Margaritaville

Don't try this at home, kids. (Photo by Tony A.)

There always seems to be that two- or three-second decision period as I approach an obstacle. Can I make it? What's the penalty if I blow it? Too often, I've found myself being overly cautious and missing my chance to pull off the move.

Too bad I didn't do that Sunday afternoon while riding on the coastal flats in South Anchorage. I knew there was a chance the tidal cut wasn't yet frozen, but temps have been pretty cold lately and, besides, I knew it wasn't very wide, and probably not very deep. And I knew that if things did go bad, I wasn't too far from home. So I went for it.

And that sucker was a super-thick, saltwater margarita.

All I could do as my bike went down was reach and scramble for the other side, which is a bit difficult when you put your foot down and it sinks to up to your knee with no sign of touching bottom. I scooted gracelessly out the other side, and my stranded Pugsley gave everyone in the group a good laugh while Tony snapped this photo.

Times like this are why we buy good gear. My Neos overboots kept my feet dry, and I gained a little more respect for my already beloved BB7 brakes from Avid. My front wheel came out of the slop covered in ice, with the front brake encased in the stuff—and it worked just fine all the way home. That's some good stuff.

But I'll take my next margarita on the rocks, not blended.

Alaska Slickrock

One of my brothers has been e-mailing me pictures from his family's spring-break mountain biking trip. It'll be awhile before I ride any real dirt singletrack, and I've been feeling envious. So today I took a little trip to Moab without bothering to get on a plane.The mud flats change from week to week. Every time I ride them this time of year, I tell myself it's the last time for the season.
Then I go back. And the conditions are different every time.Last week's ice mushrooms have mostly melted away, leaving big sections of exposed mud. Other sections are covered with a thin layer of ice that looks treacherous for anything but studded tires.But with mild temperatures—and high salt levels in the tidal-zone ice—the ice is now shallow and soft. It's just waiting for Endomorphs to mash in into the thawing mud for good traction.In other areas, the mud is covered with an inch or two of water, but firm enough for easy cruising. This is the kind of stuff Pugsleys eat for lunch. I've been riding the coast off and on for several years, and today's conditions were among the weirdest (and funnest) I've ever seen.

Any day now, this area will be impassable and I'll stop raving about it on the blog every week. Until then, I'm gonna keep lovin' it.

This shit is fun.

Coasting

Anchorage's coastal mud flats in March are what Pugsleys were made for. I tried this ride on my studded bike one night last week and thought it sucked. I was kicking myself for not taking the fat bike instead. So on Sunday, I went back with Jeff, with both of us on Pugsleys.

The spring conditions are ideal for fat tires. The still-frozen mud is just beginning to melt, and most of it is covered with a thin crust of ice and snow. There's a firm base, but enough surface resistance to make Endomorphs shine.

Occasional fields of what I've decided to call ice mushrooms shattered like wine glasses, with the fragments immediately mashing into the silty mud to provide decent traction.

We had lots of sun, reasonably warm temps and no rules. We just pointed the bikes wherever we wanted to go: through tidal guts, over ice plates, up and down the coast.

It was four fine hours of spring riding and one of the two best rides I've ever had in the Coastal Wildlife Refuge. A couple more weeks, and it'll all be gone for another season.

If you've got a fat bike, go get it while it's good.

Spring: When good trails go bad

Spurred by the nice evening sunlight that came with last weekend's changing of the clocks, I decided to take one more stab at a ride on the coastal flats tonight. I should have stabbed that route with a fork, 'cause it's pretty much done.

Spring is a hard time to be a bike rider in Alaska. Everything is either iced over, slushy, or covered in water—and most rides offer a combination of all three. It's hard to figure out which devours more of your time: bike maintenance, or washing your grunge-covered clothes.

A final trip down to the deteriorating ice of the Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge is becoming a spring rite for me. Catch it when it's good and hard, and it's a hoot to ride. Get there after it fades, and you don't know whether to mourn the demise of a good winter ride, or celebrate the fact that summer rides are now at least a still-dim light at the end of a dark tunnel.

Oh, well. Could be worse. I'm pretty sure I had a better evening than Eliot Spitzer.

For everyone in Anchorage, remember that Friday means it's time for Sage Cohen's slide show about her six-month bike trip across Asia. Get to the BP Energy Center by 7 p.m., throw a decent donation into the Singletrack Advocates fish bowl, and then sit back and enjoy the show.

Go ahead, rest your legs. You'll need 'em to ride all the new singletrack we're going to build.

Milkshakes and Vicodin

I'm still not quite sure what happened Saturday night. One minute I was cruising fast across the South Anchorage coastal flats trying to catch up with the group after I had stopped to shoot a couple of photos, and the next thing I knew, my face was meeting snow and ice. My brain didn't register anything in between.

It's not a good feeling to combine blinding pain with total confusion. Confusion as in, "What the hell just happened?" and "How bad is this going to be?" I pulled myself onto my hands and knees as best I could with my feet tangled in the frame of my Pugsley, and started watching the snow to determine how much blood was dripping onto it, and whether there were any teeth involved.

The next few minutes are a bit of a blur, but they involved quick cell-phone calls to the guys up ahead, and to my wife and daughter as I asked them to grab my 4Runner and meet me at a nearby road. Somehow I also managed to be concerned about littering, so I pick up my busted helmet visor and stuffed it into my fanny pack before pushing my bike up a bluff that I knew would take me to the road.

A quick stop at a 24-hour clinic involved a doctor shoving one end of a wooden swab stick from the inside of my lip out through the front of my chin so that she could tell me, "You've got a through-and-through," before she looked at her young assistant and asked, "Are you OK?"

The girl who was holding a light on my face then explained that she's generally OK with seeing blood, but has a problem dealing with bloody faces.

Me, too, when it's my face. Especially when someone's putting a stick in my mouth and then telling me it's popping out through the beard on my chin. And oh, by the way, my jaw might be broken.

(I thought the hole meant a tooth had penetrated my lip, but my wife, who is a nurse, corrected me today by explaining the angle was all wrong -- something pierced me from the outside in. Probably ice, or a rock.)

A little later, I was in Providence ER being told my beard would be shaved off for stitches, and a big, musical machine that sounded like an arcade video game was rotating around my head to scan my jaw.

The result: No breaks, but a damn sore jaw. My teeth are all still there. And stitches wouldn't have helped much, so the beard stayed on. I went home with a tetanus shot, and prescriptions for penicillin and fresh supply of Vicodin. I'm swollen from my neck to the top of my nose.

But every cloud has a silver lining, as they say.

The Pugsley's OK, and I have a license to get high and drink milkshakes.

CTC: The only church I need

I was trapped in my car Saturday, running errands and keepin' my spirit alive by listening to sweet, country acid-house gospel music from the Rev. D. Wayne Love and the First Presleyterian Church of Elvis the Devine. By the time I got home, I'd seen four people out riding.

On road bikes. In December. In Anchorage.

It just wasn't natural.

Fortunately, I'd read a promising trail report the previous evening on the Speedway website, so I knew it was time to attend Sunday services at the Church of the Triple Chainring. So on Sunday, five other members of the congregation joined me in salvation from the howling, hellish depths of this evil, snowless winter.

The coastal ice was hard, the frozen silt was like velvet and the company was good.

Let's go back to church. Any day now, any way, any how.

Glory Be!

Sunday services at the Church of the Triple Chainring will be held at noon in the tabernacle of the South Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge, where we will witness the miracle of ice and frozen silt.

This glorious spectacle will enliven your spirit and renew your faith in Nokian, the patron saint of winter cyclists. Believe me when I say you will raise your hands in praise of Finnish friction!

Early arrivals may join us for Gu communion (and other last-minute adjustments) in the rectory of my garage before the holy caravan of enlightenment will begin—at 11:45 a.m.—to make a joyous noise as carbide meets ice. Those who may give into temptation to leave before services end should park their sin wagons at Oceanview Bluff Park, where we'll pick up their lost souls at noon.

Do not fail to attend services, for soon it may snow and the ice shall be lost.

Details shall be posted on the forum, or you can e-mail Rev. Tim for guidance.

Portrait of a really, really tall guy

My friend Adam didn't seem to think it was a healthy sign a few days ago when I started posting pictures of naked guys wearing snorkels.* Adam is one of those glass-is-half-full people. He believes we should embrace the three feet or so of snow that has fallen on Anchorage over the past couple of weeks, and that we should get outside and enjoy activities other than bicycling.

He's right, of course. But I still get a tad grumpy when I have to drive to work because my bike route is a quagmire of deep, chewed-up snow. I'm not just sitting around in the dark shootin' holes in my front door, though. I've been doing quite a bit of snowshoeing this winter, and with all this deep powder I can tell myself that I'll be stronger on the bike this summer because of all time I'm spending breaking new trail. Snowshoes or no snowshoes, when you're sinking to your upper thighs and still making forward progress, you're gettin' a workout.

This afternoon I trekked out to one of my favorite local areas, the Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge. I followed some moose trails through tangled alder for a while, then took a straight shot toward the shore of Turnagain Arm and the barren coastal plain where frequent wind sweeps through and keeps the snow from getting too deep. The sun was at its usual low position for a January afternoon, and I took this picture of my waving shadow about 2:30.

If this cold weather continues and the winds can thin the snow on the plain, there will be some great riding out there near the ice plates.

For now, I'll just have to enjoy the snow and (occasional) sunshine.

*I can't wait to see the Google search hits I get from having those words on the ol' blog.