Fruita

Like many of the friends I've made, I knew about you, Fruita, long before I met you. I knew you like I know the other planets orbiting our sun: neighbors, yet strangers. Finally, we've met. I have your telephone number, and I'm going to memorize it, or at the very least, etch it into my arm.

Here:

To be honest, I don't like travel pieces that are ubiquitous in mountain biking magazines. I'll probably never be able to ride most of the trails that are being written about, and the point of each of these articles is always the same. There aren't many ways to say, "Riding bikes in this unfamiliar place helped me to transcend what is normally my life." However, having been to Fruita, and having transcended what is normally my life, one of those travel pieces is exactly what I want to write. 

You've likely already been to Fruita. You've likely read several travel pieces about Fruita. There's nothing I can say about Fruita that you don't already know, but I am doomed to write this travel piece because there was so much about Fruita that I didn't know, such as it will make a person not want to go back to what they had formally considered to be "living."

It's weird that the cashier at the Walgreens in Fruita isn't any more efficient than the cashier at the Walgreens in Denver, who splits her time between her cell phone and her job eighty/twenty. In Fruita, however, I don't mind standing in line while the cashier asks the locals about their rashes, and asks the tourists if they have rashes, and if they've named them. I had so much fun in a stupid Walgreens that I almost purchased on impulse a Justin Timberlake CD. 

The riding was about as good as it gets, but more difficult to navigate than the trails were the unanswerable questions that kept falling out of the unzipped backpack of my brain. If I dislike traffic and long lines at the cheese store, why do I live in a place with heavy traffic and long lines? Why have I chosen to breathe smog in a place where silence is a metaphor? I don't know. Here are some pictures.

Rebecca does something her mom wouldn't like.

If you can ride this without smiling, you might not be a good person.

If only there were a biscuit kitchen right there, it would be paradise.

The Difference a Year Makes

Winter has returned. Denver has not seen the sun for three consecutive days, which usually happens about once a year, at about this time. It's getting a little nutty here, because if a Denverite goes three days without sun, he or she begins to suffer from skin cancer withdraw. 

I overheard a couple of people in the chiropractor's office talking about the people they've seen riding bicycles throughout the storm. The cyclists were referred to as "lunatics." I think I understand how non-cyclists arrive at their feeling about those lunatics, as, to them, winter is something to be tolerated, something that makes traveling from home to the tanning salon unpleasant. However, here is a picture from my commute:

And here's a picture of the average wintery automobile commute:

I understand that not everyone is about to hop on their bike and ride through the next blizzard, but there certainly isn't anything unpleasant about a winter ride, and sometimes, if you're lucky, the frostbite works its magic on one of those weird moles that's developing on your face. 

I will admit that there are inclement occasions on which my wife will offer to drive me to work, and that it's getting more and more difficult to turn down said offers. Why? a) Because it's easy, and b) there's probably a cyclist pinned underneath that red vehicle above. Also, c) here's a carcinogenic photograph of my spine:

That bright white spot may be an oft-regretted habanero pepper. 

I have no idea how to interpret this carcinogenic photograph, but the doctors tell me there's not enough jelly between those frosted white squares. Medically, I have no idea what that means, but it does sound like a delicious breakfast. In any case, you may remember what I was doing one year ago. I spent most of this past week doing the same thing.

There are other mistakes I've made repeatedly throughout my life, but dislodging the temperamental circle of back jelly is the one mistake I just can't seem to stop making. I mean, sometimes all I have to do is reach for a light switch or even just fart wrong and I can't walk for three days. How does one learn to prevent such things?

In answer to that question, I'm off to Fruita for four days to ride my bike, drink beer, and watch the sunrise. Not getting out of town is a mistake I haven't too often made. I hope to return with many non-carcinogenic photographs for you of Fruita, the magical place where the vertebrae ride wild and free.

A Bike Ride and One of Spring's Many False Starts Coincide

Spring is here. I know this is true because I've recently cut the amount of gear I need to carry on a trail ride from forty pounds to three. For winter rides, I become as bearded and layered up as a homeless person, and carry a backpack full of things like snowpants and a gaiter repair kit. Yesterday, I shaved, wore only a t-shirt, and carried two items:

While riding in the snow can be fun, there's something I prefer about riding in a t-shirt on a day like this:

Perhaps that thing I prefer is getting to see Phillip's bare chest, which made exactly zero appearances on this blog during the winter.

Regrettably, hardly anything made an appearance on this blog during the winter, and for that you have my apologies. I was busy stumbling around in the dark and going to bed before six p.m. However, it is now light until after eight, and the siamese mountain twins have come out of hibernation. They have seen their shadow, so it is time to resume this blog.

Here is my Surly Ogre, all dressed up in a new outfit for 2013.

Not since Casanova has there been such a rigid miracle. However, I've already said my piece about this bike, and what I want to say in this post has nothing to do with anything I've said so far. What I want to talk about is the difference between a mountain bike trail and a trendy restaurant.

I try to avoid trendy restaurants, but occasionally I receive free drink coupons from the employees of trendy restaurants, and I try even harder to avoid wasting free drink coupons more than to avoid trendy restaurants. Thus, I found myself in a trendy restaurant on a Saturday night. I seemed to be the only male in knickers. While waiting at the bar, I observed other patrons indulging poor taste and making unreasonable demands of the bartenders. People bulldozed through the hoard, spilling drinks without apology, and try as I might I could not ignore snippets of childish and unsophisticated conversations held by people posing to be exactly the opposite. I wish I could describe the situation without disparaging generalizations, but the scene was at once too sinister and idiotic to not have been scripted by someone like Darren Aronofsky. I saw much evidence of wealth and primping, not much of sensibility or class. Let's hope I was simply in a weird mood.

The cocktails were ninety percent ice, and the finger of whiskey I ordered cost about half the price of a full bottle. Being in a place like that made me want to learn about arson. 

Riding a mountain bike is entirely antithetical to that trendy restaurant. You show me a dirty, bloody cyclist eating a smooshed peanut butter sandwich on a mountaintop while sharing a six-pack with his friends and I'll show you a person with whom it's worth drinking.

I'm not saying young, affluent people are worthless, or that I haven't had a good time in a crowded restaurant. I'm not saying mountain bikers have a better grasp on life than do people who enjoy socializing in trendy restaurants. What I'm saying is that sometimes I end up not sleeping for several nights in a row, and am unhappy for reasons I can't discover, and the feeling persists until I stand dirty and tired at the top of a mountain, not being bumped into, delivered from chatter. 

Welcome, spring. You are just in time.

Ogre, Again

If you've ever been unfortunate enough to ask me about my Surly Ogre, you know that I'll talk until your ears bleed. It was such an incredible mountain bike this past summer and fall that I've enrolled in  an Introductory Ogre Languages class. 

Winter finally descended upon the front range, and while local trails are a mess, I refuse to hang up the big green machine. Ogres do not hibernate. 

Those are Schwalbe Ice Spiker tires, and their being awesome beyond description won't stop my from trying. Their awesomeness is infinite. They will not lose traction on anything, including a unwary pedestrian's eyeglasses. Really, you could ride straight up Donald Trump's ego with these tires. 

Obviously the Ogre can't compete with fatbikes in deep snow, but in the city where there is frequently a  layer of icy packed snow under a few inches of powder, the Ogre is winter commuting perfection. Those little ridges of frozen slush that try to slap your front wheel out from under you? The Ogre eats those for breakfast, farting out little ice crystals as it goes. 

With a Salsa Anything Cage, you can carry your thermos, too. My wife and I spent a lovely evening riding around the city looking at holiday lights and drinking eggnog. It was the first time I've felt like a kid during the holidays since, well, since I was a kid. 

Speaking of lights, I received this thing at a White Elephant party:

Actually, I received it and it was stolen, and then I opened another one and it was stolen, too, and then the Ogre and I stormed a castle and stole one of them back. It is a Monkey Light and it is neat. Yeah, take that, darkness.

Here's a picture I didn't take:

Multi-colored hearts? You may think my Ogre is too tough for these. Well, know this: the Ogre fears no love.

A Miracle Just in Time for Christmas

On my way to work last week I had to stop at the hardware store, and on my way to the hardware store I had to pass the Dollar Tree, and as I passed the Dollar Tree I came upon a bicycle miracle. It being a miracle and all, I wasn't sure how to act. When I first passed, I was unable to stop or even look closely, as I feared that if I looked directly into the miracle it would disappear, or I would discover it hadn't been real, more hallucination than miracle. Thirty feet beyond, I stopped. I turned around. It was still there. My camera was at hand. Through the window of the Dollar Tree I spotted the person under which the bicycle miracle had undoubtedly arrived. That person was finishing a transaction at the register. My time was short. It is impossible for me to explain how I knew that the person at the register on the other side of the Dollar Tree's window was the one who would come and take the bicycle miracle away, other than to say he was to the ordinary human what his bicycle is to ordinary bicycles. Please enjoy the picture below. I believe it may be the best photographic documentation of any miracle to date. You are welcome.

Hey, Ogre, I Arrarrarraarararrararrrar You

A couple of posts ago I wrote about the radness that is Surly's forthcoming Krampus, and I couldn't help comparing it to my Surly Ogre. I want to take some time here to direct some praise toward the Ogre, which I haven't really mentioned it in print since the day I bought it, though I say at least once per ride, "I sure do arrarrarraarararrararrrar this bike."

This bike is amazing. It does exactly what I want it to do. Every time. Even with a bald rear tire it rarely spins out. It doesn't matter to me, really, what features a bike has or doesn't have as long as that bike does exactly what you want it to do. I've ridden fancier bikes, but never a more responsive, agile 29er hardtail.

Could it be lighter? I don't care. There are surely lighter frames out there, and those frames might get me to the top of a long climb ten seconds faster, but I don't think the difference would be such that I could at any one point during that climb say that other frame had outperformed the Ogre.

There was a brief time when I was riding this bike with a rigid fork and a terrible wheel set, and even that experience--on one of the front range's rockiest trials--was so good that I said something stupid about not putting any suspension on it ever, which led a good friend of mine to slap me in the face. Hard. It was the first time I've been slapped. I don't know what to say about it. As you can see, there is a suspension fork on the bike.

In other bike news, Rebecca just got a new Tallboy. I've tried to get a picture of her riding it, but they all come out looking like this:

She's much faster than she used to be, and I'm now afraid she's regularly going to chick me when we ride, which is scary because I promised her that each time she chicked me I'd get a tattoo. At this rate, that day is not far off. In fact, this being election season, let's take a vote. Each time my wife chicks me on a mountain bike climb, which of the following tattoos should I get?

Candidate A:

Candidate B:

Candidate C:

Candidate D:

Log your votes in the comments section. Voter fraud is encouraged.

Finally, I will be out of town for a while for Professional Development Days. Hey, we couldn't call it Drinking in the Desert Days. I'll report upon return.

Vacation Time Travel Part I

Rebecca and I went on vacation a few weeks ago. I can't outline the exact dates of this vacation, because when we left Denver it was late September, and when we arrived in Crested Butte four hours later, it was late November. It turns out that packing properly for a time traveling vacation is not easy, unless you are Calvin and Hobbes, in which case your time traveling vacation checklist looks like this:

• Goggles

This is the best picture I could get of the trail we'd planned to ride. The 401 is legendary, and it's called the 401 because that's how long in minutes it snows on that trail every night. The trail begins just above where the mountain disappears into the cloud and then climbs from there.

This picture of Mt. Crested Butte makes it look warmer than it was.

We spent quite a bit of our time in Crested Butte indoors.

This lurching walk to the hotel in the dark is brought to you by Macho Man Randy Savage and the letter Zzzzz. Oooooh yeeeah!

At times the clouds parted to reveal a lighter layer of clouds above, and we were able to squeeze in a couple of rides. Though we rode none of Crested Butte's more famous trails, the short ones we rode were more than we could've hoped for. Only the knowledge that I was wearing a chamois kept me from peeing myself in delight.

"This makes me puke."

After we left Crested Butte, we traveled from late November back to 14,000 B.C. in the few hours it took us to drive to Ridgeway. I hesitate to describe what we saw there, but briefly imagine a bunch of naked, stooped, bearded old guys, more simeon than men, sitting in a pool of hot water seeping from the Earth's crust and occasionally climbing out of the pools to forage for berries. There is no documentation of this portion of the trip because I refused to take photographs. You're welcome. It was the kind of place where, when you caught sight of a crinkly hair floating toward you on the pool's surface, you began telling yourself it was merely back hair.

Check back later for Vacation Time Travel Part IV, followed by Part II.