YAWP! Cyclery's Essential Photos

We’ve taken a lot of photographs over the years, so we thought we might select our favorite 10 and post them. Overachievers that we are, we’ve posted closer to forty. That might be too many, but we don’t care. We had a ton of fun looking through all of these pictures, and who are we to deprive you of having a ton of fun, too?

I think either Rebecca or I took all of the pictures below. If the pictures are any good, they’re Rebecca’s. As far as I can recall, the only photo we didn’t take is of the Tunnel of Stoke during the Randonee-nae. That was taken by Kevin McDonough. If we stole other photos, it was inadvertent. Please notify me and we’ll credit you.

Speaking of which, we know you’ve taken some incredible pictures on our rides, too. Please send us a few of your favorites to be featured on our next blog post. You have until Sunday, November 18th to submit them. Photos and videos both are allowed. We might even have a prize for our favorite photo that you submit. The only requirement for your submissions is that they have something to do with Yawp! Send your photos to yawp at yawpcyclery dot com.

The first picture below is how Yawp! looked before we opened. The shop looks a little better now, but it’s still just sticks and concrete. Those things aren’t important. Those materials are not the shop. The shop is you. The shop is all of the fun things we’ve done together, and will do together in the future. Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures of everything, or everybody. If you don’t see yourself, I’m sorry. We still love you.

Bikepacking Against the Machine in 2018

We were in the thick of 2018. KFC had just conquered the state of Nebraska and the iPhone had constructed an eighth dimension. Electric scooters had breeched the southern gate and had us pinned down in the courtyard. China had decided it would hang a second moon. I looked at Trevor, the space between us thick with cellophane advertisements, and I could tell he was thinking exactly what I was thinking.

Time to get out.

He’d heard lore about a place beyond the wall where trees still grew. I figured it was nonsense, but better to know for sure than live forever in the shadow of the AMC 247-plex. We sent up a flare and waited to see if there were other weary fools out there who might feel the need, also, to get out.

There were.

It was impossible to know what we might need in that world out there that Trevor called “nature,” if indeed it did exist, but our textured miscellany seemed sufficient to get us through crises both imaginable and not.

I haven’t time to recount here every wretched and heartbreaking event that transpired, but find the wall we did indeed, and over it we crossed into what surely must be the last stronghold of forested refuge.

Some noxious chemical had besieged the trees, and though they must’ve been dead they were a most spectacular color. The sunlight filtering through the forest was monochromatically yellow in spots, as though we were huddled under a translucent yellow acid-rain-proof tarpaulin.

The eyes can hardly adjust quickly enough, accustomed though they are to the 500 shades of gray we know too well. I’ve heard of a thing called the nature/nurture debate that took place back in the 20th century, and while the details of that debate are unknown to me, it’s clear that those words refer to the same thing.

Then an unbelievable event occurred—it became dark! Totally dark. One could not move about without stumbling. There was absolutely no ambient light and not even one chopper overhead to sweep its spotlight across the rocky, uneven landscape. We found a place to deploy our inflatable sleep pods for the night and it was our good fortune that one among us knew that fallen trees would catch fire. The smoke from this fire didn’t even make one nauseous.

On the morning that followed, we left our supplies behind and set out on an exploratory mission.

We located a relic or which we could make little sense. It seems that trains once ran here, trains of a sort that were powered by water and rocks, and that clocked a speed lower than 400 miles per hour. Why such slugs were used and for what was beyond our comprehension. However, it was clear that the tunnel itself had been sealed after numerous accidents, and was a kind of graveyard for both man and machine. What would it be like to die out here where one’s body wouldn’t immediately be fed to the orphans?

The trail became steep, and breathing unpolluted air with so high an oxygen content was difficult. This gave us ample time to look around. Ample time was not enough.

For the first time in our lives we were in a quiet place, and we discovered that noise leaves an echo in the ear much like a neon hologram burns into the retinas for a time after one looks away. It was only after many hours that I heard the flapping of the birds’ wings that had surely been there before, just hidden behind the ghostly reverberations of a lifetime of car horns, gasbag solicitations, flatulent delivery drones, and droning oxygen generators.

Sounds, really, are just the tip of the iceberg (an antiquated metaphor I don’t understand). The silence, the stillness, the variations in temperature, the appearance of animals—it is difficult to get accustomed to these pleasures, and to recognize them as such.

Logistics, unfortunately, demanded that we return to the urbolopolis, but with us we took stories and a few memories, something very intensely our own to cherish and to be changed by.

“I bikepacked against a machine this big.”

Riding with a Cycling Computer for One Year

Until recently, I'd never owned a cycling computer. I figured I should give it a go, and decided to experiment with one for a year. I bought one in January and stopped using it in July.

While I'm neither a technophobe nor a progressophobe, I am the kind of person who, for a time, mounted a small abacus to my handlebars. The joke was worth the rattling.

I don't care about tracking my stats and I enjoy navigating with paper maps--they don't run out of battery or break in a fall, many people can look at a paper map at once, and there's a lot of valuable information on a map that doesn't show up on the display of a cycling computer or smartphone. Yet, I decided to try a computer anyway. Data can be interesting, invaluable, and counterintuitive. I talk to a lot of people who know how much they ride in a year, and I can't contextualize their experience without quantifying my own. I was also curious to learn how many miles I put on my mountain bike versus my commuter, how often I actually used my swamp touring unicycle, and things like that.

No surprise: the computer and I weren't compatible. Only a small part of my frustration has to do with the make and model of the computer itself, so I don't want to pick on Sigma's Rox 11 computer. Most of my complaints would hold true for any computer on the market.

To be clear, many people enjoy competing on their bikes, and in order to compete, data is essential. This is not a critique of that. Some people simply enjoy sifting through data and using spreadsheets. This is not a critique of that, either. If you use a computer and like it, that's great. This is my critique about how data transformed me in ways I didn't like, and how quickly it happened.

The problem with the Rox 11 was a firmware update that prevented my handlebar computer from communicating with my desktop computer for a time, which was where my stats for the year were stored. I lost data, and I didn't see the point of continuing to gather data if the totals were going to be inaccurate. How many miles do I ride in a year? I'll never know. To be fair, this was merely the last straw, and I was happy to have an excuse to call the experiment quits.

My problems with computers in general can more or less be broken down into two categories.

1) The data is too immediate.

There's no point in having a computer if it's difficult to see, and mounting it on your stem or handlebars ensures you'll never not see it. That means I couldn't think about anything but how fast I was going and how far I'd ridden. For me, this invoked exactly the kind of internal monologue that I ride bikes to escape. How fast am I going now? How fast am I going now? I'm going slow! Is my tire pressure too low? Is my saddle too high? Are my gloves aero? Maybe I shouldn't have eaten that third donut. How fast am I going now? Any faster? Am I dehydrated? 

Sometimes I ride longer distances, and I'd almost always rather not know how far along I am because I always feel very tired about 10% of the way in, and this invokes a very similar kind of internal monologue. How far have I gone now? 10.1 miles! Why am I so tired? Do I have a tapeworm? Are the planets misaligned? Perhaps four donuts was too many. How far have I gone now? 10.15 miles! Am I dehydrated?

I could stow the computer in a pocket or a pack in order to not look, but then obviously I couldn't reap the navigational benefits of the GPS computer that I spent the extra money to have. (I did appreciate those navigational benefits, by the way. I will continue to use the GPS function on long gravel rides or unfamiliar terrain.)

2) The data becomes a substitute for the experience.

In a way, using a computer was quite like playing a video game. In many video games, you begin with a weak and unskilled character, and as your character battles they become stronger and learn sweet new moves. Once you've played the game for several (or countless) hours, your character becomes impressively powerful.

This is satisfying because this kind of thing almost never happens in real life. Struggles often don't lead to rewards but instead to new struggles. We learn lessons that are inapplicable down the road. In a video game, the narrative is clear, the goal is known, struggles reap rewards, and the sense of accomplishment one feels at beating a video game is pretty clearly a substitute for the lack of accomplishment we feel on a daily basis. Riding bikes with a computer provides a narrative in the form of a little blue line that it wants you to follow, and that's a comfortable feeling.

Using a computer encouraged me to tack on miles simply for the experience points, not because I wanted to. To my horror, it only took a matter of weeks before mileage totals became inexplicably important to me, and I became a servant to an arbitrary number of miles that I thought I needed to ride. Miles became points in a game that I could easily lose but never win.

That's ridiculous.

Movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Terminator have imagined the clash between human and machine, and with artificial intelligence advancing as quickly as it is, this clash may someday move off the screen and into your woodshed (or wherever you keep your android). There is presently a danger, though, in how easy it is for a human to slide into robotic, unthinking behavior. People text and check Facebook when they drive, and they may not even be aware that they're doing it. While there is a non-zero probability that a robot from the future may appear and kill me while I'm commuting to work by bicycle, it's much more likely that a texting humanoid robot will run me over as they sift through emojis to put the perfect finishing touch on a text about a fungal infection. As someone who owns a smartphone and routinely pulls it out of his pocket without knowing why, I am not making accusations. I only mean to point out that I am already overrun with screens that beg for interaction; why would I subject myself to yet another? Especially while I am trying to enjoy a meditative, recreational activity?

For about two weeks after I stopped using the computer, I felt anxious every time I rode. It was withdrawal, but from what, exactly? For those two weeks, when I got on my bike and realized I didn't have my computer with me, I thought, "No one is going to know I took this ride." Initially, that struck me as odd. I don't share my rides on any social platform. However, the act of tracking my rides and storing the data was a way of tracking my identity. One could argue that social media is how we sell our own lives to ourselves. That's what I was doing with this computer. 

When I ride now, I look around. There is no little blue line to follow, and I am free to meander through the wide open world.  The experience belongs to itself, and once the ride is over it's gone forever. No one--myself included--will remember that I rode twenty-two miles today. I relinquish this fact to the past. 

The Yawp! Company Returns to Breckenridge

The Yawp! Company recently went to Breckenridge. We've ridden there before, but the trails are so numerous that we were compelled to return. I'm happy to say it was not a mistake. 9 of 10 hammock dogs agree. So does Hammock Ian.

Do you ever feel like you're an insane person whose performance as a sane person is only barely convincing? I sure do, and that's how I was feeling when we arrived in Breckenridge. Fortunately, a bike ride (almost) never fails to return me to whatever semblance of sanity I do sometimes enjoy.

Rebecca and I had a short ride on Friday evening, up the increasingly rocky Colorado Trail toward Georgia Pass. I profoundly enjoy climbing nonsense like that. I could do it all day if it didn't make me so tired. 

On Saturday we rode a number of trails, the names of which I mostly can't remember. Flume, Mike's, Slalom, and Western Sky are names I vaguely recall. However, remember that you are reading the ramblings of an insane person who's pretending to be sane, so those may be trail names from some other region, or perhaps names of hot sauces I've never had.

We found a swing.

Photo credit: I don't know. Steve?

Breckenridge's trails are numerous and circuitous, and it's easy for a group of tourists to get lost. We didn't, actually, get too lost, but I did see this Blair Witch type object in the woods.

We spent some time riding around in circles, waving.

We saw a hole in the ground that smelled of sulfur. I've heard that witches--some of them--are followed by an odor that might be described as sulfurous. 

Despite all of that foreboding, the ride was great. We finished with a descent for the ages, an endless flow trail with a couple of wicked tabletops in between trees that were as far apart as a handlebar is wide. It was a very nearly perfect day. 9 of 10 stump dogs agree.

On Sunday, we rode about 10 miles on Tenderfoot Mountain. The climb was wooded, dark, lush, and loamy, and we made the mistake of not turning around and descending back the way we'd come. Instead, we descended fire roads and kitty litter. That's what I get for following the little line on my computer instead of thinking, and that's what the rest of you get for following an insane person. 

Bikes are just things, but they've brought a lot of joy into my life. It makes me uncomfortable that an object can do this. For years I suspected that happiness was more or less a decision, and that it had very little to do with circumstance. I no longer think so, and I'm grateful (and lucky) to have found an object that can relieve stress, introduce me to new friends, and keep me sane. Riding a bike does those things in ways that running never did, though I can't explain the difference.

Linking happiness to belongings isn't a step I'm ready to take, and yet without a mountain bike I would be poor in friendships and completely insane.

Thanks to everyone who came and made this a very pleasant couple of days.

P.S. It snowed on the way home. In June.

The Luxury of a Spice Kit: A few thoughts on bike touring gear

by Alex Hardesty

Jack drying our laundry at the top of Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park. 

Last summer my stepbrother and I decided to embark on a 2,300 mile bike tour around the Northwest of the United States as a part of our “post college graduation I don’t know what I’m doing with my life hiatus.” Neither of us had any bike touring experience, but with our early 20’s athleticism and youthful insanity, we decided it was a wise decision. After surviving three flat tires, poison oak, and the worst thunderstorm of our lives (all in the first 24 hours) we were skeptical of our decision but pursued nonetheless. It only took a week for me to fall in love with life on the bike, and I was excited about the freedom that summer had to offer. Beyond the relentless humor, swimming in cold bodies of water, and copious amounts of beer, a few supplies got me through thick and thin, and others I wish I had brought. There are many valuable advice columns and packing lists from experienced bike tourers one can find online, but here are my two cents I gathered from spending two and a half months in the saddle.

What I brought and LOVED

By no means does this list encompass my entire gear inventory. I just wanted to highlight a few items that I used often and was grateful I had with me.

Surly Disc Trucker, duh...

Adventure Cycle Maps: I used these to plan my entire tour and lived by them 24/7

Ortlieb Panniers

Kindle

Small candle lantern

Extra charging cell

Tenkara fly rod

Aeropress coffee maker

Elaborate spice kit

Flask (full of your favorite whiskey)

Multitool

Ibuprofen

https://www.warmshowers.org   I’ll leave this here for your exploration. The hospitality is phenomenal.

Blue skies and blue bikes somewhere in Canada

What I sent home/didn’t need

Water filter: Surprised? I certainly was. My step-bro dropped ours in a high velocity creek on the second day of our tour, so we didn’t really have a choice here. Serendipitously, we found we had very little need for a filter because there was water almost everywhere. Oh ya and those Adventure Cycling Maps that I LOVE also indicate the nearest water sources and the miles in between. We had iodine tablets but never used those either. We carried large bladders in addition to our water bottles to for extra H2O on the longer stretches.  

Jerseys: The fact of bike touring is that you will be dirty. Showers are few and far between. The sunscreen, sweat, dirt, blood, tears, regrets, and dreams will all become a part of your new, superstar cycling self. I started with 3 jerseys and three shorts and sent home all but one jersey and one pair of biking shorts. As long as you have clean clothes to change into at night, it doesn’t matter what you wear or how bad you smell during the day. Note: Extra underwear is key to this strategy :)

Things I wish I brought

Crazy Creek: This was a big one for me. Each night when we got to our campsite, I craved some sort of back supportive sitting device where I could lean back and read a book. I took to laying on the ground as an alternative, but was constantly envious of the fellow cyclists who sacrificed the extra pound of weight for a comfortable, compatible chair with back support. Crazy Creek is a great option, and they can also double as a sleeping pad if you don’t mind your feet hanging off the end of your backcountry mattress.   

Clipless platform combo super duper pedals: During the day, clipless pedals are fantastic to give that extra push and pull up the hills. But when you’re riding from the campsite to take a dip in the lake, brewery hopping in Missoula, or cruising to the nearest ice cream shop to devour your personal pint of the day, platform pedals are a luxury. The solution? Clipless platform combo super duper pedals! And yes, that name was invented on the spot by Levi Teal.

Sun protective arm “warmers:” The sun is intense. Especially when you spend 10 hours riding through Eastern Washington with no tree coverage. I took to layering on 20% zinc oxide sunscreen every two hours. I saw a lot of people using these protective arm sleeves and wish I had brought some for my sun sensitive skin. They probably would save you money on sunscreen in the long run too.

What I saw other people bring and thought, meh...

Solar Charger: This one is a contentious subject for those doing long bike tours on pavement. In my own biased opinion, I think they are unnecessary because we had no issue finding outlets, even in more remote areas. However, I also used the “outdated” paper maps for all but a few miles of my tour, so if you’re a super duper techie, don’t take my advice on this one.

Closing Thoughts

At the end of the day, your gear will be a personal reflection of what you value most while spending time off the grid. For me, that includes luxuries such as fishing, reading, and cooking with all the spices I use at home. Another list may include the most comfortable sleeping pad or dare I say a solar charger. Everyone values something different after 100 miles on a bike, and that is one of the great joys of touring. It gives you the opportunity to appreciate something small that goes unnoticed in our everyday lives. Ride on.

The perfect fit