All Roads Lead to a Bike

No, the blog is not dead. It's not... ok, maybe a little dead. I've been doing other things, like tweeting and Facebook. One interesting thing about Facebook is finding folks with whom I have not heard from or seen in 20+ years. My brain has been busy compiling information based on a variety of things and I've come to a few conclusions.

Here's the background: I grew up in Santa Cruz, CA

I've noticed about 50% of the folks I went to school with moved from Santa Cruz. A surprising number of them landed in the Northwest (myself included). Now here's the interesting part... bunches of these folks, both people who stayed in SC and those who left, are into bikes in a big way. Not in the "hey, I like bikes" way but the racing, avid riding/commuting, multiple discipline, bordering on religious fanaticism way. Again, myself included. And it got me thinking... Why? I mean, I know how I got into it but what about the others? Is it some sort of inevitable product of growing up at the time, in the place, and with the people we all grew up with?

One has to admit Santa Cruz was a weird and, I think, a wonderful place in the 70's and 80's. It was a much smaller community back then and we all grew up with freedoms kids today know nothing about. I'm told the world is just plain scary now. Until we all got drivers licenses, we used bikes to exercise those freedoms and even after we all started to drive, bikes were the preferred method for getting to the beach in the summer or to school the rest of the year. I remember bikes being more transportation than anything else.

With that said, bikes were definitively a part of everyday and woven into the fabric of my psyche. My best friends Dad wrote the book on bicycle maintenance, his brother was some sort of Junior Olympic phenom and their family had a stable of bikes like you wouldn't believe. The first bike race I ever witnessed was a 'cross race up at the university. I believe it was 1982 or something. Santa Cruz happened to have some terrific bike shops, killer riding and a great bike community.

My love affair (in it's current form) with bikes didn't really start until I moved to San Francisco in '94 and I started exploring Mt. Tam on a fully rigid M300 Cannondale. After that, I spent a summer touring the US by bike and logging in some 5400 miles on a 2 1/2 month cross-country trip. In the summer 2000, I did a 5600 mile bike trip from Prudhoe Bay, AK to Laguna Beach, CA. When I turned 30, I decided I wanted to try something new to celebrate the second third of my life and settled on racing mountain bikes. I later went on to working in the bike biz, being apart of owning a bike shop, helping to manage a local team, and being completely immersed in bike community to the point of not really caring if I ever ride a bike again (no, not really).

As it turns out, I'm not the only one. I don't know if anyone else has gone quite so deep into it, but from what I can tell, there are ex-semi pro racers out there along with folks who have managed to make bikes a major part of their lifestyle. These guys are riding everyday, putting on bike races, lusting after new gear, and living the life. Good on 'em! Now I'm curios how they got there.

Fall

Yep, fall is in the air. With gentle cool breezes, the temps are perfect, the rain has been good enough to wait for another day, and the light has changed. I love fall and... I hate the underlying impending doom of fall. Fall is the thing that let's you know winter is just around the corner. Fall is the thing that reminds you of all the things you failed to do with your summer. All the missed rides you had on your summer to do list, all the trail runs and hikes you never got to and all the trips, near and far, you'll not get the chance to go on.

Fall is perfect and maddening at the same time. Like the rest of life, take the good with the bad and drink from your half-full, half-empty glass. Try to squeeze some fun out of the last few days of summer. Or, take a play out of the Alaskan Play Book of Summer Fun, and run, don't walk, do not pass go and head directly for your fun of choice as fast and as furious as you can.

Yep, it's fall. Now, go.

Interesting Encounters with Cars

Four way stop. A convertible Porche with the top down driven by a guy on the phone. We came to the stop at the same moment. He looked the opposite direction of me and proceeded to roll the stop. In fact, I don't think he even touched his brakes.

As I passed behind him, I said, "Nice stop." He flipped me off.

Now, normally I wouldn't have done anything because I'm not the confrontational type but the flippancy with which he threw his middle finger into the air made my hackles stand up. I made a U-turn and got back to the intersection just in time to see where he turned. I rolled up on him just as he was getting out of the car.

Me - "Hey man, flipping people off is not very nice." 

Dude - "What you said wasn't very nice, either."

Me - "All I said was, 'nice stop' after you rolled it. How does that warrant the finger?"

Dude - "Bicycles roll stops all the time."

Me - "Well, I don't and flipping me off was pretty out of line regardless."

Dude -  Walking into his house, "Whatever. Have a nice a day."

This conversation happened while he was still on the phone and I can only imagine what the person on the other end of the line thought. I felt like I was in 4th grade. "You suck." "No, you suck." "No, YOU suck." etc, etc.

Pretty lame.

 

24 Hours of Fun, Fun, Fun

This last weekend was the 24 Hours Round the Clock in Spokane, WA. For those not familiar, this is a 24 hour mountain bike race. uBRDO Team Project (uTP) supported 3 teams and it was a production of epic proportions. We left Kirkland with 4 pop-up tents, 4 coolers, 4-6ft tables, 9 bikes, a giant box of bike parts, and the rest of the van was filled with the miscellany we would need for 2 days of MTB racing. 

Things were a little crazy trying to get out of town but we eventually made our destination at 5:30 am Friday morning after driving all night and getting an hour of sleep in the van in a rest stop. Not an ideal way to start the weekend.

Setting up camp was a blur in our delirium and trying beat the heat didn't help matters. It was about 30 degrees hotter in Spokane than we are used to on the west side of the Cascades. We did manage to put together an impressive camp for the team that was dubbed "The Condo." Friday was pretty low key with everybody making their way in throughout the day. We got everybody signed in, got our race volunteers squared away, started drinking and then went as a group to pre-ride the course.

Chaos ensued as our very buzzed riders were having a grand time checking out the course but ended up totally freaking out the other riders not on our team. Which seemed funny because I would have figured everybody had at least a few beers in them by that point. Apparently, not so... and too bad for them. It was fun.

We ended up getting pretty good sleep that night and all woke up ready to go Saturday morning. After a huge breakfast at a nearby European pancake house (the potato pancakes were to die for) the first riders got kitted up and made ready to race. I was a big ball of nervous jitters (no, not too much coffee). I was to do the starting lap, which included a La Mans style start. We had to rack our bikes, head to the start line and wait for the gun to go off. Then it was a 600m run up a hill, back down to our bikes and then ride back up the hill. The run was only 3 1/2 minutes or so, but I have never been so happy to get on my bike. Running in bike shoes and helmet is pretty lame. I'm told this is the traditional way to start a 24 hour race...

Being on a 5 person ladies team was fantastic. We had about 4 hours between laps and we did great. "C" was pulling down our fastest laps, "A" was hauling ass after not even touching her bike since CX season, "CH" was consistently solid, and "L" was a breath of fresh air. She came ready to race and she certainly did that with her consistent performance throughout the race.

The best part was the team dynamic. No bickering, no weird 'girl' stuff, and no drama. Just great attitudes, a willingness to keep at it, and a desire to have fun and race hard. I came back from my night lap at about 2 am and slept from about 230-5 am. I woke up wondering if we were still racing and sure enough the girls had kept at it during the middle of the night. As I prepared for my 7 am lap, I wondered how my legs would feel after so little sleep and being stuck in the heat the day before. As it turned out they felt pretty darn good and I put in 1:16 lap. Not my fastest but certainly not the slowest either.

I had given "C" the option of waiting for me to do another lap so she could get some more rest. When I came in she had a huge smile on her face, said she felt great and was ready to go. I handed her the timing chip and away she went. About the time I was starting to get ready to do another lap (an hour or so later) we got a call from "C". She had crashed and the medics were advising her to abandon the race. She had punctured her knee cap and couldn't move her leg for a few moments. She told Scotty she thought she might be able to continue on. We made the decision for her and I grabbed my bike and headed out to restart the lap. At this point we were solidly in second place and had been since the very first lap the day before. But with me restarting the lap we were getting bumped down to 3rd.

I spent that whole lap calculating how many laps the 3rd place team had done (assuming they hadn't dropped out) and when I would need to come back through the timing tent to be able to do an extra lap to beat them. We had to start the last lap before noon and I was mentally preparing for my 6th lap. To my surprise, "A" was waiting for me at the timing tent ready to take the timing chip and rally the course one last time. She came back 1:17 later with a smile on her face. 

We had done it. We had successfully completed our first ever 24 hour race, we stepped up when things went awry and overcame what would have been a looming 3rd place finish. 18 laps for a total of 270 miles got us 2nd place.

Now it's not all about winning. Heck, we didn't win. But we did great even though none of us had any idea what we were doing. All of uTP was pretty wiped after the race. The boys ended the race in 8th place after 2 really hard crashes in the first rotation of laps. The 2 man team was DFL and gave up about 6 hours into the race. They slept a solid 8 hours that night. Hilarious.

It sure was a lot of fun and I'm thinking about making a solo run at it the next time around. Sounds crazy but I think I could do it. The course was long enough that even after 5 laps I didn't have it totally figured out.

New Gadgets

Just discovered something called the "FURminator." Ridiculous name, amazing product. No, it's not a new thing for the likes of Scotty... It's a brush for the dog and in about 10 minutes I combed enough hair out of her to make a new dog. Neat. Now I all I need is something called the "MUDliminator." C'mon Google.

Just Ride

I've been thinking a lot lately about what has become my life adventure in cycling. I've come along from the days when I didn't own a car, was really poor, and what I considered fun on a day off as a trip over the Golden Gate bridge to Mt. Tam on my 1992 fully rigid M300 Cannondale. Man, those were the days. I used to just take off. Sandwiches and water loaded into the pack, my walk-man with a fresh set of batteries, and a sense of adventure. I would be gone all day, sometimes not making it home until after dark.

These days when I look back on all the riding we have done over the years, I think it would be neat to go back and ride all those places again. Would it be hard? Would Moro Canyon be as technical and scary as I remember it? Perhaps not. Now that we have been in the same place for an extended period of time, I have lots of opportunity reflect on trails that used to be difficult and made me nervous once upon a time. 

Take Tiger for example. The first time I rode the Preston RR Trail, I had to hike my bike through a mile of major blow down. Picture taking your bike and flinging it as high and as far as you can over the downed trees. Then imagine crawling through the innards of the trees to go retrieve your bike. Do that about 100 times. Then when you finally reach the other side of the blow-down, you are met with the wettest trail you have ever seen. A literal river using the trail to get down the hill. It was an adventure I'm not likely to ever forget, but that trail gets easier every year. Is it me or the trail? There has been a lot of trail work done in the last couple of years up there.

Brian and I used to ride St. Ed's from time to time. Half the fun was getting really lost but now we know those trails like the the back of our hands and it has turned into a place to take the dog riding instead of taking ourselves for a ride. Being on the constant hunt for new, more exciting trail systems seems to be the order of the day. Whistler is the next obvious choice for the excitement upgrade. It requires a new bike and a whole new set of gear, but that's a small price to pay for adventure.

I would love, one day, to go back and ride Slickrock in Moab. The first and only time I did that was on that M300 Cannondale and it was outfitted with full touring racks. I had never been mountain biking before (not really anyway) and I had no idea what I was doing. My guide, bless his heart, was gentle, encouraging, and gave me lots of pointers on what to do. How easy or hard would it be now? 

Along this same line of reasoning, I'm racing XC again and having a ball. So far this season, I have 2 wins under my belt and that effectively doubles my number of wins for my entire racing career. Now, is my class getting slower or am I that much faster this year? It's hard to say. I know it's a lot of fun but the girls this year just don't seem to have the same kill instinct I have seen in some past years of racing. It is a different group after all. In my defense of sandbagging, I did overhear a few of the girls on course chatting with each other. I hope they were having a great time... I know I did.

Perhaps it's experience, perhaps it's fitness, perhaps it's sheer dementia. I don't know. I wonder what it will all look like with another 10 years of riding experience. I hope to keep learning and getting better at it and maybe I can make it back to all those places to see what they look, feel and ride like then.