Ride Preview: Jackson to Game Creek and Trail Foray #2

This ride began as so many do, with me asking Bike Pimp a stupid question and her pointing at maps.
In this instance, the question was: what did a cycling website mean when they mentioned a Highway 89 pathway?
This was a stupid question because it turned out the whole time I'd been using the in-town bike path, I'd been blithely oblivious to a path branching off of it near Smith's grocery store that parallels the highway as it heads west. Bike Pimp pointed it out on a map, then explained that past a certain point, you can either head down Game Creek Road (ie: site of the trailhead for the highly popular Game Creek Trail)  or head on to Hoback Junction (ie: site of one of two gas stations between the Idaho border and Jackson on that highway). 

The highway's on the left, the path is the little road on the right

I was excited (you may have noticed I often am in these circumstances), since driving on Highway 89 is a pretty scenic experience - as are most parts of being outside around here, and decided to spend part of the weekend on the path. I figured I could decide whether I went on to Hoback or Game Creek depending on what I felt like at the time. (Spoiler - I went for Game Creek and tried out some of the Game Creek Trail).

Then I had a conversation that made me nervous, too.

I told another friend - we'll call her Hand Model, since she'll know why and will roll her eyes - of my plans and invited her along. Her response: "Oh man, that's way too hilly." Now, Hand Model doesn't care for hills in general on a bike ride, but around here I once heard a trail that scales a damn mountain described as "a bit hilly," so I decided to investigate a little.

By that I mean I tried out the first mile and a half or so one evening after work. Why I decided that was sufficiently representative of a 6.2-mile trail, I'm not sure. I guess I thought that if I couldn't make it that far, I had no business trying the rest of the ride. Basically I went out as far as The Bird, a restaurant and pub I keep meaning to try, but never quite feel like going to because it's just far enough out of town to feel inconvenient.

Did the path end up with more hills and inclines than the path through town? An unqualified yes. Were some of them steep-ish and sustained-ish? Yes. Ish. But they also weren't hard to manage, so I went home with my mind made up. The ride was on for the weekend.

My route: Russ Garaman Trail to Highway 89 path to Game Creek Road to Game Creek Trail

Surface: Paved to Game Creek Road, then gravel. Dirt, etc. on the trail.

Incline: Jee. Zus. But not impossible. I'll explain later.

Distance: About 10 miles one way, including the trail. 6.2 miles to Game Creek Road alone.

What you'll see: As per usual, there will be Tetons if it's clear. Great overlook of Flat Creek as it runs out to the west. A ton of non-specific natural beauty. 

Summer Cycling Reading List: Roll Around Heaven All Day Part 2

As I mentioned Monday, learning to mountain bike has given me a great deal of curiosity about how other people do this whole cycling thing. I also like to read. So the solution of reading biking books seemed like a good one.

Also Monday, I gave you all the basics on the first book I chose as part of this - Roll Around Heaven All Day: A Piecemeal Journey Across America by Bicycle. I hereby give you the Good, the Bad and the Verdict of reading it.

The book is a first-person travel diary from Stan Purdum, a man who turns 50 and decides to fulfill a childhood dream of biking across the United States. This happens in three chunks because, being 50 and all, he has a job and a family, and the U.S. is pretty freaking huge and time-consuming to travel across.
In one, he goes from Oregon to Wyoming with his younger brother. Then he goes across Virginia with his teenage daughter. He heads across most of the Midwest alone. 
The book switches between straightforward trip narrative with heavy focus on the people he meets and the places he sees, quasi-philosophical musings and facts/reflections on cycling.

The Bad: This is not a man who has a good sense of what details are appropriate where. Especially when he's riding with his family you get either way too much information or not enough about his brother and daughter. Frankly, he isn't very good at weaving the themes of his personal relationships in with the rest of the narrative, so the book gets bogged down when he tries. Lots of detail, not much substance.
For example - it's interesting to hear once that his brother has sleep apnea and requires a special machine to sleep. It's annoying to hear about whether every single campground they stay at is equipped so he can use the machine. I also vowed to find the man and shove a burger up his...yeah...if I heard one more time what everyone's exact order was at every single food stop.
The weakest part of the book is the stretch with his daughter. He is so busy explaining his kid that he hardly gets to the actual trip, and his constant explanations make her seem insipid and weak. You can't ever relate to or like the daughter. We never really see her because her dad is in the way, constantly fluttering about whether she's tired or whether she's in a good mood.
And...and...he skipped Grand Teton National Park and Jackson! You want to beat him a little, because he ends his west coast leg bitching about how Yellowstone is a bad road cycling park - which is pretty common knowledge around here - and if he'd just kept it up maybe one more day, he would have been in the midst of one of the most beautiful and best cycling areas in the country. Frustrating, I tell you!

The Good: When he sticks to discussing the trip itself, and his own motivations for it, Purdum is really a very personable narrator. He is clearly really into the trip and the experience of a long-distance cycle tour, and his enthusiasm is catching. At its core, this book is about a man living his dream before age makes it impossible to do so, and that is really a powerful thing.
That narrative is the one Purdum tells very well, and when he allows it to dominate the story, his writing gains an authentic voice it just lacks when he's dealing with the family or spiritual aspects. His prose evens out,  the narrative moves and you actually feel like you're on the trip with him.
Plus, he has a good-natured humility about his cycling limitations. He enjoys it, clearly, but doesn't try to prove what a seeeeerious biker he is. Granted, he's on a trip across the country. He kind of doesn't need to.
You get periodically irritated with Purdum, but overall you like him, and that's key to a book like this.
Reviewers on amazon.com get down on him for how light the book is on "technical" stuff regarding both equipment and technique. Since most of those reviews start with "I am a longtime touring cyclist" I tended to think they were full of shit. Purdum actually does include quite a few technical details of cycling in general - enough that I sure expanded my vocabulary, for what it's worth.

The Verdict: I'm glad I read it, but I think once was enough. I think more than anything, my trouble with this book is that it wasn't really my style. But then, Purdum and I don't seem to have much in common aside from the cycling thing and this is a first-person narrative, so that's not terribly surprising.  I know plenty of people whose style this would be, and even recommended the book to one of them a few days ago.

Tuesday Biking Jams: Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard

I'm afraid there are no political reasons for this week's jam. Or really any that make me sound all that profound.

There is a subset of my Bike Ride playlist that I chose as good "biking in town" songs - songs that have a decent rhythm while you're pedaling, but don't need to push you that extra few yards up a steep hill or help you keep up your energy. Lately, one of my favorite members of this subset has been "Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard," which gives Paul Simon the distinction of being my mother's favorite artist on my iPod.

Every time I listen to this song, I find myself whistling. There is a section where Simon whistles for a few measures, and it usually starts there, but then I keep whistling. This has led to the previously undiscovered knowledge that it is really hard to whistle on a bike. Even if you're only in town, you don't have the air to spare, and being bent over the handlebars you aren't in the greatest position to  use your air in that particular fashion.

You should totally try it if you don't believe me. If nothing else, it's turned out to be a sure-fire way to make everyone on the sidewalk look around to see where the whistling noise is coming from. Sometimes they kind of smile. Sometimes they kind of look at you like you're not right in the head. I feel like those people are probably no fun, because whistling isn't all that weird, even if you are kind of taking a huge breath every so often to keep doing it.

I can actually take or leave Paul Simon for the most part, despite the fact that his Greatest Hits CD was the soundtrack in my family's car on many a childhood road trip. I do love this song, and I hope this week's jam inspires you to try it out as a good, upbeat, rhythmic song for biking around your town. And if you ever figure out just what mama saw that was against the law, let me know.

Oh, and lyrics.

Summer Cycling Reading List: Roll Around Heaven All Day Part 1

Sometimes as you take a break on a longer ride, you read. Or at least, I do. And one of the things I've been curious about since I started becoming my own brand of bike person is - how do other people do it? where do they ride? what happens in the advanced stages of psychosis? So one day at the Teton County Library, I took a stroll through the non-fiction section to find me a book or two on biking.

There were quite a few, even if you don't count the "Cycling for Dummies" variety, which I tend not to. I mean, come on, if you're trying to learn biking from a book you don't need to advertise it - I'm going to just assume you're a dummy. As for the rest of them, it seems that once you start riding, the impulse to ride across something and then tell people about it is pretty strong. I'm sure the only reason there isn't a "Cycling Across the Atlantic" book is because humanity can not yet bike on water.

The first book I chose is one of the many based on the "I biked across something" concept. As the title reveals, in Roll Around Heaven All Day: A Piecemeal Journey Across America By Bicycle, the author bikes across the United States.

The summary on amazon.com reads as follows:

The experiences of a middle-aged, overweight man, mounted on an old bicycle, who is traveling across America along the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail. This inspirational coast-to-coast odyssey is a truly satisfying ride, not only for cyclists, but for anyone who travels for the joy of the journey--or simply dreams of doing so.

As a teaser, this begs so many questions. Why is this man Stan Purdum bicycling across America, aside from the fact that someone apparently will pay him to write a book about it? Does he have any attributes aside from his age, weight and apparent suicide wish? Why is this trip of his so inspirational? What is our standard for inspiration here? Are we using the word "odyssey" because it sounds good in a back cover summary or because the story actually evokes something on the scale of the ancient Greek epic poem? Why don't I work for a publishing company when I could totally pull something like that out of my ass? Does whoever wrote this make more money than I do? And so on.

I chose the book because I liked the idea of starting out with a book that explored areas I was at least familiar with - as opposed to the one I saw on the shelf above it where the author bikes across Siberia. I also liked the idea of hearing from someone who would at worst be obnoxious in a new way, and at best would stick to telling us about his trip and avoid trying to convince us all of his biking bonafides. Plus, knowing Purdum's biography says he lives in Ohio, I was dying to hear about his experiences with some of the West Coast mountains.

So I checked it out of the library and read it over the next few days, finishing it up on the bike ride you'll hear about later this week. I'll tell you all what I thought of it Wednesday, so tune in if you care about that sort of thing.

Ridin' Friday: Trail Fail and Josie's Ridge

~ Note - This was always going to be a tricky one to preview, so in the interest of catching back up, I've decided you're going in cold. You're welcome.~


At the beginning of the month, the U.S. Forest Service opened up a large chunk of the Greater Snow King Recreation Area - ie: the stretch of land with most of the really good cycling trails near Jackson. (During the winter, the land is closed to humans to keep elk and other large wildlife from wasting calories by being startled by people.) Partway down Snow King Avenue, there is an access point to the trail network just off of Wildlife Drive.

I'd been eyeing that sign announcing National Forest Trail Access for months by then, so that weekend I decided to take Little Red for my first cycling foray on a trail.

I was super excited to try something that I could describe as "mountain biking" without having people who actually go mountain biking laugh at me. I stayed excited as I pedaled up the kind of steep, gravelly hill to the trailhead. I stayed excited as I continued pedaling up an equally steep hill that comprises the first stretch of the trail. My legs kind of wanted these hills to be done, but I was making it and I was excited! This was going to be great!

And then I nearly got bucked off by my bike. I was less excited about that.

It seems anyone who has ridden trails before knows - ie: not me at the time -  it is possible for your bike to hit a protruding rock and flip over. When your bike flips over, you do too. It's a physics thing.

As I concentrated on calming my heartbeat, I realized it was time to buy a helmet. Shit would have gotten pretty concussion-y if I'd been going a little faster, or if my reflexes were a little slower. Hell, it could have gotten pretty skull-split-open-y. And this was just one of the hundreds of rocks on that stretch of trail.

So I made the executive decision to leave Little Red at the trailhead and explore on foot. I fully admit, I was a loser in so many different ways on this one, but mostly because:

1) It's really dumb to own a bike but not a helmet
2) It's even dumber to try something like trail riding for the first time and not wear a helmet
3) My first trail ride was about seven minutes long
4) I had a near-death encounter with a freaking rock


That would have been one for the Darwin Awards, yeah?

It made me feel marginally less like a loser when I realized that the trail I'd vaguely intended to seek out - Josie's Ridge - is not really meant for cyclists. In fact, I later found out that it's the only trail in the Greater Snow King Recreation Area that's built to be for hikers only. In short, it is steep as shit, narrow as shit and full of twists and turns. Show me someone who's tried it on a bike and I'll show you someone who isn't very fond of life or limb.

It's also a great hike. Those who are inclined to take a break from the bike should check it out. The trail climbs (and I mean that word more strongly than usual) up to the top of Josie's Ridge and then goes along the top of it for a while.

You start out looking out on this:

Then finally this:

So yeah, worth the climb. And a decent consolation prize for completely failing on my first cycling trip to the trails. Let's just say my evolution as a mountain biker was on hold until I had a way to protect myself on the - as I realized that day - inevitable falls that would entail.

Bike Away From Work Party or Badgering the National Forest Service

~Note - This post should have gone up yesterday. It didn't. I'm sorry. Read it anyway, you'll like it.~

Now that it's getting close to summer, there are small-ish biking events up the wazoo going on in Jackson Hole. I've missed a lot of them what with actually riding my bike sometimes and having a job and a pressing need to buy groceries, but I did manage to make it to one on Friday.

Bike Away From Work was a party/information fair to mark Bike To Work Day. I'll go ahead and confess that I don't really know what day actually is Bike To Work Day, but I do consider it good and celebrated.

Most of these events feature some version of free food and cheap booze, which is really nice. You also run into a lot of locals. Since it turns out a lot of the trails and pathways in the area have only acquired adequate signs to mark them in the past 10 years or so, word-of-mouth can be a good way to find out about rides and actually be able to find them.

This particular event featured booths from both Friends of Pathways and the U.S. Forest Service, the two major agencies that build and maintain local bike paths and trails.

Now, I've heard so many things about the great mountain biking trails and the extensive bike path network throughout the area, but finding them is a smidge more difficult. At least, it is when your sense of direction is something of a family joke and the trails criss cross in a not-especially-straightforward manner.

So I spent about an hour and a half pestering the ranger the Forest Service sent. They had some very good maps there that aren't available online, and with someone paid to know where things are to point at things for me, I came away with an actual idea of where I'd need to go to try out some of the best local rides. I'm not certain that I didn't frighten the poor man, though whether he was frightened at the barrage of questions or the idea that someone so bad at reading maps on her own would be trying to navigate in land he is responsible for is kind of up for debate.

He was very good about recommending trails that aren't too difficult for mountain biking rookies - even enthusiastic, sarcastic, sometimes fantastic ones. He mentioned that the good maps and several other rangers are available during weekdays at the Forest Service's local offices on Cache St. I'd highly recommend stopping by if you're as hopeless at this sort of thing as I am, since those maps really were good, and so was the advice.

I also swung by Friends of Pathways and picked up the maps they put out for the public of where one can find bike paths both in the Jackson area and near Wilson and Teton Village. They have local offices too, on South Millward St., but I liked catching them here better. Remember - free food and cheap booze.

I also solved the  mystery of what the faded writing on my bike bell says! And where it must have come from:

It says Jackson Hole Community Pathways on it, and was one of those free bells community organizations give out, as I mentioned in this post, where I also talk more about my own bell, which was already on Little Red when I bought her. I'd also like to take this moment to note that those Friends of Pathways socks are kind of awesome, in an "I'd probably never wear those" kind of way.

I'll swing by as many of the biking events as I can in the coming weeks, but I definitely can't manage them all. Friends of Pathways usually lists good ones on its website, if any of you happen to be in the area and want to see for yourself.

Tuesday...er, Wednesday Biking Jams: Only Prettier

~Note - This is the post that should have gone up Tuesday, May 22. Find out why it didn't here, and enjoy your third post of the day to make up for it.  ~

I don't usually go in for country, but there are a few exceptions to that on my Bike Ride playlist. This one in particular went a long way toward helping me deal with some folks in town this week that made me pretty angry.

Operation Save America, a group of particularly rabid abortion protesters, visited Jackson this week to  "minister" to a doctor in town who "kills babies" in his "killing center" (aka: offers pregnancy terminations along with his general practitioner services). They brought huge signs with pictures of bloody fetuses and were generally pretty hateful when the town objected to those signs. 


Because of my job, I had to be polite to these people instead of just ignoring them, and there were days it threatened to make my blood boil. So as I was biking by them, I found myself skipping my iPod to "Only Prettier," Miranda Lambert's tongue-in-cheek ode to tolerance. 

Between the lampooning lyrics and pedaling just a little harder than usual, I worked out  my frustration without actually punching anyone. And I managed to get past them more quickly, which was kind of a perk. The group left Sunday, but not before they protested outside the churches that asked them not to come. Such charming people. 

So Dear Operation Save America, 

I hope you enjoyed Jackson, and please don't come back. 

And to my readers, enjoy this week's jam and don't let the bastards get you down. 

Love and Kisses, 

Little Red Mountain Bike

P.S. - Lyrics can be found here

Bike Swap Blues

~Note - This is the post that should have gone up Monday, May 21. Sorry for the part where it's two days late, but hopefully time has the same effect on my biking experiences as it does on fine wine. Yeah. We'll go with that. ~


Saturday was a day of reconciliation and disappointment for me. In order to understand that, you must understand a few things. One of them was that Saturday was the date of the much-lauded Hub Bike Swap.

The Hub is a bike shop in Jackson located on my side of town.

 

It has a really different atmosphere from Hoff's in that it feels more like a European road biker place, even though they do a pretty good mountain biking business. I imagine some of that is due to the owner being European, at least based on his German (well, probably German) accent, and riding a road bike. 

I had a little bit of a chip on my shoulder about The Hub because of a helmet-buying expedition that took me there one day after work. First off, the selection was dominated by helmets that sort of resembled carbon-fiber Tropical Skittles and cost about $150. The least expensive helmet in the whole store was $90. Call me set in my ways and cheap, but I was kind of hoping for a nice neutral color costing $50 or less. When I asked the owner if he had any helmet-like products I hadn't noticed (and I didn't even comment on the fact that those helmets made me think of those 1980s troll dolls) that might cost a little less, he gave me a lecture about how I shouldn't put a price on my safety. 

May I just say, there's condescending and then there's condescending in a German (probably) accent. 

But since the scuttlebutt was the Bike Swap draws a lot of good used bikes and biking equipment on consignment, I figured I'd check it out. Among other things,  I'm liking the idea of getting a bike rack for my car more and more as I learn about places I could take Little Red. Nothing buys forgiveness like the chance to get a new toy at a discount price. I'm pretty sure that's in the Constitution.

I got there about halfway through the swap. As advertised, there were a lot of good bikes for sale. Including this one: 

Seriously, if you look hard enough, you can proclaim a fondness for PBR with all your possessions. This bike amused me enough to check on the price, but $2,000 seemed a little steep, being the equivalent of about two months' rent and utilities. 

If I didn't already have Little Red, I'm pretty sure I would have found myself a bike here, or at an event like this one. It reminded me of going garage sale-ing, except instead of having one or two bikes the family's teens outgrew or the man of the house bought in a fit of crazed weight-loss optimism, there were literally hundreds of every shape, size and type. 

But according to The Hub guys, there was only one car rack in the whole swap, and it was gone by the time I got there. I was pretty bummed out about that, since I was really hoping to find one for less than $70, which is the price of the one I liked at Hoff's. Apparently an affordable car rack is like a flattering one-piece bathing suit - you see them everywhere, except in the stores where you try to find one for yourself.

The good news is, The Hub guys, including the owner, were so nice about giving me suggestions for where I might find what I was looking for that it canceled out the Pissy Helmet Lecture. So I guess the takeaway here is: boo for still not having a good car rack, but hooray for clean slates.

Week From Hell

Hey all.

You may have noticed I haven't been so good about posting this week as I generally am. For that I apologize.
It's been just a hellishly busy week at work, and something had to give. Since my job allows me to do stuff like pay the rent, I had to make it a priority for Monday and Tuesday and neglect Little Red Mountain Bike.

What this means is that now things have settled down, you'll get a few days of multiple posts coming up here until I'm caught up with you. Can't make promises about which days those will be, but I'll do my best.

Because God knows you all can't survive without me and my pithy prose, right?  ;)

Ridin' Friday: National Elk Refuge Road or The Tale of a Kamikaze Sheep

The night after the abbreviated trip to the National Elk Refuge Road I talked about yesterday, it started raining. Then it started snowing. And then raining again. As much as I enjoyed finishing the book I was reading, I kept an eye out the window, hoping the sky would agree to quit with the precipitating long enough for me to ride the Refuge Road again.

Finally, on Sunday, the universe obliged.  By early afternoon things settled into a partly cloudy, dry, low-50s area and I decided to risk riding. One of the really nice things about cycling is that once you've been pedaling for a while, you're nearly always warm enough. By the time I made it to the Refuge, it even felt kind of muggy.

For about half the ride, you're riding past cool buttes and hills, plus little streams and tons of trees. There were only a few days left in April when I took this ride, so things were just starting to get green.

Once you get past the buttes, however....

You ride roughly parallel to the Tetons for the last mile or so, and dear God, is it gorgeous. Once the winter ranges in the Bridger-Teton National Forest open, as they did May 1, you can get even better views.

The road itself had some challenges to it I wasn't used to. First of all, it's an actual road. There's a subdivision down at the end of it, so there is some traffic. Not much - I maybe saw 10 cars during the whole time I was out there - but it's something to watch for. The trouble with keeping out of traffic on the Refuge Road is that you're on a constant hunt for the least uneven piece of ground. Sometimes that happens to be in the middle of the road, which drivers tend to think of as their territory. Luckily, all the gravel there means you can't so much as shift your weight standing without causing a surprisingly loud crunch noise, so an approaching car is kind of like an approaching herd of bison in terms of noise. It's even more noticeable because it's otherwise totally silent and largely very peaceful and still around you.

There was one notable exception on this ride because, as it turns out, you sometimes also get herds of bighorn sheep near the Refuge Road.

There was a herd grazing in the distance when I rode out, and I thought that was kind of neat. On the way back, the same herd of sheep was on both sides of the road, right up close. That was really cool, and one of those moments that I list among the perks of living in Jackson Hole. Less cool was the one sheep that decided the appropriate time to spring into the road was at the exact moment the biker was passing. Let me just say, it is a surreal and scary moment when you realize you are about to be T-boned by a freaking sheep, particularly when you're riding an aluminum-frame bicycle (yes, I found out what kind of frame I have, and yes, I had to ask).

I caught it in time to pedal like hell and so the sheep survived unscathed, somewhat in defiance of Darwinistic principles. But then I am not about to scrape my left side to shit and mangle my bike for natural selection.

At that point, I felt I'd earned a stop for pictures and looking at mountains before tackling the most uneven stretch of road.

The half-mile or so right after you turn off (or onto in this case) the paved town road is the bumpiest of the whole ride, especially heading back into town. There are potholes everywhere - everywhere! - and my butt was not a fan. Generally though, riding on a the unpaved road wasn't too bad once I got the idea. I had to pay significantly more attention than usual to where I was going over what I was seeing, and it was harder to gain momentum uphill and downhill, but I kind of liked the change. Good thing, I guess, seeing as how I could only imagine trails are even less predictable.

I wouldn't go on this ride without a bike built to take some bumps. I sure didn't see any road bikes that afternoon. I also wouldn't call it overly challenging. A few hills and a rough enough surface to make it worth your while, especially if you're a beginner like me, but nothing a beginner like me couldn't handle with a little effort.

Ride Preview: National Elk Refuge Road

This week's ride came about one day at work during a lunch hour ride with Bike Pimp. Basically it happened the way many things do with her - I walked up and said "I want to go on a bike ride and you should go with me and by the way where's a good place to go?" You'll notice I haven't included pauses in that sentence. This is in the interest of accuracy.

Bike Pimp has lived in Jackson much, much longer than I have and is very patient when it comes to pointing at things on maps until I understand. She's also a pretty kick-ass biking companion. Neither of us had too much time and we both had to be back at work that afternoon, but it was the last nice day the weathermen were predicting for the rest of the week.

So Bike Pimp suggested that we take a jaunt partway down the road running through the National Elk Refuge. "Partway down" ended up meaning about a mile because getting there ate up a fair amount of our lunch hour - our office is on the other side of town.

This is more or less where Bike Pimp and I stopped

Broadway, the main road through Jackson, ends at the Refuge, but I'd never been out that far. So when Bike Pimp and I turned off onto an unpaved road, I realized this was a good chance to work on my skills riding on a rough surface. I figure what's the use of having a mountain bike if you never go out on the trails? However, prior to this abbreviated ride, I'd only ever ridden on pavement. Who knew a dirt road would have the kind of potholes you suspect could lead to Wonderland if you fell into them?

We rode as far as the Miller House, where the first superintendent of Grand Teton National Park - then Teton National Monument - lived. During the summer season, the house is a museum/interpretive center, but during this ride it was still closed. It looks like it could be a neat place to check out when things get going in town though, so I suspect I'll be back.

The day of this ride, I planned to be back much sooner than that, though, so that I could ride the whole road on a day when I had a little less pressure to be back in town and looking presentable when the ride was done. That would have to wait for the weekend.

My route : Snow King Avenue to Broadway to National Elk Refuge Road to Twin Creek Ranch

Surface: Dirt and gravel, not including the town streets

Incline: Mild to moderate ups and downs most of the way

Distance: About 4 miles one way, give or take

What you'll see: The National Elk Refuge, obviously; various forms of wildlife including elk (more likely in the winter), bighorn sheep, the occasional wolf and the omnipresent tiny burrowing rodent whose name escapes me just now; if it's clear, a pretty unparalleled vista view of the Tetons.

I rode back to work mentally crossing my fingers - doing it physically would have been tougher because of the whole handlebar thing - the weather would be nice enough at some point during the weekend to let me get back to finish the ride. It did rain a little as we left the Refuge, so that wasn't really a guarantee. Stupid April showers.

Today in Obnoxious Bike People

~Because sometimes hardcore bike people pick up irritating habits and think they're normal. And that is irritating.~

It's almost too easy, but I have to say it: the spandex/Lycra/skintight clothing thing is obnoxious. Actually, let's qualify that. The obnoxious part is less because bike people dress like that, and more because they get smug about it.

Something I wasn't aware of when I got into biking here in Jackson is that apparently one Does Not wear jeans on a bike. This is because jeans will chafe severely on a ride that lasts more than an hour or two. Fine. I get that. In fact, I rarely do wear jeans on a ride where I expect to work very hard. I opt for my hiking shorts - which are not skintight - and while my legs do frequently hate me afterward, it's not because of chafing. Guess I'm just not hardcore enough, but you know, I am comfortable with that.

However, I fail to realize why not wearing jeans equates to wearing this:

This is the Dutch cycling uniform for the London Olympics. I see its equivalent every single day just riding to and from work. Except frequently in even brighter colors. Now, if you are actually riding in a road race, I get the necessity for streamlining and minimizing air resistance. However, shaving seconds off your trip to the post office seems a leeeeelte obsessive-compulsive. You do not need the same tools for Olympic racing as picking up your mail.

If you want to wear your Lyrca shorts and ultra-wicking fabric for a few hours on the trails or the streets, more power to you. When it gets obnoxious is when I bike by in my hiking shorts and sports bra tank top and get this snide little sidelong look while passing someone wearing the Bike Person Uniform. I hereby respond to the people - usually 30 or 40-something men - who give me that look.

A) Do enjoy your sense of superiority, but consider this: we're on the same ride. We're accomplishing the exact same thing, even if I happen to be accomplishing it in hiking shorts.

B) Of the two of us, I look the least like I'll be attending a post-ride party in my Nascar Condom costume.

C) We're biking, ok? The basics of the activity haven't changed significantly since about 1910. Let's not get too invested in the idea that we're doing something complicated.

D) People like you are the equivalent of guys who act super macho at the gym. You are an obstacle to other people feeling comfortable going out and doing something fun and good for them. That snide little look means you suck, and shall be subject to a condescending snarky rant as soon as I get home. Or at least a few days later.

Generally speaking, I don't suppose the Spandex-Clad Snots of the bike world are any worse than people who take themselves too seriously doing any other activity. But then again, I don't have much patience for this kind of shit in any area of life, so I'm not about to cut them slack just because we happen to like the same activity.

Tuesday Biking Jams: Raise Your Glass

Tuesdays are crazy deadline days for me in my non-biking, non-blogging life, but do I consider that a challenge? Well, yes, but I also go in for considering it an opportunity to give you all a taste of the latest and greatest on my iPod's Bike Ride playlist.

I scarcely ever ride without my music - except, you know, on trails where they have mountain lions and bears and stuff, given my fondness for not being attacked by wild animals. Sometimes I'll hit on just the right song for a particular moment, which is awesome. I can neither confirm nor deny that this sometimes leads to me singing at the top of my lungs biking down Snow King Avenue.

 Specifically, I can neither confirm nor deny that I ended up singing along with "Raise Your Glass," Pink's anthem for outcasts, last week on the way back to the office from lunch.

Sometimes my biking jams will have some actual cycling application, but not this one. I was just in a crappy mood and biking into a nasty headwind with a million things to do when I got back to work. Nothing quite cheers you up in those circumstances like getting weird looks from passing motorists as you sing to them that they should call you up if they are gangster, amirite? I am right.

So enjoy the biking jam, and feel free to also sing it on your bike if you can't think of any other way to cheer yourself up.

P.S. If you can't do the video for some reason, you can find the lyrics here

Happy Anniversary to Hoff's Bikesmith

As I noted, I first saw Little Red at Hoff's Bikesmith, home of the least obnoxious bike people I know. This includes owner Tim Hoff, the man who was primarily responsible for this whole state of affairs by being the one to sell me my bike.

This weekend Hoff's had their grand re-opening party to celebrate Tim's first year in business. I stopped by because he was also having a sale, and I kind of want a bike rack for my car. I spent about five minutes perusing racks. I spent about two hours drinking PBR and hanging out.

This is a basic idea of what part of the party looked like. These are mostly road bikes. Mountain bikes were behind me.

Now, I'm pretty sure I bemuse Tim a little. I don't blame him for this reaction, since in the world of bike folk I am the tourist in ugly shorts asking if anyone speaks English.

However, he's pretty great about working with me when I come in. I made two or three trips to his shop before finding a bike I wanted, and Tim never tried to sell me a bike that didn't fit my specifications or my body. He didn't use painful cycling jargon when I asked him questions. He also didn't give me shit for my price point - it's easy to drop $1,000 or more for a good bike, it turns out, but I was pretty firm that $300 was my upper limit.

So, pretty much I heart Tim Hoff, and I am comfortable in his shop. There's no question that the guys there know their stuff. They have definitely had whole conversations about a bike wheel that never actually used the word "wheel" - I am a witness.
They're also good about having beer around, letting you use their tools if you need them and not taking themselves too seriously.

 You can see (sort of) that PBR was a theme here. I ended up going home with a PBR t-shirt that has pink elephants on it, courtesy of a random guy who won a girl's shirt in an event that involved tossing  an ancient steel-frame bike as far as possible. I definitely had only the vaguest idea steel was used in making bikes until I asked, so hey, I learned something out of this part

And there were bikes. I still liked mine the best, but there was a white road bike there that, if I were the sort of person to go for skinny tires and pay $1,000 for the privilege of always riding on a smooth paved surface, I would have bought.

Someone else did buy it, however, and she looked pretty happy about it. In fact, you had folks from all the walks of the bike scene around here, which was very cool. I can't say this was strictly speaking a bike event, except for the fact that everyone there likes riding one. I can say it was an example of why I like Hoff's so much - it feels so much more inclusive than the bike world tends to feel.

Hell, for all I know, they hate me there, but at least they don't give me that "oh, you bike in jeans" face that I get when I'm actually out riding.  And celebrating a good bike shop was a good way to spend part of a Saturday.

So Happy Anniversary to Hoff's, and here's to another year of me walking in and asking stupid questions.

Ridin' Friday: Russ Garaman Trail - Indian Trails - Highway 22

The day after I bought my bike, I woke up ready to spend the day exploring this cool pathway that led out to Highway 22 and started near my apartment. For more background on the path and my yen to bike it, see yesterday's preview.

So yeah, spending the day exploring! Well, more like half the day at that point since I woke up around 11 (it's a weekend thing) and I have the approximate motivation of a spawned-out salmon until coffee cup two or three is empty. So first breakfast and coffee, then ride.

Though you may be doubting it at this point, I did eventually make it out, and the ride happened.

I couldn't have asked for a better day. It was a perfect, cloudless, low-70s kind of day, and in late April, no less. That did mean most Jackson Hole locals were out, and the pathway is a pretty popular spot for strolling and riding, but the crowds were smaller than you'd think. On the early stretch of the ride it was marginally more crowded, but then the path runs through some residential areas there. It also runs alongside Flat Creek for quite a ways, following it across Highway 89 and few blocks after that.

                                                     Flat Creek

For all the path crosses two major highways, it's really safe in terms of biker v. car stuff because it crosses them via underpass.

The first highway crossing is on a slight downhill while you're still on a pretty populated stretch of the path. On this particular ride, I mildly endangered a small child heading into this underpass, since the kid politely tried to move, but sort of forgot to move out of my way. However, I am pleased to report no children were injured while making this post.

The second underpass crosses Highway 22, and you can only get to it up about five yards of a sudden 7 percent grade. I'm bitter about this because I wasn't expecting it on this ride, but it's really not hard to make it up. I forgave the underpass for surprising me because it has brightly colored murals painted on it, which I also didn't expect. This time I meant that in a good way.

                                          Little Red at the underpass

The ride between the end of the residential stretch at the Indian Trails  subdivision and the end of the path at the driveway to Teton Science School was faultless. It's an easy ride, and I was glad because it meant I had attention to spare for the view. Plus, I hadn't been on a bike since the Wonder Steed and it can take your calves a little while to remember what they're supposed to be doing.

It was way too nice to go home after I made it to the Science School, so I backtracked and followed the path south for another hour or so. This stretch of pathway parallels a mildly busy road and a small golf course, ending a small ways past a gated neighborhood. At the time, I didn't realize I was biking next to a golf course because the owners keep the actual course pretty well blocked-off from the path.

The path also runs parallel to the Tetons, so I was once again glad the path is pretty flat. I can simultaneously manage hills and scenery if necessary, but on that ride it was nice not to have to. Overall, I really liked that this path could keep me occupied all afternoon, and I loved the chance to enjoy a nice day outside on a pathway open year-round.

So with that settled, let me leave you with a few more pictures of the view and of Little Red. I'll have more and more options as the summer gets closer and more trails and paths open to cyclists, but this was a pretty solid start.

View heading back south

Little Red and the Tetons

Looking down from the underpass

May I just say...I live here, guys. Isn't that awesome?

Ride Preview: Russ Garaman Path-Indian Trails-Highway 22

Ever since I first started thinking I wanted a bike, I've paid increasing amounts of attention to where I might ride it. As it happened, I had my first ride all picked out the day I bought Little Red, because I'd walked along part of it a few weeks earlier.

Friends of Pathways is a Jackson Hole group that builds and maintains bike and walking paths throughout the area. One of them happens to have an access point near my apartments.

I spent a few long afternoons as a pedestrian there, but since walking won't get you as far as fast as biking (you know, because one involves wheels and one involves feet), I'd always had to stop before I saw as much as I wanted.

Since my curiosity levels can cause me to get in Lewis and Clark mode - or Lewis and Clark crossed with a very small dog waiting to go outside mode - this always irritated me. And once or twice made me bite my own ankles for trying to put myself inside again.

So I knew that night as I stared at my bike across the living room that I would be using it to explore the pathways a little more. Yes, I brought my bike inside. My apartment complex forbids parking bikes anywhere but under our stairwells. I share a stairwell with three families, each of which has several children. Said children seem to just kind of multiply every single day, and all of them have bikes. Had you seen the tangle of spokes and handlebars down there, I imagine you would have decided you'd think about it tomorrow, gone upstairs and who knows - you may even have barked your shin on one of your new bike's pedals. Certainly that was my reaction.

So anyway, I knew where I was going. I even knew some of the following information:

My route: Russ Garaman Trail through Indian Trails subdivision to Wyoming Highway 22, ending at Teton Science School.

Surface: 95 percent pavement, a few gravel stretches

Incline: Largely flat or slight hills except one out-of-nowhere fiercely steep patch leading from the path to the highway

Distance: Around 8 miles one way

What you'll see: Flat Creek, High School Butte, great Teton view if it's clear, no to OK Teton views if it's not.
You also pass a grocery store, two schools, Jackson Hole Community Garden, a few random sculptures and two churches if any of that floats your boat.

Excited yet? If not, that's OK. I was like a squirrel on espresso. What can I say, I had a new toy and an adventure planned that involved being outside and indoor plumbing. That shit is exciting.

Biking To Booze: Celebrating a New Bike at Cafe Genevieve

My ownership of the little red mountain bike was a few hours old, and Bike Pimp and I had just finished attaching racks (which enable attaching baskets, etc.) to our respective bikes. She got a new one and I got her old one. This process largely consists of using screws and saying "oh shoot, the washer fell off," based on my experience.
It was a glorious 70-degree day and by now it was happy hour. Obviously, it was time to take the bike in search of alcohol.

In going to Cafe Genevieve, we could do this and sit outside on the restaurant's deck. The cafe is just outside of the Town Square, so it's a pretty easy ride from almost anywhere in the town. It also earns Happy Biker Points because it has a bike rack out front.

Being a small place in downtown Jackson, Genevieve is mildly pretentious and pricy, but the food and drink are top notch. Happy hour is a good time to stop by because Genevieve has deals worth taking on cocktails and appetizers. If you play your cards right, you can easily manage a drink and a bite for around $10.

Knocking back: Bike Pimp and I both opted for the blood orange margarita.

Bon Appetit: Since I hadn't eaten since grabbing a yogurt and a pack of fruit snacks at around 11 (yes, I'm that classy), we split a duck confit quesadilla.

Verdict: In terms of tipsiness risk, the drink wasn't all that heavy on the tequila, but it was pretty big. I was happy by the time I finished,but keep in mind I was already on a bike high. The blood orange kept it from that sticky-sweet taste you can get with some milder margaritas. It reminded me a little of a tequila sunrise with grapefruit juice instead of grenadine, the creation of a good college friend.

The duck quesadilla turned out to be smaller than we'd thought - one tortilla folded in half, instead of two layered. It was seriously good though. Nothing too fancy inside, except, you know, the duck, but really well done. Obviously it required liking duck to enjoy the quesadilla, but it was a delicious example of a fine American resort town tradition: shamelessly co-opting ethnic food and adding a dash of snobbery to justify charging more.

Add in the perfect weather and the fact that an off-season Saturday = no crowds and I considered my new bike thoroughly celebrated.

My Bike Has Accessories! (and you can too): The Bell

~Because I want to help those who, like me, responded to questions about what accessories I wanted to get for my bike with "Oh...right. What?" And because I always really liked show and tell in school.

Presenting my bell:

It came with the bike, so its previous owner either didn't like it or didn't know how to get it off. No, I don't really know what the semi-visible writing says. But isn't it shiny?

Why I wanted it: Well, since it came with the bike, I technically didn't. Frankly, it wouldn't have occurred to me to get one.

Intended use: getting attention/alerting others to your presence.

It turns out to be an actual need. Bikes aren't too loud, so someone in front of you may, for example, be carrying on a conversation with their open car door totally blocking the bike lane and not hear you coming.
In this hypothetical scenario, which is only loosely based on something that happened to me this morning, there is no clear reason for the door to be open, which irritates you a little. 
It is in just these circumstances that one pushes the lever on one's bell.
This will cause one of the conversing gentlemen to go "Do you hear a bell?" They will then look sheepish and apologetic as you pedal around their car door into the middle of the street and they realize yes, in fact, they have heard a bell.
However, it will also cause the young boys on the sidewalk who couldn't see you because of the open door to know you're coming. In light of that knowledge, they don't cross the street just then and you don't hit them.
So overall a win, yeah?

Alternate uses: It so happens the tone of my bell is a few notes higher than Bike Pimp's bell. Because of this, it has come in handy in finding out if we can play a song with those two notes and giggling a lot.

Cost: Since it came with the bike, it was either free, or it cost $200. But in the latter case it's ok, because it came with a free bike.
In all seriousness, a bike bell runs about $5-$10 in the retail world, depending on where you go and what the bell's made of.  I did find one that cost $30, apparently because it was designed to take up as little "valuable handlebar space" as possible and made of serious, heavy-duty metal. So if you're into your handlebar space and want an apocalypse-ready bell, go ahead and spend the $30.
On the other end of the spectrum, sometimes community organizations that promote biking will give them out for free, but you tend to have to wait for a special event.

Worth having?:Yes.

Anything that makes a fun "ding" noise is a worthwhile addition to your life.
Plus, it's more effective and dignified than hollering "Hey! Hey! Over here!" every time someone doesn't notice you coming.

The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship

Last month, I fell in love.

Did I meet a nice man? Well, yes, or at least a man who was both not wearing a shirt and willing to share his PBR, which is kind of better in my book. However, he is more beside the point than shirtless men offering me beer generally are, because I met him at the same moment I lost my heart to a shiny red K2 seven-speed mountain bike. I bought it on Saturday afternoon, and five minutes later  I’d added silver sequins and a cupholder thanks to some judicious raiding of a friend’s garage. At her urging, she will henceforth be known as Bike Pimp. 

Living in Jackson, Wyoming, it’s more or less a town ordinance that you own a bike. I’d already skirted close to the edge of the Unspoken Laws of Jackson Hole by spending a whole winter not only never skiing, but not knowing how, so buying a bike seems a good way to simultaneously Do As The Romans Do and Do As I Damn Well Please. Plus, I’ve been duly warned that parking spaces downtown in the summer are somewhat akin to drinks on the rocks in Hell – possible, but only in a pretty narrow window – so a bike seemed like a practical way to avoid unnecessary homicidal urges.

Am I a big bike person? In terms of my level of enjoyment in a bike ride, yes. But keep in mind, I had to have someone explain to me what brand of bike I had and how to tell how many speeds it included (turns out speeds = gears and I = mechanically challenged).  I went into Hoff’s Bikesmith, where reside the least obnoxious “bike people” I’ve ever met, and asked for a basic mountain bike that would move forward when I pedaled, stop when I used the brakes and cost less than $300.
I got exactly what I wanted and was very happy about it. I also spent two days responding to questions about what kind of bike I had with “a red one.”

My previous bike-owning experience largely consisted of a very large and beat-up blue mountain bike affectionately known as The Wonder Steed that I used in college. The major selling points – a) it went forward when I pedaled and stopped when I put on the brakes b) it cost me about $20 c) the seat was purple with pink stars on it.
The brakes did have their tendencies to make a god-awful squeaking noise when used, but it got me reliably from point a to point b for my last two years of college. I learned how to effectively bike drunk and bike in heels on that baby, humiliated myself in a charity mini-triathlon riding it (oh such a long a story) and learned the fine art of noticing when my tires were low on air.

Clearly, this is never going to be a space to indulge in bike jargon. Or spandex. I hereby do not claim to be a hardcore biker, or even an especially good one.

However, I don’t think I could live in a better area to own a mountain bike.
I live minutes from Grand Teton National Park and I can get to and from Yellowstone National Park in a day’s drive with time left over for hiking. If you’re not into sharing space with the national park kind of tourist, I live one block from the Bridger-Teton National Forest, a few miles from the National Elk Refuge and an easy distance from the Caribou-Targhee National Forest. You get it; this is a good place to have eyes, and if you can see some of the great stuff around here, get Wonder Woman calves and thighs and bring a six-pack of beer with you with minimal effort, so much the better.

Bring it on, summer. My little red bike and I are ready for you.