I was in Nova Scotia the first time I needed new cleats. It had never crossed my mind that these little bits of metal on the bottom of my shoe could possibly wear out. I just assumed my pedal was broken. Instead a band of incredulous bike boys sent me and my heavy bike happily on my way with new cleats and an extra set just in case. Despite their sardonic glances, I felt like a hero. Through my sheer audacity, I wore that metal down to a useless nub! A deformed lump! A under-sole grotesque! Take that, bitches! I ride so hard and long that metal wears down in my presence!

A couple weeks ago on my ride down from Vancouver I started noticing the tell-tale signs which often include clicking in and not being able to unclip. Obviously, a terrifying problem and one of the main reason folks avoid the “clipless” pedals. It’s taken a couple weeks to actually do anything about it, including putting the wrong set of cleats on my shoes out of a pure hopefulness that they just might work. They didn’t and so today, I am $20 dollars lighter, but in and out of my pedals in a way I’ve not been in over a month.

Right! Check the cleats…

For those of you who might be curious: I switched to Crank Brothers eggbeaters two years ago on my new bike in an effort to reduce the amount of time I have hot foot or the feeling of bloody toes. The idea is that the egg beaters might have more “float”. I still get hot foot now and again, but not like I used to. I won’t say it is because of these pedals, but I do like them. I don’t fuss with them like I needed to with my Shimano SPDs.

Why I am using mountain bike pedals on what is essentially a road bike? Because I have always biked in mountain bike shoes as I need a shoe I can get off my bike and walk across a cobbled square in France while the pigeons coo and the cutest fellows wave me over to join them for apéritifs! Or more typically, hobbling into a mini-mart with a wet floor to get some chocolate milk and some peanuts without killing myself. I need tread on my shoes— and all that helpful shoe traction that a tourist like me loves means that the flat road pedals aren’t an option.

I certainly did like third grade, but it is hard to imagine thanking someone for sending me to school. Cookies and stuff after school, sure THANKS! But for sending me there? Are you kidding? I was a doofus from a very young age!

I hope we’re reading sea shanties next to that rockin’ lamp. For some reason, I think my Mom painted it and my Dad wired it. I think it was a kit you could buy in the 70′s. My mother looks awesome in purple! I look ready for Aspen.

Ah Mother! “You are nice.”

I love watching the garden, once again, burst with exuberance. After last year’s record cold spring, the pleasant string of weekends has our garden insanely full of flowers, bees, and birds looking to make nests.

We love oysters, so the plan was born: we’d camp if the weather was nice, make a day trip if the weather was less than ideal. At ten dollars a ticket, it would also be an easy thing to forgo if the day was truly vile. We’ve been having an amazingly gentle spring with all the best weather happening over the weekends, so I found myself driving Victor and Mieko on a promising day past Olympia and onto the Hood Canal.

Our first stop was a very busy Potlatch State Park for a quick walk on the beach, some fresh air, and chats with several folks out on the last weekend of spring clamming. It appears that it was a good day for most, as everyone we talked to had their limits for razor clams, cockles, manila clams and oysters.

Following the coastline north, we arrived at Hama Hama after a sudden rain shower. Most folks had on rubber boots and looked rugged and ready to gather up some oysters. It was with some head-turning delight then to be with our trendy pal Mieko in her olive green patent leather knee high buckle boots, proving that you can certainly keep your feet dry but look like a superhero doing it. While the line to the baked oysters was long, there wasn’t a soul in line for the good stuff: raw oysters!

The Hama Hama oysters are some of my favorite. They’re briny, but still sweet and they’ve got some tooth— firm and round, pretty much perfect as raw oysters, which is my favorite way to eat them, and unlike the gigantic Willapa Bay oysters which I preferred grilled or the tiny kumamotos, which are so dainty that I only really want to eat them if someone is shucking!

We seemed to hit the festival in-between events and lectures, so after making the rounds of the different food options, including fried oysters and baked oysters, we decided to get back in the car and keep heading north, leaving the Hood Canal behind and heading toward Fort Worden, which once guarded the eastern end the Straight of Juan de Fuca. The nicest thing about “camping” at Ft. Worden is that you’re just a couple miles from Port Townsend, so it’s easy to have a good meal in town or coffee in the morning, which I think is acceptable behavior when one is car camping.

I don’t think I’d make a point to go back to another Oyster Rama. It was a long drive and they do truck these oysters over every weekend. If I was over on the Hood Canal, I’d be content to make a stop at the Hama Hama store and eat some oysters in their parking lot. However, it did spur us to get our tent out and take a drive to a part of Washington I’ve not been to that often.

Yosemite Range of Light from Shawn Reeder on Vimeo.

It’s been over ten years since I’ve been to Yosemite. It’s time to go back.

With our spate of recent home repairs, I’ve found myself down in Renton quite a bit to shop at McClendon’s. It’s a large locally-owned hardware store and in all ways, it is better than shopping at Lowe’s or Home Depot. Out in front, there is a gleaming airstream trailer that will catch your eye and lure you in. It’s a mobile outpost for Top Pot Doughnuts. And sure, go ahead, fatty, eat a doughnut! But if you’re smart, you’ll skip the calories there (or just do more exercise) and check out the simple pop-up tent to the right of the trailer.

That’s Frank’s tent and he serves the best hot dogs I’ve had in Seattle. Better than Matt’s Famous Chili Dogs and better than the hot dogs you can buy at Rainshadow Meats. The dogs come from San Francisco and the toppings are done Chicago-style— tomato wedges, pickles, sweet relish, hot peppers. Sweet baby Jesus, this is the type of dog you want to be eating when the Cubs when the World Series!

Fred Birchmore passed away last week. He was one hundred and is survived by his wife of 72 years.

“He was a joy to be around,” Willa Deane Birchmore…said about her husband. “He had a great personality. I think that’s why young people are so attracted to him.” reported the University of Georgia newspaper, the Red and Black.

Fred Birchmore was one of the rare breed of round-the-world cyclists. Of course, anyone that circles the world or even large parts of it is an astounding personality in my book. That he did it so early on, starting his adventure in 1935, into a much rougher and wilder world is Smithsonian worthy. Yep, that’s where his globe-trotting one-speed lives.

There’s a funny anecdote of him riding his big heavy loaded bike up a big hill, only to crest it and find himself in an ecstatic crowd cheering him as a victor in a bicycle race he was never part of. I had a good chuckle about this as it reminded me of my own mis-adventure of cycling into a small town in France on my loaded tourer with everyone standing in doorways waving and horrified by my appearance. Turns out I was cycling the wrong way into a local bicycle race, so I quickly pulled over, waited for the boys to pass, and then happily went on my way with Bon Chance! and Chapeau! into the evening. I couldn’t find that village on a map now.

I never met Fred. I would have liked to. When my pal sent me a note about him last week, I also learned a new slang term: “Fred”. To be a “Fred” is to be that bearded, sandal-wearing guy with all the wrong gear and a hodge-podge bike that just muscle-ons and rides right on past all the road cyclists wrapped in Lycra, not meaning to show them who is boss, but basically doing that, not out of a petty competitiveness, but just by being true to himself.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Fred Birchmore this week.

“For me, the great purposes in life are to have as many adventures as possible,” he said. “To brighten the lives of as many as possible, and to leave this old world a little bit better place.”

Like anything we humans tend to do, we find ways to bemoan other folks seeking their own bliss and we get ourselves into groups of like-minded types that reinforce our own thoughts. While I’d like to think I like most anybody who spends a lot of time on a bike, the truth is I’m just as likely to think dark thoughts about the one-speed hipsters as tiresome, cheap-beer drinkers or the 50-year old race “boys” as ridiculous ex-frat boy types with boring day jobs, while elevating the type of riding I do as the ultimate way to experience the pleasures of the bike. This is just silly. And it’s not helpful to me or really anyone, right? It would be a pretty simple exercise to be nice to all the cyclists I see around and work on changing my heart in that fashion. I can admire the simplicity of a bright one-speed and many of those 50 year-old guys are going to live to be a hundred themselves. It’s all good and it’s not really my business, is it?

What is tougher is this:

Embracing those things you know you aren’t perfect at and letting your happiness in doing them become its own inspiring adventure, to yourself and to those around you.

Being a “Fred” means you’re not sitting on the sidewalk waiting for the right gear; it might never show up. It means you’re not spending all your time in the mirror trying to get the right look; you are out getting sunburned. It means you’re not standing there waiting for others to point out the direction you need to go. It means you’re trying the big hill, not for the crowds at the top, but because it just happens to be in your way.

That, my friends, is being your own destiny.

Chapeau!, Fred, Chapeau!

Overweight and undertrained, I am paying the cost for the wet eighty mile push from Mt. Vernon on Wednesday. The jump from just a couple thirty mile flat spins to three days of riding was just too much. It’s a good thing I’m not foolishly out on a longer tour!

With our incredible spring weekends, I’ve been itching for some adventure and so told Vic on Sunday night that I was thinking about taking the train north for an overnight bike trip credit card style, though wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do. That got solved when I showed up to the train station and bought a ticket to Vancouver.

The 160 mile ride from Vancouver to Seattle is a popular challenge, with most folks splitting it into two days, with Bellingham as the overnight stop. I knew I was in no shape to make a hundred mile day from Bellingham and couldn’t think of much reason to put up with the poorly signed and confusing Interurban from Everett to Seattle. I’d just catch a bus in Everett. That’s was the plan.

Given that the train doesn’t arrive into Vancouver until noon, I opted to skip the time consuming urban route-finding and zip out to Surrey as my starting point. The Sky Train is right across the street from the train station and bikes are allowed on any car as long as it’s not rush hour. This means that by 2 pm, I had grabbed a hot dog from a street vendor and was out in the distant suburbs of Vancouver, with a very easy course to the border. I arrived in Bellingham just as the night was coming on, found a cheap motel and walked into downtown for a late super.

Then my trip started to unravel. I slept like hell and woke up to pouring rain. Thinking I might wait it out, I had some coffee in town and second breakfast a few miles down the road in Fairhaven. Turns out the weather I was expecting for the week had changed to rain. There would be no waiting it out. Luckily, there was a running store in Fairhaven and I bought a pair of warm running tights to slip over my bicycle shorts, which made a huge difference in my mood. Ok, let it rain…. and I got on the road again. But the truth is I struggled all day it to get into Mt. Vernon and when I arrived late that afternoon, I knew that I’d need to either stay the night there or I’d need to go on another 20 miles to get to the next set of motels. I was concerned about get stuck in the dark given how slow I was moving. I quit and found a motel.

With hindsight, I should have done as my tough friend Amy recommended, “Coffee and a cookie and head out for the next 20!” because the next morning I got in most of that twenty before the rain started again and it would have been mostly a flat easy ride to Stanwood getting me that much further down the road. As it was, with a much better sleep and an early start, I was already halfway to my destination of Everett when I got to second breakfast in Silvana. Feeling jaunty, despite the rain, I decided there that I’d take the sideways approach to Everett via the Centennial Trail to Snohomish— and if I felt good there, I’d just skip Everett entirely for Woodinville and the flat Burke-Gilman. I thought, I might just ride all the way home!

It is one thing to be exhausted and cycling on railroad grade bike paths and another to be on busy hilly roads with no shoulders. The route from Snohomish to Woodinville through Maltby, I pieced together via suggestions on Bikely. Perhaps not unpleasant on sunny weekend, I found it annoyingly heavy with traffic and rather brutal. By the time I hit the Sammamish River Trail/Burke-Gilman, I was spent and it was still raining. And it was on this last stretch, that I knew that taking the front rack off my bike for adventure’s sake was the right thing to do, because when I got to the University of Washington, I loaded my bike on the bus and had it take me up that last hill to home.

The Route

I used Rob’s tips from his site “The Slow Lane“. I’ve never met the guy, but he’s obviously out quite a bit on his bicycle doing the types of jaunts I like to do.

View Vancouver to Seattle Bicycle Route in a larger map

It was a sweet moment of recognition, not tinged with any regret, but still odd to see something I’d used to so well, being changed, modified and put to different task.

I was happy to get a note after last week’s ride from Michael suggesting he’d be interested in trying out a short spin if the miles were’t too long and the speed not too vicious. He’d been sidelined since shortly after buying my old bike with a mysterious lung problem (not TB, thank you very much!) and so to get a note saying that he was even considering being out on a bike was very sweet. It was with great happiness I picked him up yesterday, despite barely knowing him, to head out for a leisurely roll around some of the flattest bits of Washington I know.

Of course, if you ride with Knox Gardner, you are not going to ride very fast and you are going to have to stop here and there for pictures. “Leisure” is my middle name.

Ride Notes:
1. While there were still some dafs looking great, the tulips have really come on. This is the week to see them, particularly if the weather dries out this weekend. Take your mud boots, though.
2. The Padilla Bay Trail is a short ride on top of a dike with great views and gets you close the Padilla Bay Interpretive Center, which is worth the stop to learn about the importance of the estuary and see some cool fish.
3. Slough Foods. Open their cooler, get a bottle of wine (or two) and have a picnic there, ok? You can tell them that fatty nutty bicyclist who gorges on landjäger and pistachio cheese sent you!
4. Ok, you love your bike, but you also need a muscle car. Stop at Barn Fine Classics and ask them to rev the 1967 camaro sport with a 327 v8. (then please bring it to my house!)
5. We did get wet, but Michael was returned home with both lungs! How awesome is that?

And here is a route for you:

View Skagit Valley Spin: 2 in a larger map

I once fell into a patch of stinging nettles. Something like that stays in your memory and makes you wary of willingly wading into them with the idea that you’re going stuff them in your mouth.

The plant has many hollow stinging hairs called trichomes on its leaves and stems, which act like hypodermic needles that inject histamine….

I was shocked to find out that my friend Tara had gone out gathering nettles and neglected to call me. Of course, she graciously went about explaining how the nettles she gathered were likely too small and she’d be happy to try again and show me the ropes, all the while promising a bigger and better harvest. We’re busy people though and it has a taken a few weeks to set this up…and nettles are only good while tender in the spring. This morning, I got a tentative call. “You know, it is a bit wet out there, maybe we should postpone.” “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?“, my brain exploded into a green frustration, “It’s Seattle, it’s always wet! I’m dressed and I am coming to get you!” “Well, then you need to bring me some gloves, I have forgotten my mine at mother’s.”

By the time I joined her for coffee, the sun was out, the day was warming and you could feel the nettles just trying to push through the concrete around us. It was going to be a successful day.

Here’s the thing about foraging: stuff is just there and you pick it. Maybe somethings try hiding or have strange environments that make the whole proposition challenging, but nettles are not those. They are everywhere. Vicious, sure, but everywhere. As long as you’ve got a good set of gloves..and Tara recommends full rubber gloves like the kind you might use for refinishing furniture, you can just snip away to your hearts content. It sure seems that way. As she mentions on her blog though, “nettles are considered ‘dynamic accumulators,’ because they draw up nutrients from the soil. This also means they can draw up pollutants. Make sure wherever you are foraging is not polluted.”

I now have a giant bag of nutritious spring food. I am planning on following Tara’s suggestion and cook it down and then freeze it in small batches so that I can just pull a bit of the freezer to add a boost to soups, tarts and eggs. I have a recipe for a Spanish shrimp and nettle tortilla that I’ve been wanting to try and finally, my pal Lisa reminded me of the days I used to bake focaccia and suggested a nettle and shallot focaccia might be just the thing for a weekend brunch in the garden.

While we’ve been having onsen feasts around here lately, this meal felt like the kick-off to the out-of-doors season at Gardnovsky Gardens— my favorite time of the year, when we’re eating mostly out of the garden and having lots of pleasant impromptu meals after bicycle rides with our pals.

This meal came together in about an hour, though admittedly our kitchen looked like hell by the time I was done, so if I was cooking for guests, a more reasonable two hours would have been nice to give the appearance of relaxation and ease. Still, with all these tender spring greens, it was all about quick cooking techniques, like blanching and adding butter for flavor!

Here’s the menu:

Pan-fried halibut with nettle cream
Fiddleheads and roasted wild mushrooms
Grilled asparagus salad
Steamed potatoes

This is actually a very easy meal to duplicate: here’s how!

1. First of the season halibut is from one of the city’s best fish mongers, Mutual Fish. It’s on Rainier. Go there.

2. Boil a big salty pot of water. You need it to blanch the fiddle heads and nettles.

3. Turn your oven on to 400 and toss your cleaned mushroom and garlic in a bit of oil and start them roasting.

4. While you’re waiting for the water to boil, clean your potatoes and get them steaming. Eat some cheese.

5. Mash up some chives and other goodness into some butter. You’ll be using this to finish the fiddleheads.

6. Blanch the fiddleheads till they look bright green and are tender. Shock them in ice water. Eat some cheese.

7. Bring the water back up to boiling, and using tongs because you don’t want to touch them, blanch your nettles for 3 minutes, then shock those too in ice water.

8. Heat up your grill, heat up your cast iron pan as hot as you can get it with some oil/butter mix, and heat up some cream in a small sauce pan, and heat up a sauté pan with your chive butter!

9. Now that you have several hot pots about to happen, grab your wooden spoon and take a swig of wine because it’s about to get CRAZY!

10. Check your mushrooms. Eat some cheese.

11. Blanched nettles into cream, add a bit of salt and puree in a food processor or blender. Nettle Cream DONE!

12. Fish in the pan, making lots of smoke! When it’s seared and crisp on one side, flip it. Our inch thick halibut only took about 6 to 8 minutes to be very crisp on the outside but quite nice on the inside. You ought to see the halibut getting a bit flaky and definitely white on the inside.

13. Toss the fiddleheads in the warm butter and stir in the hot pan for just a couple minutes. Add the roasted mushrooms. Eat some cheese.

14. Get the asparagus on the grill for a couple minutes, pull them off, chop them up, grate some cheese over them, toss with breadcrumbs and truffle oil.

15. Swig of wine. Plate the feast and go eat!

This post is dedicated to our dear friend Louise, who we have been trying to lure down for dinner for months. May she finish her dissertation with her humor intact and be ready for expedition and viking feasts soon!

I think this sailor standing along a patch of ivy is quite nice. It’s the only one of these I’ve seen.

We do not have a car.

We do, however, have an old house that requires work and a very busy urban farm. About once a week, I’ve got a need to haul something that is too heavy, too far, too awkward to take on the bus or fit in my panniers.

Most of the heavy things I need are only within a couple miles from us. We’ve got a great nursery at the bottom of the hill. We have an independent hardware store and big box Lowe’s at the bottom of the hill. If I am having a party, there’s a Trader Joes down one hill and up another not far. Eighty percent of my errands take place in a two-mile radius.

Sometime in 2010, I was walking by 20/20 Bicycles over on Union Street and saw this smart-looking trailer. I made a mental note and may have even shown Victor on some other stroll, but it cost over $500 and I wasn’t sure how committed we were going to be to this “car-free” life. It seemed handy, but perhaps excessive. Last August, after getting another $120 Zip Car bill, I thought back to this trailer. As most of my errands are actually close, could we use this trailer to get what I need and could I get it (and the stuff on it) up the hills of Seattle?

So I went back to 20/20 to look at it again but, alas, it was gone! Thankfully, it just turns out the maker had a fellow by the name of David Shapiro working on making sales. David is a big believer in the power of bicycle transportation and bought several trailers to start getting them out and about in town. When I asked about renting one for a month, because I certainly was apprehensive about dropping a big pile of bank on it if I couldn’t get it up MLK with a few bags of compost, he gladly just let me use it.

“I guarantee once you use it, you’ll find other things to do with it and you won’t want to give it back.”

That turned out to be true. Now we have a fine trailer.

The trailer is a straight-forward affair. It weighs about fifty pounds and is welded out of tubular steel. It mounts to hitch assembly that I just leave on my bike. It clamps to both my seat and chain stays. The hitch is a pin and ball, so it literally is a snap to get it hooked up and ready to roll. It handles well and my biggest concern is actually forgetting it’s attached and scrapping too close to a car or pulling out into the street and forgetting I’ve got another six feet of steel behind me.

As you can see in the photo gallery, we’ve put it to good use. As you might imagine, there are plenty of gawkers when this big fatso zooms by with this jaunty setup loaded down with all kinds of objects!

Haulin Colin Trailers
http://www.haulincolin.com/
Sales Contact: David Shapiro

View Skagit Valley Roll in a larger map

So sure, went to the baby cloud leopards, but had a fine time in the sunny weather looking at everything else.

Here’s a video by my husband of the snow leopards. Very adorable, eh? Amazing to think what instinctual killers they will grow into!

Tips: Everyone knows that having a picnic at the zoo is most excellent. We stopped on the way at the Tacoma Food Co-Op on a trendy stretch of Sixth Avenue. They didn’t have much for prepared sandwiches on Saturday morning, but did have some tasty local cheese and apples that made a first-rate picnic. Of course, if you want to eat a bit further from hoards of children, the park has many fine beaches and some nice theme gardens in it.

We also very much enjoyed the beautiful open space at Bluebeard Coffee Roasters, but they were also low on snacks. Maybe there’s a reason everyone we saw out walking around in Tacoma was so skinny gorgeous. Cranked on coffee and not a bite to eat! (Wink).

When we first moved in, one of our goals was to include as many natives as possible. Salmonberry is certainly at the top of the list for a lowland native you’d be likely to see if you head out for a hike and is easy to spot to this time of year with its bright magenta blooms. The hummingbirds love it and it has been a great addition to our hedgerow, despite its want to spread. I just keep pulling out the new starts and it’s working out fine.

Perhaps the bigger issue now that the main shrub is eight feet tall and eight feet in diameter is that corner of the garden is over-planted. Do we keep this messy native or give the medlar with its crazy fruit a bit more room to grow. Do I stay content never to see the honeysuckle behind it and to let it slowly shade out our large granny-scented peony?