Gratitude

I had a really lovely Christmas vacation filled with lots of socializing and skiing and it made me feel lots of feelings, including overwhelming gratitude for all the good in my life. Mostly:

-A family that doesn't expect me to ever visit or call and still loves and supports me even though I've been hiding in Idaho for five years.

-Podcasts and libraries: all the free content you could ever consume.

-A good man and a good dog, even though I was extremely resistant to going down that road again because I'm convinced that all relationships are doomed to failure.

But seriously, just look at this weird cat-dog.

-My health. After racking up tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills at the beginning of 2018, I'm doing just fine and it could have been so much worse.

-My friends. My god I have wonderful friends. I am so fortunate.

-The fact that the city plows the sidewalks.

-My job, which is low key and flexible but feels so engaging and important.

-Interactions with people who believe in very different things than I do but are still deeply kind and caring. Related: rarely having to interact with trolls.

-My warm sunny house that I signed for a year ago holy fuck I can't believe I'm a homeowner and I can't believe it's been the most gratifying experience of my life.

-Generations of privilege. I can't stress this enough. Our family has always been working class but because of decades of canny financial decisions I have a college education and a home and I couldn't have done either without the wisdom and benevolence of my parents, grandparents, and great grandparents. Credit also goes to them for teaching us what really matters in life.

Toxic

My office is made up of five women, and I think not working with men has made me even more intolerant of some of the rank and casual unpleasantness that men can display. It came to the forefront at a party I went to this week.

A sixty-year-old man and his wife, both fit cyclists who loved to travel, were with us at the party. It came up in conversation that I used to be a racer. The man asked if I raced road or mountain, and I said mostly mountain.

"I should've guessed, you're not skinny enough to be a road racer," he said in a jocular tone.

I was pretty shocked by that and immediately told him in no uncertain terms that that was absolutely not something he should feel comfortable saying to a woman.

His assessment of my body didn't bother me, fortunately. While I'm not content with my weight, it's because I want to be stronger and fitter and more motivated, not because I want to be attractive to men. I don't have body hang-ups--I don't feel a need to apologize about the space I occupy.

Also, he obviously didn't know enough about cycling to know that, with the way racing works, a woman with some heft to her can make it a lot farther in the competitive road world than as a mountain biker.

I tried to think through why it made me so mad. I josh my male friends about their appearance. But I wanted him to understand that it's not his job or his right to observe me and tell me what he thinks about my body. I thought about one of my athletes, a girl who started out a little pudgy and is now a state champion in the throes of an eating disorder. What if this bozo had said that to her instead of me? That made my blood curdle with cold anger.

My friends' hackles were up too and they spent the rest of the night telling him how badly I could kick his ass on a bike. He seemed very sheepish and clearly didn't mean to sound like such a dick.

He never actually said sorry though. And then the next morning a guy we were giving a ride up to the ski hill showed up twenty minutes late and didn't apologize. Cy threw up his hands and said, "Men are terrible! Why don't they ever say sorry??"

The male gender continued to display its shittiness that evening. Later another guy, much younger, said that LeBron James was this century's Rockefeller. I said I thought that was a false equivalency, since LeBron built his fortune on talent and entertainment value rather than plundering the country's resources and using child labor. Suddenly this man started talking about how everyone who is not in the one percent is a slave, how we're all enslaved by our jobs and "the man," for lack of a more creative phrase. I think Cy and I both felt compelled by all the stuff we've read and listened to recently to speak up, to not let this person coast on his bullshit.

We both started arguing with him on his word choice, how it was flawed and stupid and inappropriate to misuse a word with so much historical baggage, how people who have to work for a living are very different from people who are bought and sold like chattel.

He pushed back hard and I felt for the first time like I was arguing with someone who trolls forums and Facebook. I interact with a lot of old school conservative people because of my job, but I had never talked to one of these put-upon alt-right men you read about in the left-leaning media. He was not interested in hearing what we said.

After Cy walked away too angry to continue, the guy informed me that he was a brainwashed liberal, which is truly laughable considering Cy grew up in a fundamentalist sect and his views have changed because he is compassionate and intellectually curious. I was shaking with fury the whole ride home.

Did I overreact? Or is it correct to keep holding these shitty men accountable for the stupid, thoughtless things they say? Is that how we fix a world where men have been unchecked for millenia? I really don't know.

Just Pictures of My New Dog

This is Jolene. 

She is a little two-year-old of unknown origin. 

 She really enjoys truck camping.

When we adopted her she had never been out in the woods before but she immediately loved singletrack.

 She would really prefer to never be left alone, thanks.

 And she will eat all the food. All of it.

• Photos courtesy of her primary handler/caretaker/co-parent Cy.

Why I Love Coaching Girls

In my fourth year of coaching the Teton Region team, which has grown so large it's now split into Teton Valley and Jackson Hole, I've gained confidence in myself as a leader. For the first two years I was so hesitant, unable to articulate lessons and advice, concerned I didn't have the respect of my audience. Last year I grew comfortable talking to the kids, yelling at them, teaching them. This year with additional training I've embraced the title of coach and, watching the kids progress through the program, I can now say with certainty that it has a positive impact on their lives.

Especially the girls. I've done some coaching clinics and led group rides with women but I much prefer girls. Women are busy and hard to pin down, and their fear has calcified and they aren't willing to challenge themselves as much. I've seen exceptions, women who charge forward into a new sport with passion and motivation, but girls are more reliably open to learning and hungrier to improve. It seems like girls have a more articulate learning style than boys. When I take a girl aside, give her praise, and then make a suggestion, I can see the processing. She thinks about it, tries it, analyzes the results. Boys are much more susceptible to actions than words so the best way to teach them is to beat them. (On the trail, not bodily.)

Our team has always had exemplary girls. We haven't gone a single race without at least one girl standing on top of the box. The coaches can't take much credit for it--most of these girls are genetically gifted athletes. However, we certainly don't hurt them.

It's not bragging to say that Amanda Carey and I are great role models, women who are strong without being too type-A and intense. All we care about is the kids, not our own racing, and we've been a consistent presence for the team through the years. Having women who are role models is great for the boys too. I don't think any of the boys who have stuck with the program think that female riders are weak or inferior--their coaches and teammates prove that false all the time.

The girls generally ride with the boys, divided up by skill level--they're not tagging along, they're in the mix, jostling for position. But once in a while we let them segregate and go on girl rides, in which the older girls thrive as leaders and the younger girls chase them, challenging themselves and feeling part of a separate, awesome group. Now we have the third generation of new riders coming up and while they were nervous and uncertain at the first couple of practices, now they've tasted success, grown in skills and confidence, and enjoyed the shock of being told they won spots on the podium. I absolutely love seeing that.

What Is It About Santa Cruz Bikes?

Every time my old mountain bike is nearing at the end of its life, I try my darnedest to constantly borrow bikes instead of further beating my dead horse.

Last year I bought a house instead of a new bike, and as a result this summer my Bronson has seen the inside of the shop more than it has seen singletrack. I want a new pony. I borrowed a top-of-the-line Trek Fuel EX and found it was a great bike but not the right steed for me. It didn’t fit right and rode too much like a 29er…whatever that means these days. I borrowed a Trek Remedy, which was an absolute delight. It required a little bit of adjustment in my riding style but was thrilling downhill and even uphill. Then I rode both a Santa Cruz Nomad and a Juliana Strega, which are the same bike, so I’ll just refer to the lady version. Zero adjustment, to bike or style, immediate heart-pounding adoration.

Why do Santa Cruz bikes always feel like home? It might require some serious digging into geometry charts or a better understanding of pivot points than I have, but every Santa Cruz I’ve tried through the years felt intuitive and so, so fun.

Jumping!

The Strega is a big bike. I’ve never considered getting one because at almost seven inches of squish, it’s overkill for everything I ride. It’s a downhill sled dressed up as a trail bike. Or so I thought. I took it on obligatory lift rides at two different bike parks and it was joyous. It’s so muscular but manageable, so playful, so jumpable!

But then I took it on an aggressive thirty-mile all-singletrack trail ride. I climbed for hours and hours on it, motoring over chunky rocks and up steep loose switchbacks. The Strega doesn’t even have a shock lock-out, but hot damn can it climb. The pedaling platform is much more efficient than on my current Santa Cruz.

My only hang-ups were literal pedal hang-ups. I guess everyone else in the world is skilled enough to cope with modern, low bottom brackets but that is going to take some figuring out on my part. Also it’s a heavy bike. When I stopped racing, that stopped mattering to me, but the Strega is not begging to time trial up dirt roads or anything.

Cornering!

While I was riding a beautiful ridgeline through a burn zone in Montana on a perfect bike, I remembered that I have had a very torrid and abiding love affair with Santa Cruz. Long long ago, Sycamore Cycles was in downtown Brevard and Wes carried Santa Cruz for a while. When I was eleven I saw the first iteration of a Juliana and was convinced that I needed to own one someday, because it’s basically my name, duh.

One time, when I was in middle school, a family friend let me take her Superlight out for a ride and I remember so distinctly that amazing feeling of clearing, for the first time ever, the steep root-baskety left-hander on the Middle (Upper Lower?) Black Mountain climb.

When I first threw a leg over what is now my Bronson, it was Tim Koerber’s bike. We were riding Teton Pass laps and I was on a different borrowed bike, because I wanted to be done with my Specialized Era. I had done a lot of research and narrowed my next purchase down to a couple different XC’esque bikes, but then I got on the Bronson and didn’t make a single adjustment and found myself boosting root gaps on Jimmy’s Mom. By the bottom of one short DH run I made Tim an offer.

All of which is just a long way of saying, I’m going to buy a new Bronson ASAP because version 3.0 just got released and it has the same suspension design as the Strega. Yes please.

Climbing!

Not the Worst Running Race Ever

When I saw the race announcement for the Palisades Ultra Trail Series I got super jazzed because it looked amazing, it was nearby in a mountain range I wanted to explore more, and it looked hard as shit. Also the marathon was a beautiful aesthetic loop with “98% singletrack” (not true, but I ain’t mad...anymore).

The race directors’ vision was to put us out there on disappearing trails deep in the Palisades. Unfortunately they had to make the tough call at the last minute to change the 50 and 100 mile courses and made them a lot crappier than the original plan. Some of the most remote sections were so overgrown and littered with blowdowns that they decided it was dangerous to put ultra racers out on the course in those conditions. Instead of big sexy loops, they had to cut back on their aspirations and trim the courses into smaller loops and out-and-backs. Logistically it was far less of a headache but I could really feel for them and the racers—I’m sure everyone was disappointed. They didn't really change the marathon course though, to my delight.

The vibe at the start was pleasantly chill. The race announcer kept goading people to stand closer to the front but everyone was hesitant. The race started with a few yards of doubletrack then we immediately turned uphill, just how I like it, and started plodding in a conga line straight up the steep, rooty, dusty hillside. I dared to burn a few matches to pass a big group of walkers so I didn’t have to climb with my nose in some dude’s ass. Soon we were high above the reservoir, contouring around south-facing slopes and enjoying big views. I heard from afar what sounded like a raucous crowd of supporters and couldn’t believe that so many people had rallied and found a good spectating spot to cheer on runners, but as I got closer I laughed: it was actually a noisy herd of sheep occupying the drainage below the trail. Oh, Idaho.

Early in the race when I was just plain stoked.

After a precipitous descent, the trail crossed through a wide bowl of scattered stone surrounded by cliffs. It seemed like part of a mountain had calved off and formed a barren stone basin in the otherwise lush landscape. Mordor radness.

Cy and I leapfrogged each other several times. I’m faster than him on downhills and he’s faster than me on uphills. Turns out we’re pretty much the same speed overall, which is cool.

The trail climbed and descended again, then we hit a flat gravel road section, which made me super disgruntled. “I hate hate hate road,” I thought in rhythm to my pounding footsteps. Fortunately the road ended with a nice big aid station. There was a dude in a diaper. One volunteer brandished a sign: “You’re doing awesome! Only a crap ton of miles left!”

The course moseyed up North Indian Creek, then took a left and headed up Garden Creek, beginning to gain elevation more efficiently. A runner popped up behind me and I thought it was a chick. Turns out it was just a womanly-looking guy.

Just as I started worrying about water, another aid station came into sight. The volunteers there had purified water from a little stream and poured the pure run-off into my hydration bladder. One of them reassured me there were less than ten miles to go, and pointed to a peak at the head of the canyon. “You just have to get to the top of that first.”

Slowly, slowly going uphill.

I grabbed some bacon and settled in for the climb. The trail was a magic little piece of tread sculpted onto steep shale slopes, rising over little plateaus and ridges on the magnificent landscape. The canyon dropped down behind us, a waterfall poured off red cliffs to my right, and I could see a steady line of runners far ahead and above me. I felt good.

A woman came into sight several switchbacks above me. She was the first chick I had seen all day and I started feeling competitive. I caught her at the top of the ridge but she started going off course, so I yelled to her to come back. Her mistake gave me a small lead but she was a fast descender and soon passed me on the rocky downhill. She introduced herself as Juli. We caught and dropped Cy and another dude, and when Cy darted off the trail for us, I could tell he was stoked to see us together. I charged down behind her, thinking there was no way I could sustain this reckless pace, but we had another moment of quick orienteering through a meadow and when I found the next course marking, she disappeared behind me. 

It was real pretty.

I was confused and stressed by her disappearance, feeling like she must be breathing down my neck and would catch me any minute. I ran faster than I wanted to through long, flattish miles of dense overgrowth with lurking rocks and vines and logs waiting to throw me to the ground if I stopped concentrating on my feet for even a second.

Race volunteers had put a ton of work into clearing the course, but the thick vegetation was stronger than their machete swipes. I pushed through slow miles of claustrophobic green corridor, aware that I could at any moment run into a moose or bear but too tired to care. My feet hurt. I was hungry. I hate flat descents. I started feeling emotional. I didn’t want Juli to catch me.

As I left the final aid station, I saw her behind me and had another little moment of panic (but also relief that she hadn’t seriously hurt herself). That was motivation enough to keep a steady, uncomfortable pace.

I finally broke out onto good trail again and put my head down for the final three miles on Big Elk Creek, trying to relax my upper body and focus on good running form. It was hot and flat. Have I mentioned I hate flat running? The half marathon course was an out-and-back that stayed on Big Elk and I thought about how terrible that sounded.

I finally saw the parking lot and staggered to the finish line. As I ran up the final flight of stairs and rang the finisher’s bell, the race announcer proclaimed that I was the second woman to finish. I almost started crying with happiness and brokenness. I fell down on the grass, as one does.

The first place woman called out “COOLIA!!” She had to remind me of who she was (the rad sister of one of my bike team moms) because I was an empty shell of a person.

I really can't believe I got second. Also, 14th out of 66 doesn't suck.

Juli finished shortly after me and Cy sprinted in just after that. Then we had to book it back to the valley for a wedding.

I had a better attitude at this race (I never decided that I hated running and would never do it again) and a better finishing kick than I used to back in the old days. I credit that to age and experience, or something. Which is good, because I’m signed up for another race in a month.

RockBlock

During ORATB last year when we were riding long stretches of gravel roads on fat tires, I got it in my head that if one were so inclined one could gravelpack a big loop, combining the two local favorites of Around the Rock and Around the Block into one aesthetic circle of the Tetons and Palisades.

ORATB and RockBlock both included the lovely Fall Creek Road.

It was an unusual thing for me to want to do because I’d already traveled every inch of the loop but the novelty was in squishing them together. I hadn’t heard from anyone who had done it before and that appealed to me too.

I looked back over previous ride stats for both loops and felt pretty okay about it. Around the Rock is a big ride, half gravel, half pavement, that cuts through the northern foothills of the Tetons then follows the entirety of the range through Grand Teton National Park. It customarily ends with a climb up Teton Pass after the rider is already good and shelled. Around the Block is a 107-mile paved road ride, although there are a couple of gravel alternatives one can seek out. When I rode it in 2014 we started the loop by climbing Teton Pass. Ironically, by combining the two routes I was able to avoid the pass altogether, which I joked was the entire point.

Frequent restock points meant we could travel pretty light; we just brought basic sleep set-ups and enough snacks to keep bonking at bay.

And so it begins. 

We set out north from Driggs at dawn on Saturday. As we meandered the back roads of Teton County I compared the experience to my 2015 Around the Rock ride. The fact that we were riding two weeks earlier than the annual group ride meant everything was much greener, there were more wildflowers, the peaks held more snow, it was a little cooler, and barely anyone was driving Ashton-Flagg Ranch Road, which can be dusty and hectic in the high season. 

Those first 70 miles to the park entrance were fine, kind of boring. We didn’t talk much and the lyrics to annoying songs eddied through my brain. I picked a lupine stalk and threaded it into my handlebar bag. We were moving more slowly than the last time I’d ridden it, but I wasn’t too worried about that, assuming we’d pick up the pace in the park by drafting. Last time I was alone without anyone to help me face the wind.

The road into GTNP was closed from one direction but not the other, and a car managed to strand itself on a big snow patch. I followed suit.

We made it to Flagg Ranch in good spirits. The resort there is interesting because it’s a hub for several long distance bike routes. We met a couple that was touring from New Orleans and a man racing cross country from Oregon to Virginia, and if we had waited a week we’d encounter Tour Divide riders heading south down the spine of the continent. At Flagg Ranch, we were strange not because we were riding loaded bikes, but because we were out for such a short jaunt.

Around the Rock, which has only a paltry amount of total elevation gain, is really not a hard route. The things that make it suck are the ever-present wind and the cumulative discomfort from so many hours on the bike. There was a light headwind through the park and we were definitely feeling it as we motored around Jackson Lake and past the Cathedral Group. I remembered why I pledged to only do ATR once: it's monotonous and uncomfortable. 

Real pretty though, if you're into big mountains, I guess.

We hid from the sun in Moose for a while and watched the stream of tourists in heavy hiking boots or yoga pants, taking selfies and talking about bears and bison. National parks are kind of the worst.

The Moose-Wilson Road wasn’t as bad as I expected, because Cy pulled my grumpy ass most of the way. We made it to the Stagecoach with little ado, ordered beer and street food, and flopped down on the grass. Fooster and Sean, who were riding downhill laps on the pass, joined us.

Perfect campsite, right next to the road but completely unbothered.

After eating we were happy not to have to face a 2,300 foot climb and instead puttered down Fall Creek Road, looking for a camping spot. All the firmly worded “Private Property—No Trespassing” signs pushed us further south until, after an unexpected long climb, we set up camp behind a gravel pile in the Munger Mountain parking lot. It was a perfect site and I slept harder than I ever have outside. I woke up after ten hours to the buzz of hummingbirds and the distant drum of grouse wings.

Traveling down Fall Creek Road in the midmorning light was lovely, albeit cold. We saw a big badger hovercraft across the road and watched him flatten his body and hiss at us from the creek bank below. Any closer and I would have been nervous of his aggressive bulk.

Badger!

There was a firm headwind in the Snake River Canyon that meant instead of the fast effortless miles I expected, we were toiling on the slight downhill and I was too cold to take off my jacket. When we discovered that the gas station in Alpine was under construction I had a meltdown, convinced that the rest of the day was going to be much harder than anticipated. 

"The only guarantee on every trip is that if I say something will be easy or short or downhill, it's fucking hard," I fumed, low on blood sugar. 

Then we found a little fireworks store where I drank a restorative iced coffee and immediately felt like I could crank through the miles around Palisades Reservoir. Also the headwind mellowed, because Idaho is better than Wyoming. I was feeling good about Pine Creek Pass. Cy was falling apart because he doesn't have old lady strength, so I kept pace with him. We only wanted to present one target for the deranged drivers on the pass. I want to give a word of thanks to people in cars who see two cyclists death-hugging the shoulder and slow slightly instead of trying to thread the needle, full speed, between the riders and an oncoming RV. To everyone else: fuck you.

We turned off Highway 31 onto 9500S and moaned with relief: no more scary highway riding. The psychological repercussion of riding 130 miles at the mercy of bad drivers was even more exhausting than the physical toll of the effort.

It is just so aesthetically pleasing though.

Threading our way through quiet valley roads as the cold wind whipped at our backs for the first time all day, we were grateful to be back on the good side of the Tetons, only a little worse for wear.