Bike Ride For Animals

Ride complete! Fundraising goal smashed!

2009-05-24T18:45:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who as able to donate to my ride, we completely destroyed the $10,000 goal by raising over $12,700 when it was all said and done. I'm working on a short little zine/book about the whole project so if you want to know all the details of how it went, that will be ready in a couple months. In short, the ride was amazing, I had so much fun and saw so many beautiful things along the way. Michelle and Ruby had a great time doing the support job and we had a great time at the farm with the wonderful people and animals there.

I posted most of my favorite photos from the ride here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/josh.herbivore/FarmSanctuaryRidePhotos#

Thanks again to everyone who was able to pitch in and sent me words of encouragement.

xojh

Ride Reports Catchup with photos.

2009-04-08T16:33:00.000-07:00

Monday morning bright and freakin' early HB picked me up and we stormed Multnomah Falls. The Beez was a real trooper as I KINDA mislead her about how much climbing was involved. I didn't do it on purpose. As all of you who have followed this blog for any amount of time know, I rarely know where I am, where I'm going, or how to get back. So being able to honestly say how much climbing there was going to be was just outside the spectrum of my cognitive abilities.

I'll say this in my defense: we didn't get lost. Of course the entire 36 mile out and back route was one road, clearly marked, with no turns, and a huge river to our left the whole way guiding us BUT STILL! DIDN'T GET LOST!

This ride was crazy beautiful. I've driven it many times as it's a big place to take visitors, but had never pedaled it. There was a lot of climbing but most of it was in the saddle so by the end my knees weren't crying out in pain as they sometimes do after really mashing it out for a lot of miles. I figure on the big ride, at the end of the day, I'll go stand in the cold ocean for a half hour. I call this the poor man's icing of his old man joints.

I took Tuesday off, other than commuting the 10-ish miles to work, and woke up at 5:30 this morning to log some more miles as I'm leaving town for a few days and only have a couple weeks of solid training time left.

I got up, made coffee, got ready to go, and then poked around on the interweb while I waited for the sun to come up. I could have slept for an extra 45 minutes had I looked to see when sunrise was, but whatever. I'm sure I'll fall asleep at work about 4 pm, but we have a chime on the door that will wake me up if anybody comes in.

No pictures today, this ride was all about knocking down some miles. And these were tough ones. I rode over the St. John's bridge then climbed up my old nemesis, Germantown Road. It was funny, I've logged a lot of tough miles since I last went up Germantown and figured I was in much better shape than the last time. About a quarter of a mile up the big hill I said to myself "Wow, I am really attacking this hill! This isn't nearly as hard as it was the last time, I am freakin' awesome. Damnit I am one awesome cyclist and I am so goddamned gorgeous too!" Then about a quarter of a mile and 10 feet up the big hill I started to come apart. I mean I was WORKING! What the hell happened for something so good to go so bad so fast? I had to talk myself out of stopping a few times and thought I was going to throw up a couple times just before the top.

I told myself never to tempt the Gods with such hubris again. You remain humble as you climb into the heavens! Or Zeuss will make you pay!

My plan was to take Skyline Blvd. to Dixie Mountain which is the highest point in the West Hills according to my book of bike routes but, yep, I made a wrong turn and got lost. But I managed to have a good ride anyway on some pretty quiet roads on the backside of the West Hills. I had to climb back up to the top but it wasn't as punishing as Germantown so that was nice. Once on top, I had to come down Germantown which is usually a lot of fun but today it sucked. It had started to drizzle a bit so I was braking the whole way down and it was about 8:30, which means lots of cars. There is no shoulder and one lovely shitbird in a huge white Escalade decided 18 inches was plenty of room for me and nearly ran me off the road. This gem of a human also thought gunning the engine when the pulled up right next to me was an entirely appropriate way to behave in civilized society.

Germantown is steep and twisty and the speed limit is like 25 tops. I was going about 20 for most of it so shitbird wasn't exactly leaving me in the dust. I road for about a hundred yards or so behind them with my middle finger up. I don't often give in to my road rage but I am also not a fan of people who put my personal safety at risk so they can get to wherever they are going 2 minutes sooner and I don't mind letting people know that.

I was hoping to catch them at the stop sign at the bottom to further register my complaint but they had already made it through. Probably for the best.

All told, a solid ride which put me over 100 miles in the last 5 days. I feel like I'm inching closer to ready for the big one.

Saturday Ride Report: Washougal River

2009-04-05T12:35:00.000-07:00

My first ride after the pox was lifted from the house of Hooten and it was triumphant. This was a beautiful ride up the Washougal River Road, which is a steady climb as you ride upstream, then you haul ass back down. I was doing a slow but steady 12-13 miles an hour out and around 17-19 on the way back. The road follows the river most of the way so you're always making these turns and seeming beautiful scenes of the river. There were several moments when I'd round a bend and come upon some gorgeous view, throw my hands up and say out loud "Oh hell yes!"

I was out the door early and on the bike by 7:30 which I think was why I had almost no traffic the whole ride out and not much on the way back. It's also pretty remote, so the further up the river you get, especially when it's way too cold to hit the dozens of swimming holes, the less people you find. It was a chilly ride, but one of the better training rides so far this spring, as far as the weather goes.

A couple of funny-ish moments: I pulled into a little store to grab some energy drink and some old dude looked at my bike and said "How many hamburgers per hour is it to ride that thing?" I smiled and told him I don't know, I don't eat hamburgers. He said "Oh, well, whatever you eat then." He wandered off before I was done calculating how much tofu equals one mile of biking.

Another moment: I found a little rock embedded in my rear tire as I was starting the ride. I figured I could make it out and back and be fine. I'd been planning on new tires here soon anyway, these have close to 2,000 miles on them so I want to change them out before the big ride. So I do the ride, drive home, and Michelle has to go to work so she wants to ride my bike. I go out to get it for her and find the rear tire is flat. Somehow I made it through the whole ride and only when I was done did the tire finally die on me. Woo!

Roundtrip this was a 36 miler, which was a good distance to test out my general well being after the flu. It felt good the whole time and I could definitely have gone further. Which I will tomorrow.

This one is for the nerds!

2009-04-02T21:09:00.000-07:00

Ok, since I've been down with the flu and waiting for full recovery to get back in the saddle I haven't had much to write about. Unless of course you all want the intimate details of me waking up several times a night soaked through my clothes with sweat, dropping pounds like a high school wrestler getting ready for the big match, and how I was sleeping 14 hours at a time. You DON'T want to hear more about that? Good, me neither! I hate whining!

I am over the killer bug and seem to have my strength back and am going to put some serious miles in on Saturday morning, bright and early so the ride reports will be back. I'm excited to get to it. But in the meantime I will fulfill a request I've gotten from several of you and that is to talk about my bike.

My whip is a Surly Cross Check, it's a 56 or a 58c, I don't remember which. I've had it for about 9 months, it has about 2,000 miles on it. I've changed very little from the stock set up. One of the nice things about a smaller company like Surly is that they put a bit more attention into the details and the components on this ride are a little nicer than I found on bigger companies bikes in this price range, which was about $1100.

The things I changed were mostly just for fit, not for quality or anything like that. I put a taller, shorter stem on, I've switched out the bars for moustache bars for a while but am now back to the bars that came on the bike, which I really like. I put some new pedals on it because it doesn't really come with pedals. I added waterbottle cages, a little bike computer, lights, and that's pretty much it. Oh, I put on Schwalbe Marathon tires to replace the cyclocross tires that came stock because I wasn't going to be riding off road and didn't need the tread.

When the big ride comes I'll add a rear rack with panniers and probably a handlebar bag and I might add a flag because I really want to fly the Jolly Roger.

This bike weighs a ton, it is a real tank. Which is awesome, I don't care about weight, I'm not in a race, ever. It is a very sturdy, solid ride and this thing is gonna last longer than I do, I'm positive.

I have no plans to change anything on this bike. It's a great bike and even though I'm a bit bike nerdy sometimes I really don't want to mess with this thing because it's served me so well as is. I'll probably put a new set of the same tires on before I hit the road just to be on the safe side, but that's it. Oh, I might customize the graphics, a friend of mine has a vinyl cutter and I can make my own stickers with it so I might put something like "Vegan Powered" on the downtube for fun, but I'm not sure yet.

And I just realized my bike doesn't have a name. Anybody wanna make a suggestion?

One note about my bright orange bar tape. I was reading a blog about bike touring and the author said "You're going to be staring at your bars for hours on end, day after day, you should pick a color you really like." There you go, orange it is.

And one note about the chainstay graphic that says "Fatties Fit Fine." That means this bike can take wide tires. My bike did NOT just call me fat.

Thursday Ride Report with pictures

2009-03-12T16:19:00.000-07:00

Today was a nice 30 miler. I gotta be honest with you, after the freezing cold and hunter disrupted Sauvie Island ride I wasn't feeling the bike rides. I was spending more time trying to figure out the weather, dodge the weather, and predict the weather than I was riding. I was looking for an elusive nice day with some sun and above freezing temps and I just wasn't getting one.

Until today! I decided to try another ride across the river into Washington. One of my first training rides was over there, but not the one I wanted to do today and I hadn't been back across the water since.

The route was so-so but the ride was great. The sun was out, the temps were the nicest yet and I was able to feel my toes the whole time.

I left the house and headed up Willamette, then cut across the peninsula for the dreaded I5 bride. That bridge is a beast. It isn't even fun to cross in a car. And the designers decided the walkway/bikeway needed only be about 9 inches wide. Not the best, but it didn't last too long. Once across I turned down into Vancouver and headed...west? The road was wide with no cars and a big shoulder. Though not the most scenic, I was happy for the quiet and the sun. The ride ended at Vancouver Lake where I turned around and headed back.

All told, a nice day. I'm super excited to be riding after a little slump, and I'm beyond excited for tomorrow's 60-70 miler with Glenn. Word is this route is gonna be epic. You'll know when I do!

And hey, if you've donated to my ride (www.firstgiving.com/joshhooten) thank you sooooo much. We're halfway there! You all are the best and make this all so much easier for me to take on.

-Josh

Off-bike preparations

2009-03-04T17:24:00.000-08:00

Getting my legs and brain in shape for this ride is obviously a big part of my training but there is a lot more to it than that. There is gear to collect, campsites to reserve, altitudes to calculate, and routes to nail down.

So far my gear collecting has been super on the cheap, which is nice cuz....you know...recession and all. I got a 4 dollar water bottle cage at Target the other day and a 24 dollar tent on sale. I also got a 29 dollar wind shell jacket on sale. I'm borrowing a bike rack and panniers (thank you Heather Bendyshoe.) I found a camping stove in our garage which we got for our wedding and had forgotten about. I also found a camping espresso maker. (Woo! That may prove to be the single most important bit of gear I carry! Or at least the most likely to save my life!)

On the still to find really cheap list is an inflatable pad to sleep on, perhaps a handle bar bag, cookware, and I think I'm going to get new tires and tubes before I go cuz my current ones have been wonderful, but have about 1500 miles on em. I think they are going to get an honorable discharge before I leave.

I'm going to be camping on the way down and all the campgrounds have biker-hiker walkup sites that are about 4 bux a night. Day 4 I roll into Harris Beach State Park where Michelle and Ruby will meet me and we have booked a Yurt for two nights. Woo! Yurt! The Yurt has heat and....wait for it....cable television, you just have to provide the television. We...uh...won't. All the sites I'm staying at have hot showers, which will be awesome at the end of a long day. Most of them have 24 hour vegan donut carts as well.

No they don't.

So far so good!

Some nice coverage

2009-03-02T12:02:00.000-08:00

This ride is getting some attention, which I'm very happy about. Mark Hawthorne, author of Striking At The Roots wrote a nice piece, as did Parrish over at Ecorazzi. Woo!

Though we have a looooong way to go to raise my goal of $10,000, I am so pleased with how it's going so far. Thanks a million to all the people who have donated so far, and thanks in advance to all of you who are planning to.

Saturday Ride Report With Pictures

2009-02-28T15:45:00.000-08:00

Remember in The Big Lebowski when The Dude is getting a drink at the bar in the bowling alley and the mysterious cowboy tells him "Sometimes you eat the bar, sometimes the bar eats you."? Of course you do! Todays ride was the latter, sort of.

I did a hard ride yesterday and wanted to do 30 miles today to start getting my body used to riding longer distances on consecutive days. I decided to ride out to Sauvie Island because I haven't done it in a while and I was thinking after yesterdays climbing something flat would be nice.

So I got up early and checked the weather, drank some coffee, got dressed, and hit the road just after sunrise. I'm going to get all my whining out of the way right now so it doesn't plague this post like body odor at a basement show:

I don't wear wool. But damnit if cotton socks don't fail me every week and my feet are numb with cold less than 10 miles into the ride. Am I going to have to rescue a sheep, buy a plot of land for it to live in peace on, and follow it around collecting the wool that falls off on it's own before I will have warm feet in the winter? Truth be told, I haven't really looked for good vegan socks. I'm sure I can find them, and I won't have to exploit a sheep by buying it a farm and collecting it's wool shedding to darn my own. I'm just tired of cold feet!

Which gets to the bigger issue. I am tired of being cold! It's February, it's fair game that it's cold, and thusly, that I am cold, but still. I am dreaming of warm rides. You will be mine, warm rides!

The Whinocerous would also like to say that todays ride was mostly unpleasant because it is hunting season and I did not know you could shoot animals on Sauvie Island. I was most of the way around the island when I heard guns and birds making bird noises as they took flight en masse. This made me so mad. I rode by a trailer on a pretty large plot of land that had a big pickup truck out front with some dudes getting suited up to go hunt. I looked at their property as I rode by it. No sign of a garden. No fruit trees.

Keep in mind, Sauvie Island is mostly farms and they grow everything there.

This made me remember that line hunters tell about needing to hunt for food. I imagine many do eat what they kill, but if that was a legitimate reason for hunting, why aren't hunters master gardeners? If they were all about needing a cheap source of food, why not grow it? You can surely grow more calories than you can kill. These knuckleheads I rode by clearly had enough land for a massive garden, but weren't growing shit. More fun to go out and ruin the silence on a Saturday morning by destroying beautiful birds?

Hearing gunshots made me grumpy.

So! That is the end of the whining.

All of that made it hard to really get into riding today, but I had a thought afterwards. I figure everyday of the big ride in May probably won't be some glorious visionquest where the secrets of the universe are reveled to me and the bike pedals itself. There are going to be some hard days and this was a hard day. So today was good training for days when I can't quite get my head in the game but have to keep pedaling.

I got some pretty pictures, too.

Friday Ride Report And Tips On Donating

2009-02-27T18:11:00.000-08:00

Today I rode with my friend Glenn, we went up the west hills, which seems to be my new normal route. We did a different section than I've previously done, which is pretty easy as they flank the whole west side of the city. Somehow though, this section seemed to go a lot higher than the sections I've done before? Am I just a softy or does anybody have facts on this? South hills versus North hills? They look the same when you look at em from the east side of the river. I'm pretty sure I'm just a softy today.

It was fun having a partner, though I'm a lot slower going up than Glenn. If you bike, perhaps you have friends like this, they rarely have to get out of the saddle, don't seem to get winded, and seem to barely be pedaling while you're grinding it out huffing and puffing? It was great though, it made me work harder than if I'd been on my own. Were it just me, I would have been stopping every quarter mile for a mouth full of trail mix or another Nutter Butter.

I'll do this route again and take pictures, it was beautiful. Lots of views of Mt. Hood and Mt. Saint Helens, as well as downtown Portland, from way up high. With my commute, today will come in at about 33 to 35 miles of riding with hills, which is a good workout. I'm going to try and do 30 miles tomorrow, and 30 on Sunday to get some multi-day exhaustion going.

Brendan Brazier told me in an interview once that it is good to train when you are tired if the activity you're training for is going to have you working hard while you're tired. It helps you get mentally prepared and helps you realize you can keep going even when you're beat. That is this weeks goal.

So, the donation page has been up for a day and a half and we're over a thousand bucks already! Thanks to all of you who have pitched in so far, I truly appreciate it. I've come up with some tips to help you decide when and how to donate. They follow.

Tips On When And How To Donate:

1. Do it drunk, if you are the drinking type. If you're like me, you'll be feeling extra generous!

2. If you don't drink, get drunk and do it cuz you won't know what the hell you're doing and will probably donate everything you've got. When you wake up with your first hangover wondering where your money went you'll realize asking for some of it back would just enhance your shame. Look at how much good you did the animals!

3. Do it on pay day. What good are you to me if you only have two dollars and thirty three cents to your name?

4. Do it after you watch Babe: Pig In The City.

5. Do it when your roommate who you know has a trust fund goes out clubbing but leaves his or her credit card at home. You know they want to help animals and again, way too shameful to ask for it back.

That's all I can think of right now, but I'm sure I'll have other brilliant and somewhat legal tips for you as time goes on.

I think I'm going to ride out to Sauvie Island tomorrow, I'll take pictures for you. There's a nude beach, but I think it's still too cold for all but the most ambitious dirty old men, so I probably won't get any shots there. Sorry.

Donation page is up!

2009-02-26T13:37:00.000-08:00

Hey everybody,

The donation page for my ride to Farm Sanctuary is up and ready for you. I know times are tough so whatever you can do is greatly appreciated. I will post later about the hardships our economic situation is having on animal rescue efforts, but for now, as you think about what you're able to give, look at Whitaker. He was rescued by the brave folks at Farm Sanctuary. Think about how happy it will make you knowing you bought him lunch a few times.

Yes, I just played the emotion card. It is the first of many times I will do that.