Best Bike Tool Ever!

The AWS-1: 4, 5, & 6mm hex set.  For years, I mean years, I've struggled with hex keys/allen wrenches.  Dropping them, trying to get some leverage with them.  Fiddling with the hex wrenches on multi-tools. Just plain frustration I tell you.  Park Tools came out with the AWS-1 thirty years ago, and I just finally bought me one.  It's the greatest!  Fits in the hand, good leverage. Now that I have one of these, who knows where it might lead - I think next up is a crank puller or cassette tool. Maybe both.

Summer JWP Trail Plan a.1: Columbia River

In my previous post from way back in June, Here's the Summer Bike JWP Trail Plan(s), I didn't mention Plan a.1: Bail-Out at the Columbia River if need be and get a ride home.  Well that was the winning option, or maybe a bit of self-fulfilling prophecy which is why I didn't want to bring it up.

if the rail ties weren't burned from the fire a year or two ago making it difficult or downright impossible and plain unsafe to haul a bike over this section of the Beverly Trestle, I would've been tempted to find a bolt cutter or angle grinder. 

When I was riding up a hill to the Army West Trailhead, my left pedal felt a little wonky.  I didn't notice anything on the long downhill ride through the Yakima Training Center, but it increasingly got worse biking on Huntzinger Road to Vantage.  I stopped and looked at the pedal, and it was all wobbly and barely hanging on to the crank arm.  I made it to Vantage, took the pedal off and found the arm threads were stripped.  I actually got the pedal back on tight, but it still didn't feel quite right and I knew it wouldn't be long before the pedal fell off.  I had just been thinking earlier in the day, you know, I might just make it to Spokane.  Me and the 9 liters of water I was carrying.

Tune in some day for the full Spokane to Seattle to Columbia story, including my tragicomedic epic way-finding from Issaquah to Snoqualmie, and a little thunder storm scaring me into a hotel in Ellensburg.