Weiser River Trail ride

We are going to run a shuttle service for folks to ride the Weiser River Trail, and Tuesday May 1st was our practice run.
SHUTTLE DRIVER:
Grandpa Keith valiantly served as our shuttle driver with his trusty Ford F150 and his 5'x12' trailer. It was a snap loading up six bicycles, and we all squashed comfortably into the extended cab of the F150.

RIDERS: (we wanted a diverse range of bikes types to get ride comparison. We succeeded)
- Rookie Bike Mechanic (hereafter referred to as RBM) riding mutant novelty bike he built around Nuvinci continuously variable planetary transmission internal hub. RBM is a sucker for new technology and had to see what the Nuvinci hub was all about, and so the Mutant bike was born. Spent so much money buying the wheel with the Nuvinci hub, the rest of the bike was cobbled from cheap or left-over components. Bike weighs 39.4 pounds.
- Jenni (RBM’s lovely wife) riding her Specialized Expedition with Rokshox J4 fork, aluminum frame 24 speed.
- Jesse riding his Specialized Rock Hopper with aluminum frame, front shock (forget the make), 24 speed drive train and recently serviced and repaired by a RBM.
- Shelly (Jesse's lovely wife) riding her Rocky Mountain something something (forgot the name) hardtail 24spd, also recently serviced by RBM.
- Kevin riding his Electra Ratrod cruiser with springer fork and Nexus 3 speed internal hub and coaster brake! He was our iron man, riding a 40+ pound steel framed street bruiser that hadn't been tuned-up in years! Damn RBM forgot to check it over, and so the plot would thicken.

THE RIDE:
We met at Mud Creek Outdoor Gear at 9 AM, give or take 15 minutes. Loaded up and we were off to Tamarack, about four miles West from town. Parked a stone throw away from the sawmill and we were riding a little after 9:30 AM. Beautiful Spring day, perfect riding weather.

RBM brought Jenni's Garmin Etrex Legend handheld GPS and strapped to his handlebar stem. Jenni had her odometer bike computer that RBM had just re-installed since putting on the Rokshox J4 fork. He failed to install it correctly, so it didn't work and the GPS would be our soul source of ride data. It worked fine.

Gorgeous day, mostly downhill trail, we stop on one of the many bridges that span the river for pictures! Yay! Photo time! RBM actually remembered to pack the digital camera. WOOHOO! Kevin, Shelly, Jesse and Jenni glamorously pose with their steeds on the bridge while RBM hippity hops to the perfect place to shoot photos. Even have fresh batteries in the camera, which flashes the following message “No Card”. Hmmm, no card. Could that mean the memory card is sticking out of media port of our computer at home? Yes! That is what it means, which means no photographs of this ride at all. Just colorful narration. Darn.

But what a splendorous (three dollar word to compensate for lack of photos) ride! Oh, the scenery and the stuff and the things! Okay, on the story:

About four miles out (around PineRidge) Kevin's Ratrod experienced a nearly catastrophic failure while bouncing down off a bridge and working that coaster brake. The bolt securing the coaster brake arm to the chainstay flew off and disappeared into the great outdoors. The coaster brake arm spun like a clock's second hand and bound up that Nexus 3 hub tight as a tick.

RBM, sprang into action and quickly determined that he didn’t bring enough tools with him. RBM skillfully refrained from shouting words like “#*%@!!!” and things like “I’m an idiot!!!”. Instead Kevin and he unwound the brake arm and stole a bolt from the fender mount to re-secure it to the chainstay. The wheel would turn grudgingly, and he did not have to use his tenny-runners as brakes.
The hub was in bad shape, and most mere mortals would not attempt to ride any farther than a bar down the street (although there were none so located). It was like riding a big heavy bike, pulling a sack of rocks! But Kevin is a man of stuff that is very manly, and he rode that beast more than 12 more miles! We salute you Kevin of the very tight wheel.

So on we rode. And on and on and I don’t have any interesting things to say about it, except that we were averaging 9.4 miles per hour with stopped time included into the calculation (GPS data). Okay, that wasn’t very interesting.

Between Stevens and Glendale, Highway 95 diverges from the river valley and at exactly 13 (lucky) miles we met Keith at a place where the trail crosses Glendale/Fruitvale road. A nice shady spot, just shy of Starkey hot springs. We later decided that would be the perfect pick-up point.

But the original plan was to ride to Fruitvale, and so we did! And it kind of sucked. Mushy trail, grouchy farm dogs, and Jenni and Jesse were experiencing shifting problems (damn RBM). But we made it! 3.5 miles to the old Fruitvale post office. And Grandpa Keith picked us up and away we went, laughing and smiling.