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 recent spate of chaotic blow-down in the woods has caused me to recollect an event from my past.

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

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

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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).

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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...

Ode to a lesser peak

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

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

Fanny Crosby

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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!

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

Henry David Thoreau

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"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...

Just about a bike: Surly Moonlander

This is my Surly Moonlander. 

It is a first generation Moonlander, which Surly debuted in 2011, and discontinued in 2016.  This bike should not be confused in any way with Surly's new freaky-deaky ground-up redesigned 2025 Moonlander; they are two completely different bikes.

Actually, technically, this bike is not really mine.  It's a loaner from a good friend who moved away. He asked me, while I was helping him load the last of his family's stuff into their moving-truck, if I would be willing to keep it in my garage, on stand-by, for him to ride whenever he came back to town to visit.

Like I said, he's a good friend, so of course I agreed. Especially after he told me it would be fine with him if I rode it around whenever I cared to. 

In the years that it's been housed here at my place, of course, I have.  Many, many times.

Meantime, my friend, well, I'm happy to say he has been back to visit several times. 

Nonetheless, despite his repeated visits, he's ridden the bike just once... So...

Let's redecorate the living room!

It was just about a year ago when my now ex-wife revealed the first of many reasons she had for needing to leave me (ultimately there were more than 20; I kept a list). In October 2024, about two weeks before she actually got around to telling me that she didn't love me anymore and was moving out, she told me that it was deeply upsetting to her that “everywhere I look around here, I just see your shit. Especially the garage!  Oh my god, you have completely taken over the garage!"  

True, I'll admit, but only to a point.  Lots of bikes and skis, workbenches and tools out there.  Hard to be a bike rider without owning a few bikes, or a skier without a quiver of skis...

Just about a bike: Monē SB2 Klunker [UPDATED]

3.3:1 gain ratio, 45.6 gear inches

Cjell Monē (pronounced: shell money*) proudly runs his mobile custom-fab bike shop out of the back of a former Wonderbread work-truck which is currently parked (at the time of this writing) somewhere near Silver City, New Mexico.

I'm sure Cjell's one-off custom bikes are amazing.  His initial apprenticeship at Black Sheep Bikes, and many subsequent years of experience as a successful independent bike builder, would seem to indicate: he knows well how to wield a torch.  But a one-off custom bike tends to be the sort of unobtainable unicorn which, for most of us run-of-the-mill average-type bike riders, is maybe something we get to plan for and purchase once in a lifetime.  That's been my experience, anyway. 

My Week of Riding Dangerously [UPDATED]

Turned 57 a couple weeks ago. Means I've been riding mountain bikes for close to 40 years now. 

As happens to some of us, I ended up hanging on to many of my old bikes, and have acquired and restored a couple other vintage rigs over the years, too.  Several of my older bikes are still intact and quite rideable.  The rest have essentially become organ donors or wall-art, so in a sense still "around" if only in spirit.

Quite literally hanging on (the ceiling) to several old bikes

Had an idea pop into my head the other day, as a kind of 57th birthday commemoration, that I'd ride (as-in really ride, on singletrack trails, out in the woods, just like I used to back-in-the-day) some of my oldest bikes over the course of a few days in the vicinity of my birthday and try to hit as close to an aggregate 57 miles as I could in the process. Rounding upward by just a few tenths, I pretty much nailed it at the end of Day 4 of what I've decided to call: My Week of Riding Dangerously. 

It was brutal. It was amazing. Effort was expended. Flow was elusive. Skin was lost. Blood was shed.

Vintage Chris King Angry Bee swag [UPDATED]

A little history per chrisking.com: Back when hub warranty registration was done my [sic] mailing us a postcard, Akiyoshi Takamura coined an infamous [sic] quote in the comment field of his card; "It rolls good with angry bee sound". This was the birth of the angry bees and so much more.

Aki-the-bear loading up on wild raspberries
before descending Pluto trail

Here in my hometown of Flagstaff, AZ (and likewise among the FLG-diaspora currently residing in Bend, OR) coiner-of-the-phrase "It rolls good with angry bee sound" (which, let's be frank, Chris King Precision Components has taken to-the-bank as it's now ubiquitous marketing theme), @angrybee Akiyoshi Takamura, has become nothing less than a legit folk hero. By no means "infamous," in our estimation Aki has, instead, become well-respected by handmade bike-builders and riders alike. All who have had the pleasure to know and ride with him have found his knowledge and enthusiasm for small-batch mountain bike sh!t to be deeply sincere, knowledgeable, and endearing.

Since I-don't-know-when, Aki has made an annual trip to ride in Flagstaff and, over the years, has purchased a respectable sampling of North American small-builder bikes to take back to shred in the hills and forests around Osaka, Japan. Sadly, COVID-19 made Aki's trip to the USA impossible for the past two seasons. So everyone that knew him was super stoked when word got around late in the spring of 2023 that Aki would be traveling to northern Arizona once again in the summertime.

In Beauty

In beauty I ride

With beauty before me I ride

With beauty behind me I ride

With beauty above me I ride

With beauty around me I ride

It has become beauty again

-- adapted from a Navajo prayer

Swell Trail - 09 October 2023

When did you get slower?

The following essay was originally posted to the Fifty+ Years Old forum at mtbr.com on 25 August 2023.

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Am I slower? I really don't know. That's the honest answer.

I mean, I've got almost a dozen years of Strava data that conclusively says: maybe?

How do I really know? And how much do I really care?

Facts are facts: My bikes have all changed for-the-better by several iterations in the aforementioned dozen-year time-period; fires, floods, and new construction have radically changed our local trails, in some cases for-the-better; technology, frame- and tire-design have all changed my riding style and abilities for-the-better a thousand-fold; and sure, inevitably, so has my body changed (tho not always for-the-better) as well as the way that I sometimes feel before, during, and after I ride (again, not always for-the-better)... So, which of these variables am I looking at when trying to determine if I'm slowing down?

You stink

One really nice thing about the hoard of well-dressed-in-denim touristy-folk ranging hither-and-yon in any given direction, always within sight of the parked Pink Jeeps atop Chicken Point, is that they all smell wonderfully. Like soap and shampoo, clean linen and floral perfume.  When you're riding uphill on a singlespeed in Sedona you notice these things.  Because you're going slow.  And because you stink.

The blister on my palm hurts.

Singlespeed in Sedona is hard. Rigid singlespeed is harder. Drop-bar rigid singlespeed is, no question, the hardest.  Wrap those bars in cotton-tape alone, and, you're not being tough, or faithful to some long forgotten classic vintage.  No.  You're just being stupid.  You deserve your blisters. And your sore legs. And the broken spoke in your rear wheel.

Once, years ago, my wealthy aunt and uncle visited northern Arizona and asked us to drive down and join them in Sedona for the day, which we did.  After brunch, they surprised us with the news that they had booked us an exclusively chauffeured Pink Jeep Tour of our very own (they bought-up all the other seats). I've biked around the Chicken Point area a thousand times, for going on some 25 years now.  But that trip was my first, last, and only Pink Jeep tour through the area to-date.  And, I must admit, it was a lot of fun.  Not just for the good company: my wife and our well-beloved aunt and uncle.  But also for the comedic-cowboy commentary provided by our admittedly very skillful driver.  We took the company's signature tour out to Chicken Point and got to do the whole-shabang: the slow-screechy skid down the steep slickrock near Mushroom Rock, and the gnarly Devil's Staircase descent, too.  It was a hoot, and well beyond my own meager skills as a four-wheel-drive driver.

I mended my broken wheel down at the shop this afternoon; needed an FR-6 to remove the freewheel (not sure why I've never bought one of my own).  It's been quite a while since I've been able to spend any kind of time down there.  Nevertheless, I am pleased that there are a few of my former coworkers hanging around the place who still remember my name, and that they're willing to let me use a tool or give me a hand now and then when I need it.  However, just in case the place was filled with new crew members (this has happened the last few times I popped in), I arrived bearing the proper oblation.  It never hurts to hand-off a six-pack of Fat Tire to the mechanics before you ask to borrow a tool.

Beer can accomplish great things, especially in a bike shop.

As only a day-off on your bike in the woods can bring

Riding three days straight makes me remember how much I love to ride. And how too-busy-to-ride I've been.

Late on Friday afternoon, my head buried in both hands, I made plans, promises to myself really, to go in to work today.  Not because I had to.  I didn't.  But because I needed to, or at least I felt I did.  However, once today arrived, as a crisp clear morning and the first official day of Spring Break 2012, having had two days off to contemplate the massive pile of I-don't-know-what-it-is that's piled on my desk at work, I made the decision to just go ride after breakfast, and think-on-it-all, rather than go into my office and make a feeble attempt to muddle through it all once again.

It was a cop-out, a dodge  I'll admit that.  But a manageable one, I think, in the long run.  This work I have to do right now, which I know will make no one happy, will all eventually get done, one way or another, like it or not.  Has to.  Today, had I gone in, I would have had a chance to, perhaps, make a little headway toward better understanding some of it.  But it probably would have amounted to very little.  Or nothing at all.  Because I don't really understand yet what I have to do and even less about how to do it.

Or maybe I just don't want to.

So I went out and rode. Up the Dogfoods to Newham.  Until the snow finally turned me around.  Made a rock-stack. And sat in the sun.

To think.

I figured nothing out.  Had no epiphanies.  Did imagine myself, briefly, in a time and place where I didn't have to make unpopular decisions about complicated things.  And then I got back on my bike.  Resolved to ride down this hill resplendently splattered with mud, with more than a fair measure of joy in my heart, as only a day-off on your bike in the woods can bring.

Just about a bike: Rock Lobster Singlespeed [UPDATED]

3.3:1 gain ratio, 44.9 gear inches

My old Rock Lobster is pretty damn cool if you ask me: a fillet-brazed steel frame built quite early in the career of one of the founders of our sport, Paul Sadoff, in Santa Cruz, California, way back in 1985, the year I graduated from high school. According to Paul, it's the sixth mountain bike he ever made, that's why it's stamped 06 on the bottom-bracket shell. 

For the record: I bought it back in 1995 from it's second owner, and have always run it as a singlespeed.

Because of its vintage it's got a few neat old-school features, like a braze-on behind the seat-collar for a Hite-Rite, and a couple braze-ins on the main triangle for a portage-strap. To accommodate the shoulder of the portager, the bottle cage mounts are both located on the down-tube.  Otherwise, in terms of design details and geometry, the bike is decades ahead of its time.

It's a blast to ride, though a bit of an ass-kicker, too, to be honest.  Nevertheless, to this day, I ride it a lot. It's about as simple and elemental as riding a mountain bike in the woods can possibly be. I think this is why I ride it as often as I do. Such experiences have always crumbled my cookie.

My buddy, Mark, who I bought the bike from in '95 got it about a year before that from guy named Michael, who was the original owner. Turns out Michael was a friend and neighbor of Paul's back when they both lived in Santa Cruz in the '80s.  Michael, who's now an NAU Geology prof and a semi-regular customer at Absolute Bikes, where I work in the summertime, once told me that Keith Bontrager himself cut-down, re-rolled, and laced the front wheel.  But other than Michael's compelling provenance, and the small "The Bicycle Trip" sticker on the rim, I have no real, substantial proof of that interesting little bit of history, which really is too bad.

When I first got this bike it was blue and the frame decals were peeling a bit at the corners.  It's still blue.  And the frame decals are still peeling.  But please don't assume I've let the bike languish.  I haven't.  For one thing, I took off the incredibly-huge original quill stem and substituted a new, custom-made, significantly shorter, and slightly taller Rock Lobster quill stem, chiefly so I could get a set of WTB/Nitto Dirt Drops into more-or-less the right place.  When I contacted Paul to order the stem (by telephone, ya see, 'cause this was in, like, the 1990s, back before teh internets tubes were invented) he was super nice about making sure I got the right stem for this bike ("It's gotta be fillet. Can't put a TIG'd stem on that bike.").  He even sent me a nice handwritten note along with the stem, all about when he built the bike and what kinds of tubes he used to make the frame... and also a few suggestions as to how I might choose to light it for formal museum-quality display.

I built a new rear wheel for it a couple years ago.  All by myself.  No, seriously.  I did.  I even put fancy anodized gold and blue spoke nipples on it... and I got the every-other nipple-color thing right... and I got the hub-logo direction thing right... and I got a whole bunch of other things right, too. 

The wheel I built is a Surly fixed-free flip-flop hub on a Mavic something-or-other hoop.  I've got it set-up with an easy-climbing 34x20 gear on both sides, which is a great singlespeed gear around these parts, but a fairly low fixed-gear gear for anywhere that isn't dead flat.  But still, sometimes I ride it fixed in the woods anyway.  Mostly, though, fixed off-road in Flagstaff is just stupid-hard and no fun, no matter what gear you're running.  So, really, I usually ride it as a singlespeed, and coast a lot and do bunnyhops and smile and have fun and stuff on downhills... and just talk-tough about how awesome riding fixed-gears on singletrack is. 

But, really, it's not.

Here are some other pictures of me having fun riding this bike:

UPDATES:

• In May 2010 I noticed a crack in the Rock Lobster's seat-tube.
• In July 2010 I sent the frame back to Paul to be repaired.  
• He returned it to me, fixed, in early September 2010.  He refused to accept payment for the repair.
• I had it repainted in October 2010.

• Since that time, I have replaced the old Suntour cranks with a much prettier set of Cook Bros. and installed a Thompson post instead of the well-worn Kalloy.  The portage-strap, which I made from a piece of an old back-pack (and for which, as noted above, there are braze-ins installed on the frame) comes and goes.
• In September 2016, I replaced the dropbars with a stylie set of 28" wide chrome-plated genuine Nitto Bullmoose bars and a pair of super-giant old-school Shimano M762 brake levers. Cool!
  
  
  
  
  
  

• In June 2019, I replaced the Bullmoose bars with a fairly generic 680mm matte black Answer Alumilite handlebar with a nice rise to it and some good sweep, too. Just for fun, at the same time, I also reinstalled the "the incredibly-huge [160mm!] original quill stem" which hasn't been on the bike since the day I bought it back in 1990-something.  Likewise, the super-giant Shimano M762 brake-levers were traded during this update for a period-correct pair of gently-used SS-5s, black with the plasti-dipped handles, natch.

         

• In October 2020, I replaced the 160mm stem with a custom fillet 130mm Rock Lobster stem, put the Shimano M762 levers back on (again. They work much better with the BR-MT62 cantis) and reinstalled the Hite Rite. I also fashioned a new leather portage strap from an old belt and installed it using the original braze-ins on the top- and seat-tubes. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Just about a bike: Ibis Mountain Trials

This is my Ibis Mountain Trials.

I've owned this bike since 1996, which makes me it's longest-owner.  But I am not the bike's original owner.  I bought it from Flagstaff local-legend Steve Garro of Coconino Cycles fame, who owned it back in the day... before he was a world-famous frame builder.

Before that this bike was owned by another well-known Flagstaff Mutant, Rex Jenney, who ordered it through Cosmic Cycles, Flagstaff's original mountain bike shop, back in the early 1990s.

The spec sheet that I got from Steve when I bought the bike indicates "Prices effective 4/1/92"

However, the serial number on the bottom-bracket shell, 1087, would seem to indicate that the bike is actually of a slightly earlier vintage (around 1991, I think).

I used to ride this bike a lot, so it's not in pristine condition by any means.  But it's certainly a special bike, two different-sized wheels, uncommon geometry, handmade in Sebastopol by Scot Nicol, stuff like that.  Plus, it's got a few cool parts on it.  Over the years I've done my best to A) fix it up just a little, and B) keep it in decent condition while riding it on a regular basis.

When I got it it had never been painted, just primered... and then cleverly Sharpie'd by Steve.  Of the many things he wrote on it, my personal favorite was written in bold lettering on one of the seatstays: "Yes, the rear wheel is smaller!"

Click images to enlarge

I got a local auto painter to remove all the old primer and paint it a neat gray with blue-metallic overspray, put new decals on it, and finish with several layers of clear-coat.  It turned out great and looks especially cool in the sun.

The USA-built Mountain Trials bikes (Ibis also imported a less expensive Taiwanese version of both the Mt. Trials and the smaller 24x20" Trials Comp for a few years) were manufactured in only two frame sizes, 13" and 17". This bike is the larger of the two and it fits me, a six-footer, nicely.  

It's a spectacularly fun bike to ride in the woods here in Flagstaff. I used to take it down to Sedona all the time, too, and even rode it in Moab on a couple trips way back when. It's crazy good at riding up slickrock, but ('til you get the hang of it) kinda scary going down.

Like all Mountain Trials of this vintage, has a 26" front wheel and a 24" rear wheel, 15" chainstays, a 72 degree headtube, a 72.5 degree seat-tube, a 22.75" top tube, a 12" high bottom-bracket, and a 2x8 drivetrain with a milled-down outer chainring to act as a bash guard.  It's still got its original Koski fork and the original Salsa high-rise stem, too.

Needless to say, it's rather unique.  

Of all the bikes I've ever owned, it has been, hands-down, the most challenging one to learn to ride well.

It ain't the "Pro Leisure Tour" but it ain't bad.

We're outta town for the most of this week, hanging in Snotsdale, AZ, my old hometown, for my Dad's 70th birthday, with much of the sum-total of our extended family, my brother and his family, and the grandparents, my folks, too... even great-grandma's made an appearance or two (She had commitments to play bridge with the gals today).  The other Flagstaffricans (my other brother and his family) are in California at Disneyland, which is what we did last year for Spring Break.

Between meals we've been doing the sort of big-city things big-city folk do, chiefly: shopping, snacking, and finding our way to trailheads on the "edges of civilization" for short-but-fun mountain bike rides.

Yesterday we rode a set of new-to-me trails in the McDowell Sonoran Desert Preserve in far-north-Scottsdale (Gateway, Bell and some of Windgate pass) and I took a few pictures with my still-new-to-me camera phone.  They're terribly low-res, but if you use your imagination, they kinda look like they went through the Photoshop watercolor-filter.
On Thursday (tomorrow) my Scottsdale-brother and I are planning to head back up to Flag for about 24 hours to spend Friday skiing with our Flagstaff-brother.  It's been too many years since the three of us shared the chair together.  So it should be fun.  I might even take a few more pictures!

After that we jet back down to the Valley on Friday evening for yet another birthday party (one of the cousins) on Saturday afternoon and (hopefully) another creosote-scented ride in the desert, too!

I know: it ain't the "Pro Leisure Tour" but, ya know, it ain't bad...