After a few cold, damp days, summer has returned, at least for a little while. It was a beautiful day today, in the mid 70s with a nice breeze and blue skies. This was the first rain we’ve had in months, it didn’t change the look of the high, dry Washington ranch country.

The weather is still pretty warm so the snow continues to melt off the local mountain peaks. Even with the late spring snow, it seems more and more snow melts off Mt. Hood and Mt. Adams every summer.

The light rain did rinse the summer dust off the plants and moistened up the dusty trails a little bit so it was a good thing.

Looking forward to at least a couple days of sun and clear skies.

Summer is beginning to wind down here in the PacNW, so we are getting outside as much as possible, which would be the reason for the lack of blog activity.
The days are getting shorter, the shadows are longer and the the nighttime temperatures are starting to drop into the low fifties. Daytimes are usually sunny and crisp, but there are a few more clouds and the breeze is a little cooler. The countryside is a mixture of green forest growth and brown grasses and bushes. All the plants that are able are sporting thorns and prickers.

In the shade of the large trees, there is still plenty of green.

Out in the sun, the plants are dry and brown, full of sticky seed cases and thorns.

The increasing clouds over Mt. Hood and the rest of the Cascade Mountains are a clear sign that the seasons are changing.

Still plenty of excellent mountain biking available.

Every time my neighbor, Casey, washes her new car, it rains. She washed and waxed it, so we had a thunderstorm within hours.

After the thunderstorm passed to the east, there was an awesome sunset.

Yesterday, Don and I went for a bike ride in the Mt. Hood National Forest, an area known as Gunsight Ridge. It was sunny on the valley floor with ominous clouds hanging on the Cascade mountain peaks and cool to cold wind blowing. With Mt. Hood in the background, we left the sunny valley and headed up to the cloudy mountains.

Some of the roads and trails are very steep, the tops of the mountains are more than 2000′ above the valley floor.

How high do you go? The photo below is a close-up of Mt. Hood across the valley from Gunsight Ridge. In the left/center of the photo, you can see the ski runs off the Hood River Meadows chairlift at Mt. Hood Meadows Mountain Resort. Above those ski runs and to the right are Heather and Clark Canyons. So at this stop, we are just about as high as the middle of the ski area and still climbing.

This is getting pretty far off the beaten path. The photo below is the Hood River valley. The road on the right of the photo is where we came from.

Easy to get lost? Sure, happens all the time. The locals pretty much realize the situation and carry maps and/or GPS units, even if they are familiar with the area. Better safe than sorry.

The trails are challenging. They can go from rocks on the trails….

To rocks and roots….

To just plain rocks.

After a few hours of climbing, the only thing left to do is burn up the downhill back to the valley.

More stuff coming here on the blog, on the WatermanAtWork website and the WatermanAtWork YouTube channel so check back soon.

Much like the local terrain, the past week or so has had a lot of ups and downs. The biggest downer was that I had to miss Mountain Bike Oregon this past weekend. At the very last minute, I found out I would not be able to attend, and I was extremely bummed, but I can’t really do much about things that are out of my control, so that’s the way it goes. Coming in at a close second in the downer department was that about $300 worth of bike parts, on both my mountain and road bikes, decided to fail. The freehub on my mountain bike; an expensive part on a bigger, more expensive part, just flat wore out. Great idea putting lightweight parts on a 5″ travel all mountain bike. I also notice a couple of my chainrings are worn out and causing the chain to skip. So the mountain bike is broke down, I head out on the road bike. After a few miles, I stop at a stop sign and I have trouble clipping into my pedal. I look down and the stupid pedal is broken. Are you kidding me?
OK, things are down, so what are you going to do? Start clawing your way back to the top, that’s what. Luckily, a good online bike shop had the parts I needed at a very reasonable price. They really did a good job to get the parts I needed quicker than I would have expected. UPS choked on the overnight delivery, but the shop refunded me the entire shipping cost. There is a lot of bad customer service out there, but I have to give props to Tree Fort Bikes. They have always done me right and they have great prices as well. A WTB freehub is not exactly a part everyone has, but Tree Fort had it and had the best price by far. They had the chainrings and pedals for my road bike as well. So thanks to Alan and the Tree Fort crew for the great service.
So what fun, rebuilding the rear hub of the mountain bike. The freehub was most definitely fried. It’s pretty clear this is a common problem because the new freehub had been redesigned to address some of the flaws that killed my bike.

The old freehub is on the right, if you look closely, you can see the teeth that engage the hub pawls are completely worn down. The old freehub has grooves in the hub splines from the cassette cogs, this can make it tough to remove the cassette. The new freehub(left) has a composite “bumper” to help prevent the cassette from eating into the freehub splines and it even looks like different material. The new freehub is made of a slightly darker, hopefully harder alloy.
Bikes are fixed up so out I go to ride my problems away. It almost worked to perfection. The riding conditions were perfect. Overcast, not as hot as it’s been, almost looks like a message that fall is on the way.

After a few miles, the rear hub loosened up and I had to ride back to the ranch to tighten it up. The rear hub loosened up shortly after I bought the bike so it seems like a regular issue with WTB DiscLite and American Classic rear hubs. Always schedule a “shakedown cruise” after major repairs, so this was not unexpected.
Back out the next day, more great riding. Never really a bad day on the trails around here.

The cloudy skies made things a little darker in the deeper parts of the forest, not a bad thing.

I had a couple small problems to make sure I was still in touch with reality. After doing a lot of work on my bike and spending more than a few bucks, I had a flat tire, not surprising because this time of year all the plants are throwing out the spikes and thorns. I carry a Crank Brothers Power Pump, unfortunately, I had a flat on a previous ride and the pump did not work the way it was supposed to. I sent the pump back to Crank Brothers and they sent a new pump out, no questions asked. Once again, great customer service. I needed that pump less than 24 hours after I took it out of the box and put it in my pack. Think a good pump is not a big deal? I had to stop right under these guys:

Pretty quick flat repair, to be sure.
A short time later, I broke my nearly new chain. Gimme a break! Thankfully, I had my Crank Brothers Multi17 tool to fix it up and get home. I ride by myself most of the time and in areas where nobody might be coming by for a while and there’s no cell service, so I count on my bike, what I carry with me and my knowledge and experience to get me home if I run into problems.
So, I’m trying to steer towards the sunny side of the hill, but I am genuinely bummed that I missed MBO. Oh well, tomorrow’s Monday, which is something.

We were having a little technical problem with the blog, but a quick trip to the server with a monkey wrench and roll of duct tape was all it took to fix things up.
Thanks to Connie, the WebGirl from Hamburg and Sayontan, the guy who designed this nice Suffusion WordPress theme for helping me get things straightened out.

Tomorrow morning we are off to Mountain Bike Oregon. Always a great time in a beautiful area. Weather looks good, not too hot and a little rain to keep the dust down.
Speaking of beautiful areas, how about the view from the back door?

There is a saying that goes “If you don’t like where you are from, you probably won’t be happy where you are going”. I reckon that is, at least, partially true.

Well, sometimes things go your way, sometimes they don’t. Pretty safe statement overall and works in many different languages and socio-economic political situations.
I am extremely fortunate to live in one of the most beautiful parts of the continental United States. I ride my bikes; mountain bike and road bike, as much as I can, there are trails and nearly traffic-free roads at the end of my driveway.
Because of all the riding I do, I am wearing out my bikes. I would like to think when you pay a few thousand dollars for something, that it will last, but that’s not the case. So, a few days before the August Mountain Bike Oregon event, a really great happening that I really want to go to for reasons I can’t divulge completely right now, I blow out the freehub on my mountain bike. This is not an off-the-shelf part. One company had it in stock. They are thousands of miles from here, I ordered the part on a weekend and begged them via email to please send the part as quickly as possible. Hopefully, the part will arrive tomorrow via overnight air delivery. I’ll put everything together and we will leave for MBO the day after that at 9AM. This is nerve wracking, but I love this kind of thing. Finish up at the last possible minute and throw it out there with no testing or “trying it out”.
Since my mountain bike has been incapacitated, I’ve been on my road bike. I live on top of a small mountain, a solid climb is a part of every ride. The road up the hill has some real steep sections; Tour de France climbers would be challenged. On the other hand, there is very little traffic. There are some logging trucks, but they seem amused when I race them down the hill, as long as I let them win.

When you ride down the south side of the hill, you get an awesome view of Mt. Hood.

After you grind back up the steep sections of Snowden Road and ride onto the upper reaches of the foothills, you will ride through ranches on the north side of the hill and get a nice view of Mt. Adams.

This is a challenging and beautiful place to ride. At the end of the ride, you can hit Everybody’s Brewing in White Salmon and hang out with people who ride here every day. There are places to camp and nice hotels, hostels and B&Bs around.
Keep a low profile, share the road, be cool.
Oh yeah, my mountain bike is broke down and when I stopped to take one of the photos in this blog, I noticed one of the pedals on my road bike was broken. I have spent over $300 in the past few days on bike parts. Please, powers that be, I am not made of money! New bike parts, but beans for dinner.

This area is a challenging place to ride a mountain bike. The downhills are so much fun, but the uphill climbs are long and hard. Don and I did a little up and a little down; a complete day of riding. Weather was great; hot enough to make you sweat on the uphills, then you would come around a corner and a cool Gorge breeze would feel so good. We stopped to do a little logging on one of the trails and snap a few photos.

The riding around here is always great. Working hard on the uphills and paying attention on the downhills. You have to find a second or two to appreciate the view.

Ending the day at Everybody’s is a bonus. It’s a true local’s pub. They have great beer, really good food and I hope I can say this without being a sexist pig; but they have really attractive servers.

It’s been a while since I strapped on the GPS and headed out into the middle of nowhere, today seemed like a good day to do just that.
Parked next to an old water truck that had license plates from 1960 on it, didn’t figure anybody would be by to move the truck today.

Turned on the GPS and headed out. Never been here before so I mainly stuck to a fire road and took old logging roads off into the woods. Some of the roads have been recently logged, some roads have not seen traffic for a long time.

There are countless roads like this; at one time they were full of log trucks and logging equipment. Once the trees have been cut down, the roads are rarely used. They go somewhere, but many times they end where the logging operations ended.

This time of year, all the plants are showing their protection from animals that would eat them. Thorns and stickers are everywhere. The thistle plant is a perfect example; lovely purple flowers on a plant with sticky, itchy thorns.

There are many old logging roads into the heart of the forest. I stopped here at this old logging gate, got a cell phone call and had to turn around and head home.
Got the GPS marks, I’ll be headed back here in a day or two.

I’ve been noticing that as I get older, I ain’t getting any faster. If I train hard and ride all the time, I can increase my endurance, but not my speed. Not real stoked about that, but there’s not much I can do about it. I can still ride all day, but the uphill sections seem to take longer and longer.
That being said, being slow is not going to stop me from riding. Had a fun 18 mile ride at Old Man Pass/Falls Creek a couple days ago so I followed it up with another 18 mile ride around the local hills. I know 18 miles doesn’t seem that long of a ride, but around here, you get a thousand feet of climbing every ten miles.

The Gateway to the Forest is still green, the sun barely shines through the trees. There are still patches of green around, mostly in the shade.

The trees are green, but the undergrowth is quickly turning brown with the hot weather and no rain.

Riding to the top of a mountain is usually kind of tough, but it’s worth the effort most of the time.

Get out and ride. Take plenty of water, it’s hot. Remember what it is like a couple months from now when it’s raining 29 out of 30 days.

Finally got a chance to hit one of our favorite trails; Old Man Pass/Falls Creek in Skamania County, WA. This is a great area, crisscrossed with a number of challenging mountain bike trails.
I was a “Locals Special” ride with Jeff Logosz of Slingshot Sports, who make some of the best kiteboarding and wakeboarding gear in the world and Don Stevens with Gorge Delights, a local company that makes the Gorge Delights and Just Fruit bars that are so popular with cyclists.

Don managed to blow out the rear shock of the hardest working bike in the MTB business so it looks like a shock rebuild is coming up in the next few days.

Met a nice couple from the Virgin Islands who had rented a VW camper and were on a mountain bike vacation. What a change of scenery that must be!
Looks like another nice week coming up. Saw a few fishing boats around the local rivers on the way to go mountain biking, maybe the steelhead fishing is picking up. It’s been pretty windy and I’ve been really lagging on getting out there and shooting some kiteboarding, so I’ll have to motivate and work on that. The nice summer months go by really quickly around here.