Now that’s a mouthful, and my retention of German from high school consists of the word “pavian”. So what is the title about? It’s a mountain bike tire. Schwalbe, the company, explains that Hans Dampf is German for what we call Jack of all Trades, so this tire is supposed to be their good all arounder. I was in need of new tires and with the new bike decided to try out the tubless thing. I actually got my old Panaracer Fire FR’s to work tubeless, but the “new” one I put on was in storage so long that the rubber was cracked. The Fire FR is the tire that I’ve been running for w while so a lot of this review will be in comparison. The Hans Dampf version I got was the high zoot, tubeless ready, lighter sidewall version, harder wearing and faster rolling compound. 26×2.35 size.
Monthly Archive for August, 2014
Page 2 of 2
With the weekends before the Whistler trip dwindling, we have not one but two tropical cyclones on the way to ruin the prospects for riding this coming weekend. At this time, it looks like Iselle will pass to the South, and in a couple of days, Julio will pass to the North. Iselle hasn’t made landfall on the Big Island just yet, but it was just downgraded to a tropical storm. Julio was upgraded to a category 3, but is expected to weaken to tropical storm strength before skirting the state. Genevieve that gave us bad weather a couple of weeks ago when it passed far South of us as a tropical depression is currently heading toward Japan as a category 5 super typhoon.
Monday, 04 August 2014
I was pretty beat down from Sunday and had no intention of riding today, so I didn’t really do anything proactive recovery-wise yesterday in anticipation of getting on a bike today. The weather wasn’t perfect when I got home, but there appeared to be little chance of rain. This and the probability of deteriorating conditions starting midweek from approaching hurricanes motivated me to climb back aboard the pain machine. Needless to say, the ischial arches were sore from yesterday’s extended saddle time, and the pedaling muscle groups caught the burn almost instantly, but putting on distance loosened things up.
D = 9.19 km, Vavr = 15.7 km/h, Vmax = 36.0 km/h, T = 35-minutes, A/D = 135 m
HI5-0 filming at the Blaisdell Exhibition Hall. They’ve transformed the entrance to the entry portico for the fictional hospital.
(0)Sunday, 03 August 2014
Only Root and I were open for a trail ride on Sunday, so we headed out to Sunset Hills to take advantage of the good weather. The ride started out somewhat normally, climbing up to the agricultural facility, dropping down to Lilikoi Junction, then climbing up to the plateau to drop Deadwood to the bunker. Then things got a little convoluted. Continue reading ‘Sunset Mystery Tour’
Picked 
up this ridiculously expensive beer at liquor collection a couple months ago and been saving it for my B-day. Cracked it open tonight to see what it’s about. Pours opaque black with barely any head. The moment I cracked open the cap the smokey casky aroma is detectable. It carries over into a smooth almost like bittersweet chocolate flavor and picks up some of the whiskey peat. Interestingly I find it to be pretty balanced and even on the bitterness, but then I’m a dark chocolate lover. Fairly thick mouthfeel. This is no “session” beer at 8% ABV, it’s one to be savored, but I find it surprisingly easy drinking if you are a fan of dark beers.
Worth the price of admission as a treat for my birthday, 4 out of 4 oily monkeys.
Final selection from their current variety pack, the Belgian Session pours a clear medium amber with a medium head. Floral and fruit aromas but not overpowering. Even bitterness that stays even throughout with a slight nuttiness in the finish. Medium mouthfeel that is lightened by crisp carbonation and astringency. And in keeping with the latest beer buzzword of being a “session” beer, it has a fairly low ABV in the 4% range. It does have considerably more complexity than a “session” water beer like Coors or the bit nicer “sessioner” Speights.
I’ll give this a 3 out 4 session monkeys.
Been working out various things for action camera filming and one was improving on the pole. Started with one of those ultra compact telescoping chrome steel poles. It worked as a pole, but the only thing it really had going for it was that it collapsed down small enough to stuff into a cargo pocket for the lift ride up. Being steel it wasn’t particularly light for its size, but worse yet was it relied on friction fit to hold the segments which makes it wiggly.
I then got a pair of Leki carbon hiking poles and adapted it to mount a camera to its tip. The pole is very light. It’s great as hiking poles. However it had some issues for use an action camera pole. It has a 1/4×20 camera mount adapter, but that was quickly abandoned as it is too flimsy for action use. I then created a Frankenstein adapter for the tip, which I think I’ve blogged about in the past. That worked. The collapsed size is a bit long, too long to fit inside my riding backpack, not a major issue. The biggest issue was that it used twist lock to hold the segments. This was a problem in that using it with a camera mounted to the end, the segments would unscrew allowing the camera to flop around. You could try and screw the lock really tight, but it would present a challenge of aligning the camera the way I wanted consistently, and when I wanted to collapse it to stow for transport or lift ride it was a pain.
I guess the usage of “extreme” has not died yet as NW insists on using it for their top of the line cycling shoes. I got a pair of these MTB older models on closeout for a great price. Non-clown/superhero color of black. They feature a carbon sole and a top ratchet strap and lower “winch” lace system. It’s not BOA, which I find interesting since they use actual BOA brand closures on a coupe of their other shoes. I’m hoping this will give me a more secure fit that the Velcro strap closures on my current Scotts can’t.