Bicycle Dreams

3051.7 miles, with a goal of 12 days.
110,000 of climbing.
A drop-out rate of nearly 50 percent.
It’s 30 percent longer than the Tour de France.
It’s finished in half the time.
With no rest days.
The winner typically pedals 375 miles per day,
and finishes in 8 or 9 days.

By any normal standard, the Race Across America is an utterly insane event. Why would anyone do it? After watching Stephen Auerbach’s documentary, Bicycle Dreams, I still don’t understand. But any soloist who finishes this madness is a certifiable Bad Ass on a Bike.

Riding from San Diego to Atlantic City in 12 days (or less) pushes riders into the deepest, darkest parts of their minds, while subjecting them to no small about of danger. There’s no big prize money at stake, and it costs a small fortune to train, field a support crew and race. Some racers save for years just to reach the start line.

They ride while sobbing. They hallucinate. Beyond the usual definition of exhaustion, they attempt to sleep, and fail. Then they get back on their bikes—often with assistance because their bodies are so trashed—and keep riding. It doesn’t make sense. But it makes for a great film.

Auerbach, who recently contacted me to ask if I’d review a copy of Bicycle Dreams, set out during the 2005 RAAM to document the race using 18 cameras and an around-the-clock schedule. The result is powerful. It’s no secret to anyone who follows the race, even from afar, that the 2005 race turned out to be a heartbreaking event when Bob Breedlove died in a fatal crash in Colorado, but even without such a tragedy this race dishes out enough hurt to move a spectator to tears, and Auerbach got it on film.

Interestingly, he went completely indie on this project. With no big stars or a marketing budget, Auerbach hit the festival circuit and released a DVD without waiting or a distribution deal. It’s a grassroots campaign that’s getting a boost from awards at the Red Rocks, Yosemite, Breckenridge and All Sports LA film festivals.

Hopefully, it will also benefit from dumbass bloggers like me, because this is some riveting stuff. The suffering of the racers is epic, but their hearts are even bigger. Whether it’s rookie Chris Hopkinson riding with a sore neck supported by a jury-rigged contraption of foam, duct tape and inner tubes, or Jure Robic wanting to surrender his lead and quit when he loses the ability to conjure a mental image of his wife and daughter, it’s inspirational to watch them push through the torture. (Not that I was inspired to attempt anything similar, but I’ll certainly whine less during my next century ride.)

Click on over and order a copy. It’ll cost about as much as a new pair of gloves, and you’ll remember it a hell of a lot longer.

(Anchorage riders will remember 2005 as the year that hometown boy Ben Couturier raced as an 18-year-old rookie and became the youngest solo finisher in RAAM history. Couturier appears on screen for only seconds during a blurry nighttime shot, so you locals might want to keep an eye out for a Kaladi jersey and a pair of hairy legs.)

Blue Dot paparazzi

The old footbridge over Campbell Creek on the Blue Dot trail could be described—if one were feeling generous—as sketchy.

It’s a rickety, collapsing wooden structure that’s in such bad shape it’s actually less slippery when it’s covered in ice and snow, because water and moss make it a real bitch to cross while wearing hard-sole cycling shoes in summer. When I posted this picture a couple of summers ago, it was, uh ... suggested that perhaps I should have been offering Maura and Heather a hand instead of snapping pics as they risked a cold bath.

And when Jules and I rode Blue Dot on Wednesday night, and I briefly forgot that it was her first time on the trail, it occurred to me to say, “Watch out for the bridge” just as she was about to roll onto it. She stopped right where you see her; next to a wheel-grabbing hole mostly hidden by darkness.

She immediately suspected, of course, that I was waiting with my camera to catch a gnarly crash photo.

I think my reputation among my riding partners might need a little polishing. I would never hurt one intentionally. After all, friends who will hit the trails in freezing fog at -2F don't grow on trees, you know.

Besides, I can always hide in bushes and get nasty crash shots when strangers ride by. And now that Julie mentioned it, that would be a pretty cool shot ...

Frosty

I’m a morning person.

As long as morning doesn’t start before 9 a.m., and nobody talks to me for the first hour after I wake up. Otherwise, I feel like setting fire to the world.

So I just couldn’t make myself face early wake-ups this weekend. Early this winter, I had every intention of doing this year’s Frosty Bottom race, which was held on Saturday. But that would have involved getting up by 7 a.m.

I considered joining friends for a ride on the Herning Trail outside the town of Houston this morning. But that would have meant getting up about 6 a.m. When I was sipping a cold beer about 10:30 last night, I knew that wasn’t going to happen.

Instead, I slept in a bit, then headed out to do my own version of the Frosty. My friend Kathy called when I was driving to the ride, and said she’d join me with her husky, Denali. We rode about 32 miles under sunny skies and perfect temps in the neighborhood of 20 degrees.

My legs felt strong all day. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt better while spending nearly four hours on a fat bike. But if I started feeling all bad-assy, all I had to do was look at Denali, who ran 32 miles, and loved it.

The New-shoe Haiku*

Old shoes shot to hell.
New ones finally arrive.
And silver's still cheap.


*aka: I’m tired and uninspired,
so I’m down to taking pictures
of my freakin’ shoes.
(Which almost could have
been the haiku.)

Goin’ to the powder room

Alaska is a chilly place, which means that, sometimes, chamois cream just isn’t a pleasant option—even in summer. Like when you camp out the night before a ride. Northern nights are cold. As in see-your-breath cold.

Unless you happen to sleep with a tube of Chamois Butt’r in your bag, the pre-ride application can get gruesome. Stuffing a big gob of ice-cold goo up the ol’ eerie canal first thing in the morning is enough to make you curse your own ancestors, not to mention the friends who are standing around telling you to hurry your ass up.

And on longer winter rides, anything moist will eventually feel cold and clammy against your skin. Fortunately, I recently happened upon a solution: Anti Monkey Butt powder. Shoot some of this shit in your shorts, and you’ll be warm and fuzzy for hours.

Besides being a warm, dry alternative to creams, this stuff is flat-out manly. They sell it in six-packs for cryin’ out loud! And they market it to macho dudes like fat-ass truck drivers (and those are guys with posteriors that spend a lot of time in sweaty, pressure-filled situations). Check out this info from the company web site: “Anti Monkey Butt Powder is specially formulated to absorb excess sweat and reduce frictional skin irritation. It is ideal for butt-busting activities such as truck driving, motorcycling, bicycling, horseback riding, and extreme sports.”

If you’re not manly, you can even buy a version for babies, or Lady Anti Monkey Butt, a “satiny smooth powder to minimize the frictional discomfort that women often experience when using exercise equipment, running, driving, cycling or just walking.” They say it reduces friction on your inner thighs, but if those babies are rubbin’ up against each other when you try to walk, I don’t really want to know.

Either way, this stuff is cheap and easy to find. Apparently, it’s even sold in hardware stores—which is especially nice if you’re shy about buying butt products and want to discreetly slip some into a big pile of tools, drywall anchors and electrical tape when you go to the cash register.

This is good stuff. But you don’t have to take my word for it. You can read testimonials on the company web site. For example, there’s a woman who picked up a canister at Walmart and was thrilled to find that it “stops that awful sweaty feeling that comes along with living here in S.E. Texas.”

When you need an expert on assholes, you can always count on someone who lives in Texas.

If I may butt in …

Infantry soldiers and backpackers can get obsessive about foot care. Whether you’re grunt on the battlefield or a gorp-munchin’ hiker in the mountains, your feet are your primary mode of transportation. A painful blister or a nasty fungus can ruin your whole day.

Bicyclists are picky about ass care for the same reason. Our butts are a primary connection to our bikes, and a festering saddle sore or other nether-region unpleasantness can turn a long ride into a sufferfest. Think about it: What other sport involves ergonomically designed saddles, pants with crotch padding, and all manner of creams and powders created specifically for keeping your crack dry and happy?

One of my sisters-in-law—not a regular cyclist—has agreed to do a 60-mile ride with friends, so she e-mailed to ask me one simple question: Is it a good idea to buy a pair of bike shorts?

Instead of simply replying “yes,” I sent back a treatise on shorts, seams, saddle height, losing underwear, and embracing chamois cream. I haven’t heard from her since. I’m unrepentant, though. A short answer simply wasn’t enough for a subject so near to my heart … and other parts.

Those of us who have traveled the path of enlightenment to butt bliss always hate to hear newbies complain about posterior pain or the “sadists” they blame for the modern bike saddle so, naturally, we want to share with them all the secrets that ensure comfort so they can learn to love riding as we do.

I believe that the combination of bad saddles and inappropriate clothing keeps countless adults from enjoying bicycles. We all know someone who decided to go on their first ride in years, only to swear they’ll never do it again because they returned home with a sore posterior. And most of them don’t know enough to realize the problem was a piece-of-junk saddle on a department-store bike, mated with a pair of cotton underwear and pants covered with cruelly folded and stitched seams.

One ride with a proper saddle and a good pair of shorts could open up a whole new world to them. I think those of us who ride all the time have a responsibility to stand up for the world’s butt cheeks and spread the word.

But I’m not sure my sister-in-law agrees at the moment.

Glacial facials

It’s January in Alaska, which means that 1.) it’s colder than a well-digger’s ass, and 2.) the temperature’s about to drop. Any day now, we’ll hit another one of those -20F spells that are good only because when the temperature rises 40 degrees, we all feel great at 20 above zero.

It also means this is beardcicle season. OK pretty much all winter is beardcicle season, but when you ride a bike, colder air = bigger glacial facials.

That shot at the top of this post was taken by my friend Steve a couple of winters ago on one of those sub-zero nights that can make you momentarily wonder if the couch potatoes have a point when they call us nuts. My face got so iced up that night, I had trouble sticking food in my mouth. Hell, I had to find a gap just to get a drinking tube in there.

Riding in air that cold can hurt. There’s brain freeze to deal with, and your eyes water like crazy if the wind hits them. Exposed skin gets so cold it can feel like it’s burning.

Some people would think the last thing you need on top of all that is a mass of ice hanging off your face, right? But I don’t mind it, partially because I get a kick out of the weird looks it brings from other people on the trail.

But mainly, I don't mind it because it's a small price to pay for not being a slave to razors in the morning, or TV on cold nights.

Best of 2009

Returning from a tropical vacation
to -20F commutes in Anchorage in January.

***

Fun rides on snowy trails in spring sunlight.

***

A spring road ride from Anchorage to Hope,
and the tasty burgers at Tito’s at the end.

***

The Denali Highway.

***

Team Muschi Schmerzen moving up to 13th place
and shaving more than an hour off our time
from the previous year, because this time
we actually had a clue what
we were doing in the Fireweed 200.

***

100% organic bike racks.

***

The usual big rides on the Kenai:
Devil’s Pass, Johnson Pass, Res Pass.
Spectacular, as always.

***

Stickers.

***

Riding the hell out of our new local trails.
(Or trying to.)

***

Crashes.

***

Falling into cow parsnip on the way to Crescent Lake,
then spending hours with my leg feeling
like it was plugged into an electrical outlet.

***

Rain. Leonard. Enough said.

***

Crewing for Monkee and Jules during
the Soggy Bottom 100,
and watching so many Faces of Death
roll through checkpoints
late in the race.

***

Moab.

***

Fruita.

***

Tater, buddy.

***

One word: Mankini

***

Happy New Year

Value? Not if you ride a bike.

I always like shopping at businesses that make an effort to accommodate bicyclists. I even love bragging about them here on the blog. Conversely, I’m always disappointed in businesses that treat me like a second-class citizen if I don’t arrive by car.

I’ve been a customer at Value Liquors at Klatt Road and the Old Seward Highway since the place opened. The place is clean, has good prices, and is locally owned. Most of the time, I’ve arrived there by car, because it’s close enough to my house that I drive by regularly—and who really wants to carry a 12-pack home on the bike if they’re driving by anyway?

Unfortunately, the place has never installed a bike rack. A few times, I’ve rolled a bike just inside the door while picking up whatever I needed for a weekend, or a party just up the hill at the MacHuber manse. It was never a problem.

But last Wednesday, after I carefully leaned my Pugsley out of the way just inside—taking care to keep the tires on a rug so my tires wouldn’t drip on the floor—a surly employee launched into me and demanded that I never bring a bike inside again. She ranted about it being inappropriate and unsafe. (It’s just a bike, lady, not a bomb.)

The manager backed her up the next day. Just can’t have bikes inside the stores, he said. As a reason, he cited a recent incident in which when a drunk guy tried to ride down an aisle inside another Value Liquor store.

Sorry, but as far as I’m concerned, that was an inebriation problem, not a bicycle problem.

I’m sure drunks stagger in trying to buy booze all the time, but I doubt the manager’s ever tried to ban walking. If you don’t want obnoxious drunks in your business, you throw them out. You don’t blame the inanimate object that got them there.

I’ll miss the convenience of shopping at the “corner store.” But Costco, Fred Meyer, and Brown Jug stores all have bike racks.

They aren’t locally owned, but they don’t treat me like a bum.

Happy Christmas

Christmas Eve on Speedway Singletrack

May your Christmas be fluffy and white.

Beginning of the end

According to calendars, yesterday was the first day of winter. That’s a load of bull.

I’ve never needed a calendar or a chart of the solar system to tell me which season I was in. As far as I’m concerned, seasons are determined by weather and a state of mind.

Summer? That starts on Memorial Day or the last day of school, whichever comes first. Autumn begins when the air cools and the leaves start to turn. And winter starts when there snow is on the ground, or when ice forms at night and stays frozen all day.

Science dictates that seasons are determined by Earth’s position in relation to the sun, but when I’ve been riding on snow and ice for six or eight weeks, nobody’s going to convince me that I’m dealing with fall weather. Especially when I’m this far north, where I commute to and from work in darkness during November and December.

Don’t let The Man fool you. Yesterday wasn’t the beginning of winter. It was only the end of our descent into darkness. We bottomed out, and could feel good about it.

Today, we gained 8 seconds of daylight. And that’s a good reason to give a damn about our place in the planetary neighborhood.

Powder day

Kathy passes through the pretty stuff

I have a love/hate relationship with fresh snow. I love how beautiful it is, and I love the way it covers roots and little stumps, changing the character of a trail between summer and winter.

Leonard on Salmon Run

But I hate all the work it takes to pack trails and make them fun to ride again. I hate the way I founder in the powder when a trail is only four to eight inches wide, and the slightest error—and I make a lot of errors—yanks my front wheel off its line.

Petra cruises Moose Ridge

After last week’s dump, I’ll be pushing more than I like for a few more days. But once it gets packed again, damn, it’s gonna be sweet.

Future King of the World

Stuck in gear

Sometimes I wonder where all the “bad” days went. Those days when the weather was considered crappy, giving me an excuse to stay inside and catch up on a backlog of tasks I’ve sat aside for months.

Summer in Alaska is manic. We pack all the fun we can into each long day, so only the must-do chores get done. I usually have a pile of things I intend to do when summer ends and the weather turns hard. Problem is, some of the items on that list have been ignored for a couple of years now.

I recently realized that this coincides with my decision a couple of years ago to purchase a few new pieces of clothing to keep me warm and (relatively) dry while commuting in autumn’s freezing rain. It also matches up with my decision to buy a fat bike so that I can keep rolling after a fresh winter snowfall, instead of taking a few days off until the trails get packed again.

Yeah, there are still some days when a glance out the window is enough to quash any thought of going outside, but those days seem fewer and farther between than they used to.

The better gear gets, the easier it is for us to get outside.

Maybe some of the stuff on that list just wasn’t meant to be done.

Solo

The social element of mountain biking is a big part of the fun for me, so when most people seemed to be busy last Thursday night, I had to push myself to go out and ride alone.

Then I had one of my best rides of the winter.

Come Sunday, I didn’t even ask anyone to go. I rode at my own pace, concentrated on improving my snow-riding skills, and spent hours rediscovering old terrain and finding the new singletrack that seems to pop up only in winter.

It’s easy to get addicted to the fun of riding with friends. But it’s also good to break out and do your own thing. Riding alone allows you to experiment without pressure. You can try that little trail that you think goes somewhere, and suffer no harassment if it turns out to be the Highway to Hell.

Going solo is also a great way to tap into the meditative side of mountain biking. You can clear your head and concentrate on riding your line or listening to the woods. That stuff’s easy to overlook, if you’re not careful.

Never doing it would be a shame.

Fat bikes, fat screen

Today I lived through the torment and humiliation of childhood bullying. I watched maniacal, ventriloquist songbirds murder a redneck with a shotgun. Then I shared in several minutes of loud, horrific marital strife that ended badly. I even saw the specter of Death convince an angry, homicidal little girl that she really appreciated and loved her neglectful mother.

Then Death drove a toy through Mommy’s eye socket and into her brain, just to make sure that evil little bitch felt proper remorse.

And that was only the first two hours of my initial Anchorage International Film Festival experience. I won’t even get started on the event's excruciating master of ceremonies.

Fortunately, the finale of the AIFF’s “Martini Matinee” was Carl Battreall’s documentary Fat Bike, which provided a nice reminder of how snow bikes can bring joy to a dark and weird world. Best of all, it was clear that a huge portion of the audience in the Bear Tooth theater was there mainly to see Fat Bike.

It looked great on the big screen, and the audience was justifiably impressed not only by Carl’s work, but also by the tenacity and toughness of the stars: Susitna 100 racers Mike Morganson and Josh Morehouse, who were in the back of the theater chowin’ down on pizza and beer.

I’m not sure that’s a good training diet, guys. After all, the 2010 race is only a couple of months away.

(To order Fat Bike on DVD, click here.)

Ho, yo

Tuesday morning's ride to work.

Thick, freezing fog is one of my favorite things about winter. It makes for a fun morning commute that has a different character than it does in clear weather, and light beams shoot long, white columns through the air.

Tonight's ride home.

And when the supercooled water droplets contact even colder surfaces, they freeze and stick, coating trees and other surfaces with hoarfrost. Or, if you're into the hip-hop thing, "ho frost."

Winter may be long and harsh, but it ain't ugly. Of course, it's prettiest when you're not trapped behind a windshield at rush hour.

Forgetting

Riding Baseball Boogie

They always say that once you learn how to ride a bike, you never forget. I think that’s a load of crap. I forget all the time. Some days—and some sections of trail—are like brain-sucking vortexes that erase all skill and coordination.

Last winter, my nemesis was upper Yellow Jacket. I could hang with a pack of snow bikers most of the night, but when we hit a particular section, I became a bumbling idiot and fell off the back every time. I don’t even know why. At least that section was a consistent problem, which isn’t the case with Speedway.

Speedway singletrack is usually one of my favorite winter trails, but last Thursday night, I rode it from the Moose Meadow side, and couldn’t steer to save my life. Well, that’s not entirely true. I kept steering into the snow off the right side of the trail just fine. Sometimes, my body actually leaned out to the right before my bike followed. It was like I was being pulled north by a big dummy magnet.

When I rode it yesterday afternoon, I did OK. I always seem to get back in the groove, eventually.

I just never know how long I’ll stay there.

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.