Archival Footage: June was getting old

Flamingo Flakes by Billy Schenck

When I was young I wrote poems.  Mostly bad poems. I did not intend for them to be bad.  I had hoped for them to be good. 

But they were not.  

However, they are not too-terribly-bad either, I suppose, particularly when considering the shallow depth of the well from which they were drawn at the time.

I stumbled upon a few of them recently, in an tattered manila file tucked away in the back of a closet.

Below are some of the sad, angsty lines I wrote between 1986 and 1991.  Back when I was in my 20s and thought I knew it all...

---

Payson, Springtime, 1976

Heaven's not filled
with Earth's departed souls
now is it.
The faucet's trough-plink
old hand's country signal's bad
flipping static.
Stockyard's smell
all rotten bales.
It's not in pictures
horse's self-defecation drying
cracked open like this.

There's a horsepath near a Payson ranch
rutted rental-inches into the planet
showing papersack gravel laid open
beneath grass-woven soil.

None talk much
less run until they have sight of it
tail-to-nose waiting
sniffing clover and wild flowers
or walking in sleep toward it
transfixed on this appointed path
the yearling's new faces
the ancients' breathing sensing
again able to move limbs quickly
smoothly to the gate.

The yellow line of teeth
the bridled lips pulled back
wanting.

---

Fly Lady Bug

Sitting watching clouds fly past the moon

It must be hoards
just swarms of bugs
that are disappointed by this moon
and all moons.

To spend your days
flying gyres upward toward
the sky
just to have the light taken away each night
by a paleness only the clouds can see
sharply enough to fly past.

That's why you seek out
the street-light below where I am perched
ape-like on my balcony wall
to loop and dive and crash
around this sodium-vapor sun.

If I open the door
you'll follow me inside
to the bedroom
and loop and dive and crash
around my lamplight.
I'll find you there when I retire
lying dead on my sheets.
Empty shells with little wings.

I'll come inside and join you soon
someday later tonight
and we'll lie together
and you'll hold me
and I'll think: this is what I came here for.

---

Reason. And other functions.

I've been listening to my own voice
echo down stairwells
for so long

now let me rock
with my feet up on the bed
and crack nuts in my hand
while I listen to your voice

as you sit
knelt at the foot of the bed
late at night near me

I watch your eyes
in this blue darkness and see them
grey areas with fire behind them
like eclipsing moons

Your lashes make shadows on the floor.
They reach down beneath the floorboards
and under the window's sill
and pick dandelions outside

You talk about me how
I'm the kind of man who
gets paid
for doing what he loves most:

taking things apart.
And about Jack Nicholson
and how you know why he went to the Cuckoo's Nest

And about Sartre
and Python. Laura Petrie
Hitchcock's body
How growie things reproduce themselves
almost without gratification
and without
and almost always without

'Til it makes you look
like those are nearly tears
between your lashes
reflecting this night's brightness

When I know it's just sleep
or the lack of it there

And you make me wonder
as I listen to your exposition;

Will you understand me
when I lay down beside you
to whisper my love?

---

June was getting old

June was getting old
she said
looking softly down his arm to the floor
speaking slowly purposefully
that there is this thing, yes.
reading the same books
looking out through twinned eyes
always at this too-obvious-letters-written-man
who rode to forget
then forgot to ride
slept no further or sooner than
whenever you're ready to leave
spake ice-cream talk to you
before you ever heard it
sent love letters within himself
and imagined your tears dried by them
and you never knew
me
who talks mainly for joy
the who-you-are of it all
then for intimacy
finally for solace
who still waits 'til hope subsides
paces and yearns to prove indispensable
like drinking water for kisses
esoteric iodine tablets 

intended to remove
the browns from the greys
who hunts for words
and becomes galvanized into 

this being
alone
who never quite gets each dream 

to fall in place
in this great-green-dream-hopper
instead it yields bitterness
a kind of bile in the throat
kinked like a hose
spitting sputtering

out the smallest hole's 

path
of least resistance

Weatherford Road

Yesterday, I rode my fat bike up the old Weatherford Road.

The Weatherford Road, which begins just above and a little to the west of the Schultz Creek trailhead, and the Weatherford Trail, which begins up higher on the Pass near Schultz Tank, aren't really the same thing, although eventually they do rejoin one another, at the Wilderness boundary above Schultz Pass.

The old Weatherford Road used to be our primary bike-access from town to the trails above Schultz Pass.  But we hardly ever ride it anymore, probably because most of those trails don't really exist anymore.  Trails like Secret and East Orion were obliterated by the Forest Service years ago in an effort to protect spotted owl habitat.

Today, a couple newer trails, such as Newham (not to be confused with Oldham), Upper Dogfood (a wildcat trail), and The Spotted Owl (which is sometimes mistakenly called Secret or Orion Spring) cross the Weatherford Road above the Pass.  But only one classic trail, The Overlook, still remains accessible from the Weatherford Road, up high in the aspens, somewhat hidden beneath a few rotten logs, right where it always has been.

Much All of the road is now closed to motorized vehicles, so it feels forgotten and remote and, year after year, the trees encroach on it more and more.

When it was proposed as a tourist attraction back in about 1915 by local hotel owner, John Weatherford, he assured the Forest Service that the grade would not exceed seven percent, but here and in several other places it approaches ten percent.

It's pretty obvious that the Forest Service has not put any resources into maintaining the road for some time, even sections like this one near Newham, which technically remains open to motorized vehicles.  Every summer the rains dig the channels a little bit deeper.

The road, called The San Francisco Mountain Boulevard, was originally planned to be operated as a toll road aimed as an attraction at the burgeoning Grand Canyon tourist trade at the turn of the last century.  It cost over $100,000 in 1900s-dollars to construct and it was finally completed to the saddle between Agassiz and Humphreys Peaks in the mid-1920s.

The old toll-house is still standing and appears to have been carefully restored.

Weatherford and his fellow speculators never recouped their investment.  But the road, such as it is, remains to this day, but, since 1980, only horses and hikers have been permitted above the Wilderness boundary.

It must have been quite a  thrill to drive to over 11,000 feet on the San Franciso Peaks, and not altogether without risk, either.  Last time I hiked it above the Wilderness boundary, several years ago, there were still a few old abandoned vehicles wedged into the trees off the downhill side of the road.

In the late 30s, due to a lack of maintenance, the Forest Service canceled Weatherford's special-use permit, closing the Scenic Mountain Boulevard to motorized vehicles forever.

Nope. No berries. Not yet.

For the past few years, about this time of the season, we've gone down to a nice, kinda secret, quiet spot on Oak Creek to harvest blackberries.  This year we went too early and harvested maybe 12 ripe berries in all.  The rest were all still small and green, weeks away from being ready.  

Fortunately, we did arrive right after a rain, so the air was misty and cool and the creek clear and cold. We waded around for a bit and then drove down to Sedona for lunch.

We'll go again in a few weeks, sometime mid-August, I think.  The berries in our secret spot should be ripe by then.

Little cat feet

The trails near Schultz Pass, puddle-wonderful, enshrouded in fog, covered in hail, were uncommonly spectacular this afternoon.

The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

Carl Sandburg

Just about a bike: Surly Pugsley [UPDATED]

Select images to enlarge

I've been riding my new Pugsley a lot since I got it. Almost daily, I'd say. 

And the simple fact of the matter is: There is a lot to love about this bike. 

And just a little to get used to. 

And pretty much nothing that's too-terribly-bad about it. 

Safe to say, of all my bikes, none gets rode harder or (quite literally) gets put away wetter than my Pugsley.

---

Pugsley by Surly from Rivendell Reader #39 [.pdf]
Reproduced with permission

In spring 2007 Rivendell Bicycle Works ran an article in issue #39 [.pdf] of their quarterly newsletter, The Rivendell Reader, about the Surly Pugsley, which, at the time, was basically a brand-new kind of production-bike, designed to be ridden over rough terrain and in sand and snow.

At that point in my life, I had worked for probably 10 of my summer "vacations" at a local bike shop and had, over the course of that time, through the shop's generous employee-purchase program, already bought two other Surly bikes, a Cross-Check and a Steamroller.

I am very fond of both of these somewhat unusual bikes and, even from the beginning, have always felt a real philosophical kinship with Surly's whole "thing," which is a lot like Rivendell's in a sense: quirky, utilitarian, and unperturbed by (if not openly defiant of) market-trends... but on a budget that's a bit more my speed.  Plus, as a gatherer and rider of many other odd bikes, each with its own very definite and discrete purpose, the Pugsley immediately made total sense to me.

Needless to say, I wanted a Pugsley from the get-go.

But, my fiscal bottom line at the time, and during the ensuing six years for that matter, made purchasing the not-so-cheap Pugsley impossible.  In fact, lately, I'd sorta come to the conclusion that a Pugsley and I were never meant to be together, despite my self-identified status as an ardent "follower" of all things Surly.

Fire: 20 June 2010

My experience tells me it's the third week of June when fire-season seems to begin in earnest around here; that's next week.  

Three years ago, on 20 June 2010, this happened:

The Schultz Fire. It was unimaginable.

It still is.

The editor of the Daily Sun, Randy Wilson, bumped into my friend Chris up on Waterline Road, which traverses the area most-devastated by the fire, last weekend.  He wrote an interesting article for the paper about his ride.

Below, I've embedded a fascinating video that shows, in some detail, how Hotshots defend a house during a fire.  It was shot this week, during the Black Forest Fire near Colorado Springs.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Just about a bike: Schwinn Typhoon

Founding members of F.O.C.B.S.
(l-r) Joe Bob, Anthony, Ray, Johncoe, James

I'm all about riding "the wrong bike" around in the woods on any given day, and I do so, and likewise vocally advocate for doing so from atop my personal How I Think You Should Ride Your Bike soapbox, whenever I'm given the chance.

And, it pretty much goes without saying that my new Surly Pugsley is yet another proof of this concept and my commitment to it.  But this, dear reader, is not a post about my new Pugsley (though one's coming soon, to be sure).

No, this is a post about the Flagstaff Outlaw Coaster Brake Society, which is a recent creation of my old bike-shop boss, Anthony, who has a super sweet custom made Bomber Cycles cruiser which he likes to ride in the woods now and then, and until now, mostly alone.

Today we met by Facebook(damn you fuking fakebook)-invitation-only at the bottom of Schultz Creek trail for the Society's inaugural ride.  Five of us showed up on coaster-brake bikes of varying vintages and questionable suitabilities to trail riding.

Joe Bob arrived on a sweet new New Belgium Fat Tire cruiser which he won at last summer's Clips Of Faith expo.  Tony was on his Bomber. Ray, on a sweet all-chrome late '80s Ross Mt. Whitney with fenders. 

I chose to ride my 1968, rather finely blinged-out (note: chrome fenders, ding-ding bell, and period-correct galvanized Wald wire basket) once-green Schwinn Typhoon. And James rolled up on his most-ancient, klunker-style ram's-head Schwinn cruiser sporting full-on massive paperboy handlebars and a nifty, "basketball" clamp-rack on the back!

We rode up Schultz, which, with long rest stops and brief periods of walking, took (shall we say) a while, all the way to the Sunset trail-head at the top of the pass.

We arrived at the top covered in ample quantities of both sweat and dirt (it's very dusty out these days) and asked a random kid waiting in the shade next to his bike to take our picture. This noticeably concerned his dad, who rolled up a moment later, just as junior was finishing capturing our pose.  But he remained concerned only briefly.  On seeing our bikes, he quickly dropped his guard and instead began asking about our bikes, our sanity, and our ride up.

From this point, it was mostly downhill, though only in the geographic sense.  Fortunately, Ray surprised us all by breaking out a six-pack of The King he'd been hiding in his trunk-bag for the whole ride.  So, before we rolled down the mountain with only our antique coasters to slow us, we sat down for yet another period of well-deserved respite, this time with tasty, if not nearly luke-warm, bevies all around.

Good call, Ray!

The ride down was a hoot! And pleasantly uneventful, even by more appropriately prep'd mountain-bike-ride standards: there was no blood, not one catastrophic mechanical breakdown, and zero flat tires!

Quite insightfully, James observed at one point during the descent that "we should put some better parts on these old bikes, maybe a derailleur and some good brakes, and man, then this riding-bikes-in-the-woods-thing could really be fun."

I thought his wry observation was hilarious.


Getting accustomed to using a coaster brake and a big, heavy, long-wheelbased bike with basket and rattly fenders on singletrack really isn't all that hard, just challenging, like anything else new.  The only really scary part of the experience comes when your feet both pop off the pedals unexpectedly and you realize, in that instant, that you've just lost your brakes. Completely.

Fortunately, dragging your feet on the ground to slow your rate of descent works pretty well on most surfaces.