Rough around the edges

Erratic freeze/thaw cycles, darkness, brutal winds and generally terrible conditions. For the past few days, Anchorage has been like a bad night at Tiger Woods’ house. If we hadn’t had such a good time with that hard-partying, slutty, hot cocktail waitress of a summer, it would be easy to get depressed at times like this.

At least we have a fair amount of snow on the ground now, and temps are dropping again. It’s funny how far-flung Facebook friends interpret my complaints about 38-degree weather as a sign that I think the weather’s too cold. I guess it’s hard to understand—from the beach or desert—why anyone would prefer to hold steady at 20 degrees. That happens to be the temperature at which I love to ride; it’s cold enough to keep snowy trails in good shape, but allows comfortable riding without too many layers of clothing.

The only good thing about warm wind in the middle of winter is that—if it doesn’t get too warm—the trails can still be good for biking, but bad enough to irritate all the Nordic skiers who seem to be humorless and unfriendly anyway. Considering how often they look down their noses at snow bikes and those of us who ride them, I can’t help but enjoy showing off the greater versatility of our mode of winter transportation.

Lightin' up

I was walking through the office this afternoon when I asked a woman about the red Christmas lights she had strung along the top of cubicle walls near her desk.

"You don't like them, do you?" she replied.

Damn. Shun a little holiday silliness here and there, and next thing you know, you're labeled a curmudgeon. I explained to her that not only did I like her flippin' lights, I have some pretty cool ones on my bike, too.

Not being superstitious, I'm not into the whole Christianity thing that's so prevalent this time of year but, hey, we're deep into an Alaska winter. It's dark out there. We had only 6 hours and 9 minutes of daylight today—a loss of nearly four minutes over the previous day. And we'll keep losing light for another month before we bottom out.

A few extra lights on the bike make commuting in the darkness a bit nicer, and make me a little more visible to motorists in the process. Even if they dent my curmudgeonly image.

He meant to do that

"I meant to do that."
—Pee Wee Herman, to the boys who saw him
wreck his bike in "Pee Wee's Big Adventure."

"Hey, get a shot of this," Leonard said as he eased his bike up to the edge of a steep drop into a snow-covered boulder field this afternoon. The only thing missing that would have made it a classic redneck disaster setup was, "Hold my beer."

I snapped a photo as he quickly put both feet on the pedals to complete the shot.

Then he started rolling, and there was no turning back. My first thought was of broken bones or shattered teeth, and how we'd deal with that at Eklutna Lake, where we were several miles from the parking lot, and very alone. We hadn't seen anyone on the trail for hours.

When he hit the narrow beach, my thoughts shifted to the very strong possibility he was going swimming—at 20 degrees Fahrenheit—and how we'd warm him up in the middle of nowhere.

Just as I yelled, "BAIL! BAIL!" he skillfully stopped at the water's edge. When he got back to the trail, Leonard swore he did it all on purpose.

All I know is that it was either a ballsy stunt, one hell of a survival ride. Whatever. I declined his invation to try it.

Happy Retreat

The Lollipop Girls in their colorful jackets.

Changing plans at the last minute has never been my strong suit, but sometimes it just has to be done. Today’s ride was planned for Powerline, but things started looking grim as I drove up Toilsome Hill. The trees were starting to lean, and snow snakes were blowing across the road.

A skier in the parking lot at Glen Alps told me she had abandoned her outing because “the wind was blowing me all over the place.” It was time to punt. Between cell-phone calls and on-road interceptions, we re-routed four cars to the lower Hillside, where the trails were firm, the winds were calm and the temp was an ideal 18 degrees.

It was an all-fat-bike ride, including Julie’s freshly built Pugsley. Something tells me that girl’s gonna be smiling all winter.

It was a great daytime snow ride. And it came just in time, because the weather guys say ...

Monday: Highs in the mid 30s to lower 40s. Northeast wind 10 to 15 mph except east wind increasing to 45 to 60 mph along turnagain arm and higher elevations with possible gusts to 80 mph by mid-morning.

Cold, hard data

I was thinking ahead to tonight’s cold ride when I came across this 1920s-era image of two men in Washington, D.C., reading the weather report from a government kiosk in a park across the street from the Washington Post building.

Old photographs are great for illustrating how things have changed, especially in the area of information technology. Back in the day, everyone knew that weather observations and forecasts were at least several hours old before the public got access to them.

When I want to check the weather before a ride, I just click a button and get temperatures that are updated every five minutes from points all over Anchorage. And I don’t rely on a forecast that’s 8 or 10 hours old; I watch a web site that changes around the clock. For the real-time temperature on the trail, I check a digital thermometer that hangs from my handlebar.

All of these things are a great benefit when choosing clothing layers and the timing of a ride.

But when I know the ride will be taking me past the Campbell Creek Science Center—consistently the coldest spot in town on really frigid nights—I could do without the constant reminders that the temp is going to drop from zero to -10 along the Salmon Run trail.

Cold

I went for a trail ride Sunday night when the temperature was dipping below zero. I took no pictures because my camera died, and then showed no signs of life until it had been back in the house for 20 minutes.

The temperature is predicted to bottom out between zero and -15 during Tuesday night's ride.

Don't expect pictures.

Go Roll a Fat One

Yesterday’s winter storm blasted Anchorage with high winds, coated the streets in ice and rolled this snow wheel through my next-door neighbor’s yard. At 2 p.m., the snow outside my office window was blowing horizontally, so I’m still baffled by how any of it ended up on the ground. The weather was just nasty. It seemed like a great evening to go home and drink beer.

So, naturally, after the storm mellowed out a bit, I went for a night ride with The Grouch.

It was our first snow ride of the season, and the trails were empty. In most areas, ours were the only tire tracks in the loose, sugary snow. The trails are now covered and waiting for some Endogrooming. Another foot or two of snow should soon smooth out the roots and get the winter riding season fully under way, but there’s no reason to wait.

If you’ve got a fat bike, it’s time to get out in the snow. After all, in another five months or so, it’ll be gone.

All taped up with no place to go

When real life gets in the way and keeps you mostly off the bike for a few days, even a simple ride to work can be a genuine pleasure. I've been in one of those stretches lately. Squeezing in a quick commute qualifies as a success.

And now that the morning temps have dipped into the teens, I've realized just how efficient all those cooling vents are in my new helmet. I got a pretty good case of ice-cream headache this morning, and it's not even truly cold yet. At five below zero, it would be excruciating, so I had to break out the duct tape.

Come springtime, I'll probably need a bunch of Goo Gone to get all the tape gunk off my helmet's plastic shell, but it'll be worth it if a little wind blockage keeps me from feeling like someone's driving a railroad spike into my skull.

Now all I have to do is keep riding.

Abnormal?

I sometimes wonder about the influence mountain biking has had on my life. I’ve never really socialized all that much with other people my age who are married with kids, because they tend to not ride much; most non-biking activities bore me; and my wife still has a hell of a time trying to figure me out.

And now I’ve spent this week looking at Halloween party pictures that friends and relatives have posted to Facebook. They all appear to have had a great time, and seem thrilled with their wild antics. I scan their photos and think to myself, “Hmm. Well, I guess that could have been fun.”

The problem is, I went to a party that involved two hours of riding in the dark, followed by a big fire, beer, partial nudity in sub-freezing weather, and an array of minor injuries. It was freakishly good time.

Maybe my perception of fun is warped, compared to that of most people.

Hmm. I guess I can live with that.

Borat on a bike

Hallo! My name is Borat. Welcome to my home.
Please to come with me and I
introduce you to my family and friends.

This is mah wife. Her face look like dis
all tha time because she love me so much!
She proud that I come to America
and have much success.

This is my sister, Jamina. She village slut.
She talk on phone and say to man,
“Please to take peekture of my vahjeen, yes?”

This is famous American president
Ronalda Raygun. Bad, bad man.
He ruin my home country. I spit on grave of his.

My cousin, Leo. He go to prison,
but home now. Always playing
with weiner, he is. That why he go to prison.

Meester Butt. My neighbor. My sister
spend much time with him and love
his nose very much. I try to learn why,
but she just smile and no talk.

My other neighbors. I feel not so good for them.
They never know women for to make sexy time.
Not even with my seester, Jamina. Always together,
these men, but they happy.

I must go now. Weather is cold and mah wife
very angry when I shrinkage. She say,
“Borat! Keep warm! I want sexy time!”

My morning commute ...

... is nothing like this.

Bicycle Diaries

I can’t really explain why, but I somehow like knowing that David Byrne—like many of us—has spent years traveling with bikes and sneaking them into hotel rooms to assemble them with hex wrenches. It’s one of those covert experiences that bike geeks have in common, regardless of wealth or fame.

And like the rest of us, Byrne knows that traveling by bicycle is far more enjoyable and liberating than driving a car. He has been riding in New York City since the 1970s, and routinely took a bike on tour back in the ’80s when he was traveling with the Talking Heads so that he could spend his days exploring new cities instead of getting wasted in his hotel room. He has been traveling with a bike ever since.

Along the way, he’s been a student of architecture, traffic, urban design, globalization, politics, art, music, human rights and any other subject that stimulated his mind. Eventually, he decided to put his observations down on paper, resulting in his latest book, Bicycle Diaries, which was recently sent to me by the folks at Viking, Byrne’s publisher. Viking is obviously marketing the book to cyclists, but it’s a curious strategy, because it’s only partially about riding bikes. It’s also about all the other topics that interest Byrne.

Byrne isn’t a cyclist in the conventional, hardcore, sense. He doesn’t go for Lycra, weird shoes or flashy jerseys. He just finds it more fun, healthy and sustainable to explore cities and zip around to parties and gallery openings by bike instead of in a car. And the guy gets around. He has pedaled through the funkiest sections of many American cities, and explored the likes of Istanbul, Manila, London, Buenos Aires and Berlin. Few bicyclists have his range of travel experiences.

It’s an unconventional book to market in the bike world, because it contains very little of the standard content of a book about riding—you won’t learn a thing here about eating, training, equipment, etc. Then again, it seems to be an unconventional book to market in any world. It’s something of a David Byrne manifesto. And that’s not a bad thing, if you’re curious about one of the most interesting minds in music.

If nothing else, I recommend reading Byrne’s chapter on New York, as well as the book’s epilogue, which contain the most detailed information on his bicycle advocacy and thoughts on what cities can become if people embrace the change that bicycles can bring.

It just might be enough to make you believe that everything doesn’t always have to be the same as it ever was.

Don't screw yourself

The weather dudes are predicting our first snow of the season tonight, so I just came up from the garage after installing the wheelset with studded tires. After I sat down with the ol’ laptop, I found one of the signs of early winter on Craiglist—homemade studs for sale on Craigslist. They’re typically made with screws from a hardware store, and almost always have only a tiny fraction of the number of studs they’d need to have any chance of working decently.

I understand the desire to attempt this hopeless stunt. I studded my own tires my first winter in Alaska. I spent most of a weekend sitting on a stool, twisting dozens of screws through a perfectly good set of knobby tires. I even did it by hand, because I didn’t have a power drill. I guess it’s just a stage that winter bikers have to go through in their early years. Doing it yourself seems frugal and self-reliant.

It’s goddamned stupid, is what it is.

Those tires sucked. I’m lucky I got through that first winter without sliding under the wheels of a car. And all the other homemade studded tires I’ve seen? They sucked, too. After a few years in Alaska, I “upgraded” to a pair of inexpensive—but manufactured—studded tires. In a way, they sucked even more, because I was fooled into thinking I could trust them. And I could, until about the fourth week, when sections of dry pavement had filed the soft studs into useless nubs that sent me slamming into the ground every time I hit glare ice. I'd had more than enough when I spent eight weeks with what was likely a broken elbow.

I finally broke down and invested in a pair of Nokian Extremes, thinking they’d be a bargain if they kept me out of the emergency room. Soon, I realized that riding on ice was fun instead of terrifying. Quality, long-lasting studs ... and a shit ton of ’em. Those suckers have nearly 300 knobs per tire, and every stinkin’ one has a stud in it. They make for a heavy tire that’s worth every gram.

Now I wince when I look at the homemade studded tires for sale on Craigslist, and feel bad for the people about to buy and try them.

I hope they survive their experiments, and later discover the wonders of Nokians and Schwalbes, instead of deciding that riding on ice is as maniacal as it looks.

First place in Boston

Congratulations to Carl Battreall, whose documentary on Alaska winter biking — Fat Bike — just won first place at the Boston Bike Film Festival!

IndieAK Films: Convincing the world we're nuts, but having a damn good time.

A high-class crowd

A few weeks ago, someone in Southern California found this blog after Googling “bicycling is an overpriced yuppie sport.”

I thought that was a pretty strange way to get here, considering this blog is—I’m reasonably certain—pro-bike.

Then I remembered walking across a tiny street between the beach and my hotel in Santa Barbara last October and hearing the buzz of tires on pavement behind me. I turned around to see a pack of about 20 roadies wearing color-coordinated kits and pedaling very high-end bikes.

The collective value of that group’s gear could have paid for a nice house in many parts of the country. Style matters in a town like Santa Barbara—I don’t think I saw a simple pair of black, logo-free Lycra shorts the entire three days I was there. And all the fancy bikes, when they weren’t being ridden, seemed to be on the roof racks of shiny new cars that couldn’t be touched for less than $45K.

So I suppose that in SoCal, if you’re a working-class stiff who commutes on a freeway and lives from paycheck to paycheck, seeing a few scenes like that might make it easy to view cycling as an overpriced yuppie sport. That’s a shame.

As another Frigid Bits season gets under way, I find myself wishing that the person who typed that search phrase into Google a few weeks ago could do a night ride and then stand around the burn barrel with a bunch of Alaska winter mountain bikers.

Yeah, there are usually some pretty expensive fat bikes scattered around, but they’re more likely to be in the beds of battered pickups than on the roofs of European sedans. The riders wear fleece and ripped Carhartts, and instead of looking down their noses when someone rides up on a Frankenbike, they check it out and respect the rider for making it work.

When the flames are rising and the snow is falling in a dark parking lot on a Saturday night in January, those are the people who prove that this ain’t no overpriced yuppie sport.

Bend over the check-in counter

Can't remember why I do it, Oh, maybe I can.
An honest man these days is hard to find.
I only know we're living in an unforgiving land.
And a little lie can buy some real big piece of mind.

—Randy Newman, “Big Hat, No Cattle”

I’ve long believed that the people who set airline baggage fees are on the same rung of the evolutionary ladder as used-car salesmen. In other words, at the low end of multicellular organisms.

For years, cyclists have taken it in the shorts when flying with their bikes. Anything in a box the same size and weight as a bike flies for a lower charge, as long as it’s declared as anything but a bike. Skis, golf clubs, you name it, they all cost less.

The fee for traveling with a bike can be outrageous. On Delta airlines, it’s $175 each way on domestic flights. Hell, that’s higher than the cost of a seat on some domestic flights. That’s wrong. I’d even say immoral.

That’s why I’ve never had a problem with lying about the contents of my cargo. I’ve often seen the baggage fee for my hard case drop by 50 to 75 percent simply because I told a counter agent it wasn't a bike. The size and weight didn’t change, but the charge did.

On our recent trip to Moab, one of the guys in our group paid $350 in roundtrip fees for his bike. Another guy in our group—me—paid $125. Why? Because my case is designed in such a way that it wouldn’t necessarily have to be carrying a bike, and I have no moral problem with declaring the contents as being something that flies for less.

I don't understand why the bike community continues to accept such discrimination. Huge numbers of people have taken up cycling in recent years. I’ve read magazine articles calling it “the new golf,” meaning group rides are where big business deals are often struck. The “Lance Effect” has pulled in everyone from laborers to Wall Street titans, and you know plenty of lawyers are in the mix.

So what I want to know is, why hasn’t one of them led the charge for a class-action suit demanding fair fees from the airlines? Hell, I was invited to join a class-action suit against Apple because one version of the iPod Nano worked just fine but scratched too easily! And yet nobody's decided to sue over egregious and discriminatory charges for bike boxes?

C'mon, all you lawyers. I'm startin' to lose respect for ya. It's time to stand up for fairness.

Baby's got back

The latest Fatback is so stylish
it inspired this ad that might never
see the light of day, but should.

That new titanium Fatback
is a hot-looking machine.
It's nice to see some real style
coming to snow bikes.

I don't suppose I could persuade
my mother-in-law to buy me one for Christmas ...

School of Rock

Ever since an infamous ride after a bunch of fresh snow fell on Blue Dot trail a couple of winters ago, the people who were there that night have enjoyed quoting The Grouch’s summation of the event: "It was a great ride until it started to suck ass."

As I review my recent trip to Utah and Colorado, I find myself wanting to paraphrase: I sucked ass until it turned into a great ride.

There’s just no sugarcoating it. I stunk up the joint for a couple of days. I didn’t remember how to trust good traction. I couldn’t regain the feel of shifting weight and lifting wheels as we rode over technical features. Worst of all, I was gutless until those skills slowly started to return. A couple of nasty crashes over the past couple of years made me too conservative.

I’m still not sure where the line lies between wimpy and wise, but I think I was on the wrong side of it. As the Monkee later put it, I was a contender for the Golden Binky Award.

The Golden Binky isn’t funny unless somebody else is winning it.

It wasn’t until the third day of riding—on Sovereign, my new favorite Moab trail, by the way—that I felt competent. I felt a little better each day for the rest of the week.

All I can do now is store the memories away and hope I can retain some of my sharpened skills for next summer. Our technical features are different in Alaska. Damp roots and rocks are pretty much the opposite of slickrock (which is anything but slick).

Ultimately, any bike trip is really about the company you keep and the fun you have. In that sense, I had a week of epic good times. But anyone who doesn’t try to learn from riding new terrain is a fool, and the Moab/Fruita region is like a college of mountain biking.

I hate being in remedial classes.

Tater tot

Hangin' with the famous Tater in downtown Fruita

One of the high points of Fruita was meeting Tater, the guy who hangs out downtown and greets visitors at Aspen Street Coffee and Over the Edge Sports. He has been called Fruita's unofficial mayor, and he just might be officially the town's nicest guy.

He'll shake your hand repeatedly, give you a hug or three, and he loves to talk about getting craaazy. Have your picture taken with him, and he'll probably give you a kiss on the cheek afterward, even if you're a guy.

He's a local institution. The good kind. He's pure, unadulterated kindness, and he has enough good taste to hate the Beatles. He's an oversize personality in an undersize package.

And he's a reminder of what I love about Fruita: It's a small town. The trails may be world-class, but it's still a quiet place where a guy like Tater can safely ride to his favorite spots and greet many of the visitors. It's the kind of town where a coffee shop will let him hang out, and the bike shop will fix his flat tires.

In Moab, you can reasonably assume that most people you see on a downtown sidewalk are tourists. In Fruita, you know it's pretty obvious that you're the tourist.

When I grabbed breakfast at Pancho's Villa a couple of mornings last week, I was the lone mountain biker in a joint full of cowboy hats, fertilizer caps, and locals who all knew the waitress had only four more days to work before she retired and left town. And I'm not positive, but I think she was the same person who served me breakfast when I was there five years ago.

I liked the trails and the town even more on this trip. I hope it won't be another five years before I return to the land of Mike the Headless Chicken. I hope the town is still unspoiled when I go back. And I hope Tater will still be there to call me "ringman."

As good as it gets

An epic vacation is winding down. It's time
to face the tortuous flight home after
seven straight days of riding in some of the
most incredible mountain-biking terrain
in the world: Moab, UT, and Fruita, CO.
I'll sort all this shit out in later posts after I have time
to digest everything. For now, the pics can do the talking.

Harter on the slickrock at Bartlett Wash

Jules descends Porcupine Rim singletrack

The Bike Monkee on Sovereign

Heather on Handcuffs

And Jules sums up the whole experience

Vacation Fingers

Bicycles & Icicles is almost ready to return.

In the meantime, I have a puzzle to
keep you briefly entertained: Find
the Fabulous Flipoff in this latest
entry to the Famous Finger Gallery.

Gone missing

(Thanks to Bokor Fan for the photo)

Big shit be happenin' at the
Bicycles & Icicles World Headquarters.

Good shit. Epic shit. The kind that leaves
me no time for this shit. The blog
is on hiatus for a few days.

Turning out the light

Anchorage had 5 minutes, 39 seconds less daylight today than it did yesterday. The temperature seems to fall a little more each day, too. The weeknight rides I started at 7 o'clock all summer are now starting at 6, and I get back to my car in the twilight after the sun drops below the horizon.

The evening light is beautiful, but there's less and less time to savor it. We're racing the annual slide into darkness ... and losing. I rode the new trail network tonight, knowing it would probably be my last chance to ride it without lights (and/or a snow bike) for months.

I'm looking forward to the night rides of winter—and moving through the woods in a bubble of artificial light—but damn, I hate saying goodbye to sunny evenings.

Summer of 2009, you kicked ass.

Goodbye, training wheels

This has to be one of the coolest things seen at this year's Interbike. Because what could be cooler than a better way to teach kids to ride bikes?

Bearly understandable

Biologists recently set up cameras near the community of Eagle River and found conclusive evidence that bears live in the woods. Therefore, it's a bad idea to build a greenbelt trail there, they say, because if you put a trail where bears live, animals and humans might happen to encounter each other. (Although they also said the bears carefully avoided times and places where humans were active.)

Anchorage mountain bikers have been encountering this same argument for months now. People who don't want new trails near the homes they built in bear habitat have suddenly become very "concerned about safety," so they lobby against building trails in bear habitat—especially when it's on the public land that serves as a really sweet extension to their backyards.

The problem is, all open, wooded land around here is bear habitat. Anchorage itself—the largest city in Alaska—is bear habitat. That would seem to limit the options, wouldn't it?

But the thing is, no one appears to be prohibited from building subdivisions or discount stores in bear habitat.

Doesn't it seem a little weird that it's OK to bulldoze bear habitat, but it's not OK to visit it?

Flat is where it’s at

The flat handlebar is one of the great victims of mountain biking’s fashion trends. All the swoopy riser bars with big sweep have pushed this venerable component so far to the margins that it’s hard to get one without placing a special order.


I was in Speedway a few months ago and mentioned to Greg that I needed a new bar and had three requirements: carbon fiber, 26 inches wide, and no more than 5 degrees of sweep. The poor guy had to dig deep just to find one in the parts catalog, but he came up with a sweet Salsa Pro Moto that was exactly what I wanted.

Then Chainlove.com had a cheap, aluminum flat bar on sale Monday and labeled it as being offered for “retro grouches and flat bar-tenders.” WTF?

I get grouchy when perfectly good gear gets relegated to “retro” without being replaced by something that’s truly better. But that’s OK. I yell at kids to stay off my lawn, and I remember when flat bars replaced riser bars along about 1989-90. My first mountain-biking partner—Cris—rode a Schwinn High Sierra with a bent bar and I thought it looked silly because my newer bike had a flat bar. I’ve used flats ever since, and have never seen any advantage to risers when I tried them on borrowed bikes.

Flat bars are light, functional, have clean lines, and make it easier to set up a lower riding position instead of sitting up and “air braking” all day. Want a slightly higher position for your hands? Put a couple of carbon spacer rings under your stem. That’ll get you to the same place, without all the bends that make it hard to mount lights, computers, etc.

The flat bar rocks. Long live the flat bar.

Fall color

Heather

Why do I always dread the arrival of fall,
but love it when it gets here?
Most of the biting bugs are gone, and the woods
have never been prettier.

Huber

So what if the leaves are already falling
in Alaska while riders in other places are still
enjoying the green of summer? That just
means we get to enjoy it earlier.

It also means it's time to tune up the fat bikes.

Morning wood

It’s the little things that make bike commuting so much fun. Slalom turns between goose turds on the trail. Zipping past the shopping carts under the covered entrance to Costco long before the store opens. And all the little things you’d miss if you were in a car.


This morning, I got strange enjoyment from these piles of smoldering wood chips. With cores of rotting wood generating heat, and the outside temperature near 40 degrees, these little babies were steaming out their summits like a couple of stratovolcanoes.

I found this highly entertaining, and shot some pictures as motorists zoomed by without noticing this little display of nature's explosive fury. The photos elicited a slightly less enthusiastic response when I showed them to someone at my office.

I guess you just had to be there.

Dam it!

This was supposed to be one of my infamous rant posts. I was composing all the poison prose in my mind as I photographed this bandit trail project tonight. It is (or was) an effort to build a berm for a banked ride through a gentle turn on Queen Bee. But in reality, it was just a dam that would have created a mud bog. The unauthorized project understandably has people upset—the people who spent years making this trail a reality.

After I took this photo, I shredded the whole thing. Rolled those four-foot logs into the weeds, chucked the rotten end ramps as far as I could throw them, and kicked away dirt to restore drainage into the downhill channel. Then I moved down the trail a short distance to photograph the next modified corner.

That’s when I heard a rider coming down the hill. And heard him ride by his shredded project and loudly yell “FUCK!” A minute later, we got to have a chat.

It turns out, he was just a young guy with time on his hands, and a desire to “improve” the trail by making it faster and more fun. He didn’t mean to dump on the efforts of others. He didn’t have any idea how much work went into building this new trail network. He didn’t know how unsustainable his work was—rotten logs make a pitiful base for a banked turn. He didn’t realize he was building dams that ruined drainage from professionally designed trails. But that's what he did.

He didn’t know that his hours of work were doomed to be dismantled by volunteers later this month if he doesn’t remove his damaging modifications. He does now.

By the end of the conversation, I had a hard time being mad at the guy. He meant well, but he didn’t have a clue about how to build or properly modify trails.

Most young guys like him don’t read the blogs of old guys like me, so this message may be futile, but if anyone who reads this happens to be the kind of person who wants to do a little freelance trail work, please, don’t.

At least not until you learn what you’re doing. And not until you ask permission.

Two ways are better than one

The new Singletrack Advocates trail network is tight, twisty, fun as hell, and allows riders to choose a variety of trail combinations to complete the “Grand Tour” of the network. But not everyone can easily comprehend the trail design, which was intended to use vegetation, sharp turns and uneven terrain to make riders slow down and ride with some skill instead of just balls-to-the-wall speed.

All the low-visibility corners have prompted grumbling from some riders that the trails should be one-way routes for improved safety. The way I see it, one-way trails might cut the risk of collisions, but they would also cut everyone’s options in half.

This situation reminds me of when I once worked for a big company with no limit on employee sick days. A tiny group of people abused this benefit, calling in sick at least once during every two week pay period—in other words, they were screwing The Man out of an extra month every year. When the bosses told everyone to be more careful about the use of sick time, it was the abusers who panicked and demanded to be told exactly how much sick time they were supposed to use.

In a rare moment of brilliant clarity for a corporate drone, The Big Cheese looked at these people in an open meeting and said, “You have the luxury of unlimited sick time. Do you really want me to restrict that to a firm number?”

It’s the same way with trails. Do you really want to sacrifice half of your options and ride only one way? Wouldn’t it be more fun if everyone used their heads and kept riding both ways?

Unfortunately, some mountain bikers are abusers of privilege. It’s just too tempting for them to bomb down trails while barely in control, or with their loose, out-of-control dogs running along. A careless rider and his dog nearly hit me last Wednesday night, and plenty of folks have had similar experiences.

I don’t mind rules, but I hate restrictive laws forced by the inability of people to handle loose ones. So, instead of imposing new rules to solve a simple problem, I offer this easy solution: Let’s all slow down, be safe and keep our two-way options open.

Ride under control. Watch for your fellow riders. Call out to approaching riders, or ring a bell so everyone can keep track of each other. Leave your dog at home, or take him to a wider trail with plenty of room and better sight lines. It’s safer, more respectful of other trail users, and just might save you an expensive vet bill.

And for cryin’ out loud, stop skidding into turns. That just shows bad manners and poor riding skills.

Fat Bike, the film

Carl Battreall, right, introduces "Fat Bike" at Chain Reaction.

Carl Battreall’s documentary Fat Bike is finally finished, and a small crowd was lucky enough to see it at a private screening tonight. It is, without a doubt, the finest documentary on Alaska winter mountain biking ever made.

OK, so that's a really short list. That just puts Fat Bike in elite company.

But seriously, it’s a very nicely done piece of work from a talented photographer moving into the realm of video. With Carl’s eye for imagery and sharp editing, and a fine soundtrack from local singer and songwriter Melissa Mitchell, it’s the kind of project I’m proud to see coming out of Alaska.

Fat Bike is already a finalist for the Boston Bike Film Festival coming up next month, and is being submitted to several other festivals across North America, including the International Bike Film Festival. It deserves to do well even if, as Carl said, part of the appeal will be for people to think Alaska winter riders are crazy.

The film, which was held to 26 minutes in length to have a chance on the festival circuit, touches on the history and evolution of fat bikes, and the passion and commitment behind winter riding.

Fat Bike will be available for download from Amazon.com in the next few weeks. Check it out. Trust me, it’ll be affordably priced. And for local riders eager to see it in a crowd, hang in there. A public screening now would disqualify the documentary from the Anchorage International Film Festival in December, so you’ll have to be patient. If it is screened during the festival—and it better be, in my opinion—Carl hopes winter riders will pedal to the screening en masse.

Sounds perfect.

International Incident

Jeff in Carson City was the first to round up a crowd for The Great Bicycle & Icicle Finger Series, and Anthony from Whitehorse, Yukon, was the first to take it international. But the Anchorage crew riding in Europe this month has raised the bar with a record number of people and nationalities represented.

From Refugio Monte Bianco we have a crowd of 23—count ’em 23—people flyin’ the bird high and proud. Brits, Welsh, Italians, Americans and French. And knowing the French, those guys probably meant it.

The Alaskans are there in the back row, encouraging the global community to personally insult me. Today’s post has a bonus picture of the Anchorage riders in the same area. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel about them spending so much of their vacation flipping me off. There’s a disturbing amount of enthusiasm on display here, folks. (By the way, for those keeping track, Sunday's shot was from Mont Blanc.)

Meanwhile, those of us stuck spending Labor Day here at home were left to ride local trails instead of the Swiss Alps, so The Grouch, The Monkee and I spent the holiday afternoon goofing around on the new Singletrack Advocates trail network. And da Monkee seems to be ready for Moab. He was catching air all over the place, and he didn’t even break any bike parts. It was like he knew what he was doin’ or something.

I can’t wait to see him do this shit on the Snow Ho this winter:

Guess the location, win a prize*

In celebration of Labor Day, we have
a Fresh Fingers Shot from two riders
who put the "hard" in "hardly working."

*Smug satisfaction is a prize, right?

Confused

I’ve noticed an odd behavior among Anchorage cyclists. This comes a shock, I’m sure.

Each spring, everyone’s bouncing off the walls and trying to ride as soon as the outside temperature hits 40 degrees. They’ll risk gravel, flowing snowmelt and icy patches on the road just to get a cycling fix. They’ll drool over every false rumor of a dry trail. They’ll wear ear warmers, neoprene booties and three layers of clothing just to get out there on two wheels in poor conditions. I know, because I’m out there with them.

Then the first week of September arrives. The trails are firm and fast. The roads are the cleanest they’ll be all year. The temperature edges down toward 50—perfectly comfortable in tights and a light jacket—but the second the weather turns cloudy and looks like a few raindrops might fall, huge numbers of riders whither away and disappear into their houses. I know, because I suddenly have the trails mostly to myself on such weeknights.

So 50 degrees in early spring is cause for celebration, and 50 degrees in early fall is too cold?

I look at it this way: In two or three months, it'll be 50 degrees colder than it is right now.

So ride. Now.

Say “Swiss Cheese!”

Thanks to the modern miracle of the iPhone,
the Fabulous Finger Series has returned!
This shot was taken this very morning in Geneva,
where Queen Bee and AKdeluxe are improving
the image of all fine Americans by
flipping the bird in their vacation photos before
launching their mountain-bike assault on the Continent.

Strong work, you guys. Enjoy your rides.

Anticipation

I’ve always been best at getting things done under a looming deadline. Pressure sharpens my focus. That’s probably why a long list of bike maintenance chores have suddenly seemed important over the past few days. With Moab and Fruita only weeks away, my motivation has spiked.

I spent last Saturday afternoon repacking a rear hub, and installing brake pads and a new rear derailleur—with fresh cable housings, of course—on my trail bike. This came after a week of suddenly experimenting with the pressures and rebound settings on my shocks. I’m also developing a neurotic tendency to stare at the box holding my new front derailleur as I wrestle with the decision of whether to install it now, or stick with the old one that’s working just fine.

Weeklong trips in one of mountain biking’s meccas don’t happen every year, so I always want my bike to fit and work perfectly when I arrive in a place like Moab. That’s one of the reasons I always take my own ride, instead of renting. The weeks of obsessive tweaking as I fine-tune it are just part of the anticipation that makes a biking vacation fun.

Sometime in the next couple of weeks, I’ll throw on some new brake rotors and maybe a new bottom bracket, because now that I’m running out of time, that clicking sound I’ve ignored all summer is suddenly driving me batshit crazy.