A year of adventures

This isn't one of my usual project blog posts, but I owe my dear readers some context for the lack of project content.

The last year did not go like I expected.

Part 1: I ride my bike a lot

In mid May last year my friend Sam and I decided to ride the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, a mostly off-road route from Banff, AB to the Mexico border in Antelope Wells, NM.  We'd been talking about it for years (I first learned about the route in 2014 from Shane Wighton, who had raced the Tour Divide, when Sam and I were interns at Formlabs), and the opportunity finally arose, between Sam switching jobs and me having accumulated a boat load of PTO over the last 5 years.

The decision was fairly last-minute as things like this go.  Mid-May through July was consumed with planning, getting gear, building up a bike, riding my bike even more than usual, and also building some cool robot grippers.

Here's a view of the route, down the Rockies through Alberta, British Columbia, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico.  We did the Tour Divide race route (rather than the ACA version of the GDMBR), which has some "fun" alternates that most people touring the route seemed to avoid.

Here's the bike & setup, and how I stored all the stuff on my bike.  If I did it again I would absolutely use a suspension fork.  The Cutthroat can take a 100mm travel fork, and I thought about getting one, but figured "I've seen all these pictures of people doing it without suspension, it'll be fine, right?".  No, it was not fine.  Sam, meanwhile, rode it on my old full suspension 2014 Santa Cruz Tallboy LT.  Definitely not your typical Divide bike, but it made it  - with many creaks and a seized on cassette - but it made it.

The bike:  2019 Salsa Cutthroat frame bought used, Hunt XC Race wheels, Redshift suspension stem (came with the frame), GRX 1x12 groupset, 2.35" Vittoria Mezcal tires.

The setup

It was amazing, and there were some really hard days.  

Here are some roughly chronological pictures

Spray Lake, on the first day

Lugging my bike up the scree field that is Koko Claims pass.  My upper body was not prepared for this:

Holland Lake, MT

Ascending Fleecer Ridge

And hiking down Fleecer Ridge once it got too steep

Montana is sometimes a desert

Idaho - the route only hits a little corner of the state

Jackson Lake, WY

Old mine just before Atlantic City, WY

The Great Divide Basin, where we got blasted by brutal headwinds for ~200 miles until we hit Colorado

Sleeping by the side of the road half way up a pass in CO.  It's hard to get out of Brush Mountain Lodge early in the morning when Kirsten makes is making you pancakes

Descending toward Steamboat Springs

Nice welcome before Steamboat Springs, CO.  Apparently the local farmers hate the Steamboat gravel race

A steep, loose climb towards Salida, CO

View during the incredible descent to Salida

Deer in the aspen

Descending Carnero Pass towards Del Norte

Ran into Joe, another mechanical engineer from Boston, and rode with him through a hailstorm to Del Norte, CO

Leaving Platoro, CO

A rocky and exposed section of CDT in New Mexico.  Should have taken more pictures, the view was amazing but it was brutal to ride on a loaded bike

Leaving Abiquiu, NM, beginning one of the longest climbs of the trip.

Cool rocks on the long road stretch to Grants, NM

Long stretch of road from Cuba and Grants, NM

Pie Town to Silver City

More slow-rolling CDT out of Hachita, NM, ~40mi to the border.  The road disappeared and it turned into winding through cacti and other pointy plants

At the Mexico border!

I tried to record many of the descents on a GoPro - here's one hour (out of many) of riding down mountains:

We finished the trip in 33 days, not taking it easy by any means, but there were some short days when we had to bike repairs done (Sam did a rocky descent before Pinedale in the dark with no rear brake) or really wanted to hit a town and sleep in a real bed.  The typical touring speed seems to be a fair bit slower, judging by the dots surrounding us on Trackleaders and the number of people we passed, and the record is a mind-boggling 11 days, 19 hours, set during the race this year.

Mechanically my only casualty was one derailleur hanger (I brought a spare), otherwise everything worked great.  We did get super lucky with weather and had almost no rain and no scorching temperatures - minimal rain and mud definitely kept the drivetrain alive, I've heard stories about needing to replace chains and cassettes half way through when it's wet and muddy.  Every evening I wiped down my chain and lubed with Silca Synergetic (one of the the best non-wax chain lubes around), and by the end I was only 2/3 the way through the allowable chain wear.

I got no flat tires the entire trip. When I got home I pulled many thorns out of the tires, but the sealant did its job.

Would I do it again?  Maybe - I'd definitely do another ride like this again somewhere else, but watching the race play out this year got me thinking about going back.

Some stats according to the logs:

Miles: 2,722.68

Elevation Gain: 178,717 ft

33 Days:  82.5 mi/day, 5415 ft/day

Average moving speed: 9.58 mph

Average hours “out” per day: 11:12 

Average moving hours per day: 8:36

Top speed: 48 mph

Part 2: you don't need a shoulder anymore

The last couple days of the Divide my shoulder started bothering me.  One day it hurt while riding, but it was a flat day with lots of tarmac, so I could hunch over in the aero bars and ignore it.  The night after we finished, I couldn't sleep from the pain.  And it continued for almost a month - hurting but tolerable during the day, and the worst continual pain I've ever experienced at night.  

A nearly sleepless month, a x-ray, MRI, and EMG/ECG and some physical therapy later, I finally got a diagnosis - Parsonage Turner Syndrome - mysterious damage to the brachial plexus nerves.  It's not really clear what causes it, other than that some risk factors include getting a viral infection (which I'm pretty sure I did not), and "strenuous exercise" (which I certainly did).   Lack of nerve signal feeding the deltoid caused it to almost completely atrophy, and if I tried to raise my arm to the side, nothing at all happened.

that's not supposed to look like that....

After 8 months it finally started showing signs of life, and a year later I have maybe 1/2 of the deltoid again and can raise my arm. 

Part 3:  I moved to California

Just the TL:DR version: I left the Boston area after 13 years, moved out to the Bay Area, and am working on robots with the awesome folk at Physical Intelligence.  The shop came out here with me, fortunately now in a single-car garage, not in a spare bedroom.  

After an eventful year with the least personal project progress I've ever had since I went to college, I'm finally back in action.  More kart updates and other new stuff coming.