Saturday October 18, 2014
8:00 a.m. Bird Nest Guest House
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

I made a useful discovery at the guest house yesterday. I learned that I could use the computer in the reception area to upload pictures. At first, I had trouble. The pictures would upload but then I’d get an error message at the very end and lose everything and have to start all over. I didn’t change anything or fix anything, but later on in the day, that problem disappeared and the uploading went smoothly. It also uploaded a lot faster than at the Internet café. There was suddenly hope that I could get through my backlog of pictures and clear all my flash drives. The key to this is SmugMug and the way that it keeps track of the files already uploaded. I can upload a folder containing a thousand files and just stop the upload whenever I want. I don’t have to remember when I stopped the upload. And I don’t have to keep track of individual files that fail. When I go back later, I simply upload the entire folder of one thousand pictures again, and I set the system to ignore duplicates. Easy as pie. Even large video files upload easily. Of course, there have been setbacks. I put a couple thousand pictures into the upload queue last night before I went to bed. But when I got up this morning, I found that the Internet connection failed almost immediately afterward and the upload was cancelled. So I expected all of those files to be uploaded by morning, but none of them had. Oh, well.

I’m tired this morning, though. I’ve got that computer fatigue that comes with spending too much time doing computer things.

I’m an even bigger fan of SmugMug now. When I first had trouble, I wrote them an email, and I got an amazing email back from their support “heroes” as they call them. It was long and detailed and personal and clearly written directly for me. It ended with a line like “We’re always here for you.” I still don’t understand 99% of what SmugMug can do. I haven’t had the time or energy to learn about their system, and it’s changed a lot recently. It’s very sophisticated, has a huge number of features, and just gets better and better. Flickr, on the other hand, just keeps getting worse and worse.

I called the bike shop late yesterday afternoon. The call did not go smoothly, but I learned that Jason had not been successful in removing the seatpost. It sounds like he tried everything. He even drilled a hole through the seatpost to be able to insert a metal bar and get more torque. But nothing worked. He said something about taking the bike to a auto shop. I couldn’t really understand him on the phone. Have to go there in person, but not today. Saturday is too busy. I’ll wait until Monday, I think. I just hope they don’t mind keeping my bike there all this time.

Not much else to report. I had an enjoyable time in the common area here at the guest house chatting with various people. The latest bunch has been from Spain and Argentina. Wonderful accents. I felt like I was in an Almodavar film.

Still pondering various bits and pieces of bike gear, camping gear, and camera gear. Got a few things in my Amazon basket. Not sure if I want to order them, though. Also not sure about the whole lighter mosquito net and lighter sleeping sheet thing.

Sunday October 19, 2014
6:00 a.m. Bird Nest Guest House
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Life continues in the Bird Nest. This weekend has been spent uploading pictures and reading for the most part. I’ve read quite a few books since I got here, perhaps seven or eight. I’m currently reading (for probably the fifth time in my life) “Sharpe’s Fortress.” I love the Sharpe series and I can never resist them when I find them on a bookshelf.

Even with the expected problems, I have to say that uploading pictures has been going much better than I had any right to expect. I honestly thought I would never be able to do it and that I’d have to carry around those flash drives forever or just delete the photos. And it really wouldn’t have mattered. Even if I’d lost the flash drives and all the pictures on them, I wouldn’t really care. How many market photos and typhoon destruction photos and beach photos does one person really need? Certainly not the many thousands that I have. But since I have them and I have a computer with a fast Internet connection, I’m glad to finally get them stored in the cloud. Now that I’m getting caught up, perhaps I won’t develop such a backlog again.

My Flickr buddy Adam Cohn is putting me to shame, though. He continues to do the normal thing and uploads a select few of his best photos from the Philippines and doesn’t bother with the rest. Only an insane person like me would upload them all. I got lucky last night, and the uploading continued right through the night. No one shut off the computer or shut down the browser in mid-upload and the Internet connection stayed stable. That’s a good thing because I was uploading much of the video that I shot in Tacloban after the typhoon. Those video files were up to a gigabyte each, and it took some serious time to upload them. I wasn’t confident it would even work. I still have quite a few gigabytes of photos to upload and organize, but I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Mondy October 20, 2014
9:25 a.m. Bird Nest Guest House
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

I continue to upload pictures and videos. I’m almost finished. All last night, I’ve been uploading about twenty-four gigabytes of all the videos I shot in Tacloban. I never thought I’d be able to upload them. The files are just too big, but it’s working smoothly and quickly. It’s about halfway done, and I’ll leave it uploading all day today, perhaps, while I’m out. The risk is that my SmugMug account is open the entire time, and someone could accidentally or deliberately get into my account and delete all the photos. Hmm. Maybe I shouldn’t take the risk. I’ll stop the upload while I’m gone and restart it tonight.

SmugMug has gone up considerably in my estimation. I discovered that they’ve introduced a sophisticated “organizer” tool. I haven’t explored it fully, but it appears to be very powerful and completely addresses all the problems I had with SmugMug before. It used to be extremely complicated to organize photos and galleries. That’s why I would upload to Flickr, organize them there, and then use their Smugglr tool to transfer them to SmugMug. Now I can organize them in SmugMug. It appears to be a very powerful yet simple tool. You can have folders going eight levels deep with folders and galleries on every level. And there is something called Pages. I don’t know how they work yet.

7:00 p.m.

It’s been a while since I’ve recorded a dream. Had a good flying one last night, and flying dreams are always my favorite. Only fragments remain in my memory, but the flying was accomplished by standing on a short piece of wood – an old and splintered plank about two feet long. My dream flying is always rather precarious and is accomplished through a type of brain power, and I am constantly on the verge of losing concentration and plummeting to earth. It’s like being able to fly as long as I don’t think about it.

My flying, in this dream, was being done in a world dominated by flesh-eating zombies. It was an especially terrifying place, and my flight was keeping me alive. Then came rumours of an army of vicious skeletons on the march and coming our way – the remains of zombies from thousands of years past. I flew off to investigate them and found just that – an army of fast-moving killer skeletons stomping and racing towards my group in the far distance. For some reason, I flew quite low and an edge of my plank touched one of the skeleton zombies and I discovered that they also had the ability to suck out magical power. When my plank touched the skeleton, a lot of the flying power left it. I suddenly had trouble staying in the air and I struggled to make it away and to safety. Then, once clear of the army of skeletons, I started to go down and I found myself sinking lower and lower over a narrow alley in a city. Inside the alley was a huge zombie – a fleshy one – and I was going to crash land right in front of it and be eaten by the zombie. I did everything I could to stay airborne, but I went down and down and I was terrified. That, of course, is when I woke up. I woke up to find my heart beating so hard and so fast that I thought it was going to burst out of my chest. I reflected that that is probably how I was going to die one day – a heart attack during a scary dream.

Some good news to report this evening as I listen to the routine afternoon thunderstorm. I returned to Bike Pro in the morning to see if perhaps Jason had managed to remove my seatpost from my bike. I got to the area a bit early (Bike Pro doesn’t open until 11 or 11:30), and I dropped by the Merida bike shop. A very helpful clerk there had shown interest in my problem and had said that if Bike Pro couldn’t fix my problem, then I could come by his shop and he would see what he could do. They had tried before, but he said that they didn’t work too hard because they didn’t want to damage my frame. If I came for a second visit, we could tackle it together and really make an effort. So I popped in to talk to this guy, Eddie, and confirm that I might drop by in a bit with my bicycle.

I was right in my suspicion that Jason had not been able to remove my rusted seatpost. I got the distinct impression that Jason wanted to be rid of me by this point. He’d had enough of my endless problems and requests and my presence in general. He had real work on modern high-end bicycles to get done, and he didn’t want my clunky Route 66 with its rust and outdated parts cluttering up his shop.

Jason had told me over the phone that he’d drilled a hole through the seatpost as he tried to remove it. The idea is that if you put a big pipe wrench on the top part of the seatpost, you just damage the seatpost. I didn’t realize it, but that top part of the seatpost – the part that the saddle clamps to – is not physically a part of the post. It is a separate part that is clamped inside the post. If you twist that, you just rip it out of the seatpost. So he drilled a hole at the very base so that he could put a long steel rod through the hole and then twist the seatpost. Based on what I know now, that effort was totally doomed. There is no way on earth that he would be able to remove the seatpost that way. I was fine with him drilling the hole. We had talked about it earlier. But I was surprised at how big the hole was and at how thick the tubing of the seatpost was. Anyway, he had failed and I could do nothing but roll my bike away with a big hole drilled through my seatpost.

I was very glad to have Eddie at the Merida shop waiting for me. With no home base and no big shop tools of my own, I was pretty much stuck unless someone helped me. It was a bit frustrating at first talking with Eddie. I knew exactly what needed to be done. Or at least I thought I did. What we needed to do was turn the bike upside down and insert the seatpost into a big vise. Then we could grab hold of the bike frame itself and twist the entire bike. Using the whole bike for leverage was the only way we were ever going to break that seatpost free. I knew it. I could feel it, and Eddie’s bike store happened to have a big, heavy-duty vise.

However, I couldn’t really convince Eddie of this right away. That’s the problem with getting help from people. You lose control of the situation. I couldn’t ask him to help me remove the seatpost at his shop and then just jump in and use his tools and force him to do it this way or that way.

Eddie first tried a few other things. He stuck various shop tools through the hole that Jason had drilled and then put pieces of pipe on those tools to give himself more leverage. All that did was bend the tools. He then applied a big pipe wrench. Unfortunately, all that did was tear up the soft metal. Meanwhile, he and the other shop guys were spraying penetrating oil into the edges and hammering on the frame with a ball-peen hammer in an attempt to loosen the grip that the rust had. I knew that wasn’t a good idea, but I didn’t really know a way to stop them. Finally, after everything else failed, Eddie was ready to try the vise grip approach. He picked up the bike and turned it upside down and inserted the seatpost into the vise and tightened it. The seatpost twisted in the vise the first couple of times. It was hard to tighten the vise enough to grip the seatpost tube but not so tight as to crush it. Then he inserted a thick bolt into the hole in the seatpost. This bolt stuck out the side of the seatpost just a little bit, but it was enough so that it wouldn’t allow the seatpost to turn no matter how much pressure was applied. He and a second shop guy grabbed hold of the bike frame and applied more and more pressure until we all heard a loud “snap” and the grip of the rust was broken. It took a lot of effort, but the bike was now able to spin back and forth on the seatpost tube. Eddie took the bike out of the vise and tried to twist the seatpost tube on its own to try to work it free, but it was still too stuck. He put the bike back into the vise, and now he and the other shop guy put their shoulders and backs into it. They rested the bike on their shoulders and pushed upward with their entire bodies while we twisted the bike back and forth. Slowly but surely the bike started to rise. With every turn, it came up a quarter of an inch or so. Back and forth and back and forth we went until finally the seatpost popped out. It was such a relief.

All of us were astonished at the length of the seatpost. Back when I was considering cutting the seatpost with a hacksaw, we discussed how long the seatpost might be and whether a hacksaw could even reach the end of it. We tapped on the bike’s downtube with a hammer to try to gauge how far down the seatpost went. The sound of the hammering changed distinctly at one point and it seemed that the seatpost went down a relatively short length. But when we got the seatpost out, we saw that we were way off. It was incredibly long and I would have had no chance of reaching the end of it with the standard twelve-inch hacksaw blade – the longest that I saw in the hardware stores here. In fact, the seatpost was so long and inserted into the downtube so far that it was suddenly very clear why it was so hard to get out. It was so long that it was also abundantly clear that none of the techniques we’d used had even the slightest chance of working. We could have stuck indestructible rods of steel a hundred feet long through the drilled hole and it would not have twisted the seatpost free. It would have ripped the seatpost apart long before it managed to break it free of the grip of the rust.

Now that the seatpost was out, it was a relatively simple matter to clean it up, clean out the downtube, lubricate everything and then put the seatpost back in an adjust it to the right height for my new saddle. I thought briefly about buying a new seatpost. This old one had gone through a war and showed it – its sides torn to pieces by pipe wrenches and hammers, a large hole drilled through it. However, Eddie said that based on his experience, it was still structurally more than strong enough to work. Jason had said the same thing about drilling the hole through it. I could still use the same seatpost afterward if we managed to free it. As long as I didn’t worry about the cosmetic appearance, it would be useable. I guess the only thing I have to do is cover up the holes so that water doesn’t get into the bike frame all the time. My concern wasn’t the appearance of the seatpost. I don’t care about that at all. I also wasn’t worried about the strength of the seatpost being compromised. I was mainly worried that the sides of the seatpost might have been roughened up and pitted by the rust and now it would get stuck much more easily and I would have trouble removing it in the future. But I reasoned that if that were the case, then a new seatpost wouldn’t even make that much difference since the downtube of the frame would be equally pitted and roughened up. I would just have to routinely remove the seatpost and apply lubricant to keep it free.

Once more, after the effort of getting to the bike shops and getting the work done, I was unable to face the long and difficult bike ride down the highways back to the guest house, and I asked Eddie if I could leave the bike there overnight. Going back and forth by LRT was extremely easy, and I just wanted to go back to the guest house by LRT and worry about getting the bike the next day if not two days later. The cycling in Kuala Lumpur is so difficult that I might end up stuck here forever – day after day unable to find the courage to get out on the roads.

And there you have it, perhaps the last big mechanical problem on the bike fixed. Oh, I forgot to mention that in the excitement of twisting the bike frame off the seatpost, Eddie had snapped one of the water bottle cages. His shoulder was pressing against it, and he broke it. That was no big deal because they’re not that expensive and I planned on replacing one of them with my new extra-large water bottle cage anyway.

I’m still super-concerned about weight, though – the weight of all my gear. I was never that concerned about it in the past, but now it seems pretty clear that the amount of gear you carry is not just a matter of what you are physically willing to pedal around. It is also a question of how quickly various bike components wear out. I never thought I’d have to worry about spokes again, but my monster DT Alpine spokes wore out. And my brand new chain and rear cassette wore out after a very short time. Believe it or not, even my beloved Arkel pannier bags are starting to let me down. I was astonished the other day to find that the zipper on my main pannier bag had split open. I diidn’t think those huge zippers could ever wear out, but the process has started.

So I’m still thinking about replacing some of my gear with lighter versions – mosquito net, sleeping sheet, sleeping bag, tent, cooking pot, even camera and pannier bags. I’ve always loved my Arkel pannier bags because of all the pockets and compartments, but I’ve realized that I don’t need those pockets on every single pannier bag. The most important one is my survival kit – the right rear pannier bag. I use that one as my knapsack and I like being able to put all my stuff in lots of pockets and get at it easily all day long. But the same can’t be said for my other pannier bags. They generally just sit on the bike untouched all day long. I don’t change my clothes as I ride or need to get at just one or two small items in those bags. When I use the items in those bags, I usually use all of it at once. So whether it has many pockets or just one big compartment doesn’t really matter. I use one of my front pannier bags as my stove and food bag. I generally remove everything in that bag to cook when I open it. Otherwise, it stays untouched. So if absolutely necessary, I could replace that heavy Arkel bag with a much lighter single-compartment bag.

In terms of camera gear, I actually sat down and calculated how much weight I would save by replacing all of my prime lenses with the new 12-40mm pro zoom lens from Olympus. I was surprised at the result, however. I would save weight, of course, but I wouldn’t save that much. The prime lenses are all pretty small and light and the 12-40mm zoom is quite heavy. I haven’t seen the lens in person, but I have to say that I wasn’t thrilled when I saw the lens in action on YouTube videos. I have such a prejudice against zoom lenses, and I disliked how far the lens elements stuck out when you zoomed in and out. The lens became quite long and I hate that. If I were starting from scratch (and was concerned about weight), I would strongly consider buying just the 12-40mm lens, but it would be a pretty big effort at this point to eBay all of my current lenses and gear.

And I guess that’s about it. The other big news is that I finished uploading ALL of my pictures and videos. It went really smoothly. I uploaded the contents of five flash drives with thirty-two gigabytes each plus an assortment of memory cards for a total of probably around two hundred gigabytes of data. I haven’t organized these photos into folders yet, but I’ll do that when I’m at an Internet café. I don’t want to stand at the computer at this guest house and occupy it for such a long time. I did this uploading only because I could start an upload of thousands of photos and then just walk away and leave it. People could use the computer all day and all night long and the upload would continue in the background. Only once or twice did someone close the browser and shut down my upload. Even then, with SmugMug’s sophisticated systems, it was an easy matter to just restart the upload and have it pick up where it left off.

New guests have come been coming and going at the Bird Nest. Recently, quite a few very attractive women have been staying here, and that has been interesting. I haven’t seen very many beautiful Western women for a long time. I spent some time last night talking with a stunning red-headed young woman from Switzerland. I kept losing track of what I was babbling about. I was so distracted by how beautiful she was. And I’m not sure what her mother language was, but her accent was equally entrancing. I could have listened to her all night. She had been on her way to India to attend a yoga instructor course, but ran into a big problem. She had the course booked and her flight booked, but the Indian embassy here in Kuala Lumpur wouldn’t issue her a tourist visa. It seems that India is cracking down on tourist visas. I’ve heard many people talking about having trouble getting a visa and then it taking three or four weeks to process. I always understood that visas for India were easy to get. Perhaps not anymore. It could just be the embassies here. Embassies in Malaysia seem to have a policy of not issuing visas to tourists. They will only process applications from foreigners actually living and working in Malaysia.

I may or may not go and get my bike today. I’m really tired morning for some reason, and I’m not in the mood (again) for that difficult bike ride. And it might be a rainy day.

Tags: Arkel pannier bags, Bike Pro, India, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Philippines Bike Trip 2013