chollaball.net

beckie saw this, and the box, and thought I ganked it from a dumpster.  i have been known to do that. But no, again the day is saved by several feet of duct tape wrapped round the hand pump. I don’t want my dinner to spill.

It went like this…

i was biking the kids home from school, as per usual. Minding my own business. There was an artsy-walky thing going on at school. Little did i know. Hence our fashionably late arrival. Kids pranced around, showed me paper machete, and ran themselves retarded on the playground. By the time they were hungry, they’d nearly won the party, with an abundance of pizza and a dearth of eaters. $5 firesale, we took 2.

i was gonna strap it to the roof with bungy, wrap it up in a grocery bag in my pack, until G volunteered Alana to hold it.

Me: Alana?
Alana: i don’t want to
Me: pizza!
Alana: *gnom gnom gnom*

I’m a thinker like that. Its 4-20.

It sat on top of her like a delicious blankey.  She still howled and begged me to take her up and then down the big hill again. I’m scheming up an interval workout, soon, really really soon. But not tonight. When we pulled into garage she was hiding under it.  For a second i actually thought she fell out.

Back after a 1 year layoff! BEST.RACE.EVAH!

Seriously Jim? I said on my registration I’m a fatter’sack’o'crap this year?

these have been sitting for 10 years in the garage, we do not play shot-chess.  Complete with their own 661 armor and a fistful of sharpies, i was inspired. If I could not break 2 hrs, I would win the Bunny Bribery Award!

one girl asked me if my kids did these. Hellz no, my artistry is a match for any kindergartner.

They were a huge hit.

Bunnies at Turnoff to Egg Hunt: these are so cool, you made them for us?
Me: yup!
Bunnies at Turnoff to Egg Hunt: oh i like that one, no i like the black one, oh look at the pink one…
Me: thanks for volunteering…now hurry the fuck up and pick.

riding to the start i saw this coyote. Hard to see, huh? So is the curb when you are snapping photos of a blurry coyote. Worst injury of the ride.

Derrick likes the glasses and the kahlua at the start

I raced, i cramped, I did surprisingly well. Were it not for stops to give out glassware and lend a dude a tube I would have tied my PR of 2:01.  Oddly, that year I made BV in 40 min and Telegraph Pass in 1:02, this year was 45 and 1:07.  Did I seriously make time on the HAB and ridgeline? The downhill again came faster than expected, and I had legs leftover. Next year I’m screwing the bunnies and the people needing tubes and shooting my wad as soon as we finish the hike-a-bike, mebbe i’ll finally break 2 hrs.

Amy pioneering the Squealer half-marathon

good times at the awards ceremony. i was disappointed it skipped the receiving of the Best Bunny Bribe – I surely missed a most-excellent group hug. The girls all bought me a big Lemon Drop, stoke for next week’s ride.

Chongo podiums again!

Do I still ride bikes?  Its a fair question, but I have proof.

Feb 5: High desert and snow on Trail 37 in Prezkit, day after we hiked the Canyon

Feb 19: first time riding K-Trail by the Superstitions, with Gordon

March 15: 38mm tires in place of 32′s make the Masi a kinder ride. Diggin’ my reflection at AZ Falls, where I met Yuri, Gordon and The Gnome for a 50 mile ride urban ride down to Boulders on Broadway

March 23: i dont want to hold her down dont want to break her crown when she says lets go i like the night life baby

I’ve repurposed the Blur, there is no need which I wouldn’t take the HeiHei or the Bird — $5k well spent. But I do need a bombproof utility vehicle, that i dont lock up cause its insured for $2500 more than its worth, and i dont clean and i dont lube and i dont care. Everything that once was shiny or new has been swapped out, drilled out rims for thorn-resistant tubes, but the seat is still comfy! A few more reflectors and its the Masi’s bigger, tougher, sturdier twin. Good for river rock and crapassminichunk, good for runzeheunding, good for pedaling G to school and locking her bike then towing Alana and locking the trailer then pedaling to work.

March 30:Good for mildly-offroad glowy sunsets.

G learning to notice things at bike speed

tinyGnar Junkie hit it 7 times in a row. i spotted her the first 3, then didn’t bother. She hit it the next morning going into school. Chagrin and consternation abounded amongst teachers’ aides.

This is your captain speaking, you may now feel free to move about the cabin. Alana puts her seatbelt on, she cannot take it off – is this an instinctive survival skill or anti-survival skill?

March 31: N. Snottsdale Slightly AllMountain Suburban Terrorist ShredFest. Drop-to-flat on Thompson Peak Parkway.

reload the tree

can this view be cross-triangulated to the tree?

My commute to Paypal is 5 miles, and sadly i have done it less than 10 times in 6 months. I rode in once my 2nd week, just to hit that, then i was so busy onboarding for a month, then Beckie started traveling for work, and then they did renovations to the shower. These were mostly excuses. Mostly i didn’t like all the overhead for 23 minutes of riding. Until i had to rrrrrreally start grubbing for riding time, and sampled the new locker room with complimentary toiletries. I am frugal, i enjoy the sensuality of q-tips and mouthwash, free hot water and body wash are worth at least $65 extra a year, and i won a $25 ebay giftcard as an incentive for the mandated Maricopa Country Trip Reduction Plan. Its 5 miles! Tired, weary, hungover, hungry, hot, cold, sunburned, stressed, addled, over-caffeinated, fat-saturated — Genevieve did it with me once — its 5 pathetic miles!

Once i put it onto the project plan at the scrum meeting, i easily did 3 days in a row. But here i am all kitted up 2x a day, and nowhere to go? Possibilities are intriguing for easy brick workouts with minimal overhead: 45 – 120 min CX or XC to the office and back, 20 min of freeweights, 20 min of pilates, 45 min at the gym, 2 miles jogging, runzeheunding, or picking the kids up from school.

Today was the bi-annual bike-to-school day. We locked G’s new ride Hawkeye up in the morning, i rode to work, home, then back with the trailer. From back in the day…G got a free ride across her campus, and experimented with gravity.

G remembered our route from Alana’s school to her school to the golf course, and wanted to lead. Fearless she is, even after she ate shit twice in gravelly transitions in the dark. It didn’t phase her, just motivated her to pick a new spot on the fairway for us to romp. The only 20 feet of rope on the course becomes Angry Birds, pigs popping while little girls tumble down the links.

Alana is such a girly-girl, so tender and so moody. Her idolatry of G pushes her beyond any positive or negative reinforcement i’ve failed to provide. How does an offspring of mine refuse practical shoes? At least she knows barefoot is better.

Insistent on these clothes, which somehow match

dirty girl is happy, she may yet become core

i had no hand in this, Genevieve posed it

The Beatles – Here Comes The Sun

One can actually live on work, obligations and beer for 4 straight days!

96 hrs online, on the kids, or drunkspinning workfinishing. sleep arbitrated with laundry and dishes and feeding the masses. crossfit parenting, dulled to the perfect edge for trudging.

We 3 launched with purpose by sleeping late on Tuesday, an executive decision to power nap, everyone still tired from the zoo and dreading mommy gone. Leisurely breakfast and play with binoculars over a babyblue Valley morning a bon voyage for them, skipping agroSnotsdale school traffic godspeed for me. Why do stay-at-home-moms bristle at the term ‘unemployed‘? I won’t use it, if you won’t drive like you’re late to a meeting.

Wednesday was my monthly volunteer day. I helped kids with math. I went to PE and did aerobics with G. it was the best part of my day, even better than Bagel Day, which is inevitably pockmarked with co-irkers. I spent 30 minutes commando in Fresh&Sleazy, and somehow did not eat any of it til 3 days later. Why would a child complain about a quesadilla? Melted kiddie plates forgotten in the oven looked like Dali clocks, late sittter, sidewall slice at 2 miles in to a 1hr window dodging crap-ass minichunk, spunk dry, forgot extra sealant: white people problems. It is dark and calm and 60 degrees over a babyblue Valley night. I jogged home, ran back out with the dog, took a staff meeting on IST time, drank heavily. Doing it the next day and the next.

I’ve seen a lot of blogs from parents. The women writers gush and whine and take 4x too long to get to the fucking point. The men act disdainful, then redeemed, then make bad fart jokes. I am disinterested in their little monsters and blogspot subdomains. I don’t want to wallow in pearls of wisdom, i just want it to be quiet for another day pushing a boulder up a hill.

I try to find a sparkle every day, something remarkable to testify. Some days the kids or the dog or the sunset provide, some days its a chore and a bore and i slice sidewalls. Some days i can’t even enjoy rubbing one out cause i can no longer imagine any conceivable narrative where stripper-hot women would be interested in me. So omnipotent is my lameness, it suspends suspension of disbelief, even in a porno.

Its 65 and sunny everyday of an AZ winter. Annnnnnnnnnnnnd its trainer season! Monday – trainer! Tuesday – trainer! Wednesday – sidewall slice, and then…trainer!!!

Since i clearly don’t ride anymore, i made myself happy the next best way, and bought gear. Thanks Fish! Then i fought with my kids and kicked Alana’s bike down the street, cause i’m good at ruining a day like that.

Maad gave me a charity fuck and drug me out at 3pm Friday around the Gateway Loop. The start of the weekend was so beautiful it stung, but i could only wheeze and wallow over spanking Alana that morning, even though she so had it coming. Maad bitched about needy bitches and their booty calls interrupting his training sleep. FML. Personal best time on Paradise Wash – 7:32.

50 minutes is not a ride, so i made myself happy the next best way. Kila and i picked the girls up from school.

G showed off her bike by riding around the gym at Kids Club. i asked her if she thought Alana would remember we fought that morning. G figured no, and Alana couldn’t be happier to see us and the bikes. We took the long way home through the golf course. The kids rolled down hills and romped in the dark til they were dizzy. We showed Alana a swamp we’d found the week prior, formed where the golfcourse’s irrigation settles. Reeds and lush trees sprung out of the ill-planned source at the lowpoint of fake greenery interweaved with bands of desert. Hundreds of small black birds chittered in the reeds, quieted as we approached, fled to the high branches as Kila sloshed through the muck, then dropped like beads in a lava lamp back down to the reeds.

I’m so sick of lame-ass obituary drivel about ‘he died doing what he loved.’  I hate dead-legged interminable uphill slogging cold-sweating cramping fileting by catclaw and wondering how my wife is gonna rip me a new one cause i’m so late to NYE festivities. That would have been a horrible — terrible — death, and in my final moments of breathless frustration i would have screamed and cursed the Heavens and wondered why i was not at home playing Wii with the best little girls in the world.

The AZ Trail from the Picketpost TH outside Superior, to the Gila River and back. 41 miles, and we thought 7500 vf.  Turns out it was 9k, that extra 20% all stuffed into 10 miles on top of another 2500 vf., and about 3500 before that. I was doing great through the first 5 miles of the climb.  Easy reliable 15 min miles that steadily rolled off me. The last 5 punctured all reserves and left me completely and utterly shattered. I haven’t had my ass handed to me so badly in a couple years. The climb just kept going and going, and going. All I could think was ‘i have to get out of this canyon! i have to get out of this canyon!‘ When I finally did, my left leg locked up both ways. It cramped extending and it cramped contracting. I couldn’t spin out the cramp or be still with it. I flopped over on a switchback, trapped in cramps extending and contracting, and writhed on the trail for 20 seconds until i was able to grab my foot and pull my leg bent, whenceforth it cramped again and i had to stand up to prop my leg extended, whenceforth… This continued for 2 hours.

Other than all that, it was a primo day on primo trail

The trail is holistic, and follows the contours of the terrain so seamlessly i often couldn’t guess where it went around the next bend. Its surface blended the landscape. Some sections are bench cut, others over embedded rock, through rock gardens or stream crossings or narrow lines on exposed pitches. There were no freebees.

out to the dropin at mile 14 and back would be a great long day without being totally brutal. ~5 hrs, but not so much that you lost the joy of the engagement on the trail I averaged just under 11 min\mile out to mile 14.  A bit faster on the return. It was flowy and snug, but i was so broken the last 5 miles i appreciated very little.

y

the change in tree color marked the Gila River

strange bedfellows

I rounded a corner and saw Doug rolling through this on the far side. It reminded me of a sequence i took of Beckie in The Canyon, the distances and scopes were similar.  can you see him?

lemme help ya out with that

two handbrakes, rear deraileur, squishy and too long. A dirt ride covered in her bigger bad-ass pads and new jersey allowed saddle time and gentle falls. G did so well already!!!

Last day of 10 to enjoy the family outta town, i headed to Tuxson to ride something new and pretty with a new friend who offered to show me around.

I made brownies.

so psyched was i

What a POS is my camera. but if trends continue, one of my kids will break it within 6 months. You’ll just have to use better imaginations to appreciate all the lush chunky violence of the terrain. The backside of the Catalinas is dense, bouldery and tight. Thicker with cactus than anything here in the Valley.

The loamy soil was still moist, and offered outstanding grip even in the many transitions from rockface and back. Flowy traverses, bermed descents, and punchy climbs kept the ride exciting and the heart rate up. Any bike will handle this trail, but stoked for techy opportunities, the Bird was the perfect choice for me.

i gots da last Rage DH jersey, suckas!

lots of b-lines. we were having too much flowy fun on the Lower and Upper Chutes to take many pics. I hit most of the alternate trials and jumps, but not this one.

wadding…

wadding…

booyah! wadded up!

So tell me people, what is the right technique for these long steeps?? I managed on 3-4 other ones out there by creeping in gently and massaging the rear brake down. I just didn’t want to try this without watching someone else go first…twas the night before xmas, I’m not going to the ER. :nono::yesnod:

I could not bear to put the Heckler in the recycle bin, we’d been through too much together. So I took it out to the desert and gave it a proper burial.

with a great view

rain brought out all the ghetto-tubeless residue, and set the tone for ceremony

bottle opener on the frame still works

i made a toast

and poured some out for my homey