I Used to Do This

I wake up feeling antsy. And angsty. I've let too many sunshiney days go to waste. I have watched the evenings pass with beer in hand instead.

I don't want to go for a run, because for a couple reasons I don't like short runs here. I am particular. I don't like running trails that I'd prefer to bike, and the hard trails I want to run are populated with megafauna that I'm not tryna fuck with. It's too bad I don't have that perfect backyard loop like at Camp, or the miles and miles of steep ridiculous Pisgah trails to hurt myself on.

Oh well.

I decide to ride up to Targhee. The warm morning air feels heavy with moisture (like, fifty percent humidity, not real southern humidity) and black clouds are pushing north across the valley but here black clouds don't always mean a storm, especially not in the morning. I pack a jacket and go for it.

I feel fast. I love spinning. The road is quiet. It's opening day at the resort but no one is heading up because there's still six feet of snow at the top. Two trails are open to bikes.

The shoulder is so wide and the pavement is so smooth. I breathe hard but don't think hard. I feel like my thoughts are left trailing in a wake behind me. I can't hold onto any thoughts when I exercise. Bye, thoughts.

Daily rain showers have left everything so green, the greenest, the most emerald, jade, lime, verdant, in contrast with the peaks, still snow white. I look at flowers, look at the corpses of little birds and squirrels on the road, look at the rumps of what might be elk tucked down next to the creek, look at big boulders and think about the book Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. What if all those boulders were actually donkeys?

This ride feels like when I used to get out all the time in the mornings. Before I felt constrained by a nine to five schedule even though my job is flexible and there's no way my boss could fire me. Back when I was an athlete. Now I'm enthusiast. But this is why I was an athlete. Because I used to do this. I resolve to do this again. I haven't ridden to Targhee that many times, because I don't like out-and-backs, but it's a twelve-mile climb on a beautiful road that ends at 8,000 feet. How did I get so lucky as to live here? Why wouldn't I like this? A quick hour and a half in the morning and I'm a happier person. I will do this again.

I believe one is contractually obligated to take a photo at this vista if one pedals to Targhee.

Stud Run in the Bone Zone

In my relentless pursuit of novelty, I couldn’t resist signing up for the Angry Horse gravel bike race in Bone, Idaho. I registered for the 82-mile version, the Stud Run, because, I mean, why not. And I signed Cy up too, because misery loves company.

The "town" of Bone is tucked into the Caribou foothills east of Idaho Falls. As we drove through a wind farm at 5:30 a.m., the turbines turned sluggishly and I wondered if that boded well. Turns out, yes. Barely any wind until the race ended. 

The 82-mile race was one big loop, which as you might have noticed by now is something I find deeply appealing. It's made up mostly of excellent dirt roads. I started out at a very conservative pace, chilled to the bone and annoyed by all the roadies around me. The first forty miles swooped through farmlands. Rain from the previous evening had turned some sections into slick, churned up mud but it was never quite bad enough to be problematic; rather, the mud added interest to the ceaseless up-and-downs of the ag roads. I knew that the course elevation profile was mellow at first, with a series of long climbs coming in the second half of the race, and I was impatient to be done with the rolling terrain. It made my knees hurt and these roadies kept leapfrogging with me. When the climbing started in earnest I settled in happily. I love long climbs. Also the roadies dropped me. Whatever. 

With the elevation gain we emerged into a crazy beautiful new ecosystem of aspen groves, wildflowers, and lush fields with little brooks trickling beside the road. The landscape was so hyper-saturated with green that it felt like the plants were beaming their own light onto my face and arms. The temperature was perfect and the wind never picked up. Caribou Mountain, still snowy, stood sentinel in the distance and over one rise I saw the Grand Teton on the horizon. 

Words and photos do not do it justice. It was SO BEAUTIFUL out there in Bone.

Near the end of the race we dropped into a scenic creek canyon, then had to climb ten miles out of it to the finish line. It was a slog, and scary to get on a busy highway for the first time all day. Idaho Falls drivers don't give one solitary fuck about safe passing of cyclists. The cumulative miles wore me down and my upper body felt withered and weak, but I finished the race in much higher spirits than usual. I never descended into that dark place where I hate everything and want to quit for no good reason.

It definitely helped to have my perpetual riding partner at my side. I did not want to ride with Cy the whole race, because I think those kinds of couples are gross, but he has become a real endurance athlete and I could not for the life of me drop him on any of the climbs. He was actually putting time into me on everything but I'm wickedly stubborn and consistent if nothing else. This is the first race we've done in which he crossed the finish line before me. But just barely. 

In a pretty strong field of roadie women, I placed sixth. It's kind of a shitty finish but as I’ve come to learn in recent years, I can either choose to prepare for races or I can just wing them and accept mediocrity. And every time I opt for the latter.

Anyway, the Angry Horse was a nice run-up to the premier event of the season: this weekend's Teton Ogre Adventure Race. The race directors had us all convinced that last year would be the final chapter in the Ogre book, but apparently they love hosting the challenging bike-and-trek scavenger hunt as much as we all love doing it, so it’s back for 2019. I can’t wait to see where the Ogre will take us this year.

Escapism

I was going quite stir crazy in the valley to the point where I was unpleasant to be around. It was raining a lot and I was feeling a little overworked, wrung out by the groundhog-weekly nature of my job and resentful of the hordes of people who had escaped the valley for warmer climes. Worst of all, I was deeply frustrated that I had ordered a bike in October and it still hadn’t arrived.

I sent in an employee purchase form by mail to Santa Cruz for the in-hot-demand aluminum Bronson. I never received confirmation and was never charged for it, but heard from others that that was the norm for EP and the bike I wanted was out of stock anyway. I waited contendedly(ish) until midway through February, then started agitating with not one but three shop managers from two different shops to figure out WTF was happening. All of a sudden it was April and I didn’t want to pay retail for a bike but my window of freedom was nearing and I was desperate. And extremely pissed.

Finally two weeks ago I ordered a bike from Sam but I hadn’t acted quickly enough (y’know, besides the whole ordering in October thing) and was facing down a scheduled trip to the desert without the new bike I had been waiting for the entire winter.

Yeah, frustrating. I had to leave town though, so I said fuck it and loaded up the Half Chub in the minivan. I couldn’t even bear to wait until the end of the day Thursday, so with the blessing of my boss, who was clearly over my angst, we left town at noon. As we drove south the temperature gauge rose steadily until it came to rest at 70 degrees and I could feel all my churlishness slough off me.

We did a short ride at Red Fleet State Park right before the sun set and I tried to remember how to mountain bike. The Krampus is a champ though. After riding it almost exclusively last fall, I have a deep affection and respect for its maneuverability and indestructibility. I feel like I’ve spent a full season working on fundamentals because riding singletrack on the Krampus means taking absolutely nothing for granted, and I can’t wait to get back on a light bike with full suspension, a dropper, hubs with less than 25 degrees of engagement, good brakes, and a modern drivetrain.

Krampus riding: exaggerated form required

After a night spent on BLM watching the moon rise over the umber rock formations of Red Fleet, we rode a bit more in Vernal to wear the dog out, then headed south again, landing in Grand Junction. It was hot and the Lunch Loops trailheads were crowded with people and dogs. Jolene kind of hates other dogs, which adds a lot of stress and strain to a lot of situations. Feeling at a loss because there was no camping allowed anywhere on the BLM in Grand Junction, we decided to just start riding.

It was so hard, rock jumble clambering and walking uphill and downhill in the sun, my wrists aching from the jolts through my steel fork, frustration with the constant hike-a-bike weaseling into my brain. We finished and I was certain, again, that I didn’t like the desert. Fortunately I got in touch with Erica and she said a big crowd of Teton Valley’ers had scored a camping spot in a nearby area, because otherwise we would be SOL. Relieved, we headed their way.

Jolene was stoked on any riding she was allowed to do

Life got a lot better, although I was kind of annoyed by the hordes of extremely privileged people with $200,000 Sprinters or campers, the children on carbon bikes, the roving unleashed dogs that forced us to keep Jo locked in the van all day. But we drank beer and rode bikes with friends and it was great. The trails ranged from fine to awesome, weaving through the campsite and up onto needle ridges, with features and drops that were challenging but never caused me the consternation that I had experienced the prior day.

Mountain biking with friends is the best

The 18 Road trails were very fun

But I still don’t love the desert, and we were low on food and water and we’re both pretty restless people, and I wanted to let the dog off leash and run away from the crowds, so we bailed. I found an area on the map that seemed intriguing, and even though I knew the fact that it was at 10,000 feet was a clear warning, we decided to send it anyway. Of course on top of Grand Mesa the snow was piled higher than the van. We joked that we were terrible at going to the desert. We parked in an empty XC ski lot with restrooms and fell asleep to a light snowfall.

We suck at deserting

It rained as we dropped back into the canyons of northwestern Colorado the next morning. Scanning the gold mine that is Trailforks, we found a little trail network two hours north, in a town where it wasn’t raining at that exact minute. After a quick van unload and gear up, we went for another ride and were delighted to find a mellow, twisty ribbon of dirt swooping through trees, definitely more my scene than bare rock. We ended on a downhill trail with perfect berms and friendly wood features just as the rain started again. We putzed our way north again and hunted down a hot spring that was sort of on-route. Juniper Springs was down a long dirt road, slimy pools with eroded concrete walls painted in once-bright colors, the water not quite warm enough to warrant a substantial soak.

Meeker is magical

So we left, and decided to just go home because the rain wasn’t quitting. We weathered I-80 in a storm, crept through a herd of skittish elk in Hoback Canyon, and made it home as night fell.

It was rejuvenating to feel the sun on my bare arms and to put rubber to dirt again, although I’m still not convinced I want to go back to the desert any time soon. Fortunately my bike is arriving this week (supposedly) and riding areas closer to home are drying out (slowly).

Earned it

Dry Riding

My grandmother in New Hampshire is the only person in my family who understands what it's like to live in the grips of winter for six months, to wear snow boots for half a year without reprieve, to bask like a daffodil when the sun does occasionally emerge even though sunshine usually means bitter cold, and to gird yourself for spring because it's truly the worst season.

Truly. We've had above freezing temps during the day the last two weeks, for the first time since late October, and the mountains of dirty snow in town are melting at a glacial pace, exposing each day new fetid piles of poop from dogs, deer, and moose, degrading the already potholed roads, and leaving expanses of mud, grit, and barren brown ground. Ah, spring.

The switch always flips sometime in March or April, where I lose patience with winter. This year it happened early, because February was ridiculously deep, and because last weekend I skied the Middle Teton, and every time I spend twelve hours in ski boots without actually making a single good turn, ski season feels over.

We're all in the same boat, so Carolyn and Chrissy and I ditched work yesterday and hightailed it down to Idaho Falls for a road ride with Carolyn's friends. We started pedaling from a generic house in a generic suburb of IF and headed through farmlands for a few miles. I felt skittish on skinny tires, riding single file with five other ladies, cars buzzing past going fifty. I've only ridden a bike a handful of times this winter and only on snow. Road biking took some re-acclimation for all three of us even though we're all experienced, albeit lapsed, roadies.

Then we started climbing and it was all better. I went as hard as I could up the four-mile hill and felt like I was pressure-washing the cobwebs out of my legs and lungs. God I love road climbs. We regrouped at the top where the road turned to gravel. Deanna looked down into the canyon and noted with surprise that the road wasn't muddy. IF is dry but its foothills are still spotted with snow. We decided to drop in and circle through the canyon to make a loop back to her house.

Dry riding!

We were all so so so stoked to pedal down the empty rutted dirt road through vegetation on the cusp of blooming. I am so starved for speed and smooth cadence and rolled up sleeves and a sport that I'm still, even six years later, so much more comfortable in than skiing.

On the rolling, busy roads back to the subdivision, to my minor surprise the IF girls surged, sprinted, pulled hard through the wind. I love roadie fuckery and I appreciate it when I don't get in trouble from other women for that kind of behavior. We finished together and high fived then ate excellent Indian food because that's what one does when one is not in the valley. Now we're plotting a longer weekend ride and I'm dying for the snow to melt.

The Spoon Couloir

Couloir skiing is what you’re supposed to do in the Tetons. You’re supposed to hunger for those long, steep, narrow strips of snow, lines that you have to ascend to assess, and lines that you’re fully committed to once you’re in them. I’m not sure, though, that I actually like couloir skiing.

Not my happy place.

Cy, Dapper Dan and I set out from Driggs early on Saturday in pursuit of the Spoon, an aesthetic couloir in GTNP that cuts through rock bulwarks on Disappointment Peak's northeast face. I hadn’t skied anything scary for a while so I was nervous. Let me clarify: the Spoon is a scary line to me, but it wouldn’t be for many skiers I know. I don’t enjoy skinning on icy surfaces, bootpacking up steep lines, or skiing in no-fall zones. I’ve been skiing couloirs for half a decade but definitely started before I was actually a competent enough skier to safely do so. Fortunately I have had supportive partners every time and definitely got real lucky

once or twice.

We were skiing with pointy accessories (an ice axe or a whippet, Black Diamond’s ingenious ski pole with a pick on the end for self arrests), a new concept to me, and one I’m not entirely comfortable with. If I need more sharp objects than just my ski edges, I’m leery of the consequences.

Skinning at dawn.

The forecast seemed to be on our side; no snow had fallen in a week and the impending storm kept getting pushed back in the day. We made quick work of the long flat skin from the Taggart Lake Trailhead to the toe of Disappointment and then booked it uphill, me lagging slightly behind those two with their long-ass legs. Cresting the shore of Surprise Lake, we were hit with big gusts funneling through the basin. The snow was polished to an icy sheen by the constant wind. We picked our way around the Amphitheater Lake basin, found softer snow in the apron of the Spoon, and put our skis on our backs. The first traverse freaked me out because I hate bootpacking sideways on steep slopes, but we decided to continue uphill after I had stopped hyperventilating. It was fast going at first, the boys punching steps into the supportive snow, but near the top of the couloir the wind intensified, slapping our faces and blinding us with vicious spindrifts.

We fought our way across the top to hide in the flattish berth of a rock. The guys were patient as I transitioned shakily, paranoid that all of my gear would be ripped from my hands by the wind and thrown into the abyss.

Cy finds some soft snow after 800 feet of hardpack.

The avalanche danger appeared to be minimal. The loading zone was scraped clean and the couloir was groomer-firm. We each skittered down the slope, and I made nary an arcing turn; my top priority was to keep my ski edges dug into the snow. Each time another gust blasted me, I sat down and plunged my whippet behind me. Pretty graceless way to ski a couloir, if you ask me.

That said, I'm a much better skier than I used to be, so the descent was uneventful. The three of us were very happy to exit the Spoon without incident and we traveled down to Delta Lake via a much nicer and almost as aesthetic second line. The snow in Glacier Gulch was soft and the terrain was playful, but I wasn’t as appreciative as I would have been with fresher legs. Somehow the trek back to the car was much longer than the ingress, but isn’t that always the case when your boots are rubbing your feet raw and you can hear the siren call of Coors?

Dapper, stoked to be in soft snow again.
Little did he know he would be split skiing the rest of the descent.

Safely off the mountain, I reflected on the fear that grips me in couloirs, and wondered if it’s worth it. Climbing and descending consequential lines scares the piss out of me for extended amounts of time and I don’t really enjoy it. Am I a real Teton skier? Should I content myself with skiing low-angle bowls and effortless powder trees? And would that be the worst thing in the world?

Or will I forget the paralyzing fear once a few weeks have passed and start perusing trip reports again, dreaming of big, beautiful lines?

I mean it is really fun sometimes.

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.