New gig

One of the reasons I started this blog was to provide myself, rather selfishly, with a place to write. Since Bike Magazine closed its Local Knowledge section, to which I used to contribute a monthly column covering the Southwestern U.S., I really haven't had any substantial, paying, professional writing gigs, and thus I haven't had any real impetus to keep writing. Sure, like all (people who occasionally fancy themselves) writers, I have a few personal pet-projects that I tell myself I'm working on. But in my world, without the promise of pay, and/or the threat of impending deadlines, these kinds of things tend to just languish. Add to that a wife and a kid, obligations to my 'real' jobs, and the demands of life in general, and suddenly one day you just kinda realize: It's been ages since I sat down to write anything. Ergo, this blog: A place to write and a promise-to-self to make it both meaningful and regular, despite a lack of metrics ensuring a real audience; one always hopes that someone's reading and watching what I put here. Anyway, I like to think there is.

But, like all well-intended projects of this nature, sometimes life gets in the way. To a degree, I guess that's been the case for the past several weeks, beginning with my busted ribs and concluding this past week with an inconvenient summertime kiddie-cold that I acquired from my daughter.

But, I've also been remiss in putting stuff here lately because I've been working during my spare time developing a few new pieces of writing for a spot I've been given, rather unexpectedly, at a new website: Trailnation.com. I hadn't really been trying to get any writing work lately (I did submit an unsolicited manuscript to Mountain Gazette recently which got rejected), but I was stoked when one of the editors of Trailnation.com, an old friend, contacted me and asked me to be a contributor to the new site; apparently he'd stumbled onto this blog via a link to it on my Facebook page and I guess he liked the tone of a few of the older posts. Whadya know.

I've got a deadline in just about a week for my first piece and I've been told the nascent Trailnation.com website will 'drop' around the 18th of August, and also that a Trailnation TV show will debut on the Fox Sports Network throughout the Midwest region on the 22nd of August. I have no idea what sort of format the site (or the show, for that matter) will have, or even a full grasp of what the content will be like, only that they are striving to create a place where all kinds of trail users, bicyclists, motos, hikers, and equestrians will come together to share and discuss their passion for trails and the outdoors. I've been assigned the task of writing about riding bikes on trails. Sounds good to me! We'll see how it goes.

Hope you stay tuned.

Left Out

Crashed a bit today. On Easter Island, that super-flow-y trail that spurs off Old Lower Moto. Failed to spot a tombstone-shaped rock in the trail. I could blame dust, but we all know: this week, following several days of good-hard rain, that's a bit of a stretch. Following too closely at Mach, that's probably a more honest excuse; but it's also a more lame one, too. Got caught napping a little, really, near the end of another great Tuesday Morning Ride, that's the real truth, and spotted the minor rock in the trail too late for a bunnyhop, left it too late to float through. Instead, I augered my front wheel into the rock, bounced off, and rode it out on my front wheel for 5 or 6 feet until gravity conspired to dump me over the bars.

I've definitely bruised, maybe cracked, and possibly broken another rib or two. Summer just can't seem to pass-by the last few years without a rib-incident. I've been riding well, too, until today; not too banged up for midsummer, ya know. I thought maybe this year I was gonna get an injury-pass. Alas. No dice.

But, as I'm sitting here on the couch trying to find a comfortable position, typing, it's occurred to me that it's the rare crash that damages the left side of my body, as has this particular crash. My right side (on the other hand) is a mass of scars, badly-mended broken bones, and the ghosts of old sprains and tumbles from head to toe. But my left side, even after all these years of riding, it's relatively intact, aside from the occasional superficial scrape now and then. Is that a strange thing? Do other people crash more on one side than the other? I've got no clue. But that's certainly the truth of the matter as far as I am concerned.

My kid is the coolest kid I know

I made this shirt for my kid a few years ago. It's really too small for her now, nevertheless this is the shirt she chose to wear this morning. Neither my wife nor I set it out for her. She knew what day today was, and she dug this shirt out from the bottom of one of her dresser drawers.

Cool kid!

The Tuesday Morning Ride

Ken, owner of Absolute Bikes, cleaning the legendary Portal of Pain
on a long-ago Tuesday Morning Ride

I had a brainstorm a few years ago that we should sell a house-branded, hand-selected blend of bagged and roasted coffee at Absolute Bikes, the bike shop I work at in the summertime. Surprisingly, my idea was rather well received (most of them aren't) and we began a dialog with the owner of Flagstaff's Late For The Train coffee shops, and even commissioned local artist Lyle Motley to design a packaging label. We deliberated for a while before selecting a brand name for our soon-to-be-sold house coffee and eventually settled on TMR Blend, as a kind of homage to the shop's classic weekly group ride. But somehow, along the way, the whole plan to sell coffee at the bike shop got canceled. I don't remember specifically what killed it, but as is so often the case, I know for certain that it died; no bags of TMR Blend Coffee were ever sold. LFTT moved on without a second thought, and the completed design for the packaging languishes somewhere in the bowels of the vault at Absolute Bikes.

But our fleeting plan to sell coffee at the bike shop lives on in my mind; I am reminded of it every Tuesday morning as I crawl out of bed at 5:50 AM to grind and brew my own home-roasted coffee as I prep for the Flagstaff's longest-standing formally-organized no-drop group ride: the Tuesday Morning Ride.

I try to attend every Tuesday Morning Ride I can during my ever-shortening summers. Between early June, when school lets out for the summer, and early August, when teacher meetings and then classes resume, I am usually able to get in some 8-10 Tuesday Morning Rides if I really commit to getting out of bed way-too-early-for-summer. Most years I do.

I've been riding with regular attendees Ken and Chris, as well as a whole host of others who show more sporadically, on the Tuesday Morning Ride for years. And not once in all that time has the ride ever sucked. Yeah, some rides have been a bit too fast, some a bit too long, some way too slowed down by multiple flats and/or crashes, mechanicals, or lost riders. But seriously, in like 12 or 13 years of getting up early-early in the summer on Tuesday morning to ride bikes in the woods, I cannot remember even one ride that was not generally awesome: filled with great empty trails, cool temps, good strong friends, and a whole lot of climbing and descending on singletrack. Every Tuesday Morning Ride is different: different people, different trails, different themes. But they all kinda end up sounding a little like this:

Ken and Jim and Charlie (on his one-speed) and Brad and I headed around Mount Elden this morning on my third Tuesday Morning Ride of the summer. We rode out through Buffalo Park to Lower Oldham and I flatted. After the repair, we got on the new freelancer trails that head east from Oldham and eventually, after riding a few choice secrets up high at the base of the rocks, joined up with Forces of Nature and the Elden Spring system. However, because we'd spent so much time bouncing around on the rocks on the trails at the base of Elden, Ken was out of time and had to bail by the time we got to the bottom of Fat Man's Loop.

The rest of our group proceeded around the always-too-hot-no-matter-the-time-of-day eastern exposures of Mount Elden, past Hart Trail, through Sandy Seep, and eventually around the corner to the Little Elden Spring Trail on the mountain's northern slope. We crawled up Little Elden through miles of horse-assaulted trail dust to Little Bear where we ate and said goodbye to Jim for a while as he took off like a rocket up the long climb. The rest of us sat-in and made a long-but-mellow no-debt steady ascent up Little Bear's miles-long four giant switchbacks to the saddle at the top where we found Jim (nearly asleep, I think) patiently waiting for us in the shade.

We took another quick break at the top of Little Bear, and since several of us were getting close to gotta-be-home-time, jumped onto Upper Red Onion down to Elden Lookout Road. Brad bailed down the Lookout Road at this point, complaining of a sore knee, and the three of us that remained made the short jump up to Lower Red Onion. Following the quick portage down the marble-covered sketchy switchback in the middle of Lower Red Onion, Jim made his first successful ride down the super-giant rock towards the bottom of the trail!

From here we hopped back on Elden Lookout Road down to Middle Oldham, ripped down it and onto Rocky Ridge. Another fast descent, and Jim split off at the Rocky Ridge/Jumps intersection. Charlie and I continued down Jumps to the back of Buffalo Park where we shook hands, said goodbye, and split, he going up to the Buffalo, and I continuing down Jumps to the Park Street trailhead and home.

Five riders. Who know how many miles or feet of climbing. Four hours fifteen minutes door-to-door. Two flats. Approximately two bottles of water and a snack each. Plenty of good conversation and scenery.

Slice it any way you like, but that's pretty much a Tuesday Morning Ride.

The tree that nearly killed me

Below is a little video I shot today of the tree that nearly got me on Saturday. 

Riding up Brookbank again this morning, I was a little concerned that I would find the tree to actually be smaller than I remembered it in-the-moment.

It is not. 

It's huge. 

I parked my bike more-or-less where I ditched it when I started running and shot the video from there...

norm

it never rains in may. but this may it's just been raining like mad. for the last several weeks, with surprising regularity, it's rained nearly every afternoon... good, long soakers too, for the most part, different in that way from the booming summer monsoons. the flowers and grasses, convinced that this odd season is for real, are beginning to really go off. and the trails! they're in pristine, never-before-seen-in-may condition: no dust, no sand, nothing but traction through every turn. i've been in riding in flagstaff for nearly 20 years now, and i've never seen it like this this time of the year. may and june are typically dust season; this year they're shred season!

i headed out in the rain again today, as has become the norm. today, however, i had a little company, which sadly isn't the norm. noting the big drops that were beginning to change the color of his pinkish driveway a darker shade of red, ken and i put our rain-gear on before we left his house late this morning. i don't really like to ride in rain-gear, but i don't like being wet and cold either; who does? and this latest sequence of afternoon storms seems to have taught me to prep to ride more-or-less like it's the monsoons, meaning: a) be sure you've got your rain-gear; and b) if you don't have your rain-gear on when you leave home, you can be pretty sure you're going to have it on at some point, sooner rather than later, during the ride.

from ken's we rode across wake-up trail, which, being uniformly made of basalt rock and basalt clay, was already getting slick, and out past the welcoming 'no trespassing' signs into lockett trust. a steady parade of wet, jacketless, smiling riders riding back in the direction of town met us as we headed toward the parking lot at the bottom of shultz creek. but, after riding through the parking area, alight with tail-lights and alive with cars backing out of their respective spots, we headed up the trail, just the pair of us, and saw no one else, save one other pair of riders on moto, the entire afternoon.

the rain was intermittent as we climbed through the fort valley trails and both lower and upper moto, but the rocks were slick and wet, making upper moto more than a little extra challenging. after cresting moto, we dove back down to newham, across the new trail that i guess we're calling new orion springs, and then back down what has to have been easily the best, most-rippin' totally perfect ride down a totally empty shultz creek trail at full-mach on a saturday on ideal conditions in recent memory!

it would be great if this cycle of storms was a harbinger of a prolonged and much-needed early monsoon, but i get the impression from the weather folks out in bellemont that it's not, that it's just some fluky very-wet may. perhaps. nevertheless, it's been a great month for riding here in northern arizona. and i'm enough of a native arizonan to know: we must never begrudge the rain for raining on us. in fact, i really do hope it continues. it's a drag to carry/wear rain-gear. but, heck, we always need the rain.

Putting it together

I'm going to try something new here, beginning today. I have a plan...

As with most plans of this nature, I fear it's only fair to admit that this new plan might honestly take root in rocky soil and bear little or no fruit. But I am going to try, nevertheless: to make regular entries on this blog.

Here's what I'd like to do: I'd like to create a place for me to write, to practice writing. I've been a writer, off-and-on, for many years. But, at the moment I find myself with no venue, no place to put my words... the magazine and newspaper assignments have all disappeared, dried-up, or been canceled for one reason or another. I find myself in need of a place to practice, a place to just write. For lack of any other venue, like millions of other writers, by default This Blog will be the place.

I don't intend for the things I write here to be anything too deep or personal. I don't intend to wax poetic or become too nostalgic or philosophical. I just want to write about what I do: the places I ride and ski, and perhaps talk a little about who I've hung with in the process... stuff like that. This certainly won't be the first blog to emphasize such things. But it will be mine... The Blog of a satisfied 42-year-old father-and-husband who has ridden bikes and skied for some 20 years in the woods near Flagstaff, Arizona.

Here's to making regular blog entries...