Brokebike Mountain

Well, I decided to take it easy yesterday and not do any more updating. We had to recover from a mad mad mad Saturday night out in Banff. Dinner and a movie. Maybe this time away from our girlfriends is starting to get to us... I'm embarrassed to say that we went to the Irish pub. Speed and cost were the main factors for consideration though since it's near the end of the month and we still haven't be reimbursed for expenses submitted about 3 weeks ago, and we only had 50 minutes until the movie. I highly recommend Okanagan Summerweizen Apricot flavoured beer! And Prometheus in 3D was pretty darn good. Although I am a sucker for Sci-Fi.

It'll have blown over by the time we get there...

How to attach your $3k soil corer to your $1.5k bike...

Last week. Yes. A bit of a trial that one. It would be great to get a reliable weather forecast, but I suppose that there are drawbacks to working near the mountains. I had planned our second biking excursion for the monday. We had previously scouted the start of the route that would take us along a trail for 10km past 6 sites. A nice wide ATV trail all the way along. Dry and dusty when we passed it, and due to be dry for the Monday. Kit was packed up, bikes thrown in the SUV (mid sized) and off we went. It looked dry in every direction. Except the direction we were headed. In that direction there were some nice purple looking evil clouds. But we had a plan and we were going to stick to it. On arrival, it was still dry, and it looked like we might actually get away with it. So we headed off down the trail, which was still nice, dry and solid. 5 minutes in the downpour started. I've seen worse, so just kept pedaling. Then the hail started, which kind of stung, so we pulled over to shelter under a tree until it eased off a bit. 15 minutes of heavy rain and hail later it finally did lighten off. So back on the bikes, cycling along what was now a small stream. The going wasn't too bad though and we had a quick discussion and decided we might as well keep going so we didn't have to come back. However, the rain kept coming, and the mud was getting deeper and deeper. At about 6km in I lost Jeff. I wasn't too worried as he usually takes a bit longer than me. I waited for a while and then decided I'd better go back and check. I found him 500m back carrying his bike. Mud had clagged his chain, causing

Ideal conditions

Clag

Got a little mud on me.

chainsuck at the front, which in turn forced his rear derailleur into the spokes of his back wheel. Result – rear wheel wasn't turning, and gears were a thing of the past. $200 bikes are not very hardy in tough conditions. As the designated bike technician, I had to do a trail fix, which involved brute force to bend the derailleur back to around where it should be, and use two rocks to hammer the cage back into shape so that the chain would stay in it. I got it going, so apart from being soaked, cold and annoyed, I was quite pleased with myself. There was no way we were going any further forward on the bikes though. We had stopped just short of one site (the plan was to go to the furthest one and work our way back) and had passed one on the way, so we managed to get these done. Then it was a slow, wet, cold, muddy crawl back to the SUV. It was ridiculously sticky. Rolling along the trail for 10 metres tended to double the weight of your bike. I tried to get Jeff to ride his bike through all puddles to try to keep the mud off,

I hate mechanikking

but he didn't seem to be listening. Probably off in a world of misery. I left him to push while I rode my much tougher bike back to the SUV. I was just congratulating myself on having bought a sturdy steed, when I started to hear a metal grinding noise from the back. The mud, as well as being really sticky, was also really coarse, and it had worn out my rear brake pads. Then there was a similar noise from the front. Which is quite amazing really, since my front brake problem from the weekend had recurred and I hadn't actually used the front brake for a few hours. And I had also put in new pads at the front. So without being able to engage the brake, the mud had still managed to eat it's way through brand new pads in about 10km!

A very generous time for 20km of riding would be 4 hours. Add in 6 work stops and make that 6 hours. It took us the 6 hours to do 12km. Another day of learning! No more taking the bikes out in the wet!

What I stand in 6 hours a day 4 days a week

All this made tuesday a bike parts shopping and maintenance day. One of the benefits of having a cheap bike seems to be cheap replacement parts. Jeff's new derailleur was only $10, whilst my fancy hydraulic brake pads cost $45. It was nice to have a change of scenery and go to Calgary to get these. Back at the cabin, I had the whole afternoon for the simple replacement job on Jeff's bike, and the even simpler pad replacement on mine (which still had to go back to the bike shop to enquire about the crapness of their brake bleeding skills). So, 4 hours later and after a lot of swearing and petulant kicking, I had to give up on both bikes. Jeff's needed a new gear cable; my spare ones were too short. I got the brake pads in on my bike, but the rear seemed to be jammed on, and although the front ones seemed fine, it would have to wait until the bike shop fixed their bad job to tell.

Everything looks better on a good day.

Wednesday. Finally things went well! We took what was planned as two days of sites and hit them all. 8 in one day is our new record! Funny how when things go well, there's less to say. It did feel like we had somewhat recovered from the earlier disaster. There were some nice photos to be had, and despite the forecast it stayed dry most of the day.

Following the weather forecast again (rain), we decided to map out and core a site for using the magic box on. It has to be dry to use the box, for woe betide anyone who buggers up the electronics on a $30,000 piece of equipment! Of course it was blazing hot sunshine

Everything...

when we got there... Basically what we were doing here was marking out grid lines with flags for GPR transects. We also need to core so we can compare the GPR data to the actual soil content. For this site that meant 8 transects and 21 soil cores of 2m deep or more. Well, 2m deep or more if you don't encounter frozen soil after 50cm! Coring was a bust, so I made a quick decision to go and get the box, and we'd do the GPR survey. Then we'd leave the flags in and come back with the GPS and note their locations so we can come back and core when the ground has defrosted.

So back to the cabin to quickly pack up the GPR. Have some lunch and head back out. Then the fun job of hauling this kit through a wetland for 1500m again. 1400m in is a terrible time to realise that you've forgotten the control unit. Another minor disaster. So I got to run back to the SUV, drive the 40 minute return trip to the cabin in 30 mins, and run back through the wetland to catch up with Jeff. During the drive it started to rain. Which was just brilliant. I was going to have to run all the way back and tell Jeff that we need to get everything back to the car, and that it was all big waste of time! It was still raining when I met Jeff, but had lightened up a lot. And after 10 mins it was actually dry again, thank goodness.

Controller bag generously donated by D. Donaldson.

Finally we got started with the GPR. At this site the ground is terrible for trying to drag a cuboid over. To me, scientific research shouldn't involve two grown men jumping up and down on hummocks trying to make the ground smoother! The surveying went reasonably well though. I'm still not sure we can actually use it on the terrain at this site, but far improved on our previously reported attempts. To my surprise, we had still managed to finish by 5pm. So again it seemed like we had recovered somewhat from unpromising beginnings!

Where?! I wanna see it!

As friday is our office day, nothing of great interest happened. If you want to avoid some venting at comedy bike shops, stop reading here and just look at the pictures.

We finished our paper work early, so were able to go into Cochrane to the bike shop and get them to have another try at fixing my brake, and also get Jeff his new gear cable. I'm glad I know at least a few things about bikes. Firstly the shop tells me that my make of brakes quite often don't work as well after a bleed. I'm prepared to accept “not as well”, but it was working “not at all”. They then suggested I had a leak. Which I knew might be a possibility when it stopped working, but I was checking and there was no sign of leaking fluid anywhere. In any case, it went through a cycle of working/ not working/ working/ not working. So unless it leaked, and then somehow sucked the fluid back in, then leaked again, I can't see that being the problem.

The scenery is growing on me.

They agreed to check it over again. The next thing they tried was to suggest that I needed Jeff's cable accurately measured so I could fit it to his bike. That's the first I've heard that one. I had to ask three times to get a cable. After several attempts to get me to bring the bike in and to tell me that gear cable comes on a spool (so how then does it stay in the shifter?) and I need to tell him what length I need, he finally took me into the workshop and asked me to point out the cable I needed. All that for a sale of $2. And you thought car mechanics were bad.

So as far as measuring accurately goes, I fitted the cable and had the bike fixed in about 10 mins and did not measure once. And I just picked up my bike today and the brake seems fine just now. I'll reserve judgement until I ride it though!

So that was the disaster week. Apologies if it comes off as a bit of a rant! If that's going to be the worst week here, I think I'll manage just fine.

Here's another bunch of photos...