Henry's S24O

After Sam's solo backpacking trip, Henry lobbied hard for a camping trip of his own. I was sick last weekend, so we had to delay until it was now the last weekend of summer. After raining hard Friday, Saturday was clear and perfect, and we loaded up and hit the road.

Unlike most previous S24Os, Henry was riding his own bike and even carrying most of his own gear. Progress! We took some well earned breaks along the way to camp:

I was riding my Rockhopper and pulling my Burley Travoy trailer. For my camping load, I greatly preferred this Travoy over our old kiddie trailer. Except for the weight when climbing hills, it was almost unnoticeable. By comparison, the kiddie trailer was always noticeable due to the herky-jerky effect it put into pedaling, and the sail-like wind drag. I don't miss it, even though we had many good years with it.

My Rockhopper wasn't quite as transparent for this trip. The bars felt too low, not helped by our slower pace. Also, I had just installed my Compass Rat Trap Pass tires onto new wheels (my old wheels being donated to Henry's new mountain bike, but that's another story):

I love the supple ride of these Compass tires, but that same supple sidewall is just plain flimsy when I'm trying to install them. Even after using water to lubricate the bead while I manipulated the tire on, the end result was still a misaligned tire that gave my ride a "thumpa thumpa" herky jerky ride all on its own. It was like constantly riding over sidewalk expansion joints, especially noticeable when I was coasting and moving slower.

Honestly, I'm not sure these tires are worth the hassle and expense. This ride had me dreaming of building my own custom bike: skinny tubes, lots of stack, Jones bars, 700c wheels, and mid range tires. Hmm. I need to learn to weld or braze first.

We were taking the long part of our ride on Saturday night to our campsite. After dropping down to the river and crossing at Emerald Parkway, we celebrated the climb back up with a stop for ice cream. Well, frozen yogurt:

This was a pre-desert to our dinner once we reached camp:

After dinner, we hung around and played with a rope we found attached to a tree for some reason:

We set up our tent sans rain fly. My hope was that I might be able to see some action from the Perseid meteor shower, but one lousy shooting star was all I caught. Regardless, we had a pleasant, cool night under the stars. Henry was happy to have brought his Bengals blanket for a little extra warmth.

Sunday morning, we had the tent packed up by 6:40 and were on the road for Tim Horton's in Powell. We took the short way home through Shawnee Hills, only stopping for a bit of history about the underground railroad in Ohio:

Home by 8:15, in time for me to catch a ride at Chestnut Ridge with buddy Marc. This had me thinking of a different new bike, something with suspension on each end. But that's also a project for another time.