chollaball.net

Authority Zero – Get It Right

I gave 3 weeks notice at work. 2 to do the right thing and wrap up a release, and an extra to burn down vacation. LiveNation stopped paying out vacation balance; all in all just another brick in the wall.

I had only ~4 days of work to do in that time, and the spaces in my Outlook calendar became a methadone program. The first day i forced myself not to check email at 9pm i got tremors. Other days i filled with bikes, house projects, trips to the pool. I finished Project Firebird, and tried new restaurants. Maad and I kayaked Saguaro Lake in the morning then installed blinds in the rental house – it was like a regular weekend day, including doing all the grocery shopping and not really feeling off work at all. I re-read my Java textbook – all 670 pages and a few of the indeces. It weighed more than my laptop, but i hauled it on commutes to work, to snatch some passages during the day and train a little. I slogged it on walks with Kila. When i was in Tent City there was this skinny, greasy dude passed out on his cinder-block sized bible during nearly all 7 hours in holding. I saw him the next day at kickout for another 3 hours, still wearing the dirty windbreaker, whispering his words, carrying his bible. Takes a junkie to spot one, i guess. A clean break, a payout, and a week off would have been smoother, but i’m not so sure better. A wean is more holistic.

I borrowed a big bike for a week, and hauled it up Mt. Elden, having so little fun i thought i’d skip replacing the Heckler entirely. It payed off on the downhill. I got this rock on Wasabi for the first time ever (pic, not of me, ganked off MTBR. thank you unknown photographer).

We daisychained onto Beckie’s Arizona Economic Roundtable Conference for 4 days in a nice hotel in downtown Flag, and didn’t move the car for 91 hrs. I couldn”t stop checking work email between trips with the girls around NAU, to Thorpe Park, the library, and Sunset Crater.

Cybro and I spent a lot of time together.

The 3 hrs I’d be in the office every other day, I mostly hid in my cube or scurried to the kitchen with my eyes down. Once I started shutting off, it was easier to continue distancing myself. The day after i dropped the bomb was filled with heavy conversations, which mercifully slowed or i subsequently managed to avoid . You get closer than you think after 7 years, and i struggled to balance closure with the reality that we hadn’t ever hung outside of work and weren’t about to start. Freedom to delete any incoming email that struck my fancy balmed a lot of the burns. All the shit i’d wanted to blow off i could, and tossed one deserving dilhole under the bus.  I went back for thirds on donuts and meeting leftovers and waved 6 times. I worked until 2:30 on my last Friday on an emergency release. Respect for great teammates. Then i wiped my drive.

My final week ‘at work‘ was about as much fun as you can have in Phx in summer. I commuted, then took the kids to the pool. I drank beer and got up at 4am for shuttles on Somo. On our first drive up the mountain we watched a cat bolt across the street with a dog right on its ass. It hucked itself up this saguaro, but was gone by the time we came down Geronimo. Pic courtesy of LateDropBob.

3 rides in armor and a full-face had me dizzy after the short climb on National to the dropin on 24th Street. It was worth it, to just geek out on trying the big bike. It was too big, literally, i needed a S not a M, and 4-5 lbs overbuilt for me. I liked it on the rock slots, where the wheels pushed back against everything that bucked me. I cleaned Trip to the Dentist on Holbert for the first time, and rolled the rock bridge and its exit and half of the boulder garden. It was partly me, partly the bike. The Heckler was a 4 yr old single pivot with a flexy rear, a 32mm fork and shitty rims. How can the next bike not be better, even if its not a 38 lb chro-mo sled?

Pro’s Market reopened their Central Avenue location. I brought home queso, pork, and a sack of roasted jalapenos.

I drank beer and got up at 4am for my first ride to Bartlett Lake. 65 miles, 4.25 hrs, and a lot of climbing. It started with a ~19 mile gradual ascent punctuated by a 3 mile climb up to Seven Springs Road. The drop into the lake was almost 14 miles, all but 4 of them down, and those 4 hurt. Statistically, the ride compared closely to Tortilla Flat, but felt little like it. The road was designed for cars with no speed limit less than 30. I hit stretches where I went almost 40mph for a minute at a time with no fear. It would be long slow death coming back up, with no switchbacks or narrow walls to distract me from my suffering. The three climbs out hurt, hurt less, and hurt more. I sailed home in under an hour.

hey buddy, there’s bacon a mile north!

The last day at work I commuted in, cause it was my idiom, and i was going to a happy hour. Another group of coworkers took me out to lunch. The 2 nicest places i’ve been in downtown Scottsdale. Outside of work, doing day-to-day things, watching people eat, i was overcome with melancholy. Work, workout, kids do not leave a lot of bandwidth. You miss out on good friends that way.

I see an Onion article out of this:

New Employee Won’t Stop Talking About Awesome Old Coworkers. Said new teammate Cybrothavan Gupta: ‘He’s sharp and easy to teach. We had a great lunch at the indian buffet. But he kept inviting us to a ‘street’ taco place near his old office. 15 years in software development and he ‘forgets’ about Hindus and cows? What a dick.’

Peter Gabriel – Solsbury Hill

Project Firebird is a contract job I took on. I’ve been outriding the Heckler, and needed a new bike to progress. Such enablement tools cost about $4k, and I am a godlike-better QA Engineer than I am a bike mechanic. I need to clean Holbert, i need to push it at NRA, i need a rematch on Hangover.

I needed professional validation, i was losing focus and fight, slipping into the lukewarm pool of above-average nominal-commitment that my path at Ticketmaster carried me down. The raise and promotion i thought 2 years ago would come hasn’t come, the position in Dev would be a 50% paycut, and my lead developer was leaving. I wasn’t worried about my job, for at least the next 2 years, only that i would be doing exactly the same thing i was now. Stagnation = death in software. Eventually i would be expendable, with Live Nation having no more commitments to the Ticketmaster team. Shredding gnar is an expensive indulgence and daycare is not cheap. A festering clockpuncher’s acceptance of no-bonuses demanded a countermeasure of fiscal responsibility, along with a howl at the moon. Fuck yeah. The reward would be my first ever guilt-free bike, a nice bullet for the reso, and growing stronger from something not killing me.

I have done so many new and challenging projects in my career…I can solve a muthafuggin problem. I’m Duke Nukem with Rambo with an extra nut with a tesla gun. And yes, you diagrammed that sentence correctly; there is a functional energy canon blasting away off the extra cajone. Drop me into your program i will unwind it and break it and wash everything in arterial spray and get it ready for production. But being great within the structure of other top teammates is one thing; contracting you are alone. People are strange when you’re a stranger. Would 7 years working for The Man in the Big Leagues prove my shit the hardest?

Actually, yes.

Just about everything was easy, in stride. When it wasn’t, working through it or around it was not that hard. Worked up a good sweat, but not that hard. Nothing is as hard a TicketMaster’s 6-layer cake. The tech challenge was larger amounts of nominal, the real problem was the void – people who didn’t know what they wanted, how its built, or what acceptance criteria were.  I used new tools, parried verbage like ‘stakeholder‘ and ‘resource‘, defined, consensified, redefined and reconsensified and rediscoverd. I could still do an all-nighter, especially for $500. I learned a new tool and new language and was functional in 40 hours. I could cleanup good and write bloated spreadsheets explaining details in painstaking detail. I wore a tie and setup a LinkedIn account. The reward was creating a job for myself, a tax-writeoff, an empowerment. 3 months later I had 3 job offers. Fate and irony and opportunity all conspire, but after 1.5 years of fishing, 3 months later I had 3 job offers. I had a contract before i made the jump to Ticketmaster too, 16 hours at $100 an hour set me and Beckie up with full snowboard kits, and I’d say the whole TM move worked out pretty well.

At first it felt like an ATM machine. Need some money, go work on the contract. Maids coming, knock out some contract. Grocery store = contract. Overtime, bonuses, found money are the American Dream. They were in no hurry, and neither was I, and I banged and floated along enough for a drivetrain and 1 leg of a fork, taught myself MS Test Manager and Visual Studio in a single day, and whined about having to sit down and work for .17 hours of email and project management. The problems of startups showed themselves: amateurs and limited experience, talented people working alone instead of together, small-town mindset. Weeks went by with my hardware not working, timelines crept up, the reality of hacking through the weeds of a V1 program, coding test code around failures. Eventually I had to deliver all by myowndamself, which is pretty much how i knew it would be, which was why even though i loved the $bling$ i had a pissy attitude about it all along. Bush leagues. The level of tactical strategicness needed equaled that of a complex environment, so much shit did not work everything i did was an escher path through a barren network.  MS Test Manager is the worst thing i’ve ever smelled, in 2 hours I was the in-house expert.

Meanwhile, I got in the pipeline for 2 positions with huge potential, and an internal position requiring a move to LA. I went in heavy, striding up up with my 2 pistolas.  I was oddly calm and confident in ways I’d never really been about delivering a message, highlighting my strengths, and connecting with their needs. QAing a product was the easy part. So this is PR? I didn’t hate it, it was just boring, and stressful – finding ways to steer conversations back to examples i wanted to explain, contexts to provide, skills to demonstrate. I actually ate NOTHING (well, almost nothing) at a free lunch, I was so focused on proselytizing.

11pm on a Monday night i was getting the Heckler ready for a dawn National ride when I saw it – a crack in the weld between the chainstay and the triangle. My first thought was relief. Finally i can get rid of it. Then i cried realizing I’d be riding Desert Classic in the morning instead. My annual trip to the Helipad brought it all into focus: close the contract, close the new job, buy a new bike.

In the next 2 weeks I put in 35 hours on the contract, and did face-to-face interviews with Apollo Group and Paypal. The first I had no idea how it went until a follow up call with the Director where we hammered out the role.  The interview for Paypal was harder than a dirty century:  7 45-min 1-on-1s back to back, and then a phone screen at night from India.

Project Firebird ended with an evening of flashbang code generation reported as a failure, to spare us all when we’d gotten to the point of garbage in garbage out. For under 2 weeks billed they got a huge test plan and 300 bug reports, automation scripts to validate acceptance-level functionality, and working samples for a toolset they had limited knowledge about. It felt fair, and I was feeling the finish when i topped my target of $4500. I got to my mark after 6 pay periods, it ended up as 17% overtime for a quarter, I did the final report and meetings during a slow afternoon at my day job during my last 2 weeks. Nearly a perfect landing. I’m pretty sure I don’t want another contract ever again, but i am shopping for a new snowboard…

I continued to ride the Heckler on dog runs, to remember its touch upon me like an influential lover.  It became intolerably leaky on its last beer run home, forcing Kila and i to walk and shuffle and ride on the rims with our 30 pack of beer. As I drank and contemplated, the tire went completely flat. 

‘I was feeling part of the scenery, i walked right out of the machinery‘

I quoted that song for the Princeton yearbook too. Some days I’ve regretted it, some i haven’t. I’ve felt much the same about giving notice at Ticketmaster.

naturally, i had to change my FB avatar to this:

The day i did this jump, i held off until a local guy showed me where to land and how to get out. Once I had the plan, the rest was all on me to execute. The stakes are the challenge, the puzzle solved is not — the bike pointing down a boulder-garden, steep trees on the snowboard, AES races. It mental. I think I can do it, which means i should, knowing how much better i’ll feel coming out the other side. I try to choose well, liking to only go a little big while taking my talents to south beach. During the marathon interview with PayPal i said about 12 times ‘there are a lot of good engineers, and i’m one of them.‘

They bought it. I’m owning it. I started on Monday.

Burgeoning confidence in my ability to knock out a long day has begat an addiction to big adventure rides. After the PMC, I was fired up and full of aplomb for this ride. It was largely on jeep roads, so an easier 100 than singletrack. The concept of dropping into Sedona from Flagstaff and climbing back was seductive.

I didn’t do any particular training, just my normal routine, and initially intended to do the 50 (nee 60) one way into Sedona.  Chump change.  But the overhead started to creep in: leave home the night before, get a ride or drop a shuttle car in Sedona, back to Flag, all to only ride 50 miles…  James decided to go big about when i did, and our goal was set.

Maad and Gordon get their game faces on in the Safeway parking lot

Nacho Libre es mas macho!!! Noel and his family put me and BrianC up at their cabin. Close proximity to the start made the 6am launch tolerable.

16 riders started, most of whom were faster than me. This ride was, ostensibly, a group ride, but I had no expectations of that happening. Neither the fast guys hammering to Sedona nor the touring guys heading to Oak Creek Brewery were a fit. I felt much better when i let go of the pack and turned on my music, trading company and a draft for a pace i could maintain. Losing the push to keep up with others was a vulnerability, so i broke the ride down into splits to keep on pace for finishing in the 13.5 hours of daylight. 6 hours to Sedona, 3 hours out of Sedona and up the rim, and 3 hours back to Flag left me 1.5 hours to rest, resupply and puke.  This translated into about a 10mph moving pace, Shnebly Hill aside, which became my metronome – each swing of speed, each slowdown, i had to target at least 10 mph or I’d never get done.

The first 25 miles were surprisingly tiring fireroads, ripples of washboard and strips of sand forcing constant activation instead of easy-spinning.  I quickly got hungry, which was a huge red flag. Driving north during dinner and getting up early set me down at least 1000 calories, and suddenly managing my hunger became as big a deal as hydrating, but harder, since I usually pig out at home and don’t think much about food while riding.  Experience helped me adapt, which wound up saving me. I finished all the food i thought i wouldn’t need by mile 70, but carefully avoided bonking the whole ride.

a tornado came through here last fall

hello, welcome to my Happy Place. Can i get you anything?

After 2 hours and about 25 miles, we neared the end of the Mogollon rim and got a glimpse of Casner Mtn.   Vistas of Red Rock Country surrounded the steep powerline road across the ridgeline.  When I saw this stretch on the topo profile, i thought it was a mistake in the track since the pitches shot straight up and down in rapid succession.

powerline roads are mountain biking’s Martin Luther King Jr Blvd

somebody ran this guy over. I’m blaming my friend Raybum, who I saw at mile 15 and then again at mile 70

wildflower season in the Valley has been pretty tepid, but looked good in the high country

throwing my bike down in frustration on this gang-banged hike-a-bike led to the above pic

approaching the 2k descent

these endurance rides bring out different kinds of riders and bikes, which is part of the fun…seeing others’ styles, strengths and weaknesses, goals and ambitions for a given day, how each person solves the problem of  The Perfect Ride on The Perfect Bike.  This guy (forgot his name) was on a rigid single-speed cross bike, and had us thinking of a Medivac as he slipped side-to-side down the babyhead-filled ruts. I was at the back of the fast pack for the entire approach, but led our group down, then got smoked again by the guys on CX bikes.

James in the switchbacks on the 3 mile descent off Casner

behind James, the switchbacks are scarred into the mountain

We were still only 35 miles in, and elation from the descent quickly turned somber, then got smacked in the mouth by the heat radiating off the red rocks during the 15 mile approach to Sedona.

By now the group had irreparably fractured, so James and I re-synched for the long haul as we began 10 miles of singletrack through West Sedona.

Sedona singletrack is slow, sandy, rocky and roasting.  My last few years of Sedona renaissance has been on the spectacular all-mountain trails like Hangover and High on the Hogs, not the XC stuff that I largely ignored for 10 years. After 4 joyless dry creek crossings along the Corkscomb trail, I voted we eject onto a road asap and get to our resupply at the Burger King in town. Another 30-60 minutes of slogging would have a big ripple effect; I was already aggressively managing Team Chollaball to finish the day.

20 minutes of adding this and discarding that in the BK’s AC, and we marched out to face the ride’s biggest challenge. At 1pm. Which dumbfuck thought that up?  Shnebly Hill Road goes up 2200 feet in 8 miles. Its a tolerable grade, but the surface is full of embedded rocks and puddles of powder.  The geologically accurate term for this terrain is ‘suck-ass‘.

We went about 2.5 miles, took a break, went another mile, ate, repeated. 1.5 hrs and 1600 feet later we got to the lookout, and had our pic taken by a dude from Florida who had flown in to attempt the Coconino 250. That put our day in perspective. The cool thing about guys like that, the AES races, my buddies today who were faster or slower, is that this whole scene is about the effort and the journey. If yours is legit, so are you, and will find gracious company.

I sunk into a pool of shade on the roadside at the summit, and ate everything left in my pack.  The end was in sight, but where? Neither of us knew much what to expect other than 25 miles of mild elevation over dirt roads. more washboards? 2 hours? 4? A couple fast miles down and onto the shoulder of I-17, where easy spinning outweighed the windblast from passing trucks.  We hit a convenience store at  Munds Park, then an awful ATV-sculpted double-track. 5mph, 7mph, 4mph…3, 3.5 hrs til finish…7:30 sunset, temps rapidly falling…click clicking in my head. James counseled me to stop looking at the garmin. He has a point. He is also much stronger than me. I require reminders to drink every 15 minutes in cool weather, every 5 when I’m tired.  I need progress reports cross referencing mileage and time and vf. If I rode more and worked less, riding would be zen and effortless, and work would be so hard. If I worked more and rode less, I’d be rich, live in Silicon Valley, and have kids writing sonatas in Montessori kindergarten. Instead i flail at each, and a descent into the depths of my endurance leaves me so empty i find a rare moment of peace with both goals.

Mile 77, my music died.

Mile 85, after 30 min of gravel roads just deep enough to be bland and awful and utterly uninspiring, I stumbled off the bike and held a safety meeting with myself. Emptiness flowed into my numb hands and feet. We saw a gift from Noel and Amy’s kids. I sang to myself, angel’s wings won’t you carry me home. No shit, it was on when the mp3 player died.

We had just packed up the signs and rolled out when Noel drove up the other way with chocolate-covered donuts that sugar-coated the last remnants of pain and frustration.  The road turned down, and paved, and for the first time in almost 13 hrs we saw the Peaks. Breckenridge Vanilla Porter awaited.

94 miles, almost 9k vf, ~10.5 hrs moving

And a few more pics from James’ trip last year, and from Yuri and Gordon’s blogs.

A cool guy named Fish built a pump track in his backyard. Thursdays are party nights. I finally visited when shopping for the Malice, to try some other bikes and a different track. The crowd is mostly from Cactus Bikes near Somo, since Fish is a mechanic there and lives in the neighborhood. Cactus is a premiere shop, but somewhere i’ve never shopped, with Rage just down the street.  I knew a bunch of the regulars from here and there, more of a DH\FR crowd that I rarely ride with, but I showed up with a 6 pack and fit right in. I’m good like that.

The Fishbowl is very different from the big moves at Rage. Its all about rhythm and speed, so everything is smaller except for one bowl at the end, which is setup to allow 2 options and passing.

Fish is a great guy, with a 4-yr old boy, and if you get there early before the party turns much more adult, its a kid-fest, with a track that is kid friendly and a yard full of kid toys!

The first time I brought G, I brought Fish a bottle of Bacardi Anejo. Welcoming  a new friend into the party is one thing, letting me bring my monster is an entirely different level of hosting.

She did at least 50 laps, undismayed by a couple hard falls, blowing everyone’s minds with her energy and her stoke. Hi I’m chollaball, and this is Hurricane G. When she wasn’t knocking out laps on a track suited to tinyRiders, she was playing with new children and new toys. I had to drag her away. She kept asking for a week when we could return. I couldn’t wait either. Everyone there had kids, and kept eyes out for all the others, and yielded to all riders smaller than 4 feet. At moments I’d jump on and maybe get 3 good laps before some child or another would break all rules of traffic safety, but there was so much happiness and laughter no one minded.

By her second visit she was a pro, stayed out of the big bowl, and barely fell. There was a birthday party being held, and G sang and had cake and rode with a new friend. I got some tips for getting over the front wheel and looking at the exit as soon as i enter a turn. Excellent times.

Photos are from Yuri.  Thanks bud, that ride was too much fun. 5 minutes from the end we hit a 30 yard long jersey barrier. Yuri nailed it end-to-end. I’d never seen it, and got squirmy 5 yards from the end so manualed off – first time I ever went kinda big on a manual when i had no other options, and landed it.

and one of Alex. I dunno how this pic unfolded with light and translucence, but it captures the moment. Alex blew my mind a few months ago cleaning this nastiness on his first-ever try.

Monday – Rage PT, and dog-walk on the Malice. I am finally learning how to manual, and dropping curbs on 1 wheel.

Tuesday – hour on the trainer while i sat on a conference call, then the Blur and the trailer to pick the kids up from school. We rode home via the Library and Westworld.

As I packed my ‘Go Box’ for Wednesday at Papago Pit on the Heckler, it dawned on me that with a completely holistic effort, I could pull off the clean sweep.  If eating shit on a steep drop to steep tranny didn’t mess me up.

Thursday, the Hei Hei and  I helped Yuri, Gordon, John and Alex plant a Tequila Tree. Excellent times were had, and I cleaned the move that gnarled my finger up almost a year ago. Some very fun pics on Yuri’s blog.

Friday I was going to commute, but a necessary visit to the client site for Project Firebird put the kibbosh on those plans. No Masi, but I made a C-note for an hour and a half.

Saturday I got up early and took the roadie out to the peak of Happy Valley Road. In the hazy overcast morning was the shimmer from the Superstitions 50 miles away, Tom’s Thumb from the other side, and a panorama across the whole north and southeast Valley.  I feel summer approaching, and a curiosity to get out that way at 5:30am with a camera and a gps.

All the Chollaballs then again joined the THNR crew for a trip downtown for the San Tan Wheelie Jam, a fun silly excuse to ride bikes and drink beer.  We had a nice group of parents and kids rolling from Yuri’s house.  And I rode the Masi – check!

navigating metro Phoenix

pre-parade

G was stoked to be in a parade. Unfortunately, her first ride in heavy traffic and a big pack shook her. We stopped half-way through so she could check out the parrots in a tropical bird shop we spotted. Sometimes we all miss Jo, in theory. Completing the course by ourselves, G tipped the odometer into her most mileage in a day, eventually ending at 10 miles and almost 1.5 hrs saddle time.

Snacks and facepainting were the rewards

why are you so tired?

mmm…San Tan Beer Garden

back at Yuri’s for bbq and shenanigans

seriously…what are the odds of getting 3 little girls to look and smile at the same time while swinging?

hard to believe, but i only have about 7 hrs saddle time so far this week.

Seems like a simple question with almost 9k descending over 60 miles, but 7 hours in, with my ass screaming from the world’s worst case of monkeybutt every time I stood or sat , the answer was no longer clear. With no remedy in sight, I grinded my butt into the seat so the pain would fade quickly.  I had a wonderful giant tub of shammy-butter in the car, but blew past it when 10 minutes before the start i heard a zzzzzzzzzzzzzing zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzing zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzing from my front rotor as it rubbed against the limp, bent clip holding apart the pockmarked brake pads.  The day before, I discovered a stuck piston from my Hayes brakes, and with no time to get to the shop or repair and test it myself, i swapped an old front Juicy from the Blur. It worked great in the bikestand the night before!

15 minutes of frantic work by James and I didn’t really help.

I DIDNT WORK AND WORKOUT AND JUGGLE SCHEDULES ALL WEEK LONG TO GET UP TO PRESCOTT AND BAIL IN THE PARKING LOT!!!

So, fuck it, we set out about 10 minutes after the pack, and I repeatedly squeezed the brake lever and wondered if the hydraulic pressure would normalize and give me some stopping power before the spring scored a line in the rotor or got shaved off and dropped the brake pads in the dirt. If it happened, i’d turn back. but not before.

We quickly caught the back of the pack in the Dells. A lot of riders hated having this uber techy stretch in the race, and if I didn’t know what to expect or was a lycra-wearing xc weenie I’d have agreed, but I couldn’t have thought of a better way to start. There is no ‘Best of Prescott‘ ride without the Dells, and the 29er rolled all the wheel-swallowing, suspension-squatting ruts far better than the Heckler. I couldn’t do any BIG moves, but with the goal being to move fast and take a bite out of the long day, dialing into my bike and my body geometry and the rocks right in front of me eased the tension of my wonky brakes from my mind. I still had to squeeze the lever about 6 times before every little descent for the first 30 minutes, but passing people who would gobble me up on the long climbs made me happy.

We had a line of about 10 riders exiting the Dells, unusual for me and an underground race where I am usually at the back, and it kept the pressure on me to keep pace.  Balancing the benefits of speed and navigational assistance vs. doubts over my own fitness was difficult, but as usual, my inner rah-rah guy won out and I went hard.  We worked through the Granite Basin area and then another 20-odd miles of climbs and descents through almost-alpine and high-desert.  I settled into a groove with my buddy Nardo and his (nee, my new) friend James.  They kept pushing my pace, I had a good gps, and good times were had. I bounced between my Quiet Place, my Tired Place and my Happy Place for about 4 hours. I’m fat, out-of-shape, and kids making me spend way too much time on the trainer or the bike trailer or the pump track. But my 20-year base, a week of healthy choices, and smart riding kept me going reasonably strong. I never cracked, just a few little fissures and a couple times i simply gave up climbing to push for awhile. 9:15, and mid-pack – a result I had no expectations of achieving, which tells me once again I am a perennial sandbagger, a gross underestimator, or just stoopid lucky. The takeaway for me is relief that my kids have not made me a total fat sack of crap just yet.

I don’t remember a lot of specifics from the middle 5 hours, other than an incredible whoopdee descent into Granite Basin, and rolling Mint Wash.  The rest was an ebb and flow of weakness and resolve, gravity and thrust, and self-shuttling. The course gave constant payoffs for each in the unending series of climbs. We hit the 2nd water stop at just about 2pm, an hour ahead of my cautious cut-off point, and on pace to do 9 hrs. A proper deuce, a party hat, a protein drink, a dunk under the cool spigot and fresh sunscreen charged me out and up Trail 396.  Its a beautiful mild undulating climb, and teamed with the water stop to inspire me to ~ mile 45, when fatigue and the course’s Boss Round took over – 2 miles and 1000 vf up Spruce Mountain Road.  At the time, I thought Spruce Mtn Road could be upto 5 miles and 2k, and about .25 mile in you hit a demoralizing pitched curve filled with golf-ball gravel. I pushed up and cross ref’d my gps’ elevation total with my watch. 100 vf in .10 mile, 50 vf the next .1 mile over 2 minutes, and so on. I tried to flashback to the climb to the Wasatch Trail in Telluride, knowing i slayed it in an hour, knowing this would not be that bad.  Nardo and I overshot the turn onto Smith Ravine trail by about 150 awful soul-killing yards.

Smith Ravine was the beginning of the end. 10 miles of mostly-dh.  It was fun, but i was riding tired, and didn’t get it as good as i can.  Dialing it back was an easy decision, i had nothing to prove at this point in the ride. I was going to finish in respectable shape and all the way from the Dells through the tight switchbacks and banked turns and wheel-grabbers I’d been moving the bike well. Pump track and jumping skills crossing over. Not anything too dramatic, but 3 seconds from leaning on the front wheel instead of scrubbing speed in a turn, 2 seconds and 2 fewer cranks pumping over rocks, grabbing air and acceleration still at mile 55.  Hours spent lately on the bike that don’t work my legs or fit into my mileage log, but tire me and beat me, to push through an infuriatingly low artificial ceiling. It requires finesse along the z-axis to overcome.  I’m so far from good, the first time i got air under both wheels hitting the big tabletop at Rage PT I nearly skated off the next turn i was so far from in control. 2 days later I ate shit on a steep drop to steep tranny at the Papago Pit, but I’m going back this week.  Tomorrow I am riding roadie.

The last 7 miles on 305 took longer than it should, too many road crossings draining 2 minutes and 20 cal of energy each. My (new) goal of 9 hrs was slipping away. The intra-stream goal-establishment wasn’t as much a challenge as a necessary adaptation. Out of my foggy memories of long stretches of trail, I remember looking at the gps and thinking ‘just keep pushing til 6:50‘.  Then nearly puking, and thinking ‘just keep pushing til 6:47‘.  I don’t do well dialing down to microcosms of suffering, i lose my will in the details. I need to see the big picture. Back before the first water stop i checked my split, and picked a target. Even after the sluggishness of the Dells I could get an 8-9 hr finish. I was not puking, and Nardo was pacing me in exchange for navigation, so i clutched and floated at that slightly-unsweet spot until gravity finally brought me home.

Not a total fat sack of crap just yet.

Maad had this kooky kool idea, as he often does.

I had a bunch of trips to NE Mesa with the rental house turning over, and vowed to hit Hawes looking for it! Its weird to need an incentive to ride Hawes, but more it was an incentive to not let shitty-rental-house-fixathon get me down.   Psychedelic sunsets would be my reward for fiscal responsibility. I launched at 6:30 on Tuesday after 5.5 hours of chores, and probed Twisted Sister out and back through sundown to scope the right launch point for the Treasure Map.

I deconstructed the poem for clues, sentence-diagramming and interpretive poetry, knew every roll in the trail, and almost as many in Maad’s deviant plotting.  I was so confident I would find it, the hour i spent poking up and past and back over it in the dark seemed like foreplay. I was 99% to it in 10 minutes, so apache am i. But I still rolled home  empty-handed, hauling the fifth of El Jimedor I intended to offer the gods. What was the phrase…99% doesn’t get a space shuttle to the moon?

James joined me on Friday, under strict instructions to keep his thing-sayer from saying things. I had a plan, some serious Blofeld shiz, ready to Brothers Bloom him back on his azz.  Unbeknownst, I brought the only beers on a beer ride. I could search to my content, and horde all the beer, til he caved under the pressure of information for barley.

My brilliant plan failed.

The instant we set off on foot, he countered with a woeful ‘I’m thirsty‘.  My paternal instinct and temperament towards bons temps rouler took over. DAMMIT! I’m such a stoopid friendly drunk!

So I searched more, I scoped, and referenced, and triangulated through the desert.  No-handed, calculations in one fist and a brewski in the other, i picked up and down the rocky hillside. James trailed me round, asking for more beer, and sighing like a woman. Telling him that struck a nerve, and my new plan turned to loosening his tongue with pints and nagging.

I found it.

When i was struck by certainty, i reached out for it like Indiana Jones.  I will claim .49% of the last 1%, the rest I was given in hot\cold clues. James needed to spill his secret, I preyed on that weakness, and thirst, and riding in 98 degrees (not an April Fools joke). Sun Tzu advised choosing your battleground, or deception, or being feared safer than being loved. I don’t remember, Tequila Tree warms all hearts in hazy glow.

a humble offering

new toy

Rage made me a screaming deal on a beauty, a high-end package for killer value. The math vs. wrenching and shopping and effort and quality was easily settled by mad luv for a great LBS, which lets us tear it up by ourselves for 2 hours after closing.

G took some not-bad pics

My kids and i came home filthy and exhausted.  

There are no pics of Alana,  i was too busy pushing her lap-after-lap on G’s bike while she hooted and howled and did not try to put her feet down, and threw a fit when i stopped.  Her tricycle is a death machine on the track, next time we’ll upgrade her to the 12 incher. She made up for lack of riding with intrepid scaling of the table-tops.

This took 2 years to nut up to. Totally mental.

every 5th step on the top flight was extra long and broke up the increasing frequency that would have forced me into speed. Every step on the second flight was equally long enough for the entire middle to feel academic, an opportunity to come back into control, and the pitch on the last flight became a simple straight shot. Hardest part was avoiding the discarded bottle of Hershey’s syrup sitting in the middle of a step off the last turn – an attractive nuisance ready to shoot out from under my wheel. I coulda kicked it away on the hike up, but i don’t condone trail sanitation. The broken glass and rusted rebar and concrete blow made a high price for failure.

After nearly 40 rides without companionship, this weekend i gave up the idea of distance, in favor of freeride explorations, sprints and meanderings for fresh urban techiness. I found some other never-hit skinnies and jumps and staircases. This is the toughest trial in the city, thus far. The pic shows the steepness lost in the vid, but not the crusty and rusty and dusty with glass.