I've reached the northern end of the Willamette Valley Scenic Windtunnel! 138 miles into this #biketour, 65 miles into today, with about 40 to go!

Eugene to Jefferson Photos

Maybe these didn't post in random order this time. We will see! (they didn't, thanks new phone!)

Hey look, I'm pointing in the direction that I'll be going!

Break #1 25 miles in at Harrisburg. I wasn't supposed to go to Harrisburg.  I totally screwed up following the Willamette Scenic Bikeway.

Trees! Oh trees and your fleeting windblock!


Scenic. (and smoky, there should be hills in  the background)

Oh. So. Scenic.

Trees planted in neat little rows, as if they understand that the valley is a friggin' summer-time wind tunnel.

The Tattooine Scenic Bikeway.

Hey look, a route-finding sign!  Kind of nice, actually, when they are actually there.

I'm up a hill here. A real hill. Still windy.

My new dashboard, complete with cue-sheet for the bikeway that is missing cues.

Doesn't really matter though. So far it's a tour of dirt farmers.  I should have done this ride in June or July.

People practicing near the dugouts that I want to sleep in. The green grass is concerning. I hope none of the sprinklers point into my dugout.

2015 Oregon Tour, Day 1, Eugene to Jefferson, Or

Holy cow headwinds batman.  Head. Winds.  Headwinds headwinds headwinds headwinds.  I just road 70 miles at between 10 an 12 mph, working by butt off the whole time. (Normally cruising in the flats should be more like 18mph).

I knew there would be headwinds today.  The forecast predicted 15mph N winds, as well smoke from the County Line 2 (Warm Springs) fire to be blown in over the cascades from the East.  Both were right, but it was hard to tell if haze in the area was just from the smoke, or if it was also from the winds kicking up dirt from all the barren dirt fields.  It turns out that Late August is not the best time to tour the Willamette Valley.

Today was 70 miles, with 5:29 on bike time.  I left a bit after 10am, which was silly because I should have left at 6am to beat the wind, but I didn't because leaving for your own house on a bike tour takes FOREVER.  I left after 1pm to start my tour last summer.

So far the Willamette Scenic Bikeway is pretty enough, but not that much better than what you see on I-5, at least not in late August anyway. I did miss a big section of it between Coburg and Peoria because I took the wrong road - which saved me 10 miles but also cost me what I must assume was the prettiest biking in Oregon ever.  Or not. I don't know. It was friggin windy.

Jefferson is a suburb of Albany or Salem or both, so it's not a great place to stay. It's a town of 3k (too big) without a good sleeping park.  I did find one spot down by the river, but it's real near a homeless camp which could cause me trouble and is pretty exposed.  Right now I'm in a middle school / public park making dinner and scoping out some baseball dugouts, my favorite stealth camping spots.  They should work great provided the football practice currently nearby leaves so I can go set up discretely.   I also need to find water, because all the faucets are hooked up to hose spigots.  This could be.. interesting...

I should also mention - in a strange coincidence I met another bagger on the road (I forgot his name) who has a mutual friend with Iris and I, and is already setup to stay with at my place tomorrow on his bike tour.  We'd never met before, but someone found each other on the road in Jefferson. Crazy.

With food, fuel, and water, Freedom Nargoat is 93 lbs. Still 10-20 lbs lighter than last year for this #biketour Follow along at siryaps.blogspot.com

August Adventure: Tour Du Wildfires!

Life is too short to avoid bike touring because of ass-loads of wildfires.

Or, maybe, life is too short NOT to avoid bike touring because of ass-loads of wildfires.

Well, either way, I leave tomorrow for a 12-day, 750 to 850 mile Oregon loop bike tour, my last adventure before I have to report back to work on September first.  I should be able to avoid the fires, but I'm worried about smoke (more on that later). It's been a good summer, and so far this blog has recorded (mostly via instagram) some of my longer adventures, including a 9-day, 100 mile hike on the southern PCT, a week out at Oregon Country Fair, and a week riding across Iowa with 15,000 of my closest friends and Team RoadShow.  This, however, will be my first self-supported bike ride since my 2014 62 day, 4,064 mile trip (blogged starting here).  I have been riding, mountain biking, hiking, and running all summer, however, so I feel well prepared for this trip.  

This post, in a way, picks up where I last left off with my explanation of why I bike tour.  I'm especially excited about this trip for a couple of reasons.  1) It's been almost a year since I finished my last one, so I need to get back out. 2) It's about half-through known parts of Oregon that I know and love, and half-through new parts of Oregon that I hope to soon love. 3) It's the debut and test of my new 20lb lighter touring setup!

Of course, I'll be blogging the whole trip here as my personal diary, and hopefully some of you will find it interesting as well. For my own records, I'm going to dedicated the rest of this post to pack lists and routing. My ego says you will still be interested.  (I explained a little bit about why I keep this blog back before my PCT trip).

Packing
I shaved 20lbs off my setup partly by switching my stove setup from a Whisperlite International White Gas system to an MSR Pocket Rocket canister stove.  If I were to be doing a longer trip I would try building an pop-can alcohol stove (only slightly lighter than the Pocket Rocket) because HEET is easier to find than canister fuel (but a similar weight).  However, for a 12-day trip I only  need one fuel canister, so I'm not bothering.  Canister stoves are also less likely to start forest fires than pop-can liquid fuel stoves (or so I hear).

I also shaved weight by upgrading my sleeping pad, and switching my front panniers and racks from standard style (JANND and Axioms) to Salsa Anything Cages and Bags (4lbs saved total), and several other more minor tweaks I learned from backpacking earlier in the year. This setup also seems more aerodynamic.  I'm still carrying relatively heavy extras, including a tarp (about 1 lb, really nice though in addition to my ground cloth), a Kindle, A Ukelele (2.5lbs), a bluetooth keyboard (<1 lb), Juggling Balls (1 lb), Solar Panel (>1 lb), a leg roller, etc.  I could be lighter, but right now I'm at about 40 lbs of gear on a 35 lb bike, which I think is a good compromise between lightness and fun.

I've posted my pack list here in case people are interested. I've started organizing it by bag/location rather than type of item because that's easier for me to pack with.  I've also started organizing things into sub-bags to make it easier to pack for other trips.  For example, my dop kit, ditty kit, and butt bag are the same for backpacking as they are for bike touring.  Things in red are debatable, things in green have fluid packing locations to keep my load balanced and may change from day to day.

 If you are interested in more "How to Bike Tour" stuff.  Please check out the guide I wrote last spring.

Working pack list (click to embiggin)

The Route
The route is basically the Willamette Scenic Bikeway from Eugene to Portland (if I can follow it, it's complicated), then the Columbia River Gorge to the Dalles (I did that before in 2007 and loved it), then a zig-zaggy route south towards John Day that hits Old West Scenic Bike Way and Blue Mountain Century Senic Bikeway and then takes the Adventure Cycling Trans Am route back to Eugene over McKenzie Pass (I did the TA route the other direction in 2003 and 2014).



The Willamette Scenic Bikeway can be read about here.  The route I'm taking is almost exactly that, plus a spur into Portland as seen on the map below.  That will change slightly, however, since that map currently points to my buddy Mark's old Portland house, not his new Portland house (where I will be staying).

This is NOT a short or direct route to Portland, and may be the only time I take it for that purpose, but I figured I should do it at least once.



The Columbia River Gorge bike route is well mapped here. There are three alternate roads that you can choose from, and I'll be mostly taking the Old Columbia River Highway all the way to The Dalles.



The Random Oregon Zig-Zags:  Depending on how I'm feeling at this point, and how the wildfires are doing in central Oregon, I'll take either a long or short route, first hitting the Blue Mountain Scenic Bikeway and then the Old West Scenic Bikeway.

Short Version:


Long Version:

My choice will be heavily dependent on how the huge Canyon Creek Complex fire South of John Day is doing.  I'm reasonably sure I can avoid the fires (unless more start), but I don't know if I can avoid the smoke. There are tons of fires, including some that will hassle my on my way back to Eugene as well. You can see a map of all the fires here.

My return route from John Day / Mitchell is simple. I just take the AC Trans Am Route over Mckenzie Pass back to Eugene. Assuming the County Line 2 / Warm Springs fire doesn't blow up the whole area.



My final bit of information is are approximate overnight towns and approximate mileages to those towns.  This list will almost certainly change several times as the trip progresses.  Alternates are annotated on the list in a confusing manner.

Click to Embiggen

New touring set up is 75lbs (35lb bike and 40lbs of gear) without food and water. That's about 20lbs lighter than last summer! Includes over 5lbs of Ukulele, juggling balls, bluetooth keyboard, etc. #adventureblog

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Adventures in Science - An Exploration of the Effectiness of Assorted Beer Can Koozies

Abstract:
Two abnormally handsome gentlemen, gladly burdened with a love of bikes, beer, and civic virtue, spend a hot afternoon sciencing and drinking beer for the good of all humankind. The age-old question of whether slap koozies or sleeve koozies are more effective is indifinitively and unfinitely solved.

Our clothing was removed to avoid contamination and because TV told us thats how people do science (and drugs!)

Introduction:
There is little better on a hot day than riding bikes and drinking beer. Amongst the nerdier bikers a debate has raged, emotions have bared, feelings have touched, and rivaling factions, emerged - each side with their champion - It's the burly slap koozies vs the svelte sleeved koozies.  Two sides of the same insulating coin, locked in the eternal struggle of keeping cheap beer cold and drinkable.  But which does the job better?  Which one is the master, and the other the slightly warmer and shittier apprentice?

The slap camp makes big claims, sitting smugly atop their speedy bikes, and sporting their huge beards and strangely blue bike shorts.  They are quick to extoll the virtue of a koozie that can snap on their arm for ready deployment, and that is invariably thicker and more robust than the sleeve version of the koozie. They make convincing arguments as they sit, sipping on their free beer as it ever-so-slowly warms in their hands, and looking more and more like a drunken dirty Santa Claus as the day progresses.


The sleeve camp is not easily swayed, however, as they kick back, extolling the virtues of their lighter koozies that cover much more of their can and easily fit in a jersey pocket or under a bike short leg.  As they sit back, stroking their huge mustaches and occasionally tooting, they claim that coverage rather than thickness is more important, and remind the bearded heretics that at least sleeve koozies don't smell like a burning tire fire, unlike the slap koozies. 

It was clear that the only way to settle this argument was through a heavy application of science-sauce!  Our science heroes to the rescue!

Methodology:

Because our heroes were not able to obtain a grant to pay for this sciencing (thanks, Republicans) we used PBR as our beer of choice due to its cheapness and because we want people to think we're cool.

Four (4) koozies were used.  Two (2) snap (both RAGBRAI themed) and two (2) sleeve (a Kum n Go and a Rock Valley RAGBRAI).  We also have one control (naked) can for each experiment.

 Beer cans were kept in fridge until right before the experiment. They were opened at the same time (roughly) outside in the shade. Koozies were applied before opening. We used one thermometer (Oneida Kitchen Digital) set in Fahrenheit for more precision because the thermometer doesn't read decimals and Fahrenheit is a more sensitive scale. We went in the same order (order on the chart) and allowed the thermometer to stabilize in each beer (took about 10 seconds).  Several thermometers may have been better, but we didn't have several, and this method rules out thermometer variance. By graphing the temperature over each specific time we hope the best-fit graphs lines will give us an approximate-enough comparison.  The thermometer was also not calibrated by boiling or ice water, because we are lazy and we are just measuring relative differences, anyway. We realize that this is less accurate than other methods, but what do you want out of a beer koozie temperature experiment?  It was a friggin' hundred degrees out.

We took temperature readings whenever we felt like it (about every 5-8 minutes) for a bit over an hour for each trial.  Koozies were kept outside until the beginning of the experiment to simulate RAGBRAI conditions. During the experiment the beers were kept on a wooden table (shade) or grass (sun) platform to best mimic normal conditions.  A metal table may have thrown the results in the favor of the sleeve koozies which cover the bottom of the can.

Mark is especially good at probing

Variables Addressed (and not):
The dependent variable is obviously temperature.  We kept the other independent variables the same.  We did two runs - one in the sun and one in the shade with all 5 cans. Ideally, we'd have addressed several more variables, including:

• Holding the cans (we didn't have enough sciencers to hold 5 cans and take measurements for an hour, also, who can hold two full beers in their hands for an hour without drinking them? We knew we couldn't)
• Using half-full cans to see if volume matters
• Using a metal table
• Using RAGBRAI humidity (our test area was 12% humidity, RAGBRAI has 90%.  Does evaporative cooling factor in?)
• Does the color of the koozie matter?
• Do moving cans mix heat around better than stationary cans?

Addressing all these variables fully would have required 128 trials, so we didn't.  We hope the comparison of the koozies in sun and shade with other variables not changing will be enough to put this horrible, family-dividing controversy to rest.

The results were fed directly into a computer that at no point had beer spilled on it, probably.

Sources of Error (aka, the section where we admit we could totally have done this better but are too lazy):
The order that the probe went through the cans may increase our error, so we kept the order the same to minimize this effect.  Also, it is WAY less humid here than it is on RAGBRAI, and that may affect evaporative cooling from inside the can. Also, since the cans were kept full the entire time, it's not a great mimic of normal conditions. The less fluid, the less the koozie has to cover, and a stationary full can does not mimic the drinking environment.  The sun run was significantly windier than the shade run, thus wind may be an unaccounted for variable.  How fully the can mouth is open and how it's aimed at the wind may also be a source of error.  Also, in the sun experiment, grass may have shaded some cans more than others.

The surface the can sits on also a likely variable source of error, as one koozie covers the bottom and one doesn't.  It is likely that holding the koozie would give slightly different results, but that's a pain in the ass, so we didn't do it. It should be noted that the slightly warmer probe went into the RAGBRAI slap each time, which may have given is some heat energy.  We also don't know the standard error on the temp probe.

Finally, this really should be done with much larger sample sizes in triplicate, but like I said, no grant. Jerks.

Results:

Click on the photos for bigger versions.

Discussion:
There is one thing made abundantly clear by these results, and that is this: Hanging out on a hot day in our underwear drinking beer is fun.  Also, using a koozie is worth it if you drink beer slowly.  Other than that - not much can be concluded.

The best way to look at this data is by looking at the slopes of the lines.  The steeper the slope, the faster the beer warms up.  As you can see from the graphs, the increase is mostly linear, with R-squared values in the .98 and .99's mostly, although a 2-order Polynomial best-fit line does yield higher R-squared values  (a value of 1 for R-squared denotes a perfect correlation, where 0 is no correlation, and -1 is a perfect inverse-correlation). At the extremes, the temperature change is not linear, especially as the beer nears the ambient air temperature, but for the purpose of this experiment we can use a linear best-fit line, with the slopes indicating the average rate-of-change.  This allows us to ignore beer starting temperature, etc.

We also are not sure why some cans started out colder than other from the same fridge.  We did not predict that variability, but using rate-of-change (slope) for our comparison adjusts for this variability in our results.
 

Plants love sciencing!

Shade Run:
In the shade run the koozied cans out-performed the naked can, which we predicted.  We did not predict, however, how close the other cans would be.   The naked can has a slope of 629.53, while the sleeves performed best at 460.99 and 468.19, beating the snaps at 479.59 and 487.88.  Before our last data point, the differences between the sleeves and slaps were even greater and rate of change for all was higher, possibly indicating that all of the cans were slowing down.


However, even with this small sample size, the sleeves outperformed the slaps by only a small margin, and the results are likely not statistically significant.  Since I haven't had statistics in over a decade, and Googling the specific statistical test for this type of experiment proved more difficult than I'd like, we have not run this data through any statistical test.  Suffice to say that in our rather attractive opinions, the koozies all performed statistically the same in the shade test.

If you'd like to run the stats on the results, please do!
 

This may or may not be a photo of 5 open beers in a church yard (pants were worn to protect the baby Jesus)

Sun Run:
These results were similar to the shade.  The naked can was significantly hotter, but the four koozies were statistically identical.  However, some weird stuff did happen.  The Rock Valley Sleeve was kicking ass, until at 40 minutes, when it started getting much hotter much faster.  We think the exposed can above the koozie finally started mixing down at that point.  Thus, it is likely that internal mixing forces are very important if only part of the can is exposed to the sun.

Also, 95 degree PBR tastes like Tri-Flow bike lube.

Implications and Further Research:
At first glance, the biggest implication is that any koozie is better than no koozie.  However, this is less important if you drink like an adult.  It shouldn't take longer than 30 minutes to drink cheap crap beer on RAGBRAI. In the shade, the difference at 30 minutes was only 4 degrees (55 deg vs 51).  In the sun, the difference was 16 degrees (69 vs 53) so there it does matter. So, possibly more important than using a koozie or not is choosing not to drink in 103 degree sun like an idiot.  Find that shade.

As far as which koozie to use - it turns out that insulating ability, at least under these conditions, is not a factor.  Sure, with hand heat, beer swirling, and decreasing volume with time, there may be a difference between koozies in effectiveness, but this preliminary research may imply otherwise.

We would recommend further research addressing the other variables listed above, especially one where the cans are stirred.  We also recommend drinking better beer, and especially recommend riding your bike.  Like.. now.  Go now.

Go ride you bike.

Now.  No really.  Go ride bikes. It's fun!

You can bring beer...