WatermanAtWork Blog

We ride a lot of singletrack around here, but we also ride miles and miles of paved/gravel/dirt roads. I prefer to ride my Giant Trance X full suspension bike most of the time, but the paved and gravel roads are really making short life of my expensive Kenda Nevegal tires. The tires are great on dirt, but wear out very quickly on pavement and gravel. I could buy a new wheelset/disc rotors, etc., but I’m a little short of discretionary cash at the moment, so I decided to put a little work into my 1999 Azonic KZ2 framed bike and use it as a backroads cruiser. The hardtail frame is not as comfortable as the 4″ of Giant Maestro suspension, but it will do the job for riding the backroads with a little singletrack thrown in.
As I said, I bought the frame back in 1999 and installed my components from a bike that I had just snapped the frame. As you can see in this photo from March 2002, the RockShox Mag 21 and Cook Brothers E Crank confirm the bike’s “heritage”.

The KZ2 was designed and built as a dual slalom frame, so it’s pretty sturdy. I’ve ridden this bike thousands of offroad miles, aside from a few rock dings and scratches, it’s still in great condition. The drivetrain has been upgraded from the original 7 speed Shimano Deore to 9 speed Shimano XT and the Mag 21 fork was replaced by a Duke 100mm. No disc brake tabs so the original Deore cantilevers are still on there. I recently put a WTB seat, new handlebars and grips on it, so it’s back to being a dependable ride. The rear rim is a little out of shape, but they are 36 spoke Sun RhynoLites, so it’s still got a few miles left on it.

Took it out today for a shakedown ride; it was easier to pedal uphill than the Trance X, but I’d forgotten how harsh the ride on a stiff aluminum hardtail can be on bumpy singletrack. It was faster than the full suspension bike in many areas, mostly because the cantilever brakes did not do a very good job of slowing the bike down. Disc brakes are really a great improvement to mountain bikes, for sure.

I’ll be riding the hardtail on the rides that are mainly on pavement and backroads, using the worn out tires from the full suspension bike, which can now be reserved for singletrack with tires that are not worn down from riding on pavement.

The 2012 kayak fishing season is officially underway. Another long, cold, wet spring looks like it’s finally over and the beautiful Pacific Northwest summer has begun. Many of the lakes in the higher elevations are still covered with snow, but we can start in the valley and work our way up as weather permits.
The temperature may reach the high seventies in the late afternoon, but this is the season of the long thermometer around here. When we are first getting out on the water at, or a little before sunrise, the temperature is still in the low forties. Anyway, it’s off to the first kayak fishing trip of the year at Spearfish Lake in Klickitat County.

You can see the mist coming off the water due to the 60°F water temp and the chilly 42°F air temperature.
The May “supermoon” was still pretty bright, even a day or two after the full moon.

Best news of all is that the fish were biting. Caught at least fifteen fish, all released, and lost another ten. Even caught a pikeminnow, which was worth $4.00, but I wasn’t signed up for the rewards program.

Most important, especially in this part of the country, is that there was no wind. Glassy water is something you rarely see around here.

Spearfish Lake is an easy place to go kayak fishing; easy to get to, free parking and launch and easy to get your kayak in the water. It’s a small lake and can get crowded at times, but if you hit it early, it’s a pretty good place for an easy day of fishing. There are actually two lakes at this location; Spearfish Lake, the lake in the photos above, is the larger and deeper of the two. It’s stocked with rainbow trout, check the WDFW trout stocking schedule. If you hit it within a week or two of the lake being stocked, pretty sure you’ll catch plenty of fish. Little Spearfish Lake is smaller and connected to the Columbia River by a culvert, so whatever is in the river will be in the lake, mostly smallmouth bass. A good place to try if the water is over 56° or so.

Finally, and I’ve probably said this before, it looks like the long, wet winter/spring might be over and, hopefully, nicer weather is on the way. Everything is lush and green, but the trails are muddy and slippery.

It rained most of yesterday and again last night, but today the sun actually came out and there were blue skies above.

Hopefully, we’ve rounded the bend and are on the home stretch to summer.

It’s been raining off and on for a week or so and it looks like more of the same for the upcoming week. However, even here in the rainy Pacific Northwest, the rain stops and the sun comes out.

It was a sunny weekend and my friend Dan’s birthday, so he and a bunch of his friends came out to the Gorge and went for a ride on the Twin Tunnels Trail between Hood River and Mosier.

Stopped in Mosier to have a look at Mosier Creek Falls.

Most of the gang headed over to Everybody’s in White Salmon for beers and lunch, we headed home for beers and BBQ chicken, hot off the Hood River Hideaway grill.

Wrapped up the weekend by rebuilding the ultalight spinning reels so as soon as the rain slows down and the wind stops blowing, we can get in the kayak and go after the trout.

Keeping the fingers crossed for some decent weather.

Today was easily the warmest day of the year, with a record breaking high temperature of 82°F. Don came over with Mandy The Trail Hound and we headed up the hill for a little mountain biking. We got an early start to beat the weekend crowd, which was a good thing because it did get hot later in the day, but we only saw a few people out on the trail, pretty typical for around here this time of year.
Don got his first look at the new sections of trail, I think Mandy liked them as well.

I was hot and Mandy did a lot of running to keep up with us and she did what everybody should do on a hot day; drink a lot of water.

Hardly a cloud in the sky, terrific riding with great views of Mt. Adams.

We rode a little over nine miles, with all of Mandy’s side trips into the woods, she probably did closer to ten.

We hadn’t ridden this part of the trail so far this year, there was another new section of trail as well as some new trail hazards courtesy of that major ice storm this past winter.

On the way home, there were some fantastic views of the Hood River Valley fruit orchards in full bloom. Not many places you can see something like this.

The fruit trees are in full bloom, by next weekend most of these flowers will be gone.

Another hot day tomorrow, then maybe some rain later in the week.