Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Tulip Ride 2008

For the past four years, a large group made up of mostly Microsofties has made a ride up through the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. This was the first year that I was able to join them for the tulip ride, although I have joined them on various other rides to Mt. Rainier and Mt. St. Helens.

The ride was originally scheduled for last weekend, but it was postponed due to the snow. This weekend the weather was around 70 and the sun was out for most of the day. Beautiful!

It was also my first long ride with a rider on the back. Rachel joined me and was a great passenger for the whole ride. I was a bit worried about how we would fare on a ride that long, but having her on the back was not any more uncomfortable than normal. That being said, spending that much time on a bike definitely leaves you sore.

My wardrobe choice was horrendous. I saw the 70 degree forecast and left home with a t-shirt, a linerless motorcycle jacket and jeans. BRR. I failed to remember that the day started out around 40 degrees. It was so cold that I couldn't stop shivering while we were riding. Thankfully Matt was well-dressed and let me borrow his long sleeved shirt. That, combined with the warming trend of the day, eventually got me warm enough to really enjoy the ride.

You can look at the actual route map, but I'll summarize. We started out in Redmond and made the boring trek up I-405 and I-5 to the Tulalip Casino. We hung around there and picked up some more riders. From then on it was two lane roads into the tulip fields. We stopped to snap some pictures but ended up leaving quickly when a cop started writing parking tickets. We regrouped in La Conner at Palmer's restaurant for lunch. Simeon, Matt, Laura, Rachel and I decided to leave the group at this point and headed out on our own. We drop around to the top of Whidbey Island and stopped to look around the bridge at Deception Pass. From there we headed down Hwy 20 to the Clinton-Mukilteo ferry. The ferry dropped us off just north of Lynnwood, and from there we went out separate ways home.

The number of bikes in our group rose and fell throughout the day, but it topped out at 40 bikes! Riding in a pack that big really turns some heads. I was trying to figure out how long our pack was stretched out on a 40mph road and my best guess is about 3/4 of a mile.

Photos are posted in my photo gallery. If you want to see even more, you can check out the photos on flickr. They include a bunch of photos from other riders in the group. A couple of my favorite photos are included at the bottom of this post.

Thanks to Jeff Henshaw for organizing all of this. He took a little video which shows all of our bikes parked at Tulalip and a sea plane taking off while we ate lunch in La Conner. Jeff usually organizes a couple of ridges throughout the summer and I'll be eagerly awaiting the next one!

[UPDATE] I forgot to mention that I paid over $4/gallon for gas on this trip. It's the first time that has ever happened. Granted, it was premium gas for the motorcycle, but how much longer will it be before regular unleaded is over $4 too?

[UPDATE] It appears that also forgot to post a link to my own photo gallery. It contains my favorite shots from the ride in case you aren't interested in looking through 100+ photos on flickr.

benmartens April 28, 2008 Motorcycle

First Hike of 2008

Tim, Rachel and I met at Tiger Mountain on Friday evening for our first hike of the year. We decided to take it easy and not go for the peak right away. Instead, we hiked up the cable line trail and then headed west around the lake, by the high school, up to the junction with Sunset Way, and then back east past the lake. We returned to our cars just before dusk.

While our route could have had a bit better scenery, it was still enjoyable and we get a few good pictures. I'm looking forward to a lot more hiking this year!

benmartens April 27, 2008 Outdoors

Books Completed

In February, I completed The Life and Times of Ben Martens: 2002. Lulu.com did a great job printing off the hardcover book for me, so I went ahead with books for 2003-2007. I have been spending ~5-10 hours/week for the past two months and I'm finally done with the next 5 books. It takes an extremely long time to get everything edited, formatted, and laid out correctly. Tonight, I finished the process of uploading them to lulu.com and placing my order. For the low low price of $148.70 plus shipping, you can now have six books covering the first six years of my blog, or you can download the eBooks for free.

Like I said before, I know no one will read these (probably including me), but I think it's pretty neat to have these volumes sitting on my shelf. Except for 2002 which was only a half year of blogging, the other volumes are all 500-650 pages long. Somewhere in there, there has to be at least one page worth the tree it was printed on.

Maybe.

benmartens April 24, 2008 Projects

Garage Shelf

One of the biggest (by physical size) projects that I’ve ever undertaken also turned out to be one of the quickest. I have a very tiny garage. It was a struggle just to get the motorcycle and the car in at the same time. Over the last two years, the floor of the garage and the three shelves got more and more full. It was time to build a bigger shelf/mini-attic at the back of the garage above the motorcycle. The only trick is that we had to build around the water heater and pipes in the corner.

Tim and I met at Home Depot at 5:45 on Monday evening. We headed home with the wood and soon BenH joined us. Ben and I built the frame while Tim notched the top of each post. The posts were 4×4’s and the 2×4 (and 2×8 front span) sit in notches on top of the posts for added strength. Just four hours after we started the project, we had the frame standing up on the posts and lightly secured.

On Tuesday night, we added some diagonal bracing and secured everything tightly. Screws were added between the structure and wall studs were we could to keep it all stable. For the final step, we cut the plywood to fit the top of the shelf and Tim screwed it into the frame.

Pretty much everything that we had on the floor of the garage now fits up on that shelf. We were even able to empty one of the white shelves. I’m probably going to be buying a cargo box for the top of my car and we should be able to hang it from the bottom of the shelf when not in use. We have just about crammed as much fun into the garage as we can physically fit!

We had about $20 worth of wood leftover due to some last minute design changes. Once I return that, the total project cost will only be about $80. We also learned that Stanley bits are worthless. We ruined about a half dozen of them trying to get all the screws in. Once we switched to DeWalt bits, everything went much more smoothly.

benmartens April 18, 2008 Projects, Woodworking

Saddlebags

I've never liked riding with a backpack when I'm on the motorcycle. It's small, inconvenient, uncomfortable and it makes for a sweaty back in the summer. Bags can get very expensive, but I didn't feel the need to go overboard, so I ended up ordering some pretty cheap bags.

They arrived yesterday, and I'm quite happy with them so far. The bags are pretty small, but it's as big as I could go without remounting the rear turn signals. Tim and I  added a couple pieces of metal that hang down from the seat bracket. We drilled a hole in the bottom of these new struts and corresponding holes in the bags and ran bolts through to connect them the bag to the strut. This will keep them from flopping around in the wind and from getting caught up in the wheel. Since the bags were not high quality, I didn't feel too bad about drilling a hole in them.

This mini-project is just about done. I have to go get one more bolt to replace the rear bolt that holds the seat to the fender. With the straps going under the seat, the old bolt is too short.

I'm really looking forward to having some storage on the bike where I can keep things like wrenches, duct tape, and a baseball cap.

benmartens April 9, 2008 Motorcycle

Broken Bones

This weekend I purchased a device to break my own bones. Tim finally convinced me to get a mountain bike. With those great trails right down the road from our house, it seemed like a good move.

I headed for REI to make use of their 20% sale for members in March and picked up the Novara Aspen. I didn't do a ton of research because I was buying something on the low end of the scale, but this looks like a pretty nice bike. When did bikes start getting disc brakes? Crazy.

Prepare yourself for low budget, low skill mountain bike movies in the near future.

benmartens March 25, 2008 Outdoors

Beep!

Saturday was the 2008 Hope on the Slopes 24 hour skiing fundraiser at Stevens Pass. Matt and I arrived at 9am for registration where we were given RFID tags to wear on a rubber band around our wrists. Every time you got on a lift, you had to scan the tag at a special reader and wait for the beep. I'm going to be hearing that beep in my sleep for a while.

There were only two lifts that had the scanning device. We spent the entire day on Skyline Express because it had the most vertical of the two available lifts. Can you imagine riding a single lift over and over again for an entire day? We started off strong at 9:30AM and plowed our way through the day. A couple trips back to the car to fuel up with pretzels, peanut butter, bananas, granola, and Gatorade G2 helped to keep us strong.

By 7:30pm we were starting to fade so we headed into the lodge and had some real food. That was the first time that I checked how many vertical feet I had skied. I was right at 50,000 feet! The combination of knowing that I had reached my personal goal and tired muscles started to crush my willpower. Luckily Matt was there to get me back out on the slopes for some more runs.

After a couple of runs, Matt realized how tired he was too, and I knew it was about over when I found him sleeping under a tree. We had been skiing for 12 hours so we were both pretty beat up. I decided to do 5 more runs which would bump me up to 50 total runs and push me over 60,000 vertical feet for the day. That was quickly accomplished and we headed home tired, but happy with our day.

It was very interesting to watch how the snow and weather changed throughout the day. It started off pretty heavy and slushy, but as the sun went down, I could feel the snow getting harder up top. By this point, the other contestants and I had found the fast way down the mountain. A race rack was forming and people were just straight-lining the whole run. If you told me I was going 60mph I wouldn't have been surprised. 70mph wouldn't be a stretch either. It was quite a sight to see packs of 10-15 people in a full race tuck screaming down a sheet of ice at insane speeds.

Last year, the record was 86,000 vertical feet, but I bet that will be beaten this year. After the crowds died down, you could make a lap in 8 minutes (6 minutes up, 1 minute 40 seconds down.) Stamina would be the limiting factor, not time. I'm very proud of my 60,500 vertical feet. To put that in perspective, I have been keeping track of my vertical feet for the last three years. Of the 11 months that I have skied in the last three years, I have skied less than 60,500 feet in 7 of those months.

I thought that this event would be mind-numbing and boredom would be my biggest enemy. It was a big help having Matt sitting on the chair with me. We split up for a couple hours and that part was pretty boring. The MP3 player was also a big bonus. I had a Preston and Steve podcast going for most of the evening which helped keep me entertained.

If I do this again, here are some changes I'll make in my approach:

  • We stocked up on the normal ski food, but I think you need more for this event. It would have been fantastic to have a big crock pot going in the lodge.
  • I talked to the guy who got 3rd place last year. He was popping potassium pills every few hours. I really needed some of those.
  • I don't think you can do the event safely without a little sleep.
  • It's probably not worth pushing too hard during the day. There are a lot of crowds on the slopes and in the lift lines. The real money comes at night when there are no crowds and the hill is clear. Rest more during the day so you don't burn out.
  • It seems silly to buy skis just for this event, but I would have loved some big 215 Atomic race skis. When you're going that fast, the extra length would be very useful.

But yada yada yada, as we all know, this wasn't really about the skiing. It was about raising money for the American Cancer Society. Thanks to everyone who donated to support me. Together we raised $810 and overall the event has raised $85,000! Thank you!

Season ski days: 24
Vertical feet: 60,500
Season vertical feet: 414,650

benmartens March 10, 2008 Skiing

Fancy Burrito

My Sunday motorcycle ride ended at Chipotle. While I was there, a Lamborghini Countach pulled up. It was a flash back to my childhood. The Countach was produced from 1974 to 1990 and it was proudly displayed on the walls in my room in the 80s.

benmartens February 21, 2008 Motorcycle

Sunday Motorcycle Ride

It was so sunny on Sunday that I had to take the motorcycle out for a ride. I decided to strap the helmet cam onto the front fork. That didn't work too well last year, but that was before I put the new exhaust on. My theory was that the quieter exhaust would cause fewer waves in the video. It ended up working, but the video is still pretty boring. Consider this a proof of concept. Maybe I'll get some more interesting video throughout the summer. There are three videos since YouTube only allows 10 minute videos. I have embedded the first one here, but you can find the second and third on YouTube. There's not much point in listening to the sound because it's either completely missing or drowned out by the wind noise.

benmartens February 20, 2008 Motorcycle