Northwest Recreation

Winter is here and it is time to start thinking about season passes to ski resorts.  Although not all resorts have good sales regularly, many will be having Christmas deals, making the possibility of skiing both cheaper for you and giving the chance to give a pass as a gift to a family member or friend.

When purchasing a pass, try to calculate how many times you are really going to use it over the winter season.  At some ski resorts, a lift ticket is $55 and a season pass is $650.  If you don’t ski around 15 times, you won’t even make it close to bringing it below the lift ticket price, so unless you like to pay all at once, it isn’t worth it.

Also remember that location is key.  If you buy a lift ticket there, you are going to be skiing or snowboarding there a lot, so keep that in mind.  If you do decide to get a season pass and use it regularly, you can stand at the bottom of the run at the end of the season knowing you did well in making your purchase!

Although many people fail to think about them, hand signals are an extremely important aspect to biking.  Whether you are on gravel roads with light vehicle traffic or busy highways, hand signals show where you are going and help others to anticipate your moves and directions.  Here are some hand signals to remember, but note that they can be different from one country to another, and these only apply in the U.S.

Left turn:  Left arm extended parallel with the road you are turning onto and pointing to your left with no bend in the elbow.

Right turn: Right arm extended to your right parallel with the road you are turning onto with no bend in the elbow, OR, left arm with forearm pointing vertical with a 90 degree bend at the elbow.

Stop:  Left arm with forearm point down to the ground and bend in the elbow.

Remember, be safe and have fun!

As an additional option for tire slime, the slime that comes in the tube is always an option to consider when you are thinking about flats on your bike or even (dare I say it?) your car!  Although no ill fortune such as this should ever have the right to descend on such visitors to Northwest Recreation, such mishaps do happen.  In this case, tire slime in the tubes at the store is yet another viable avenue.

Pros:  Comes in a tube, fairly cheap for a large amount, and easy to use.  Squirt in the tire and pump it up is the basics of how this works.  Works fairly effectively against small punctures and for thorns entering tires.

Cons:  Messy and hard to clean up if you spill it.  Also, you MUST have a PUMP in order to use the slime in a tube.  Otherwise, you’ll get the slime in and notice that you don’t have any air to put in it, anyway.

All in all, it’s a good option if you have a pump and don’t mind carrying a tube of slime around with you.  Granted, the pre-slimed tubes are much easier, but you use what you can and what you have.

As a second option to the previously mentioned Tire Slimed tires, there are always generic slimed tires you can use.  Even though I advise going with the brand, I do acknowledge that there are good generic tire slimed tubs out there.  Some say no flats, “guaranteed,” and although I am a little skeptical, I do trust those as a good source for cheap slimed tires.

I personally use both in my tires.  The Tire Slime tubes are slightly more expensive, but they work just as effectively as the generic ones, and vice versa.  Bottom line, it comes down to who has been in the business the longest.  Tire Slime has revolutionary technology that can be trusted, while generic ones are working on copies of that technology.  Do they work?  Absolutely!  Are they as good?  That’s still in debate.  For now, I would rather get down the mountain in one piece, rather than be stranded and injured because my tire went flat going over technical terrain.

As part two of the series on Tire Slime, there are available tubes with slime already in them.  These are the brand named Tire Slime that you find sold at bike stores, etc.  Out of all the pre-slimed tires, these are said to work the best and perform the most decent when punctured.

Although generic ones are available, most suggest that you stick with the brand name–and I agree.  A while back, I went biking with some buddies, only to have one friend find out that goat heads would pierce through even a thorn guard if caught the wrong way.  Had his tires been slimed like my other friends’ tires were, he wouldn’t have had a problem.  Bottom line, stick with the real slime if at all possible and use them to guard against small punctures.  If you get a larger puncture, you’re going to have to face it!  A patch is in order!

Because of the thorns that constantly get stuck in tires, I think it is only fair to cover one possible remedy for tire punctures.  This remedy, tire slime, is an effective way to control the leakage of air from a puncture in your tire tube.  There are several different options, each of which will be discussed in upcoming articles on NW Recreation.  For those who have bikes, dirt bikes, ATVs, cars, etc, it is important to consider these remedies to avoid the possibility of being stranded or walking back to a gas station.

Being prepared is an excellent way to prevent such results, and the three things we will discuss here will be:

• Tire slimed bike tubes
• Tire slime in bottle
• And generic slime in tubes

All three have a variety of benefits, and will be addressed in upcoming posts.  Happy November!