A Bike Ride At Last!

Aaaaaaat laaaaaast! A bike ride day haaaas come alooong....

Starting this weekend, the weather in Jackson Hole suddenly realized it was, you know, almost April, and warmed the hell up. As you'll see in the picture, that doesn't mean all the snow magically disappeared. That stuff's been building since October. But on pavement, it's mostly dry and snow-free.

I had a spare few hours Saturday afternoon, so I decided with the day looking so gorgeous, it was high time Little Red and I took a spin. So we did, dangit.

The trails (and in fact, most of the land in general) in the Bridger-Teton National Forest is still covered in snow and closed for wildlife-related reasons. However, I didn't mind that too much, since I had no idea whether skiing on the weekends would do much for keeping my legs in mountain bike shape. Instead, I took a few laps of the bike paths in and around Jackson. I've written them up before - I went from the Garamon Trail to Highway 22 and out to the Bird on Highway 89 - but after the winter they felt brand new.

Several months outside in the cold hasn't hurt Little Red at all,

thank God, which meant I could keep going without waiting until I had the funds for a spring tune-up.

My poor legs - and more notably, my poor ass - were a little less ready to go. The good news was that I took a few hills that frustrated me pretty good when I first bought Little Red with no need to stop and walk the bike. The bad news was that apparently ski runs aren't the best ever preparation for two hours of the pedaling motion. My lower body in general was less than pleased by the time I packed it in.

At least even the tougher mountain bikers among my friends talk about "getting the legs back" during the summer, so I can be like the cool kids if it comes up.

And I would put up with an awful lot of muscular complaining just to be outside in the sunshine again. Even before the trees get their leaves back and things start blooming, there really aren't too many places a pretty as Jackson Hole. If nothing else, the random reminders that hey - there are Tetons in these here parts - would be reason enough to venture out and get back in summer shape.

Ladybiking Love: Places With Racial Diversity Edition

Yes, yes, I realize that it's officially no longer Women's History Month, but I found the subject for this post while it still was. 

 As such, I hereby retire from women's history as it relates to bikes with this post about women's present as it relates to bikes. Not sure if I'll entirely surrender my feminist soapbox, but I promise it's in at least temporary storage.

 As I noted in one of my previous posts, biking is slowly moving away from its 1980s and 1990s past as a white guy thing. My last post focused largely on the gender switch, but Veronica O. Davis, a woman recently interviewed in Bicycling Magazine, is focusing on both gender and race with her D.C.-based group, Black Women Bike D.C.

Photo of Black Women Bike D.C. circa August 2012. Find the original on veronicao.com

One thing she said in the interview linked above really struck me, especially after noting the way people can be hesitant to enter a sport where no one seems to look like you.

"Everyone comes for different reasons, and it’s about something for everyone, and making people feel comfortable. So if someone says I only want to go to the end of my block, that’s all right, we’re going to celebrate you. If you said I’ll do a century, guess what, we’re going to celebrate you too. A woman in our group, she’s biking around Japan right now—we’re celebrating her. It’s really just about celebrating people getting on a bike."

Yes, that does seem like a lot of celebrating and perhaps an overly saccaharine women's daytime television vein of discussion. But then she goes on to say this:

"A bike is always there. There’s a sense of freedom—I’m not confined to a specific route. If I want to stop and smell the trees I can stop and smell the trees. If I want to go fast, I can go fast. So it’s about empowering women to have that sense of freedom and not being stuck on someone else’s schedule or agenda"

It's definitely easy to forget in Jackson Hole that it can be really limiting to consider white skin the default condition for people as a whole - partly because this is about as white a community as I've ever known. Think about it - if I describe to you "a person doing something," what color is the person you're picturing? If you're on a marketing team, a planning board, a bike shop staff, you can end up leaving a lot of people out of the world you're planning for that way.

If everyone can't look at biking and see enough people like them doing it to feel like it's totally normal, that's a problem. That's kind of why bikes were such a big deal for women in general, and why they're still a big deal for pretty much everyone who isn't a white guy. The more parts of life where you don't see a wide variety of people participating, the easier it is to see all but the most common participants as "extra," or "peripheral" instead of, you know, "people." Biking is awesome, and it shows everyone that all the things it represents - physical fitness, green transportation, looking kinda goofy in spandex - reach a wider community than you might think.

Major kudos to Ms Davis for showing black women that a bike doesn't know what color you are - if you can make the thing move, you can have the same freedom she does, or that I do. It's really great, and all anyone has to do to figure that out is find a way to feel comfortable trying it.

That being said, bikes may not know what color you are, but their riders sure do. If your biking community is only full of people who look like you and ride like you, maybe you need to look around your whole community and see who isn't riding, and think about why. Because I guaran-damn-tee you, biking isn't mostly done by white people because white people are just more naturally gifted at it than everyone else. Men don't still have a slim majority of bikers because women just don't like bikes. If either of those is your hypothesis, you need a new one, stat.

Little Blue Skis: When My Runs Match My Skis

I do my skiing at Grand Targhee Resort in Alta, Wyoming. This is unusual because most Jacksonites opt for Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in Teton Village. I decided to learn at Targhee because it's much cheaper and less steep. Also, my acquaintance with the Village was not five minutes old when the first dude in neon addressed me as "brah," which I hate.

This whole thing is important because learning to ski at Targhee has been a slow process of venturing out from the Kids' Fun Zone. The trail maps make it clear this is for "beginners of all ages," but ending up on one's ass as wood cutout cartoon animals mock you kind of brings it home that most beginners are not in their 20s.

Over the weekend, I tackled my first blue run without a babysitter.

In ski parlance "blue runs" are kind of the intermediate runs, with green being easy and black being expert (or, you know, shit-your-pants terrifying. Either one).

Tackling the blue runs used to be something I didn't really want to try alone. So my veryvery patient friend - we'll call him Logan, after the only dude in the Baby-Sitters Club - has been helping me branch out. Plus, you know, my skis are blue too, so there's always the whole aesthetic thing.

This weekend, Logan was sick, so I went out alone. And I tried a blue run on my own, with no need to call in the Ski Patrol.

The run I tried is so far my favorite run on the main mountain at Targhee - Chief Joseph's Bowl. You access it from a traverse that used to scare the bejeezus out of me but has great views of the back of the Tetons. The earliest stretch is pretty damn steep.

The rest is less steep, but still very much not-in-Kansas-anymore. The redeeming feature is that it's wide. When "some people" are still a bit of a 'fraidy cat about going all that fast, the way to control the speed is to make a very wide turn that allows you to cut across the slope rather than continue letting gravity and momentum hurl you to your doom. Or something like that. So more room to turn = a much calmer Looney Tunes brain.

My first time out on Chief Joseph, it took me literally an hour to get down because that's how I (didn't) roll. This weekend, I managed to cut that to 20 minutes, and I know part of that was because of my improved form on turns. Not that those turns were significantly tighter, but they at least kept a bit more of their momentum without causing any significant panicking. Progress, woot!

I don't expect to be shredding blacks by the time the season ends. Especially not in this part of the world, where steep is the new normal. I can say that I can do blues all by myself. Not bad for three months of weekends. Or at least, that's what I told myself to justify drinking beer at 4 p.m. when the lifts closed.

Patrick Dempsey is Clearly a Closet Jacksonite

I swear, the promised Little Blue Skis post is forthcoming. It's just that actually writing about my experiences takes longer than making snarky remarks about stuff I find on the internet. 

Speaking of which...

It turns out, if you click around Bicycling Magazine's website, you will become distracted by the number of times you see Patrick Dempsey's face. Like in this picture, courtesy of a courtesy photo used on Bicycling Magazine's website.

It's like, carbon fiber, carbon fiber, Patrick Dempsey, Patrick Dempsey, carbon fiber, Patrick Dempsey, Patrick Dempsey. You see? Patrick Dempsey has a bigger presence than carbon fiber! In a bike magazine! Or maybe I just paid more attention to those reference because come on, he's in Enchanted!

Apparently he's also a biking advocate, which is not as awesome as making confused faces at Amy Adams cleaning up your apartment with her cockroach buddies, but it's pretty close. (Note: If you don't know what I'm talking about you clearly spend too much time on the internet and not enough time watching Disney movies. Go watch more Disney movies.)

Anyhow, he apparently has a challenge all his own, which you can read about here if you are so inclined.

The actual point of this post was my reaction when I read this quote, which is part of the interview linked above:

"I used to ski race as a kid, and biking is the best way to stay in shape for that... It’s just an incredible sport. I love it. It just calms you down and it’s mediation in motion."

Wait a minute... really good-looking white guy who's really in shape and really wealthy, skiing, biking, kind of fruity ways of talking about outdoor sports...guys, Patrick Dempsey lives in Jackson Hole and he doesn't even know it!

LRMB Local Spotlight

The sudden return of snow and slick roads - while I'm working and can't go ski - continues. Stay tuned for your latest edition of Little Blue Skis after I hit the slopes this weekend. In the meantime, I thought that since I've been so up on the League of American Bicyclists and such, it would be civic-minded of me to point out some cool stuff currently gracing the websites of some of the pillars of skiing and biking business here in Jackson Hole.

Brought to you by poor sad Little Red watching the snow.

~ Jackson Hole people: making my athletic accomplishments seem inferior since forever. Check out this post from Skinny Skis about a blind cross country ski racer. A blind senior citizen cross country ski racer. Putting this in perspective, I don't even know how to cross country ski.

~Getting in a little planning for when the weather does turn around with Hoback Sports' riding guides. They have them for
trail rides and road rides.

~If you're into the whole fat bike thing, Fitzgerald's Bicycles, which moved from Jackson to Victor last year, has a pretty cool guide for that scene.

~ After a winter hiatus, Hoff's Bikesmith is open Mon. - Fri. 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. Side note - I love that they're open till 6, because I can get bike needs managed without skipping work. Go Hoff's!

~If you didn't believe me about the tooootal hipster vibe going at the Hub, check out this post for visual proof after the guys there made a trip to a handmade bike event.

~Also, fun fact - the inner loop of Teton Park Road in Grand Teton National Park is closed to motor vehicles until April 30. It is, however, open to cyclists and pedestrians. If the snow doesn't vamoose in time for Little Red, I may actually take a fat bike up there - assuming rental prices aren't too dear.

Happy Thursday, LRMB-ers!

Because It's Snowing in the Middle of the Week

Fun fact:
I mentioned in my last post that I needed to find out where Wyoming's bike-friendliness ranks nationally? I avoided Women's History Month distractions this time, and the answer is 25th. Directly in the middle. 

Also? The state has one bike-friendly community. Anyone care to guess which one? (hint: it's totally Jackson/Teton County).

Clearly, they don't check on these things during the spring, because the weather right now is all "fuck you I'm going dump snow on you ALL DAY!" And that's just not bike friendly.

Yeah.

The f-word, btw, is totally called for just now because it's definitely the first day of spring. And it's snowing. Not really good ski snow, but awesome not-biking snow.

Also, you can check on your community's (apparently not-spring) bike friendliness with this awesome map, which I definitely didn't play around on for like half an hour on my lunch break. Full disclosure: it was more like 40 minutes, partly because I got sidetracked wondering how Arkansas and Mississippi somehow have more bike-friendly communities than Wyoming. It seems more people exercise down there than the average ass size would suggest.

Ladybiking Love: Spring Showers Jackson Style Edition

Because it's spring in Jackson, the weekend brought a sudden turn for the snowy (slash freezing rainy) in the weather. Given the 50 and 60 degree days that kept popping up without warning, I kind of thought I'd be telling you all about getting Little Red back in fighting trim for an early spring ride. That was a big fat nope after the vicious ice reappeared with a vengeance.

Thankfully, the League of American Bicyclists saved the blogging day. I actually signed on to the site because I needed to see where Wyoming ranks in terms of its bicycle friendliness. Instead, I got distracted by posts about women in biking history as part of the League's Women's History Month series, which is much more impressive than mine.

Both of the women were suitably badass, but I particularly loved Frances Willard, who was badass in the 1890s.

Frances Willard, courtesy of CUNY's Investigating History site

My favorite part?

"I learned to bicycle when 50… and I think it is one of the best things I ever did,” Willard wrote. “What pleases me is to see other worn-out women take it up, and fine a new lease of health and life thereby."

She also named her bike Gladys, which is enough on its own to make me adore her. 

It is seriously cool to hear from one of the early women to try the whole challenging her body thing, especially because this was back in the day when women were supposed to be super delicate flowers. Unless, of course, they were poor, in which case they were supposed to do back-breaking work in shitty conditions and still raise kids. Reality-based notions of women's abilities and worth were still in the future, and seeing women doing a sport (!) in public (!) was huge for advancing them.

Even now there are a ton of messages that say women aren't physically strong, women shouldn't be out on bike routes alone, women prefer bikes with superfluous flowers on them instead of any actually practical features because they don't really do anything hard.

In one summer, I got strong enough to make it up a 10 percent grade without stopping - the exact same 10 percent grade I shared with Serious Biker Dudes. And I did it with sequins on my very practical mountain bike. Trying to explain how that feels to someone with the privilege of knowing society always has and always will assume he is capable on his own merits is tricky.

I can do things some subsets of common wisdom say I can't. When I fail, it's clearly because I'm a newbie, not because I'm a woman. My body and its abilities are not defined by what makes it female. Learning to mountain bike means I know this on a level I didn't before I ventured into this more extreme area of physical activity, and I am that much more powerful because of it.

Imagine what a difference that feeling must have made to a woman like Willard. Imagine when she realized her body was strong and capable and useful in a way it hadn't been before; a way so different from the one she'd been taught to consider important; a way considered actually impossible for women to achieve at the time. Empowerment really can be that simple.