Stupidity rules

An imaginary conversation
between two Anchorage snowplow drivers:

Fred: “Hey, uh, boss? This street’s kinda narrow.
Where you want me to shove all this snow?”

Boss: “Ah, hell. Just push over there
on that bike path.”

Fred: “But, uh, don’t it look like

Harvey already plowed the bike path?”

Boss: “Screw that. We get paid fer plowin’ the street.
Them little fairies in their funny pants
don’t wanna walk through snow, they should buy cars.”

Fred: “ Dude! This is kinda fun! Check it out, boss.
I shoved a great big ol’ pile o’ that
white shit right in their way!”

Boss: “Ya learn fast, kid.
I think ya got a future in this bidness.”

Roots

My friend Manny shot a bunch of nice photos at Saturday's Stud Slutz Criterium on Goose Lake. But this one was my favorite, because it shows another friend, Rob, out there riding on behalf of the denim industry and old-school mountain biking.

Check him out there on the right side of the photo. Rob's rockin' his work gloves, his Merrell mocs, and some blue jeans with one leg rolled up to keep his pants out of the drivetrain. He seems to have forgotten his race number. If I know Rob, he probably showed up just as the race was starting, and was too busy assembling his bike to bother with details.

A few years ago, Rob and I made up half of Team Megasorass in the 24 Hours of Kincaid. When we decided to hold a team "training ride" that spring, Rob arrived with his wife's bike, put tires on it in my garage, then did the ride wearing sandals and using platform pedals.

The guy's no gear snob. He's just a bike junkie with a wicked sense of humor. He's a reminder of what mountain biking is—or at least used to be—really about. And that's a fine thing to be these days, when the Frigid Bits field contains a smattering of local team jerseys.

Not that there's anything wrong with being a sponsored rider, but I don't remember ever seeing someone show up in team kit and then hanging around for a post-race tailgate party. Those guys probably have to hurry home to drink Cytomax and upload their heart-rate data to spreadsheets.

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who shows up wearing colors should have to buy beer for everyone else.

And there should always be some guys like Rob around to drink it.

The doctor will see you now

Winter riding teaches you things.

The most important thing to learn is to just get out there.

Saturday was grim. Back spasms left me barely able to walk all morning; snow fell much of the day; the forecasters issued a winter weather advisory. I was tempted to bag the evening ride and stay home.

Fortunately, I remembered the lesson from countless previous rides: Get off your ass and go, and you'll probably be glad you did.

I'm glad I did. The trails were surprisingly good. The other riders were fun. And 32 degrees almost felt like spring.

Bike rides have an amazing way of making your body and your mind both feel better. A night ride followed by some laughs and a couple of beers under a streetlight in a parking lot? It doesn't get much better than that.

I love my therapist.

Dr. Pugsley, 7 p.m.

Don't be late.

And so it begins ...

Wildlife through the bike frame
takes on a whole new meaning.

I shudder to think of what
we have just unleashed.

Still ridin'?

What rush hour looks like on my commute.

Before the Grill Meister recently migrated south, he and I had a conversation about being “the guy who rides his bike to work” at our respective places of employment.

He worked at the same place—with many of the same people—for a couple of decades. But they would still ask him, “So, you ride your bike to work in the winter?” And he would reply, “Yeah, for 20 years now.”

I know how he felt. People from other parts of my office building routinely see me walking in and out of the place with a bike helmet on my head. Many of them walk by my bicycle where it’s parked near the back door every day. They’ve seen me show up on a bike in the darkest depths of winter, but they still greet me with lines like, “So, you still ridin’?”

Understandably, most of them don’t know me all that well, so they’re just looking for conversational filler on the order of, “Been fishin’ lately?” The only thing they know about me is that I ride to work all year, so what else could they ask?

Still, it bugs me a little bit that the “still ridin’?” question seems to imply they think that one of these days I might quit.

They obviously don’t understand how deeply I hate idling at stoplights.

Schwing!

What do you pull
behind YOUR bike?

Stunning

The collision of digital video technology and human stupidity has not been a pretty thing. The interwebs are chock full o' nuts maiming themselves in every conceivable way on skateboards, motorcycles, snowmachines, bikes, yadda, yadda, yadda. It's as if people think a video isn't worth watching unless someone in it has a date with the emergency room.

Hey, I understand the sentiment behind the T-shirt that says, "It's only funny until someone gets hurt. Then it's hilarious." It's just that I prefer to apply it mainly to colossal wastes of time like NASCAR and baseball.

There is great beauty in fluid motion. Treat yourself to three and a half minutes of Sergio Layos.

Thanks to Jeff for posting this over at Bike Carson.

It's no Pulitzer, but ...

Today I offer a big thanks to Bikegirl and the rest of the the animal lovers at Paramount Cycles, who have presented me with the finest award this blog will likely ever earn.

To recognize my 700th post, and my No. 2 ranking in Google searches for "bicycles + beavers," they gave me a pair of "Save the Beavers" socks that I will wear proudly. Because after all, what greater cause could there be?

Bicycles & Icicles. Promoting the protection and humane treatment of beavers since 2005.

Framed

Early last year, I photographed some moose through the frame of my road bike during a ride on the Coastal Trail. As I often do, I e-mailed a copy to my brother in the Midwest, who responded with his usual smart-ass—but funny—response: "Moose schmoose. We got goats!"

So when I sent him a copy of my latest moose-through-the-frame photo—which appeared on this blog last week—I should have known he'd come up with a response. Little did I know he'd pull it off by exploiting our dear mother while he and his kids were visiting her one afternoon.

I've got moose, but they've got grandma. (And she doesn't usually kick if you ride close to her.)

Sunday in the Temple of Singletrack

Adam and the Snow Bird

It's beginning to look a lot like winter.

Thanks to the recent snow, the main Hillside trails were busy Sunday with skiers, ski-jorers, hikers and fat-bikers. I joined five other riders on the new trails built this year by Singletrack Advocates, and we spent two hours riding tight, twisting trails with a very narrow sweet spot. Choose a slightly bad line right now, and you'll end up in loose sugar snow that'll either stop you dead, or toss you on your ass.

It was a leg-ripping blast, despite a half-hour spell in which I forgot how to ride a bike. I was blowing steep climbs and tight turns, and even a couple of straight sections. I felt cooked, and my brain started shutting down. When complete incompetence takes hold, it's a hard habit to break.

I finally got a chance to wolf down a frozen candy bar that had been riding around in my Camelbak for a couple of weeks, and the connection between my brain, hands and legs was somehow re-established.

When we got back to our starting point and three riders headed home, Mark and Darcy wanted to tack on some distance by heading down to ride Speedway singletrack. My body screamed "N0." But my brain screamed, "You need the longer workout, you fat ass," so I gulped a Gu and went with them.

It was a hoot. An exhausting hoot.

A great mountain bike ride requires some suffering; a few stupid mistakes; mental recovery; moments of perfect, blissful flow; and fun partners who push you farther than you would go on your own.

Three hours of snowy singletrack. A pile of sweaty clothes. A glass of wine. Legs that don't want to move once they hit the recliner.

Perfect.

700

I’ve never done a “milestone” post, but according to Blogger, this here pimple on the ass of the Internet is 700 posts old, as of now. Who knew such silliness would last so long, or that I could blather on about bikes for three years in 700 separate posts?

Considering that blogs spring to life and die with the regularity of mushrooms, I’m starting to feel like an old-timer

Things appeared to have come full circle, in a strange way, when my daughter recently met another rider at her high school and the kid surprised her by saying that he reads her old man’s blog. Now I feel somehow responsible for polluting the minds of America’s youth. But that’s OK—the guy’s a mountain biker so I’m pretty sure he’ll turn out fine.

It has been a pretty cool experiment. I get to write about my rides, spew my opinion on bike-related subjects, and post my sometimes goofy pictures. And people—some of them not even looking for beaver shots or illicit drugs—come back, day after day, from all around the world and just across town. (For some reason, the beaver/vicodin searchers seem to not come back.)

Maybe you have nothing better to do. Maybe you just want an excuse to flip me the bird. Maybe you’ve ridden with me and you’re afraid your picture will end up here. Maybe you’re just waiting for my next ugly crash in hopes I’ll reveal more information on how to obtain more painkillers. (Sorry, Huber, you’re shit outta luck.)

Whatever your excuse may be, thanks for stopping by.

My new idol

So this guy came riding up to us on the trail Saturday afternoon. Three of us were stopped at an intersection and considering our options when he rolled up on a new Gary Fisher 29er singlespeed and stopped to check out our Pugsleys.

He was no spring chicken, and was surely carrying quite a few more pounds than he had in his prime. For a few minutes, we talked about bikes, which trailhead we had started from that day, etc. He was doing a 14- or 15-mile loop. Just out cruising and enjoying the snowy woods.

Then he went his way and we went ours. But I'm sure he made a bigger impression on us than we did on him.

He said he's 72 years old.

That guy's The Man.

It's an uphill battle

The line on the cover of the magazine said, “Winter Riding Basics.” I was on my way to a sandwich shop across the street from my office, and needed something to read, so I tucked the December issue of Bicycling under my arm.

I was curious to find out if the magazine’s staff actually had any tips that would be useful for those of us who ride year-round in Alaska. I realize that most of their readers deal with much milder conditions, so I didn’t expect much. I got even less.

Prepared for a chuckle at overpriced jackets and riding boots that leave wallets lighter and toes frozen, I plopped down at a table, bit into my lunch and opened the magazine to find the “winter riding” story, which was full of advice on … riding an indoor trainer.

Sorry, folks, but spinning on the hamster wheel is winter training, not winter riding. If some dumb schmo like me can ride through an Alaska winter, I’m sure a good portion of Bicycling magazine’s readers could ride all year in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Colorado, etc., especially if they found some useful articles on how to do it.

Riding in winter is easier than it looks. Believe me, I’ve been doing it for years but still sometimes find myself looking through my car windshield at someone on a bike as I think, “Damn, that looks cold!”

Pedaling to work last Tuesday, I stopped at an intersection where a cluster of campaign volunteers were waving signs for their candidate. One of them asked me if I ride all winter, and then told me she was impressed. “I’m a wimp,” she said.

This from a woman who was standing virtually motionless on frozen concrete, in 15-degree air, at least an hour before sunrise, to wave a cardboard sign at passing cars. And she thought I was the one suffering.

If the editors of a leading bike magazine don’t get it, how can we make that woman on the corner understand?

As the light turned green, I assured her that I felt great, and was surely warmer than she was at that moment. It’s all a matter of the right gear, I told her.

From the look on her face, I’m pretty sure she didn’t believe me.

Fat-bike Baiku

Who thought she’d follow
down gnarly trail at the end?
Oops. The Birds again

Desert bird

Giving his wife one more reason to be proud.

Our latest installment in the infamous Finger Series comes courtesy of local shop czar Jon, who did the big flip-off while riding Tucson’s sunny Fantasy Island last month while the rest of us were listening to our studs clattering on icy pavement. Somehow, it feels like we should be giving him the bird.

Spongebob: From Frigid Bits Ice Crit icon to
Fantasy Island fetish, he’s bad. He’s nationwide.

Spongebob, one of the talismans that guard the trail, would surely have raised a finger for the cause as well, if only he’d had some flexible digits.

In a sad first for the Bicycles & Icicles blog, I must publish a correction. Last weekend’s post about the Frigid Bits scavenger hunt referred to a “brownie-chasing Viking chick.” As I was bluntly told at an election-night party, that rider was not a Viking, she was a tampon.

Never mess with a rag when she’s on the gorilla.

This disturbing fact was confirmed by Deb—the woman in the costume—who questioned the volume of my post-ride beer consumption. I was sober, but I have to admit that a Viking typically bears little resemblance to a tampon except in the aftermath of pillaging raid halted by unusually violent resistance.

Catching a brownie in your mouth, in the dark,
is harder than you might think, even when
your entire reason for being is to absorb and consume.

In hindsight, I have no idea how this happened. And I’m still trying to wrap my head around the idea that someone who dresses as a tampon would question the volume of MY drinking, but that’s another story.

Regardless, the entire staff here at B&I World Headquarters (OK, that’s just me) regrets the error and wishes to set the record straight.

(Thanks to Akdeluxe for the Arizona pics, and to Deb for the others.)

The time has come

Ride to your polling place
and vote Tuesday.

But if you vote for McPalin,
this photo's for you:

The Fingers keep coming!
Oscar the Grouch, photographed by Manny

Frigid Bits, Halloween style

Transvestites, beer, a gay bar, temps in the teens, a brownie-chasing Viking chick, and a fleet of bikes marauding through downtown Anchorage on a Friday night. This was a scavenger hunt and burn-barrel party to remember.

It was a farewell event for The Grillmeister, and it came on the heels of a Critical Mass ride that already had a bunch of bike nuts downtown, so the crowd was big—maybe even a record for a Frigid Bits series event. Thirty-four riders took to the streets for the hunt. With more showing up for the grillin' and swillin' we had at least 50 people caught up in this shit.

I'll let the pictures do the talking.

The Grillmeister busts a pre-ride move.

Even Gov. Palin showed up. Sadly, the stress
of campaigning appears to be
diminishing her GILF status.

A lot.

Whenever I visit a gay bar, I like to throw my arm around a guy who shows absolutely no interest in me. (Yes, a gay bar. What, you thought I was joking about the transvestites?)

This looks like the cover shot
for a bizarre album of
gangsta rap from outer space.

A Frigid Bits Halloween is like
Mardi Gras, without the toplessness.

Rumor has it, there was alcohol involved.

Piper? Is that you?
Nothing says class like a trashy woman
who's preggers and drinking PBR.

It's always hard to find when it's cold.

Ooooh, yeah. There's my big boy!
I knew it was in there somewhere.

Goodbye Grillmeister

All four finishers of the first Frigid Bits race—
which was won by the guy who proudly displayed
his pink flamingo trophy. (Nov. 2005)

The end of an era is at hand. It’s time to send Tim “The Grillmeister” Kelly off to a new life in Colorado. Friday night’s scavenger hunt will be his final Frigid Bits event (as an Alaska resident anyway).

The idea of The Grillmeister taking part in his final Frigid Bits is a little hard to comprehend. This guy has been around from the beginning. I didn’t know him for the first season or two, because the only time I could get near him on Goose Lake was when he was lapping me and too busy to chat. I mainly knew him as the fast dude with the goofy cowhide helmet cover.

You can't beat The Grillmeister's meat.

But as the Frigid Bits series evolved and we started hanging around after events to drink beer and cook dead animals, Tim emerged as the guy who was always willing to to schlep his big-ass grill across town, cook everybody’s chow, then stand around in sub-zero weather drinking beer and talking about bikes.

Tim’s a true Bike Guy, in the finest sense. He’s been racing for decades, loves every minute he can get on a bike, still rips the legs off riders half his age, and is happy as hell just hanging out with his fellow bike nerds.

The guy’s got passion:

Who wants a tan?

He built the famous—and probably the world’s only—1,500-watt bicycle headlights, and rode 10 laps on Goose Lake while towing the 50-pound generator it took to power the crazy things.

Real men wear boxers. On the outside.

He won the coveted lingerie jaune in a race last year, and still proudly wears those flippin’ Spongebob boxer shorts all over town. I’m pretty sure he’s the only guy to ever walk into the crowded Pioneer Bar and order a beer while wearing his boxer shorts over tights.

At the 2008 Soggy Bottom finish line.

When I met him on the trail during this year’s Soggy Bottom 100, he was miles ahead, speeding north as I slogged my way south toward the checkpoint in Cooper Landing, and Tim damn near took a disastrous header because he was yelling my name and trying to give me a high-speed high five as we passed going opposite directions.

To me, that was a great example of why mountain bikers will always be cooler than roadies—a fast guy at the front can be happy to see and cheer for a friend who’s suffering off the back.

Guys like The Grillmeister make the local bike scene a better place. The Frigid Bits series won’t be the same without him.

It’s gonna be weird to pull into the parking lot on Saturday nights and not see that cowhide helmet cover.

Back to the real world

I've been stuck in Southern California
without a bike for a few days, watching
groups of up to 20 riders whir by my hotel
in their club-ride packs. That stung.

I even envied this guy on his Townie.

Now I'm back and itchin'
to get back out on frozen trails.

(Not that my trip was all bad. There's no better place
to be than a SoCal beach when you
crank up "Californication" on an iPod.)

Think snow

Speedway Singletrack, Saturday afternoon

With temps in the neighborhood of 20 degrees,
the trails are firm and fun. They're also gettin'
a tad icy, so watch your cornering, folks.

And keep your fingers crossed
for a little more powder. I have a feeling
it's going to be a fun winter.

Scene from a ride home

I've been thinking that maybe I should start
assigning pretentious titles and numbers
to my photos, like some artists do with paintings.
You know, lend a little weight to these
silly things I photograph while out riding a bike.

I think I'll call this one ...

Stoplights Suck, No. 1

It's part of a series from my "commute period."

Bi*cy*cle

noun
A vehicle composed of two wheels held in a frame, one behind the other, propelled by pedals and steered with a handlebar attached to the front frame.

Maybe this definition should be printed, and then stapled to the foreheads of people who insist on trying to sell their motorcycles in the "bicycles" category of Craigslist.

Just a thought.

And on the subject of people who just don't get it, a survey in the United Kingdom has found that a majority of women won't ride to work because they're worried about being sweaty when they arrive. A significant number are worried about "helmet hair."

Ladies, please. Get over it.

First of all, if you dress properly and ride at a moderate pace, you don't have to be very sweaty when you get to work. And if you can't keep helmet hair under control, your hairstyle might be too complicated. Simplify. Women who ride to work are hot.

Petra on "Today"

I still see hits on this blog from people around the country searching for an update on Petra Davis. She and Pete Basinger were interviewed on the Today show this morning. They both looked and sounded great, for a couple of Alaska mountain bikers stuck in New York City. (It's sort of hard to imagine Pete surrounded by so much pavement.) Here's a link to the story and video.

Once ya go fat ...

you'll never go back.

Sunday's group ride on fat bikes was my
favorite kind—laid back, with a nice mix
of familiar riders and new faces. The trails
were firm, fast and fun (except for all the
blowdowns that still need some chain-saw work).

It felt good to be back out on
the Pugsley, riding on snow.

I only wish I could have gotten the shot
of Rio pouring creek water from his boot.

Fight the ninjas

(Yehuda Moon is always worth a read.)

I was cruising through a thin fog this morning (Is there anything more fun than riding in fog?) when a dark silhouette appeared ahead of me, illuminated by the portable lights at a nearby construction site. It was the dreaded Bike Ninja.

Bike ninjas are those riders who are too cheap or stubborn to use lights, making them more dangerous to everyone—motorists, cyclists, even themselves. On routes with plenty of ambient light sources, they’re little more than an annoyance to other riders, but in really dark areas, they’re a freakin’ menace. Most of us who have spent any time commuting know the shock of seeing another rider suddenly appearing in our headlight beam as we swerve to avoid a head-on collision.

Being a bike ninja is selfish and dangerous, and there's really no excuse for it. For about $12 at a Fred Meyer supermarket, anyone can buy a pair of flashing be-seen lights. Last winter, they were charging $6 for a red, blinkin’ butt light, and the same price for a white light you could tape or zip-tie to a handlebar. And these aren’t the crappy, single-LED things that are often given away as promotional freebies. These thins have multiple LEDs and bright flashing sequences.

If you’ve been running in stealth mode, stop by the store and grab a couple. Please.

They’re far cheaper than medical bills.

Lance might not approve

I could never get into the yellow wristband thing. I know the cause was noble, but it felt too much like a fad. Still, I ended up with a few because occasionally a co-worker would buy an extra one for the Office Bike Guy.

So when I rolled up a spare tube the other day and was trying to figure out how to keep it from flopping around in my commuter bag, I happened to remember that there was still a Livestrong bracelet in my desk.

And ya know what? That thing made a freakin’ perfect tube wrap! It was just stretchy enough, and it’s made of fairly thick silicone so it’s not prone to dry rotting like a rubber band. Hell, I could use five or six more of these things just to wrangle the spare tubes on my workbench.

Millions of these things have been sold, but how often do you see anybody wearing one these days? They’re just lying around in glove boxes and junk drawers, waiting for second lives. I say it's time to yank those puppies out of storage and put 'em to work.

Besides, what better way to raise awareness of cancer, recycling and flat tires all at the same time?

99

Today is a time to celebrate. We have finally entered double digits in the number of days left in the Bush presidency. It’s been a long time coming.

But it’s also a day to remember a lost opportunity. For the first time, we had a president who liked to spend his free time mountain biking . But he didn’t do a damned thing for us. Didn’t lift a finger to further our cause. No funding for new trails. No defense of our rights to access of public lands. Nothin’. A big, fat zero. To be fair, I doubt he knows there are millions of other people who love mountain biking. I mean, he took up the sport after becoming president, and he lives in a high-security bubble. I’m pretty damned sure he’s not going to learn about the rest of us by reading.

I once saw something from IMBA about how we need mountain bikers on municipal committees and in state legislatures, Congress, etc., to give us a louder voice and greater legitimacy in the public eye. To have a mountain biking president should be the ultimate way to advance our cause but, with Bush, it has only inspired frequent jabs from Maureen Dowd at the New York Times, who likes to point out that when this or that major event occurred, the president was "out riding his bike" instead of doing his job.

Considering how he wrecked everything else he touched, we should probably be glad he made no attempt to help mountain bikers. With his record, any effort to help would probably have been a nail in the sport's coffin.

But I’ve often found myself how different things would be today if Dubya hadn’t become our first court-appointed president despite the majority of Americans voting for Al Gore in 2000. Or what if so many voters hadn’t been in a coma four years ago, and we’d elected John Kerry, the guy who rode a custom Serotta Ottrott? Now there was a guy with brains and good taste in bikes.

I wouldn’t expect any president to make bicycling a big priority when it comes to domestic policy, but a little effort to encourage bike commuting, or trail building, or something, would help.

After all the presidents we’ve had who liked golf, jogging, tennis, etc., it would have been nice if the first one to enjoy mountain biking could have enhanced the sport’s image, instead of making it the butt of jokes.

Vote for Obama. And let's send him a bike.

Bike people are better

I’ve heard a lot of people say customer service is extinct. It’s often hard to disagree. When I had to deal with the Sears appliance repair people last week, I came close to throwing my phone on the floor and stomping the shit out of it while wishing I could do the same thing to several people I’d spoken with that day.

Fortunately, the bike industry seems to have a lot of cool people who stand behind their products. When my sidewall failed on a three-year-old Nokian Extreme studded tire last spring, I sent photos to the manufacturer and waited for a response like, “Ooooh. Sucks to be you. It’s out of warranty.” But that didn’t happen.

Instead, some dude in Finland asked me for a code number on the tire, and then told me it was still under warranty. He asked for my address, shrink-wrapped a new tire in thick plastic, slapped international shipping labels all over it, and mailed it directly from the factory.

A couple of weeks ago, my daughter was inflating the tires on her Rockhopper when the handle assembly on my old Topeak Twister floor pump broke loose and came completely out of the pump. The thing is nine or 10 years old, so I figured it was probably a goner but I really wanted to repair it. I hate throwing stuff in a landfill before it’s time, and somehow it just feels good to keep old stuff working. Besides, I’ve always thought something as simple and serviceable as a floor pump should last damn near forever.

It’s a first-generation digital model, and the old disk assembly that held the O-ring had finally fatigued and snapped off. The head of the disk unit was held in place by a crimp in the bottom of the handle shaft, so it looked like a cheap assembly method that was never designed to be repairable. I momentarily thought about throwing it away, but the idea of trashing the whole pump over a cheap piece of plastic seemed like a waste.

I got on Topeak's website and filed a note with a digital photo of the broken part. After exchanging a couple of messages to nail down the pump model, the Topeak guys mailed me a new, better-built handle assembly with an adapter to make it compatible with the old pump. No haggling, no hassle. I was impressed.

When I installed the new handle a couple of nights ago, everything worked flawlessly, and the pump is probably good for a few more years.

It’s a beautiful thing when someone’s willing to provide quick service and a free part for a product that’s years beyond its warranty period.

Stabilize this

While the folks in Congress were mortgaging our future last week, they stuffed the Big Bailout Bill with all manner of special provisions they called “sweeteners,” as in, “You want my vote, ol' boy, you’re gonna sweeten the pot by attaching my pet project to this here big-ass boondoggle. 'Cause when things go tits-up anyway, all that's gonna matter is how much money I got for my district.”

None of these so-called sweeteners had any business being attached to legislation that was allegedly designed to save us all from an economic meltdown and financial ruin, but the suits did manage to squeeze a few positive things into the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. One of them was “Sec. 211. Transportation fringe benefit to bicycle commuters.”

In a nutshell, this thing provides money that will allow employers to reimburse bike commuters up to $240 per year “for reasonable expenses incurred by the employee during such calendar year for the purchase of a bicycle and bicycle improvements, repair, and storage, if such bicycle is regularly used for travel between the employee’s residence and place of employment.”

That sounds like a pretty cool thing, but—brace yourself for a shock here—there’s a catch. You can’t just apply to the government and get a check. Your employer would first have to work with the government (and we all know how easy that is) to develop a reimbursement plan. Then the Big Boss Man could pay you, but then he’d have to ask the government to reimburse him.

Which is OK, I guess, if your employer is sufficiently enthusiastic about alternative transportation and willing to wade through some red tape. Personally, I’m not holding my breath. I don’t know about you, but the corporation that owns my office ain’t exactly progressive on things like this, and I just can't see our payroll or HR people being willing to take on extra paperwork.

A few years ago, when we were preparing to move into a new building that was being remodeled for us, we suggested spending a miniscule portion of the overall budget on a couple of showers so that bike commuters and lunchtime runners could enjoy healthy lifestyles and clean up before going to their desks.

I don’t want to say they laughed at us, but from the corporate reaction, you’d think we had asked for free tequila and strippers every Friday afternoon. Hell, I considered it a success when I managed to ensure that an old steel bike rack would stay inside the building after it was left behind by the previous building owners.

There are plenty of employers willing to spend a little effort to help bike commuters. If you work for one, start talking to them about the provision in the bailout bill. Try to get some cash in your pocket.

It’ll be the best use of money tied to this whole mess.

Gettin' ready for snow

Other than a ride that ended with a flat on Friday afternoon as I stood in a mixture of snow and rain trying unsuccessfully to inflate a bad spare tube, I haven't managed to spend any time on a bike this weekend. I was busy hanging out with my man Buckwheat, who doesn't get to Anchorage often.

We ate some good food, had some good laughs, and did a little truck shopping because on the way up here from Skagway, he managed to drive his Toyota Tundra up ass end of a bull moose.

I did, however, manage to get the studded Nokians on the commuter tonight, just in time for a forecast that calls for snow and temperatures in the 20s and low 30s.

That's it, kids. Our three weeks of autumn have come to an end.

How do they do it?

My view from the bike path
during this morning's ride to work.

Most bike commuters—me included—are always raving about the benefits of riding to work. We act as if there isn’t a downside, but there is: It freakin’ ruins you for the days when you have to drive.

Yesterday morning, my daughter realized at the last minute that something she needed for school was in my wife’s car, which was several miles away in the parking garage of the hospital where she works. Now, I try to be a nice, understanding father. I have a great kid and she rarely causes this kind of disruption. But few things piss me off like an unplanned and unwanted drive from South Anchorage to Midtown at rush hour on a weekday morning.

The problem is, when you’re addicted to fresh air, exercise and bike paths, it’s painful to dive back into the inefficiency of crawling through a stream of brake lights. It’s downright infuriating.

I’ve said for years that I understand road rage. Hell, I understand parking lot rage. I wanted to scream like a maniac and put the gas pedal to the floor just to get out of the clogged maze of the school parking lot after dropping my daughter at the front door. Meanwhile, the lucky kids were rolling up, throwing locks around their bikes and walking inside as dozens of parents idled their cars in a stop-and-go procession toward the street.

What I don’t understand is how car people can sit in their vehicles and get angry at bicyclists riding to work.

Yesterday I sat in my car, looked at people on bikes and felt overcome with envy.