Let's get a divorce.

Divorce is a world of suck best avoided. 

Divorce is a muddled muttered mantra of repeated regret.  

Divorce is a long dark lonely road to nowhere, inevitably heading somewhere, albeit only god-knows-where. 

Divorce is an explosion, one of such great magnitude that it must, of necessity, result in the complete destruction of all-things, leaving only remnant annihilated particles to coalesce into a new format, fused under duress into something radically regenerated and fundamentally evolved. 

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I conferred what feels as if it could be one of the last physical reminders (that and this apparently indelible and resistant-to-all-lasers ring-finger-tattoo on my left hand) of my now defunct marriage to the good folks at the bike shop this week. 

Let's go to France!

Went to Paris (the one in France) for a post-divorce "Tuscan Sun" adventure in July.  Fair to call visiting Paris a long-standing "bucket-list" item of mine. But, given the sad situation I came to find myself in in January 2025, planning and accomplishing this trip solo came to mean a lot more to me than just another item to check-off that list.

Pleased to report, I had a truly amazing time!  Aside from one breakdown on the RER-B line on my way into the city from the airport (which required me to navigate the massive Gare du Nord train station unrehearsed in order to find an alternative route to my hotel), everything went super smoothly travel-wise. I met lots of good people, ate tons of good food, drank gallons of great wine, and saw hundreds of amazing sights.  All the things one does while visiting that amazing, complex, beautiful city.

While I was there, wandering around the city for a week on a janky rental bike (and each night via the Métro), I posted a few pictures, along with some wordy captions, to my Instagram.  They're embedded (and thus preserved) in chronological order below.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by R Chrysler (@rockychrysler)

Let's use a heart-rate monitor!

Several of the following observations were originally posted to the Fifty+ Years Old Forum at mtbr.com on 01 October 2024.

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I started riding with a heart rate monitor, a Garmin Forerunner 45, in April 2024 and, after several months of data collection, I now find myself absolutely fascinated by what I've been learning about my cardio-vascular health and fitness. I am especially intrigued by the corroboration of what I feel has been a distinct increase in my overall-fitness and threshold-endurance during this summer's riding season. 

Bottom line: I love doing the things I get to do outdoors. My objective in learning to use a heart rate monitor has been to better understand my general overall fitness and health and, quite simply, to maximize however-many years might remain to me to continue to be able to do these essential activities that I love. Below is an inexpert run-down of what I think I'm beginning to understand better about my body based on what my new monitor seems to be telling me.

Let's do a product review! Canclaw Bike Can Holder [UPDATED]

The following review was posted to the Beer Forum at mtbr.com on 16 Apr 2024.

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Being the inventor of the original on-bike beverage-transport system, the DIY Cooziecage™, I felt that I should be the one to volunteer to purchase and review the Canclaw, a $23.00 (+$5.00 shipping) 3D-printed on-bike beverage transport system akin, if not in design then no-doubt in spirit and intention, to the Cooziecage™.

Let's lurk! [UPDATED]

In the course of my life there have been several things that I knew I would love the very first moment I saw them. That list includes:

• my wife
• our daughter
• our home
• riding singletrack on a mountain bike
• making sweet dropped-knee Tele-turns
• paddle-boarding gracefully across a lake
• and skiing with a lurk

I've written about many of these subjects elsewhere on this blog. But never before about lurking. And if I'm being honest, as with the other things listed above, lurking has pretty much changed my life, entirely for-the-better.

Let's adopt a rescue cat!

“A human being with no dæmon was like someone without a face, or with their ribs laid open and their heart torn out; something unnatural and uncanny that belonged to the world of nightghasts, not the waking world of sense.”
— Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

Our cat, like our dogs, is a rescue. You can tell by her one docked ear. Our vet has told us that she was likely captured when she was young as a feral stray, spayed, and then released back into the world to fend for herself. Later on in her wild early life she must have been recaptured, probably by animal control or a rescue agency. 

Fortunately for her (and us), it seems she somehow fell into the care of our local no-kill shelter at that point. That's where my wife and daughter first encountered her. They brought her home soon afterward.

They named her Rosie.

I just call her Cat.

She is, of the many many good cats I have known in my lifetime, easily the best-of-cats, my Pantalaimon, a chatty, constant companion to me at all times (except, of course, when she is cat-napping) whenever I am at home. 

Let's ride a singlespeed!

"When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all incumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run."

- Henry David Thoreau

3.0:1 gain ratio, 41.6 gear inches

I recently converted my Surly Pugsley "fatbike" from an eight-speed to a singlespeed.  After a thousand or so very rode-hard miles in the past 8 years (and having been put away wet more often than not), the original drivetrain components had become seriously clapped-out.  Rather than replace them (at great expense), I decided to just remove them. Best part of this decision: stripping off the no-longer-necessary gears, shifters, cables, and derailleurs shed almost four pounds. Today, the Pugs, and her one 34x22 (3.0:1 gain ratio) gear, is revitalized as a bike that is (as it truthfully always has been) an unmitigated hoot to ride!  In a way, it feels as though this was how she was meant to have been set-up all along.

I've been riding singlepeed bikes in the forests of northern Arizona for almost 30 years. My newly reconfigured Pugs SS is the fourth legit singlespeed mountain bike in the garage. I really dig riding one-speed bikes. Always have.  Geared bikes are lots of fun, but only singlespeeds are truly enlightening (pun intended).

Let's listen to some records!

System specs:
Fluance RT80, Ortofon 2M Red
iFi Zen Phono (balanced), Denon AVR-1804
Paradigm Mini Monitors (v.3)
Discogs/rockychrysler

I listened to a ton of FM radio growing up, you probably did, too. I also had a small record collection in my bedroom, and a stack of tapes in a big tattered case in my car.  As a result, I was slow to adopt digital music, CDs, MP3s and streaming content, not because I was an analog purist, mostly just because of the cost of conversion. 

I have always enjoyed listening to music, not so much for the sake of the lyrics, but quite simply as a background soundtrack that permeates nearly every moment of my life. As I see it, life flows better, most things are a little easier, food and conversation are more enjoyable, and I am more productive when there's music playing.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I listened to a whole lot of mainstream music during the early period of my life, Journey, Elton John, U2, Scorpions, Def Leppard, Prince, ELO, Pink Floyd, R.E.M., Van Halen and the like. These bands and artists, and this sort of easily accessible music-for-the-masses, was the gateway through which my musical tastes have since expanded and become enriched throughout the couse of my lifetime. In fact, many of these same groups still have a well-deserved place in my music collection to this day (in truth: all of the aforementioned do). The music of my youth is still on regular rotation in my life, not for the sake of nostalgia but because, at least to me, a lot of it is still quite diggable and good.  Still very diggable and very good, in many cases.

Let's adopt a rezdog!

Nellie

Skadi

A few years ago the Internet introduced my wife to the plight of the abandoned pets at Dead Dog Beach on the island of Puerto Rico. As her awareness and concern for mistreated and misbegotten mongrels grew, she and my daughter both became occasional volunteers at a local no-kill shelter.  It was a short distance between this formative experience, helping in the recovery, care, and re-homing of unwanted animals, and the adoption of our own first rescue-pet, an adorable-but-feral little black puppy. She had been found a few weeks prior by some travelers, wandering alone and mortally ailing on the roadside not far from the town of Kayenta, Arizona.  Her bowels distended and  infested with worms and infection, the travelers took her straight to an animal hospital here in Flagstaff where she received emergency surgery to repair her destroyed prolapsed rectum, and intravenous antibiotics for several days.  Her care was made possible by High Country Puppy Rescue, from whom we acquired her.  We call her Nellie.

Our younger dog and her sole surviving sibling were clever enough to be able to evade capture by the good people at the Tuba City Humane Society for several days after they were first reported as strays to them.  Just another set of feral black puppies scavenging, motherless, in trashcans near the center of town, but my wife and daughter immediately fell in love with them the day their pictures were first posted to the agency's website.  After a brief in-person get-to-know-you session, they brought the more gentle of the pups home.  As with our first rezdog, she's quickly socialized positively into our domestic life, though, because she's still not quite a year old yet, she continues to be inclined to be cautious and nervous when out in the world beyond our home. She is never far from Nellie’s side no matter where we are.  We call her Skadi.

Let's roast coffee!

Green beans are shipped in sealed plastic bags

I've been roasting coffee at home for at least 15 years, probably longer. I can't exactly remember when I began to do so, but I think it was my friend Mark (the same guy who sold me my Rock Lobster) who first clued me in to how to do it, way back in the early 2000s, before our daughter was born, when we were still living simple in the barrio on the other side of town.

Here's the lowdown on home-roasting coffee: It's really fun, and it's also a very satisfying thing to do, in that putting-your-hands-to-really-good-work sort of way, same as fiddling with your bikes in the garage, or pulling dandelions out of your lawn, or spending a few hours flipping through crates of old vinyl in your favorite used record store. I dig things like that, especially when I've been able to take the time to perfect my process for doing so over the course of time for many years.  Home coffee roasting is also a little bit cheaper than buying your coffee already-roasted from the coffeebar down the street, so that's another advantage for sure.  But the very best reason of all for roasting your own coffee at home is how it tastes.  There's really no comparison.  None. 

Let's make a Burton DIY Throwback snowboard!

To spice things up a bit this winter, rather than, you know,  just going out to snowbike on the Pugs, or just doing your basic cross-country ski loop out in the woods above my neighborhood, I determined to try to find a few other fun things to do when I'm out in the winter snow when I'm not skiing up at Snowbowl, 'cause, well, I'm 53 now. I really do need to find new innovative ways to hurt myself.

Mounting a Cooziecage™ to the downtube of my Pugsley made beer-drinking in the winterwoods possible and, so, that was a great and rewarding first-effort in this regard.

I've also been doing some fun multisport snowbike-to-xc-ski excursions up Schultz Creek toward Schultz Pass.  Probably got the first-ever ski descent of Kentucky Waterfall in the process. Wasn't pretty. Hellno! But it definitely happened.

Let's build a Cooziecage™ [UPDATED]

The original Cooziecage™ and the Cooziecage™ II are both tested-and-perfected on-bike beverage-transport systems.  Follow the step-by-step DIY instructions below to make a Cooziecage™ of your very own.

*A Creative Commons License

has been applied to these instructions.

 

Afterwards, I hope you enjoy many a lovely bevvie

all alone
in "silent lucidity"

(ride the whims of your mind)
or when hanging out with your pals
whilst sitting atop big rocks,
or blown-down trees,
or in grassy meadows,
or on snow-covered stumps out in the woods. 

In my experience/opinion, these are things almost everyone likes/needs to do.  

I hope these free* instructions help to make all your rides more enjoyable, and this crazy world we live in a little bit better, too, one beverage and one bike ride at a time.

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I like beverages!  I like bikes!  And I think bike rides and beverages go well together.  

Thanks, Cooziecage™

If you do too, you should build a Cooziecage™ (or a Cooziecage™ II) and conveniently take a beverage with you on your next ride. 

Heck, you should take one on every ride!  I do.

Tired of waiting until your ride is over to enjoy a lovely beverage? With a Cooziecage™ attached to your bike you'll be able to crack open one of your favorites the next time, and every time, you get to the top of your ride.  

Just imagine how refreshing that will be!