I had plans for a more ambitious ride tonight, but the man put a pretty good beat-down on me today and by the time I got home, the amount of energy I had left in me was exactly equal to what it takes to make a trip to the park with Brandy. Which is okay - it counts as a ride as far as I'm concerned at this moment, and it's just fine with Brandy. Patty came along, and since she was up for chucking (not to be confused with up-chucking), it turned into a Brandy-in-action photo shoot.
"When do we start?"
"No, really. When do we start?"
High performance cornering
High performance acceleration
Flight
All balled up
"That was pretty fun, boss."
I suspect she (Brandy, not Patty) digs my getting beaten down and wishes it would happen more often.
John not-so-subtly reminded me yesterday that there are no fat tracks in Manito Park. I feigned the whole deal about how little I care, but truth be told, it's been bugging the hell outta me.
Trouble is, I've scheduled a few use-it-or-lose vacation days to combine with paid holidays in a highly strategic effort to give me 11 straight days off of work. Why is that trouble? Because wrapping things up at work to the extent that I can get away for that period of time is just a monumental effort and had me totally life-force-wasted by the time I finally escaped my humble cubicle late this evening.
Once free, though, I quickly realized that if I could summon even a tiny bit of give-a-shit, I could ride tonight, somewhere, anywhere, thereby setting the table for what I could lamely designate as the twelve days of bikeness. Yes, it's trademarkable, but I'm kind of over that whole thing, just as suddenly as I embraced it.
Brandy and I did eventually get out and 'mark the park'. Have you ever shouldered your bike to a "center point" and then ridden a helix? I seriously doubt it, even if you say you have. So just stop lying. Crop circles are child's play compared to the tracks we laid tonight.
Umm, yeah, I know what you're thinking, me too . . . I should have pursued a career in art.
The snow wasn't all that deep, and so I had to do a bit of "rim packing" to make the bike stand up on its own and capture this fantastical shot. Which may be kind of cheating, except that I really don't care. Betcha anything you're wondering what "rim packing" is right now.
Patty has Brandy dressed up with a holiday scarf these days and Brandy is not exactly into it to the extent that her eyeballs are bleeding, but despite all this, she was still up for the outing. A gamer, that one.
Once back from the park, I was totally jazzed about making some hardcore progress on the wheeliebike, which plays big into my holiday plans. But I was just flat out of gas and only managed to strip it down. Flames and grinding wheels will have to hit it another day.
I did figure one thing out though, with the assistance of beer. I've been struggling over a color scheme and it finally came to me tonight: "Forest awakening to a tequila sunrise". Time to go rifle thought my rattle-can stash, then.
Brandy's kennel closed, or went out of business, or something. We've since heard that there have been quite a few complaints about the place, in recent months.
We first found it by recommendation of her vet, who we like and trust. But that was a few years ago, and there have been warning signs more lately, which we have ignored, as dumb people are wont to do. Ask any dog.
So we went in search of a new "kennel". Oh, how mightily dumb we have apparently turned out to be.
Apparently, the good places are not called that any more and they don't operate like that any more, either. Seems that between the dark ages in which I was raised and the present time, things have changed a bit, in terms of what is the proper kind of outfit to care for your dog, when you're on vacation or can't otherwise do it yourself.
We ended up at a friend-recommended place called Doggyland. Since it's in the valley, and I work in the valley, it became immediately apparent that it was my job to drop off / pick up Brandy from "trial day". And every other day we will ever drop her off / pick her up, for that matter. If we pass the test, of course. Holy living hell. Trial day. Am I even saying this?
Apparently, I am, then.
You're supposed to bring a pet bed. And a ball. And dog food. Which we did, as you can see. And which barely left room for me to drive, might I mention.
When we got there, Brandy and I walked in together, and there was very little anxiety on her part, as is normally the case with the "kennel" routine, and everything was rad and chill, and Mary and Sarah were just unbelievably cool and professional while they dealt with my clueless dork self. They asked me if it was okay if they put her in with the small dogs. I hadn't the first idea what that meant, so I said, "Sure!"
Obviously, I hadn't even begun to "get it". Ignorant people can only adapt to enlightenment so fast.
However, on my behalf: I came back at the end of the work day to pick up my carpool buddy and they let me look through the window at her, in this new environment and she appeared super happy and comfortable and there is no smell in this place and there is no incessant barking and there is containment, but no cages, and they have this scale model of the layout of the facility in the lobby that, along with their concept, their philosophy, is just blowing my mind. After processing throughout the day what I had seen in the morning, I was on the verge of being able to accept. Here's kind of the explanation of how it works, as quoted from their website:
At Doggyland, there are 3 exercise areas where the dogs are seperated by size and play style. Each one is an open play space where your pet will enjoy a fun filled day frolicking with other dogs of their own play style. In summer, your dog can cool off in our air conditioned indoors or the small wading pool out doors whilst drying off in the summer sun. In winter, your pet will be safe from the cold in our the heated indoors. Each play area has a seperate door flap that your dog can freely go in and out of. In fact, they will have so much fun exercising in our doggie daycare, you'll be sure to notice a happier, content and calmer member of your family.
I drove home with a completely different dog. Confident, content. I can't believe I am even writing this. But I totally shit you not.
We, as people, need to keep stretching, evolving. It's something we all gladly give lip service to, I think. But sometimes we don't really understand what that means and then certain turns of events show us what it means, in no uncertain terms, and then we are somewhat grateful while at the same time mostly bewildered and it is just best to go to bed and let our subconscious mind deal with it all during REM and whatever other kind of sleep we are in for, and hopefully we will wake up tomorrow and we will have adjusted, even a little, if not completely, and things will make better sense. Hopefully.
More convergence stuff, or maybe just wild ideas. Time will tell.
This is Brandy.
She's predominately Australian Shepherd. If you know the breed at all, they are 110% about their job. Since we don't have a ranch, her city-slicker job is chasing down anything that is launched from our hands or feet. I'm not talking about chasing it down as in getting it done sometime before coffee break. The future of civilization hangs in the balance, on every throw. She makes greased lightning look slow. This dog can scoot.
When our longtime family lab started to slow down, we intentionally went out looking for a smaller, auxiliary, back-up dog, that could learn the ropes and excellent manners from the main, heavy-duty dog. Brandy was a respectful student and picked up all kinds of great traits from the old girl. The other thing we intentionally went after was some energy. The kind that keeps your metabolism up. The kind that keeps you from sitting on your ass when you get home from work because you feel guilty that she has been waiting for you all day and her whole life revolves around you and nothing short of a drool-spewing workout will do. The kind that gets you out in all kinds of weather because it's just so flat-out fun to go hang out in the park with your pal and share the joy of gettin' after that damn ball!
Jasmine went to dog heaven a few weeks ago, and Brandy is a different dog. She's no longer auxiliary, and it's a hard adjustment when you've had an older sister that handles all the tough situations. But she's stepping up. And she's more focused than ever on her job.
So we're down to the park almost every day, like we've been every day since she came home with us. We walk sometimes, but mostly we bike, because she sleeps at the speed I walk. So we ride. And we pack the essential gear, as dictated by the conditions:
Ball "chucker" Nylabone (daylight) frisbee (er, um, flying disc) Large LED lighted frisbee (er, um, flying disc) Small LED lighted frisbee (er, um, flying disc) Plastic bag for picking up poop (I'm usually "plastic" on the "paper or plastic?" question) Optional master's hydration for those extra-hard workouts
I threw the the blue and orange thing in there. It's called the 'flying squirrel'. Lame. If you have a really slow dog, it's yours. (As you can tell, I've been living with a slow dog for years and am now drunk with fast-dog arrogance.)
LED frisbees? Yeah, we get 'em at REI. Greatest invention EVER. We love summer, but we love the winter even more, because we have the whole place to ourselves and we turn it into a glow-in-the-dark playground. Sometimes we freak people out in a UFO-kind-of-way. People have immense immaginations in the dark. (Myself included.)
The AquaVelva's been a blessing, because now I can carry all the stuff I need in the baskets.
Yup, that's a bud light stashed under the (empty) poop-sack in the front basket. Good eye. Anyway, no more slobbery frisbees (er, um, flying discs) stuffed into my backpack. No more plastic bags of poop stinking up the side pocket.
But the other night, as I was hydrating between demanding, athletic tosses, I had a vision. It had to do with some cruiser stuff that's been happening lately.
First, I went to get my hair cut the other night. Ed cuts my hair. He's the reason I look so awesome. (Not buying it? Whatever, bite me.) Anyway, Ed has this new, totally awesome, head-turning, screams-cool Electra cruiser that he's commuting on. I got there early and I'm checking it out, and Ed says that I better take it for a spin while I'm waiting. Twist my arm. And it turns out to be way more fun than way fun. People are yelling at me about how cool my bike is. It's not my bike, but the secret is safe. At my age, I'll take all the attention I can get.
Then, over this past weekend, Patty, Jacque and I went out of town for a family wedding and had an opportunity to rent some cruisers in our spare time one afternoon. We were diggin' it! Just one of those "in the moment" deals.
I've always thought cruisers were cool. Someone else's cruisers, though. Never could figure out what to do with one, myself. But all of a sudden, with a brilliant flash of LED light, I'm thinking about how cool it would be to take a cruiser and turn it into a dedicated run-dog-run-dog-bike. Something like this:
I suppose I should apologize for my absence. But I'm just not feeling it.
What I would like to say is that it's great to be hanging out with you here again on this most humble of virtual venues.
I built a bike jump in my backyard starting last night and finishing up tonight, which is, I guess, the impetus of this post, if not the true subject.
The backstory is that the pump track that I put together about 3 years ago, with the help of friends, is scheduled to soon go away forever, with no trace left. It has become time for me to "grow up".
Many would say that this sentiment is long overdue, and that a man my age was wildly immature for building it in the first place.
I would like to counter that notion with a little story from my way-past . . .
When I was 12, I "ordered up" a Tonka mobile crane for Christmas. I was way past the age when a boy should be playing with Tonkas of any kind, but "Santa" indulged me. The thing is though, this crane was an advanced piece of machinery, and there is no way in hell that any 8, 10 or even 11-year-old would even have a clue as to how to maximize its potential. A certain amount of maturity was requisite, and I had it, and I knew it. No apologies. Did I play with it for the next 3 years? Hell no. But for the next 6 months, I was industrious as hell at the helm of that fine piece of equipment. Not a lot of friends came around during that period, but whatever.
So, can anyone build a pump track? Why yes, of course. But can anyone do it well?? I think possibly not. It might just take someone with a certain amount of life and technical experience, as well as a furious pent up need to commune with a weird bunch of freaks who have a latent desire to ride in circles without pedaling. And an even stronger need to do it well, in order to please the freaks.
Could I have pulled this off as a younger man? Probably not, I submit. So my maturity empowered my immaturity. Chew on that, if you will. And in the meantime, let me once again refuse to apologize. I have no regrets about "doing" the pump track.
So let us elegantly segue . . .
Work has been totally bugging me. As in the need to show up by 8 and stay until 5. Say politically correct stuff. That type of thing. It occurred to me just yesterday that the prescription was to build a jump on the pump track site. Not sure why I didn't think of this sooner. It turned into a 2 evening project.
Brandy was on board the whole way. Unlike the rest of you bastards, she never questions me.
Once the jump was fairly roughed in, I employed the massive footprint of the Blackborow to ride it into shape.
Eventually, the mighty Bucksaw came out to play. Brandy is the poster child for the axiom that negative attention is better than no attention at all, and as a result, I spent the entire jump session dodging her presence in either the approach or landing zone. Despite the hindrance, I freakin' skied! Wish I had pics, but alas, no other party was around to run the iphone cam. You will have to trust me on this.
While I do recognize that this last-ditch effort to exercise my dirt-moving freedom is largely symbolic (as in flipping the bird to the maturity establishment), I am also quite intrigued by the scientific aspects of the endeavor. I'm not a bike nerd in any respectable sense of the term and I actually get quite bored by a lot of bike nerdy topics, but the whole deal about the shape of the ramp and the launch trajectory is currently fascinating to me and is probably something I will be playing with over the course of the next few days. So clearly, I am not a nerd, to reiterate.
The way that the jump works is that you have to go out into the street to get a start, and then haul ass down the driveway, swerving around the dog, and hope you get enough speed to launch. My neighbors will be observing an overweight, middle-aged dude doing this over and over again, in the high-90's heat of the coming weekend, if everything goes as planned.
Super weird, then.
But the feeling that I need to apologize still eludes me.
This weekend was a four-dayer for us, and was designated as chill time. Some deliberate downtime between a very busy 2011 and what looks to be the same kind of 2012. A few to-do's got done, but the list didn't own the weekend and most were left undone. What did take some of the priority was a bit of riding and thinking about riding. And what I'm obsessed with lately, bike-wise, is hitting some of the area's unimproved railbeds on the new bike. I know it's a me-problem, but I'm just smitten with the history of these corridors and with the public access to miles and miles of stunning natural and man-made scenery.
I'm generally not so hot on driving to ride, but in this case, I'm pretty happy to get in the truck and lay down some miles in order to put myself in position to experience some meaty railbed. Roaming out to these areas on a fatbike isn't really an option - it's too far and honestly, riding one on pavement is about as exciting as cardboard, IMO. On any other surface, though, let the fun begin.
And my mood for the weekend was super low-key . . . I just wanted to pedal around in this crazy dry weather amid the sessions of sunshine and enjoy looking at stuff. It would be so rad if I could take my dog along.
I don't have a fatbike rack option figured out yet, so for now I'm just piling the damn monster in the back of the truck.
Trouble is, that's Brandy's domain. Which leaves no other option except for her to ride shotgun. She seems to dig it, so I guess I can deal with the dog hair and bad breath.
On Sunday, we headed to Rosalia, to check out and do a bit of riding on the John Wayne Pioneer Trail. The remnants of the line are pretty prominent features of the area.
The signage on the gates that's now pretty familiar to me states that a permit is required and I had intended to just not worry about it and lightly poach, but when we got there, there was just too much population and visibility and I just wasn't in the mood to push it on a relaxed Sunday morning in rural Washington. We ended up just driving around and exploring the landscapes and hitting a few different road crossings of the trail. Despite the fact that we never pulled the bike out, we had a great time just banging around, and learned a lot about the lay of the land. And oh yeah, we got out on a couple occasions and did some good work sniffing around and peeing.
Today, we headed west on I-90 to Sprague - about a 40 minute drive from home, including a stop for an Egg McMuffin, which we shared. Not that bad (the eggamuffin or the drive). The destination was the end of the tame portion of the Columbia Plateau Trail and the beginning of the wild part. At a trailhead called Martin Road. The signage was unbelievably awesome and there's no way we could have not found it.
We were lucky enough to get a parking spot.
My new camera has a razoo timer feature that allows you to set it for up to a 30 second delay and then take 10 consecutive photos, spaced at about 2 second intervals. We dinked with this thing for a while and took a buncha shots - some of the sequences were pretty hilarious . . . this dork and his dog and his fancy-ass camera ride-posing in the middle of nowhere and failing miserably. A couple turned out okay, though.
The unimproved railbed is pretty gnarly - it would suck on pretty much any other bike and is one of the kind of surfaces that people talk about when they say that fatbikes allow them to ride places they couldn't before they got their hands on one.
The ballast was pretty hard on Brandy's pads, but at times there were cow trails along the edges (this is bigtime cattle grazing area) that gave her some relief. And me too - I'd ride there sometimes to mix it up.
The way the fat tires handled the ballast was pretty amazing. Don't get me wrong - it was 5-7 mph stuff, but it was comfortable and not that death-grip, wear-ya-down kind of experience you'd be having on a normal MTB. One of the things that I know second-hand is how tune-able the "suspension" of these bike is. But most of the pressure gauges that are attached to pumps are not accurate or reliable in the pressure ranges that these tire run at, so you have to have some means of measurement. I bought this gauge a coupla weeks ago and was finally able to get some firsthand experience with the feel of the bike at different pressures. Dropping both tires from 14 down to 10 totally changed the ride. For the better.
The other part of the big air equation is a portable pump that's up to the challenge. Damn, these balloons take a lotta air! What I picked up is a Lezyne high-volume morph-style pump. While the pump is nice piece of hardware, the plastic mount that comes with it is a flimsy pile of krap. You can't see it in this pic, but the base bangs against the frame and I had to protect it with some electrical tape. Stylin. I'll figure out a better way to mount it in due time.
This is more of the kind of garbage that would not be so much fun to ride through on a normal MTB, but was a blast with the fat.
What kind of bike adventure would be complete without a flat. Changing it takes a little longer than your normal-bike flat. I hope I get faster, 'cause I think there are a few of these in my future. I thought that maybe this was a pinch flat due to the 10 psi, but it was just a puny thorn. These tires don't have much in the way of flat protection - you wouldn't want them to - they need to be as flexible as possible to provide that cushion and grip that is so amazing.
The noise of these tires against the ballast, getting echoed off the walls of a rock cut is righteous . . .
I understand that this stuff (fatbike and/or nasty rail trail) is not for everyone, but I'm afraid I'm a little hooked for the time being. The majestic scenery and the freedom of exploring these historical wonders via pedal is messin' with me bigtime.
She came into this life as a runt on a farm. She hung out by herself and never got the chance to properly socialize and then she went to what we think was a pretty abusive environment. There was a Russian mail-order bride involved. I am not making this up. Patty and I adopted her out of that when she was two. Even though we knew better, we thought we could love her back to normal, but her first coupla years did some irreversible stuff and I don't like to lie to my dog, so I've had to explain to her that she's brain damaged. The way she looks at me lets me know that she understands. It's just a fraction of a hollow-eyed second and then it's "whatever, dumb human . . . game on, can't we just get on with what's truly important": her one and only focus in her sad dog life is to chase what I throw and bring it back so I can throw it again. With some head games thrown in. So I throw and she chases. And we go all crazy trying to fool each other. It seems to work for both our pea-sized brains and amuses us both endlessly.
When she's not chasing, she's a cuddler, a sweetheart. Even though she smells funky and her coat gets all ratty and the USPS is on the verge of cancelling our mail service forever because she charged a carrier and had to be pepper-sprayed, she's hard not to love. We watch Dr Phil together and listen as best we can and he's taught us both not to focus on the painful past. Thanks to his wisdom, we have come to accept that the only thing we can control is what lies ahead. Patty and I chose her because she needs to move and we want to move and she makes us feel bad and lets us know when we don't move enough and hopefully that guilts us into getting out and moving more because moving is essential for her and way good for us.
She chose us because anything is better than being yelled at in Russian. Like all relationships that work, everbody gets something they need.
So that's a long intro, but I think you will be happy that you wasted this time wandering into my dog's psyche, because she spends a lot of time waiting for her humans to do something and she is in for a surprise because tomorrow they are, and as well as you now know her, you will want to be along for the ride. The bike ride, that is.
Brandy and I tend to go to the park after dark these days, in order to avoid the summertime crowds. But the after-dark-atmosphere is noticeably more tense right now, due to the city's response to the Spokane Serial Stackers.
Tonight we were just innocently tossing around our LED fris, when a security car with one of those articulating driver-side spotlights shows up and starts blasting light all across the field we're playing on. I hit the deck and killed the LED. Brandy was exposed for the first time to the "GET DOWN" command. She didn't get it. Luckily, she didn't give us up.
I get that it costs the city a coupla bucks to undo the work of the stackers, but I'm just not buying that they're public enemies. They inject some much-needed energy and creativity into spo, and I think we can afford it. Rock on, stackers.
Patty and I met Glen and Christa, along with her substantial crew of friends and family, for some snowshoeing at Antoine Peak this morning. We would have been nine strong, except that Thylvethter didn't thow. So it was the eight of us. (No idea, how this Puddy Tat worked his way into my imagination tonight or how he relates to snowshoeing, or anything that happened today, but I'm rolling with it anyway.)
Upon waking up and looking outside this morning, everything looked dark and foggy-damp-cold and not at all inviting. But by the time we got to the trailhead, the sun was popping out and hitting the exceptionally crystalliney ground blanket and I could just sense that it was gonna be a rad outing.
The trail was snow boot-walkable out of the parking lot for a few hundred yards, but it didn't take long before we were travelling on a legit snowshoe base, where you'd have been post-holing without them. Nope, the trail that we were packing with our 'shoes would not be fatbike-rideable, in case you're wondering.
This is our group, less Christa and her mom . . .
Brandy! Over here!
Candid family portrait, courtesy Glen . . .
It would not have been a complete day for me if it hadn't invovled a little high-marking, so I fell back towards the end, and did my thing.
I just continue to be more impressed with Antoine Peak every time I'm there. It's so close and yet so removed from the city. It's real winter there, once you gain a few hundered feet in elevation. I can't help but think what a fantastic workout it would be to 'shoe to the top. It would probably be a 5 or 6 hour round trip, with lunch in the middle, maybe at the peak. Serious food for thought.
The AquaVelva's been a blessing, because now I can carry all the stuff I need in the baskets.
Yup, that's a bud light stashed under the (empty) poop-sack in the front basket. Good eye. Anyway, no more slobbery frisbees (er, um, flying discs) stuffed into my backpack. No more plastic bags of poop stinking up the side pocket.
