Between a rock and a ...

Trivia question: What do I have in common with Lance Armstrong? Seven Tour de France victories? Nope. Dated Sheryl Crow? Nope. One nut? Nope. Admired by millions? Hell no. Hated by ... nevermind, I'll stop there.

The only thing I have in common with the winningest soon-to-be-(possibly)-indicted cyclist in the history of the world's greatest bike race is being flipped off by people all over the world. Hell, I bet I could even top Armstrong in the category of being flipped off in more countries than I've actually visited.

(Click the pic to see the larger version in all its glory.)

The latest, greatest addition to the World-famous Fabulous Finger Gallery is a stellar showing of disrespectful digits from a whole gaggle of mountaineers who were led into this mess by my friend Harter. That's him on the ground out front, during the crew's rock-climbing trip in Penticton, British Columbia.

Even with some conscientious objectors in the crowd, they managed to get 27 people to let it rip, and that's damn impressive. In fact, I think it's a flippin' record! This is the best mass flip-off since that international incident at Refugio Monte Bianco back in '09.

If you'll excuse me a minute, I think I have something in my eye.

Good job, Harter. And thank you, Bellingham climbers!

(Note: For those of you who are new to the Finger Gallery, don't forget to keep clicking "Older Posts" when you get to the bottom of the screen, because this thing has become a monster.)

We don't get to know why

The word finally came on Friday. The motorist who struck and killed William Curry in Midtown three weeks ago will not face charges.

According to news reports, police interviewed the driver and eyewitnesses who said Curry was riding against traffic in the roadway and steered into the car’s path as he crossed against a red light when the driver was turning right on a green. Whether it was a factor in the collision is unknown, but police said he was also wearing “an iPhone headset,” which is against the law.

Some riders were frustrated, and have questioned the use of Curry’s GPS data in the investigation, saying—correctly—that the margin of error is too great for a GPS to determine whether Curry was on the sidewalk or in the street. The story I read gave no indication of whether police used the GPS data to determine anything more than his direction of travel. It could have been witnesses who convinced police that he was in the roadway.

My initial reaction on Friday was disappointment. When a cyclist dies, I want someone to pay. I want to know the police did a fair and thorough investigation. So I re-read the news story a couple of times. Was the investigation solid? I can’t say for sure. But I see nothing to indicate it wasn’t. It looks like Curry made a fatal mistake.

So why do those of us who commute on bikes often think we’d feel better if we knew a bicyclist died because the motorist did something wrong?

How would it be better if the driver had been drunk, malicious, or sending text messages instead of watching the road? Is that supposed to make us feel better?

Maybe it’s because we want to make sense of tragedy. Maybe we look for martyrs. Maybe a little part of each of us hopes that, if it ever happens to us, it won’t be for no reason.

Maybe we don’t want to think we could make the same mistake.

I’ve made that kind of error. The kind that could have killed me. I’ve found myself in the path of fast-moving cars after I misjudged speed or blew a judgment call because I was in a hurry and thinking about my arrival more than my survival. So far, I’ve always been lucky enough to accelerate fast and find an escape route. Some day, I might not.

If a motorist ever takes me out for the wrong reason, I hope the police nail him. But I’ll never take comfort in knowing a bicyclist died because a car driver made stupid mistakes. Because there’s no comfort in knowing careless, drunk or homicidal motorists are on the road.

It's dangerous enough out there already.

If it's a dream, don't wake me up

Rolling downhill toward an intersection this morning, I made the usual check over my left shoulder to determine if I would need to stop before crossing the automobile exit chute at the upcoming roundabout. There was a small, white sports car coming up fast. Then a weird thing happened.

He slowed down and waited.

He corked traffic for me and held two cars behind him. And he did it early so that I’d know I had plenty of room. With no eastbound cars coming through from the other side, I was good to go as he returned my “thanks” wave.

I still don’t know what’s going on lately, but I like it. I wrote in December about seeing more consideration from drivers, and I expected the phenomenon to evaporate as we gained light and the weather warmed up. Instead, I’m still seeing a surprising number of people behind the wheel who are being nice to me when I’m on a bike.

Don’t get me wrong. We still have our share of bad—even malicious—motorists on Anchorage streets. I routinely get buzzed by drivers too lazy to move a couple of feet to the left. But I feel encouraged to see so many others anticipating my needs and overtly yielding the right of way, or going out of their way to give me extra space.

Do I dare allow myself to believe it could be a sign of growing acceptance? No doubt a few drivers are operating in a heightened state of awareness after the death of a local bike commuter earlier this month. The friendly behavior could still fade as summer approaches.

I can’t help but wonder if some of those friendly drivers work in offices with bike commuters.

Non-biking co-workers have told me that when they hear of a bike rider getting hurt, they think of me, and hope that I’m OK. I think that’s because the more we ride to work, the more we humanize the image of bike commuters.

Maybe for some people, a figure on a bike is becoming a reminder of a person they know and like. The woman they sit next to in the office, or the guy they went to lunch with yesterday. That can buy a cyclist a little extra space, or a little more patience from the person behind the wheel.

Or maybe I've just been on a lucky streak and I'm grasping at a fantasy.

I guess we have to find glimmers of hope wherever we can.

Noise

Pedaling home from Friday night’s memorial ride on my trusty, but battered, commuter, a guy followed me briefly after a traffic light, and I almost apologized for the loud clicks coming from my pedal/crank area. Shit, that was annoying. Why do I always forget that the big disadvantage of switching from studs to slicks every spring is that I can suddenly hear all the neglected bike parts?

After squeezing a bunch of grease through the pedal axles, and pulling off the cranks to lube the contact points, I’m hoping Monday’s commute will be quiet. I’ve always believed that a noisy bike indicates a poor upbringing. I may not know which fork to use at a nice restaurant, but I’ll be damned if my chain’s gonna squeak.

Speaking of noise, we’re entering the noise-making season again. My friend Randy took this shot of a black bear with three spring cubs on Rover’s Run three days ago. If you’re managing to get out in the woods during the sloppy spring thaw, remember you’re not alone.

Seagulls and Canada geese have returned, and now the bears are waking up. That can mean only one thing.

Mosquitoes are next.

Ride for William Curry

Memorial ride organized by
Bicycle Commuters of Anchorage
4-15-2011

An estimated 100 bicyclists pause
for a traffic light while riding
north along C Street.

A memorial "ghost bike" at Tudor Road and C Street,
the intersection where William Curry died.

A tribute at the site,
where William's sister
spoke to the riders.

Let's hope we don't see any more
of these this year.

Thanks to Bicycle Commuters of Anchorage,
the riders, the motorists who offered friendly honks,
and the state trooper who stopped to show support.

Unchained

Well, my winter riding season ended with a big, fat whimper. I went out Saturday morning to bag one last cruise on some snowy trails, then snapped a chain pin about 20 minutes into the ride. Of course, all my chain tools were on other bikes or my work bench, so I tossed the chain in my frame bag and then walked/coasted back to the car.

Strangely, I didn’t mind that much. It was a nice day for a walk through the woods. Nevertheless, it was an underwhelming way to end the fat-bike season. Damn April.

I’ve never actually tracked it, but I’d be willing to bet that I gain more weight this month than any other time of year. The riding sucks. I usually spend a big part of the month riding only to work and back while waiting for the pavement to become sufficiently dry and (somewhat) clean for decent road biking.

On the bright side, the doldrums give me time to try new things, so I’ve recently started posting on Twitter. I’ve always thought “tweeting” seemed silly but what the hell, I once thought only nerds wrote blogs. (Maybe starting a Twitter account proved me right.)

Anyway, I often come across interesting links or think up wiseass comments that never make their way to this page, so head over to Twitterland and check out @icybikes if you want some more (mostly) bike-related stuff.

It was my friend Anthony’s Twitter feed that alerted me to his nomination of his wife, Sierra, for the Kazlaw Community Mountain Biking Award. Thanks to everyone who voted for her. And if you didn't, click on over and give Sierra some electoral love.

After all, it's not every day you get a chance to vote for someone who won't spend the next four years disappointing you.

William Curry Memorial Ride

Bicycle Commuters of Anchorage is organizing a memorial ride in William Curry's honor.

The ride will begin at at 5:30 p.m. this Friday from Curry's office at Raspberry and C Street, and proceed to the spot where he was struck and killed by a car a Tudor Road and C Street. If you can't reach the starting point by 5:30, you can join the group at Tudor and C at 6 p.m.

Get out the vote

Sierra in action. Photo by Anthony DeLorenzo

When was the last time you had a chance to vote for someone who A) wasn’t the lesser of two evils, and B) wasn’t sure to leave you disappointed four years later? Well, here’s your chance.

My Yukoner friend Anthony has nominated his lovely, badass wife, Sierra, for the BC Bike Race, so I’m asking everyone who reads Bicycles & Icicles to click on over here and cast a vote for Sierra van der Meer to win the Kazlaw Community Mountain Biking Award. If she wins, she'll get free entry in the race. Sierra’s a hardcore mountain biker who gives a lot to the Whitehorse bike community, and she deserves the votes. You can read her profile right here.

You can’t lose with a vote like this, because Sierra won’t raise your taxes and she won’t cut your favorite social program. She’ll just go out and put the hurt on some fellow mountain bikers, then keep helping promote mountain biking in Whitehorse. (Which makes her far more fun and productive than anyone in Washington.)

Damn, it’s good to be thinking about mountain biking again. We’re still six or seven weeks away from dry trails in Anchorage, but it’s good just to know it’s coming. It’s been too long since I stood in a hot shower while drinking a cold beer and watching muddy water flow off my shins and down the drain.

The Great SS Experiment

A couple of years ago, curious about all the passion some people exhibit for singlespeeds, I bought a conversion kit and turned my old commuter into a model of simplicity.

My old Stumpjumper was a great mountain bike its day, but after years on singletrack it had slowly evolved into a stripped-down, fully rigid and fender-equipped town bike, so taking it singlespeed seemed like the next step. Every few months, I still conduct a mental inventory of the pros and cons of having only one gear. For quite a while, I kept thinking that as time passed, singlespeeding might grow on me.

Sorry, derailleur haters, but that hasn’t happened. I even tried taking my SS for a trail ride once. And once was enough.

There is only one advantage to going shifter-free: I get to mostly ignore bike maintenance in the sloppy, wet weather of autumn and spring. Other than some occasional chain lube, I don’t do much of anything to my bike.

But here’s the rub: I wasn’t spending much time on maintenance when my commuter bike had derailleurs. All I had to do was occasionally wipe off some gunk, lube the chain and squirt a drop or two of TriFlow in a few key spots. Maybe install some new cables and housing every couple of years.

For a little extra effort, derailleurs allow me to gear down and pedal through three inches of wet, spring snow without abusing my knees at the end of a long day. They allow me to move a little faster when I’m running late. They help me glide up hills when I’m hauling cargo like a lock, cans of Diet Coke and/or a container of lasagna that I plan to eat for lunch.

Singlespeeders love to brag about spending less time on maintenance, but I’d be willing to bet that, over the course of a year, derailleurs save far more time than they cost. Hell, now I have to disassemble the Surly Singleator and reverse its spring tension if I switch from a 16-tooth summer cog to an 18-tooth winter one, not to mention changing chain length every time I mess with the gearing. I never had to do those things with a derailleur.

The old Stumpjumper will remain a singlespeed for now, because my commute is short and fairly flat, leaving me little motivation to blow a few bucks on a new drivetrain. But if I suddenly found myself facing a longer ride to work, one of the first things I’d do is re-install a full range of gears.

Singlespeeding is still silly.

Rider Down

What a tragic way to kick off spring.

William Curry was struck and killed by a car at Tudor and C Street last night. He kept a ride log at Endomondo, and his friends told reporters that, when he died, Curry was riding his bike to his girlfriend's house after work.

That’s the map of his final ride at the top of this post. He was about three miles from home, and police said he had taken all the right steps to make himself visible while riding at night.

APD Sgt. Glen Daily told KTUU: "He's got reflective clothing, you may be able to see a flashing unit that bicyclists have, he's got a helmet on, proper equipment -- it might just be an unfortunate series of events."

Curry was just 36 years old.

All the details haven’t come out yet, but the result was what we all know—when car meets bicycle, the bicycle loses.

Be careful out there, people. It’s not enough to be visible. You have to make them see you.

No More Mr. Nice Guy

Road-bike season is just around the corner, and this year I have decided to try extra hard to avoid getting killed.

Last April, I took a fall that scared everyone who witnessed it. One guy told me that he actually shut his eyes when he thought I was about to get snuffed. I didn't write about it on the blog, because it took awhile to process and I never got around to figuring out how to describe it.

I was on a 100k ride from Anchorage to Girdwood and back, and was used to riding only one other person in the group. (That should always raise a caution flag.) We were on the Seward Highway, also known as the most dangerous highway in Alaska. (That should always raise a caution flag, too.)

One rider was a lot slower than the main group, and I didn’t want her to feel bad for always being off the back, so on the return from Girdwood, I slowed down to ride near her for a while. After a stop that pulled the group back together, I decided to bring up the rear.

We were soon nearing McHugh Creek south of Anchorage when one guy flatted and other riders began pulling to the side of the shoulder to wait. That’s when I made the mistake of passing Miss Slow on her left.

Next thing I knew, she was body-checking me toward the northbound lane of the highway on a sunny Saturday afternoon. When you’re looking at the white line and your brain instantly calculates that the upper half of your body is going to land in the lane of traffic, you have a second or two to think about things.

You think about things like the Seward Highway being the state’s most infamous, and how popular it is with distracted sightseers on sunny days. And you think about how that stretch of the highway has only one lane going each direction and very little room for motorists to swerve around falling cyclists. You also think about the fact your head will soon be directly in the path of tires traveling 60 mph.

That’s not a happy moment.

As soon as I hit the pavement, I knew I needed to get up fast. But there was a woman on my legs, and she was still trying to unclip from her pedals. I couldn’t do anything but wait until she got up or everything went dark.

So I laid there and waited. A couple of other riders soon realized she wasn't moving quickly enough, so they pulled her off me. As I started to get up, I finally did what I'd been afraid to do from the ground—I turned and looked behind me. Two pickups had managed to come to a complete stop to avoid crushing me. (The next time you get pissed off at a bad driver, remember to be grateful for the alert, careful ones.)

We all regrouped for a few minutes as the flat tire was repaired. When we started riding again, I was high on adrenaline and led us into Anchorage with a wide gap. It was several miles before I realized two of my fingers were really hurting. After I pulled off my glove and got a look at my hand, my friend Heather and I split from the group and took a direct route to my house, where we poured some wine and put a bag of ice on my hand. When my wife—a nurse—showed up with pizza, she took one look at my fingers and announced that my wedding ring had to be cut off immediately. Heather’s husband, Ken, did the deed with a pair of wire cutters.

Because it was one of the few times I've had a potentially fatal experience on a bike, I drank more than my share of wine that night. My fingers—which had probably been smashed between my handlebar and the pavement—were swollen for weeks. All this because I failed to recognize that someone in the group was still learning to use clipless pedals.

I like doing things to encourage new riders. We've all been there. And we've all fallen because we were learning to unclip. Being patient and bringing more people into the cult is a good thing. But I think I'll restrict those efforts to singletrack.

I’ll be keeping an eye out for newbies on the road this spring, and I’ll be keeping my distance.

Freeze your keys

Just in time for gas hitting four bucks a gallon in Anchorage—and much of the ice and slush slowly disappearing—Bicycle Commuters of Anchorage are kicking off their second Freeze My Keys event.

The concept is simple: You freeze your car keys (symbolically, if you’re squeamish about potentially ruining your high-tech keys with all the electronic doodads they put in them these days) and commit to not using a car for the month of April. Or, if that’s not realistic, you can promise to freeze your keys for a couple of hours, days or weeks, and log as many commuter errands or trips on the bicycle as possible.

And because no bike event is complete without some swag, some of Anchorage's small businesses have donated locally produced prizes, which participants can qualify to win by visiting the businesses.

“We are showing Anchorage business owners that catering to bicyclists is good for business and we’re telling Anchorage bicycle commuters to support bike-friendly businesses,” said BCA Vice President Dawn Groth.

Freeze My Keys kicks off this Friday at 5:45 p.m. at Modern Dwellers Chocolate Lounge, 751 E. 36th Ave., and coincides with BCA’s Bike First Friday non-motorized tour of art galleries. Participants are encouraged to ride their bikes, and bring an old unimportant key, which will be symbolically stowed in the deep freeze for April, after members group-pledge to bicycle commute more often for more reasons.

Fastest Man in the White Mountains

Greg in Hope after
the 2011 Soggy Bottom

Bicycles & Icicles would like to offer a big congratulations to Greg Matyas, owner of Speedway Cycles, who proved—again—that even an old guy with an achy back can be a big-time ass kicker.

Greg won this year's White Mountains 100 with an elapsed time of 10.2 hours. And this came only a few weeks after his third-place finish in the 350-mile Iditarod Trail Invitational.

Congratulations to everyone who finished, including my friends Janice Tower, who took second on the women's bike division; Rachel Steer, who took second in the women's ski division; as well as Brian Garcia and Julie Malingowski for solid finishes. And condolences to Julie, who was derailed by mechanical problems and forced to scratch after a winter of training hard and looking strong.

I guess this means she has to start training for next year.

Muddy mate

I'd like to thank to my man Ashley, aka lemmiwinks, for providing the latest piece of fine art to grace the Fabulous Finger Gallery. This shot comes from Down Under—lemmi’s home turf of Australia.

As lemmiwinks explained it, he's a “roadie by nature” who was recently given a free GT Outpost Trail steel frame (circa 1990s) that he built up using the parts he had lying around. Then he took it out out and trashed it in a race that raised funds for a rescue helicopter.

Looks a little slippery, eh? Here’s his description:

“As you can see it was wet and muddy. I still had mud in my ears after taking a shower. They called it off after four hours, I got two laps in, my teammate one. We weren't too devastated—the slipperiness was indescribable.

If there’s anything I love more than international submissions to the FFG, it’s mountain bikers with enough good humor to build up old frames and flog themselves against the terra.

Cheers, Ashley.

Sprung

Darcy on Janice's Jive, 3.20.11

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends,
It gives a lovely light.

—Edna St. Vincent Millay,

"A Few Figs from Thistles"

People have many ways of determining the beginning of spring. Some people use the official date on the calendar but many of us—especially this far north, where weather often fails to match the "official" season—use personal and eccentric milestones. For those who hate winter, spring arrives when the last snow melts.

I usually call it spring when the Iditarod ends, because that's when the daytime weather is often in the balmy 40s, and the sun is high enough to eliminate the long shadows we've lived with for months. But the real proof of spring, for me, always seems to come at the end of a sunny day. The kind of day that begins with a plan to spend a couple of hours riding before taking on the daunting list of shit that gots to get done ... but really ends after a longer ride, a beer or two, a late dinner and then a flurry of vacuuming, laundry, and hours on the laptop catching up on more shit that gots to get done. (Like blogging at 11 p.m. instead of going to bed, for example .)

Until we start to get a little taste of sunlight-related sleep deprivation, it's still winter. But then we finally crest that hill and begin rolling toward summer, the season marked by rides that keep us out until midnight and make us cringe because we'll be lucky to get five hours of sleep before going to work in the morning.

Spring is finally knocking at the door.

I can feel it now.

Larry

Hi. I'm Larry, this is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl.

I always loved that line on The Newhart Show. I've been thinking about it more often lately, usually after I manage to top a steep climb without spinning out, thanks to the fact I'm in the apparently small group of riders who choose to run Larry tires front and rear, instead of the Larry/Endomorph combo that Surly has recommended since releasing the Larry as a front tire.

I enjoy Surly’s amusing product names. A lot of people know the Pugsley was named for the chubby kid on the old Addams Family television show, and the big Endomorph tire was obviously named for the body type of fat people, but fewer people seem to get the Newhart reference when they see Larry on a bike with two Rolling Darryl rims.

And it pains me that virtually no one on Large Marge rims seems to remember Large Marge, the truck driver from Peewee's Big Adventure, a cinematic masterpiece about a guy on a cross-country odyssey to find his stolen bike.

But aside from their sense of humor, I differ with Surly on the recommended Endomorph/Larry pairing. The Endo was a great tire. It changed winter biking. But the Larry is better in every way, as far as I’m concerned. It not only improves cornering control in the front, it grips better in the back on steep climbs and during braking. The damn thing even steers better on pavement, thanks to a deeper tread pattern with continuous knobs down the center of the tire.

Ever try riding Endos on dry pavement? It's like steering a couple of fat pencil erasers as they smear against asphalt.

I switched to a pair of Larrys last fall while still on my old Pugsley. When I upgraded to a Fatback last month, I stuck with the double-Larry approach and haven't regretted it. Between the better traction of the tires and improved handling of my bike, I feel more secure climbing and cornering on snow than ever before.

Now, if only Surly would make a Kevlar-reinforced road touring tire called the Gilligan.

Or maybe gender-specific, ergonomic saddles. They could call them Wally and Beaver.

March Madness

Middle Fork, 3.11.11

Some people say that summer is the reason we endure Alaska winters. But in March, spring riding feels like enough of a reason to me.

This is about as good as it gets, especially when the weather stays as sunny as it has for the past couple of weeks. The trails are killer good, the temperatures are perfect, the bears are still asleep and the mosquitoes haven't hatched.

I spent Friday on a leisurely solo tour of the STA trails, Llama and Middle Fork. There's nothing quite as nice as a mid-ride snack when the day's so warm you can just sit in the snow and still enjoy the food and the view.

I even managed to finally get a nice portrait of my new Fatback, freshly equipped with a custom frame bag.

A long ride on Friday, snowshoeing with my daughter on Saturday, and a good ride today. The only thing missing is enough rest.

Sleep deprivation. Yeah, that's a sure sign of spring.

Don't be fooled

Johnson Pass Trail, 3-5-11

The skinnies are coming out, but I'm not buying into it.

When I pulled into the trailhead parking lot tonight, Leonard and I were armed with fat bikes. A guy I know was there with his SS mountain bike. Then his riding partners pedaled up on their studded rides. They said they've been loving the hard trails lately.

People all over town are loving the warm, sunny weather we've had for the past few days, but I keep scanning the weather forecast, hoping for three or four inches of snow to freshen things up. I'm in no hurry to switch bikes. I've got a new fat bike that I'm lovin', and I don't like getting suckered.

Sure, we're light on snow this year. The spring thaw could be quick. But it's March 9 in a place where I don't move my snowblower to the shed until May 1. April will be warm, muddy and ugly, as it always is. March, however, is dangerous. It wasn't too many years ago that I was clearing three feet of new snow off my driveway on St. Patrick's Day.

This is a false spring. Don't fall for it. Mark my words, March will roar back and kick us in the ass.

It's still winter, and I'm gonna keep riding like it as long as I can.

End of the road

This photo is what I love about the Fabulous Finger Gallery. Every time I think the movement has quietly died, a gem shows up in my inbox.

Our man Dylan here pedaled from Seattle to where the road ends at the southern tip of Argentina, and then he propped his camera atop his bicycle and flipped me off. That's style!

Dylan missed Anchorage during his trip, and he said Bicycles & Icicles was one of the online escapes that helped him cope with 130-degree heat in Paraguay. It's good to know a few pictures of beardsicles and snowy trails provided a few moments relief along the way.

Dylan, you capped an epic journey with an epic flip-off. Well played, sir. And congratulations on riding all the way to Tierra del Fuego.

No. 5

Pete rocks a respectable
beardsicle at the Skwentna
Roadhouse checkpoint.
(Photo from Iditarod
Trail Invitational's Facebook gallery.)

The first three racers have reached McGrath in the Iditarod Trail Invitational. Not surprisingly, Pete Basinger won the 350-mile race for the fifth time.

He was dominant from the midpoint of the race, leaving several checkpoints hours ahead of his chasers. He finished in 3 days, 6 hours and 30 minutes, which was less than an hour off his course record.

You’d think that with a record like that, the Daily News could have found a more current photo of Pete for this morning’s edition, instead of publishing that old standby from his historic Dreadlock Period.

Jeff Oatley turned in a fast ride, and narrowed the gap enough to finish only 25 minutes behind Pete. But damn, how about that rookie who took third place?

OK, calling Greg Matyas a rookie is a little weird but, hey, he was a rookie in the ITI even if he has raced bikes for decades. Greg allegedly told people he’d be “touring,” but 3 days, 12 hours and 20 minutes is a damn fast tour, if you ask me.

I think Greg just scoped out his chances and then hauled ass to secure the top three spots for Fatbacks. Whatever his motivation, it was a hell of a ride for an old dude in his 40s. Congrats, Greg.

Speaking of age, here’s a little nugget that sometimes bounces around my brain this time of year when I’m impressed by Pete winning the Invitational:

Long-distance cyclists commonly peak in their 30s.

Pete is only 29.*

Scary, huh?

*The Daily News says he's 30, but I'm going with 29 based on the age he gave me during an interview a few years ago.

Collared

I voiced my protest to the people at Thomson Components today. They are engaging in behavior up with which I do not wish to put.

I started using Thomson seatposts years ago at the urging of two nephews who were then bike-shop workers. I was tired of feeling kicked in the gonads every time an inferior seatpost clamp or bolt broke, launching the horn of my saddle toward a high-velocity docking with the space capsule of my crotch.

You can spend all the money you want on ergonomic saddles to keep your goodies happy and nocturnally functional, but there’s nothing ergonomic about a bundle of foam, plastic and metal being fired like a missile at your junk. And it only adds insult to injury when you have to ride several miles back to the trailhead while standing up because your saddle is in your Camelbak.

My nephews promised I wouldn’t be able to break anything on a Thomson, so I became a convert. And they were right. Every post I own has been bombproof. So when I built up my new Fatback, Greg over at Speedway persuaded me to go for a matching Thomson stem. Pure sweetness. Those components are light, pretty, and strong as hell.

And now I find out those bastards at Thomson are making seatpost collars. They even just built a quick-release prototype to complement last year’s bolt-on model.

I’m still selling pints of blood for money to send to the credit card company, and now I find out my Thomson cockpit needs one more piece to satisfy my lust.

FML.

Can't top this

1,003

While creating a new post a few weeks ago, I noticed I was nearing the 1,000-post mark. I made a mental note to mark the occasion when it came up. Then I forgot.

I noticed a couple of days ago that I had already written number 1,002, so I’m celebrating 1,003! (Insert confetti and applause here.) Who knew this pimple on the ass of the interwebs would last this long? Not me, or I would have been too lazy to start the damned thing.

Writing a blog can be a strange thing. One day you’re amazed to have a dozen readers, and the next thing, you know, there are hundreds. Because of Bicycles & Icicles, I have friends I’ve never met face to face. In a few cases, I’ve actually shared rides and beers with them.

Hell, I even gained my 100th “follower” a week or two ago. Some bloggers have several times that many, because they’re informative, positive and/or inspirational to others. To hell with that. I don’t do warm and fuzzy. I just vent about bike-related stuff. Or annoying stuff that affects bike riders. I rant.

For the most part, this blog remains what it was originally meant to be—an outlet for the crap I want to get off my chest without driving my non-biking wife batshit crazy. She still endures far more bike-related conversation that she ever wanted to hear. (And it sometimes drives her perilously close to batshit crazy.)

Thanks for reading this stuff. And thanks to everyone who ever met me on the road or trail and said, “Love yer blog, man!”

You obviously have too much free time on your hands, but I appreciate you anyway.

Seriously, people?

Is it really that difficult for the municipality and the state to coordinate snow removal from streets and bike paths? We've been talking about this for years.

It’s simple, folks. Even a dumbass like me can figure it out: Plow the streets first, then the bike paths, because you clearly can’t grasp the concept of not heaping snow on top of already cleared pathways. This one on my commuting route is so moronic, I made a point of carrying a camera today.

Not only did the driver of a road grader put a small mountain of snow directly across a bike path, but he did it at an intersection that’s already among the most dangerous in town. And the bike path was cleared days ago, so no one's coming back to remove this thing.

This kind of crap ensures that bicyclists who are crossing the scary C Street to O’Malley high-speed auto chute have to dismount and lift their bikes over this icy beast. It most cases, such a thing is highly annoying. Here, it adds to the danger of a poorly designed crossing. Any pedestrian with mobility problems is doubly screwed.

I'm startin' to think you guys will never get it.

Badasses All

This was the weekend of the Susitna 100, which meant I went to a fun party, took a little trail ride, and frequently went online to look for updates on my much tougher friends.

I’m not sure what makes someone want to endure that many hard hours on a bike, but I admire the endurance of those who can do it. So here’s to all the finishers, especially those with whom I’ve shared rides over the past year or so, resulting their pictures residing in my laptop. They're all tough buggers.

Carl Battreall: 16 hours, 9 minutes

Sean Grady: 17 hours, 6 minutes

Next Saturday, Sean will start riding to Nome
in the Iditarod Trail Invitational.

Leonard Fancher: 21 hours, 8 minutes

Mike Morganson: 25 hours, 7 minutes

This was Mike's 14th Susitna 100 finish.

Julie Perilla: 28 hours, 7 minutes

Julie Malingowski: 34 hours, 29 minutes

They've all earned a cold beer and a good night's sleep.

The New Fatback

I got home from the first singletrack ride on my new bike the other night, and I found myself sitting in the garage just staring at it. I was still trying to sort out in my mind what had just happened.

When I decided it was time for an updated snow bike, I was willing to look at everything but knew I had a bias toward the locally designed brands. Two shops in Anchorage are staffed with people who ride and produce their own bikes. Both brands are popular, and I have friends on both brands who tell me they love their bikes.

I asked questions of a lot of riders, including strangers I met on trails. I rode friends' bikes. One real test ride on a Fatback convinced me I was finished with offset designs. Wheels and spokes sit dead-center in the Fatback frame, and it was the first time I'd pedaled a fat bike that handled like a regular mountain bike.

But my test ride was misleading. The first half was with a slower rider, and the second half was done with legs that were tired before I'd left the house.

When I hit singletrack on Tuesday night, realized what I'd gotten myself into. I rode harder than I'd intended, because it was fun to pedal this bike with intensity. I felt faster. And don't even get me started on what it was like to aim it downhill on a twisty trail. It was a freakin' thrill to not be countering the "steer itself" effect of the Pugsley's offset design. The bike actually went where I wanted it to go.

And it gets better each time I take it on the trail.

A month ago, I was looking forward to the beginning of spring. Today, I'm dreading the end of winter.

No waxing up north

I've been so busy this week that I haven't even taken pictures of my new bike. Fortunately, my new friend Julie—who I met through my old friend Julie—just sent me a picture of her new Fatback, which is sporting one of the farthest-north "No Waxing Required" stickers. Julie is one of only two riders in Fairbanks (that I know of) with stickers from this here blog, so I'm proud to see one on her fine bike with its sweet new carbon fork, which was added just in time for this weekend's Susitna 100.

Both Julies and our mutual friend Carl will be racing. Good luck to all of you. Have fun, and come back with all your toes.

And speaking of the new bike, I definitely will post some pics in the next few days, because holy shit is it ever a hoot to ride. After two days of commuting, I took it out for its first singletrack run tonight. I don't think my test rides did it justice. It's stiff, fast and fun, and corners like crazy.

I'd also like to offer a reminder that a new forum called alaskabikehub.com is now online to replace its defunct predecessor, and offer my thanks to Jordy B., the guy who established alaskabikehub.com and salvaged all of the old forum's content and placed it on the new site.

Bike forums can be pits of sophomoric humor and trash talk—I know this because I'm often right in the thick of such shenanigans—but they also accumulate loads of useful information. It would have been a shame to see years of user-generated content flushed down the toilet, so kudos to Jordy for pulling off the technical voodoo behind the new site.

New forum

If you're a former user of akspokes.com, and you've been waiting for news of an alternative since the old forum went dark, it's time to move to the new Alaskabikehub.com!

Ready to roll

On Saturday, the weather was sunny and beautiful,
but I spent the afternoon in the garage.

I didn't mind.

On Sunday, I got up early, did a 50K ride,
then returned to the garage. Tired. And I
still didn't mind.

On Monday, I'll ride to work on my new
Fatback. And my 16-year-old daughter
will get out to ride hers.

After building it herself.

Riding for a reason

Broken Toe Joe on the Fatback he'll ride to McGrath

I’ve never been a fan of fundraising rides. The causes are usually good but the big, nationwide events tend to have an unsettling amount of overhead in the form of advertising, staff salaries, insurance and promotional doodads. And the organizers never seem eager to reveal what how much of each donated dollar actually ends up in the bank account of the beneficiary group.

But I do respect grassroots efforts with little to no overhead, and high-efficiency transfer of your donated dollars to the causes they celebrate. That’s why local bike racer “Broken Toe Joe” Pollock is the focus of today’s post.

Joe—who finished fifth in last summer’s Fireweed 400 solo—has decided to tackle the Iditarod Trail Invitational, a 350-mile winter race from Knik to McGrath, and to use it as a way to raise money for the Alzheimer Disease Resource Agency of Alaska. Joe is paying all his own expenses, so 100 percent of every donated dollar will go directly to the nonprofit agency. No ad fees, no T-shirts, no brochures, no bullshit. Just a guy riding a bike and asking for donations for a cause that matters to him. He has already passed his original goal and very well may exceed his current target of $8,000.

Joe’s grandfather, J.R. “Tony” Pollock, died just over a year ago after struggling with Alzheimer’s for years, so Joe understands the long-term effects the disease has on its victims and their families.

“I met with development director Fran Kelly and toured their facility,” he said. “I was really impressed by the care they give their clients, as well as their families. Alzheimer’s is a form of dementia that impacts the whole family over a long period of time,” he added. “Many families struggle alone for years trying to manage it and simply need more help.”

The agency has set up its website to make donations simple. You can make a secure donation online here, or send a check to ADRAA, 1750 Abbott Road, Anchorage, AK 99507 and include a note to let them know you are sponsoring Joe Pollock. Alaska residents can donate a portion of their Permanent Fund Dividends to ADRAA through the "Pick.Click.Give" program by selecting the Alzheimer’s Resource of Alaska District 1, 3 & 4 when you apply for this year's PFD.

The ADRAA website has more information about its work at alzalaska.org. All donations are 100 percent tax-deductible.

The ITI will start February 27. Bookmark this page to follow Joe’s progress during the race. You can also follow him Facebook at "See Joe Ride."

Self-medicating

Worshiping at the house of the Sunday-morning flip-off.
Breakfast at Luce's Lodge last weekend.

My friend Heather accuses me of being full of shit when I blame my irritability on a lack of singletrack. Don't listen to her. This is a woman talks more trash (to me, anyway) than most pro wrestlers. She isn't sensitive to my needs.

My riding routine has been unsteady for weeks. By Tuesday night, I was about ready to rip doors off the kitchen cabinets over minor irritations while making dinner. That's a sure sign that I need to drop everything and go for a ride, so I announced that on Wednesday evening I would be occupied elsewhere.

When you've gotta go, you've gotta go.

A couple of winters ago, I was renting a bike in Wellington, New Zealand, so that I could get out for a couple of hours of sanity-restoring exercise. The shop guy recognized my symptoms. "You really need a ride, don't you?" he said. "I completely understand."

A few minutes later, he sent me out the door without taking a dime of my money for a deposit. He didn't even ask for my name or a credit card number. He simply handed me a bike, and told me to knock on the back door if I got back after the shop had closed for the day. He knew I could have pedaled away and never returned. He also knew I wouldn't.

After only a few minutes, that guy in a bike shop diagnosed my affliction with as much accuracy as any doctor ever could. Not everyone could have done that.

Fortunately, we bike junkies are pretty good at treating ourselves.

Game? What game?

Luce's Lodge on a fat-bike kind of morning.

Here’s what I saw of the Super Bowl: Seven seconds left, the clock running, and Packers starting to celebrate. Game over.

There was still some pizza on the table, so I didn’t miss anything important by arriving home late Sunday afternoon. Besides, the “big game” seemed to reduce snowmachine traffic on the frozen Yentna and Susitna rivers, so the trail was firmer much faster than it had been during Saturday’s 25-mile ride to Luce’s Lodge on the Yentna, where we spent the night before riding back to Deshka Landing.

Rush hour on the Susitna River.

For my money, a sunny day riding with friends will always beat anything on TV, especially when there’s a clear view of Denali and a four-time Iditarod champion says, “Amazing!” when I pedal by him as he adjusts the load on the trailer behind his snowmachine. (I always knew Martin Buser was the nicest guy in the Iditarod.)

Luce’s was the site of a virtual fat-biker’s convention on Saturday night after our group of five riders encountered friends in a three-person group near the confluence of both rivers, then found four other local riders at the lodge. It was the last big weekend for training before the Susitna 100, and I was probably the only rider out there who wasn’t preparing for either that race or the White Mountains 100. I was the lone slob, training for nothing but fun.

Julie M. and Carl, with Denali on the horizon.

Like I told Queen Bee as we pedaled upriver, the only thing I do to prepare for a 100-mile winter ride is a 50-mile winter ride. That’s always enough to remind me I don’t want to do a 100-mile winter ride.

Speaking of fat bikes, this trip might have been the Pugsley’s swan song. New bike plans is in the works. If all goes well, I should soon be posting pics of a new fattie. Anybody want to buy a nice, sturdy Pugs?

Winter exposure

Photo from "BLM Alaska Frontiers"

Winter biking is getting some nice exposure in the winter issue of BLM Alaska Frontiers, a newsletter about public lands administered by the federal Bureau of Land Management.

A copy of the newsletter was passed along to me because of the cover story with the unfortunate headline, “Winter Biking—A Possibly Crazy Alaska Tradition.” I call the headline unfortunate because the story, written by BLM staffer Craig McCaa, makes the case that winter biking isn’t so crazy after all.

McCaa points out that winter biking in Alaska dates back to 1897, when participants in the Klondike Gold Rush had the idea of riding hard trails packed by dogs, horses and foot traffic. But even better, he writes about the White Mountains 100, a race that debuted last winter on BLM lands north of Fairbanks in the White Mountains Recreation Area.

Positive coverage of bicycling is always good, but it’s a rare treat when it appears in official government publications mailed to land managers. Those are the people we need on our side. Or, at the very least, we need them to see mountain biking and winter biking as popular and legitimate uses of public lands.

Eventually, they might stop thinking of us as crazy.

Ice claws

Julie on Portage Lake. (1.15.11)

I'm not ashamed to admit it. Ice scares me. It can be an amazing riding surface, and it sometimes carries winter bikers to stunning places, but that stuff creaks, pops and groans, all of which serve as reminders that it can break. And when that happens, especially in remote places, you can die.

The best you can hope for is a whole heap of hypothermic misery as you get out of your wet clothing and build a fire—but that’s only if you manage to get out of the water. So I set up a little one-man assembly line last weekend and started making ice claws for an upcoming trip on frozen rivers. I should have done this a long time ago.

These self-rescue devices may not be pretty, and they have some minor impalement potential during a dry-land crash, but they’re cheap and easy to make. And if you ever have to use them, they could be priceless.

If you ride on ice, check out these instructions and videos on making and using ice claws. The information is from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

Minnesotans have a lot of experience with ice, given that the state has cold winters and bills itself as "The Land of 10,000 Lakes.”

That has prompted Alaskans to brag that we have 10,000 unnamed lakes. People here routinely travel over frozen lakes and rivers on skates, skis, bikes, snowmachines and in cars and trucks.

Which raises the question ... why doesn’t Alaska have an ice-safety website?