Tour of the Wasatch Front

Tyler and I have been wanting to ride from SLC to the alpine loop through Heber and then back to SLC for a few weeks now (one big 115 mile loop). After looking into it a bit, we decided to start out a tad bit easier and start from Midway instead of from SLC, thus cutting out the ride up Emigration Canyon to Parley's Canyon and up over the hill to Heber. It took off about 35 miles and a good bit of climbing. We figured that the resulting 74 mile ride with 5000 feet of climbing that we would end up with would be good enough.

And now for some pics:

And one more of the Alpine Loop Scenery:

That crazy track bike disease...

No matter if you're a cyclist or not, if you look around Salt Lake City lately you will see many more bikes than you used to. They are becoming a very popular mode of transportation as residents discover the well defined bike lanes and bicycle-friendly roads of Salt Lake City, not to mention the added benefit of losing a few extra pounds. (and I'm not talking about making your bike lighter...) It is likely that a good number of the bicycles that you see are fixed gear bikes, commonly called track bikes. People choose these types of bikes for a number of reasons: less maintenance, no dérailleurs to break or go out of tune (and thus no griding gears), extra leg strength from riding only one gear... the list goes on. Most importantly, they're a lot of fun to ride and people have compared it to almost "walking" on your bike because when you pedal forward, you go forward. Pedal backward, and you go backward. Pedal slow, you go slow. Pedal fast... you get the idea.


Ahhh, the Raleigh One-Way, mmmmm (Cyclesmith sells it, need I say more?!)

Now, if you're looking for more fun on your commute than you normally have eating that "footlong" and coffee from Maverick in your car while stuck in traffic (probably on Foothill Drive), then commuting on a fixed gear bicycle is for you. Believe it or not, you'll actually have fun getting from point A to point B! (not to worry all you "geared-bicycle commuters," there will be a post in the near future for you too)

As mentioned on Cyclesmith's website, Salsa's new line-up also includes a hot new pre-built fixie that would make a great commuter bicycle somewhat "on-the-cheap." If you're truly looking for a fixie to commute with, pay special attention to the rear drop-out area to look for eyelets that will allow you to mount fenders. (see photo at left, eyelets are the little round loops on top) Because having a nice "pin-stripe" up the back on a rainy day may be considered cool while you're actually ON the bike, when you're off the bike it doesn't do so much for attracting the opposite ... well, let's just say that it's a pretty good wife repellant. So get those fenders on for a rainy (or snowy) day and ride worry free.

Hebmüller Pre-Filter

I finally got my pre-filter installed on the Jetta. It filters down to about 150 microns, which is not very small for a filter, but the larger filter medium makes sure that I don't lose any flow capacity across the filter element. However it's still small enough to catch any dino-diesel crud left over in my tank that gets cleaned out by the biodiesel before it clogs my main fuel filter. Thus, a clogged main filter is a thing of the past. :-) Had my car been running on biodiesel from the start, there would be no crud in the tank for the biodiesel to clean out so there would be no worry for a clogged main fuel filter.

It is still kind of fun to see the "bean juice" flowing freely into the engine through this clear pre-filter though. It should also help out in the winter when there *might* be a chance of the fuel gelling. This will allow me to see it easily if it happens. The air space in the top is nothing to worry about because it's a low pressure line on these pre-2003 TDI's. If it were a post-2003 engine (PD engine), the line would be pressurized by the tank pump and pump that air pocket right out.

If anyone local is interested, I have some extra filters and high-quality fuel line because I had to buy in bulk. The filter cost me $3.25 each and the hose cost me about $2.00/foot, both prices including shipping. If anybody local wants to put one on your TDI, let me know and you can buy the stuff from me for what I bought it for. Some people don't even put the new fuel hose on, but instead they just cut a section out of their original fuel line and put the filter in place, this works just fine too, but I liked the look of the blue hose, haha.

A Crude Awakening

I haven't blogged for a bit, so today turns out to be a good day to blog. We had a great time this weekend with our friends, Steve, Liz, and Nash (and Lexi too of course), that finally joined us up in Salt Lake. Cornia even showed up at their house! He's got a great reggae band, "Carlos Cornia" that I actually have yet to see in person, but want to really bad. We went to eat at Settebello, mmmm, that's all that needs to be said about that :-)

But the main thing that spurred me to post was the movie that Gina and I just got done watching, A Crude Awakening. My favorite part was hearing about Hubbert's Peak because I have learned about it in school already and could relate to it. I highly recommend the movie if you have not seen it

The movie is very well researched and follows along very well with what scientists like Hubbert have been telling us since the 60's and 70's. So far, they've been very close to perfect with their estimations about oil reserves and our obscene exploitation of those reserves. For those of you that remember the 70's gas crunch, that was only a drop in production of crude oil by about 5%. Royal Dutch/Shell announced in 2004 that it really knew of 20 percent fewer oil reserves than they had been reporting up to that point. At the time, 20 percent of just their reserves equated to 3.9 billion barrels of oil valued at $136 Billion at that time. Today that same amount of oil equates to nearly $254 billion at current ~$65/barrel prices. Evidence that our oil reserves are limited is all around us. Many countries are now importing more oil than they are producing and it's not far off for the U.S. either. At the rate we're using it, even all of our "untapped" reserves would not sustain us for very long in a crisis. It's an interesting movie and shows how dependent we are on oil. A change is needed, and there is no silver bullet. No matter the mechanisms that you use (even my beloved biodiesel) we will all have to use less of it and promote sustainability and conservation. Go out and rent this movie, if nothing else, to simply be aware of what is to come in our future.

Biodiesel report

I figure that after 9 1/2 months of having the "ole oil burner" aka "The Jetta" in her new home in SLC that it was time for an update on how she's running. As stated in an earlier post, we found the Jetta on Craigslist after months of searching for a cheap, TDI that I could run on biodiesel. It also took a few months convincing Gina that getting one new car and selling our other two would be worth it. After getting it home, the first few tanks were a B20 blend of biodiesel (20% biodiesel 80% regular diesel) to kind of ease into the whole biodiesel thing. The car had nearly 100,000 miles on it and biodiesel really cleans out the system, so it's not a good thing to make the switch very fast. The weather started to get cold and we had to continue to run B20 until the spring time because a higher percentage of biodiesel would have a problem with the cold weather. So B20 it was throughout the winter, and I was still 80% tied to foreign oil. But, glorious spring time came around and I topped off with B100 (100% biodiesel) from Cardwell Distributing.

It smelled a little vegetable oil-like and not like a fuel at all (which was nice compared to the oily smell of regular diesel), so I pumped it in and drove away happy on a mixture of 100% soy and canola-based biodiesel from Idaho and Colorado. The car immediately quieted down a significant amount and the exhaust was devoid of it's normal slightly pungent diesel aroma in favor of the new cooked vegetable oil fragrance. And it was about $0.05 cheaper than regular diesel at the time to boot!

I can now report that after 21,000 miles on either B20 or B100, the Jetta is still going strong and just ticked over to 120,000 miles. I have performed the regular maintenance with a filter change here and there, an oil change (which only needs to be done ever 15,000 miles BTW), and a timing belt job and that's about it. During this last tank, the weather was extra hot (think A/C on all the time) and we did almost exclusively city driving and we got a horrible 39 MPG. It was the first time we have dipped below the 40 MPG mark, so it was a sad day. On the flip side, here's a shot of our fuel mileage record:



Yep, that's a 53 MPG in the middle there. That was on the way to Durango and back on one tank. Diesels really excel at the freeway driving, so the times where the mileage was high were times when we did a lot of freeway driving. The times when it was low was city driving (which we do more of anyway). What drives me nuts though is the stupid EPA. Just look at these numbers, eek!



Can you believe that? That's the EPA trying to say that my car is supposed to get 38 MPG combined and I actually get about 43 MPG! How can they do that?! The one that irks me the most is the freeway rating. They say the car gets 44 MPG on the freeway, I have never gotten below 50MPG on the freeway and I run a renewable fuel instead of gasoline! I don't understand the EPA sometimes, it's ridiculous. At least they revised the bloated numbers to better reflect the mileage that hybrids get (believe it or not, hybrids do NOT get 60 MPG as Toyota claimed). A prius for example gets a little better mileage than the TDI in the city, but gets worse mileage on the freeway. Hybrid technology is great though, don't get me wrong, although it would be nice if they could run a renewable fuel and still get the same mileage numbers. Can't wait until Europe brings over the diesel-hybrids to replace all the gasoline ones, can you say true 60 MPG combined mileage?

HDR, and Gilgal too.

OK, a bit of explaining... I didn't know that HDR photos had to be in a special format, but now I do and it makes sense. So I had to figure out how to turn them into a JPEG file so I could post them up here. I finally figured it out, and here's one:



The idea is that you get a wider range of tones with HDR, and therefore you see more detail throughout the photo. Looks like I need to work on it a bit, haha. I'll post more later.


Gina and I went to Gilgal Gardens the other day too. It was a blast and really cool to see some of the sights that surround us that we usually take for granted. See the post here

and a teaser photo:

Me, my bike, and a camera, what else do you need?

Since Gina's been out of town, I haven't known what to do with myself. It's especially interesting without a car... although so far it's been great going completely "car free" for a few days. Tonight was a beautiful afternoon and evening, so I headed out on my bike, camera in tow, towards downtown SLC to see what I could find. This is where the Chrome bag comes in really handy! Shoes, camera equipment, a bike lock, and my trusty hat all fit quite nicely.




I am going to try a few HDR images if I can ever get the Photoshop CS3 free trial downloaded, haha, all 450 MB of it. I took some photos with that very intent, so I hope they work out. If they work, they'll be in the next post. For now, here are some teasers:

The "lighting" was beautiful all evening


Yes Timmy, that's a flag...


When you walk or ride (anything other than a car) you notice quite a few more deserted alleys.




And of course the Wells Fargo Building. I really like the lines on this one, maybe I'll try it in B&W.

I like to ride my bicycle...

...ahh the eternal words of "Queen." My response: "Yes Queen, I sure do..."

Saturday I had a couple of options... 1) Ride the Chalk Creek Road Race (50 miles) 2)Ride with the Cyclesmith Team to Henefer (don't ask where that's at), or 3) Ride with a high school buddy that I haven't seen in way too long up to Snowbird. I choose option 3 please Bob. The day was made even better by getting in a partial ride with Gina before heading out to meet Jeff at the point of the mountain. Gina and I rode up Emigration Canyon until I had to turn around to be able to meet Jeff in time. Gina kept going to the top and got there in record time for her! Way to go G. I headed down, and here's what my day ended up looking like:



Yep, that's a darn steep hill. 9% grade with pitches up to 11%

The dope

If they didn't before, everyone now knows there are cyclists that use performance enhancing drugs. This post is short and sweet about the sport I STILL love.

There is nothing like the "sssssss" of the tires and then the gust of air that the peloton pushes as they speed by in a bike race. The first time I experienced it, I was hooked, it's intoxicating. I love the competition, suffering, dedication, and being outside trying to will your body to go harder against mother nature, not to mention the mind games, strategies, and teamwork. However, in the upper tier of the sport, a major "weed out" is occurring. Guilty cyclists names are being thrown out as cheats and liars which inevitably draws others into the interrogation light simply due to the human urge to stereotype and put everything (and everyone) in some sort of grouping. That's OK, stereotyping happens, but I am proud of the sport I do and there are so many good things about it that it propels those involved to weed out the cheaters. This occurs in cycling more than any other sport that I have seen. A few cycling teams even have their own doping control programs that administer more tests in a single season than the entire US Anti-Doping Association performs across ALL sports in an entire year! That is showing the world that something is being done about the problem. After learning that, does it surprise you that more cyclists get caught cheating than in other sports? To end my rant and rave, could you ever imagine the following happening to somebody in another sport ? I can't.

Taken from Pezcyclingnews.com:

"Immediately after the stage, it was announced that Christian Moreni (Cofidis & Italy) had failed a drug test earlier in the race. Not only was he immediately disqualified, his entire team was asked to leave the race. To illustrate the seriousness of the situation, Moreni was arrested after the stage and driven-away by the police whilst still wearing his race clothing." (Emphasis added)

It doesn't happen in other sports that way, as we've seen here in the USA, so the sport of cycling gets a pat on the back for that. I love my sport.

No bus route

I've heard many excuses for not riding mass transit, but the one I hear the most is that there is not a convenient bus route that matches where the person wants to go. I thought this was the case for me personally for a long time until I discovered deadheading buses. Imagine the typical US city with a downtown in the center (generally) surrounded by suburbs. Buses run in the morning carrying the throng of people from the suburbs to the city center. Because there are fewer people going away from the city center in the morning, they run empty (what is called a "dead head run") from the city center back to the suburbs to then pick up another load of passengers. Any bus scheduler will tell you that it is almost impossible to avoid some dead head runs, but the good news is that most bus companies will still let riders travel on the dead heading buses. In my example, I travel from near the city center against the majority of traffic. I never thought there was a fast bus that traveled in that direction so I would either drive or wake up obscenely early to ride my bike or take the combination of TRAX and the 811.

If anyone is familiar with the 811, you know what it's like. It's a 93 series bus generally, which means that it tops out at 55 mph on the freeway and wasn't even built for the freeway to begin with. It's generally packed with people (most of which wouldn't be riding it if they knew of other options) and stops every few yards as it lumbers along it's route. Not to mention that air seems to seep right through the windows as well as through the floor and doors... and roof and everywhere. This provides the opportunity to get the sauna feeling in the summer and the ice cream isle feeling in the winter. I thought the above were my only options that I could ride until I saw a dead heading bus one day completely empty. You can imagine the situation... me, standing on the 811 (because there's no where to sit) huddled next to the most pleasant people in the world and as I gaze out the window at the mountains, I see a nice commuter bus (see pic below) cruising by completely empty! So I said to myself, "Self, I REALLY need to be on that bus!" I emailed UTA that day and they informed me that I could ride those dead heading buses. The next day I caught one.

I was hooked! It was just as fast as driving because the bus makes no stops until it gets back out to the suburbs (or Orem in my case). It's a straight shot at 75 MPH from Salt Lake City to Orem and it is amazing. It affords me about 40 minutes extra studying time, reading time, or SLEEPING time. Hello, who wouldn't want to catch an extra 40 minute nap to and from work? So I ride a dead heading bus (there are many of them) nearly every day and going to work is so much more enjoyable now!

If you think you can't ride the bus because there is no route available to you, it may be worth contacting your local transit authority and asking them if there is a dead heading bus that may fit your schedule. I have been emailing UTA once every few months asking them to advertise the dead heading buses, so I hope they do one day. I hope they don't change the route that they run, but at least advertise them!

Most people however can ride the normal express buses (VERY fast options=Bus# 801-810) easily. In addition, many large companies will offer cheap bus passes to their employees which makes the commute drastically cheaper than driving and just as fast with nearly front door service in downtown SLC. Even if your company doesn't give you a cheap pass, a monthly express bus pass (including TRAX and all other buses) is $107. With just a little arithmetic and gas at $3/gallon, that means you would only need to make about 11 trips from Orem to SLC and back to break even on a monthly pass (assuming you get 25mpg). Many people make more than 11 trips to SLC and back in a month, so it's quite cheap. Not to mention less wear and tear on the car and the ability to arrive at work much more relaxed.

oh yeah, and if you're looking for pics of our Bald Mountain hike (cause I know you are...), they can be found at The Bradlee Duncans