Adventures in Onionism

I wasn't feeling Henry Coe. By doing a long day trip instead I'll be able to get more work done and I probably covered more miles than I would've with a pack (and without the commitment device of having to make it back to the truck.) So I ran a 35 or so mile loop I've been thinking of for a while--Redwood & Chabot Regional Parks and EBMUD land over Rampage Peak and all the way around Upper San Leandro Reservoir. Lower trails were annoyingly muddy, but it was a beautiful day.

I did a long run on the Ohlone Wilderness trail east of Fremont last weekend. It was 40 degrees and raining with high winds, but I didn't die of hypothermia, so I consider it a success. I'm headed to Henry Coe State Park for an overnighter tomorrow in the few predicted days of sunshine this month.

Yesterday I rode my bike over to the Headlands to watch some of The North Face's 50 miler. There was significant prize money at stake, so it was quite a spectacle as far as trail runs go. I got there right as friend and fellow long distance backpacker Andrew Skurka (pictured) finished. I then went backwards on the course looking for Tattoo Joe, but I didn't want to ride home in the dark, so I turned back without running into him. Today I went to the workshop and replaced my bike chain. It recently started slipping, and when I inspected it today, there was an obviously bad link that was the cause. I also replaced a spoke and trued the wheel yet again. The ride home (in the rain) was silky smooth, so all is well. Why is working on bikes so much more fun than working on cars?

It snowed all day, I was gassed by the time we got to the cabin, and I got gnarly blisters, but the trip was excellent.

I'm up in Truckee for the long weekend. I went snowshoeing with Bink, Krud, and Monkey to Frog Lake. ( Anybody got 7.5 mil to spare? ) Overnighter to an off-the-radar cabin in the Mt. Rose wilderness tomorrow. I'm tired of radio silence, so I'm going to post a few blog entries to adventuresinonionism.blogspot.com, invite only. If you want in, shoot me an e-mail.

My roommate lost one of the bolts connecting the small and large front sprockets on his bike. The pressure of the chain bent the small sprocket, doubling it over completely, and rendering the bike useless. It was an old European three-bolt sprocket set with a cotter pin to attach the crank-arm to the spindle. The bike-shop didn't have the old parts, so my roommate asked me and we took it to the workshop today, found an old crank set with the exact same setup, and swapped it out. I wasn't familiar with the old cotter pin set-up (but I've never used a modern crank-puller either) but it wasn't that hard to figure out. So we saved a bike's life today. Good times. Now back to work.

I love this. As you may recall, I gave a presentation on the Sierra High Route to 5 Bay Area REI's this summer. They later gave my name to an East Bay trail group, and in early September I gave my presentation to them at their big annual hike & ride fundraiser. They just sent me their newsletter, and this is how the presentation was described: "The entertainment that evening was a slide presentation by Garret Christensen, who has hiked all the major though hikes [sic] in the US. He talked about hiking the top of the Sierra Mountains from one end to the other – off-trail! He showed us slides of the beauty of the High Sierras, the exhausting work that it takes to hike it, and the pitifully minimal equipment he takes when he goes there. I think we all came away from that talk admiring his persistence and resourceful- ness and thinking: “Thank God I’m not THAT crazy!”" Awesome. Support the Bay Area Ridge Trail . It needs to get finished so I can thru-hike it.