Give it a rest

Last week, The New York Times published a story about people depriving their brains of downtime by filling every spare moment with e-mails, phone calls and electronic games.

The story cited a University of Michigan study that found people learn better after a walk in nature than they do after walking through an urban environment. The Times story suggested a radical idea for a woman who was interviewed while multitasking with her iPod, iPhone and a a high-def TV as she exercised at the gym: Perhaps, the story suggested, her head would be clearer if she went for a run outside, without all the gadgets.

Downtime allows the brain to process experiences and turn them into long-term memories, according an assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco. When your brain is constantly stimulated, the learning process is disrupted. He might has well have said, “mountain biking makes you smarter.”

What baffles me is why we still need to be told things that so obviously fit under the category of “No shit, Sherlock.” Why do we seem to forget that simply playing outside is more relaxing than staring at a screen?

It doesn’t matter if a person likes to ski, hike, run or—like you and me—take solace in the meditative benefits of singletrack. You’re better off if you unplug for a few hours and get out in the woods.

I think that’s one of the reasons I like to take it slow and enjoy the ride. Pedaling fast is fine, but half the fun of a mountain bike ride is swapping tales at the trailhead or during water breaks along way. What’s the rush? All the bullshit of daily life will still be waiting when the ride ends.

You can even hurry home and blog about it.

Three on three

Cruising down the South Fork Rim Trail late Tuesday evening, Jules, the Bike Monkee and I were making a lot of noise while trying to avoid a bear encounter.

Still, I can’t say it came as a huge surprise to have one anyway. As bear turf goes, that’s a pretty busy neighborhood.

I rounded a corner and saw the Monkee pulling himself off the ground up at the next curve, then backing up slowly as he held his arms out, trying to look as large as possible.

“Bear?” I asked quickly as I stopped my bike.

“Yeah, “ he said, still looking around the corner. “Three.”

I pulled a canister of pepper spray from the bottle cage on my bike, and took a few steps toward him, which was enough to give me a view around the vegetation next to the bike he had ditched while avoiding a near-collision and the resulting bear charge. The view was a tad unnerving—a few feet from his bike stood a couple of one- or two-year-old cubs and the ass end of a brown bear sow that was starting to move her offspring into the woods. They crunched through the brush to our right for a couple of minutes as we considered how to retrieve Monkee’s bike and get the hell out of there.

That was the second time in about five weeks that I’ve been close enough to a grizzly to pull out the spray and take off the safety clip.

I often think that Alaska mountain bikers are relaxed enough to ride here only because we convince ourselves there isn’t a bear around the next corner.

But sometimes, there is.

And that’s when a can of Counter Assault is worth its weight in gold.

Going (mostly) car-free

Most parents dread the day a child turns 16 and gets a driver’s license. We fear for their safety, and shudder at the thought of car insurance premiums that double—or worse—overnight. For many families, a new driver in the house also means there will be an extra car in the driveway.

Not at my house.

My daughter recently started her junior year of high school as a licensed driver. Because her schedule includes a mix of online courses, a night class at a local college, and two classes at her local school, the only realistic option is for her to drive each day.

A few months ago, my wife started trolling craigslist for used vehicles, but buying another reliable car is outside my financial comfort zone at the moment. I’m among those American workers who managed to keep my job, but lost annual pay raises, my company’s 401(k) match, and a significant portion of my old salary. My pay stubs look about like they did when my daughter was 10.

Fortunately, I have a sturdy commuter bike with fenders for wet weather, and I own studded bike tires for icy days, and a fat bike for snowy ones. So, instead of paying interest on a used-car loan, I’m handing over the keys to my 4Runner each morning, and giving up the option of driving to work. And I’m kind of looking forward to doing this for the foreseeable future.

I’ve always told my kids that it’s easy to love bike commuting when you choose to do it. Pedaling into freezing rain is more tolerable if you know you didn’t have to. But there’s also something nice about cutting options and stepping to a higher level of commitment.

Besides, she leaves some cool mix CDs in the car stereo.

Drive to Work Day

This morning I faced my twice-yearly car commute from South Anchorage to Midtown during the morning “rush hour.” That’s another way of saying I had a dental appointment.

Traffic on the Seward Highway was lighter than usual—so light that I arrived a few minutes early and managed to read a few pages of a Vonnegut novel before going inside.

The whole thing reminded me of how smoothly automobile traffic can flow when fewer cars are on the road. And it inspired a daydream of a wonderful alternative to Bike to Work Day, Critical Mass rides and other forms of pro-bicycle activism:

Wouldn’t it be nice if so many people rode bikes to work that we’d have to choose one day a year when we would all drive just to clog the roads and remind society of how ugly the world would be without bike commuters?

Gettin' the job done

I’ve long believed that wet weather is just part of living in Alaska, and that whining about it is for the weak. Therefore, dear reader, you are hereby on notice that nothing in this post is to be misconstrued as whining, but Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, this is getting ridiculous.

When consecutive days of rain hit the 28-day mark, we broke a record that had stood for 59 years.

And that was last Saturday. It’s still raining.

If it weren’t for my weather-tortured commuter bike and it’s full-coverage fenders, I’d be batshit crazy by now. The trails are a muddy mess, and road biking isn’t all that attractive in rainy weather, but you can always get out for some kind of ride if you have a bike that’s equipped for slop.

Here’s to the townie, the commuter, the Frankenbike, the beater, the whatever-you-want-to-call-it bike that suffers the shit and never lets you down.

You can have a garage full of all the high-zoot carbon and titanium rides you want. None of them are more respectable than the grungy workhorse that gets you to work in the kind of weather that tends to keep the expensive toys inside.

Fancy bikes are a ton of fun, but in times like these, it’s the old, reliable ones that keep us sane.

Saving Sarah

Sarah has spent this summer as an intern in the office where I work. She has also spent it as a bike commuter, riding from downtown to South Anchorage every day on an old Trek mountain bike that wasn’t getting much action in my garage.

After feeling her strength build all summer as she racked up miles, she sampled a little trail in my neighborhood, then wanted more. So, some friends and I took her up Powerline Valley last night. I saw it as a fun way to show her another little piece of Alaska while baiting her into the cult.

She splashed through a bit of water, smiled a lot, and pronounced the downhill section “warped,” but a seriously good time. I even overheard her telling Maura that she was starting to like mountain biking more than running.

I love getting people into mountain biking, but it’s especially rewarding to convert runners.

The way I see it, saving a person from running is like saving a person from the church.

Could there be any higher calling than that?

Soggy Fingers

Last weekend's Soggy Bottom inspired
some fine efforts for the Bicycles & Icicles
Fabulous Finger Gallery:

Strong work by Mark Davis, who was among
the elite group of finishers in an event
in which two-thirds of the solo riders
had to scratch.

And here's a classic from Sean Grady.
It's always fun when someone finds a way
to put a new spin one of these shots.
And yes, that's me walking toward him
when both of us were on the trail
shooting pictures near the
Cooper Landing checkpoint.

Well played, gentlemen.

Epic

This one will be talked about for years. The 2010 edition of the Soggy Bottom 100 tortured a record number of riders with off-the-chart terrible conditions. After a glance at the list of finishers in Hope, I estimated the drop-out rate at 50 percent. Someone told me they thought it was higher.

No one can be blamed for abandoning this beast. People came in covered with mud after multiple crashes on slimy trail. By the time they reached Devil's Pass trailhead, some were in the early stages of hypothermia. Those who cracked included some of the toughest riders in Southcentral Alaska.

Here's to the toughest and fastest in each solo division: Peter and Darcy.

Darcy Davis, first female finisher, riding
out of the first checkpoint at Cooper Landing.

Peter Butt, first male finisher,
savors the finish line in Hope.

The Sog Slog

Call it epic. Call it a bucket of suckage.
Either way, you'll probably be right.

Whatever you call it, this weekend's Soggy Bottom
is looking like a tough one. Rain has been falling
on 109 miles of trail for days now.

Bottoms will be soggy.

Good luck to all the racers.
Chill the beer and let the sufferin' commence!

Rooted

Leonard gets skinny on Speedway.
8.1.10

I've always been a summer guy. I have friends who prefer winter biking to summer biking and, though I get their point, I still like warm days, long hours of sunlight, and the feel of dirt under my tires.

But there are moments when I miss snow. Like when I knock a little dust off my Pugsley by taking it out for a summertime ride.

Or when I ride Speedway singletrack when it's dry.

Those roots will open a can of whupass on a guy. They did it to me on Sunday. There's nothin' like a nasty knot of roots to make you appreciate the smoothing effects of a few inches of snow.

For now, I'll cling to summer as long as I can. And when the snow flies this fall, I'll cheer myself up by remembering how it's burying those wheel-grabbing buggers.

Soggy end to the dry spell

The blog has been in a coma lately. This wasn't helped by a multi-day, non-biking trip out of town. Come to think of it, I'm having a little trouble remembering the last time I went on a real ride. I think it was ... oh, yeah, a freakin' week ago. No wonder I'm gettin' grumpy. Good thing I plan to remedy that situation on Sunday morning.

I returned home the other day and found this photo from Jules, who has been ripping her legs off preparing for this year's Soggy Bottom 100. She felt like flipping the bird to the notorious Swan Lake section of the Resurrection Trail during last weekend's training ride. And I don't blame her.

The Soggy will be held next Saturday. It's one more reminder that summer is flying by. Time to get busy and ride.

Who knows? Maybe I'll start coming up with stuff to rant about on the blog. I hope so, because ranting about not riding just sucks.

Rovin' Rover's

The city is warning trail users—again—to avoid Rover’s Run because a remote camera captured images of a brown bear sow and her two-year-old triplets walking on the trail multiple times over the past week.

For about 30 years, people used Rover’s on a regular basis with no significant bear problems—just an occasional sighting. But since a bad summer two years ago, the municipality has treated Rover’s like a skid-row titty bar full of brawling biker gangs. Nevermind the fact that the bear responsible for a serious mauling was never seen or heard from again, and the most persistently troublesome bear was killed, bringing threatening bear encounters to a screeching halt before that notorious summer ended.

Between trail closures and frequent warnings, the city has terrified many runners and bike riders, thereby cutting human use of Rover’s Run during summer months to a small fraction of what it was prior to 2008. All along, critics of the city’s response have pointed out that if humans vacate the area, bears will feel free to move in, and become bolder about using the trail during daylight hours.

And now cameras are capturing daytime images of a virtual wagon train of brown bears cruising the trail as if they owned it. Coincidence? Maybe not.

Take another look at those three cubs in the picture. They’re two years old. For their entire lives, human use of Rover’s has been minimized. Now Mama’s teaching them they can cruise that area with impunity.

Think they’re going to go away?

Don’t bet on it.

Something’s Fishy

It was the usual Monday morning greeting at work. The receptionist asked about my weekend, and I said something about riding on the Kenai Peninsula. Her immediate response was, “Did you fish?”

This might be my biggest disconnect with many of my fellow Alaskans. For most of them—at least in this part of the state—the words “weekend” and “Kenai” mean fishing. To me, they mean mountain biking.

A similar exchange occurred one day last summer when I was out in the driveway getting the camper ready for a trip, and my next-door neighbor walked over and excitedly asked, “You going fishing?” And this is a neighbor who has watched me ride bicycles through all seasons for several years, but has never seen me carry a fishing rod to the car. Maybe she was just excited by the thought of me seeming normal, for a change.

I don’t mind a little fishing now and then, but it’s a low priority. It’s pretty sedentary. And it’s nowhere near as thrilling as zooming down a nice piece of singletrack.

Besides, I can buy salmon and halibut at the grocery store, if necessary.

But the grocery store doesn’t sell trail time.

The Bear

Resurrection Pass Trail, 7-17-10

With some rides, it's hard to determine what will be remembered the longest. Saturday's trip across Resurrection Pass was full of unusual elements like, heat; sun bright enough to burn our skin; unusually dry trail; a friend's severely disabled bike in the final quarter of the ride.

But, for me, the most memorable moment might be the bear. It crashed through the willows a few yards to my left, huffing and grunting as it—and I'm very happy to say this—found a way to run away from me instead of toward me. He was fast, brown and huge, and he did me a favor.

I'm often too quiet and complacent in serious bear country. I make too little noise and tend to forget about the risk of surprising a dangerous animal. A close encounter is a good reminder that I need to step it up a notch. Be louder. More aware.

Saturday's encounter happened so fast, it wasn't even very scary. It was later, in quieter moments, that it was easy to imagine what could have happened if the bear had chosen fight over flight.

And that wasn't much fun to think about.

Fireweed 400

Team Fancher at 30:54:02

Congratulations to all finishers of this weekend's Fireweed 400. My respect for the mental and physical hardness of such people could only grow from experiencing the race for my first time as a crew member.

Congratulations to Leonard Fancher, who overcame a difficult first day and rallied to actually gain speed over the final 200 miles and finish in 30 hours, 54 minutes, 2 seconds. Our team rolled out of the Valdez checkpoint at 4:20 a.m. full of worry about our ability to finish—but only because we had no way of knowing that Leonard would find new life on a rainy morning, and uncork a hell of a ride. Congrats, too, to my other friends among the elite group of survivors: Tony Berberich, Erik Christensen and "Broken Toe Joe" Pollock.

Thanks to Janice for her phone-and-text coaching consultations during the race, and to all the other crewing friends who made me smile when we saw each other on the road: Julie, Jill, Sean and, of course, Sarah, my partner on Team Fancher. With no bike-race experience of any kind, Sarah endured 39 sleepless hours with boundless energy and humor, and found ways to contribute that I had never imagined.

If Sarah's still available after she graduates from college next summer, I know a couple of racers who would be happy to put her to work.

Summertime mania

A friend who works in a bike shop told me last year that being employed at a shop doesn't really make sense for someone who rides. The problem is that summer is when you want to be on trails, but instead you're stuck in the shop, working.

The way things have been lately, it almost feels like the same thing applies to people who write bike blogs. The difference is, we don't have to show up for work. Well, not blog work, anyway.

The blog gets push aside when friends and trails call. Or bike maintenance is necessary. Or any of the other demands of "real life" get in the way. But this is also when photos and stories pile up ... some of which I could probably write about without getting punched in the kidneys by the people with whom I ride.

Come to think of it, only one of them hits me, but I'd like to keep the number from growing so I gots to sort this shit out.

Big gears, little brain

The pre-race flip off.
(Photo by Maura)

Quitting was about the only smart thing I did at last weekend’s 12-hour race. My goal was to ride from noon to midnight and determine how my mind and body would hold up in such an event. But at 7:30 p.m., with my knees throbbing in pain, I rolled up to the timer’s tent and said, “Check me in. I’m think I’m done.”

I spent the rest of the night blaming my creaky, aging knees, but that probably wasn’t fair. My creaky brain played a big role in ending my race early.

Exhibit A: About a half-hour before the start, during a casual conversation with friends, I set a goal of riding eight laps on the 11-mile course. This was a dumb mistake. I wasn’t fully familiar with the terrain, and setting such a goal was in direct conflict with my original plan to simply ride smart and see how far I could go.

Exhibit B: I forgot the meaning of “riding smart.” I always warm up slowly, so I felt good about keeping my first-lap pace in check. Plenty of riders passed me as they warmed up, and I was proud of myself for resisting the temptation to chase. But then I got stupid. After one lap, I started doing math—never a good idea, in my case—and calculating what kind of split times I’d need to rack up eight laps before midnight. I ramped up my pace to turn a faster second lap. Bad move.

I achieved the pace I wanted, but not the one I could sustain for 12 hours. Shortly before 6 p.m., I finished my fourth lap but knew it was time to adjust my goal. During my next lap, the goal became simple—stop doing damage.

As The Grouch later pointed out, the 24 Hours of Matanuska course contains a lot of hills that are very steep, yet short enough to tempt riders into powering over them with gear combinations that are too high. That’s hard on knees, and I pedaled right into the trap. Gearing down would have cost me the eight-lap goal, but so what? If I’d used my head, there’s a good chance my body would have held up for two more laps, which would have put me at a respectable seven.

Ultimately, though, the race answered a bigger question that has lingered in my mind since the depths of last winter: whether I should enter this year’s Soggy Bottom 100. With 7 hours and more than 50 miles behind me, the thought of riding another 50—even with good knees—held zero appeal.

I love doing the rides most mountain bikers call all-day epics. But for me, the line ends somewhere around six hours and 50 miles, depending on the terrain.

After that, it’s burger-and-beer time. And I’m OK with that.

24 Hours

I'll be spending the next few days eating ibuprofen and drying out rain-soaked camping gear as I sort through all the mental detritus of the 24 Hours of Matanuska. Being a guy who abandoned in pain after seven and a half hours, one of the things that’ll stick with me is the tenacity of some really tough racers. There were many, and I got pics of only a few:

Team Davis. With no competition remaining in the race by Sunday morning, they had their victory in the bag, and could have gone home for hot showers and sleep. Instead, they kept going out for laps on a course so slippery that even the best racers were reduced to pushing up the slimy hills. Their husband and dad, Mark, had fought off cramps for hours to rack up 10 laps in the 12-hour solo division Saturday night.

(Photo by Jill V.)

Tony B., who rang up 18 laps in the 24-hour solo division. I watched him roll out in the rain at 7:30 a.m. with a 26-inch wheel that had just been thrown on the back of his 29er as an emergency repair just to keep the thing rolling.

Jenny H. wanted 10 laps in the 12-hour solo division. She got them by cruising by the timer’s tent at 11:30 p.m. and going out for a final two hours of suffering. When she finished seconds after this photo was taken, she couldn’t even drink a beer. That’s what I call giving until it hurts.

The Grouch—and unofficial race mascot—who survived the 12-hour race on a fully rigid bike, but had the good sense to bring a spare, so he could cannibalize a front wheel after destroying the one he started with. (As odd as this blog already was, publishing a picture of a guy who wears a hockey mask and cannibalizes things might be a new level of strangeness.)

Petra proved she's a certifiable badass just by being there. Racing like one was just a bonus.

Kudos to everyone who rode. (Including the drunk dude who did it in flip-flops in the middle of the night.)

Franco Finger

I don't know if it's the wind or a digestive problem from that strange cuisine, but the French sure like to know their outhouses aren't going to lift off when the countdown reaches zero.

My man Leonard stopped at this heavily fortified privy in France for a flip-off photo last fall. At least I think that's why he stopped—I don't know what he had for breakfast.

While we're on the subject of thoughts that could cost you some sleep, I'm going to crew for Leonard as he solos the Fireweed 400 in about three weeks. Team Muschi Schmerzen is taking the year off after two campaigns in the 200 relay event, so I decided to get a front-row seat and watch what the real maniacs endure.

It should make every ride I do this year seem like a Sunday cruise. Who knows? Maybe I'll get flipped off a few times when Leonard gets irritable in the wee hours of what could be a 28- to 30-hour effort. Not that I'll still have the fine motor skills to operate a camera ...

One tenth

I was talking with someone today about Rover’s Run, and the bear-related incidents that have occurred on or near that trail over the past two ... well, now three, summers. She mentioned the often-discussed idea of of building an alternative trail that would be farther away from Campbell Creek and it’s tasty, bear-attracting salmon, and said she thinks some people at the municipality seem to favor this option.

That’s when I started talkin’ crazy and mentioned that if the city wants the trail farther from the creek, the city should pony up some money and fund the project. That’s not how things work in Anchorage, of course. If you want or need a new trail here, you have to spend a few years in public meetings begging for permission. You have to make sure the bike-hating Nordic ski community is happy. You have to raise a bunch of money to pay for the trail. Then, if you’re lucky, the city that would benefit from the project will grant you permission ... and you get to pay for a permit. Yeah, the city charges you a fee to build it a free trail.

As I walked back to my office today, I thought about my recent trip to Canada. As my friends and I rode multiple trails with Anthony—a local in Whitehorse, Yukon—the conversation was sprinkled with his mentions of when the city built this trail or that one, and how the city crew was constructing that fancy new mountain-bike bridge at the bottom of the gully.

Whitehorse is roughly one-tenth the size of Anchorage.

One day, we rode to a little skills park tucked away in the woods at the base of Grey Mountain. There were log bridges and teeter-totters cut from the local timber. We asked, who did this? His answer: the city of Whitehorse.

Back in town, there’s a formal, fenced skills park full of jumps, wall rides, and all sorts of tricky challenges that most of us will never attempt, much less master. (Ever try riding on a steel chain over a shallow pit? Me neither. And I can still say that.) Where’d the park come from? The city. Public funds were spent on a public recreation facility—for mountain bikers.

This happened in a city of 26,000 people in the freakin’ Yukon territory. A place with only two bike shops.

And what happens when a town invests in such things? Its residents have a blast riding their asses off, for one thing. And people like us travel there to ride. We spend money in the town’s stores and restaurants. People start bike-related tourism businesses like Boreale Mountain Biking (and then let Alaskans hang out in their yurts to drink margaritas, but never mind that right now).

We know to go there because such places get noticed. Word gets around in the bike world. The media covers the town as a destination that people should put on their travel lists. Hell, people in the United Kingdom read about Whitehorse in British newspapers and bike magazines.

Anchorage—Did I mention that it’s roughly ten times the size of Whitehorse?—could never do such things, of course. It’s not as if we have a huge, stunning blank slate of mountains at the edge of town, just waiting for trails to be built if the city and state ever decided to work together. It’s not as if we have hundreds of thousands of tourists passing through every year, and surely, none of them would want to bring bikes and have some real fun and get a little exercise while their relatives buy shitty souvenirs or go fishing.

It’s not as if we could tell the grumpy NIMBYs to shove it. It’s not as if we have the marketing power to sell our world-class terrain to the world. It's not as if we have thousands of hotel rooms ready and waiting for the bike riders who could easily get here from major airport hubs like Seattle, Salt Lake City and Minneapolis.

And it’s certainly not as if most of our municipal leaders have one-tenth the vision of the people who run Whitehorse.