Urban Camp-Out

 Recently........ a few Imperialists and myself, got together for an overnight, urban camp-out in the great city of Lavender Town.

Break...hiding his bike in the mouth of the cave

WTF

It's an urban camp-out....so we rode through urban areas

  We gathered less than ten miles from the actual camping spot but rode around for a couple hours to make the riding portion legit. On our way we stopped off at a cave to do a little exploring, upping the ante of our in town adventure.

bikes represented....Krampus, Cross-bike, Pugsley....in the shadow...my Moonlander 

home sweet home ....for the night

 .A little after 7pm we arrived at our destination and set camp. The area chosen was in a beautiful setting next to a river, but filled with junk, some of which was very useful. Looking past the sea of pop bottles and other items that floated in, the amenities included a picnic table, garbage can, stone fire ring, table and chairs, as well as a viewing platform ( a couple boards nailed up in a tree).

Early morning view from my tent 

AF's tarp tent...fully enclosed , made from one 10x10 tarp , a stick, some small rocks and some twine....super awesome!

Apparently our camp ground is called "Peaceful Plaza"

 With all that it sounds like a state park camp ground...it wasn't. It was merely a bunch of shit someone probably rolled down the embankment and then gathered up to make an improvised hang-out.......in other words.......It was perfect. The four of us stay up way past our bed-times and B.S.ed around the fire telling stories and cooking. In the morning we broke camp early skipped breakfast and bid farewell.

I like to sleep in on a Saturday , but seeing the water like glass was totally worth getting up early 

       

Reunited

First ride...what better place than the riverbottoms?

 A couple yeras ago I sold off my first generation Moonlander. I did this to fund a Krampus and I didn't really love the bike. It wasn't long before I was pining for those big fat tires once again. My previous Moonlander was a medium and was to too short in the cockpit. That required a long ass stem and like three feet of seat post. The crank-set's q factor is too wide for my knees which was the tipping point for it's sale. Also the build on the stock "Lander" pretty much sucks and is really heavy...namely the crankset,which is like one of those big chunks of billet aluminum that no body ever bothered to machine down to make it light..

Already took it out on it's first camp-out too

  For my current build, I scored a brand new 20"frame/fork sometime in August, that was frame saver-ed as well as the head tube and BB faced and tapped. The rest of it came together from the local bike swap in February, like old Juicy Ultimate brakes, a brand new 40 dollar big fat larry, a brand new  E 13 crank and BB ,for 40 bucks, a saddle for 20, and on and on. I also robbed some stuff off of my other bikes. The thing that really makes the Moonlander swell is the use of the E13 fatbike crank in the 100mm version. It only has about 3-4 mm of clearance from the chainstays, but it does not touch. I've been beating the piss out of it for the last week and a half and I have not been able to get the crank arms to strike the stays....I'm happy with the "regular" fat-bike q factor and so are my knees. This bike is the shit.

The following photos are fond memories of my old "Moonie"

Moonlanders float really well but I'm not doing this again....at least for a while

Lake Superior