The Road Goes On Forever

Anyone who thinks the Midwest is a flat wasteland needs to come ride here. Over the past four days, I've ridden 181 miles and climbed 10,596 feet. I've crested hill after hill only to see another hill waiting. Sometimes—just to make things more fun—there has been a second, taller hill waiting so that we could see two climbs directly ahead of us.

OK, so these hills aren't quite the Alps. But they can stack up one after the other like a quad-eating roller coaster from hell. After three or four hours in the saddle, all I want to do is raid my brother's beer fridge and sip a frosty one while I soak my cooked carcass in his hot tub.

Living in Alaska, I tend to forget how extensive the road systems are in the Lower 48, especially in the farm country of the Midwest. Old county and state highways seem to be everywhere, so there is a mind-boggling array of options for road cyclists when they start planning rides. Even though there's an extensive community of cyclists in the area, meeting other riders out on the road is fairly rare because they're scattered over so many miles of pavement.

Even the drivers here deserve some credit. I don't know if it's because they're not sure what to think of the crazy people who wear funny clothes and ride bikes in the middle of nowhere, or they've decided to be nice to cyclists here on the edge of the homeland of the Tour of Missouri, but motorists have been cooperative all week (so far).

Nobody has honked in anger. Nobody has yelled at us. Nobody has thrown anything at us.

To the UPS driver who followed us for half a mile at 20 mph and then gave us a friendly wave when you finally had room to pass, and to the drivers of pickups and cars who patiently waited to crest hills so you could move to the left and give us plenty of room as you passed us on roads without shoulders: Thank you.

I may take a shot now and then at Midwestern ways (I spent the first 18 years of in this part of the country, so I have some baggage) but this place ain't all bad.

It doesn't look flat to me.

West of Paradise

This week's Tour of Funky Places
to Stop During a Bike Ride continued
today with a 41-mile ride along some
nice rural highways leading
to the town of Dearborn, Missouri.

This area is full of reminders
that I'm not in Alaska anymore.Apparently, Bo and Luke Duke
have fallen on hard times and relocated
to Dearborn in a more economical
version of General Lee.We stopped at a "sports bar"
for a Coke, but they didn't have any.
They said the truck would be coming later
with a fresh supply. Therese settled
for a Sprite, while Matt and I
treated ourselves to biscuits and gravy.

Why not? A small order
cost only two bucks, and the
proprietor looked like a woman
who knew her gravy.Besides, we needed fuel for the ride home.

Just another shitty day in ...

My sister-in-law had to work today,
so my brother and I took off alone
to ride 54 miles of relentlessly
hilly county roads in the countryside
north of Kansas City.

And we arrived in Paradise.Paradise is a quiet place
where you can walk into a store
called Clyde's and buy a Snickers bar
and a bottle of Gatorade. Or if you're
brave, you can have a Philly Cheese Steak
that costs a mere $2.19. (Something tells me
there's a plastic wrapper and
a microwave involved.)

But you can't wear your cleats inside
on the painted wooden floor.
And while you sit outside on a cheap,
plastic chair, maybe a guy will step out
of his pickup and notice you're
drinking Gatorade with no shoes on.
Then he can look at your bike
and ask how your feet can hurt
when they don't even touch the ground.

I recommend giving him a little laugh
and a friendly wave.

It's easier than explaining the cleat thing.

One in a million

Sunday started with a bang. A 70-mph, blazing-down-the-Kansas-Turnpike bang. It was followed by the sound of my brother saying, "Shit!" as he looked in his rear-view mirror and saw a bike flying through the air after it came loose from his roof rack.

I have to admit feeling a guilty shot of relief when he said it was his.

OK, so I'm goin' to hell. I can live with that.

Through some freakish occurrence of luck and physics, his Cannondale hit the pavement, slid onto the shoulder against a concrete barricade, and suffered only superficial damage while managing to avoid being run over. After a few adjustments and a vow to be more careful when racking his bike in pre-dawn darkness, he was able to ride the Octoginta with no problems.

I think he had his bike-protection mojo working this morning.

Lining up for the mass start.

A Kansas-style aid station, complete
with a John Deere tractor.

My brother riding through the countryside
on his death-defying bicycle. (My sister-in-law,
shown in the group photo at the top of this post,
was pulling up from behind as I shot photos
with one hand and steered with the other.)

Mr. Retro and Mr. Can You Hear Me Now? share
a brief encounter at the second aid station.

Getting there

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
'til its gone
—"Big Yellow Taxi," by Joni Mitchell

I'm in a bad spell for bike commuting. Schedules and obligations at home have been forcing me to drive to work, and that'll be the case for much of this winter.

I really shouldn't complain. My drive to work is only a little over three miles (the fun way—by bike—is longer) and I can get there in less than 10 minutes. But I hate driving to the office. Evening and weekend rides are great, but getting to work on a bike feels like doing the right thing and cheating the system all at the same time.

I was able to ride Tuesday for the first time in two or three weeks, and damn, it felt good.

There I was, pedaling along, dreaming up blog posts that will piss off hockey fans (just kidding, Luke) and cruising through the darkness on damp streets and trails. I watched the sky grow light over the Chugach Range and felt my legs spin easily as my slicks quietly hummed along.

I was feeling so good that I couldn't even get annoyed by this young bull moose that declined my gentle invitation to clear the trail. He was just another reminder of the cool route I ride to work. I snapped a few pics before he decided to slowly push me backward. He stared me down and kept approaching, so I stashed the camera and went a couple of blocks out of my way rather than attempt to ride around him at close range.

After all, it's rutting season, and he was a sexually frustrated yearling hoping to get a little action in a tough market. Big, bad-ass bulls are having all the fun while this poor dude is struggling to grow some stubby antlers—it's the ungulate equivalent of a horny high-school freshman trying to grow a second sideburn to impress that chick that almost made the cheerleading squad.

After I turned around, I detoured through a skateboard park, rounded the corner by a porn shop and cruised up Dimond Boulevard as the noisy parade of headlights and taillights carried all the automotive inmates to another day at work.

Maybe having my bike commutes cut back for a little while is a good way to remind me just how sweet every trip on a bike really is.

Never take your daily ride for granted.

This one time, at goon camp

I was reading "News of the Weird" in a weekly rag while eating lunch one day last week, and I saw an item about a goon from the National Hockey League opening a special camp for aspiring thugs.

Parents who want the best for their young hooligans pay this guy and his brother to teach the little tykes how to assault their opponents just like their toothless heroes do it on TV.

Now, I've never been much of an entrepreneur, but if I were Tonya Harding I'd rent the adjacent sheet of ice and start a class for the figure-skating sisters of all those young hockey players. You know, teach them stuff like triple axels and how to win competitions by getting fat bodyguards to break the knees of better skaters.

There are plenty of parents eager to pay for anything that will give junior an advantage in this hyper-competive world, so why not make a little coin while helping kids pursue their dreams?

Of course, you'll never make a buck off some people. Don't waste your time trying to entice those lazy parents who take the cheap route. They buy their kids mountain bikes and then piss away their weekends riding trails, splashing in streams, eating snacks and having a bunch of pointless fun. These foolish hedonists deprive their children of educational trips to hospitals and deny them the dream of being among the .002 percent of people in their sport who will become rich and famous.

I mean, really. Those bike-riding freaks don't even like to fight! And forget about gettin' them to spit at other kids, or hit them with sticks. They see someone in distress, do they pop 'em upside the head with an elbow? Noooo. They ask them things like, "Got everything ya need?" Sometimes, actually stop and help people do things like changing flats!

They meet new kids on the trail and won't even call them names. They engage in all manner of unnatural behavior, like sharing trail information and going on bike rides together as if they want to be friends.

It's not really the kids' fault. It's those parents who buy them those silly bikes, spend time with them and take them out for post-ride hamburgers. Such people don't care enough to give their kids the benefit of some hand-to-hand combat skills. It's a shame, really.

It's a good thing we have hockey fighting camp, or next thing you know, everybody would be having fun.

Bluto was my role model*

* What's your excuse?

Y'all oughta be ashamed of yerselves.

Here I was, thinkin' each person who reads my blog must be an individual of intelligence and good taste, and you let me down. I check the stats occasionally; I know what kind of places you people are hanging out in when you waste your employers' time on this shit. State and federal government agencies, oil companies, software firms, engineering outfits, university computer networks—they all show up in my barely understandable stats.

I mean, seriously people. I figured most of you were smarter than me. It's not like that's hard to achieve!

So I write a post about doing the Octoginta ride next weekend and admit I have no earthly idea what the name of that event means, and who is the only person who tells me?

My sister-in-law in Phoenix, who happened to be reading the blog only because she was bored out of her skull and couldn't find anything better to do! She's not even one of us! She's a civilian—one of those people who owns one cheap bike and is happy that way!

And she had to be the one to tell me that "Octoginta" is Latin for 80. As in 80 miles. Which—by some freakish coincidence—just happens to be the length of the event.

It's like calling a 100-mile ride a "century," but gettin' all hoity-toity to do it.

Now, personally, I'm not embarrassed by not knowing such a thing. After all, I majored in journalism. Journalism school is like an academic refugee camp for people who drink too much and can't do math.

Or Latin.

But some of you people understand gear ratios and how carbon fiber actually works. You took all the hard classes. I expected more from you, people, I really did.

Vado pro veho!

Or something like that.

On the road again

A few weeks back, I sold three old bikes while clearing out some space and improving my bike-storage strategy. One of them was the 1970 Raleigh Sport, an English 3-speed that my dad purchased and rode through the brief window between retirement and cancer.

I pulled this thing out of my mother's attic a few years after Dad died, and I hauled it home to New Mexico. Then I moved it all the way to Alaska when we came up here 11 years ago. At some point after we bought our house in Anchorage, I finally got around to mostly disassembling the thing before all my good intentions fell apart and the restoration project stalled. The frame spent the past few years hanging from a hook in my backyard shed, while most of the parts collected dust on a shelf.

Bikes should be ridden, not stored in cardboard boxes, so I finally decided to admit to myself that I'd probably never finish the damned thing. I sold it to a guy named Zach, who quickly turned the pile of parts back into a functional bicycle while sending me updates via e-mails and Gmail chats. Then he was was nice enough to share these pics of the bike after it was rebuilt.

Dad picked up this thing at a yard sale in Arizona, so I don't know much of its history. But at 37 years old, it's still chugging along and making its rider happy. (Zach will probably be even happier if he succeeds in softening up that old, dried-out Brooks saddle.)

It was a fairly cheap, utilitarian bike in its day. Countless versions of it are still being ridden around the world. How many of today's cheap bikes do you think will still be in use 37 years from now?

"Damn few" is probably a pretty safe bet.

Octo what?

“Charlie’s out there in the bush, gettin’ stronger.”
—Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore, ‘Apocalypse Now’

I don’t think a bike has really settled in at my house until it has been around long enough to take a vacation. The roadie is rapidly approaching its first anniversary and hasn’t left Alaska yet, but that’s about to change.

In less than two weeks, I’m taking it down south for a week of riding with my younger brother. He still has nice weather and is riding to stay in shape. He's out there gettin' stronger while I watch my gut grow. Here in Alaska, it’s getting dark earlier and raining a lot, and I’m barely riding. I’m even driving my ass to work every day because of obligations that are temporarily screwing up the bike-commuting option.

My brother and I try to meet somewhere every couple of years so we can spend a few days riding together. Sometimes I put the hurt on him, sometimes he puts the hurt on me. I think he’s looking to tip the balance in his favor.

Our first day will be devoted to mellow fun at the annual Octoginta ride in Lawrence, Kansas. I’m looking forward to a mass ride in Lawrence, which I haven’t seen in years. I grew up as a Jayhawks fan and have fond memories of spending weekends on the KU campus while visiting older siblings who went to college there.

When we were in high school, a buddy and I once got a little help from his older sister's boyfriend and poached a vacant KU dorm room for a night to avoid the two-hour drive home after a rip-roaring ZZ Top concert. (This was during the “World Wide Texas Tour” in 1977, when the bearded brethren were still a country/blues band with soul—quite a few years before they bought fuzzy guitars and started making silly MTV videos.)

The only thing I can’t figure out about this trip is what the hell “Octoginta” means. I thought my brother would know because he lives nearby in Kansas City. He said he’s not sure, but he thinks he recently treated a case of it in the hospital where he works.

I forgot to ask where the rash appears. Maybe I'll pack some extra chamois cream.

Eklutna Lake Trail

Despite its popularity with the general
public, I think the Eklutna Lake Trail
is underrated by serious mountain bikers.OK, so it has all the technical challenge
of hopping two curbs while riding to
the liquor store for a six-pack.

Sometimes we need to remember
that mountain biking isn't about
hard trails, races or outriding our friends.
It's about having fun, getting some exercise
and riding to pretty places where
cell phones don't ring. And this trail
has some of the best scenery around.

On a pretty fall day you get snow-covered peaks,
frosty leaves, and sunshine reflecting off
Eklutna Glacier. If you keep your eyes open,
you might see some Dall sheep, a mountain goat
or a bear. (My son had his first close-range bear
encounter here about five years ago.)
It's 26 miles of beautiful country,
and a damn nice way to spend a day
on a bicycle.

A person could do worse.

Fausto—the universal language

My job occasionally takes me to strange places. On Wednesday, I found myself shooting photos aboard a large ship crewed by Italians headed for Asia. The captain was a nice guy from a small town near Naples. He welcomed me aboard and was very accommodating, but I got the impression he couldn't quite figure me out.

When evening came around, he invited me to dinner in the officer's mess. We made small talk as he led me there and showed me parts of the ship along the way. As we ate, we discussed everything from his hometown to the hard, lonely life of a mariner to futbol and our families. Eventually, cycling came up because ... well, because I was involved in the conversation, and I'm too myopic and socially dysfunctional to have a conversation that doesn't eventually involve at least one bicycle.

He began to tell me about a big bike race held in his country and I said, "Of course! the Giro d'Italia!" His smile broadened instantly. The names of great old racers started popping up and as soon as he realized I could discuss Coppi, Pantani, Anquetil and Merckx, an already nice guy relaxed and opened up even more. I could sense that he enjoyed finding an American whose interests range beyond the NFL (actually, mine don't even include the NFL).

After dinner, we stood on the bridge for a long time as he showed me charts and his usual route to Japan, and told me about his ship's infrastructure, and the storms and other hazards along the Great Circle Route.

When midnight rolled around, it was time for me and another guy to leave the ship via a smaller boat that was pulling alongside so that we could climb down and jump aboard while the bigger vessel continued to steam through the darkness. I thanked the captain for his hospitality and he replied, "Anytime! Anytime!" This is a guy responsible for transporting dangerous cargo, so he doesn't get a lot of visitors—especially in these paranoid, post-9/11 days—but he sounded like he'd welcome me aboard any time I asked for a lift on one of his regular runs.

As we left the bridge, I shook his hand one final time as he said, "See you next time. Well, not next time, but sometime when you want to come again."

Even though he was a very friendly guy, I don't think he would have warmed up to me as much if the only sports conversation I could have was about the Yankees being six games behind the 49ers, or whatever the hell it is most ESPN viewers talk about.

I know it'll never happen, but I sort of liked the idea of climbing aboard and spending a few days on the run to Japan while hanging out with guys from the land of Cipollini.

All Pugged up

I've been getting my Pugsley ready for its first full winter, which really just means I installed a new handlebar and put some air in the tires. I did, however, need a better light for nocturnal trail rides, and about 10 days ago I found a killer deal.

Is there anything better than finding insane deals on bike stuff?

Of course not. It was a rhetorical question. If you found yourself answering with anything not along the lines of, "Oh hell no!" go stab your own knee with a fork.

Anyway, I was walking through the local REI store checking out the big fall sale when I looked in the glass case full of fancy bike lights and saw last year's NightRider MiNewt on sale. It's being replaced by a second-generation light, but the first version is still ... well, light years ahead of all my old stuff. By the time they applied the 20-percent discount offered to members on a single item, I was snatching last year's $160 light for about 85 bucks.

This happened only a couple of days after I had ridden Johnson Pass and found myself longing for a Camelbak large enough to carry more food. My M.U.L.E. just couldn't carry as many calories—or as much water—as John's H.A.W.G.

This left me wondering two things: 1) Should I blow a hundred bucks on another Camelbak, and 2) what the hell do the acronyms M.U.L.E. and H.A.W.G. stand for?

Whatever. My wife and I walked out of REI that day with my new light, and then she wanted to step into a nearby outdoor-clothing store that I rarely enter. Right away, a guy walks up, hands us each a coupon and says it's worth 50 percent of any single item the following weekend. We started looking around, and sure enough, they had two big-ass Camelbaks with nebulous acronyms.

So last Saturday, I was there with a coupon in my hand when they opened the door at 10 a.m., and five minutes later I was walking out with a H.A.W.G. that cost only 50 bucks.

I almost felt like I was shoplifting. It was a disturbingly good feeling.

A beer-run classic

I was preparing to go to dinner at Ken and Heather's place Saturday evening, but I was scratching my head over one of life's most vexing dilemmas: how to transport two six-packs of bottled beer and four big chunks of halibut without my BOB trailer, which someone recently borrowed.

Even if I'd had the BOB, I was really in the mood to ride my Pugsley, which is way too fat to accommodate the trailer's fork. Driving wasn't a good option. My friends live a little less than a mile away, so I'd walk there and back before I'd go beerless for a couple of hours just so I could drive home.

Then I remembered that I had all the parts required to assemble a great American classic: the rack-mounted milk-crate cargo hauler. Give a resourceful man a purloined milk crate and a fistful of zip ties, and he can move damned near anything. It might arrive in more pieces that it's supposed to be in, but he can gawl-darn move it.

These contraptions are one of the greatest utilitarian accessories in the history of bicycling. Over the decades since some some dirt-bag student carried out the first covert crate-snatching mission in the hostile territory of a supermarket's back lot and safely delivered the package to the extraction zone of his front porch, these things have hauled countless loads of beer to college dorms and apartments. Sure, they've also held TVs and supported bookshelves, but who really cares? It's hauling beer that made 'em famous.

So I ran out to the backyard shed and grabbed a crate that I boosted from a grocery-store alley during my reckless youth—27 years ago, to be exact. That's the other great thing about milk crates ... they never freakin' wear out!

Anyway, I went back into the garage, clamped a rack around the seatpost of my Pugs, and zip-tied that milk crate on good and tight. Next thing I knew, I had 'er loaded up with beer and dead fish, and was standing in the driveway trying to figure out how I was gonna get my 44-year-old leg over a bike that was starting to look like the Clampetts' vee-hickle when they loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly. Hills, that is.

The act of mounting the bike wasn't exactly poetry in motion, but what the hell—I was off to a party with a full trunk, a smile on my face and no need for a driver's license.

I didn't care if the car-imprisoned civilians stared at my fat-ass tires or the junk in my trunk. I was rollin' a modern-day classic, and cold beer bottles were clinkin' on my six.

Abusive relationship

Maybe I'm just weird, but I think
there's something really cool about
beating up a good bike ...

and then cleaning its wounds
and getting it back in action.

Then again, if I'm weird we all are,
because most mountain bikers I know
get off on this odd pattern of behavior.

Weird can be good.

B&I is on the road

In a town where at least one person
is struggling with the alphabet.

But if you want to go for a ride
or catch a fish,
this shop can set you up.

Nope, I still don't get it

I'll confess: I have been tempted to take an old frame and build up a singlespeed just to see what all the excitement is about. But something keeps getting in the way.

My geared bikes work. Really well.

Besides, I remember riding one-geared bikes as a kid. I also remember walking up a lot of hills, just like I often see SS riders doing.

I keep reading articles about how singlespeed devotees swear by their simpler, easier-to-maintain machines. But on Friday my friend John and I rode over Johnson Pass and had to slog through several miles of mud. Our gears were packed with bear shit-flavored gumbo and wrapped with thick weeds.

At one point, I couldn't see any teeth on my middle ring—it was a solid disc of mud. The spaces between my rear cogs were a mass of brown and green. Same for the front and rear derailleurs, which were covered in inches of crud. The chain was covered, too, and had to pass through two enormous masses of sticky mud as it moved through the derailleurs. My bike was as filthy and mud-packed as it has ever been.

Then an amazing thing happened.

Everything kept working.

Not flawlessly, but pretty damned well. When I needed them, the derailleurs I've ridden for three seasons with only basic maintenance kept doing their jobs. I was able to access all the gear combinations I needed to finish a long, tiring ride. I shifted into the middle ring when we finally found good trail, and dropped back to the granny gear whenever I needed it for a short climb.

Same thing with the rear cogs. I ran out of legs before I ran out of gears, so I don't even know how many cogs I could have used beyond the four I needed.

And how much time have I spent this summer futzing with derailleurs? Well, let's see ... I remember shooting some lube on them once in awhile, and I might have turned a barrel adjuster once or twice.

Sorry, singlespeeders, but I still don't get the fascination with doing things the hard way. I'll take a reliable set of derailleurs and shifters every day of the week.

Throw your hands up and shout!

When I got off the trail yesterday and picked up a cell signal, I found a voicemail from a nice guy named Kevin, who said he had my missing camera.

His daughter had spotted it from the car as her mom was driving down a street near the trailhead where I left it on the roof of my 4Runner.

Now I have my camera and the photos I had taken right before I lost it, such as this one of my daughter doing her hands-free, standing-up gag. I also get to keep tormenting my friends by shooting pics during our rides.

Kevin declined the reward I had offered on Craigslist, so after I got home I mailed him a Kaladi Brothers gift card with a note telling him to go buy a few complicated coffees for himself, and a few hot chocolates for his sharp-eyed daughter.

Good people kick ass.

Heed the Call

The sick and twisted mind of Lucas Brunelle
has produced two new videos.

They might make you want to go play
in traffic, or they might give you nightmares.

Either way, you shouldn't miss them.

¡Ándale!

The dark post

No photo tonight. I went for a ride with my daughter.

We rolled through the woods, over pretty streams and through falling leaves. We even goofed around in a parking garage, where I took pictures of her standing up while riding with no hands. Then I took some great pictures of us together on a little bridge over a creek.

When we got back to Smokejumper Trailhead, I put my camera on top of the car while I racked the bikes.

And then I left it there.

While I drove home. I'm such an idiot.

Now my camera is lying somewhere beside a road, or in the hands of someone who picked it up and decided not to call the phone number that's on a sticker on the camera body.

Small digital cameras are one of the coolest accessories to have on a bike ride. I'm really gonna miss that thing.

One, two, three ...

How many misadventures in mountain biking have started with the words, "You think you could ride up that?"

Maura asked that question this afternoon, and John got into the idea of testing the limits of traction. Then a bunch of synapses in my brain stopped firing and the idea started to sound sort of cool. Next thing I knew, I was flopping and rolling down a hill with my legs wrapped around the frame of my bike.

Ride up it? Hell, I couldn't ride down it.

Ah, hell, summer's on the way out and the door's hittin' it on the ass. What good is a Labor Day weekend if you can't bag a ride and score a few new bruises before the temperatures start falling?

Fortunately, we also survived an encounter with the moose pictured above. Sometimes, the big critters just don't want to cooperate and get well off the trail. After several minutes of "nudging" our patience was running out and John squeaked by, leaving an increasingly nervous moose still in our way.

Finally, a narrow window of opportunity arose and Maura and I made our move by counting to three and gettin' the hell outta Dodge.

Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure a few misadventures have also started with the words, "One, two, three, GO!"