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.

Ladybiking Love Redux

In a continuing trend of shamelessly using Women's History Month as a chance to talk feminism on a biking blog - I found some pretty interesting stats to share with all my LRMB-ers. Even those who aren't such fans of this series of posts (at this point a series of two, but still).

So it turns out, biking, like everything else, used to be a huge boys' club and really isn't anymore. Overall, it's still a smallish boys' club, with about 51 percent of all cycling users possessing manbits. But among young 'uns like me (ages 18-27) it's actually 60-40 the other way.

All this according to a study by the Gluskin Townley Group that includes data up to 2012, by the way.

Jay Townley, owner of VendorLink Cycling and a founder of said group (notice the last name linkup) had the following to say in a February magazine article I'm too lazy to cite right now. Mostly because it's in a PDF format I can't really link to:

"From about 1995 to around 2007 [upper-middle class men] spent more and more money on their sport, and turned bicycling into a very exclusive upper-income, white mens club that made too many U.S. bike shops unfriendly, intimidating territory for non-bicyclists and latent bicyclists."

I've never put it in those terms exactly, but he's pretty much describing the Obnoxious Bike People trend I so snarked on during the summer. In Jackson, all this is compounded by the fact that biking (and in fact, most sports) are the domain of upper-income, white, really in shape men. So where you encounter it, the atmosphere is unfriendly, intimidating and suffused with a particularly bad brand of superiority complex.

Now, I realize that the fact that I can afford a bike, have the free time to take it to the trails and mostly have the health insurance to deal with the physical risks means I'm pretty darn lucky. In fact, if it didn't feel like biking and outdoor sports were the reflection of larger culture in this particular regard, I'd probably just avoid that crowd. You mostly can here; the wilderness is a big place, and a the overall biking community is reasonably friendly. 

But when biking is yet another place the needs, wants and role of women, people of color and lower income folks have just not been a part of forming the culture?

Well, just like everywhere else with a ways to go on this issue, you end up with one major norm. If you don't match it, you feel a little unwelcome, a little wrong when you get out there because to a vocal subset of the people doing the same thing, you don't belong. You're doing it wrong just by being you.
Sure I can deal with it and move on, but not everyone can. And that really sucks, because they shouldn't have to.

Biking is great, as I've said before. There should be as few barriers to doing it as possible, and for sure none related to something as stupid as a lack of diversity. If nothing else, I hope that as the industry adjusts to a new image of the typical cyclist, it shatters that unfriendly, intimidating atmosphere surrounding parts of the culture.

Remember how people in Jackson are nuts?

Well, people in Jackson are nuts.

Every few weeks during the winter, I've spotted someone, against all logic, riding a damn bike. Every time, there's been some reason I can't provide proof - usually that reason is my deep-seated desire to not crash my car, since I tend to be driving at the time.

But! Even when I'm driving I must occasionally stop at a red light. This week I stopped at a red light, and this mad biking fool rode across the street in front of me. Heading down the highway to Wilson, I might add, which is a solid 40 minute ride at least, with no consistent bike path.

The roads are much better than they were even a week ago. However, the unpictured bike lanes often are not. In fact, they're usually worse because the snow is mostly gone and the ice is mostly not.

And for those of you who are wondering what those white specks are all over the picture...it's definitely snowing. If memory serves, it was something like 20 degrees out at the time. After a Jackson winter, that can seem warm, but I still wouldn't want to create my own wind chill.

So yeah - we get a different breed of biker here. One that's nuts.

On the plus side, spring is coming a little more every day, and if I can't ski, I darn well want to bike. So fingers crossed everyone!

Little Blue Skis: Pow pow gnar gnar (apparently)

Skiing, like anything that gathers a cult following, has a lore and vocabulary all its own. The holy grail, the perfect game, the triple-word score of that lore is the powder day.

You can tell this is a big deal because a lot of the less comprehensible vocabulary words seem to center around it, making those people fluent in ski-speak sound like Batman fighting while discussing a cocaine habit. As an example, "pow pow gnar gnar" seems to be a good thing. "Shredding the powder," definitely is, since I know what that one means.

I had my first powder day last month, and yeah, that stuff is great. It's definitely hard to explain. I never understood the enthusiasm of hardcore skiers about it and I still haven't really gotten into the deeper stuff of dudely skier sonnets, but trust me, a day of fresh powder/snow is fun.

My little blue skis covered in powdery goodness. But not cocaine.

As an example, I've gotten a lot better about the whole notion of hurtling down a frozen mountain with sticks on my feet, but there's still a part of me that can't quite be convinced the whole thing isn't a Bugs Bunny-style plot to cause me admittedly improbable injuries.

It mostly shuts up on the green (easy) runs, but every time I tackle a new blue (intermediate) run, the interior monologue is something like this:

Rational brain: "Ok, let's DO this!"

Looney Tunes brain: "No."

RB:"Oh come on. Just make wider turns to cut your speed. You'll get there."

LTB: "That little snotnose snowboarder kid is watching me. It's a sign. I'll end up falling so my knees bend the wrong way and get stuck like that. Then he'll run me over and point and laugh and they'll have to call Ski Patrol to save me and they'll point and laugh and I'll never ever get down."

RB: "Seriously? I'm going without you."

The monologue as I tried a brand new run on my first powder day was a lot more like this:

RB: "Ok, let's DO this!"

LTB: "No. That stuff looks different."

RB: "And a lot softer. Falling might not suck this way."

LTB: "Well...Hey! I didn't agree to this!"

RB: "But look! We're floating! This is awesome!"

LTB: "Hey, we are! This is awesome! *pause* But you still suck."

LRMB Quick News Hit

From a Teton County press release I got today:

Work Begins on Wyoming 22 Pathway Project

Jackson Hole Community Pathways, a joint program of the Town of Jackson and Teton County, is pleased to announce the highly anticipated kick off to the Wyoming 22 Pathway project.  The selected contractor, Cannon Builders Inc., will begin constructing the Snake River pathway bridge this week.  Crews and equipment will begin arriving at the construction staging area at Emily’s Pond on Wednesday, March 6th.  The pathway bridge is the first segment of the Path 22 project that will, upon completion, connect the west bank of the Snake River to the Town of Jackson via a separated, non-motorized pathway.

Now, I hate press releases. Always have, always will. But I'm sharing the relevant pieces of this one, courtesy of Teton County Spokeswoman Charlotte Reynolds, because this is cool Jackson news, y'all! Basically, this is a big deal, because once the pathway's complete, I can ride from town to this neat park along the Snake River without going through the "Y" intersection.

That's where Highway 22 and Highway 89 meet up, and it is beyond sketchy to ride a bike in that area. I almost died at least twice last summer just trying to ride to a bar that's located just outside town on that highway. Also, fun fact! According to the Jackson Hole News&Guide, the paper in these parts, that intersection is the site of 30 percent of the town's bike -vs.-car accidents.

All reasons why I'll put up with press releases to know that this shit is finally going down. It'll go down slowly, because construction work. But it's going down.

Happy Tuesdays, LRMB-ers!

Ladybiking Love or Did You Know It's Women's History Month?

Women's History Month always warms the cockles of my little feminist, mountain biking, skiing heart. (For those of you who need to be more on the ball about these things, that's March, which totally starts today). I was scanning the interwebz in honor of the occasion and stumbled across something pretty darn cool.

The League of American Bicyclists has a super awesome post about the role of bikes in feminism up today, which all my LRMB-ers should totally check out if they have the time.

The highlight? This quote from badass suffragette Susan B. Anthony: 

“Let me tell you what I think of bicycling,” she said. “I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel… the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.”
Keep in mind, because society has always enjoyed telling women what to wear, she said this while seeing women dressed like this:

Now, I will snark on spandex with the best of them, but guys, these ladies are wearing corsets. As in, actual whale bones compressing your entire chest and abdomen. And along with those ridiculous skirts, they have whole layers of petticoats underneath. I'm not totally sure how they're pulling this off. But they're still biking.

Lesson? Biking is awesome, and so are women. These particular women are awesome because this was quite literally one of the only ways their society allowed them to just be outside and use their bodies exactly as they pleased.

Now, I'm going skiing this weekend, which is something I definitely couldn't do in those skirts, but I'll be thinking of those women.

Biking and skiing are things I'm learning because I love to challenge my body and find new ways to use it. But no one, least of all me, should forget that having the sense of ownership in my time and myself that takes is a freedom that had to be won for me, that had to be won for every single woman out on the mountain with me this weekend. The League of American Bicyclists will be posting about some of the women who put in that work throughout the month, and I'll be keeping track of that.

Since Lord knows, I won't be biking (not until walking is less treacherous, anyway) I'm hoping to find the time to celebrate Women's History Month here on LRMB every so often. So along with fatbike spotting, ski adventuring and anxiously awaiting the chance to get Little Red back out and into the swing of things, watch for a little ladybiking love to come your way.

Or at least, know that I'll do my best.