I’ve seen this plant a bajillion times, but never the fruit. On the west face of the McDs, a few min below Tom’s Thumb. Bunches of them. It was about 85 when i rolled past at 9am, i think about average for this time of year.
my kids have warmed up to the kids down the street, after a wasted year of trying. The payoff for our efforts is *awesome*. There is an array of little blonde girls doing little blonde girl things, like jumping around like crazy little blonde girls, and not annoying little blonde girls’ parents. I could not have been happier playing lifeguard for 2 hrs while the other parents had a break.
i’m looking for a creepier title, lmk if you can come up with one. I tried – i played on variations of ‘Girls Gone Wet and Wild‘, and ‘Ghetto Snottsdale Pool Diaries‘ til i got bored with my attempt at cleverness. This title reminds me of a chinese dish, and its soooooooooo much cheaper than a pool. They should offer air compressors as Mother’s Day gifts too.
Alana’s voice is tiny. Cartoonish, dark knight rising, clawing up from deep inside a deep hole. Of cognition and empowerment and oratory. When she has not started a fight or sent herself into meltdown, her code is perfectly clear. Coors rocky mountain water clear. Rising out of that inky cave, grasping its edges, so close to pulling herself up. The stink bomb of willfulness and awful flying around the center of her storm is unable to obscure her voice, even a bit. Its just another filter, yet her voice is so clear.
I watched some vids of G when she was 4.5, and her voice too still sounded like an impressionist’s painting of childhood. So raw in saying, so hard to say it, so vanilla cake, syrupy and yummy. They speak in portmanteaus, and when i hear them they strike me as so normal i forget to remember them. I wish I’d kept a list of all the frankenwords my kids created. Most of us would agree they belong in Webster’s.
Genevieve’s voice is legible, relevant, thoughtful and clear. Metastasizing with each day successfully navigated, self-sustaining fuel of comprehension and competence.The honeyed spotlessness behind G’s voice makes the hard things she says sound gentle. I hope its a timbre and tone she keeps her whole life. She is so very beautiful.
I haven’t been on the bike in 3 weeks. I’ve been drinking on the trainer, getting up for school, driving so far to work cause I am so new at a new job i cant justify working from home. My flexible well-compensated workaholic world is broken. I broke my finger. Cause i was tired. Cause i am not in shape. Cause i am metastasizing downward. A seminal shift upon all my notions of value, fitness, earning potential, and maternity. It didn’t just happen snap snap; it took 7 years, sluggish cannibalism to feed their voices. Now, I want to be down here. I want to sit. 4 hour rides sound scary, and icky. 4 hours with kids sounds nominal, workmanlike, like an early weekend road ride used to feel, get it done and get on with my day.
A cheesey work kumbaya thing.
I thought about doing the drug-dealer-in-the-bathroom-with-the-drug-dog scene from Reservoir Dogs. A friend said i should just start singing Purple Rain and crying.
All that you project comes back in. Especially in facebookiness-space, the space between meat-space and cyber-space, cordially awkward social encounters and interactions. All that you project is a massage of a memory and a wish, and the nature you’re stuck with. How do you project yourself?
I have smuggled wild animals across the US-Mexican border
TRUTH
I built a backdoor into Ticketmaster’s ticketing system that would enable me to get access into any event.
LIE. I did not build it. I designed it. It doesn’t exist.
I was saved from exhaustion in the San Juan Mountains by a van full of political extremists, and I asked them to let me out
TRUTH
After 2-3 min of pleasantries and where ya froms, they dive into shooting all those wetbacks and Jan Brewer the Philosopher King. Miles I did not have to slog up in my bike shoes ticked off so slowly.
I missed getting killed in the 1993 WTC bombing by 5 minutes
LIE. Happened to one of my very best friends.
I got a tattoo of my daughters’ birthdays from a professional MMA fighter
TRUTH
Those hairs are cactus spines.
I lost it on the catwalk on National, during the Squealer. A rockface I’ve cleaned 50 times did not look the same, I hesitated, put my wheel in the wrong space, and tumbled downslope towards a cliff. It was stupid. I was tired and wasn’t seeing the trail well. I was trying to get tired earlier this year, and not save more than i needed for the climb up West National. Slowing down just a bit on the techiest stretch would have cost me a mere 30 seconds.
*facepalm*
My initial catapult into the rockface I handled well. Ish. Bu then started ragdolling down. I threw out limbs, fingers and toes, tumbled again. I stopped, dazing and buzzing, nothing was screaming in pain, but i could not bend my finger. Didn’t hurt much. Ish.
buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Going back up the trail, carrying my bike, seemed a very very far 15 vf coupled with a 30 min walk down nasty singletrack to Telegraph Pass. The road was 25 feet under me, and I could roll all the way off the mountain. I went down through 15 feet of palo verde, sliding, baby heads. I peered down the cliff…the road was soooo close. Roadies went up and down Summit Road and didn’t see me, other Squealers appeared on the exposed corner i fell from, the road was so close. This is how fucking dumbasses die you fucking dumbass.
With a refreshed survival instinct, 3 fingers and a thumb didn’t take very long to crawl back up to the trail.
At Telegraph Pass i told other Squealers to send word I was DNFing. The Gnar Van was going up and offered me a ride on their way back down. I waited 40 min, giving all the abused pieces of me time to ache, throb and make me want to get back on just to feel myself getting closer to the end. I was still racing. Ish. After the van dropped me a 30 min ride away at Boy Scout Camp, after the bumps of a painful 15 min flat spin to the car, DNFing tasted a lot better.
The right elbow was now hurting proper, and de-bibbing a new challenge with neither arm working well. Avoiding monkeybutt definitely outweighed the pain in my finger and shoulder. Shifting the Acura on the drive to the ER ensured both the left and right sides hurt equally.
Having completed the Aron Ralston punch on my Man Card, i was delighted to find the ER was slow, and flopped into a bed. They have a portable xray machine that showed only a dislocation on the doc’s laptop in minutes. He blasted my finger full of lidocaine, plucked out the cactus spines like a boss, and unfucked my finger in less time than it took the kids to watch one Sponge Bob episode. Beckie brought them to meet me. I was glad they got to see frankenstein, battered and beat-to-shit, bits of blood off cactus scratches and bounces — it will makes them respect their bodies and their bikes and the instructions i give them. Doc left me with a bitchen set of forceps. My insurance paid for them in gold.
My egg survived the calamity unscathed. I pulled it out of my camelback 10 hrs later, and dropped it on the tile floor when it slipped off my splint.
For $2.69 I got 20 percocet i didn’t need. I had 30 oxycodone leftover from 2010, which ironically managed to not be in my pack. I popped 12 old oxy over 5 days, then stopped, and did not miss a tap on the keyboard. Painkillers are not my high of choice. The percocets are worth $100 street if you don’t have a prescription. Can I get a refill?
Narcotics are a constipating agent, but Easter is a laxative. Luck would have it.
Yes.
I worked harder, despite my unemployed effort baseline being disappointingly high. Every last screw in the house has been tightened, I sucked from the public teat for 3 weeks, and did 10 rides with the girls. 3 days of snowboarding and the trip to Sedona were restorative but not restful; driving is tiring, as are fear and stoke. I would have enjoyed another month off. I am grateful to have snuck in Wolf Creek and Highline.
It was all boot camp for 9 days of Xtreme parenting that left me sortakindawanting the relief of work. Not included in the pics below are soccer, the GROAZ Day at Somo, more soccer, and a marathon trip to the zoo.
Spring slush at Snowbowl for the kids, beers and laptop on the deck for me. I negotiated my salary for an offer while riding up the magic carpet with Alana while carrying an SLR. That has got to be some new kind of dooshbaggery.
rode the Hart Prairie lift and came down by herself. Not bad for a 7 year old on Day 7. I asked her if she could doo eet, she said yes. Her first run took 40 min, and she had “an epic wipeout”. She wanted to squeeze in 2 more runs, but only got one.
Next day in Mexico.
The jump line was still there, and The Guardian in his elf suit.
I scoped it out the first morning, on the Bird but only for recon with no pads or fullface. The dirt on the takeoffs and landings was much firmer than last time, but the wood was falling apart. Jump 5 had warped into a half bow and split the run in two, the droppin wobbled badly. So instead I came down the alternate 100 yard entrance of chunky sandy singletrack into 3 small jumps and the 4 big ones I tiptoed around last trip. I thought about jump #1 all evening, and pedaling over the next morning was feeling so groovy i thought i’d simply roll on up and send it. It still took 3 tries til i could shut down my brain enough. Just send it you dork. I was sure I’d wake up in a shitty mexican hospital, but the landing was perfect and half a second later I had to prepare for the big turn, the hipper at its exit, the next jump, and the next one, and keeping enough speed up for the next one.
Felt like more than 30 seconds.
The beach was sweet, chilly, and calm. We paddled a lot, tinkles took willpower.
Hash Run
I rode the fatbike. This terrain was awesome and joy and nerve-wracking, could not unlook it for a moment. I will come up with more judicious descriptions on future trips when i am not crapping my pants, assuming i do not first break my ankle and can upgrade my brakes to BB7s.
My tracks and the Ice Cream Man’s. It reassured me i was in the most efficient spot to traverse the beach.
Ice Cream Man is a sun-baked beefjerkyish dude who drags his cart for miles over sand. Sometimes I see him rolling up to Las Conchas when I’m rolling out. He doesn’t talk much and doesn’t waste a lot of energy and doesn’t seem comfortable unless he is plodding ahead with his cart. I understand, on long rides your equilibrium freaks out if you stop pedaling when your mind is intent on pedaling pedaling pedaling until you are finally done.
G gets a fistful of mexican coins and she comes back with some fewer and ice cream. I hope he overcharges us, or finds peace in honesty.
I spend some with Antonio, El Caballero, who likes my fatbike.
Alana rode for the first time holding onto G, but got skeered and didnt want to do it again the next day. Petting the baby was enough.
Kila agrees
I hung this on the front door.
A family has five (5) members:
Which member of the family should drive the hybrid?
I’ve been trying for a week to figure out why my wife asked me if I left the note for myself. She’s been trying for a week to figure out why I didn’t address it specifically to her if it was specifically meant for her.
Our advocacy group put together a skills park. Sadly, I did not contribute to the work days. But I did own porting the website from a single page to a wordpress blog during my unemployment. My penchant for geekery put this relatively-simple task high into the billable hours, and i’ve used it to teach myself about sprites and css and all things that can impress during a job interview.
The Chollaballs arrived early for the demo day, to have the track largely to ourselves where we could raise traffic hell and shred with few potential head-on collisions.
JTFC what an awesome morning!!!!
Beckie cant deny the stoke!!
3 hours of skinnies, tabletops, teeter-totters, and pump track wear out a tinyShredder
pic courtesy of Carmen Bastek
pic courtesy of Carmen Bastek
pic courtesy of Kathleen Kigma
thank you KK, this is the best family pic we have!
This unemployed shit rocks! Tracked the weather pattern for 8 inches of fresh in Flagstaff, with a gratis lift ticket from my MTBR buddy Rockman. Thank you Joe! Skipped school, left Snottsdale at 5:30am for a day of snow single-dadding. After wardrobe anomalies I dropped the kids off at 10am covered in gore and fleece for lessons, and then shredded trees for 5 hrs. Passing G’s class on Hart Prairie at 2:45 I said ‘hey little skier‘, and she nearly fell over with joy. Then buzzed Alana giggling up the magic carpet.
Sledding til 6pm and creeping through a whiteout in the Verde Valley were small speedbumps in the Daddy Triple Header.
I repacked, recaffeinated, and headed out to Pagosa Springs the next day with Doug and Ryan. A foot of fresh, over 30 inches in 3 days awaited us.
Doug dropping the cornice on Alberta Peak
Ryan’s buddy Brad lives in Pagosa and showed us the goods all day
approaching Gate 1 of the Waterfall
another steep hike off the right side of Alberta led to knee-high pow
i hope Ryan has a beacon
Hurricane Genevieve has gotten bigger, stronger and smarter.
i watch G climb and she looks like she is flailing, hanging by 1 arm while thrashing her feet. Honeybadger don’t give a fuck. She just charges straight up and doesnt stop til she is at the top. She keeps that heavy gravity-sucking melon pointed up and never loses her flow. its ugly unless you watch the progress and not the form. She totally kicks my ass on the same lines.
On President’s Day, we rode up some social trails in the McDs foothills. The first ~1 mile is m’eh doubletrack, G was bored and faking being tired. Alana on the trail-a-bike spent 2 hrs singing. As the trail goes on it gets, by tinyRider standards, progressively more interesting – rockier, singletrackier, tighter and rollier. It ends north of the Windgate valley, with some cool views of the mtns. Halfway into the ride, G realized she was further up this trail than she’d ever been, and she got…not a 2nd wind…but inspiration. She started riding harder, more fired up to clean the rollers and sandy washes. She walked upslope on the whoopdies, not a trace of frustration on her face. I no longer had to cajole her; she pushed the pace.
enough energy at the top to roll in the dirt
The return trip was 4.5 miles and 500 feet down, G insisted on being in front and ripped the whole way home. 30 min and we didn’t stop, which has never happened before.
At lunch she ate:
Had to be over 1000 calories, for barely weighing 70lbs. Hasn’t stopped eating all day.
She’s making it bell-to-bell in her soccer practices, pouncing on plays, bouncing off kids, seeing the spot before the spot she needs to shoot. Coach told her the other day “you’re not hurt if you’re not crying, go play.” I tell her the same thing. She dusted herself off and scored another goal
Soon enough she will hate me and not look up from her smart phone. Hopefully i won’t be such a fat sack of crap that I’ll have forgotten what it means to be an athlete myself. The surrender has happened incrementally over 7 years, and its gone so deep I don’t even remember what its like to plan for my own big days. All I want is to be with my kids. I missed the Tortolita 50 putting on birthday partys, missing the Fatbike Odyssey this weekend to help coach her game. At least i’m getting a stoke bump from her now.
