Strolling Amok

Pops goes on tour.

17 Oct 2015
38 Comments

Ordering the Granby

Just a Granby, but this one has a cassette toilet, the slide-out tank of which is accessible through the rear wall. (That white frame.)

Just a Granby, but this one has a cassette toilet, the slide-out tank of which is accessible through the rear wall. (That white frame.)

The Grandby model from Four Wheel Campers is a specialty rough-terrain, compact pop-up truck camper. It is designed and built specifically for outdoorsmen (and women) who want to be able to camp in places that are not safely accessible to other types of vehicle-based RVs.

The Four Wheel build floor. The four rectangles in the black sidewalls are access holes for tie-down points to the truck bed. Perhaps someday they may progress to three in order to remove a lot of the effects of bed twist on the camper frame, but that is much, much more easily said than done: a complete redesign with lots of problems to solve. Worth it? Not really.

The Four Wheel build floor. The four rectangles in the black sidewalls are access holes for tie-down points to the truck bed. Like all 4-point mounts, this system promotes frame twist when the truck bed flexes, but the frame is durable enough for the 99% of customers that use it, and the mounts are pretty close together to decrease the movement. 3-point mounts are popular in Europe, but I’m not sure that the bottom-up redesign needed would be worth it in actual practice.

This post outlines the options I chose and some of the planned modifications to make the Grandby better suited to become a more workable habitat for an indoor-oriented oldster. Sometimes, plans benefit from change once you Read more…

Posted in The Intrepid and tagged ,
17 Oct 2015
4 Comments

“All About E-Bikes” Resource Online

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This is just an informational post for those of you who think of e-bikes and their variations as mysterious black boxes, making the decision of what to get or even whether to get seem overly confusing.

Evelo has recently released their Complete Electric Bike Buyers Guide online. It’s a non-gritty, informative overlook of what’s available, and why. Written for those who are non-conversant in Geek, it’s a pleasant and informative read. Naturally, being an Evelo publication, it just happens to include and explain those features which Evelo’s e-bikes have, too. And of course, by the end of the book, you’re funneled onto a page that shows off their various models. Can’t blame them for that.

With eleven short chapters, it makes for a fairly brief and complete read that I think will help people who want to know more about e-bikes in general, rather than have to gather it by rubbing up against one Google search result after another. Sure, it pushes e-bikes as the savior of mankind, but that’s because Americans are way, way behind both Europe and China in their e-bike acceptance and utilization, and always will be.

That’s because of both attitude and logistics. NYC, Evelo’s hometown, has even banned all e-bikes, in that same “magic demon” spirit with which it greeted the arrival of the horseless carriage over a century ago. Fortunately, they represent the exception rather than the vanguard of incremental urban progress. U.S. cities and towns have long chased growth in such a way as to separate and distance residences from businesses, making automobile ownership nearly mandatory for employment.

Still, some younger urbanites have made an effort to buck this trend, and have located themselves within biking distance of work or school. The American Dream of suburban home and car, along with the expenses and frustrations of same in the nightmare of commuting, have opened up a viable market for e-bikes. Between those and recreational riders, Evelo’s guide is a help to understand what the e-bike option is all about. The above link takes you to the first page in sequence, though a link at the upper right of the Guide page called “All Chapters” allows you to see an index so that you can pick through only those parts that you’re most interested in. It’s worth a look. Have fun!

Posted in E-Bike Pack Mule and tagged , ,
14 Oct 2015
10 Comments

Silver Island Mountains Loop

Ready, set...

Ready, set…

The Silver Island Mountains are so named because they resemble an island of mountains on an otherwise flat terrain. I don’t use the term “featureless terrain” because the salt flats are on the eastern side, while mud flats are on the western side. The “Scenic Byway” loop, most commonly taken anti-clockwise, heads north, then west, then south around the mountains. The official length of the loop is some 48 miles, though the completion to get back to the same spot (camp) is just short of 52 miles.

Though not breathtakingly high, these mountains are interesting in their features.

Though not breathtakingly high, these mountains are interesting in their features.

Read more…

Posted in Tourista! and tagged ,
13 Oct 2015

Return of Evelo Explorations

Though your attention is naturally concentrated on the trail itself, it pays to stop and look around!

Though your attention is naturally concentrated on the trail itself, it pays to stop and look around!

[Caution for cellular data users: this post contains a heap of photos, and although they are all low-resolution pics, those readers on more restricted cellular data plans may want to wait for a WiFi hotspot before clicking on the “more” link that pulls down the whole post.]

Today’s post is about what I saw in Green River, Wyoming as I went further along a trail that I had originally hiked along. I include these posts because, well, I spend time exploring on my Aurora e-bike, and getting out there in one fashion or another is what it’s all about. Since I don’t do postcard scenic masterpieces or flower closeups, what I saw, you see. This trip meandered along miles of up and down, and I arrived back at camp both Read more…

Posted in Campsites, E-Bike Pack Mule and tagged , , , , | Leave a comment
12 Oct 2015
3 Comments

Green River Memories

One sunset.

One sunset.

In a sense, Green River, Wyoming is a perfect place to boondock for either a hiker or a bicyclist. The town itself is rough around the edges, but welcoming. In its businesses, customers visit and update as well as buy things. While they do business, visitors, as new faces, do well to add what brought them to town, whereabouts they’re camping, where they’re from or where they’re on their way to. It’s like introducing yourself. If you either appreciate or don’t mind the changeable weather – which also gets a little rough around the edges – the scenery stays enervating. There’s no sense of Read more…

Posted in Campsites and tagged
11 Oct 2015
2 Comments

In Limbo In Wendover

The Mighty Defiant is now very near the Bonneville Salt Flats just outside of Wendover, Utah. The campsite is an unromantic spot in the flat area where racers tend to congregate in August and September in a sort of junkyard camping festival. I wondered at the different appearance of the entire surface here, as it looks like vegetation has made a start at filling in places where the campers usually congregate. Looks as though nobody’s been here! An online tour of the various clubs that use the track for speed events indicates that few if any have been able to use the track due to rainstorms flooding the salt surface. A little Datsun-based truck camper has commandeered the spot I had last year, and I explored an alternate further in – as far as it’s safe to go with the Defiant – that has a rock projection surrounded by “dirt” and thick dust. That was a no-go, since a walk around it showed that the Ford alone might make it with momentum in 4WD, but with the trailer, no way.

The Defiant is unhitched, but still in Travel Mode because the winds are brisk and gusty enough that carrying the big solar panels out to hang them would be risky and difficult. I wondered at that, because on the short romp here, the Mighty Furd was Read more…

Posted in Campsites, Travelin' Man and tagged
10 Oct 2015
7 Comments

That Weather Thing

Well, I got up today and checked the weather. Surprise! There is an advisory out that a cold front will be moving in tomorrow. No rain, just wind. Predicted gusts of up to 50MPH “in the windier locations”. That’s here on top of this bluff, for sure. I hate to think what the true windspeed will be up here. Time to bail. Remember my post saying that having the weather forcibly mess with my camping was a nuisance? Here ya go.

This will not be at all easy, since the Defiant’s various supplies are low and must be replenished, the waste tanks need to travel empty, and the decamping procedure is lengthy, which will badly eat into the 5-6 hour drive to Wendover, Utah. Resupplying in Wendover is possible, but more limited and problematic. I was going to take a different route south on this trip, but delaying here in Green River, Wyoming has made my original route non-optimal.

In short, I’ll be offline until all things can be made happy-happy again!

Posted in Travelin' Man and tagged
06 Oct 2015
40 Comments

The Other End of the Spectrum

Stock shot liberated from The Four Wheel camper website. I doubt that they will mind. They'd probably prefer me to use a half-dozen more.

Stock shot liberated from The Four Wheel camper website. I doubt that they will mind. They’d probably prefer me to use a half-dozen more.

In the first part of this series, I pulled out a partial laundry list of traveling issues presented by the travel trailer Defiant, a tired 1994 Gulf Stream Innsbruck 26-footer. While evaluating what to do to make my travels less of of a physical ordeal, less stressful, and better able to place a living space in the most desirable (to me) locations, I had to mull over more questions about myself than about technical RV rig choices. After all, any given rig can be vouched for as being “better”, but better for whom? RV Spartans follow one rigid ideology, while “he who dies with the most toys wins” RVers follow another. Regardless of the pressures either way, it’s your life, your wallet, and your rig, and you’re the one who’s going to have to live with it. No one will be apologizing for steering you the wrong way for you.

So, the questions returned to the basic starting point. What did I want to be able to do that I’m not doing now? Since I am already on the road, what did I want to be able to stop doing?

The stopping part was easy. Hauling around the uber-comfortable Defiant dictates a certain mode of living. I wanted to stop Read more…

Posted in Navel Gazing, The Intrepid and tagged , , , ,
04 Oct 2015
8 Comments

Staying “Home”

Front yard o' the day.

Front yard o’ the day.

This post is simply about going no further than a quarter mile from camp, and taking a zillion snaps of my campsite. Ugh, sounds horribly boring, doesn’t it? See, I intended to go out for a walk day before yesterday, got out there a ways, and then noticed some rain heading my way. Couldn’t be sure of the timing though, because here above Green River, Wyoming, you can clearly see stuff that might be twenty or more miles away. So, I walked this way and that about the camp in order to Read more…

Posted in Campsites, Daily Life, The Defiant and tagged , , , ,
02 Oct 2015
6 Comments

Revenge of Evelo Exploration

Sunset, and the full moon is riz.

Sunset, and the full moon is riz.

This is just a post about a 24-hour period, a nice sunset and view into the valley, followed by rampaging vermin at 2 in the morning. Ahhh, nature! A hastily-deployed trap got him sometime later, since the worst thing that can happen is for the critter to return home and tell his buddies about the bonanza. If that happens, it’s party time.

I reviewed the Defiant’s Vermin Defense System after breakfast, and determined that since the high frequency repellers were Read more…

Posted in Daily Life, E-Bike Pack Mule, The Defiant and tagged , , ,

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