To Ride an Iron Horse - Jack of the Green's Blog

[blues2cruise]

Your camp spot looked great. I see your forest has some pine beetle problems like we do.

Your video was ok for a first time. I imagined that the singer in that song must get a sore throat from singing the way he does.

[JackoftheGreen]

Gina, thank you for the praise. I've found blogging to be quite rewarding practice. (-;

And Blues, yes, I was surprised by just how much of the pine forest was in decline, though I didn't know why. I find the effect strangely dramatic, with the rusty red of the dying pines providing stark contrast to the vibrant greens. I'd never seen pine trees of that species before -- their trunks are banded and knotty, like aspens, and the pines I'm familar with have craggy, chunky bark.

[Wrider]

Gina, thank you for the praise. I've found blogging to be quite rewarding practice. (-;

And Blues, yes, I was surprised by just how much of the pine forest was in decline, though I didn't know why. I find the effect strangely dramatic, with the rusty red of the dying pines providing stark contrast to the vibrant greens. I'd never seen pine trees of that species before -- their trunks are banded and knotty, like aspens, and the pines I'm familar with have craggy, chunky bark.

Pretty sure those are Lodgepole pines. I'll bet the ones you're used to are Ponderosa pines. If I'm right, the ones you're used to smell like vanilla when you're up close to them.

We have beetle kill here in CO pretty badly as well. Very sad to see entire mountain sides are gone. Unfortunately pine beetles are only killed by -40 degrees for 3 weeks or something obscenely cold like that.

BTW when you use pine in a decorative sense (furniture, art, whatever), try to get beetle kill pine. On the inside, the pine has a greenish blue hue that's very pretty IMO.

[blues2cruise]

Wrider, it's true. Apparently the Japanese are buying some of our pine beetle wood because they like the colour. At least the wood is still good.

[JackoftheGreen]

Rubia's been thinking about getting one of those green light triggers for awhile, along with a couple of our riding friends from work, and when she first mentioned it I asked if she was really having enough trouble with red lights to need one. I asked because I haven't really had much trouble myself, and we were thinking that maybe it was just these couple of intersections in the older part of town that presented a problem. That being the case, we decided to hold off on buying the trigger until one of other friends had purchased one, and see how it performed for him.

Well, last Saturday I changed the oil in both of our bikes, and it was the first time I'd really got up close and personal with PowerSlave for anything other than a wash. To get at the oil screen I had to lay down and crane my neck to see up and under the floorboard and frame tube, and what do you think I found?

Yep. LoL, PowerSlave already has a green light trigger! I didn't even know it was there, what with the great big floorboards. No wonder I haven't had any problems with red lights! We're ordering one for Rubia post-haste.

[JackoftheGreen]

Remember how a couple posts ago -- six months or more ago -- I posted my very first GoPro video?

Well, it turns out that once you've begun editing video of your rides, blogging about them in text seems a little, uh, pale? At least, it did for me. Perhaps it was the shiny-newness of the GoPro, or all the challenges associated with learning to edit video, but it never occured to me to write a single line here about the rides we took through late summer and into fall. In addition, I finally waved my little white flag and joined Facebook, so I guess most of what you'd call blogging I've done there instead of here. A shame, too, since there were some good rides. Monte Cristo, another ride to Garden City via the 'back way' in, and above all, East Canyon.

East Canyon. Just reading it makes me sigh with affection. Rather than trying to explain it, I'll just show you...

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That's the view from the summit of East Canyon. It's a significant geographical location in Utah history, this being the spot where Brigham Young stood and declared, while looking out over the Salt Lake valley, 'This is the place!" Obviously I am not so significant a historical figure as Young, but I'd like you to know that I stood there, looking out at those switchbacks peeking through the trees, and declared, "I f*king LOVE this place!"

East Canyon is a beast. It's 44 turns in eight miles, seven of them hairpins, with more than 1000 feet of elevation change end-to-end. That's up one side and down the other, of course. Increasing and decreasing radius turns, asphalt in poor condition in certain sections, and more than one of those hairpins are transitioning from ascent to descent or vise versa as you move through them. It's a ridiculously technical road, and we loved every minute of it. The video we shot that day doesn't do it any justice.

We've got a couple of long rides planned for next summer -- the Grand Canyon and Mt. Rushmore -- and although we'll be filming those rides as well I'm going to make a concerted effort to blog about them here as well. And I have no idea if I'll have any content to post through the winter, but I'll certainly try.

As always, thanx for reading my blog and ride safe!

[JackoftheGreen]

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This was taken just a few minutes ago, it's the view through our back door out onto the patio.
Any other winter, we'd be bundling up every hour or so to trek out into that mess and smoke. But Carrie and I quit smoking back in October -- neither of us have had so much as a puff since Halloween night.

People who have quit -- or people who have never smoked in their lives but want to encourage you to quit -- will tell you a bunch of stuff that will be different once you're smoke free. I'm here to say, they lie.

"Food will taste so much better!"

No, it doesn't. I'll grant food tastes different, but it's certainly not as if the bar gets raised everywhere. Some things taste better now, while other things don't taste as good as they did before.

"You'll feel so much healthier!"

Nope, not really. I suppose for someone who's been smoking longer than I have -- 17 years -- it might make a marked difference. But the only health effect I've noticed is that don't cough in the mornings anymore. That's certainly nothing to trivialize, but to hear the quit-smoking zealots say it, you'll feel like you could run a marathon after just a couple of weeks of not smoking. Lemme tell you, smoking or no I'm still not at 'training weight', and walking up a big flight of stairs leaves me winded at the top with as much regularity now as it did before I quit.

"You'll smell so much better!"

Yup, no argument there. In fact, I and my cars and my clothes smell SO MUCH better, that sometimes when the cravings get bad it's the only thing I can latch on to. My mouth still tastes like toothpaste four hours after brushing them, and that's incredible. And when my buddies at work who still smoke go out and have one, and then walk past me afterwards, it makes me incredibly glad I don't still smell like that.

So, yeah. There you go. LoL, I started this post just the show the snowy picture and complain about not getting to ride. The smoking stuff just sorta came out...

[dr_bar]

Give the taste thing time, and the health. My dad coughed up thumb nail sized chunks of tar for about two years after he quit.

[blues2cruise]

JOTG



It always makes me happy to hear that someone has stopped smoking.

Now if we ever met I could actually stand beside you and your wife and not gag on the smell of smoke.


If it's only been since October 31, give it more time. Your body is still adjusting.

Wow...way to go.

[JackoftheGreen]

Just posting because I'm excited to share --

I'm ordering new sprockets for PowerSlave later today, swapping from the stock 17/42 to 18/40. It should lower my cruising speed RPMs by about 450, but it'll cost a bit of low-end torque. I've read that it'll also make low-speed manuvers a little more difficult, both because it'll be harder to 'reign it in' once it's moving, and it's harder to find some pull until then. I'll be practicing my clutch slipping for sure.

More to come!