chollaball.net

I was tossing my empties from a dog ride in the dumpster at Westworld, when I found it filled with the better part of someone’s backyard.  Some people in Scottsdale have never heard of the Goodwill store.

I did not go out with the intention of dumpster-diving, but I can’t resist something free and in good shape. Ok, not good shape, but good-enough shape to have an adventure. So I stashed some toys, and formulated a plan.

This is about the 6th time Kila and I have picked the girls up from school this way. Our new ritual. We’ve heretofore gone home via the Hill Park and the Library, giving the kids a chance to raise hell before settling in for the night.

They love it, immediately look for snacks, and wonder what adventure is in store

I showed them the map, and said we’d start at the fountain where Kila gets water. G knew what I meant, and almost new how to get there from school. Alana played along.

1.5 mile approach

consulting the map at the Westworld TH.

across the parking lot, down between the hills, under a tree…

someone else out playing with their kids

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.

it was on the tip of my tongue, til i decided ‘milestonamonstrous!’ would suffice.

Pre (slightly-Post)-Emptive Warning: This post is lame and will suck.

no photos, and prose that is mostly weary and in food coma. It was too milestonamonstrous to not throw down on paper while fresh. Some days being father to these kids is a blessing from angels.

Alana rode her goofy plastic tricycle more-or-less to The Eagle.

You: WTF is The Eagle?
Me: Dude, you don’t have the handshake.

Those little legs have figured out how to steer and pedal. They kept going, kept climbing, kept rolling downhill. G rode the strider bike, while Alana huffed with jealousy and fretted with temerity, but knew exactly our destination.

At The Eagle, Alana climbed up the walls, and the rock piles, while G spotted her. And when she wanted to keep climbing and G wanted to ride the trike, she got bent but I just kept repeating ‘share share share‘ til her breathing quieted and she seemed to get it. G was a great big sister by saying thank you and giving me no grief about giving it up after a lap.

and giving a demo!

we rode up the hill. i forget things. we kept riding home, 2 beautiful little girls following me and each other, our tinyPeloton, herded by our dog. G sessioned the tiny slope into the parking lot, Alana wanted to try. Alana wanted to switch bikes. And she was on the strider bike and coasting down gravity and getting it. Use your feet, roll roll. Sharing, sessioning, trading back and forth my 2 great little girls, sessioning some more.

Alana finally crapped out and took the gimme in the jogging stroller the last 200 yards home.

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.

G started asking about the rock wall at the gym a week before her bday.  at 5+2 days she got her bonus present.  It would be fun, i was equally excited.  Her first time out she really sucked, but she got better every time up the wall.   Within a few runs she figured out to lean into the wall and not the harness, to move 1 limb at a time, to plan the move.  I tried to help her, but wtf do i know about climbing?  We hit it 3 times in the first week, and each session showed improvements – learning a little about her gear, what rope she liked, patiently waiting her turn. By then she knew as much about climbing as me.  A few weeks and half dozen sessions later, i see her ebbs and flows, when she is upbeat and when she wants to cruise. I have no plan for her, jut to coach the moments to help her succeed or have fun at whatever she is up for that day.  Usually it works, and when it doesn’t, I climb a line or let her play on the rope til she’s ready to go again or go home. Yesterday at the park i talked her up a puzzle moving 1 limb at a time just like on the wall, and another little tick-tock forwarded in her brain.

The week after she started climbing, we went to the pump track for the first time. I had the day off, took the girls out of school to the zoo, Lolo’s for chicken and waffles (G remembered from 6 months ago), then to Rage. I told her it was a party, and she loves parties, and i brought both their bikes jic.  The best and most unfeigned thing about my kids is if they see something cool happening, they want in!  But the PT is a complicated scene for little girls. No real reason as to when someone goes shooting around the track, when its clear, and why she can’t stop wherever the hell she pleases. Its a friendly scene, and dudes were gracious. By her second lap the lot full of shredders was cheering on the little blond riot gurl.  She ate shit heading into the sand in the inside of a bermed turn, and next time and almost every time after figured out how to get on the wall and rip.  She was fearless going up and down lips, and taking the dropin 7 feet down to carry her over the 4 ft tabletop. The only time she got off her bike was when she crashed.  This is mostly how it went the next couple trips to the track, non-stop, dauntless, elated. She got pissed when i came home late and told her i took the Malice to the track. She got pissed when she saw it on my rack dropping her off for school. She got psyched when i came home from the Fishbowl and reported on kid-friendly hours and small rhythm rollers.

The next week, she tried skiing for the first time. The sequencing was wonderful, and eerie, like i was scripting her reality show, programming her to be a deep cover assassin.  But dodging bullets in slow-mo is not on my Outlook cal for next week, soooooo my conscience is clear.

Child Services Rep: Sir, were you exposing your child to danger?
Me:  She wanted to, she was pretty good.
Child Services Rep: gnarness is no excuse for bad parenting.
Me: I gave her pads.

Skiing was equally awesome. Her progress seemed glacial to us, but not to her, and she rode the wave until she crashed.

Day 2 was better, and Day 3 she got on and off the lift and completed a green run. Conflicted all weekend about not being with her, while getting shooed away by the Squaw Kids staff, and tugged by our own repressed love of boarding, we were thrilled and relieved. She is a bit above average — which was cool — and got to taste the mountain to end her trip, which was the capstone on our foot of fresh on Day 3.

token pic

awesome pic!

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.

i’ve had the blues, the reds and the pinks. One thing’s for sure, love stinks– The J. Geils Band

love?

i’ll tell ya about love… its laundering a load of lights after a roadtrip. Endless stacks of tiny shirts and tinier shirts, lycra-woven socks that could almost fit any of us, and shirt-like pant-like flower blossoms that defy identification. My children are disgusting, they go through 2.8 outfits each, per day, more on weekends. I would kill myself if i thought about being reduced to this, but the residual stoke of the weekend makes it a game.

I should turn this into an app, dudes would so buy this. A next-gen version of my vaporware  Sorting Silverware, which was too easy to be profitable. You go for the bright-colored kids stuff, then the nipples and straws and air ducts, knives cause the handles give them away, forks, big\little spoons. 20 seconds, too easy.

V2 adds challenges and  noise, starting with color blindness. 2 little girls == 0 navy blue || hunter green.  The game also gets harder with fatigue from 4-6 more loads of laundry waiting for me, or that i’ve done, or that i’m doing.  Its like my commute – so horrible, that only a time trial and self-flagellation inspires enough motivation to make me believe its good.

Desperate Housewives, I bring you…

Bulletstorm X: Laundromat (working title)

Its going to kick ass! Sort or die, dive in, go!

• ownership x 4
• type {pants, shirt, socks, toy, towel, blankey, UNDERPANTS!, shorts, other}
• hangers.  *oooph* didn’t see that one coming. big hangers, little hangers, pants hangers – getting past that is like a Boss round.
• dryer vs air dry
• which fucking drawer? I gave up with Alana, and she now has a drawer of anything with 2 leg holes

I think i can get my time down to 6 min per load.

this is the most awesomest thing evah!!!! Beckie acts like she’s doing me a favor when i work on her bikes; G wants me to set her up with tools, Alana  begs to help and then she dances. No TomSawyerizin’ or nuttin.

I wanted G to see Kila romp in the moonlight on a golf course. Its something I’ve wanted to share with her as soon as she was old enough to pull it off. That kind of joy is so healthy, for both of them. All of us. When I broke it down logistically, it really wouldn’t be too hard to pull off – lights, blinkies, snacks, fluffing that morning, a healthy dinner, a mile on a bike lane, an MUP, then the cart path. Shutting down my light on the golf course left G with only her petzl. I explained how she shouldn’t worry – the surface and the width would be completely consistent with what she was experiencing right now. When we finished, she was rolling by the moonlight.

G cracked off the 2 mile approach, followed me in the dark down a single-track with no pause, and hopped off when i told her to push up the big hill. Go straight, turn, left, right, stop…3 days of getting her ass handed to her on skis made her suddenly sooooooooooooooooooo much smarter on the bike. Where she could do something about it. Thinking and flowing and taking instruction. I had a feeling it would go that way, which was why i invited her. The day we returned from our snowboarding trip, I did a track stand throughout the light at Bell and Thompson Peak, something I’d only ever managed for 20 seconds. I went up Tom’s Thumb, cause anything less seemed flat after 5 days of snowboard dreams. On the descent i discovered how to continue steering through the last quarter of a turn. In retrospect, its hard to imagine how i’d missed it for so long, how i’d turn and lean and then hope the last part of the curve worked out. Pump track or snowboarding? Who cares! I came down East End more in control than ever before.

The snow transformed G too. Full of poise and power and confidence, it was the best ride we’ve ever shared. Sometimes I’d jack both brakes cause she rolled underfoot, but i just told her to keep paying attention and enjoying the ride. She is so fun and so funny when she’s on her game. She led, I led, Kila led. We had a beverage stop at the lake. We walked off the carpet of green into a wash, explored down it chasing birds out of tress in the darkness, then back up to our bikes, calling out lines and grades and required foot positions she learned on the climbing wall. There is a 40 foot descent back onto the MUP, that transitions from paved to packed with gravel in between. I asked her to take a moment, to think about which line was best, and then to go.

Is it selfish to be so happy i have a great riding partner, held captive for the next 13 years?

having your own bouncer for 8 hrs ought to be illegal. all the silliness they can not do at Pump It Up, Lifeguard Chollaball allows! Popcorn for everyone! the birds in the yard will be a big attraction, we can watch Turtle swoop!

after 9 hours, and all the guests leaving, they still would not stop. It became fetishistic, all the freaknastiness you only dream of

Happy Bday, lovely girls!