Bike shots

I take a lot of trail-side pictures of whatever bike I happen to be riding. I often ride by myself, and if there's photographic evidence that my bike was somewhere, that means I was there, too. It helps me remember the places I've been. I will occasionally take a selfie, though I usually refrain on the grounds that's it's an inane Gen-Y term for an equally inane Gen-Y activity.

Here are some of the bike photos I've taken over the last couple of months in and around Anchorage, Alaska.

Here's a standard profile, taken near a trail map, a sad lost-dog flyer, and warnings about the dangers of moose cow-calf pairs and aggressive hawks. The pictures are almost inevitably of the drive side of the bike. My drivetrain gives me very little trouble whereas disk brakes, over on the non-drive side, are a never-ending source of squeaks, howls, scraping noises, and adjustments. Why would I want to have a picture of those damned infernal rotors and calipers?

No sooner had I said all photos were of the drive side of the bike than in sneaks a front-quartering, non-drive-side view. 

Another trail sign. Drive-side or not, the bike needs to be facing the right because this was July 5th, a counter-clockwise day on the Bolling Alley Trail. Portrait orientation is employed less frequently than landscape. If the snow-white frame seems overexposed, it is, but only because it was exceedingly sunny that day. The clear skies didn't last through the entire trip, as you'll see.

This is my bicycle back at my Anchorage apartment. This wouldn't ordinarily be something worth taking up space on an SD card for other than it was snapped after a 32-mile ride, the longest I've ever done on a singlespeed. I am irritated by the fact that I am visible in the reflection in the window 

Another standard side view. I had been photographing some mushrooms up close and inadvertently left the camera on the miniature special-effect setting. It looks kinda' cool, but it also made it hard to tell that the rock is a giant sphere.

Mixing it up a little with the bike climbing a little rise all by itself.

Now I'm really mixing things up. I'm back with the portrait orientation and now, the bike is on its side. I wanted to make sure I got the cloud-shrouded foothills of the Chugach Mountains in frame and, to be fair, there was nothing on which to prop the bike in the muskeg anyway. 

Portrait of my bike leaning on really the only large rock (not including the big stone sphere, above) that I saw in the whole area in which this was taken. 

Distant, nearly head-on shot. If this isn't a trailblazing departure from my typical bike photo, I don't know what is. Actually, I was more interested in showing a section of the kind of singletrack I'm going to miss when I get back to the linear rock piles I ride on back home in Tucson.

This is the bike photo-bombing yours truly in a "me-peg" (a jpg of me?, is that better than saying "selfie"?). I'll also miss this sort of cool, misty, late-August weather back in Tucson. 

And finally, here's my mountain bike on my apartment balcony just moments ago. I don't know which way it's actually facing in there, so I can't tell if we're looking at the drive or non-drive side. The wheels are off and the chain is in a baggie, so there's not really a drive-anything right now. The wet pavement in the background, and the forecast for more of the same right through my departure date, is why I went ahead and boxed it up.

In my two months in AK, I managed around 135 miles of riding on, over, under, and/or through, as the case may be, pavement; wooden bridges; trails both wide and skinny; roots, moss, and mud; low-flying, partially-fallen trees; dog shit; hobo camps; and three or four small rocks. I rode the Coastal Trail along Cook Inlet; the Chester Creek Greenbelt; the gravel-strewn, terrifyingly bike-hostile streets of Spenard; the sweet, flowing singletrack of Kincaid Park; and the surprisingly kick-ass social trails I found mixed in with the Anchorage Pacific University cross-country ski trail network. I even got momentarily - and inexplicably - lost in downtown Anchorage early in my stay. This was perhaps fitting, because I had just retrieved my bike from a TSA-driven SNAFU in which it was momentarily lost. Despite the melancholy tone of today's prior blog post, I really have had an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime experience up here. In fact, it was so awesome overall that I am now officially over and done with the SSWC 2014 debacle.

Short timer

When I arrived in Anchorage in late June, it was only a week after the summer solstice. The days were longer than long, and the vegetation was in full bloom. I especially liked the Cow Parsnip (aka Pushki; Heracleum maximum Bartram) that lined the trails.

Yesterday, I went for what was going to be my last ride before heading back to the Old Pueblo. Here, in late August, with the days still long but getting steadily shorter, the Pushki is on the wane. I can't help but to see this as a metaphor for the time I've spent up here, and the fact that it's coming to an end.

I learned today that Pushki can cause severe skin reactions. I hadn't known this, and I'm glad I didn't have any issues. On the other hand, I don't doubt I would have eventually become sensitized. To stretch the botanical metaphor a bit further, this lack of basic knowledge about Alaska - and the potential consequences of that naiveté - represents the reason why I probably shouldn't live here. And I actually could have. I was offered a permanent transfer right into the job I've been up here doing temporarily. With a word, I could have left my work frustrations in Tucson behind and embarked on a new life in the Last Frontier. After nine years of fruitless job hunting, I was sorely tempted. It kept me up late at night, thinking about it. But there was just too much I didn't know.

I didn't know if the new job would be worth uprooting everything for. I didn't know if I could handle the cold and snow and ice and darkness of winters so close to the arctic. I didn't know if I'd ever be able to get transferred back to the Lower 48 - much less Tucson - if things didn't go well. Most of all, I didn't know if I could actually leave my beloved Sonoran Desert. And so, I reluctantly declined the first opportunity I've had in years, ensuring my return to a place I know I love but also to a job that I don't like. 

Fortunately, I'll always carry a bit of Alaska - and a lot of great memories - in my heart. When the at-work shit storm inevitably starts back up (and I expect it to do just that within days of returning), I'll have somewhere to go in my mind.

Worth two-hundred and twenty-two words

My camera battery is dead, so today's mountain bike ride in the 907 is without photo documentation. In lieu of images, here are a few word-pictures.

-Cool and wet and yet, here it is, mid-August
-Caught in Moose Jam along the trail
-Rooted, downright abusive singletrack
-Mud on bike, yes, but no dog shit this time
-Runner's nipple

So yeah, I woke up to light rain which came back from time to time throughout the day. During my afternoon ride, I got stuck with a group of other bicyclists wisely reluctant to go between a cow and calf moose. I'm not accustomed to encountering cervids that don't flee at the sight of humans, not to mention ones the size of a small horse. And not having a camera for that or anything else, I ended up riding a lot more and stopping far less often than usual. Between the constant hammering, much of it over exposed tree roots on my why-the-hell-am-I-still-riding-this rigid fork, and the fact that I haven't lifted weights in a month-and-a-half, I now find myself pretty well shelled. And that's always a good thing to be on a Saturday afternoon. Oh, and the dog shit thing is pretty self-explanatory, as is the humidity-driven abrasion on my man cans. Ordinarily, I'd say something about how the last four beers in the refrigerator were calling my name, but all I ever want after these rides if hot coffee.

What did you expect?

Yeah, no, it's going to be a while before I drop this. As I mentioned, I spoke to an Anchorage local yesterday about how so many people - including both he and myself - were screwed out of riding the Single Speed World Championships last month. This guy felt that the bike festival aspect of the whole thing seemed to revolve around dive bars rather than the incredible trails the area has to offer (and which the locals work hard to cut and maintain). I hadn't looked at it that way, but I had to agree.

There's this counter argument that people shouldn't have arrived with so many expectations. This invariably comes from people who managed to get out to the race, have fun, and go home with great memories. But with all due respect, go fuck your collective selves. Can you imagine having missed it? Would you be pissed off if you did? Can you put yourself in someone else's cleats and understand why they might be so bent? And the expectations? Well, it was common knowledge the race was going down at Kincaid Park, so there was really just that one expectation:

What time is the race?

My only prior experience with the SSWC was in 2002, in Downieville, California. BeanSS and I were only spectators, though we did have our singlespeeds with us. It was low key, kinda' punk rock, kinda' underground, and yet, with three sheets of paper taped inside a bike shop window (one was a note for Pete), we, just like the stupidly-fit people racing the event, knew all there was to know about where to be and when.

As I understand it, a few key people busted their asses to make the 2002 event happen, and the end result was that all everyone else had to do was pay a ridiculously small entry fee, show up, find a campsite, and ride. It had this festival atmosphere simply because all of these people were in this stunning landscape full of incredible trails, riding the same sort of bikes as everyone else. Even the swag was epic, and they didn't run out of shirts.

It seems the effort in 2014 was to work really hard on organizing the pre-ride fucking around and deciders and crap, and then ensure the event itself was as non-pro and anti-establishment as possible. Anti-establishment is one thing, but when regular people - still singlespeeders, mind you - get excluded in the process, well, it just sucks.

And that is that.

Dangerous wildlife?

I am very fortunate that a road cyclist in front of me on the bike trail pointed this out to his friends, because I was about to bank off the pavement right into the utility corridor along which these two were browsing. The cow was on one side, the calf on the other, and the trail went right between them. I don't know much about moose, but I understand getting between a cow and her calf is a quick way to get the shit kicked out of you.

Here's a somewhat closer look at the cow. Sometimes in my scramble to get a photo, I forget to actually take in the subject. Not this time. This is a truly impressive animal, and while smaller than a bull moose, she's still more massive than any of the elk I've seen.

I went ahead and rode well past these two large cervids before I found another way into the trail system. I deployed my bear bell just in case (moose, and especially calves) are part of both black and brown bears' prey base.

Setting aside for a moment my ongoing incredulity at needing to worry about large land mammals during a bike ride within city limits, let me explain these east Anchorage trails. They are unlike anything I know from Tucson. There are no rocks, but what takes their place are exposed tree roots. A 29er is the perfect bike for these trails. A rigid singlespeed - wheel size notwithstanding - really isn't. 

This was about the worst of it, and it was worse than it looks in this photo. Well, at least for a confirmed desert rat like myself it was. The thing was, this went on for hundreds of feet - on climbs, flats, and descents - which made it hard for me to get on top of my 32:19. I eventually got over myself, stayed on the gas, and tried not to bark my bar ends on standing trees or get clotheslined by partially-fallen ones. Fortunately, despite the morning rain, the roots weren't slippery and I only slid the back tire sideways once.

Other sections were only moderately rooted. I think the degree of root exposure has something to do with the topography but also the age of the trail. Older trails are just more eroded.

Finally, there were a few reaches that were either relatively recently-built and/or situated in depositional areas, and these were the only places where my bear bell wasn't jangling madly from a million little hits. Zoom!

I eventually reached a lake that served as the centerpiece of a gigantic dog park. There's nothing like this in Tucson, either. Anyway, it seemed like a good turnaround point. I ended up talking to a local mountain biker who had converted his fat bike into a singlespeed and registered for SSWC 2014. He and his buddies, like me, missed the race too. He gave me some great tips for an epic ride I could get to from town. Maybe later. As an aside, look at the layback on that stock seatpost. Yeah, I'm back to bending posts with my fat ass. It's so bad I've had to readjust the angle of the saddle because it was getting nose-up, and if my taint isn't happy, I'm not happy. A Thomson is already on the way.

I really thought I was done with the dangerous wildlife by this point in the ride. I'd even silenced the bear bell. Then I saw this sign. Despite my education in zoology and having been employed for 20 years as a wildlife biologist, my head was swirling with tasteless comments.

But there's a reason for the precaution. There was a more official-type sign just above a sizable beaver lodge.

I eventually made it home safe and sound, having avoided any overly adverse encounters with Alaska's fauna (there are always mosquitoes to contend with).

Barmageddon - SSWC 2014

Here are some choice shots from the SSWC 2014 pre-race carb-loading session at the Carousel Lounge in lovely Spenard, Alaska.

Shall we?

Thunderfish, the opening act.

That's Sarah Palin with the glasses. The Ninja at the urinal is one of the hosts of SSWC 2015 in Japan. This photo pretty much makes it very unwise for me to open this blog at work.

Hey, that's the name of this blog!

The Black Owls, performing the middle set.

The flyer said "It's dangerous to fly Solo. Take a Wookiee with you". So I did.

Canis lupus spenardensis

I believe the future SSWC 2014 men's champion is in this shot, advising us to Harden the Fuck Up.

Fuck yeah!

Luck of the Irish. I seem to recall having a pull of whiskey from this fine decanter.

El Luchadero Borracho. This dude spent much of the night tapping people on the shoulder with a drum stick or something so they'd turn around and look around like morons. I fell for it repeatedly, but the real problem I had with his behavior was that he was storing the drum stick down in that bib. 

And lastly, now that we know what I look like, I present the mosh pit instigated by the headliners, Seracs. BeanSS is still hurting from this, too. This demonstrates that inside of every older person, there's a younger person wondering what the hell happened. Also, this might just have the slightest bit to do with not making it to the race, scheduling issues notwithstanding.