Alex Wetmore is always busy with something…

The Kogswell Porteur/Randonneur (aka Kogswell P/R)is getting a lot of buzz in online forums as an exciting new bike. The most interesting this about this bike is not the weird wheel size (584mm aka 650B), or being the first TIG welded Kogswell, or the fact that it fits wide tires. The most interesting thing about this bike is that uses a low trail steering geometry. Just to give customers many options Kogswell is selling the bike with three different forks to allow the customer to tailor the steering geometry and handling of thebike to their needs.

Jan Heine, Mark Vande Kamp and I evaluated the handling differences of the three different forks for Vintage Bicycle Quarterly in Volume 4,Number 3. As a result of that testing I found that I preferred the fork with 40mm of trail. It works well unloaded or with a light rear load and best with a front load.

This was a difficult trip for me to pack for. I was planning on riding the Vancouver Island logging roads with stretches as long as 3 days between towns, so I knew I couldn’t go ultralight. I also was carrying a 5.5lb tent for two instead of the 1.5lb hammock that I’d carry if I was riding solo. While touring I like to use my Cobbworks Oyster Bucket panniers even though they are a little bit heavy because they are waterproof and make great stools in camp or at rest stops.

While planning for this trip I knew that the bike would do best with a front load, but I also wanted to get away with carrying only two panniers and the buckets work best on the rear. As a result my original load looked like this:

Rear Heavy Load (photo by John Speare)

I put most of my food into the front handlebar bag, clothing into one rear bucket, the stoveand a few misc items into the other bucket, and my tent, sleeping bag, and sleeping pad on top. I did not weigh my gear before leavingbut I’d guess that I had about 25# on the rear of the bike and 10# on the front. Lifting the bike made it obvious that there was a heavy rear bias.

It wasclear from the first ride around the ferry terminal parking lot (and sadly 3 hours from home) that this was not the ideal setup. The rear load made the front of the bike too light and the bike would easily shimmy. Larry (a touring partner) pointed out that my buckets were located behind the rear axle,so I slid them as far forward as possible and this helped a great deal,but the handling was still not very good.

That night I thought about how to fix the bicycle’s handling. I knew that I needed to get a front rack, but I didn’t think that putting the buckets on a lowrider rack would leave me with the necessary bag capacity. I still needed somewhere to put my tent, sleeping bag, and pad. I considered using compression straps to fasten those to the rear rack, but decided that I ultimately needed to get some panniers for the front. The Ortlieb Backrollers that I use for commuting were on their way out anyway (after 10 years of daily use), so I decided to purchase a new pair.

The next morning I visited some bike shops in Victoria, BC and purchased a pair of panniers for the front and a lowrider front rack. I moved everything that was strapped down to the rear rack to the front along with a few items from my buckets. It was obvious from my first lifting of the bike that the weight distribution was much better.

This is what the bike looked like with the new gear:

Balanced Load (photo by John Speare)

It was clear that the handling was much better even after a couple of miles. Lesson learned, low trail really does mean having a front or balanced load.

Once properly loaded the Kogswell P/R worked nicely as a loaded tourer. This bike was designed around wide tires and I ran it with the 36mm wide Panaracer CdlV. This tire worked very well on pavement, crushed limestone trails, and dirt logging roads. Even with a heavy front load the bike was comfortable to ride all day, never fought me in the corners, andcould be ridden no hands for short periods.

My bike is a prototype and the list of brazeons differ from the production bikes. The prototype had almost everything that I’d want for touring, but I’d still let to see a few additions. The highest priority would be having a third waterbottle cage location mounted under the downtube. Two bottles of water is good, but three is even better. My prototype didn’t come with mid-fork brazeons for a front lowrider, but I know that they have been added to the production frames. Otherwise the bike has everything necessary for loaded touring.

On my next trip I think I’ll concentrate on having a load biased towards this front. This will probably mean using the same handlebar bag, two buckets mounted on front lowriders, and a large saddlebag in the rear with no rear rack. I think that this would have provided the capacity needed for this trip while optimizing the load balance for this bike. For an overnight trip I would probably use only a handlebar bag and two small front panniers.

When I sold my previousloaded touring bike I was wondering if I made a mistake in assuming that the Kogswell P/R would be up to this sort of use. After 5 days on the road I’m here to report that it is, as long as you are careful to put at least half of your touring load up front. The bike really is a joy to ride when well loaded and I hope to use it on many trips to come.

Two weekends ago I went on a 3 day road and backpacking trip with my friend David. I’ve known him longer than anyone who isn’t a family member and we’ve been great friends for almost all of that time. He had some time off and we decided to do a trip together on the Olympic Peninsula. We try to do something like this every few years.

The weather was looking super iffy on the morning of June2nd and we spent most of it looking at weather reports and wondering if we shouldhead east (away from rain) instead of going west (into it). Finally we gave in and decided toignore the weather reports and head west. Like many great trips wekicked it off with a large meal and hit an Ethopian Resturant on the way out of town. During lunch the rain slowed down and things started to look better.

We had good ferry Karma and arrived at the Edmonds/Kingston ferry with no wait time for a ferry plus getting loaded onto one of thefirst lanes to be unloaded. The drive to Port Angeles was uneventful except forme making a wrongturn where we drove a 40 minute loop around the Port Gamble Indian Reservation (and yes, there is a casino in Port Gamble) beforepopping out exactly where we started and getting back on track.

In Port Angeles we arrived at the ranger station 2 minutes too late to get a bear canister, but the ranger told us we wouldn’t need one for our first night, andwe figured we wouldn’t have any food left by the second night.As the day turned into evening we realized that we had no flashlight and found aopen hardwarestore to buy one, then headed up into the park to go to Olympic Hot Springs.

Passing Lake Mills on the way to the Hot Springs

The trail into the Hot Springs was an old road so the hiking was super easy. We saw a few other groups coming out of the hot springs and an abandoned biking bottom of the side of the trail, but not much else on the hike in. We went to the campground first and setup our stuff, then went down and found the pools themselves.

The hotsprings were okay, but not great. They have higher algae growth than most springs that I’ve been too, and someone seems to think that using old car floor matts is an appropriate way to seal up the pools. I found it kind of disgusting, but I’ve also been spoiled by the wonderful hotsprings along highway 12 in the Idaho panhandle. David loves the springs and spent more time in them. We had some great conversations about how to best design a house that he is building and what the world will be like after peak oil.

While the hotsprings were lackluster the campground was great. It was mostly empty (only one other group was there), had bear wires for storing food, and the campsites were set pretty far apart and were flat. The only other people camping there were a little strange and very drunk and disappeared (while leaving their fire going) shortly after we got there. We shared a couple of beers and a little food and went to bed.

The next morning we headed out an on the road to Neah Bay to find Shi Shi beach.

Getting to Shi Shi beach is an adventure. It is a roughly 4 hour drive plus ferry ride from Seattle. In the last two hours of the drive (from Port Angeles) you’ll only pass through two communities before Neah Bay and both are very small with limited services. The scenery is nice though,and that is what really matters.

Once at Neah Bay you need to jump through a few hoops to get to Shi Shi beach. You need to pick up a Recreation Pass ($10) at one of a number of businesses in town. This pays for the trail to the beach. If you are with David you also need to find some fish for dinner. We asked around before finally being pointed to the fish processing dock and David walked down and was able to buy a full salmon,right off of the boat, for $5. $5, for a ~5lb fish. $1/lb for stuff that costs $20/lb back in Seattle. The day was looking up.

We arrived at the trailhead to discover a couple of rangers and a police officer looking at two trashed cars. They told us to park at the private parking lots (someone’s front lawn) a 1/2 mile back up the road. This cost another $10, but that is part of the Shi Shi adventure. You need to pay three people to get there — an Olympic National Park backcountry pass, the Makah Indian Reservation for trail work, and a private individual for parking so that your car isn’t broken into. Did we really want to go here that badly?

We did.

A cool tree along the Shi Shi beach trail

We loaded up our stuff and headed in. Since we didn’t have a bear canister we only brought food for that night and thought we’d find a nice breakfast in the morning elsewhere. The trail in started pretty nicely, it was mostly boardwalk and turnpike along some second and third growth forest. After about a mile it turned into a trek through the mud in second growth forest. The only people that we saw on the trail were a couple of rangers who passed us (going into the beach) and a odd woman walking very fast away from the beach who asked us if the wild raspberries were poisionous.

At the end of the trail we found a steep bluff down to the beach and the rangers were talking to a large group about their camping situation. We passed through and broke out of the woods onto the beach.

Shi Shi Beach, looking North

What a beach. There are large sea stacks at the points on either end of the beach. The beach is about 2 miles long and has streams coming across it in about 4 places. The stacks at the south of the of beach are called the Point of Arches and there are 3 arches that you can see through as you approach them.

We walked about half a mile down the beach, setup camp, and had some dinner. The fish was awesome:

Grilling salmon in the fire

I’ve only recently started eating fish (after 15 years of being a strict lacto-ovo vegetarian) and this was the best that I’ve had so far. I expect that the setting, being hungry,and the freshness had a lot to do with that.

After eating about 2lbs of salmon and an ear of corn each we walked down to the end of the beach and back. The area around the Point of Arches was the most interesting and we waited there for sunset:

Sunset over the Point of Arches

Any thoughts of skipping this trip due to rain were clearly unfounded. The weather was wonderful and this might have been one of my more memorable sunsets (especially in Washington State). On the walk back up the sunset just got better and better.

We got back to our camp at dusk, restarted our fire, moved it a little bit closer to our sitting rock, and sat back and relaxed. What a wonderful weekend. I hope to make it back another time.

Relaxing by the fire

The rest of the photos.