Off-topic: Fixing a leaking steam wand on a Saeco Aroma

 Yes, this still is a bike blog. But we all know there is some overlap between the bike and the coffee scene. So please allow me to publish a very brief post on fixing my espresso machine. 

I have a Saeco Aroma, bought refurbished in 2013. It's just enough espresso machine for my needs, and it's been working reliably for years. There always had been a little leakage from the steam wand into the drip tray, but only recently the dripping increased to a point where I needed to do something about it.

 

I spent a good amount googling around for a solution. Every espresso maker is a little different, and there are lots of different kinds of leaks and causes for them. Eventually I found a link to what sounded like a solution to my problem. However, the link produced this:

A 404 error :(

 

Internet Web Archive to the rescue!The page was indeed archived. What was missing, though,  were the pictures. Fortunately, espresso makers aren't particularly complex pieces of technology, and so I could figure things out based on the text alone. For the sake of posterity I thought I'd document the process.

1. Unplug the machine. Make sure the machine had enough time to cool down. 
2. Remove the water tank and loosen the two Philips head screws that hold the metal cover in place. Don't lose the serrated washers
3. Remove metal top
4. You can see how the steam knob has a snap ring and a washer on it. Those two parts prevent the knob from being turned all the way out. 
5. Remove the snap ring. There's a good chance it'll fall somewhere into the machine, but it's easy to get it back out with a magnetized screwdriver. 
6. Keep turning the steam knob counter-clockwise until it comes out. Put the large metal washer to the side.
   

 

The lid is off

Snap ring

 

Snap ring removed; washer and knob still in place

Knob removed. There appears to be some corrosion on the tip

After rubbing off the corrosion, you can see that there are two grooves in the tip of the knob. This is what is causing the leak. 

 

The original instructions said to use use 220 grit sandpaper and steel wool to remove the grooves. This is where things got a little tricky: Without a visual reference, I wasn't sure how much material to remove.So I took it slow, starting out with extra-fine steel wool. The grooves were still visible when I tested thing the first time, and indeed there was still dripping. I removed a little more material, now using sandpaper. Brass is soft, and so it doesn't take long to remove a lot of material -- be careful, and maybe use a finer grit sandpaper. The second time round it seems like I got it right. There are still a couple drops when pulling a shot, but way less than before.

Pretty smooth now!

 

Reassembly is easy, except that I couldn't remember which of the two grooves on the know the snap ring went on.

If you found this post helpful, buy some stuff from Amazon through my affiliate link! For example, some Lavazza Super Crema.

A 300km DIY brevet to Kettle Moraine

My 200k ride two weeks ago went well. Near the end of the ride I started asking myself, "What would it be like to add another 100k?" I've ridden two 300k brevets before, one going really well, the other less so. Of course, organized brevets have all been cancelled due to COVID, and there are no sanctioned 300k permanent routes starting from Madison. So I figured I'd do a DIY brevet.

The difference between a DIY brevet and just a long ride? I dug up some of my knowledge about how to ride a good time and made a solid plan. The standard reference to this is an article in Bicycle Quarterly, where Jan Heine describes how he created his plan to ride Paris-Brest-Paris, a 1200 km ride, in under 64 hours. One of the keys is to minimize the time off the bike, and to do that you need to specify how much time you're going to spend at each stop. Following the article's suggestion, I created a spreadsheet to help me with the planning. 

 

Based on recent rides and the wind forecast, I figured I should be able to maintain an average moving speed of close to 25 km/h (15.5 mph). I made some adjustments to account for presumed hilliness of the sections and the fatigue in the later parts of the ride. The break schedule was aggressive. A 15 minute break? Sounds long, but it's all to easy to, as the Brits say, faff about and waste half an hour at a gas station. This costs you time while also not really providing much rest.  

 With sunrise a little after 6 am, I aimed for a 5:30 am start to maximize riding time with daylight. I was happy enough that I was on the road by 5:34 but that happiness didn't last long. About 2 km into the ride I saw a face mask in the middle of the road. That triggered an immediate, "Oh shit, I didn't pack a mask!" An additional 5 km and already 17 minutes behind schedule. Sigh.

The ride to the first control was uneventful. My legs felt in okay shape and there was hardly any wind. My route incorporated a tiny detour just before the control to collect two Explorer tiles. I skipped the first control in Newville as I still had plenty of water and wanted to make up some of the lost 17 minutes. At this point an unexpected drizzle had started. But I was making good time and at the next stop, in Whitewater, I was ahead of schedule. The lakefront park I had chosen for a 30-minute rest turned out to be so-so: The restrooms were locked and the lake turned out to be more of a swamp or marsh. But at least it had comfortable benches. I cut the 15 minutes break time down to 10 to account for having to make another gas station stop for water. 

The underwhelming lake view in Whitewater

 

The next section of the ride was my favorite. Kettle Moraine was already in view from just outside Whitewater. Oak trees, pine forests on sandy soil, gentle climbs on windy roads, good views. If this were closer to Madison, I'd ride here all the time. And based on the number of roadies I encountered, I'm not alone in this assessment. 

 

Eventually the moraine ended and the country of giant mansions on private lakes and Donald Trump election signs began. The next control was in the Town of Oconomowoc (population 98.74% white; 2018 vote share Scott Walker: 74%). Nobody at the gas station but me wore a mask, including the staff... I had calculated my arrival time based on a segment speed of 23 km/h, assuming that the hills of the Kettle Moraine would slow me down. But they had been gentle enough for me to arrive at the half-way point or the ride with 30 minutes in the bank. 

Looking for ways to stay healthy? Wear your f'ing mask

 

Those 30 minutes would come in handy for the next segments. The wind had picked up and came from the northwest. Which way did my route take me? Well, first north, then west. In addition to the cross/head wind, there were constant rolling hills, which I hadn't expected. And the route was dead straight for the most part. So it was a bit of a grind, mentally and physically. 

 

By the time I got to the next control, in Watertown I was a few minutes behind schedule. Or was I? Losing 30 minutes over 44 km seemed like a lot. Trying to claw back time, I skipped the Watertown stop (only 5 minutes anyway) and pressed on toward Waterloo. Once I got close to town and checked the clock, it looked like I would get there ahead of schedule. Weird: I certainly didn't feel any faster between Watertown and -loo, and I wondered if maybe my schedule sheet was wrong (I checked today, and it wasn't). Who knows.

In Waterloo I was scheduled for another "long" break, at half an hour. I bought supplies at a gas station, but it didn't have any seating. By the time I got to the nearby Firemen's Park, only 20 minutes of break time were left. Let me tell you: This break schedule was brutal. But the schedule is the schedule.

From here on I was in semi-familiar territory again. It was nice to recognize some of the road names from previous rides. But the wind had gotten stronger and the grind continued. What helped me get through this was listening to a podcast interview (in German) with Phil, an ultra-cyclist with a very chill-but-intense and inspiring attitude about riding your bike over long distances.

 

I probably was dehydrated and undernourished at this point, despite what I thought to be a decent job of chugging water, Clif Shots and Bars, and (a new addition to the arsenal) Tailwind. My body was in underpowered Diesel engine mode: Fine at constant speed, but slowing down drastically on every uphill. My heart rate for the most part refused to go into Zone 3. 

The last control before Madison was the general store in Keyeser. I had been there once before and wasn't counting on the store actually being open. But it was closed indeed and the faint hope for a Pepsi was squashed. No luck. I was 19 minutes behind schedule now, with 35 km to go. All south from here on, that is, no longer into the wind. Maybe with skipping the 5-minute stop at Keyeser I could make up the remaining 14 minutes and arrive on schedule?

To increase my chances, I followed advice I had just learned from the podcast with Phil. He describes how during ultra races he often catches a second wind in the evening hours. "I'll put on an awesome set on my speakers, real bangers. And then: Kopf aus, Beine an." Brains off, legs on.

The "brains off" part probably worked; the "legs on" less so. And so it was 7:42pm when I rolled in. Twenty-four minutes behind schedule, with a total elapsed time of 14 hours 12 minutes and 12:40 in the saddle. This was faster than any of my 300k brevets (14:26 and 15:12). Of course on an actual brevet you don't have the option to just ride through controls -- you have to stop at least long enough to get your brevet card signed, which can easily cost you 5 to 10 minutes each time. But on the other hand, I didn't benefit from any drafting, and there were the 17 minutes lost to forgetting my mask.

 

Conclusion? Well, I'll just copy and paste the one from my ride report from the previous 300 km (where incidentally my moving average was exactly the same):

My moving average was much lower [than on my first 300k], 24.6 vs. 27.4 km/h, but I spent half an hour less at the stops. This pretty impressively shows that a fast brevet is not so much the result of riding fast but of having efficient stops.

Just across the border

Big fake sheep

[content note: Lots of stuff about eating, and not eating]

It's been over a year since I last did a 200 km ride. With the pandemic, there have been no organized brevets, water fountains and restrooms at parks were closed, and I didn't feel comfortable doing my usual gas station stops. With three water bottles this limited me to 120 to 140 km, depending on the heat. With a statewide mask mandate and the research on mask effectiveness, I felt okay embarking on a longer ride and refuel at gas stations when necessary. This Saturday conditions looked perfect. A high of 28°C (80 F), mostly calm winds from the NE, sunny.

The destination for the ride was a certain retail establishment located just across the Illinois border in South Beloit. The Strava route builder did a good job of suggesting a route, and I didn't have to spend too much time fine-tuning it to collect a couple more Explorer tiles along the way. The total distance was 196 km. Far enough, but I figured I could always add a little detour or two to make it to 200.

Because I would have the wind in my back for the first half of the ride, I didn't want to leave too early. No point in riding with a calm tailwind, only then to ride back when the headwind is strongest. This was fine by me and accommodated my usual slowness in getting ready in the morning. Two coffees and one bowl of oatmeal in me, I was won the road by 7:18am.

My recently repainted Gunnar was in tip top shape (minor rear derailleur indexing issues aside) and I felt great. As predicted, the wind wasn't strong but definitely in my back. At the current speed I calculated that I could be at the turnaround point well before noon.

The Peace Trail follows the Rock River and will eventually connect Janesville and Beloit

One thing I have been struggling with on long rides lately is eating. My glycogen stores were still full of yesterday's pasta and the bowl of oatmeal. I know I should keep eating all throughout the ride, but in the first couple hours into the ride I just didn't feel like it at all. I had had some vague plan to stop in Janesville, about 75 km in, but then of course my route didn't really go through Janesville but around it on the lovely Peace Trail. So by the time I got to the Road Ranger gas station in South Beloit, my turnaround point, I had only had one Clif Bar and one bottle of water. There I bought a bag of dill pickle chips, a bag of actual pickles, and a bottle of V8, but only half the bag of chips and drank the V8. I kindasorta knew that this wasn't going to be sustainable, but bike brain also stopped me from doing something about it.

Well, it did go alright for another hour on the return leg, but then my body started sending some "cough, cough, didn't you forget something??" messages. The first sign was that the lukewarm, slightly plasticky water in my bottle suddenly tasted absolutely amazing! I quickly downed my remaining two water bottles and set my eyes on finding a gas station quickly. It didn't take long until I got to Footville. The gas station looked vaguely familiar from previous rides and I bought a whole gallon of water. So far, so good. But apparently taking care of one bodily need made me lose track of that whole eating thing. I really enjoy sitting down on a nice bench to eat, and neither the gas station nor the Footville Memorial Park offered such amenities. "Ah well, instead of following the signs to Footville Community Park, which would take me slightly off route, I'll just keep going and stop in Evansville! Can't be more than 20k!" Yeah, I know.

Next bodily message, at the bottom of a hill, probably halfway to Evansville: "I'm not going to ride up there unless you feed me. Right. Now." Who's to argue with that. I just stopped on the side of the road and ate both a Clif Bar and a Clif Shot. This was enough to get me to Evansville, where I stopped at Lake Leota Park. I finished the remaining half of the chips and the pickles (note to self: pay attention and don't buy the spicy pickles) and kept drinking more water. This was plenty to console my body and get it ready for the remaining 50 km.

Have I mentioned that I like pickles?

I realized I couldn't make it back home by 4:20. (I'll leave it to my readers to figure out why this is relevant to this report). This provided a welcome excuse to add a couple kilometers and make a pit stop at the Hop Garden in Paoli. This is truly one of my most favorite spots, and a beer and a Pepsi were extremely delicious, 185 km into the ride. Once I got going again I noticed that my average pace had fallen just under 25 km/h. Not that it really mattered, but it provided a boost of motivation to get it back up to 25 and complete the 200 km in under 8 hours riding time. There are a couple minor hills Paoli and Verona -- not exactly conducive to raising the average speed -- and I did what my legs allowed me to do. Once I reached the Military Ridge Trail I was able to push the pace. And indeed, the display of my Wahoo jumped from 24.9 to 25.0 km/h maybe 5 minutes before I reached the 200 km mark, just at the city limits of Madison. Pretty good for a solo ride.

This was a great ride, and despite the eating/drinking issue I felt pretty good the whole time. Nonetheless, I'd like to figure something out about the eating issue. Maybe strictly pre-planned stops? Bring real food like I used to do on brevets? Set up an obnoxious alert on my phone or the Wahoo? Maybe embarking on a 300 km route, or a 200 km with more climbing will force me to come up with a solution.

To the Alps! - Day 2

Day 2: Füramoos to Kleinwalsertal

It took me forever to write and publish this post. The reason: Sometime during day 1, I accidentally had changed the ISO settings on my camera – you may have noticed the graininess in some of the photos in the previous post. Having mediocre photos in a travelogue was really demoralizing, and so I couldn’t get myself to finish the post for a long time. But here we are! Day 2 of my trip to the Alps.

No Allgäu without brown cows and cowbells...

...and crucifixes along the way

Breakfast was served at 6:30. I had gotten a lot of sun the previous day, and today was forecast to be a little warmer still. So despite only having to go about 110 km today, I got an early start. Within the first hour of my departure, I got the first glimpse of the Alps in the hazy distance. Too far to capture by camera, but elating nonetheless.

The Alps are in this shot. I swear!

I'm a sucker for taking pics of these signs (even if the grades on there often seem exaggerated)

One of the nice things about using Komoot for route planning is that it shows “highlights” on the map. These are recommendations from other users. Recommendations include traditional attractions like castles or historic markers, but also scenic stretches of bike trail, a swimming spot, or a bench with a good view. The Wurzacher Ried, apparently Central Europe’s largest contiguous intact high moor, was one of the highlights that I had planned my route around. Maybe the number of qualifiers should have made me suspicious. The moor was meh. The route was on a bike path right next to a busy state highway and all you could see of the moor were the signs and some trailheads. Ah well.

The meh moor

At some point I passed the ill-defined boundary of the Allgäu region, a region renowned for its cow, cheese, alpine foothills—and best known to tourists from around the world: Neuschwanstein castle. After a minor construction detour, I reached Leutkirch im Allgäu. Two hours into the ride I was ready for a second breakfast. On the picturesque church square Bäckerei Schwarz provided me with coffee and pretzels. I quickly sent a Whatsapp message to my parents whom I was supposed to meet at the end of the day. They were somewhere on the Autobahn, and I still had a bit of a lead on them.

Pretzel time!

The view for my second breakfast

Past Leutkirch I encountered another detour. One of the small roads on my route was closed somewhere ahead. It wasn’t entirely clear where and the signed detour would have taken me on a road too busy for my liking. The map showed an alternative route that looked about right, and so I ignored Komoot’s constant audio reminders that I was of course. The detour turned out to be excellent choice. A beautiful tree-lined road, ending at a little palace, Schloss Rimpach.

On the way to Schloss Rimpach

.... - manor house - kitchen

The hills around me kept growing, and my route was definitely climbing, but at very gentle grades. It was another hot day and I started to feel a little dehydrated and bonky. The tiny villages along the way (among them: Kleinholzleute and Großholzleute – Little Wood People and Big Wood People) didn’t have much to offer and so I was glad to eventually get to a gas station. It didn’t just provide me with water and a Pepsi. Next door was a wood carving business; except that it wasn’t exactly “carving” but two people with chain saws creating oversized wood sculptures! Noisy but fun to watch. Another gas station attraction: A fully airbrushed tanker truck, theme: “The History of the Diesel Engine, from Rudolf Diesel to Euro 6 Emission Standards.” Or something like that.

The process...

...and the results

The hills around me became taller and I climbed the first “pass.” Not tall enough to warrant a name, but the first sustained, steeper climb today. And on the other side, a wonderful descent with a view of the Alpsee Lake. I restocked my pretzel stash in downtown Immenstadt but kept pushing on. Just outside of Immenstadt my route reached the bike path along the river Iller. Whereas I hadn’t seen a ton of people on bikes until now, the Iller-Radweg, connecting Ulm and Oberstdorf, was heavily trafficked. I sat down on a bench along the trail and enjoyed the view of people of all ages and on all types of bikes passing me by.

On the Iller bike trail

River bike paths have a reputation for being boring, but this stretch was very nice. The Iller is an alpine river, with a wide, rock filled bed, framed by beautiful mountains. The trail led me to the outskirts of Oberstdorf, with its iconic ski jumps. I have some distinctive childhood memories of visiting the top of the jump and being terrified by the view down the slope...

Oberstdorf panorama, with the ski jumps on the left

My final destination was near but up. My parents had texted me that they were awaiting me at their hotel, and all that stood in between was the final climb into the Kleinwalsertal. The trail and subsequent road were steep and the sun burned down on me. I passed the border into Austria and eventually arrived at my parents’ hotel. I probably looked pretty beat and sweat-encrusted, but I was almost there! Our own hotel was further up the valley, but with some rest, water, and coffee, this wasn’t a big deal any more.

Entering Austria

This had been a great trip, with pretty much everything going according to plan, no mechanical problems, and my not-quite-fit-for-purpose bike working well enough. Navigation by voice with Komoot worked really well overall, even though it would have been nice to have a GPS device on the handlebars to see a map.

I had had great plans of bike touring again in Germany or the Alps this year. Given the COVID situation, that's just not going to happen. I have no complaints about the biking here in Wisconsin, but I long for mountains, the pretzels, the bike trails. Hopefully next year...