The Blasphemous Bicycler

A few months ago, the Sloth and I decided to recreate last year’s PCRT camp out. Various scheduling conflicts pushed the trip back a few weeks this year, and we missed the fall leaves this time.

Mrs. Sloth kindly agreed to shuttle us up to the north end of the trail. After fiddling with our panniers for a few minutes, we were under way by about 11:00.

After a few miles, we encountered a momma bear with two cubs crossing the trail. We stopped our bikes to exchange pleasantries, but she was in rather a hurry with pre-hibernation errands to run. She led her cubs off the trail before we even had time to get our cameras out.

We spent the rest of the day rolling along, taking in the sights, shooting the breeze about various things, and taking numerous snack breaks.

Before long, it became obvious that darkness would find us before we found out camp site. We did not figure into our calculations that last year’s ride occurred before the daylight saving time change. Not that it was anything to be concerned about, since we were both rocking dynohubs. Along the way, the Sloth’s headlight cable got tangled in his spokes, which rendered his headlight unusable. We were able to find our way into camp by the light from my headlight without incident.

After we set up camp, we sat down to some fine Esbit-warmed cuisine.

With full bellies and many hours of darkness to while away before bedtime, we scavenged about for some firewood. The area around the camp site was picked pretty clean by previous campers, but we found enough to keep a small fire going until about 9:00. When the fire went out, we went to bed.

The morning sunlight revealed a huge pile of firewood in an unoccupied camp site a few yards from ours. We muttered curses under our breaths and made some breakfast and coffee. I made a pot from some Java Juice packets I brought along in an effort to save weight.

The Sloth is thankfully a bit more picky about his caffeine than I am, and produced from his panniers a french press and some freshly ground fancy-pants coffee from India. It put my java juice to shame.

We got rolling again, and passed a lot more cyclists than we had the day before. We passed a fellow heading the opposite direction, and a few seconds later, came across what appeared to be a blowdown.

Closer inspection revealed the truth. We were under attack by crazed beavers.

We moved the tree off the trail, and continued on our way.

Near the end of the trail, I was starting to have some problems with my hands and my butt. I looked down at the GPS on my handlebars (I was getting a trace for OpenStreetMap), and noticed that our moving average speed was somewhere around 10mph. It occurred to me that maybe drop-handebar touring bicycles are not the optimal equipment for a leisurely ride like this. Maybe there is a better piece of equipment for this.

I have long been of the opinion that bicycle technology was essentially perfected in the late 1970’s. I’m now hypothesising that it may, in fact, have been perfected fifty years earlier.

I’ll find out shortly.

I made my very own camouflage bivy-sack for sneaky camping trips.

The top is 1.9 osy uncoated ripstop nylon. The bottom is 1.3 osy sil-nylon. I used a modified version of this pattern I found online.

The whole shebang weighs 12 ounces.

I made the top camouflage so I can hide from rangers, game wardens, crazy rednecks, etc, when I’m camping in places I’m not supposed to. Even when I’m camping legally, the camouflage should be fun. I can pretend like I’m G.I. Joe hiding out from the Cobra Commander or whatever. I think this will make my camp-outs more exciting.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye!

The Sloth and I are planning to re-enact last year’s PCRT trip. If anyone wants to come along, come along.

It goes like this:

We ride about 35 miles, stop to camp, then ride another 35 miles or so the next day. We ride slowly. We stop frequently to take pictures / tell stories / goof around.

Then, there’s the traditional ice cream / Root Beer stop at the Cedar Run General Store.

You will not have a problem keeping up with us.

We’re looking at either the weekend of Oct. 17 or Nov 14th. Drop a comment if you’re interested.

My Grandma passed away last week. We had her funeral today. After the service, the ladies from the Lutheran Church had sandwiches and casserole dishes of macaroni-&-cheese and crock pots full of baked beans for everyone.

It was a very Lake Wobegone kind of scene, and it made me homesick.

Grandma was a very nice lady, and it’s sad to see her go. I will do my best to honor her memory by continuing to enjoy some of the things that she enjoyed:

1. Nature
2. Moonshine

Bye, Grandma!

Inspired by the delightful goofiness of a certain youtube personality, I’ve been spending some time reading about hammock camping over on hammockforums.net, and I decided to get the definitive book on the subject.

It’s pretty much a straight, to the point, screed on the hows and whys of hammock camping.

The idea is that you sleep in a hammock instead of on the ground. The benefits are:

1. camp anywhere – you don’t need to find a flat, level 6′x3′ piece of ground without roots, rocks, etc
2. Put your feet up and lounge in luxuriant splendor, even in the midst of inhospitable wilderness
3. Sleep up above all the bugs, snakes, mud, and creepy crawly things

It is a convincing argument, though I haven’t yet tried to sleep in one. I have found online instructions for constructing a hammock of my very own, but I have not yet sourced all the requisite materials for this project.

I think this strategy would work very nicely for stealth camping on s240s, because the number of possible campsites increases dramatically when all you need are 2 trees to tie up to.

I am eagerly awaiting warmer weather, so I can ride out into the hinterlands with a hammock, a few books, and perhaps a flask of spirits to conduct my leisure in style and comfort.

I give Hammock Camping 3 jihadis out of 5.