11 February 2024

Spoke Prices


Heads up, like everything else spoke prices are increasing. Order soon and save. I have a lot of spokes in stock but I see that suppliers have raised their costs. My prices are an average from multiple suppliers. As I work my way through my current inventory I'll be raising the cost of spokes for my wheelbuilds. 

See you on the trail!

14 November 2023

New Address

If you are keeping track I've got a new address below. This time I bought a house so I'll be staying put for a while. I'm set up to build wheels so send your parts my way and I'll get you rolling! I'm close to Beacon in Spokane, so if you ride there I'll see you on the trail. A shout out to my home buying team Robin DeRuwe at Kelly Right Real Estate and Chris Scott at Guardian Mortgage.  

28 September 2023

Crater Lake National Park

 A Road Bike Trip With More Mountain Biking 


Each year the road around Crater Lake National Park is mostly closed to auto traffic for two Saturdays in September. Taking the opportunity to ride around the lake has been on my to do list since hearing about it years ago. I have visited Crater Lake a couple times in the past. Once just passing through I stopped at the north rim for a quick photo op on a ferociously windy fall day. The other time was a day of skiing from the rim village. This time I got some consecutive days off work to make the 8 hour drive to Crater Lake from Spokane. This trip wasn’t all about riding a paved road around an amazing lake inside a national park though. Between Crater Lake and the spoke is Bend, which has an equally amazing mountain bike trail system. After a day riding around Crater Lake I did three days of trail riding in Bend.

   

I stayed on the north side of CLNP in a National Forest campground at Diamond Lake. This saved an hour driving through the park to get to the campground in the park at the south end of the lake. At the Diamond Lake camp I found there was a 10 mile paved bike path around the lake. On Saturday morning, while I could have driven the 10 miles from my camp to the north rim of Crater Lake to start the ride, I pedaled there. My thought being, after Crater Lake I’d also ride the Diamond Lake loop too.   

 

It was a beautiful day, bluebird skies, negligible wind, good company, great scenery… There were an estimated 4000 riders on hand. The ride stats for my day were ~70 miles, ~6000’ elev, 6.5 hours of shammy time. By the end Garmin said my body battery was 13 of 100 and my stress level was 90 of 100. I slept really well that night. Road biking isn’t really my thing but something like riding around Crater Lake car free I can get into. With so many bikes on the road the cars I did encounter were well aware of bikes in the area.


The next day I drove to Bend and put my feet up for some rest, reading and re calorieing my body with pizza and a beer. Over the next three days in Bend I’d ride more miles, hours, and elevation than my Crater/Diamond loops. All of it primo, rain shadow, singletack. While I have ridden in Bend numerous times I have been there in the spring when the higher elevation trails are still buried under snow. Noting this I wanted to focus on riding higher elevation trails I hadn’t been on before. On the third day I rode the old favs around Phil's trailhead. 

  

In my four days of riding I accumulated more saddle time than drive time for the trip. This was not a goal I started with but a nice benchmark to have achieved. Riding in the dirt was a nice way to unwind after the after the pavement around the lakes.


31 August 2023

Hope Pro 5


Hope hubs have been a popular choice for my customers over the years. The newest Pro 5 is out now. Get them to me with your choice of rims and I'll build them up. You'll get a great handbuilt wheelset that will provide years of maintenance free riding! 

18 August 2023

Spoke Sale!

Spoke lengths are to the milimeter and I misordered some boxes of them. So, right now I've got a glut of silver DT Swiss butted spokes that are good lengths for most 27.5 wheels or maybe higher flange hubs with deeper dish 700c rims. To unload these spoke lengths I'm making them $1 each till the inventory levels come down. Pick your rims and hubs and let me do the labor of building your wheels. Trust me much better at the mechanical part of wheelbuilding than the computer part of ordering.

03 August 2023

New Stoppers


 I got new brakes. They are pretty awesome! Hayes Dominion 4 piston. 

06 July 2023

O Canada!

No, I haven't made it out to the center of WA to ride the new Beverly bridge yet. and now, its HOT out there. I did just spend a week in Canada though. So much to do. A week in BC included lots of biking, some hiking and paddle boarding, 2 bears, a family of 9 skunks, an elk cow and calf, a bunch of deer, a few beers, and city campgrounds within a short pedal of the trail head.   

  
Nelson and Kootaney Lake


So many bridges in this section of Fairly High in Nelson


Rossland trail bearing locator 
 

24 June 2023

Spoke Wrenches


4 different double ended Park wrenches, 2 different Shimano specific wrenches, the set of regular Park wrenches, Mavic, Zipp, FSA and DT specific wrenchs, a modified Park 3 way internal... but I still didn't have the spoke wrench I needed to make a repair on a wheel with proprietary parts🥴. Well I do now.


19 May 2023

Beverly


I was in central WA for a spring ride getaway. To me it's a nice time to be out in the sagebrush. Not too hot yet and no snakes. I prefer alpine riding but there’s feet of snow there now. Since I was in the area I was thinking about the Columbia River and the newly remodeled Beverly pedestrian bridge across it. The bridge just opened for use last fall. I see this as a cool new recreation opportunity for the area. I started thinking about how to incorporate a ride out of the new bridge. 

Chilling at camp after a day of riding sagebrush singletrack I pulled out the gazetteer and started sussing out routes. I like riding loops to see more and the Hwy 24 Vernita bridge down river from Beverly provided another way across the Columbia. 

So, starting in Beverly I plan on riding southeast through the Sentinel Butes on as much gravel as possible. There are some random gravel roads starting out but I’ll end up on pavement before crossing at the Vernita bridge. Across the Columbia I’ll make a right and pick up the old Milwaukee railroad grade. More Gravel here. Google shows a couple tressel crossings on the railroad grade. These may or may not still be passable. I guess that's part of the adventure. I’ll ride this along the Columbia back to the new ped bridge and across to Beverly. I'm guessing about 60 miles. 

It all looks doable on google maps. Hopefully I can get down there for a lap before it gets too deep into the heat of summer. Reach out if you want to join, tackle it yourself or stay tuned for the report.


09 May 2023

Social Media Update


If you're a wheel customer or just interested in my social media updates I'm checked out, at least for a while. You can still follow my goings on here which I'll contribute less to but with hardy deeper content. Stay tuned, I have some great ride ideas to do this season you'll want to see. If you feel the need to reach out for wheel services, or connect on a social level riding bikes, talking bikes, playing table games, skiing, fishing, drinking beer... use the contact info below. Till then, enjoy the ride!