Airlines & Bikes

It had been a few years since I had sent a bike on an airplane for a trip.  Imagine the surprise & shock when I checked in with US Airways and they told me it would be $200 for the bike one way!!!!  By the time you are at check-in you don't have time to turn on your heels and go to Fed Ex or UPS to ship it.  At that point you are at their mercy and your choices are to pay the price or leave the bike.

The bike was nicely packed in a hard shell plastic bike box but the 'oversize-ness' is what drew the fee.  THe last time I flew it cost about $50 and so I was very very ill-prepared for the mental sticker shock of a 4X price increase - if only my salary kept pace with that!  The insanity is that skis, snowboards, golf bags, etc...are all oversized but do not incur the wrath of the extra baggage fees...huh?  Just another little quirk of biking and wanting to take your bike with you.

$200????  holy schnikes!  Lesson learned....on the way back, I will try the Fed Ex & UPS route as it certainly has to be cheaper than the airway robbery.  The irony is that you pay the penalty and then stress about them pulling your luggage apart and putting the box/bike together as carefully as you originally packed it, only to watch the airlines toss your luggage around like a rag doll.

Butte Boulder Stash

During our stay here in Butte, I have kept a eye open for potential bouldering.  Butte is surrounded by a lot of rock, and a lot of that is slabby granite that is not usually all that solid.  A lot of the rock is decomposing (as I suppose all rock is) but I have vivid memories of bouldering in Vedauwoo where my foot exploded off a pebble and gave me a nice ankle sprain for my efforts (from falling awkwardly).

There are tons of boulders around but most of them are featureless or not solid enough to trust (or would require a lot of 'cleaning').

On a walk through the woods on Sunday with the dogs, I did come across some possibilities....
first, a quickie video of how 'solid' some of the stone is...or actually I have super-human strength!!!!

Sporting Bike Woody?

The materials being used to build bikes never cease to amaze me.  There are soooo many options and if you want to go the wood direction, here is one:

http://www.renovobikes.com/

The craftsmanship looks beautiful and I would be really interested to ride one of these just to see how the ride & bike 'feels'.  Is the ride really that different?  What is the durability?  Some of the tubes look like they are hollowed out to save weight.

There are a handful of people who have also been building their own bamboo bikes as an alternative to the usual choices...just goes to show that with a little creativity, you can build yourself a bike out of just about anything...now how durable are these bad boys??

Thompson & Helena Rides

Mother nature played nice this last weekend and we had a phenomenally good weekend weather-wise.  The temps crept into the upper 70's and made for some great riding.

I took the dogs out for a walk on Friday to Thompson Park to do some recon to see what kind of shape the trails were in.  To my surprise (given the recent big snowfall out there) it was in great riding condition.  I left after work on Friday and did the Thompson Park upper and  lower loops and then meandered up the RR tracks and caught the new trail up to Toll Canyon CDT where it was rideable up to 6,800 ft.

On Saturday, I went up to Helena and decided that if I was going to be riding the singlespeed at the Whiskey next weekend, it was time to take it out and get familiar with it again.  I swapped the forks and went from the stiff carbon fork to a squishy fork up front.  The first thing I noticed (besides the extra 2 lbs) was how squish forks often 'chatter' when braking and simultaneously turning (think switchbacks) and it took a little while to get used to that.  I am still debating whether the suspension pro's outweigh (no pun intended) the cons - and that will mostly depend on the terrain.  I will probably play it safe and take the squish down for the Whiskey.

Saturday's ride ended up being a great day in the saddle and I rode part of the Helena ridge trail that I had not yet been on.  It was an awesome day to be out and it was a big day elevation gain wise.  It was almost 25 miles of riding, but with close to 4,700 ft of climbing.  The good news is that the Whiskey is only about 2,500 ft more of elevation gain so my hope is that with a taper, the legs will feel OK...no doubt there will be some hike a bike this upcoming weekend but there usually always is....

Local Ride Conditions

Time to start (b)logging what the local ride conditions.  As of Friday April 20th most trails are relatively dry until you hit around 6,800 ft.  I rode all of Thompson Park yesterday and it is good to go - exception being several down trees on both the upper and lower loops.  Mental note: take handsaw to clear out some down trees....

My guess is blacktail & the archery range are good to go and Beaver ponds is probably close.  I rode up Toll Canyon on the CDT for 3/4 of mile until I had to turn around and head back due to snow drifts.  A couple more days of warm weather and Toll Canyon will be rideable as an out/back.

more to come...pix of current conditions as of 4/20:

Toll Canyon CDT about 3/4 of a mile in - looking back towards the pass

 Toll Canyon - same spot but looking west - where I turned around

 new trail connecting the top of the RR tracks to Toll

 new trail

Mother Phattie

the mother of all mountain bikes:

http://ibismaximus.com/#photos

now I would like to see someone ride that 59inch wheeled bike!

Paranoia Train To Training

Occasionally a good old fashioned dose of reality is good enough to scare you back into training mode.   It had to happen this week and it was probably too little too late for the Whiskey but there is hope to get back on schedule.  Although the Whiskey will be a good barometer of just where the legs are, or aren't!

We are still in shoulder season here and that has meant mother nature has not exactly cooperated this week for getting out.  The alternative to that unfortunately is being stuck on the indoor trainer which is never fun.  The forecast is calling for better weather this weekend so hopefully the window starts to open for consistent riding outside.

Next on the agenda is to dust off the single speed and make sure all is in working order - and also swap out forks from rigid to suspension...which means cutting the steerer tube to length...more to come this weekend.

Motivational Trough

The past week has proven to be more of a mental battle to training as opposed to anything else.  It is probably a combo extended car time, weather, and low motivation.  I keep wondering how this is going to transfer over to the Whiskey in about a 10 days...At this point there is no quick fix to training and it will be time to deal with the consequences....no one to blame but myself.

Perhaps the Whiskey will be the proper slap in the face needed to get 'scared back to training'.  The wifer signed us up for the 24 hrs of Spokana "Round n Round'.  Between the Whiskey and the Round n Round there should be plenty of motivation to get on the saddle and ride.  It is always good to have events lined up as they keep the training log honest and force the hand on the motivational action.

and just in case you were looking for a quick motivational speaker:

Foggy n' Groggy

and not the good grogg.....The past few days have been a daze of serious road tripping.  I don't recommend spending 22hrs within a 48 hr period driving around the NW.  As much as I like to drive, the accumulation of hrs logged in the car over the past couple of months has been a wee bit more than being able to enjoy the tug of the open road.
The most disruptive aspect of all the road tripping has been the change to sleep and trying to get back into the regular scheduled programming.  It takes extra energy to get motivated for training and unfortunately this is a key period to ramp up the base miles...ohh well, nothing like going into a 50 mile mountain bike event as a single-speeder knowing the legs could be in much better shape.  doh...double doh....and it will be DOH DOH DOH come race day on the Whiskey.

It is definitely Spring in Montana as it can be perfect temps one day and the next can be a reminder of how SW Montana can get snow just about anytime!  Last week we had significant snow up in the hills and some snow down in the valley.  Fortunately the ground is relatively warm so the snow melts pretty quickly if it even accumulates.
Snow line of one of the recent snows....

 Visiting one of our favorite guilty pleasures.....

 Otis finding the mother of all beds upon returning home....some kids love double stuff Oreos....this dog loves double stuff beds!

Rockin' New Facilities

While on the road ride on Tuesday, I noticed that some work had been done along the walkway between Butte & Rocker.  There is a 1 mile section of paved walkway between Rocker and Butte.  Unfortunately the walkway does not really connect to anything but you can tell a lot of effort has been put into paving the walkway and construction of some pretty high end facilities  on either end of the 1 mile strip.

New parking lots have been put in on either end too.  This project reminds me a bit of the bridge/overpass to nowhere along I-70 in Colorado.  There is an exit on I-70 west of Denver in the mountains that is literally an overpass and nothing else!  It goes nowhere, just dead ends...a project where perhaps funds needed to be spent for the sake of spending them or losing them.

It is great to have the paved walkway but it seems a little overboard to put in the nice new facilities and parking areas for a 1 mile stretch that comes from and goes to....nowhere.  Hopefully the grand master plan is to continue to build out the walkway from/to nowhere so it continues or links to more than the existing paltry 1 mile.

Rockin' Rocker Roadie

Tuesday's weather was just about perfect road riding weather so it was time to dust off the skinny tire and pedal some asphalt.  In the grand scheme of things it was a stellar day riding as the weather was in the wheelhouse and nothing was thrown at me and there was no buzz by drive by's so all in all a big thumbs up!

I did a quick loop where I started from home then headed up the steeps up to Walkerville and looped back into the access road towards Rocker and beyond.  That hill up to Walkerville is short and punchy!  You gain a little over 500ft of elevation in about 1.2 miles.  Fortunately it does not last long so you can comfort yourself with the thought that soon enough it will level off.

When on the flats, it felt like a super easy day on the road and it was relatively easy to maintain a 25 mph speed....well, until I turned around and noticed the reason it was such an easy pedal was because of the tailwind that had been accompanying me.  Now it was time to pay the price and pedal into the wind on the way back.

It was definitely windy on the way back but it felt great to be out and the legs felt decent all things considered.

Ride summary:

A Pig Is Just A Pig

Most of the time, when you put lipstick, or pretty bows, or clothes on a pig, it might look different...but it is still a pig - unless of course it is a fat bike pig, in which case that is a GOOD kind of pig.  99.99% of the time there is no such thing is a good pig though...

I have come to the realization that my pig is called 'Butte'.  My recent adventure of getting shot in the mug by a paintball fat farm while mountain biking gave me a bit of clarity.  I have been putting lipstick on Butte since the 'bastards took our omelets day' (our second weekend in town).  As some of you might know, we have had several crazy episodes since then and we have continued to apply lipstick on said piggie....Granted, the lipstick has gone from being applied with a lipstick stick, to being applied with a paint brush, to being applied with a broom, and now being applied with a full on paint sprayer (urggh, again with the damn paint).  Each whacky unique experience has required more and more lipstick to the point where the paint sprayer has just sprayed the whole piggie such that it looks like a cartoon jalapeno piggie.

Unfortunately that has been a disservice to ourselves as we have continued to hold out hope that perhaps our experiences were just unique and that our experiences would get better as we plugged along during our sentence here.  

The money move would have been to just realize that it was one big giant piggie and that a piggie is a piggie is a piggie is a piggie.  If we would have embraced our inner piggie early on, there is a chance we could have seen the piggie for what it is.  A pig.  We should not have sugar coated the piggie, we should not have made the piggie into a mensa piggie, or foodie piggie, or a friendly piggie.  The reality is this pig is a wild boar!  So much for the money move huh? 

If we would have recognized the wild boar it would perhaps better prepared and better have managed our expectations but alas, the wild boar had to run us over a few times for us to come to terms with accepting the wild boar for being the wild piggie that it is.  Yes yes yes, we are ssssllllooooowwww learners but I prefer to look at it as being stupidly optimistic.  

So as our tenure in Butte starts to wind down, I raise my glass and toast the wild piggie and will make a concerted effort to no longer be fired up about piggie feces as it is flung around and happens to hit me.  Just remember if you live in piggie-ville, there is a good chance you will get hit with flying piggie dookie - it might be intentionally flung your way, or it could just be collateral dookie...either way, you gotta' learn to live with the 'eau de piggie'

I encourage you all to embrace your inner piggie....

da' Whiskey fiddie

The Whiskey is now officially 'on the books' for me and it is time to spend the next 3 weeks deliberating over what ratio to run on the single speed...I am debating on whether to run a 32:19 or 32:20.  The course looks like a 32:19 would be a good choice but considering it is early season and I am just not sure how much 'leg' is in me at this point, there could be a good argument for running an easier gear for a little extra cushion.  Ahhh, I am sure to agonize over the upcoming weeks on the gear ratio although I am leaning towards the harder gear ratio as most of the climbing looks like it is reasonable.

Based on the profile, it looks like the climbs are gradual which should theoretically be OK, even early season.  Such is the challenge of living in an area where the riding season is short due to a long winter.  It makes the early season events a bit of a gamble when it comes to fitness and the anticipated level of suffering and noodle legs.

I am looking at it as more of a training ride and a good way to get some high intensity riding as the High Cascades hundie looms.

Dog Ballet

As we took the dogs out for a walk, we realized just how much it had snowed up in the hills.  There were some areas that looked to have about a foot of fresh snow!  It made for a fun walk and the dogs were all sorts of fired up since there schnozes were working overtime.  It was super peaceful as we were the first group to go up and disturb the fresh blanket of white stuff.

Pix from the walk and snowball catch session:

DOH! Chinese Tofu

We often head out to dinner on Friday nights as a way to decompress from the work week and get ready for the weekend.  Part of the challenge of living in a smaller community is the lack of options for dining.  There are about 3-4 places that we have on the rotation that are reliably consistent in regards to decent options and OK food.  There is one restaurant that we really like and occasionally treat ourselves to,

The one restaurant has its limitations too - it has had the same 'specials' page for over 8 yrs!  When we first arrived to town the wifer would often order a specific dish because it was a 'special' and thought it would not be offered for much longer...well here we are 3 1/2 yrs later and the specials menu is the same and her favorite dish has become 'old reliable'.  We then heard from another patron that the track record of the same specials menu actually dates further back to at least 8 yrs.  Since it is our favorite place to eat at in town, we view it as a funny quirk since the food is usually pretty good.

A few months ago, a local Chinese restaurant started to offer an 'Indian' menu on certain days of the week.  We were excited to check it out as it was the only Indian option in town.  Despite not being the best Indian food we had ever had, we were excited to add it into the rotation!

Fast forward a few months and we went back there yesterday to get some Indian food.  Unfortunately they are no longer offering the Indian menu at all on any day so we took our chances with the Chinese menu.  The red flag should have gone up when we heard a patron ask for chop sticks and we heard the waitress say they did not have any.  Mind you, the waitress was dressed in sweat pants and a sweat shirt.  At this point we should have known not to do what we did next....

We looked at the menu and thought it was pretty cool that the menu had tofu options.  Sweet!  So we both ordered tofu - I ordered the mandarin tofu and the wifer ordered the tofu version of the general tso's chicken.  The plates arrived and the mandarin tofu plate looked fake.  It came with a bunch of sqaured tofu pieces that had been deep fried and covered in some glazy orange syrup and 2 pieces of broccoli.  Nothing else....just a bunch of fried tofu squares floating in a fluorescent orange syrup with two token broccoli stems bobbing around.  I should have taken a picture because it just looked 'not right'.  We dug in and took a few bites of the flotilla and figured out it actually tasted worse than it looked!  We basically ate about 3 or 4 pieces of the drowning fried tofu mess and then decided to stick to rice only....even the fried rice did not have any veggies.  We ate up the rice and then promptly paid the bill and left with what was perhaps our most un-satisfying meal in the last few years.

word of caution - if you are thinking of tofu from a chinese menu, think long and hard about it....

Wing Wonderland

Winter made a quickie return to Southwest Montana to interrupt Spring's progress...hence 'Wing' - not to be confused with 'scwhiinngggg'.

The good news is we have snow bikes and this recent dump of snow means there should be additional opportunity to ride them!  They are forecasting 4-10 inches in town with more snow at elevation so it looks like this white stuff will be enough to make for a last push in a snow playground.  

Allzzz I gottzzz to say is 'bring it, bring it real good'

Post Paint-Gate

Paint-gate continued to twirl around in my noggin for a couple of days and the noggin just could not wrap itself around making any sense of it all and so the best course of action is to not make any sense of it since it is nonsensical.

The big picture was I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was very fortunate that it was only a paint gun and it did not hit my eye, etc.  So it will add to the collection of crazy stories that will at some point be able to be retold over a beer and a few laughs.

The day Post-Paint-Gate was spent digging out fluorescent yellow boogers and still tasting paint.  By mid-afternoon, most of the glow in the dark boogers were out of the system and it was time to think of riding - after all, it was the weekend and weekend means play time!

Below are some pix of the ride Pre-Paint-Gate:

reaching the pass via the abandoned RR tracks

 exploring 4 wheeler tracks up on the East Ridge - Steep!

 Steep n' Rocky!  Rideable if you gotssss the legs

 Nice view of the Tobacco's

 Tobacco's on the left, Highlands on the Right

 unsuspecting mug shot prior to the chaos that was about to unfold:

 great campsites along the road to Delmoe lake

Ride Info - a little under 4 hrs and decent elevation gain considering lack of real trail options:

Life's Stranger Than Fiction

Admittedly, there are times when you have to shake your head about just how absurd things can be.  Apparently April Fools arrived a little early in Butte, MT as yet another "I can't make this stuff up" episode unfolded on the last day of March.

The plan was to go out for a long training ride on the el Phattie.  I left from the house and rode up to Maude S where I caught the abandoned railroad bed and rode that up to the pass.  After reaching the pass, the dirt road was calling my name and so my trusty green el phattie sidekick 9zero7 dutifully complied and tolerated my cranking away on the dirt road.  After about 2 hours of ride time, the skies were getting ominously dark and it was time to turn around and head back.

On the way back I wanted to try to find the new road that the Forest Service had put in from the bottom of Blacktail to the Pass.  The course director for the Butte 50/100 was thinking of re-routing the start of the event down the new road.  As anyone who has ridden that erosion calamity can attest, it is SKETCH at best.  The prospect of a work around would be sweet especially since the descent is always ripe for some great wipeouts - and there is one area where it bottlenecks a little and there are some mean looking barbs on some wire fence...now that would make for a bad day!

So far, it was just another normal day out and about on the phattie.  Just logging miles, saddle time, and scenery...take it all in - ahhh therapy for the soul.

Apparently the therapist had a little sum'n' sum'n' extra spicy special on the menu and I was just about to find out what it was.

I looked around for that road through a couple of intersections where I thought it should be and as I was climbing to the first T, I saw a family with a crew of kids getting ready for a good ole' paintball gun fight. I stopped, said hello, chatted the idle chatter that you do when you first see people.  There was something a little off about them - they were not very talkative and were not the most friendly bunch.  I did not think twice about it at the time and just chalked it up to not everyone being as nice as one would hope.  No biggie, certainly not a second thought crossed my el phattie mind.

I zigged and zagged through some intersections that all led to dead ends and decided to head back to the erosion trail mentioned above.  I was getting close to my turn off and then BAM!  My face exploded and my instinct told me immediately that my mug was the on the receiving end of one of those fully auto scary paintball guns.  I quickly dismounted and tried to assess the damage.  I yelled at the band of idiots to stop shooting because they apparently did not have the computing capacity to figure out that shooting a stranger in the face should warrant an interruption for them.  I reached up and did the check of the face....pat, pat, pat, pat...pat...OUCH....there it was.  The little turd family had nailed me right on my upper lip and inner septum of my nose.  No wonder that hurt!  ouchie mama.  Fortunately I am not much of a bleeder but my nose did remind me that with enough force, it too will bleed.

At about this time I was on my ace, next to my bike with a bit of a yard sale going on...glasses here, bike there, gloves off....and pretty much just stunned at the absurdity of all that had just unfolded.

One of the kids came up to me and said "Are you OK" to which a quickly responded "F NO, you guys just shot me int he face!"   He quickly tried to edumacate me with his twisted logic of how it was my fault that I was in the woods riding a bike and getting shot in the face.  As I assessed the situation it became apparent to me that I need to get off my butt and gather my stuff (and my mind).  About this time I was done trying to argue with a 10 yr old about the virtues of taking responsibility for your actions that was pretty much falling on deaf ears - not only falling on deaf ears but getting some lip service back about how I was the one at fault...like they say, arguing with insane people only brings you down to their level.

I got my stuff together, and told them I was going to their trucks to take pix of the license plates so I could have the info.  Bear in mind that UNTIL this point even the leader of the village idiots (the father) was telling me it was my fault.  Once I took pix of their license plates, they started to change their tune and the alpha idiot started to apologize - and it was 1/2 assed...one of this little twerps continued with his lip service at which point I glared at his father with a vicious enough look that he barked at his son to shut up and move away.

About this point the FAT COW that is mother bear showed up and wanted to escalate things again.  She kept yelling at me to calm down (which I was and she ironically was not).  She started with the 'let me give you my lawyer's #', and decided she needed to get real close to me to try and poke at my face and tell me I was OK....despite the lip & nose swelling and blood on my face....She too got in the "this is your fault" act by trying to insinuate that this was backwoods Montana, whaddya expect?  I was aware enough to realize that trying to talk to these people would be like trying to convince Hitler to take a Ghandi approach to winning the world over...it just was not gonna' happen.   I had to glare at the village alpha idiot again so he understood that he needed his monster hippo of a tub of lard wife to back off before she made things worse than they already were.

What totally blew me away (besides the absolute outlandish odds of something like this happening while riding a mountain bike on a dirt road) is that these jerks took NO responsibility for their actions.  The 1/2 assed apologies only came when I had their license plate info - and even then they were backhanded apologies.

We live in a world that we get further and further apart from taking responsibilities for our actions.  Guess what, if you look like an a-hole & act like an a-hole.....you ARE an a-hole.  Own your a-hole-ness.  If you don't own your actions then you are even more of a coward and less of a human being.  The sad thing is that there was a lesson to be learned for those kids and that opportunity will be completely missed.

If the family had originally come up and started to apologize as opposed to placate me, I would have probably looked past it and thought I was lucky not to be hit in the eye, or ear, or teeth, etc.  Unfortunately they did not act contrite at all, and it is just another whacky story of our stay in America's Butte.