Matanuska Thunder Struck

The myth is busted. For several years, I’ve scoffed at friends who said positive things about the riding at Kepler-Bradley State Park in Palmer. I’d tried it twice and found little more than voracious mosquitoes and wide, boring trails. I refused to believe the stories were true.

That changed on Saturday when I drove north with Jules and the Monkee after staying up until 1 a.m. the previous night as we built her new Salsa Dos Niner. They knew where the good stuff is, and damn, it was fun.

Finding dry Alaska singletrack in May is about as easy as finding a virgin in Vegas, so to get my mountain bike dirty a full two weeks early was sweet. And those nasty mosquitoes weren’t out yet.

EndoRando was in the parking lot after wrapping up his ride, which included the shooting of a fabulous new piece of fine art for the Fabulous Finger Gallery. I hooked him up with some stickers for his fat bikes, and his pic will show up on the blog later this week, so stay tuned, boys and girls, 'cause it’s dirt season!

Against the Wind

I have no idea what the guy said. The headwind was roaring in my ears, and my light jacket was flapping like a flag in a hurricane when I passed him on the C Street bike path.

He was spinning a small gear into the maw of Monday night’s wind tunnel, and I caught up to him only because I was mashing the shit out of my 36x16 and wondering what had ever possessed me to turn my commuter bike into a singlespeed.

We smiled at one another and I yelled something like, “This is insane!” He probably couldn’t hear me, despite us being only three feet apart. He smiled and yelled something back, so I nodded as if I understood, then kept inching ahead, slowly.

After getting home, I posted a comment about the headwind on Facebook, prompting my old friend Helen to reply: “There are things for situations like this. They're called cars.” In the ensuing exchange of comments, she pointed out that drivers can communicate easily in all situations—with their middle fingers.

I suddenly felt much better about fighting that bugger of a headwind, because Helen had reminded me of one of the greatest things about riding a bike.

When motorists are stuck in rush-hour gridlock, tempers flare and everyone gets angry. But when bike commuters find themselves in adverse conditions, they support each other with friendly waves and knowing smiles. Their shared suffering creates an unspoken bond.

Try finding something that cool the next time you’re on a freeway.

Limbo

The blog has been slow for the past week. Hell, it’s been in a coma. It’s not that bike things aren’t happening, they just haven’t been blog-friendly. It’s road-riding season while we wait for the trails to dry, and pavement’s just not the same.

I need dirt.

On dirt, riders scatter enough for me to get photos. On pavement, they tend to stay in tighter groups.

On dirt, riders get to laugh at each other’s falls. On pavement, falls always hurt, and laughing can get your ass kicked.

On dirt, you tend to swap stories when everyone stops to regroup. People talk about how they cleaned a boulder or slipped on a wet root. On the road, there’s not that much to talk about. “Did you pedal for the past half-hour? Hmm. Yeah, me too.” Fascinating stuff.

My mountain bike is spruced up and ready to go. New tires, bottom bracket, chain, cassette and crankset. It needs to be set free.

An escape is being planned. I just need to go over the wall before the guards toss my cell and discover the map.

Point Blank

Shut the fuck up.
Learn to buck up.
Shut the fuck up.
—“Nugget,” by Cake

Motorized vehicles tend to make little people feel larger and stronger than they really are. And I’m not just talking about those enormous pickups driven by frustrated men who are shorter than the average eighth-grader. Even a little SUV can make a soccer mom feel invincible, especially when she’s near a bicycle instead of a monster truck driven by a dwarf.

That’s why I always like watching a motorist’s gonads shrivel when his (or her) anonymity disappears as an angry bicyclist appears at his door after he parks. I’ve seen teenage boys and angry old men suddenly grow sheepish when confronted at point-blank range after they’ve harassed me on the road.

This morning, I heard the hostile voice of a woman as I pedaled north on an industrial side street: “THERE’S A BIKE PATH ON THE OTHER SIDE!” I looked back and saw a car—with the driver’s window rolled down—pulling onto a side street. Yeah, that’s ballsy. Yell at me as you’re turning off the road to disappear, you abomidable bitch.

The greatest thing about industrial areas is light early morning traffic. It allows quick U-turns. Let’s dance, baby.

I followed her into the parking lot where she works, rolled up to her window and asked what her problem was. “There’s a bike path right over there!” she angrily said.

No, I replied, that’s a small sidewalk on the wrong side of the road, and oh, by the way, do you know what Alaska law says about bicycles on streets?

“No.”

Well, as a licensed driver, you should.

“Look, I ride a bike too,” she said, growing timid. “I was just trying to be helpful. I get nervous when I see a bike on the street.” (There goes the right ovary.)

Well, maybe you shouldn’t be driving then, because what I was doing was safe and legal, and I really don’t appreciate people copping an attitude and yelling at me from their cars. I know what I’m doing, fuck you very much.

“Look, I just thought you should know there’s a bike path,” she replied while nervously starting to close her door and raise her window. “I thought maybe you hadn’t seen it. I didn’t have an ‘attitude’ and I didn’t mean to upset you.” (Aaaaaand there goes the left ovary.)

After I spouted a few more angry words and started to roll away, her boldness began to return as the distance between us increased.

“Have an awesome day!” she called out.

Too late.

Go (to hell) Speed Racer! Go!

My friend said a couple of co-workers were going to join us for a road ride. He didn’t say they were hammerheads. Hell, I don’t think he knew. But the pace was fast from the start, and I got caught up in the fun of speed, and the testosterone-induced insanity that makes a guy hang on to the front instead of using his head and dropping back.

By the time we reached the Coastal Trail, I had stopped thinking much about the speed, but the hammerheads still had the afterburners lit up and I was staying with them. Traffic was fairly light, and we scorched it from Kincaid Park all the way to downtown Anchorage. When we took a break at a coffee shop, I realized what I had become, for about half an hour, anyway: a roadie douchebag. We had no business riding that fast on a recreational trail, and we looked like assholes to everyone we passed. I felt embarrassed for days. Now that I think about it, I still feel bad, and that ride was two or three summers ago.

That’s why it stung this week when a local rider posted an open apology in an online forum. He regretted losing his temper and berating a road cyclist for going too fast and scaring the shit out of him on a recreational trail used by everyone from toddlers to senior citizens. He felt bad because he continued to yell after the other rider had apologized. He’s right to recognize that he could have chilled out faster, but I don’t think his anger was inappropriate.

This kind of thing comes up every spring when the fast bikes come out and riders get drunk on sunshine and speed, because this is also the time of year when more people walk on paved trails, or push strollers, or pedal their rarely used beach cruisers—the kind of uses for which paved trails are built. Riders who terrorize people by treating them like slalom gates deserve a nasty ass-chewing now and then. High-speed riders should stick to streets and highways.

If you’re a rider who likes going fast on paved trails, try this simple experiment: Go for a walk on one of those trails, and take a small kid, if you have one laying around the house. Or take an elderly neighbor or grandparent. When a bike whizzes by, you’ll probably realize just how narrow a six-foot-wide strip of asphalt can feel.

And maybe you’ll think that, on your next ride, you should slow the hell down.

VO2 FU

What I love most about the Phabulous Phinger Gallery is that I never know where the next picture will come from, or how weird it will be. They've been done in snow, sunshine, various states, foreign countries and even under water, but this is the first one from the torture chamber of a VO2 max test.

Erik's a rider from Palmer, and is, no doubt, a shitload faster than me if he's this concerned about his VO2 max. I'm just glad he was still able to express himself, and that he reads my blog. Thanks, Erik, and welcome to the rogue's gallery.

Turnagain fingers

Road season has begun. For me, this is the time of purgatory between snow biking and mountain biking. My road bike is mainly just a sanity saver for the times when I can’t ride trails. Still, even a road ride can be damn fun.

Saturday’s first ride of the season was the Arctic Bicycle Club’s annual Turnagain Arm Metric Century, a 66-mile ride from Anchorage to Girdwood, and back. The weather was perfect: Clear skies, little to no wind, and nice spring temps. It’s a shame that only 10 riders got in on the fun. (Though, even in a small crowd, I got The Finger a few times.)

The shoulders of the highway were amazingly clear for this time of year. Well, except for two-wheeled obstacles, one of which left me with a mangled front brake and two swollen fingers that guarantee this post will remain short.

But all’s well that ends well, and in the future I will follow my new rules of the road. I have been advised by both my attorney and my neuropsychologist that I am to keep my upper body out of the lane of traffic on the Seward Highway.

Sounds like good advice.

Headin' home after a tasty lunch in Girdwood.

Watch out, Danny MacAskill ...

... because Chris Akrigg is coming up behind you, and he's good.
Best of all, he rides singletrack. And has a dance move or two.

My brother sent me the link to this video last week,
but it took me a few days to get around to watching it.
I'm still not sure if these things make me happy
by entertaining me, or depress me
by reminding me how much I suck.

Will work for beer

Most years, I think of the spring bike swap as the official kickoff of the summer riding season. Unfortunately, I had a work-related obligation a couple of Saturdays ago and missed this year’s event. Luckily for me, Bicycle Commuters of Anchorage—a group that has never gotten its due credit on this blog—hosted a celebration and volunteer recruitment party tonight at Midnight Sun Brewing Company. It felt like a nice season opener.

These folks have led the charge for Anchorage commuters over the past two or three years, promoting bikes as a mode of transportation and working with elected officials to get a new bike plan passed by the Anchorage Assembly. An organized group to speak up for the rights and needs of bike commuters has been needed for a long time, so we’re lucky to have BCA getting the job done.

A bribe here and there can be an effective way to accomplish things, and BCA knows how to grease palms with just the right incentive. One little coupon for a free Oosik Amber Ale was enough to get me to sign on the dotted line as a volunteer for an upcoming event. (Who knows what I would have agreed to if I'd had the Panty Peeler.) I’ll be a valet parking bikes May 1 at the Bike to Work Fashion Show and Festival at the University Center.

I didn’t tell them my role models are the parking garage attendants who took Daddy’s rare sports car for a joy ride in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I’ll be hoping for someone to put a nice new Pinarello in my hands before wandering off to check out attractions.

Trust me, everything will be fine. What? That little scratch? Uh, I’m pretty sure that was there when you gave us the bike, sir.

Bike guy

After years of simply being a bike geek, it’s nice to know that riding to work year-round can buy a guy a little athletic credibility, even if it’s undeserved.

People in the building where I work have been organizing a summer softball team. After sending a mass e-mail to everyone in the joint, one of the women behind this project called me personally to ask if I planned to play. I politely declined, while withholding my low opinion of a game that progresses at a glacial pace, is excruciatingly boring to watch, and often involves people wearing funny pants. (As a mountain biker, the last thing I need is another sport that’s boring to watch and involves people wearing funny pants.)

I was chatting with this same woman a few days ago when she laughed and informed me that a number of people on the floor below mine had been asking “if the bike guy is going to play.” Given they don’t know my name, and therefore couldn’t be interested in my charming personality, I suspect they believe that someone who rides so much is sufficiently athletic to get past first base. (Which, come to think of it, is sort of the same lie I told myself in high school.)

Unfortunately, I’m about as skilled at any form of baseball as I am at open-heart surgery. Which is to say that if I end up on a team, things are going to get ugly and people are going to regret letting me be involved.

I appreciate the invitation, but I’ll let everyone else spend the summer playing with their balls. We'll all be better off if I simply remain “the bike guy.”

Finger flash

The thing I love about these shots of big groups flipping the bird is that there always seems to be a couple of people who aren’t really sure what the hell is going on.

See those three women on the far left? They had no idea why they were being rounded up in a dark parking lot to flip off some strange guy with a camera. Kudos to their bold friend for diving—finger first—right into the madness.

And thanks to the Smithville crew for letting me hang out and share a couple of beers after their Wednesday evening ride on a meteoric night.

Considering how many kilts were in this crowd, I'm just glad the meteor was the only big flash that occurred.

Takin’ it up the icicle

I’d like to apologize to the person from France who Googled “icicle in her ass” and ended up on my “If I may butt in …” post. Something tells me I failed to provide what the Googler was seeking. Winter bikers are a hardy lot, but there are some things up with which we will not put.

I don’t know what kind of kinky stuff those cheese-eatin’ surrender monkeys are into, but frozen rectal probes are not likely to appear here unless one of my friends accidentally gets impaled in the posterior—in which case, I confess, photographs might be taken from a zone beyond punching distance while we’re waiting for the ambulance to arrive.

At that point I might have to change the name of this here blog to Bicycles & Assicles. Which is probably what it’s called in Alabama already.

Cracking up

Ah, spring commuting in Anchorage.
Gravel everywhere, snowmelt coating
bike frames with muddy slop,
and the sound of studs clattering
on dry pavement.

Studded tires are slow and heavy,
and grinding hundred-dollar studs
against the pavement is annoying,
but I've learned to resist the
temptation to remove them early.

Because a path that looks like
this for several days ...


Can suddenly look like this ...


Then, of course, we have
those pesky little cracks that open up
in thin pavement of bike paths.
And by "little," I mean
freakin' huge.

Steer carefully, people.
And try to stay upright.

Boutique vs. basic

Not having the coolest components on your bike can feel a little like being a teenager who spends the weekend with a glue gun and science-fair project while the guys from school are winning football games and making out with cheerleaders. At least that’s what I think it feels like. I never actually had the brains or motivation to compete in a science fair.

I often feel twinges of lust when I catch a glimpse of someone else’s fancy bike bling, especially if it’s a shiny bit that I’ve coveted for years. Chris King’s components fall into that category. I’ve never experienced the rite of passage that involves pressing those boutique-brand headset cups into a bike frame.

Some friends would never lower themselves to using a lesser brand. They’d accuse me of being a cheap bastard—after all, a fancy headset costs something like $125. Not that much in the big picture, considering that most of us own a few thousand dollars worth of bike gear. But that’s still a lot of bucks for a basic part. I blame my perspective on a sound sense of frugality.

Even with my meager math skills, I can figure out that for the price of a Chris King headset, I could buy two from Cane Creek and still have enough money left over to buy a case of decent beer. When you’re building up a new bike, that price difference covers another component or two. And when you really get down to it, how good does a headset have to be? All it has to do is turn a little left, then a little right, then a little left … over and over. With decent construction, proper adjustment and sealed bearings, most of my cheaper headsets work flawlessly for years without requiring any attention.

Over the past 20 years, I think the only headset I ever managed to “wear out” was the one on my old Stumpjumper when the bike was clamped to my roof rack as I drove into the garage and damn near ripped the steerer tube clean out of the fork crown. The bearings got pressed into the races like bite marks. I doubt that a Chris King model would have fared any better—it just would have cost more to replace.

I still want one, but don’t expect to see one on any of my bikes any time soon.

Don't hurry, be happy

I love slow rides. Many of my friends are lighter and faster than me, so even our “mellow” rides are still at what I think of as a brisk pace, and I love those, too. Sometimes, I end up with a group that that makes me work hard just to stay on the back. I even like those rides.

But there’s nothing like going out alone with the sole purpose of riding easy to rest weary legs, or to do some deep thinking, or just to take long breaks and enjoy the woods.

That’s what I did one day about a week ago. I had both tired legs and some thinking to do, so I took two and a half hours to do what could have easily been a 90-minute ride. I ate some snacks, took a bunch of pictures, and stared into a hole in the ice as a creek gurgled past beneath my feet.

At one point, I stopped in the woods to shoot a few pictures, and a local racer cranked by wearing his team kit. He looked a little baffled to see me just hanging out in the forest.

I’ve known people who focused so much on “training” that they forgot to ride for fun.

Frankly, I’d rather be slow.

Phat

They’re here, they’re real, and they’re spectacular. Surely destined to become the must-have fat-bike accessory for next season, the custom Bicycles & Icicles frame stickers have finally arrived, giving winter bikers a new way to figuratively thumb their nose (or flip the bird) at bike-hating Nordic ski snobs.

I slapped a couple on the Pugsley tonight before heading out on what was likely my final fat bike ride of the season. The afternoon sun is turning the trails into mush. The turns on Speedway are getting so rutted that even Endomorphs can barely hold on.

We’re entering the Dark Zone—that dreaded period between good snow trails and the dry dirt that won’t be available for another two months. I’d say we’ve entered road bike season, but that’s still a couple of weeks away for anyone who doesn’t want to go out for a ride and return home covered in wet road grime from all the snowmelt flowing in the streets.

This is also the period when the blog tends to slow down, because trainer rides and brooding impatience aren’t very inspiring. This time of year, all a person can do is put his head down and try to get through it.

And maybe put some shiny new stickers on the fatty.

Connect the Dots

Once upon a time, I hated this trail. Or maybe it was just one night.

Two or three winters back, a group of us turned on to Blue Dot in total darkness, only a few days after a snowstorm. Manny’s Hell Ride, I like to call it. To this day, there’s a statement from Oscar the Grouch that elicits chuckles from many, but is fully understood only by the handful of riders who were there that night: “It was a great ride, until it started to suck ass.”

That trail was six inches wide with 18-inch walls of powder on both sides. You couldn’t turn the pedals without hooking a foot in the snow. Oscar’s light was dying. My patience was fading. And Tony’s GPS, unfortunately, was working. He assured us we were almost at the end—repeatedly—because each time he said it, it felt like we were turning in some new direction.

These days, Blue Dot is one of my favorites. Especially in winter, when it’s buffed out and every twist and turn only adds to the fun. And in a winter like the one that is ending, it is heavenly on a fat bike.

In a couple of months, we’ll be wrestling with its gnarly, exposed roots, slipping on the water-soaked boards of its crumbling bridge, and donating blood to its hordes of mosquitoes—none of which will be as fun as its snowy singletrack.

Trails like this make me look forward to winter.

Issue #148

Steve R. and me on Speedway last spring.

Congrats to local rider Randy Armstrong, who managed to get the above photo published in Issue #148 of Dirt Rag magazine despite me being in it. And thanks to my brother Matt, who tipped me off about the pic being in the new issue. It'll likely be a few weeks before we see it on newsstands here in Alaska.

Randy routinely shoots some of the best local mountain biking images, so it's nice to have one of his photos seen by a wider audience. And it's always a treat to have Alaska represented in DR's "The Rider's Eye" section.

Spring slop

Spring in most of Anchorage is not a pretty time. The commuting conditions are the worst of the year (we hope), and every piece of litter and neglected dog turd pops out of the melting snow like some sort of hellish weed. The streets and bike paths deteriorate into a mix of afternoon slush and slop that turns into glare ice and gnarly, icy ruts by morning.

Over the past couple of weeks, I entered my usual springtime funk and lost most of my desire to ride my bike to work each day. Fortunately, inspiration returned this week, and I owe it all to that guy I saw last Saturday—the guy riding through slush with all the wrong clothing and a marginally suitable bike. He reminded me to suck it up and get back in the game.

The street riding may be a mess, but the fat-bike riding is still sweet. The trails are firm, the evening temps are warm, and there’s plenty of sunlight. It’s a good combination when the studded bike is dirty from commuting, and the Pugsley is still getting trail action.

But I’m startin’ to get ideas when I look at my road bike ...

Off the charts

I was about to post a picture from today's ride with the non-news that I had nothing to write about. then I saw this amazing photo. It doesn't look like much. In fact, it's a pretty crappy photograph all the way around.

Except that it's a web-cam picture of Mike Curiak in Nome. 21 days, 4 hours and 31 minutes after he started riding the Iditarod Trail on a fat bike, fully self-supported. His policy was to carry all his food and fuel, accept no outside assistance, and never set foot inside a building.

And he made it.

That means this photo will probably be the most amazing bike-related image you see this week.