report.

15. Which brings me to probably one of most important questions to wrap up. How well did you know Sheldon Brown and could you write a little about your relationship with him?

JB : I got along fine with him and we talked at InterBike for a few years until he said he was coming out my way in the summer to visit his daughter Tova, who was attending UC Santa Cruz. I met him at his motel in Santa Cruz, 65 miles from my house, from which we took a great ride along the coast and up through big redwoods before he descended to Santa Cruz from Summit Road while I rode home. He took the FAQ title page picture of me standing over my bicycle on that ride and I took some good ones of him that I am sure his wife has suitably saved.

Jobst Brandt and Sheldon Brown in Santa Cruz in 2006. This photo was borrowed from the latter’s journal, where he had documented the day’s ride with Jobst.

16. He was a renaissance man. Do you feel the cycling world is a little emptier without his presence of mind?

JB : I liked him a lot and found him to be no mechanical dummy. As you may recall, The London Times wrote a glowing obituary after his sudden death that came after the second time he came to Santa Cruz on which he and his wife had a lovely ride around the place. He was already suffering from deterioration but didn’t let it take his bicycling away. The next time I saw him he was on an electric three-wheeler at InterBike, no longer able to walk. A great man! As you see, he believed in the stuff I wrote and put it on his web site.

Part IV to be continued…

Topic : Bicycle Wheel Loading (1999) : Eric Salathe initially wrote : “The Bicycle Wheel is beautifully written, but the persistent lack of acceptance of this idea among its readers, as well documented on this list, shows that the ‘wheel stands on its lower spokes’ slogan does not accomplish its function.”

JB’s reply : “I chose not to condescend and state anything other than what is engineering fact, explaining why and how the wheel works. I know that many people have great difficulty visualizing this and I believe that is why the wire spoked wheel remained misunderstood and not analyzed until “the Bicycle Wheel” was published. Previously many authors wrote extensively about what they believed took place. None of these recognized that the top spokes or, for that matter, any other spokes of the wheel were affected by the vertical load except the bottom few in the tire contact zone. That loads only unload spokes was also not understood. When a wheel is overloaded or crashed to destruction, none of its spokes are overloaded (other than possibly being kinked after becoming slack).

I am fairly sure that the whole subject is still a mystery to most people who should understand it. I overhear conversations and see postings here that reveal these misconceptions. Even people who seem to grasp the concept have said as much as “I crashed my wheel and have to get all new spokes”. Progress is slow in coming.”

Topic : Anonymous Postings (2009) : “Dan O” initially justified to Jobst the unseen value in anonymous postings by writing : “What’s in a name? You must assume that any information you make available on the internet will be harvested, stored, and used indefinitely and completely outside your control. This information can be accessible to any and every wacko ‘in the world’. The availability of information can even affect the security of other people who might never have chosen to make it publicly available. So it is a sensible basic tenet to not provide unnecessary information to systems outside your own control.”

JB’s reply : “I suppose you don’t take off your dark glasses when introduced to people with whom you exchange thoughts and ideas. That and chewing gum is something one once learned not to do in polite societal encounters. I realize that this forum lost all that about 15 years ago and now we occasionally read about newsgroups that have vanished for the large volume of rude and anonymous postings.

I hope you noticed that the least civil postings come from a raft of secret agents. Even Sheldon Brown had no effect on the genre in his days in spite of his courteous style of asking these writers to sign their work with real names. I guess this is like many other fads that people follow without cause or reason, like wearing dark glasses in all weather and night time too to have the I-spy look.”

I was happy to see Mike continue on past McGrath, and even happier still to see that as of this moment (6:30pm AK time), he is heading out of Ophir. Though no mountains of mancakes are tempting him there, it is ‘gut check’ time, as he wrote in 2008:

Do yourself a favor–open up an atlas [or check the tracker's map -- SM] and check out where Ophir sits. Not much around, right? Takotna and McGrath sit ~40+ miles to the SE, and then waaaaay to the north is Ruby, and way to the WSW sit Shageluk and Anvik. Unless I turn around now, at my *best* rate of speed the next hint of civilization I’ll encounter is at Ruby, and that’s at least three solid days travel away.

Think about that for a second: When’s the last time you left somewhere, anywhere, and knew that you wouldn’t, couldn’t get anywhere with a roof and four walls for more than three days?

Shageluk and Anvik are a similar distance away but positively unreachable–no one goes there from here, not in ‘even’ numbered years anyway.

Any phrase I choose will come off as cliche, so I’ll just say it the way it comes to mind: Leaving Ophir is gut-check time. Have your mental shit in a pile or you’ll lose it completely on the way up to Ruby. I dallied a bit while crossing the makeshift runway the dog folks use just west of town, mentally checking everything I needed off of many errant mental lists.

This year he did not have the down time in McGrath where tent parts, stove and other odds and ends were new additions to his kit. So perhaps his ‘errant mental lists’ are a little shorter and less numerous than 2008 when he new additions to his kit from his downtime in McGrath.

That downtime was almost 24 hours. Yet still his split times show him a day behind 2008’s pace. It looks like he has been riding most of the day, with some slow spots of (likely) bike pushing. I think the pushing may be due to fresh snow, and perhaps things are looking a little like this:

(photo from Mike, 2008, just outside Ophir)

I’ll leave you with the rest of Mike’s words about the Ophir ‘gut check’:

I knew that I had all I needed–I wouldn’t have made it this far if my gear or fortitude had been lacking. But still, the threshold between ‘I am here’ and ‘that’s way the heck out there’ is slap-in-the-face obvious on the edge of Ophir. Somehow walking made me less anxious as I punched through that invisible wall and committed to heading north toward Ruby, so I strolled a few minutes until the lights, sounds, and woodsmoke were no longer sensible.

Despite the warmth of the night I caught myself shivering with anticipation. I reached down and flicked my headlight up a notch brighter, the better to see through the steadily increasing snowfall, then remounted and pedaled out into the darkness.

–Scott Morris