Lots to process still, but great things as usual.
More to come…
Author: timmooney
Thoughts going into WDS 2013
We’re about an hour away from our scheduled pickup to the airport, for a trip about a year in the making. Last year, Kimberly and I attended our first World Domination Summit and came away inspired enough to commit to tickets to this year’s affair.
WDS is difficult to describe, but I’ll give it (yet another) whirl. The heart of the conference is entrepreneurialism, but not necessarily sticking to just that. It’s the melding of living your life on your own terms through lifestyle choices that include how you work and how you play. Chris Guillebeau organized the first WDS two years ago and it’s doubled each year. Clearly the message resonates! I definitely recommend checking out his book The $100 Startup… it’s one of the few business startup books that have resonated with me. Maybe it was the bike on the cover 😉
Last year’s WDS gave me the germ of an idea that is eventually going to become PedalShift, a bike touring lifestyle site that I’ve been working on in fits and starts for the last few months. I hope to launch it later this summer, and I suspect this year’s WDS will fuel some inspiration.
So… off to Portland!
The Goblin’s Identity Revealed!
Many of you remember my west coast bike, the Green Goblin. It’s a vintage REI Viaggio Safari of (until just now) unknown vintage. I bought it at a Portland bike co-op that helped restore it to its current glory.
The thing is… the Internets have no info on this beast. None. I spent the last year googling in vain trying to find something (anything!) that would clue me on the details on the Goblin’s origin story. I tweeted Novara, I asked REI mechanics… no one had a clue.
And then I stumbled on this little gem… the 1998 ACA Touring Bike Buyer’s Guide. And there it was:
A nice review, and it’s definitely correct because it has that weird reverse-spring deraileur that will definitely screw me up if it ever blows on the road! And, of course, you can definitely tell that’s the Goblin in the pic. It’s nice to know (finally!) what I’m riding.
And I get to see the Goblin as soon as Saturday… we fly out tomorrow for Portland and the WDS conference. Tour starts the 15th, so I get to rock some local Portland rides first. Looking forward to it!
Hey, if you dig this, you’d probably like my podcast Pedalshift. Its all about bike touring and stuff!
It’s like I moved the whole house to a different city
You ever see those “wide loads” on the highway and they’re carrying a whole house? Not pieces of a house, the whole friggin house?
That’s sort of what I just did – farewell subdomain, hello uncommonlysilly.com. Same house, new address. I might have changed one of the Google Fonts. Nah, looks the same.
Happy birthday to my favorite girl
Happy 4-0 to the love o’ my life…
Do not try this at home
I took my first gnarly header over my handlebars the other day… I refuse to engage in finger-pointing (particularly since I have about a 50% blame-share) but I would like all pedestrians to please listen on multi-use paths for people like me who need to get by them. Had I been able to remain on the sidewalk, I wouldn’t have had to get off the sidewalk. This is important, because when I got back on said sidewalk, it decided to jam my wheels in a way that stopped bike momentum. This is a problem, because I kept going… and fell on the rough sidewalk… and skidded… for a few feet.
Ouch.
Contact point numbers 1-5 now all are pretty shredded up, but healing. The left knee never really wanted to close up until about 2 days in (hint: that’s when you’re supposed to get stitches I think?). The road rash on my left forearm is the worst… that’ll take a week or more to stop smarting (see above). The heel-of-hand scrapes are particularly fun when typing.
Like I said, I have to take some blame here… I was rushing, there was no need to take a risk and go off the sidewalk onto the grass. Still, I can’t help but feel like I need a little help from pedestrians who are unaware of requests to move to the right when a faster person (biker, runner, walker?) who is sharing the path with them needs to get by.
But now I have some solid biking scars to share. So there’s that.
It’s Goblin Time
Back in the day, there used to be Miller Time.
Today, I polished off a major project that was a monkey on my back for months… so, I’m reminded of that old commercial.
So, I went to pick up some beer and look what I found at the corner market:
This seems familiar… hmmm….
Ahh yes, the Goblin. I believe it’s awakening from his slumber in a box in my brother’s garage. It hasn’t rolled since last summer’s adventure, and in two weeks… I’ll be back to get it ready for a Portland to San Francisco ride.
IT SHALL BE GLORIOUS!
(Ok, I’ll admit to having had a couple of those beers. Please disregard the all caps.)
GLORIOUS! HUZZAH!
Crossing the river and heading home
I woke up with the sun… and the frogs (seriously… all night with the croaking? Or whatever you call it?) ready for the last leg of the mini-tour. I had decided to cross the Potomac at White’s Ferry using the nifty private cable ferry… 2 bucks and a couple minutes of aquatic traversing:
The campsite I stayed at the night before was just around the bend above. As I was rolling off, the guy who was sharing the other side of it with me was getting ready to kayak the rest of the way to DC. Lots of ways to find adventure…
Once on the other side of the river, I was able to bike a few more miles into Leesburg and grab a nice breakfast at a local diner. I had about 40 more miles to ride, and I wanted to beat the rain. I chose the Washington & Old Dominon trail, otherwise known locally as the W&OD, pronounced (unfortunately) “wad” – not kidding.
Not a great experience. In fact, I don’t think I like the W&OD all that much. There’s not much shade, and because the trail is paved there’s a fair number of racer types who are more concerned about making their times than sharing the trail. It’s not everyone (far from it – I get along just fine with bikers of all stripes), just enough “Lances” to make the ride less enjoyable.
Next time I’ll take a little mud, some more shade, and a lot more solitude on the C&O.
Final tally for the day… 44.9 miles total. Total for the weekend, about 120 miles (roughly the distance from DC home to the cabin). Feeling pretty good about next month… the big hills are tougher fully loaded, but that’s what they make low gears for, right?
This ride’s for the birds…
Today was a little humid for my taste, but mild by summer standards (please do not remind me it’s spring… My weather nerds taught me a cool term called meteorological summer). I rode from my campsite to Brunswick,MD and had a good encounter and two meh encounters.
Good – a gorgeous heron that didn’t mind a close up:
Bad… A flat rear tire (by far my least favorite to change)) and then my entire rear rack falling off the bike… 2 miles apart… 2.5 miles from Brunswick. Dude.
About 45 minutes delayed, I nabbed lunch at the spectacularly cool Beans in the Belfry:
I had a much easier 20 mile ride back to tonight’s campsite near White’s Ferry. My neighbor is a kayaker:
And I just saw a deer saunter by his tent. Very cool.
So, figure about 60ish muddy miles, maybe 5 on a slowly flattening tire (yes it was that muddy I didn’t notice!). Not bad. Tomorrow I cross the Potomac into Leesburg for breakfast, then take the W&OD back home. I’ll confess, with the muddy surface and occasional downed trees blocking today, I’ll happily take pavement tomorrow!
Quick escapes
It’s amazing how fast you can get away from a city… DC in particular… by bike. After dropping off my dog Louis for a weekend with his number one fan (I’m not kidding – he has one) I was a 90 minute ride of 20ish miles to a gorgeous riverside campground. How often do we fritter away 90 minutes and it gets us no place interesting or rejuvenating?
Also nice here tonight, but sadly unphotographable – the fireflies.
