Switzerland hiking trip

I finally finally got off my lazy butt and uploaded photos and wrote the trip report for our hiking trip to Switzerland. Trip report here Photos here

New Zealand trip report

I finally got unlazy and posted photos and wrote a very short trip report to our new zealand trip.

Trip report here.

Photos here

Wow, a post! Or yet another trip report.

Last weekend Kekoa and I went backpacking in Yosemite from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir to Rancheria Falls, it was definitely wet. If you want to read the rest of the trip report, click clicky here.

Conclusion: Tour of the Mostly-Swiss Alps

I had fun, I had a lot of fun. Kekoa and I both had a lot of fun. Despite losing all my biking gear the first day, I'm glad I bought all new gear and got my butt on the saddle for the next three weeks. While writing the trip reports, I also realized how much I already want to go back.

There's something very different about bike touring compared to normal "visit a big city" traveling, I felt that I had a lot more freedom bike touring. I could get from point A to point B without help - unless I wanted help via public transportation. I felt a strong sense of independence associated with pedaling myself from place to place. I was on nobody's schedule but my own (or the group's). I also really enjoyed the fact that we could find a hotel and/or restaurant every few miles (at least in Switzerland, with the help of our maps), which meant we weren't going to starve or freeze to death :)

Everyone was also really nice, it might have been because we were traveling by bike. But every time I asked someone for help, they were very eager to help (with directions, finding a book store, and so on). The stays at every hotel, meal at every restaurant were also wonderful. I really enjoyed the breakfasts with lots of meat, cheese, and bread. The large and plentiful dinners. The ability to eat whatever I wanted. At Rosenlaui, they even started breakfast earlier for our group because we had a train to catch. Once again, German beer is really really yummy!

Compared to the US, the drivers were also much nicer. We got honked at a total of 4 times (not including Innsbruck, where we got honked at about 5 times in 2 miles there). Twice in Switzerland and twice in Italy. That's not bad for 2 weeks of riding. The drivers themselves were much more polite, I rarely felt unsafe with the cars around me. The same cannot be said for the roads around Northern California.

Switzerland was extremely beautiful, and the climbs were gorgeous. I now miss hearing cow bells during my bike rides. A lot of folks have asked me what my favorite part of the trip was - for me it was just the being there, biking, feeling like I could be anywhere I wanted, and experiencing every day. (God that sounds really cheesy, but it's pretty true!)

If I had to make a list...

Least favorites - Losing all my shit and having to pay really expensive German prices to replace it. Having a hard time finding things my size because almost everyone is taller with bigger hands. Crap weather the first week (if only we flew into Europe one week later...). The freezing cold descents the first week.

Favorite things - The climb and descent of St. Gottard and Sustens pass. The cool looking hairpins on Splugen pass. The stay at Rosenlaui. The food (lardo, pizza, pancetta), the beer, the wine! The sound of cow bells. The many waterfalls. Having someone to help block the wind.

Looking forward to going back!

Tour of the Mostly-Swiss Alps, Part IV

Time for the fourth and last part of our cycling trip report. This is the part where Kekoa and I tried to chase Piaw et al down, and it took until Rosenlaui.

Here's part IV of the trip report.

I still have a conclusion, maybe tips & tricks, and gear review to write! Hopefully those will be easier.

Tour of the Mostly-Swiss Alps, Part III

Time for the third installment of our cycling trip report. This is the part where Kekoa and I took off for a few days to climb more - in super hot weather.

Here's part III of the trip report.

Tour of the Mostly-Swiss Alps, Part II

Time for the second installment of our cycling trip report. This is the trip report of the freezing climbs :) Which ends in super hot weather.

Here's part II of the trip report.

Tour of the Mostly-Swiss Alps, Part I

In 2010, Kekoa and I, Piaw and Lisa, and Phil Sung bike toured in the alps. The original plan called for touring the German Speaking Alps, but due to weather constraints, we ended up touring mostly the Swiss Alps.

Here's part I of the trip report. This included how we attempted to outfoxed the weather from Munich to Innsbruck and then to Bludenz.

Funny things we saw in Europe

Since I'm quite delinquent in writing my trip reports, I'm going to start with the funny signs and things we saw in Europe.



No Smoking Ashtray?


No peeing standing up?


Very Exotic Sauce


Dickmans??!?!



Nuts

Road rash fun

What better blog post than to write about road rash.

Given that I had a fairly fun (NOT AT ALL) crash about a week ago, I feel compelled to write about road rash and treating it. Let me say I got most of my information off of xton's very helpful post on the same subject. I just wanted to elebroate more on the bloodiness, of course. :)

First off, if you aren't up for cleaning the wounds yourself. Go to urgent care the first day. Not the second... I did a shitty job the first day cleaning my wounds. The next day, while the wounds were happily oozing black/brown dirt, I got freaked out thinking I might have broken something, and decided to go to urgent care. Needless to say, they took one look at my wounds, and decided to tear off all my expensive tegaderm, and re-scrub everything. OWWWW. The nice part about urgent care - they do put lidocaine on your wounds to numb it before they scrub. The bad - they only put it on the deep ones (too much lidocaine is apparently bad for you), and it's topical, so once the top of your wounds gets scrubbed off, it starts stinging pretty bad. If you are ball-sy enough to clean it yourself, drugstores also sell this 2% lidocaine solution that should help numb wounds, which I've heard helps.

Bandages

The whole new moist wound care stuff is really awesome. I was told to use Tegaderm and then some folks recommended Duoderm. After a bit of research - I realized Duoderm / Tegasorb (not tegaderm) / Hydrocolloid are all pretty much the same thing. All this stuff is a bit expensive (Tegaderm is $3.75 for a 4" x 4 3/4" patch at drugstore pricing and Hydrocolloids are $3 for a 3" x 3" patch at drugstore prices) with the hydrocolloids being a bit more expensive. I recommend buying what you need for the day and then buying in bulk from some online medical supply store, even with the expedited shipping it's still cheaper.

Personally I used Tegaderm for the first few days, until the wounds started oozing less and moved to a hydrocolloid bandage. One thing to note about Tegaderm: if you are oozing a lot (yellow ooze is OK), do clean/replace often, else your skin might get irritated and itch a lot and add insult to injury. The ooze also smells really bad, it kind of smells like someone sweaty who hasn't showered in while... The wound can also ooze a lot and the ooze can "spill" out and seep through the edges of the Tegaderm, so definitely bandage it in with gauze so it doesn't leak on your clothes. You can leave these on for a few days. Until either the wound looks healed or the ooze has taken over so you have to change it.

Hydrocolloids are a bit more expensive than Tegaderm, but they are a bit nicer. The nicest feature is that it absorbs the ooze, so it doesn't leak everywhere easily, and just grows larger... it sort of looks like a GIANT whitehead. It does eventually ooze tho, if the bandage cannot absorb anymore. You can leave these on for ~7 days.

Anyhow, the best part about both of these is the ability to shower with big wounds over your body, with no pain as it keeps the water out. For the more surface type wounds, it took about 1 week for the oozing to stop, for the larger wounds, it looks like it's going to take 2 weeks... Moist healing also lets you completely bypass the "scab forming itchy" stage, and having no scab to pick on is wonderful. I didn't feel any itching besides from the ooze irritation (ew). I do believe that the moist healing thing works faster tho. I had similar sized wounds on my leg and arm, on my leg I chose to let it scab over and on my arm I put a hydrocolloid bandage on. Result at 1.5 weeks: arm has new skin already, leg is still scabbed up and itchy.

Ice

After a while, it won't be the bloody wounds that hurt, but the stupid bruises from falling and your body hitting random parts of the road! Icing within the first 24 hours is KEY. This will save you a lot of pain down the road (and make healing a lot faster). ICE A LOT (I wish I iced more...)

Moist healing is awesome. No more crashing for cyn.

Review: Zero Days by The Real Life Adventure of Captain Bligh, Nellie Bly, and 10-year-old Scrambler on the Pacific Crest Trail

I just finished Zero Days: The Real Life Adventure of Captain Bligh, Nellie Bly, and 10-year-old Scrambler on the Pacific Crest Trail in one day. This was a fun read! If you have done any backpacking at all, you'll find many parts of this book where you just can't help but laugh in agreement because you've felt the same thing before.

This book is about Nellie Bly, Captain Blight (Barbara Egbert and Gary Chambers) and their 10 year old daughter Scrambler (Mary) backpacking the Pacific Coast Trail (PCT). The PCT is a 2,650-mile hike from Mexico to Canada. According to the book, less than 100 people finish each year, and finishing with a 10 year old is just plain nuts. The book is organized by theme
"Togetherness", "Trail Angels and Demons", "Food and Water", ..., which I found made for better reading than I imagine a chronologically organized book of a family doing the PCT. I mean who wants to read "Day 1: We hiked X miles", "Day 2: We hiked Y miles", ... That said, each chapter touches some insight or experience about their journey. My favorite parts of the book were the parts were I TOTALLY knew what the author was referring to when she was talking about the happy/frustrating moments about backpacking (although I'm guessing her feelings were more intense than mine...), and it was also gave enough insight that one would know what to expect doing such a long thru-hike.

Personally, although the PCT sounds tempting, I think I'll try something shorter first. Most likely it'll be the John Muir Trail, or England's Coast to Coast first!

A bit weight weenie-ish...

Warning: Very dorky post below.

I'm trying to find a pair of lightweight hiking/trekking/traveling pants, since every ounce ends up counting (I have to carry it), the lighter the better. Annoyed by the fact that most of the manufacturers don't actually post the weight of their pants on their websites, I took a scale into some stores today.

My drill went like this: Pick out a few pairs of potential pants, take pants into dressing room. Try pants on, if I like the pants, also weigh them in the dressing room. Result so far: I could not find a pair of long pants lighter than half a pound.

That's how I spent a few hours of my Sunday afternoon... I'm almost ashamed to admit.

Pigeont Point Lighthouse overnight trip

Kekoa and I joined Piaw plus many others on an overnight trip cycling to the Pigeon Point Lighthouse.

Trip report here.

Summary: Awesome trip, awesome hot tub :)

Bangkok thoughts...

K and I spent a few days in Bangkok in the middle of our Hong Kong trip over Christmas/New Years last year. It feels weird using the term last year, since "last year" was just two weeks ago.

Food: The food was awesome, I had the best Hainanese chicken rice for 30 Bhat (which is less than a dollar), the thai food there was awesome, we had this awesome afternoon tea which included 10+ items that cost very little. I have lots of food recommendations if anyone ever wants them :)

Thai massage was awesome too, but that said, it's still expensive to fly that far for the food and good/cheap massages. The sites itself weren't too interesting, but old temples/religious monuments really don't do that much for me. The shopping was OK, it was cheaper by a little. Sadly, given the globalization of stores, it's really the same stores over and over again, which is a bit boring.

I guess looking back, I wouldn't fly all the way from North America to Bangkok for a trip, Bangkok itself isn't really worth it. Sure the food was wonderful, but the touristy sites itself weren't that interesting, and it was really too hot in Bangkok itself to do much besides eat, shop (indoors), do massage/spa related things. A lot of folks from Asia fly to Bangkok for a shopping/eating/spa trip, which is more worth it, since it's close by (2-3 hour flight).

Backpacking trip to Merced Lake

This is a very late trip report from our backpacking trip in May to Merced Lake. We found this trip in this Sierra North: Backcountry Trips in California's Sierra Nevadabook.

This was definitely an awesome trip. If interested, check out the trip report and pictures here.

The Various Brands of Chicken Noodle Soup

Since I've been sick for the last few days, I've had a lot of experience with the different brands of chicken noodle soup they sell at Safeway. Namely the Progresso Chicken Noodle soup, the Campbells Chunky Chicken Noodle soup, and the classic Campbells Chicken Noodle soup...

My favorite is the classic Campbells Chicken Noodle soup, as bland as chicken noodle soup normally is, this one has the most flavor, or probably salt for that matter. The noodles and chicken pieces were also slightly better textured than the other two. I'm not asking for too much since it is chicken out of a can, for sick people.

Least favorite is the Progresso one, there was a lot of really gross mushy vegetables, the texture was a bit off for the soup, and it tasted very blah. Totally not recommended.

The Chunky one is OK, I don't really like the twisty noodle this one and the Progresso one has, it just is a lot of noodle with minimal flavor.

I guess this is what happens when you get sick for a few days, you write reviews on chicken noodle soup...

Review: Alice Waters' - The Art of Simple Food & How to Pick a Peach by Russ Parsons

K and I really like to cook and eat. Mostly I find the recipes that sound potentially yummy, and convince K that he really wants to make them. Our two favorite foodie books we've bought in the last year are probably The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution and How to Pick a Peach: The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table. Both are these books are *awesome* in their own way.

The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution has great simple recipes. K and I belong to this CSA called Eat With The Seasons. This gives us good access to fresh produce grown in California. Alice Waters' book emphasizes using fresh ingredients and simple recipes that bring out the flavors. Everything we've made from here has been easy to make (we haven't screwed up any recipes yet) and yummy. The tomato bruschetta recipe takes 4 ingredients (tomatoes, basil, olive oil, salt), and is highly recommended. Another recipe I really like is the apple tart, which besides making the tart, calls for apples, butter and sugar. You can't really go wrong with that!

How to Pick a Peach: The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table describes the produce that's fresh each season, provides some history on said produce, and tells you how to choose the best fruit/vegetable out of the bunch. The "how to choose the best" is my favorite feature. I never knew how to tell when anything is ripe, now I just open the book and read a short paragraph. This book also has simple recipes like the Alice Waters' book, mostly focused on bringing out the flavors of the particular ingredient.

Anyhow, I really like both of these books. They are a bit different from the straight up recipe books, but are both good reads and reference books.

Emigrant Wilderness Backpacking Trip report

Kekoa and I visited Emigrant Wilderness over Labor Day weekend. We started out at Crabtree Trail head, visited Chewing Gum Lake, Y Meadow Lake, Upper Wire Lake (and Middle Wire Lake and Lower Wire Lake), and even more lakes, but you'd have to read the trip report to find out :)

Trip report linked here!
It was fun trip!

Bike fit by Ari at Bespoke Cycles (Review)

This post will not be interesting to anyone not interested in biking :-)

I've been road biking for about 2 years, and since the beginning - I've had a lot of neck/shoulder pain, and right knee pain on longer rides. After trying multiple things, reading about optimal bike fit (and since I'm considering purchasing a new custom built frame), I finally decided to get a bike fit by someone more knowledgeable.

Ari at Bespoke Cycle was recommended by a few sources (and they also do custom Seven frames, a builder I'm considering), so I made an appt with them. The fit first started out by Ari and I just talking about my history, and things I'm concerned about, and also what I want from a bike in general.

First off, Ari spent a long time looking at my feet and doing cleat adjustments. Apparently I have somewhat of a hammer toe on my right foot. He also mentioned that my toes need a bit of stretching, as they have a tendency to curl up. Also, it turns out I have quite high arches, and that the insoles (superfeet green) I were using weren't even high enough to support them. He moved my cleats back quite a bit, to help relieve the pressure points on the balls of my feet.

After that, Ari had me stand up and tested my flexibility. He immediately pointed out that my leg length was not equal when standing still. Apparently my left leg has a tendency to collapse and become shorter and my right leg needs to hyper extend to compensate for this. This can apparently be the cause of my right knee pain!!! I have some options in front of me: shimming my shoes, seeing a sports doctor to get to the bottom of this, and trying better insoles. The good news is I have some hope in figuring this out once and for all. I've had right knee pain for the last few years, and have given up running because of it. I've had *two* other doctors look at this and have gotten an MRI, and they never mentioned this leg length discrepancy. Hopefully this means, if I can get this all figured out, that running will be in the cards again.

Now it's finally for time on the bike! The fitting uses this Retul fitting system and also a power measurement system that I can't remember the name of. I learned a few interesting things from this part.
- my saddle fore/aft was completely off, this moved ~1.5cm (forward)!!!
- my legs aren't working 50/50 efficiency when it comes to my pedal stroke (my "shorter" leg is actually working more)
- I hyper extend my ankles too much, and this actually leads to a loss of power as I'm trying to extend my ankles and then have to pull my heel back up
- my positioning isn't the best, I'm tilting my hips backwards too much and slouching way too much
- my frame is somewhere between 0.9 inches - 1.9 inches too big for me (and probably the main cause for my upper body pain)
- stiff aluminium frames aren't for me
- I need to stop scooting back on the saddle to get more extension in my legs, as this also screws with power output
- I need to do more stability exercises, and my VMO (inner knee) muscle is still quite weak
- I should do more core work :)

All in all, this was WAY worth the money spent. Ari spent about 3 hours with me, and also explained a bit of the options we could do if I decided to get a custom frame. I was really impressed by the fact that he seemed to take into account that one of my main concerned was *comfort* (as I've heard sometimes a lot of fit folks focus on maximum power and not comfort). I went for a ride yesterday in this new position, overall it'll take some getting used to. We'll see after a few rides how this all pans all!

The Cube: The Ultimate Guide to the World's Bestselling Puzzle - Secrets, Stories, Solutions (Review)

One of the last BANGs had a Rubik's cube puzzle in it. After that, I decided it would be cool to try and learn how to solve one. At the same BANG, someone mentioned that Wei-Hwa co-authored a book on this particular subject, so I decided to read said book.

For my purposes, The Cube: The Ultimate Guide to the World's Bestselling Puzzle - Secrets, Stories, Solutions was great. It didn't take too much reading to figure out how to solve the cube following the steps in the book. There were lots of pictures with colors and the text was good enough to figure out which way you have to orient the cube while twisting it around. Note, I'm not very good at the whole "spatial" thing, so being able to stare at the pictures to figure out how to twist the darn thing was key. One gripe I do have - the authors decided to use some rare colors (pink, cyan, ...) such that the readers wouldn't get confused if their cube had similar colors. Unfortunately, there were still times where I got confused by the colors in the book. Some of the moves in the book are easy to remember, some of them, not so much. My goal is to be able to solve a cube without having to refer to the book in the future. We'll see how much work I'm willing to put into this :-)

The history part and the descriptions of the other cube-like-puzzles sections were pretty fun too, lots of pictures. I found a few things that I played with when I was a kid. Since the book also includes directions on how to solve a 4x4x4 cube... of course now I want to get my paws on one so I can attempt it.