Month: July 2007
Rodeo
the other day I picked G up from daycare, which does not happen all that often. She was on the other side of the room and did not see me, one of the teachers was standing by the gate to her room. So I said, “better step back, she’s going to charge like a bull soon.” I called G, and it is so cute she knows her name and my voice she turned right away, her face lit up, and then it was full steam ahead! The teacher swung the gate open and I got bullrushed!!! where’s the clown when you need him?
Boop: The Unleashing!
Its everywhere! It can’t be stopped. I see your boop and I am zeroing in and will not be stopped. and when I connect I will push your boop like i need the elevator: firmly and with purpose, making sure that the boop actually depresses. Its particularly bad in summer. It was cute, it is cute, its obsessive. Its creepy and sweet. Its very invasive of my personal space. Its in the pool, in the kitchen, in the bath, at the gym, in the car, you got a belly-button i got a finger get the fuck out of my way. She booped Janna today! Soon she will boop a total stranger. She knows that you have a boop, and she knows you know she has a boop. and she knows that you know she knows it. its become viral, an evolutionary memory. boop! boop! its hard to turn down, I feel as though I am filling her with negative reinforcement regarding her natural curiosity and friendliness. So I accept the boop, i embrace the boop. again. and again. and again.
Fistful of Beer, Fistful of Baby
A great way to walk into to the house, after a stop at Trader Joe’s and picking up G from daycare.
Riot Baby
oh no! we’re not in this together
We’re In This Together – Nine Inch Nails
I did the Usery Loop today on the roadie. I was looking forward to this ride all day, planning to be fucking gone gone gone from the office before 6 so I could manage the whole ride in the last hour of daylight and capture a little bit of cool and shade. the speed and rhythm would help pull the soul-draining hairshirt of monday off me. plus it would help cure my residual hangover from a weekend of drinking heavily and eating wrong in Rocky Point. I was hammering pretty hard from the get-go, the short ride and the day’s anticipation driving me to a strong start. i’ve felt slower than I used to be on the roadie and its been eating at me, since…like since the Tour de Phoenix about 15 months ago when I trained pretty hard and just managed to break the platinum group at 3 hrs 14 min. sucking on the roadie shouldn’t bother me because I have not been putting in the road miles plain-and-simple, I have done Tortilla Flats once this year compared to about once-a-month in times past. but it does bother me, because I hate to suck just on general principle. there is also a social MTBR road ride coming up in 2 weeks, and while I’m not worried about being slow, its always fun to feel strong in a group ride. So, I was hammering, and realizing I had a good split at the 4-way stop sign, pushed myself along up Usery Pass.
hit the climb up Hawes at 48 min, which means i’m right on pace for my strong times for this ride. i was feeling it all over…back, quads, arms…but whatever there was only 15 min left, and short hard rides like this are the perfect way to get stronger. so i dug in for the 6 minute-long final climb. then Nine Inch Nail’s “We’re In this Together” comes on my player. sweeeet, this is exactly what i needed, this song will give me at least 3-4 minutes of motivation before the fatigue overtakes me, and by then i’ll be close enough to the top to shoot my wad and then the climb will be over. the grinding angry pounding rhythm totally matches the rumbling in my core as I launch into the climb, and i’m pushing strong smooth strokes and feeling good and feeling just the right amount aggressive and just the right amount content.
then the battery on my player dies.
G’s voice now in my head “nooooooooooooooooo”.
E-I-E-I-O
Genevieve sings! Ok, not really, but she does love music (particularly reggae and ska, but that’s another story). On the singing front, she is pretty much a one-hit-wonder. On radio Genevieve, it’s old MacDonald, all the time. I dont know if it’s a sign of our horrendously neglectful habit of parking her in front of baby einstien or if its something she gets at day care, but she loves that damn farmer and she walks around singing e-i-e-i-o all day long. She has a set of animal-related literature that she relates to Mac D, and she walks around clutching these various tomes and singing until someone sits with her and sings the song. We do the song as a duet, with her supplying the e-i-e-i’s and naming the animals and me handling the rest. The only problem with this approach is that G’s farm contains only dogs, as this seems to be the only animal’s name she can remember. I think she may be figuring out “cow”, but for now, it’s a “moo” in Genespeak. I think she may also be on the verge of getting “horse”, but she seems to have a little difficulty determining which is the horse and which is the cow. Her plight is not helped by the fact that she destroyed her “Snappy Little Farm Animals” pop-up book so that the duck has no head, the horse has no nose, and the rooster is completely MIA. Cruel, cruel baby. She’s never going to win the 4-H competeition at this rate. Maybe I should call the humane society. That poor duck.
woe, the ride of the all-moutain rider
the all-mountain rider can’t suck by himself, he needs a bike to help him with that, preferably an expensive one that sucks just like him.
he needs a bike that can do a little bit of everything and a lot more at the boundaries, to compensate for his boundaries. unfortunately, bikes are at their best when they are specialized. so in the quest to overcome every boundary, he buys a bike that will suck at the common, or at least most of the common, or pretty much everything but a few things, which is guaranteed to be the exact terrain on any particular ride. 6/6 is great for everything but more work than 4/4, except for when you need 8/8, except for the hadtail spin home. the bike climbs like a hungry goat but its timid descending, its point and shoot down but a truck going up, the pedal bob going up is what makes is stable going down, its too light for DH and too heavy for XC, it is tight in the trees but too snappy on a long straight descent, switch to a longer bike that is like a train on rails in the descent but too sluggish in the trees, it cant do a goddam thing, but it can do everything! why do i need a new bike?!?!?!
Its marketing!
The marketing wizards have titillated the compulsion and the shame of the all-mountain rider by promising a cure-all to his woes. tapped into the desire to get better by promising the “One Bike.” What is the One Bike? It does not and can not exist, but we get drawn to its bold promise. here are a few snippets from the Santa Cruz website:
The Nomad: “If the VP-Free and the Blur LT spent a dirty weekend together in Whistler, chances are that nine months later there’d be a little Nomad running around. “
The Heckler: “If bikes could be thought of in human athletic terms, some could be compared to marathon runners, and some could be thought of more like wrestlers. Somewhere in the middle, you’d find the Heckler. A damn good rugby player. Even got a built-in bottle opener…
what the fuck does this have to do with a bike?!?! Its no wonder I can’t find a bike to test ride, let alone decide what to “build up to be what I want”. I don’t know what I want because what I want does not exist and can not exist, how am I supposed to build it? woe, the ride of the all-mountain rider.
Shoes II – Shoezapalooza
The baby is very interested in her shoes. Obsessed is too strong a word, but very very very interested is not. She enjoys grabbing her shoes, fetching other pairs of shoes from her shoe drawer, brining others their shoes to them, trying on others’ shoes to make sure said shoes are foot-worthy. this was fine but awkward on my teva’s, and potentially dangerous with beckie’s heels.
So she got a new pair of sandal\teva-esque shoes. Size 5 woohoo. such a big girl. And she stomped about with her new shoes. Such fun, such power, such potency. Stomp Stomp Stomp! and then stomping off to the shoe drawer to return with a pair of shoes! and then stomping off to the shoe drawer to return with a pair of shoes! and then stomping off to the shoe drawer to return with a pair of shoes! There are many pairs of shoes in the shoe drawer. Beckie kept lining them up, G kept running off for more. It was like a vendor laying out a display at the flea market. And when we ran out of shoes, G went back for boots.
Flagstaff, June 21 & 23
I rode in Flag last weekend. Beckie had a conference, a free hotel, and a need for a babysitter. Thurs afternoon and Sat afternoon were mine to ride, the rest of the time split between hanging out with G at the hotel, sponging food off the conference, and some work.
the goal for Thursday was to ride Jedi as part of a big Elden loop, and make it back to the hotel by 6:30 so Beckie could get to dinner. i was going to climb Schultz en route to Ricochet on Saturday, so I figured this time for variety I’d take the steeper shorter route up Rocky Ridge to Lower Brookbank. i knew that would suck, but it really sucked worse than I remembered. so much summer powder on the trail i was getting totally bounced around on Rocky Ridge, which I thought was pretty easy last time I had done it. I let a little air out of my tires on the way up Brookbank, continued to suffer, and was at the bottom of Hobbit Forest in about an hour. i love Hobbit Forest but again its a different trail in powder. Last year at Rancho Relaxo II i got the whole thing but one spot climbing, this year it was like I’d never seen a rock before.
“wow, i’m out here from the midwest, we dont have anything like this here. Like this rented Specialized?” said by tourist as he\she wipes blood from elbows.
that is what I felt like anyway, except for the blood. Some days you’re just not riding so well, better to accept it than fight it. a well-deserved break after 7 miles and 1:15 of climbing, then down Hobbit Forest, down Little Bear will cure any feelings of inadequeacey. A deer or something about that size bolted off the trail right in front of me, i really got into carving the turns, and then after skidding out on one I realized I had a pinch-flat…letting the air out on the climb…it figured.
I had fallen off my pace to get back in time for Beckie and also hit Jedi (3:30 hr), so I tried to decide if I should bail or hit the road to save time or what? I was having such a disappointing ride from a skills perspective, I really needed the newness of Jedi as a pick-me-up. So, whatever, Beckie could wait a little…I waited for her to get on the road earlier this morning, compromises had to be made! Going up Little Gnarly and i was feeling all that climbing and it hurt, but figured if I was standing my girl up I damn well better be riding and not pushing, and soon enough Little Gnarly topped out in Dry Lake Hills and I made my way to Jedi based on some guidance from a rider earlier in the day (thanks bro!). At first it was pretty ho-hum, mostly flat with an ocassional log obstacle. They were constructed and had 1-2 feet up\down each, but were pretty easy. i started to get a better feel for these types of obstacles which I never get to hit, and that was quite fortunate cause soon enough a genuine tester appeared. It went 3-4 feet up by means of a thin – maybe 6-8 inch wide – board propped up against the obstacle. First time I went up tentatively, and got up top ok but off balance with no momentum, which led to an awkward get-out. Next time I went back and focused and zero’d in on the board…up, over, down…sweet! The trail got much harder as it traversed and descended back around to Little Gnarly. I got all the downs but some of the up-slope obstacles i passed on; i was alone, loose conditions, end of the day…it was the smart move.
Back down on Schultz I flew down, flew down 180 into town and called beckie to learn she had left all of G’s clothes at home, so was at Target, buying G a new wardrobe including swimming pants for about $35…its nice to be a tinyHuman. Back to the hotel!
That night, Friday, and Saturday am I got to spend lots of quality time with G. We swam, hiked, played, and she helped me clean my bike. After the conference ended and we checked out, it was back to the base of Elden for another ride. Again Beckie ran with G, this time I was exploring a new route up Schultz, Weatherford, then Ricochet to Supermoto.
Schultz was a fun, slow climb up for 4 miles until intersecting with the road and the Schultz Tank parking lot. I found Weatherford, and this is where the exploring began. On the map, Weathorford looked to be about 2 miles and 800 feet up, and that was basically the deal. What the map didn’t show was how loose the trail would be…it was 30 minutes of mostly unredeeming blue-color work, a long grind to the top. There were a few moments of nice passages through lines of trees, but mostly I gave a sigh of relief when I got to the National Forest boundary and the turnoff.
A quick downhill with some whoopdees, then a mostly-hidden turn onto the much-ballyhooed Ricochet. Ricochet did not disappoint; it was tight and twisty singletrack through the woods with an ample helping of rock obstacles, staircases, and log obstacles. Not a lot of elevation change, but a gradual downhill over a great variety of challenges. I faced another BIG log crossing, and was pleased to see myself making improvements on each tough challenge — hit it hard, go up with confidence, find the line down before you crest the top. Ricochet ended too soon, but with some map help and instructions I quickly found more sweet singletrack on the Secret trail lower down the ridgeline.
Secret was not quite as technical, but still had its share of short, hard ups and a few technical downs. More log obstacles as well. There was one giant one not long after a hard, fast up. I was just barely recovered as I rolled up on it, but was feeling good about my prior success and figured “all the others have been well built…just hit it strongly and look for the line down!” Turns out the log on the downside had a giant rotted hole in the center. I did such a good job spotting the far side when I came over the top, I saw that gap the whole way as it swallowed my wheel. Fortunately I reacted enough to pull back and just have a bad sideways dismount — a prong to the groin from the saddle, but otherwise a damn good save.
Secret gave way to Supermoto, which had been the talk of mtbr for the season. It lived up to the hype and then some. The top half was flowing tech riding over a rock strewn lava field. The slope was perfect, and for 2 miles you worked the bike around all manner of rocks large and small to earn every few yards. It then opened up into a swooping, track-like downhill to the bottom of the mountain. Probably the best run end-to-end I’ve done yet in Flag. Except I got lost by heading right and not left at the bottom and came out on the wrong side of a neighborhood. i worked back to the Rt. 180 and a couple mile spin out back on the road. i can totally handle that with the payoff being the rest of the ride. Can’t wait to go back again this summer after some rains wash the trails.