The Long Haul Trucker takes on Walnut Creek

As part of my very half-assed (or more, time got away from me) efforts at the LGRAB Summer Games, today I went to pedal around Walnut Creek Metropolitan Park, a green area I've never been to. Walnut Creek is known among dog owners and mountain bikers for being a haven in North Austin, and now that I've been, I can't believe I hadn't been before.

I had some errands to run beforehand which put me in at the northern entrance to the park (a map is available here, but be aware that it does not have the trails labeled as they are named on the park signage). Unfortunately, most of my pictures somehow got corrupted, but I have a few that came out!


Hooray! I found it!

There is a road that runs through the center of the park, by a couple baseball fields and a public swimming pool (which I am totally taking advantage of soon). The trail meets about ten feet back from the main parking lot, and I hopped on it and headed left, because it seemed as good a direction as any to go.


The road into the park. The next like, 4 pictures I took got corrupted, which sucks because they were all of the trails.

I hopped onto the trail on the TARDIS because despite what other people think, I'm not going to let my lack of an actual mountain bike keep me off the trails. For god's sake, when I started hiking I routinely wore flip-flops out of pure and simple "Don't know no better." There is a main trail that encircles Walnut Creek that is only marginally less smooth than a fire road, meaning the Surly is more than capable of tackling them. Whether or not I am is another question entirely!

Not to be a walking advertisement for Surly or anything, but it blew my mind that despite the fact I was riding a road-touring bike with street tires on it, my bike really didn't handle any differently despite the surface. It's an incredibly stable bike and it's fun to ride even off road. So, way to go Surly.


A rare species is sighted! A bike with fenders, a rack, and a kickstand in the wild!

I didn't ride very far, I admit, mostly out of insecurity, but also out of the fact that (as usual at this time of year), I was getting the beginnings of heat exhaustion. And, as is often the case with the wrong tool for the job, every time the trail got technical (I got lost down at least one side-trail), I opted to hop off the bike and walk it. I think with practice, to be honest, most of the sections I walked are perfectly doable on the Trucker, but I also admit that there are far more ideal bikes for the task. If anyone has any spare cash sitting around, the Santa Cruz Juliana is a pretty good tool for the job.

I eventually got to the point where I was getting a bit concerned about my ability to press on, as I could feel my head getting lighter and my heart beating faster (for those who live in cooler climates, this is a sign you need to cool off NOW). I asked a very kind fellow on a super-sporty Trek and he gave me directions back to the parking lot. Once there, a very nice lifeguard let me hose myself off and fill up my water bottle afresh, which improved my morale quite a bit for the ride back up the hill back to the house. I unlocked the TARDIS, swung us back onto the pavement where we usually play, and headed home.

Sport vs Transport Part Deaux

My criteria for what constitutes an awesome bike is highly variable. This is largely because I take a "Tool for the Job" approach to cycling, where no one bike is ideal for all tasks, though certainly some bikes are more ideal for most tasks than other bikes which are excellent at one thing, but suck at anything else.

There are no better examples of the two sides of the coin than a cyclocross bike and the downhill full-suspension mountain bike. For reference, I will choose two bikes I consider to be fairly representative of each type of bike. I'm going to go ahead and admit a huge personal bias towards smaller, quirkier manufacturers whose work is primarily in steel.

So check it. This is the Soma Double Cross:



This picture comes from the website for Soma Fabrications. However, when I googled this bike, most of the pictures of it came up tricked out as a commuter. For those not totally immersed in bike dorkdom, cyclocross is a sport that is basically centered around taking roadbikes off-road. This has created bikes which are fairly fast, handle very well in a variety of conditions, and tend to be tough as nails. They are versatile by their very nature, and as such, it's a bike you can ride for road rides, can do some trail on, and does just as well getting you to work. A lot of manufacturers have noticed this and include a lot of commute friendly features like braze-ons for racks and fenders and all the other goodies people like to put on their rides.

To contrast, this is a full suspension mountain bike, the Cannondale Claymore:



This bike is an amazing over-mountain bike. It will roll over just about anything going down a hill and you can do some incredible rides on it. But here's the thing - even going uphill on this bike is a bear of a task, due to the weight of the suspensions which make hillbombing at questionably intelligent speeds possible. If you tried to ride it on a normal trail with some people riding hardtail 29ers or god forbid, on the street with a few people riding hybrids, it would feel about like dragging a ball and chain up a hill. A squishy ball and chain.

The point I'm getting at here, is when someone asks me what constitutes a "good bike" or "the best bike", the first thing to ask is, "Well, what are you going to use it for?" because there is no one right answer. A good transport bike has a very different criteria from a road racing bike or a full suspension downhill bike.

For my money, versatility and practicality always win. Maybe I'm insufferably boring (not to mention preachy and arrogant), but if I'm blowing the equivalent of a month's worth of life on a bicycle, I like to be able to use it for more than just buzzing around looking cool. I also like using it for buzzing around looking cool while crossing things off my to-do list. Even if all that's on there is "Go to the pub for beerskis".