I get dropped by old dudes wearing hi-vis vests and campy dayglo bodysuits

Cranked out a century last weekend, 6:40 riding time (15mph avg), with no real prep or whatever. No long stops either, just a few minutes here and there, and one stop at a store to go pee and buy really weird flavored peanuts (Dill Pickle!).

This bodes well for my doing Braden’s 200k this Saturday:

I’m excited to get out and ride with other people, and also to get a good sense of the roads northeast of Richmond. I usually head southeast out of the city, and I’m getting bugged biking up and down the same old strip.

[quote=surfcat]

So, yes, the Disc Trucker is offtopic for this subforum, but the specific question is tangentially on point. Hence my presence here amongst you good people.[/quote]

Buying a Disc Trucker in 2018 sounds terrible.

I’m going to try this hack at some point as a decaleur alternative… Not super pumped on the existing decaleur solutions out there.

If you just need a bag for your stuff, why not one of these http://www.outershelladventure.com/shop/handlebar-bag ?

Another alternative is avoiding decaleur tomfoolery with that Restrap magnetic rando bag?

Thanks for the suggestions re: decaleur. Why is a DT in 2018 horrible? Full disclosure: I have been out of the loop (obviously) for some time. Sincere question.

Sincere answer: the range between a Pelican and Big Dummy is so huge, why not shop around? For example: almost everything similar from Kona looks to be better spec’d. For getting the bars up high for touring, Surly’s lack of sloping top tube means doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If you are going to seriously load a bike down, the I suppose the DT is the right bike. But touring with tons of stuff sucks, and plenty of folks have toured with less than End-Of-Days ready frames and survived.

I think the tarck hivemind has decided that the touring rig with most of the weight on the front lets you use a lighter, flexier frame on the back that has shorter chainstays and is in general less of a couch. you can use one of their road-ish frames with lowriders and it will be fine, you don’t need some super light whippy road bike, though some have used exactly that for some pretty gnarly rides (emor/doug, I’m looking at you!)

Thanks for the feedback guys. My Pelican is a great frame, and I was convinced the low-trail thing was gonna be for me, but at the end, after years of trying different things with it, I just don’t love it.

The main reason is that I’m > 220lbs and the smaller diameter tubing - which makes the bike awesome for lighter riders - just flexes like crazy for me. Especially so when I’ve tried to do even modest overnights with it - i.e. a couple lightly-loaded panniers on the front and my tent on the back rack, a long grade, and a crosswind made me question whether I’d ever see my wife and kids again.

The current spec for the Disc Trucker seems pretty much like what Surly has always done… midrange stuff. I’ve been riding my Big Dummy complete for nearly 7 years and aside from a handlebar change and adding a dynamo hub, it’s bone stock and has been completely reliable and awesome.

I’m also on my second Cross-Check - currently built as a sweet fixie in clownbike colorway. The Cross-Check is a bike I truly love, and which I re-bought after selling my original to a fellow Tarck member back in the day - and I feel like Surly is, for me, a known quantity. Lastly, I’ve ridden a Disc Trucker and know what to expect.

I’ve just dithered for years trying to either get comfortable with the idea of touring on the Big Dummy (too heavy / too much drag) or trying to make the Pelican be what it isn’t. But it’s time to just get the bike I know will be in the sweet spot, for me.

Thanks again for the replies, they are appreciated!

If you really want a front handlebar bag (and front lowrider panniers) with stouter tubing spec I’d suggest dithering with this new very affordable Masi and ditching the LHT idea.
https://masibikes.com/products/speciale-randonneur-650b-2018

IMO the LHT is exclusively for hauling 50-100 lbs of gear around the world.

Well, my dad has a LHT, doesn’t know shit about bikes, rides the fuck out of it, and likes it, so do what you gotta do.

Ok we finished. I’m not sure if we got credit yet because:
We had to change the route
Garmin crapped out 4 times

Well it was a tough ride and we saw some beautiful things, I’ll update with photos when I can get to a big computer.

Our team name was “tasty randos” and there were 4 of us at the start - me, david, alex, and Chris - we all had little flags with the team name, it was great. We started in Hillsboro at 7am at the “on your way” market - for some reason I bought tums, just to get the receipt. We head out baseline toward forest grove and wiggle through some side streets to get to banks. There has been a change recently with drivers - more people are waiting, crossing the line, and passing with ample space between us and them - have any of you noticed that?

The weather was amazing - sunshine, mid 60s, clear skies - perfect. We make it to banks and hop on the banks-vernonia trail, a local MUP that attracts everyone. We rode it at 730am so there weren’t many people. It was beautiful, sun shining through the trees, everything green and fluffy, it was just one of those perfect weather days. We get to vernonia and buy a jug of water (for the receipt) and head out toward clatskanie on highway 47. It’s now like 830-9 and there are still minimal cars on the road. We make the turn at the most/clatskanie junction and start the first significant climb. This is logging land. Clear cuts (or “clear harvest” as one of my teammates joked) all over the horizon. We are about to descend and a herd of elk trample down the hill, over a berm and into the field of former trees. Kind of majestic.

The descent brings us to clatskanie and this coffee shop/beauty salon. I had a double espresso and a marionberry coffee cake that was pretty good. We head out on highway 30 to the Lewis and Clark bridge to enter Longview. Highway 30 sucks and so does the bridge (lots of logging trucks and logging truck debris) but at least there’s a shoulder for bikes. We ride through a nice neighborhood in Longview with fancy old houses and a nice big park before we head out on (hwy 4?). After a while we take a right onto Stella road - with a max 26.5% grade. We follow the road - which turns into Germany creek - and hit our dead end. No trespassing and no vehicles signs and a big roadblock. We decide that we should readjust our route and turn around headed towards ocean beach/hwy 4. This was probably a good idea because David was wearing delta cleats and hiking in those would have been fun to watch.

We ride highway 4 and David is lacking. So I decided to pull out the air horn I carefully packed in my saddle bag. A few toots and a short burst of energy but David is toast. He decides it’s a good idea to hitch back to Longview and then to I5. Oh well, we only need 3 machines to complete.

We stop for a bite at the “Duck Inn” and get the record scratch entrance you would expect when 3 Dudes in spandex walk through the door of a bumpkin diner-raunt. We look over the menu and the only vegan dish is French fries. Well I’m not vegan (1/2 of my compatriots is) so I ordered a BLT wrap. A few whiles pass and we’re getting ready to go, I wrap up half my wrap and pay the bill. Unbeknownst to me the waitress grabbed my leftover when she was cleaning the table. Dammit.

outside the temperature is dropping. It had been a perfect low 60 mid 50s day but I. The shade, and now, it was cold. I asked the waitress to fill my bottles with hot water - tuck those in my jerz pockets and they’re little heaters for a minute - careful though, they can cause a greenhouse in your jacket. Raymond is farther than I expected. We had a ~50km leg to the junction and then another 50km to Raymond. We’re already 200k in so we plan to make it by 1am.

It was 7pm and the sun was setting and it was beautiful. No traffic, quiet, no headwind. There’s a great descent near grays river/rosberg. It’s now dark and a suv rolls by and somebody yells something unintelligible “blah blah blah bikers blah!” None of us hear exactly what he said but we end up catching them at the gas/beer station up the road in naselle. Again, guy is 20 feet away but he’s so drunk none of us can understand.

“Ah! The bike tourers! Where are you headed?”
Says a guy who just paid to pump some gas
“Olympia”
We say
“Ah, that’s about an hour 45 from here”
“Well, how far is Raymond?”
“A little longer than a standard marathon”
“Oh cool”
“You guys be safe out there”

And we make the turn to Dayton into the cold forest.

Continued tomorrow

Its cold. mid 30s and we’re climbing to Dayton in the dark. Alex and Chris stop for something (maybe to snack?) and I go ahead. there’s a deer to the right of me jumping through the ditch. every now and then a car will pass, im tired. there are weird sounds in this forest. it’s pitch black except for my lights but ill hear random motor sounds and machines in the distance. eerie. I have to stop to rest every few km to keep going. we finally make it into dayton and the mcdonalds with the comfy booth is closed. we head over to the chevron and the nice attendant lets us stay inside and warm up.
i have a 50/50 coffee/hot chocolate and that was a mistake.
45 minutes later
we’re getting ready to leave and it’s now easily 32 degrees outside. i grab my emergency blanket and cut 3 patches: 2 for the tops of my thighs and 1 for my frontside, tucked into my shorts/under my jerz.
for those of you following along, im wearing
wool base layer
poly s/s jerz
emergency blanket layer
sportwool l/s jerz
rain jacket/windbreaker
uniqlo down vest

this seems to work for a while and i eventually strip off the vest.
We’re traveling at a pretty good clip. we make it to our next control in montesano and we warm up in a gas station. i have some serious heartburn. i take a couple tums and we’re heading out to elma/mccleary. Alex has his his 2nd 3rd wind and is moving faster than i can think. im weak.
we make it to mccleary and it’s 7am.
355km. 5km short of what we need.

i try a gingerale for the heartburn but it’s only making it worse.
25kms to brunch.
i stop a few times to vomit. it was the hot chocolate. worst decision.
we get into oly and we find our way to the brunch. we’re late, tired. i change my clothes in the bathroom and we sit though the mandatory brunch.
kind of a downer.


LOL great story mig. Thanks for sharing!

Wow, I just looked at the Strava Heatmap for that area and there are zero recordings through a huge area of the coastal range.

You can find growlers gulch trails real easy that way.

There’s not really roads you want to ride on through the willapa hills. Mostly logging roads, clear-cuts, and hill people.

Yep “Weyerhaeuser land” is what the locals told us. They said they used to make the shortcut to pe ell but not anymore. I asked 3 locals and they all said they used to but not anymore, and they said we should try but we wouldn’t get any help if we needed it. I’m sure you could poach it but you’re in for trouble if you get into a pickle or caught.

Also, there is or was a “town” in the middle of there. River view or something like that. People live up there but probably nobody bike friendly.

When you say ‘in for trouble’, do you mean hostile locals, or the lack of anybody anywhere to help?

Lack of anybody to help.
Bike broke
Injury
Animal attack
Aliens

I also looked at the heat map the night before and the whole morning I was working the plan b route in my head