How I survived but sprained a finger [UPDATED]

Due to massive unseasonable rainfall and destructive winds recently, USFS sawyer crews have had to clear some 200+ trees off our local trail system in the past couple weeks.  Their efforts are greatly appreciated.

This spate of deadfall blow-down caused me recollect an event from my past.

On 13 June 2009 I was nearly killed by a falling tree.  

This is that story, written in 2009, now reposted.

---

I forgot it was race day today.

 

And it quickly became evident as I headed out this morning that I'd overlooked this fact... the number plates on everyone's-bike-but-yours kinda gives that sort of thing away pretty quickly. 

But, other than a few skinny riders out early doing warm-up intervals on this somewhat breezy early summer morning, the only other folks I ran into on my way to ride the suffer-trail up Lower Brookbank were my friends Ken and Kurt preparing to do a little race-day corner-marshaling with a posse of their kids.

Toward the top of Lower Brookbank the already-steep trail tips upward and becomes even steeper just below the Upper Brookbank intersection. It's tough to clean this spot even on ideal conditions on your very best day. Today I rode toward this trap ready to dab (happens a lot). I always like to ride into it as far as I can, no matter what, hoping to perhaps get lucky, and today I thought I saw a decent line through the loose stuff, rocks and limb-litter, that's always accumulating on it.

I've been on Lower Brookbank several times this week, going both up and down it. So I immediately noticed, as I headed toward my line, that there were a few new sticks and limbs strewn about on the ground in this area that weren't there yesterday. A few of the limbs were sizable, five or six footers, that had obviously sluffed off one the the many large old snags that occupy this pocket of the hillside. I didn't think too much about the limbs though, they were off my line, not in the way, even if they were remarkable in size. 

Just about a bike: Surly Sorceress

 

Got a new bike the other day, a 2026 Surly Sorceress, the hot-honey bling flavored one, in fact!

(TL;DR) It is fricken gorgeous.  And exceptionally rad.  And I'm gonna tell you why in just a sec.

But first a few bona-fides and a little business (or jump straight to the "How does it ride?" review if you want).

---

I own several Surly bikes.  Like to think I was an early adopter of the brand.  Definitely a sympathizer, at least as far as their vibe goes.

My first Surly was a mud-brown Steamroller.  Got it as a frame-set in 2000.  Built it my way.  Still have it.  It's always been a fixie.  It's a very fun bike to ride.  But it will spank you in the ass without warning if you don't keep your head in the game. Not that that's necessarily always a bad thing...

The Eastern Sedimentary Block Of Mount Elden

Heart Trail

This post was originally published on rockychrysler.com in June 2015.

The following reasearch paper was written and submitted by me "in partial completion of the requirements" for GLG 599, a Geology For Teachers course I took at Northern Arizona University in the summer of 2004, during what is probably best characterized as the second-phase (of four, I think) of my 20+ year-long post-baccalaureate academic career at NAU.

The paper is about some of the really interesting non-volcanic, sedimentary geology found on the eastern end of Mount Elden that's conveniently bisected by the Heart Trail*.

After I completed this paper, I uploaded it to Wikipedia where it became the initial kernel for the site's Mount Elden topic.  I'm pleased to report, much of my original content is still intact to this day.

The descriptions and photographs below are based on observations that I made along the original Heart Trail in the summer of 2004. 

* Beginning in 2019, the entire trail was rebuilt at a new, less-severe grade and on a lengthier and more sustainable alignment.  Despite these changes, all the geologic features referenced below can still be observed at the general elevations indicated below, however the approximated distances between features may vary given the changes to the trail.

 

---

An Overview of the Geology of the Eastern Sedimentary Block of Mount Elden

A paper submitted in partial completion of the requirements for 
GLG 599

Middleton

30 September 2004

Ode to a lesser peak

This article was originally published in Mountain Gazette magazine #166 - Spring 2010

---

“He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock that shadows a dry, thirsty land."

Fanny Crosby

---

I watch the rocks.

From my desk at work, all day long, year-round, for 14 years I’ve watched the rocks of Mount Elden, one of Flagstaff’s lesser landforms, out the windows of my classroom.

Little has changed.

Again today, as it always has since I’ve known it, this mountain compels me: Come.

Three seasons of the year, for the better part of the past two decades now, I’ve ridden its trails home each day, a few miles of amazing boulder-covered, dacitic, woodsy singletrack with inspiring, evocative names like: Spring, Tree, Fat Man’s and Forces of Nature.

Along the way, I’ve sat near small trickling springs and watched birds, butterflies and bees drink and fight and fly away home. I’ve watched huge, complicated rain-borne waterfalls form and dissipate, both in the short span of minutes. I’ve taken refuge beneath overhanging rocks, huddled in narrow pockets while riotous storms roiled and lightning flashed close by.

Climbing aimlessly among its cracks and crags, I’ve found mysterious ancient glyphs and dark caches strewn with thick smoky potsherd.

Once, I saw a lion with her kit.

Let's ride bikes for re-creation!

---

 "I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude."

Henry David Thoreau

---

"I thought of that while riding my bicycle."
Albert Einstein
commenting on the origins of the theory of relativity
(and also me, commenting on the origins of this blog post)

I have a good heart, for which I am ever grateful.

I mean that, of course, quite literally. 

But also metaphorically.

After months and months of effective and uplifting professional therapy, thousands of sincerely self-reflective written words (Thanks, cannabis!), scores of interesting conversations with many also-divorced men and women, the earnest support of my good friends and loving family, aaaand a few undeniably clarifying microdoses of psilocybin, I'm beginning to feel like I'm drawing nearer to being able to view myself, at the very least, as someone somewhat partially-restored, re-created in fact, a newly viable human being (albeit perpetually of the work-in-progress variety now), less consumed by sadness, regret, and self-loathing than I have been for some time.

Let's also add hundreds of bike rides alone in the woods to that list. In fact, let's put them somewhere near the top.  

Because every single one of the bike rides that I've been on in the last 20 months has helped my healing immensely. 

An unironical inverse ordering of sundry broken things

My father always said, "If it's a problem that can be fixed with money, it's not really a problem." 

He was, for much of his life, a person of some means, however, so this was a fairly simple thing for him to be able to say. Nonetheless, I get it.  There are problems in this life that cannot be fixed, no matter how much money you have.  Real, heartbreaking, chronic, sometimes fatal problems.  I understand this difference all too well.

I, unlike my father, am not a person of means.  To that end, I, personally, have found that the compounding effects of encountering many broken things in a short span of time can be challenging, despite the fact that many of those things are, indeed, fully reconcilable assuming you're willing/able to spend of the appropriate amount of money to purchase a solution.  

Which is to say, most but not all of my recent problems have been of this type, the kind that can be fixed with money.

Below is a list of a few of the recent challenges I've faced, described in inverse order of the impact the broken thing had on my emotional and/or financial well-being, from least to greatest...

The Settlement Of The Night Monster

[audio]

This post was originally written and published at rockchrysler.com in July 2013.

What follows is a true tale, or at least as true a tale as I am able to tell of it these days, so many years later, about a trip I took to the Galapagos Islands with my grandparents when I was 10 years old in 1977. It is a tale based, at least in terms of its sequence and style, on this poem which I wrote for Beckian Goldberg's ENG 200-something Introduction to Creative Writing poetry workshop as a sophomore at Arizona State University in 1987.

The photos below are also mine, taken by ten-year-old me with my prized Kodak Instamatic camera.

---

"Yes, the night monster will settle there and will find herself a resting place."

Isaiah 34:14b

---

Santa Fe Island, Galápagos
27 October 1977

It was a sharp knife, much sharper than most ten-year-old boys would tyically be allowed to possess.

And it was the right knife, too, its stainless three-inch-long blade and array of Swiss-army implements perfect for carrying confidently in one's front pocket all day long, especially on a grand, far-away excursion such as this.

The fish, lying on its side on the deck, a large trolling-hook pinned in its lower jaw, also gauged the sharpness of the boy's knife; its wide, unblinking eyes betrayed its awareness, as it gaped and gasped in desperate need of oxygen. It needed to die, wanted to now.

"Kill me," the fish told him.