Alex Wetmore is always busy with something…

Tried and liked is an Internet-BOB list tradition for the last few years where community members post about products that they’ve tried and liked over the last year.

I haven’t bought many actual bike products this year, so my entry is going to be heavily clothing related.

Sorry that this entry is text dense and photo light.  I’m writing it at 5am in Oslo, Norway, and haven’t had a chance to go find photos.  I’ll write more about Oslo soon.

Riding a bike that I made

A year ago at this time I had just finished building Gifford, the first bike that I made from scratch.

A year later I’ve ridden almost nothing else.  For the last 6 months I haven’t even owned another road bike (I do have a mountain bike, folding bike, and tandem…and a road bike on the way).  I look forward to having a lighter and zippier bike back in the stable, but I know that if I were to drop down to one bike which one it would be.

I’ve had this bike for a year and thousands of miles and I don’t think I’d make any changes.  I can’t say that for any other bike that I’ve ever owned.  It also feels great knowing that I made it, and knowing every little detail of how that was done.

REI/Novara Verita Cycling Jacket

I haven’t had a real bike rain jacket in years.  You might ask how that is possible in Seattle?  I’d use my favorite Ibex Breakaway when it was misty (most of the time) and the paper-like O2RainWear jacket when it was really dumping.  The O2 jacket won on low price ($40ish) and it’s light weight and easy packing.  It breathed as well as anything else that I had tried.  I just got sick of patching up the jacket, or disposing of them every couple of years.

I was at REI looking at expensive jackets from Gore and Shower’s Pass when I found this one from REI.  It is cut a lot like that papery O2 jacket: tight enough so that it doesn’t flap around, loose enough to wear a heavier Merino sweater under it, long enough in the tail.  It is made of a much more durable fabric and breathes even better.  It adds a rear pocket and lots of reflective piping that really works well in the dark.  The orange color is an attention getter too.

This jacket (and the O2 one) have no ventilation at all.  No pit zips, no back zippers, nothing.  10 years ago I was convinced that ventilation was the key, but the newer fabrics seem to do pretty well without it.  I like how much lighter the jackets are without all of that stuff too.

Alite Monarch Camping Chair

I actually bought this in 2009, hopefully I didn’t put it on last year’s tried and liked.  I think I only used it once last year, but I spent many evenings sitting in my Alite chair this year.

This is a very comfortable chair that weighs under a pound and packs down pretty small.  I had it on most of my kayak, car, and bike camping trips this year.  It is much more comfortable for me than the normal L shaped foam chair and packs smaller.

This chair isn’t for everyone.  It only has 2 legs, you need to be comfortable leaning back and using your legs as the front two legs for balance.  I sit that way on 4 legged chairs, so it works well for me.  It is also made pretty borderline light, so I think the 200lb weight limit is a serious one.  I see many of them in the returned area at REI (which can be good if you want a discounted one).

MyFitnessPal

Early this fall I weighed myself and for the first time in my life my weight rounded to 200lbs.  That kind of freaked me out and I decided to get serious about losing weight.

MyFitnessPal is one of many great applications that make it very simple to count calories using your smart phone (they have versions for Android and iPhone).  At first I just ate as I always did during a normal week, but took good notes using MyFitnessPal to keep track of how much I was eating.  Then I spent 3 weeks being very serious about logging every calorie (even if I just had a brownie sample at the grocery store).  That was a very useful exercise and gave me a great mental model of what is high calorie and what isn’t.  I lost 10lbs in those three weeks.

I’ve stopped using this tool on a regular basis, but I’ve still lost another 5lbs just by being a bit smarter about what I put in my body.  During the same time I’ve been biking less (mostly due to excessive travel), so I should be in worse cycling shape.  However when I do get on the bike I feel faster.  I look forward to seeing how this really pays off in the spring (when I’ll hopefully be back at my “good” weight of around 175lbs).

Rough Stuff Cycling

This isn’t new to me, but 2010 is the year that I concentrated on it.  I love riding the logging roads in the Pacific Northwest.  Once I’ve spent my cycling days having days of tough climbs, fast descents, and great views it is really hard to do anything else.  A brief recap of 2010: Jack Pass, CdA NF in June, Kachess Ridge in August, CdA NF in September, Stampede Pass in October.

I never got into mountain biking because I had a hard time handling all day very technical rides, and didn’t like driving my car long distances to ride my bike shorter distances.  The rough stuff rides are less punishing, so I can manage a 50 or 70 mile day without feeling dead.  That lets me keep the bike to car time in check.

One of these rides per summer month feels about right, I hope I can keep up that pace next year.  I promise to do a better job of keeping the roughstuffnw.org blog going too.

Pacenti Quasi-Moto Tires

They are light.  They are fat.  They are knobby, but not too knobby.  I think they are the perfect dirt road tire.

CNC Machining

I really need to write a blog entry or two about my CNC adventures.

I bought a tiny little CNC milling machine in Feb 2010 for my birthday.  I can’t say that I’m 100% productive on it yet, but when it is working well it is a great little machine.  It is a lot of fun drawing something on the computer, pressing go, and seeing it get created.  Here are some dropout prototypes that I recently made on it (the really shiny bits came from Keith Anderson Cycles, I made the dull bits):

Ibex in, Icebreaker out for Merino Wool Shirts

For most of the last decade I’ve had an Icebreaker T-shirt on as my base layer.  I first bought Icebreaker clothing on a trip to New Zealand in 2000, and came home with tons of it on a trip in 2002.  They really introduced me to lightweight wool T-shirts that are comfortable in all conditions.

About 3 years ago Icebreaker moved their production from New Zealand to China.  Quality seems to have gone down for me, and the price did not.  Icebreaker representatives at the factory store in Portland claim that no country but China can sew the lightweight material, but Ibex proves them wrong by making even lighter shirts and having them sewn in the US.

This year I haven’t bought too many wool shirts, but whatever I have bought has been from Ibex.  It’ll stay that way in 2011.

Mountain Hardware Pants — Good and Bad

For the last 6 years I’ve mostly worn one pair of shorts.  They are made by Mountain Hardware and are a tough synthetic canvas that still doesn’t show any signs of wear.  They have an integrated belt which has let me adjust them to fit me over the ~20lb weight swing that I’ve had in that time.  I wish I’d bought 2 or 3 pairs, I’d never need to buy other shorts again.

Last winter I bought a pair of Mountain Hardware 3/4 Ridgetop pants which are sold as climbing pants.   To me they looked like cycling knickers.  The price was half the price of most cycling knickers, so I gave them a try.  They are great, the fabric feels really good and they fit great.  They have nice little details like a keyholder in the left pocket, deep pockets that don’t drop things, and an adjustable belt just like the one on those shorts that I like so much.

I needed some new cycling/hiking/biking pants last spring and decided to check out all of Mountain Hardware’s offerings since I liked those shorts and knickers so much.  Here is what I found at that time:

• Piero Pants — These are 95% of the way there, but don’t quite make the cut.  The waist is stretchy and there is no integrated belt.  Out of the washer they fit nicely, 3 days later they’d be falling down my waist.  The pockets were really shallow, so I kept losing my cell phone when I’d sit in chairs.  They have the magic heavy canvas of those old shorts, but the details are all wrong.
• Matterhorn Convertible — The fit wasn’t the same as other MH pants, they didn’t work for me.
• Mesa Pant — The online copy makes it sound like these use the same fabric as the Piero pant, but they don’t.

Mountain Hardware has since killed off the Ridgetop 3/4 pant.  If you can find them at a closeout place (Sierra Trading Post or the like) scoop them up now while you can.  I bought a second pair.  They’ve replaced them with the Ridgetop pant, which are the same thing in full length.  I got a pair of those and they are good, but I still wish for them in the tough fabric of the Piero pant.

They don’t make shorts with that fabric.

When Mountain Hardware makes something well they really do a knock out job.  Stock up then, because they won’t make it nearly that nice for many years.