MT Biker: Summer All of the Sudden

Summer in the Garden

Cooke City Garden

Yesterday we were out in the garden working. Well, we most of us were working. Kip was driving Yokie slowly insane by killing her marigolds.
I saw my first echinacea flower blooming. Then, in the backyard, I ate my first two raspberries of the season. In the blink of an eye, summer is here.

Summer in Absarokee

The BBQ on July 6th is getting to be Absarokee's biggest event. This year it was a qualifier for regionals, so the competition took a serious step up. Yokie and I had stopped eating here because it was pretty bad for a while, years behind the trends and way below par in general. This year though, we regretted our decision not to bring money. There wasn't a pineapple in sight, no orange tiki taco habanero salad nonsense; there was some great looking pork, and a real focus on quality preparation. Great to see BBQ in the region stepping up to the plate.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I like the cut of this man's loin.

Again, don't take this the wrong way, but this girl had a great ass.

Summer with Shrek

So, the shredded rear tire on Shrek I incurred during the Tatanka 100 turned out to be a bit of a bitch to fix. The Hed Big Deal wheels are dependent on gigantic rubber bands to fill in gaps between the bead channel and the tire bead. The directions say you won't need them at all probably, and if you do need them one in each channel should work. They give you four with the wheelset. I needed all four, plus a lot of persistence and extra sealant to make one tire work the first time. Then I had to manufacture similar bands myself by cutting down old inner tubes for use in the rear tire.
The second go round, the ones I had jerry rigged needed to be replaced, so that is a huge project in and of itself. And it sucks that I'm doing so much legwork to get a $2000 product to be functional. Then, I had some valve stem issues. Tubeless valve stems suck. Somebody needs to design one with lateral support, where the structural integrity of the stem, well, exists. As of now, it's one little teeny nut you hand, I should say finger, tighten, and it pulls against a little rubber stopper. Any lateral pressure is transferred directly to the rubber inner part of the stem, and it creates undue stress and results in teeny leaks.
Car and motorcycle systems have solved this by simply putting a nut on the inside of the rim as well as the outside, such that the two nuts pull against each other and create a seal and a structural support.
Long story short, it took me hours and hours to jerry rig four new rubber bands, and two new valve stems. After a break that was probably good for me but felt like ages, I got to ride Shrek again on the 6th, for a big night ride up Benbow Mountain.

Start of the ride, in Dean.

Divide between Dean and Nye

Food Trailer at Montana Jacks

Then I had a ride yesterday up Lake Fork and then the Main Fork of Rock Creek. It was a 25 mile ride, with about ten miles of epic ST. The two or three mile stretch from Wyoming Creek TH to MK Campground is one of the best stretches of trail anywhere.