Bicycle Camping at Middle Creek - July 30, 2011

Well, that was fast. I mumbled the words "bicycle camping" and a few folks had jumped on it. Mark your calendars.

We're going to be roughing it this time. Middle Creek Lake in Louisburg, KS has no showers, electricity, flushing toilets or drinking water on site. There are some convenience stores on the way out and back, but nothing really close to the campsites.

People will be coming from various parts of town, but I propose those who wish to convoy to the lake meet at the Overland Park Arboretum just west of US-69 on 179th street at Noon on Saturday.  I plan on riding east from the arboretum to Metcalf, then heading straight south almost exactly 20 miles to the campsite.

Other than that, there's no defined route, no actual "start time" or anything of the sort, so feel free to join us later in the day. Just get yourself and your gear to the lake on July 30th and camp with other cyclists. It sounds like some participants may enjoy an "extended" gravel detour (maybe not as hardcore as last year?) on the way to camp, while others head straight to the lake.

We'll begin our return trip after breakfast on Sunday morning.

These things are always awesome, because there are many different ways to prepare the bike, shelter, food, cooking, and entertainment and everyone has a different technique. People learn cool tricks from the other participants on trips like this. I'm actually looking forward to overcoming the drinking water challenge and seeing how others do it. You may want to think about bringing several extra bottles for water at the camp site, or peruse the various backpacking options for acquiring safe drinking water. I'll probably go the "filtered water bottle" route and boil the water before filtration.

If you've never done anything like this before, don't worry. It's easier than it looks, as long as you have a bike that can carry food and shelter. Feel free to ask questions and discuss the event in the comments. Invite friends. The more, the merrier. We had 11 folks at a similar event in 2009.


I'm calling this a rain-or-shine event. I don't mind camping in the rain, or riding in it this time of year.

Off-roading, Bike camping

Before I continue, I should mention that we spent most of our time yesterday with our heavily-loaded bikes pointed South, into an 18-25 MPH headwind. Keep that in mind as you read this.

It wasn't exactly an S24O trip. I left at 8 in the morning to ride to church yesterday, since it's close to the Price Chopper. Locked up at church:


At about noon, though, I left for Price Chopper, went inside and scored a quick lunch at the deli. Shortly thereafter, Randy pulled up. Randy wasn't going to be able to camp with us, but he's going on a week-long bike tour soon and wanted to shake down his new gear, namely his front rack and pannier setup. His plan was to ride to Hillsdale Lake with us then return home. Soon, commuterDude showed up. This was who RSVPd. It'd be a small group, but it would afford us a lot of flexibility on route, schedule and whatnot.



I recalled a shortcut through Spring Hill that Randy showed me last time we went out this way, and asked him to take us along a similar route outbound. We'd end up taking Ridgeview to 207th, then west to Woodland, before winding through some residential stuff to get through Spring Hill. We'd barely touch the main drag through town (Webster) before hopping on Victory Road, which turns to gravel just south of town.


Victory doesn't cut all the way through, though. The first time I did this S24O, I made a quick stop by the railroad bridge on 239th which was about 1/8 mile out of the way, then went West on 239th. Our group stopped for a quick break in the shade by the bridge.


Overhead, we heard something. We thought it may have been a railroad maintenance truck. It certainly wasn't a train. We walked up to see what was above the bridge. Lo and behold, there was an un-used railbed alongside the existing track. We may have heard a four-wheeler, for all I know. At first glance, this railbed looked a bit like a rails-to-trails path, maybe a bit rougher. We decided to go for it. We took a little access road to get to it, and didn't see any signs or gates stating we couldn't use it. Randy is using a Long Haul Trucker with 1.95" tires. He's The Dirt Bum, for crying out loud. He does this all the time. cDude and I, though, were quickly descending into a habit of pushing the limits of our bikes. Modern bicycle marketing being what it is, we were using "the wrong kind of bike" for this stuff. It's not so apparent in this photo, but as we got further south, we'd encounter track ballast on the railbed, made of large chunks of flint, slate and limestone. Our skinny little tires would wobble hither to yon, searching for solid ground below the boulders as our high-pressure road tires launched some of the smaller rocks out like bullets with god-awful noises. Ping! Thwack!


After a few miles, we ended up at a dead-end railroad crossing near Columbia Rd. No idea what it was there for, but we crossed the tracks and hit more gravel.


There was an interesting abandoned bridge just off Columbia Rd that appears to be a historic bridge for the same road from God-knows-how-long-ago.


A little better picture of it, but I should have backtracked up the road a bit to get a better shot.


We continued south to get to 255th St in the heart of old downtown Hillsdale Kansas. We'd stop at the convenience store to fill our bottles up, and that's when "Underbiking" happened.

Usually, we'd head west to the lake, but we continued south on Hedge Lane (old KC Road) and found more gravel on 271st. We rode that out to Woodland Rd, which featured some not-so-subtle hills. In these parts, there are maybe 20 people who have any legitimate need to use the road. It's all farmland.


Once we got to 287th street, Woodland ostensibly ended with a "Minimum Maintenance Required" sign. As cDude put it, "Their idea of maintenance was to put that sign up a long time ago and forget about it." - I'm paraphrasing a bit, probably, but however it is he said it, I couldn't have put it any better.


I didn't get any pictures of the sloppier parts of this road. It continues on for about a mile, and parts of woodland are impassable for any 4-wheel vehicle not purpose-built for mudbogging. We, on our trusty two-wheel steeds were able to navigate around the behemoth mud puddles, but both cDude and I found ourselves stopping a few times to clear mud out of our fenders and low-clearance road brake calipers. 3 or 4 times, my own bike completely clogged up and neither front nor rear wheel would spin at all. The muddy trail turned west, placing us on a ruttier and rockier section of "road" that is supposed to be 295th St. These vestigial roads have long out-lived their usefulness. They go nowhere and are needed by no one. They're enjoyed by off-roaders of all types, though. Yesterday, that was us. We'd hit Victory road, where suddenly the gravel was even again. After the previous section, it might as well have been the Bonneville Salt Flats for all I was concerned.

We veered south to 299th St and went west, crossing the southern dam of Miola lake, where lots of people were enjoying the long weekend. I was already completely out of water and had borrowed a bottle from cDude. We stopped at an RV station and used their drinking water refill nozzle to refill our bottles and hose our bikes off to clear out enough of the clay mud from our brakes and fenders to allow our wheels to spin freely again. I was also burning up and covered in salty sweat crystals. I took the liberty of hosing myself down with the nozzle. Might as well, right? I think Randy got a picture of that.

We hopped over to Hedge lane, then weaved our way through various rural byways and another stretch of minimum-maintenance stuff that doesn't even show up on a map, featuring a weathered, repeatedly repaired creek bridge that's obviously failed more than once under the weight of crossing vehicles. My wheels clogged once more, and we finally made it to Lake Rd, where the entrance to Hillsdale State Park was waiting for us. Randy parted ways, while cDude and I forged onward to the camp site, where both of us leaned our bikes on the first available lean-worthy structure, and ceremoniously cracked open the beer we brought along. Somehow, his was still cold. My Boulevard Wheat was in a pannier water bottle holder. It was warm and covered in dust, but it was still the best beer I've ever tasted.

My wife showed up to hang out with us at the camp site for a while just as we finished setting up our tents and locking the bikes up. We unloaded a few more cold beers from the cooler, and settled in for supper. Me? Reconstituted freeze dried stuff. Dude made bean burritos. We both used soda-can alcohol stoves.


As night fell, we found some abandoned fire wood to set up. I carved a skewer, and we roasted some marshmallows I'd packed away.


We had some good conversation, cleaned up and hit the sack pretty early. I never touched the fishing gear I packed, and kind of wished I had packed a camp pad in its place to go with my bedroll. Lessons learned for future trips. It didn't bother me much last year, but I must be getting old. This is a 64-second-long exposure of our galaxy's core, as taken with a cheap point-and-shoot camera.


Breakfast was two tylenol, french-pressed coffee and scrambled eggs. cDude fashioned a brew basket out of a PBR can, and used a drip filter and coffee grounds he brought from home. Once coffee was made, he did oatmeal. Why didn't I think of oatmeal?!


By 9:00, we had everything packed up, and rolled out shortly there after. To say we took a different way home is an understatement! A quick stop by Lake & Dale again, and we bee-lined it home from there. You can still see the clay mud on my tires. I wrapped all of my dirty clothes up in my commute towel and lashed it down. They were muddy and damp, no sense in putting that stuff in my panniers.


A carbon-riding, camelbak-wearing roadie blasted past us on old KC Road, and I exchanged greetings with him. He was thankful for the tailwind heading north. He got up the road a ways, and I started taking my pull. We had a pretty good clip going, but when I ran out of steam, the race was on. I watched cDude reel the poor guy in. I really wish I could have been there to see the look on his face, being passed by a guy on a loaded steel bike.

I eventually caught up with Keith in Spring Hill. From there, it was an easy ride back with most of the hills behind us and a good push from the south winds. At 159th and Ridgeview, Keith and I bumped fists and parted ways and I continued home, using a good part of my usual commute route.

Stats:
Pack Weight: 27.2 pounds
Distance: 82.8 miles
Elapsed Rolling Time: 7h 17m 14s
Average speed: 11.36 MPH
Max speed: 28.1 MPH

Everything is in the panniers!

I jettisoned some of my gear at thr last minute. Now, even the tent and bed roll fit in the panniers. The tent poles are too long, so I am using the trick I saw Apertome use: strapping them to the top tube.

Getting ready to camp, August Recap

I usually prepare for camping or backpacking a few days early. We're doing the S24O Sunday into Monday and right now it looks like a relatively small turn-out. That's fine with me either way.

I don't know if I ever wrote about it here, but a while ago, Planet Bike sent me their "Keep On Keeping On" rack, a lightweight, strong utilitarian bike rack weighing in at just over a pound but being rated to carry 55 pounds. I've been using it since June, but never have gotten around to really loading it up. It doesn't have a spring-clip (sad panda) but otherwise, it's got the features I like. You know, like rear supports that don't turn my panniers into spoke-food?

I figured I'd load up my stuff (click to see an annotated version of what everything is)


And make sure things were all good:


Looks like all systems are go. Then, I found out that my wife would like to spend all weekend camping. So we'll be heavy camping (propane, coolers, etc) Friday and Saturday, too.

I found out cDude was planning on cooking over campfire. That's not a bad plan, but the wood you can buy at Hillsdale lake is usually green, uncured wood that's nearly impossible to start. I told him I'd rig up a penny stove to see how he likes it. Just in case. The end result was one that uses the jets coming out the side so that the pot can simply rest directly on top of the can for support.



Crappy composite, I know... but it shows how it works.


It brought 2 cups of water to a boil in about 4 minutes. It's certainly not a world record, but it's faster than the one I made last year.


The thing I love about these soda can stoves is that you just need 2 cans, a razor or pair of scissors and a finishing nail or small drill to make them. Well, and a penny or some other round metal object to act as a pressure valve over the filler hole. The fuel is really the most expensive part. Mark my words: knowing how to make these things will make you a hot commodity during the zombie apocalypse. Or something.

As for August... it was awesome and crappy all at once. I logged 275 miles commuting, and more for errands. I didn't have a cyclometer the entire time. I'm pretty sure I got more than 300 miles total this month. I'm not too worried about counting them this year, though. The mornings have been stellar:



The afternoons have been everywhere between the 70s and over 100 degrees, with one day sporting a heat index near 120! Multiple traffic closures and detours have slowed I-35 down to a slog. In the mornings when I'm riding along I-35 and with the direction of traffic, I'm often riding faster than the cars on the highway are moving, for extended periods of time. This has, of course, resulted in a lot of motorists rat-running the highway and opting for the side-streets such as the ones I use to get around.

Also, some old guy on a $2,800 Serotta Colorado keeps passing me every morning. At least he's friendly, but yep, I'm still slow.

August Tunage on heavy rotation:
First State - As You Were
Gravity Kills - Guilty
Barlow Girl - Enough
Golan Globus - Blazer (2005 Radio Edit)
Burn In Noise - Raca
God Lives Underwater - Rearrange
Stabbing Westward - Save Yourself
Duran Duran - Ordinary World
Grand National - Talk Amongst Yourselves (Sasha Involver Remix)
Madonna - The Power Of Goodbye
First State - Reverie

Bike Camping, Labor Day Weekend

Where: Meet at the South Olathe Price Chopper, 159th and Mur-Len. Not 151st. 159th.
When: Sunday, Sept. 5th, 2010 at Noon
Plan: Ride out to Hillsdale State Park, set up camp preferably near the Crites Boat Ramp campground

I'm scratching the idea of a northern meeting spot, because I'm probably going to ride to church that morning (yes, fully loaded) It's only a mile from the meeting spot.

Email me for more details and to RSVP.

Photo Dump: One Tone Paceline 2009

If you're on Dial-up, just go take a coffee break or something. Come back in 5 minutes. Then this page might be loaded all the way. I took well over 100 photos on this trip, and have tried to narrow them down to something manageable for this post.

Let me preface this by saying that each and every participant on this ride made it as great as it was. ALL the riders are to be thanked for this event! All I did was spam some people on some mailing lists and make some suggestions on the route. The final route, the date (and thus the perfect weather), the meeting points, the rest stops and pretty much every little detail of this ride came from the group.

Good conversations happened between diverse groups of people who've never met before. I saw instant rapport form that honestly transcends having bicycling in common; these were just very friendly folks that happened to have all found themselves on loaded bicycles at the time. To each and every one of you: THANKS!


I rolled out at about 11:15 to meet up with the first group of riders at Lenexa Senior Center. I wasn't expecting to find Jason pulling a kiddie trailer, but there it was. This was my first clue that awesome things were about to happen.


Amnee, Jason, Carol and John ready to go. We talked for a bit and admired the rigs.


Jason's Gary Fisher. I hadn't seen this yet. Nexus-8 equipped.


Carol's Jamis Coda carrying the wide, light things.


Rolling out down KC Road


Jason


The Lenexa Group


Price Chopper in Olathe


commuterDude


The Bikes. We had 10 riders at this point. Tim, Chris, Gene, Randy, Keith, Amnee, Jason, John, Carol and myelf.


Gene's Burley Trailer. Not nearly full.


Being pulled by a nice Trek XO2




Randy of KansasCyclist







Holding to the right to let the car behind us pass. The entire trip, our group held up MANY motorists. Surprisingly, all were courteous except for one while we rode through the park later on.





As we wove through the country roads that connected disjointed suburbs, we would also get several roadside cheers, looks of awe, and double-takes from other cyclists. I've got to say it was awesome seeing this many loaded bikes all at one time, even from within this One Ton Paceline.

Down Old KC Road, I hit the descent HARD to catch the video of most of the group riding past.


We stopped at Lake & Dale before the arduous death-slog to the park. There, we topped off water bottles, picked up some refreshments (i.e. beer and candy bars) and moved along.

Hillsdale Lake


The arrival.




About an hour after we showed up to the camp, Darius showed up. He was coming from further West than any of us and got a late start due to things back at home. His shelter was one of the more peculiar things I've seen. He hung a mosquito net from inside this cover, and used a camp pad on a sheet of plastic. Lightweight, versatile and very functional. I like it.


Chow Time!


Let me interject for a moment. When I say we had a diverse group of people, you can see I wasn't talking about skin color. Let's face it. Most of us were slightly (or in my case not-so-slightly) pudgy white folks. The diversity really shows when you start talking about our ideals and philosophy for a camping trip like this. And there were very few things more diverse than what we all brought to eat and how we decided to prepare it.

Dehydrated fruits and veggies, freeze-dried meals, military and civilian Meal-Ready-to-Eat type stuff, CLIF bars/snacks, cook-at-camp burritos, and sandwiches were consumed. Light-and-Expensive backpacking cooking systems, home-made stoves, fondue heaters, and in some cases no cooking at all were all well-represented.

Someone brought SPAM! I didn't eat it, but I was cheesing for the camera.


MRE for Chris.


Gene's JetBoil. It brought two cups of water to a rolling boil in under one minute. Yes, really.


Some of the crew at the feeding trough.


Gene's Solar Charger. It's worth mentioning that Gene's cool toys are also used to help educate children about the outdoors including backpacking classes through the OEL.


BOIL, Damn you! One highlight I'm sure will stick in everyone's head is sitting around the picnic table (which wasn't level by any means) while my stove fell over, spilling flaming Everclear all over the place. Fortunately, we got the flames put out before anyone or anything got hurt. Note: my little pot stand needs to go away. I set it on the ground after that. It boiled water plenty fast, but after watching Gene's JetBoil do the same thing in about 45 seconds (yes, really) 5 minutes seemed like an eternity.


Keith, tweaking the centering screw on his Kogswell. If anything is a millimeter out of adjustment, he notices. Again, my Park MTB-3 gets used on someone else's bike :P


As the sun started going down, Gene and I fished near the boat ramp. I caught nothing, but Gene managed to wrangle in a few bluegill -- likely enough fish to feed a few of us back at camp. They all made it safely back into the water. I was really thinking about holding on to one to fry up, though. Meanwhile, Keith and Randy rode around the lake, exploring old bridges, cemeteries and buildings. Others did their own thing as well. I'm not too sure what else transpired while we were fishing.

Roasting marshmallows after dark.




Crescent Moon


Long exposures of base camp




I crashed out a little after 10pm. My little radio had gotten almost two full days of sunlight to charge its little 350 mAh NiMH cell. I'm sure it was as charged as it was going to get. To drown out the loud country music being pumped by our camp neighbors, I tuned into a favorite radio show of mine, DJ C-Vaughn's Liquid Buzz. This show is mostly breakbeat stuff. Not exactly good sleeping music. It was playing quietly enough to not disturb anyone else, but loud enough to take my mind off of the hideous country music. I woke up just in time to hear the 3:00 AM hourly Station ID sweeper. Surprised it'd been playing for 3 hours, I turned it off and went back to sleep.


When I woke up a little before 7:00, some people were already almost packed. Others were still sleeping.


Slowly but surely, breakfast came out.


Darius and I tried our own different method of coffee. I think he'll agree I won that battle with the coffee press. :)


My breakfast: re-constituted eggs with bacon (tastier than you might imagine) and coffee.


Randy, who seems to be reviewing a map of Hillsdale State Park, and Gene.


At about 8:00, we had all gotten most of our gear packed away and were ready to head out.











Shadow Panda.


People fishing in one of the streams near the lake


I caught Randy taking a photo over his shoulder.




We stopped at Price Chopper in Spring Hill for "breakfast" -- I thought most of us already ate?!




Randy and I sat outside and talked a while, reflecting on the ride, and discussing a possible better route than Webster to get back home through Spring Hill.

Keith decided to torment Randy and I with the scrambled egg smell. They did smell better than the ones I re-hydrated back at camp.


We cut over to Woodland






They don't call it the scenic route for nothing.




The quaint old downtown district reminds me of old-town Lenexa. According to Randy, most of the shops are no longer used at all.








And just like that, we were back among the soybean crops, tooling north toward what is left of Ocheltree. These days, Ocheltree's all but lost. Little remains of it aside from a few houses stuck under the new rail bypass bridge on 199th street. As America's transportation infrastructure shifted from rail to interstate highways, villages such as Ocheltree -- which at one time fared quite well -- fell to shambles.


We happened across what appeared to be a funeral procession for a fallen motorcyclist once we hit Ridgeview and 175th. Hundreds of motorcycles with a police escort passed by. I didn't get any photos of that. It was memorable, though.

Along Ridgeview, it's interesting to watch the signs of returning to suburbia -- as well as suburbia's mostly failed attempt to sprawl a bit more. The banner for The Estates at Wolf Creek declares "NEW HOMES" and clearly there is some stunted development going on. Plots of land that appear to have been bulldozed then left to sit dormant. Perhaps 191st Street is just a bit out of the way for people looking for homes -- unless, of course, they're coming from even further south.


Ever so slowly, street lights and sidewalks appear as the street numbers get lower. CommuterDude gets a raging case of barn fever -- the phenomenon of gradually picking up speed the closer you are to home. Jason and the full trailer took chase as Keith flew past Amnee. A little friendly (and fully-loaded) competition.


The newish railway overpass on Ridgeview. Interesting decor.


One by one, the participants peeled off to go to their homes. First Randy, then Keith, then Gene as the remaining five of us -- the original group that left Lenexa Senior Center -- beared northeast on KC Road, riddled with blighted rail crossings galore. Tires beware!


I'm amazed, frankly. No mechanical issues at all. Most of us have never done anything like this, and this was only my second crack at it. I can still stand to revise my methods. Everyone was pushed outside their comfort zone, and at the same time everyone seemed to be amped up about future trips along the same lines. I have some good advice and some brilliant ideas for some trips in the future. And rest assured: we will do this again!