Best foot forward

Vibram - the first lugged rubber sole

I have spent large swaths of my life walking in the Shenandoah Mountains. I have done it in sneakers, in cheap work boots I bought at the hardware store and in hand-made Italian hiking boots. And to some degree or another, my feet have always suffered. But never have I known podiatrical misery like that I experienced last year when accompanying my brother on a hunting trip up Paddy Mountain in Shenandoah County, Va.

Walking on Paddy Mountain means either scrambling over rocky scree fields or bushwhacking through dense stands of knotty, iron wooded mountain laurel. Ascents are steep and descents are brutal on battered soles; bruised toes jammed into the fore ends of even your good old hiking boots and ankles mercilessly assaulted by the wobble of teetering stones. After a single day I realized that if I was going to spend more time traipsing around Paddy Mountain, especially in cold weather, which seems likely given a recently rekindled interest in spending time in the woods and having access to a cabin abutting one million acres of National Forest, I was going to need a new pair of boots.

The hunters down on Bonnet Hill Road all seem to wear similar 9" huntin' boots. Once you get 'em started on the topic, each will regale you with details of their preferred footwear. Mostly they seem settled on pretty standard boots by Irish Setter and Rocky. Of course what passes for standard these days is pretty high tech. All seem to have intricately interlocked panels, some mixing various fabrics with leather and other space age synthetic materials. The soles look like they could only have been designed by a computer, displaying swooping organic H. R. Giger patterns that wrap up and around the toes. Each man thinks he has the best pair of boots, but they all insist that the real trick is wearing extremely heavy socks in them.

My uncle, who has spent his life hunting in these mountains and who is partner in a hunting club at the base of Paddy Mountain, gave me a couple pair of thick wool socks he insists are the absolute standard of what hunters should wear. These things were huge! Not just that they were a larger shoe size than I wear, but huge in every respect: thick rag wool that came up nearly to my knee, a gigantic red elastic band at the top. They seemed more like some kind of leg warmer an Inuit ballerina might wear or something you might see a Japanese schoolgirl wearing. (Thought: Inuit Ballerina - great name for a band). It seems to me that if you have to wear a gigantic blanket inside your boots to keep your feet warm and pad them from the abuse of actually walking in them, maybe you have the wrong boots.

Chippewa Arctic 50 boots. The best. By far.

Now my brother, a Master Electrician and life-long outdoors-man swears by Chippewa boots, and in particular has been trying to persuade me that the only pair of boots worth wearing on the mountain are the Arctic 50's. They're lined with genuine lamb shearling, a 1/4 inch wool felt insole and a classic Norwegian welt Vibram sole. Old school. Classic. American made boots that have been made pretty much the same way forever. After my day out with him last November I came right home and placed my order on Amazon, but when they came in they were extremely narrow, a bit short and just as heavy and stiff as you could want them to be. I wanted to like them, but I could tell they were not a good fit, so back they went. I couldn't exchange them because at the time Amazon didn't have the next size up and I didn't want to play the back and forth game until I got the fit right. I really wanted to try on different sizes until I found one that fit right. But I couldn't find a retailer in the area that carried them, so I despaired.

Lamb shearling lining and wool felt insoles - what a lovely combination.
And yes, those are little American Flags on the laces. 

Then last month I got back to the mountain and spent some time exploring in my trusty old Timberland Euro Hikers. I love these boots and have had them since about 1995. But man, a couple of hours on Paddy Mountain once again reinforced my need to get a new pair of foot armor. Now as it happened I ran into my brother up around Chester Gap just a few days later and he mentioned that he had just bought himself a new pair of Arctic 50's down at Alvin Stokes General Store in Front Royal. The next thing I knew, I was down at the General Store trying on not my customary 9 1/2 D but a 10 1/2 E. Yes, the Arctic 50's seem to run a bit small. But once I got my feet in to the 10 1/2 I could tell they were going to work out. I was worried a bit by the boots' height, since I'm not used to walking with a collar that high up my shin, but the shearling lining and the thick felt foot bed provided instant assurance that these were boots I could walk and stand in all day, even in the sub-zero cold, even over the broken surface of Paddy Mountain. And I don't need unnaturally thick socks either to keep my feet warm or to provide cushioning.

I know better than to recommend a boot to somebody. Like a bicycle saddle or a toothbrush, some things are just too personal. But if you're in the market for a stout pair of hunting boots, and you're fond of traditional, high quality American craftsmanship, you might just want to stop down to the Stokes General Store and try on a pair of Chippewas. If you like 'em, you'll save money - Stokes undercuts the nearest competitors I can find by at least $25 - and if you don't, well they sell a lot of other brands you might just like. Plus you can pick up some ammo and some beef jerky while you're there.

I think that I shall never see...

With apologies to Mr. Kilmer

Autumn arrived this past weekend. With the exception of the Ginkgoes, most of the yellows have faded to gold. The reds are just passing from their lurid crimson fury to a deep dark magenta. Vibrancy is mellowing to calm loamy earth tones as the world trundles toward its winter dormancy.

Because, you know, red.

This is a time to pay attention. To really look closely. Nature uses this time to demonstrate the extraordinary loveliness of death, which is after all, the necessary precursor to rebirth. This is a time to settle into the warm embrace of sleep.

Form follows fashion

Over the years I have been expanding my notion of  the platonic form of "the good bike" has been evolving. In the 90's when I started riding, I thought the hybrid was the highest evolution of the bicycle, the fusion of all that had been learned to that time from all the different types of bikes ever designed. And to some extent, that was right.

My 1993 Specialized Crossroads Cruz has a TIG-welded chromoly frame, intuitive indexed thumb shifters powering the thoughtfully chosen 27 speed Shimano drivetrain (28/38/48, 14-28), solid cantilever brakes and 700 x 38 wheels. Nice upright position. Eyelets and clearance for fenders and racks. A very flexible platform for lots of practical types of riding. My wife still uses hers as a commuter, and despite being quite heavy, it's extremely serviceable. I even imagine it could serve as a loaded tourer in a pinch, though that weight problem would dissuade me from pointing it at Machu Picchu.

So I rode the Crossroads for about a decade. Then Lance happened so I had to have a racing bike. Then I had to have a fast racing bike. By then I almost knew better, but it was too late. So there I am, an overweight middle manager riding around Rock Creek Park on an overpriced carbon fiber superbike. I slavishly follow all these rules about what to wear and how to outfit my bike and how high my stem can be based on what the idiots on the Goon Ride think despite the fact that I couldn't hang onto those guys on my best day. Or the fact that even Eddy Merckx, the Cannibal himself doesn't follow them. What a sucker.

The reason I mention this whole evolution is because it occurs to me that what I've really been doing all along is merely following fashion. Hybrid > Road Race > Superbike > Rando... OK, I skipped single speed/fixies, mountain and 'cross bikes. I'm intentionally planning to skip fat bikes and gravel bikes, which are currently all the rage. So it is possible I've gotten off the fashion track and entered my retrogrouch years. Presumably I'll get through the lugged steel phase and find my way to recumbents.

I have seen the light

Curmudgeons beware. The future will be better than the present. Not in every respect, certainly. But in the way our present is demonstrably better than our past, our future is shaping up to be incrementally better than our present. You want evidence? Okay, there's a British company making glow-in-the-dark asphalt surface that promises to significantly reduce the need for electrical lighting on bike paths and streets. How cool is that? Imagine being able to clearly see where you're going as you navigate your bike through the woods. Imagine how much money is spent illuminating streetlights along such paths and roadways that could be saved if such a system proves practical (hint: it's millions and millions).

Imagine being able to ride your bike on a dark path without a light. Imagine being able to see the edge of a path with no painted lines - even after dark. Imagine reducing the amount of ambient light so you can see the stars again. That is actual progress. I doubt that this would be a replacement for street lights on busy roads, but anything that can reduce electrical costs for lighting, reduce light pollution and improve visibility in low light areas seems like a good idea to me. And from the sound of it, this could even save municipalities money on infrastructure costs.

So, still not convinced that the present is better than the past or that the future will be better than the present? Well, perhaps you should read the exhaustively researched The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker, currently on Bartlebones' nightstand. The general premise is that it is now statistically the safest time to be alive in all of human history. So turn off the 24-hour [bad] news channel, tell your nutjob Tea Party friend he's wrong, and enjoy your life. Soon you'll be able to ride your bike in the dark and never slip off the pavement.

Hope springs infernal

Paul Rosenfeld has an interview in The Atlantic with Swedish documentary filmmaker Fredrik Gertten entitled The Rise of the Bicycle in the Twenty First Century. It would be easy to write this off as just another example of yet another Northern European attacking America's love of cars and their associated dependence on petroleum. Just another viking preaching about a transportation model and an attendant quality of life that cannot and never will be implemented in the United States. That is it would be easy if the model had not already started to gain traction in communities across the US, including right across the river in good ol' Arlington, Va. And increasingly in DC, and even right here in Bethesda, MoCo, MD, USA.

If I didn't know better, I might just start to feel a twinge of hope that at least some Americans are beginning to recognize that suburban, car-dependent communities suck and that human-scaled environments with pedestrian friendly infrastructure and public transportation (formerly known as "cities") potentially offer a higher quality of life, reduced environmental impact and a general improvement in the well-being of our citizens. Yeah, right...

In defense of idleness

The Atlantic has an extremely important article in the current issue entitled, Teach Kids to Daydream by Jessica Lahey. The topic is a particular bugaboo with me; a subject I return to time and again, about which I have even found myself in arguments with parents. I am a firm believer in the notion that children need unstructured time. I think many modern children live time-boxed over-scheduled lives that, combined with the saturation of electronic media have a devastating impact on their natural impulse to dream and imagine.

I've long maintained that boredom and idleness are the catalysts for imagination and creativity. In my own childhood I recall many a long, summer day filled with invention and discovery, as my brother and I roamed the woods, "explored" the local creek or built a tree house. Do today's kids even build tree houses? I'm sure some do, but I suspect they spend as much time figuring out how to get electricity and broadband access to it as they do actually building it. Then, instead of pretending it's a pirate ship sailing on a sea of acid, or writing a journal with entries that begin, "Day 39: I have secured shelter," they just sit inside it texting their friends about how great it is to be texting them from a tree fort. I dread the thought of having to read the books written by this generation, if such things still exist. So do me a favor and take Lahey's advice:

Teach your kids how to just be. How to value silence and be at peace with nothing but their thoughts to occupy them. Make the romantic notion of laying back on the soft grass with nothing to do other than to watch the clouds pass overhead a reality.

4 eyes

Looking back now I marvel at all the years I chose to see the world through disks of glass, peering through prismatic lenses so finely ground and polished. Those glossy optics inter-mediated my experience, framed my perception, protected me, an artificial eye between me and actual experience. As a photographer, the camera always dangling from a sling over my shoulder actually affected my posture with its ubiquitous, weighty presence, causing a slight slouch, a stoop, a very subtle listing to starboard. For many years that camera shaped my world and gave me focus. And quite literally reshaped me in the process.

Then of course I moved on to a different type of lens, a screen, whose cathode rays have now bombarded me for decades, whose plastic frame has provided a window through which I can interact with the world, can take it in, can stand witness, behind which I can hide. The voyeur needs the glass, the safety of the separation from the subject. But it's often hard to see how such things affect us, how they change us, how their very presence makes us something other than what we are without them. The glass is transparent, but not invisible.

Rudy Project Rydon

Now here I am, struggling to adjust to a new set of glass partitions whose strange disorienting parallax I must somehow come to integrate into myself; a prosthetic augmentation of my decaying senses that promises to restore what has through the years been lost, but which will in so doing fundamentally alter me. This new part of myself, this new way of seeing, of acting and being will take some adaptation. Even now, on this first night, I can sense the neurons rearranging themselves to accommodate the odd liquid pane through which I will ever after view the world. From this point forward I will be irrevocably changed. From now until the end of my life I will be a man who wears spectacles.

So if you see me staring vacantly off into space, idly staring out a window like a child in the back seat on a cross country road trip, don't just assume I am lost in my customary stupor. I may be engaged in re-configuring my brain to navigate a newly discovered world or merely marveling at the astonishing variety of textures in the road surface. 

Up, up and away

There comes a time in every man's life when he feels the need to do something incredibly stupid. Hopefully when that time comes it does not take the form of marriage or procreation, though sadly I have to report that it often does. Fortunately I have not been particularly stoopid in those areas. Nevertheless, I found myself gasping and wheezing my way up and down the lovely but viscous hills of Garrett County, Maryland a couple of weeks ago. And there's no way to describe the decision process that led me there as anything other than stupid*.

I survived it and even managed to enjoy the brief parts between long sessions of mind and body destroying effort. I won't bore you with the details of my deplorable climbing ability, but I just will apologize to the good people of far western Maryland for polluting their roads with my flaccid corpse for over seven gruelling hours. I hope I can still have babies.

Bartlebones drags his fat ass across the finish line of the Garrett County Gran Fondo Masochistic Metric

*Apologies for any offense taken by the American Association of Stupid People (AASP).

Nocino, Bambino!

Indigenous Eastern Black Walnuts (Juglans nigra)

A couple of days ago I reported on my experiment to make Nocino, an Italian digestivo. I noted that I was using California sourced English walnuts (Juglans regia) because they don't grow readily on the East Coast of the US, where your 'umble blogster resides. Now, I'm no locavore - I'd never be able to give up coffee or bananas - but when possible, I like to get as close to home grown as I can get. So having gotten my "imported" brew started, I began a quest to see if I could find a local variant. In my web wanderings I had run across one or two suggestions that it is possible to use the native Eastern Black walnuts (Juglans nigra), so off I went on a quest to find a nearby source. If I could find a tree nearby I would be able to provide myself and those around me with a plentiful supply of Nocino and save myself the forty plus bucks to buy the nuts from California. I figure the sunshine state gets enough of my money for their wine.

I scoured the area only to find that at the end of the street on which I live there is a thriving colony of mature, healthy Black Walnut trees. Under my nose the whole time, hiding in plain sight. The trees are technically on the property of a somewhat protective neighbor, but several branches extend beyond their fence, overhanging the quiet country lane, so I figured anything I could pluck from them to be a common resource. Regrettably, all but a few of the lovely nuts were well above the reach of my modest wingspan, so I was forced to employ a pole saw in order to retrieve a sufficient quantity with which to concoct my coveted elixir. So, brazenly I strode down the street to the very fence line, 9 foot pole in hand. I thought the neighbor might have bothered me, but within a few minutes I was all finished collecting my couple dozen nuts and was once again on my way with no interference.

The Black walnuts have rougher skin and a distinct piney (some say minty) scent. The insides looked pretty much the same as the English nuts, and they seemed to have more liquid in the core. Once cut and in the jar they behaved exactly the same, oozing their sweet black nectar overnight. So, the experiment will be much fuller than originally anticipated. I'll have a batch of Nocino Traditionale and a batch of New World Nocino. I can hardly wait!

See Part I
See Part III

Further Reading
http://graduallygreener.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/foraged-nocino-green-walnut-liqueur/
http://greengabbro.net/2011/07/18/this-years-nocino-recipe/

Plowshares reforged

Last week I was on an emotional roller coaster. I had just procured an absolutely delightful set of panniers made of re-purposed canvas Swiss ammunition cases when on their maiden voyage one of the retainer clips broke and the right pannier became unmoored. I became so depressed about the whole thing, I was driven to drink. Fortunately, it will be at least a year before I can have that drink, so while I waited I thought I might just as well repair the pannier; and that is what I did. I'm happy to report that all went well, and the result was even better than I could have imagined.

Copper tube rivet left; aluminum blind rivet with brass washer right

To modify the cases for use as panniers Out Your Backdoor (aka Jeff Potter) uses 3/16 inch copper tube rivets set with a splash anvil. Basically it's just a tube with a head on it that you mash into an anvil that spreads the open end of the tube into kind of a mushroom shape (the second type shown in this video). They work pretty well, and look really nice against the aged leather of the ammo cases. And while they're fine for riveting the leather logo and blinky light tabs to the bag, they're clearly not the best solution for bearing any appreciable amount of weight. No offense to Jeff - it's just the fact. He clearly puts a lot of thought into the placement of the rivets, carefully measuring and finishing them. But for the connections to the hooks that fit over the rack, I just think the copper rivets he uses are a bit too short and possibly a bit too soft. One of these rivets pulled through the leather within the first eight miles of riding with a relatively light load.  

Initially I thought I would just buy a 3/16 inch brass screw, nut and washers (I like brass for its relative corrosion resistance) just bolt the retainer back on and go about my business. But then it occurred to me that a few years ago I had purchased a rivet tool for a project I can't now recall. I had some 3/16 inch rivets but none long enough to add a washer to the inside of the rivet, which I wanted to assure it would be able to hold the weight, should I decide that I DO want to carry a few hundred rounds of 5.6mm ammo (the current standard for the Swiss military's standard issue SIG SG 550 rifle). So oft I went to my local hardware store where the nice man helped me find the Medium length "pop" rivets and suitable washers. Upon return to the Bartlecave, I had the whole thing complete in about five minutes. Voilà! The rivet's secondary head and washer stick out a bit more than the tubular rivet did, but I am convinced this will produce a much stronger attachment. 

The basic process is demonstrated by some guy with an English accent here: