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.

FatBikes - Who Knew?

As surprises absolutely no one, even less those people who know me, I periodically am wrong.

Like, remember when I said it’s too icy to ride a bike in Jackson winter streets?

I hereby correct myself by noting that fatbikes are a thing. In my defense, it never occurred to me that anyone would want to bike in the snow enough to invent such a thing.

I’m both too lazy and not interested enough to get into the technical details, but a fatbike has huge grippy tires to allow its rider to bike over the snow. A quick online perusal shows people use them for sand and mud as well. And apparently, modern dance poses wearing shorts and sports bras, because God knows every sport needs its scantily-clad women.

Someone else's little red fat bike - note the crazy tires. And the falling snow.

They’ve been popping up in my consciousness for a few weeks now. You know, just long enough to prove me wrong about biking in the winter.

I saw a whole group of people riding them at Grand Targhee Resort on a recent ski trip. When you still ski in the kids’ zone, you’re low enough that the out-of-bounds area isn’t so much an avalanche risk as nice deep snow in the woods, which apparently is the perfect terrain for a fun sub-zero bike ride. I’m not exaggerating, by the way. The high that day was eight degrees.

Then I saw an out-of-date ad for a FatBike Festival a few hours away in Island Park, Idaho. Granted, this area’s smaller wilderness towns (and I solidly include Jackson in this list) are prone to festivals. They break out in festivals at the drop of a hat in the hopes that manufactured excitement will be contagious and infect pocketbooks nationwide.  However, the ad did indicate to me that there are enough people who are into this whole fatbike thing that the town of Island Park thought forming a festival around it would be enough to draw people and their money to the area.

The sighting that sparked this post was just a few days ago when I passed by The Hub on my way to get a burrito at the place next door.

I’ll post a picture as soon as I remember to take one, but it will be of a fatbike with a “Rent Me” sign on it. And what look a lot like neoprene oven mitts attached to the handlebars, presumably to keep one’s hands warm.

The Hub, home of both helpful question answerers and snooty road bikers (as noted during the spring), is open in the winter! (who knew?) And they offer fatbikes for rent, presumably because there is enough demand to make it worth the effort.

I give up. Winter in Jackson Hole is apparently no reason not to put on your snow pants, stick a balaclava under your helmet, strap on a pair of oven mitts and hop on your bike. Even if you’re not on a fatbike, at least based on the person (well, I assume it was a person and not as appearances suggested, a bundle of weatherproof cloth with a helmet on top) riding a normal mountain bike down Snow King Avenue this morning.  Of course, the bike lanes play host to layers-deep frozen slush, so he (we'll go with he) was biking down the middle of the road, but you almost had to admire that kind of commitment to green transportation. Or being out of gas, which is a pretty powerful motivating factor to bike to work in my experience.

All that being said, my resolve to not bike during the winter is unchanged. When I can’t always get my car up icy hills in this town, it’s kind of asking for trouble to do the same on a bike. At least when I get stuck in my car, there’s a heater. And if there’s anything you learn from living through a Jackson winter, it's that you gotta love a heater, amirite?

Learning to ski is totally like learning to mountain bike: Introducing Little Blue Skis

I have come to the conclusion that I must have a subconscious grudge against my skeletal system. There are not many sports I enjoy that haven’t at one point killed someone and all my favorites commonly result in broken bones for the people who do them.

Mountain biking does indeed come to mind. This past summer I broke my bike rather than my bones when I fell, but I did end up with an excellent array of bruises and scrapes.

I rode horses for most of my childhood and a good chunk of college. I kept doing it in spite of the fact that I was possibly the only nine-year-old in the history of the barn I frequented to be bucked off by the gentlest, oldest horse in the place.

So naturally, I took up skiing about a month ago.

My little blue skis.

 I realize that this is supposed to be a bike-centric blog. The trouble is, riding bikes in the icy Jackson streets and sub-zero temperatures is just a bit too suicide-y even for me. Also, as I discovered this summer, there are only so many trails around here suitable for learning and practicing, and I foolishly didn’t take that into account when I planned out this blog.

Also, it turns out the two have more in common that first meets the eye.

 As I acknowledge above, both involve more falling than your average activity. As I took my first foray onto the slopes I felt bit like I did on a new cycling trail during the summer. Most notably, I once had to fall on purpose to avoid crashing into a huge wood cutout of a leering mouse in the kid's area.

 Dressing funny is part of the culture. Biking has spandex. Skiing has a look people refer to as “steezy.” People who use this word unironically appear to be trying to achieve an acid-trip homage to 90s Nickelodeon ads – lots of neon.
   
It is possible to spend more money than I make in a year on your gear. I got reasonably good gear for under $400. A brand-new setup I looked at earlier this year would have cost me $2,000 – without any accessories or associated clothing. And it was on sale.

Both sports are full of proselytizers. People who do much biking or much skiing are eager to tell you all about why the way they do it is the most awesome of all the ways and you should do it too. Skiing is even worse than biking. Skiers recruit with a passion for giving testimony I have not seen since my last Christian youth rally.

Skiing and biking are both seriously fun. What's not to love? I mean, sure you fall. Sure you end up with sore muscles and weird bruises. Sure you deal with terrain and weather (eight below ski day, anyone? I’ve totally done it.)
But both involve being outside, pumping adrenaline, getting solid exercise and racing down steep hills really, really fast.

Also, public safety announcement, both because it’s important and because my dad reads this blog and will bring it up later if I don’t put it in. Wear helmets biking and skiing. And horseback riding, for that matter. All of these things are much more fun when your brains stay inside your skull.

Aristophanes and the Perks of Biking

Ancient Greek drama isn't exactly a biking kind of topic for a lot of reasons. Among other things, I have biked in a dress and can only imagine biking in a toga is more difficult than that.

That being said, last night I suffered from a bit of humanities-in-college nostalgia. So I went to see The Frogs, which currently is playing various nights in August outside the National Museum of Wildlife Art.

In order to understand the biking story there are two things you should understand:
    1) "The Frogs" is written by Aristophanes. For those of you who didn't have to take a general humanities survey in college, he is considered "The Father of Comedy" and wrote him some pretty funny plays. He was also Greek in the time of togas and agoras and shit.
   2) Riot Act, Inc., the group in charge of this whole theatrical event is Jackson Hole's "alternative theater company." So in a town with a lot of hippies, they're the biggest hippies in the theater scene, which is kind of like being the biggest douchebag at a Ferrari dealership, only you're a lot more fun to be around.

The reason these things are important is that I arrived at the show only to find they'd been selling Greek pita picnic dinners. To those who biked or walked to the show, they sold Greek pita picnic dinners at a discounted price. Granted, it was only a $2 discount, but still, if a penny saved is a penny earned, that's earning 200 pennies. Plus, it's always nice to get that little "I got rewarded for reducing my carbon footprint and getting more exercise" glow that comes when you get Bike Perks.

So you see, Greek play - Greek food, alternative theater - alternative transportation. 

I totally rode my bike to the play last night. The National Wildlife Art Museum is an easy biking destination because it's right along the bike path between town and Grand Teton National Park. There's even a handy underpass from the pathway to the museum driveway so you don't have to cross the highway (my what a lot of ways), which is good, because tourists drive like morons the whole way to and from the park.

Trouble was, I'd already eaten, so really I saved $13 by not buying a picnic dinner at all. But it's nice to know I could have gotten a discount. And the cupcakes they sold had frosting that looked kind of like hummus, which freaked me out, so I saved $3.50 by not buying one of those either.

Oh, and the play was pretty good too. 

A Much Belated Ridin'...Wednesday: Jackson to Moose

Clearly, I suck. On the plus side, I made all my deadlines in real life. On the minus side, it's Wednesday and I'm just now getting around to telling you all about how you totally should check out the "North Highway 89" pathway.

Because you should. Everyone should, whether they have a bike or not. They should accio bicycle that shit (and if you don't know what that means, go read the Harry Potter series and examine your life closely). Or, you know, rent one or something.

Anyway. My experience riding it with Tori Freak was three parts fabulous and one part pure pain and suffering.

 

You ride about four miles before you get to the park entrance, the last mile and a half of which is spent on a pretty continuous uphill. I was proud of myself when I realized I didn't need the break Tori asked for at the sign here, although I'm not going to say I wasn't glad to take it.

We got up pretty early, considering we'd closed down the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar the night before. Luckily, our bike ride was our only Sunday plan, so we still had plenty of time to get our respective rears in gear. Sunday is probably the better of the two weekend days to get out into Grand Teton National Park. Most of the day's flights out of Jackson Hole leave in the morning, so the weekend tourists have already left by the afternoon.

Now, Tori didn't bring her own bike, having flown to Jackson from Arizona. Luckily, Bike Pimp's One-Stop Don't Pay For It Shop (ie: her garage) yielded a spare mountain bike that she was willing to let Tori borrow. It was hot out, but pretty windy as we started down the path. Sunscreen and chapstick definitely were in order. A huge plus with this whole planning a ride weeks in advance thing is you remember to bring that kind of stuff.

In the early stages, the path swoops up and down as you pass through by the river bottoms where the park shares a boundary with the Gros Ventre Wilderness. It's gloriously pretty there - and head's up, these are the last trees you're going to see until you get to the Snake River, which is almost to Moose.

Once you're past the Gros Ventre Junction, your view is pretty consistently this:

The whole ride, the Tetons are just looming up on your left. People get in car wrecks on this highway because they were watching the Tetons and not the road. That's how distracting they are. Riding the pathway, along with being a nice long, almost totally flat ride, is also the best way to see just as much of the Tetons as you'd like. You even pass a turnout about two-thirds of the way to Moose that makes a good spot to rest, hydrate (remember this was an 80-degree day) and gawk. The view on the right is basically a field of sagebrush with a few hills in the far distance, so there's really no comparison.

You get your own underpass to cross the highway at Moose Junction. Handy, given the number of tourists that are turning left across the highway in their RVs at that point. At Moose Junction, you start biking along Inner Park Loop Road instead of Highway 89 - fun fact, Inner Park Loop Road is cyclists and pedestrians only during April. Trouble was, I didn't know which road was Inner Park Loop when I got my bike and it was practically May by then. Next year, y'all, next year.

The Moose Visitor's Center isn't far from the highway, and by the time we got there, we were pretty much out of time.  The path continues on to Jenny Lake, which is well worth the seeing. However, we wanted to have time for our much-anticipated Two Woman Stir Fry Party (ie; making stir fry and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer reruns) that night, and we had a few hours left of biking to get back to town.

We stopped in at the Moose Visitor's Center so I could snag a year-round park pass for Yellowstone and the Tetons ($50 bucks, LRMB-ers) and we could rehydrate.

PS: This is the view from Moose

So thus far we have the fabulous. Now, on the way back to town, comes the pain and suffering. Turns out the wind kicked up while we explored Moose, and the moment we turned back onto the highway the wickedest cross wind in the West threatened to knock us over.

You think I'm exaggerating, but I'm not. The wind came across the sagebrush flats in gusts that literally pushed us both sideways. I don't know for sure about Tori, but every last muscle I had was tensed to keep me upright and moving forward, given how hard the wind was trying to convince me that I really wanted to head off to the left. Or maybe just collapse leftwards. I know Tori and I both spent the ride back in low gears so we could pedal enough to maintain forward momentum.

Suffice it to say we were approaching too tired to move by the time we got back and were more than glad to sit completely still while Buffy did all the work. The good news? Even in those circumstances, the Teton views were good enough we still decided the ride was totally worth it.

Ride Preview: Jackson to Moose

When you start up your mountain biking hobby/addiction in the early spring, you end up hearing a lot more buzz than you can ever make sense of until much later. At least, that's the case in Jackson Hole, where an early thaw leaves outdoor enthusiasts in a lather of anticipation for the late spring opening days of the national forests and parks.

This year, the big news of the winter was the completion of a brand spanking-new bike path allowing those so inclined to bike from the center of town out to Jenny Lake in Grand Teton National Park. A lot of the buzz I heard made me feel slightly dizzy trying to follow it, especially since Jackson locals seem to utterly lose sight of what is and isn't comprehensible to outsiders after a year or so in town. However, that tidbit stuck and stuck hard. Before I was entirely sure what kind of bike I had, I knew I wanted to take it on the new path.

A view of the path, courtesy of Dornan's at Moose. Visit www.dornans.com to see the image in its original habitat and to read about other fun things to do in the park. 

When a dear college friend - Tori Freak, we'll call her - paid me a visit, I thought it sounded like the perfect opportunity to get out and check out the park on bikeback. Since I enticed Tori to town by sending her pictures of the Tetons, she was definitely up for a prolonged journey in their full view.

So I borrowed Bike Pimp's spare mountain bike and ramped up the excitement levels. Biking on my own is a totally different animal from biking with a friend. Since most of my biking friends are several skill levels above me, I tend to be a solitary creature on the trails and paths of Jackson Hole. Not only seeing Tori again, but sharing my new home and new hobby with her was definitely going to be an unexpected treat.

My route: Cache St. to Jackson-Moose bike path to Moose Visitor Center

Surface - Pavement the whole way

Incline - There is one extended uphill stretch from the National Elk Refuge to the national park entrance, and then a series of smaller ones between the park entrance and Gros Ventre Junction. Past Gros Ventre, the path and the terrain are almost totally flat.

Distance: 14 miles one way

What you'll see: So much of the Tetons! That stretch of path runs parallel to the Tetons the whole way to Moose Junction, and the sagebrush doesn't do much to block your view. Probably the least obstructed views of the whole range you can get. You also cross the Gros Ventre and Snake Rivers on your way there and back. If you're lucky, you might run into bison, elk or other members of the park's Wildlife Brigade.

Local biking news or This kind of terrifies me

Hello LRMB-ers!

After an early July full of doin' stuff (that obviously wasn't blogging) I'm back with something of a horror story. And a kind of creepy little girl to go with it.

Just in case all the scrapes on my legs and scratches on my bike I've picked up on the trails weren't enough to remind me that I seem to be attempting a decently extreme sport (who'd've thunk it?), the Jackson Hole Daily ran this article over the weekend.

The essence of the piece went like this:

"A Jackson mountain biker went to the hospital after being rescued Friday afternoon from the Cache Creek area.

Teton County Search and Rescue volunteers retrieved Derek Collins, 38, after a crash on the Ferrin Trail.

He sustained “substantial injuries,” in the accident, rescue coordinator Tim Ciocarlan said." 

To read about the rescue and the details of how the wreck happened, follow the link to jhnewsandguide.com's archives. The article notes that he crashed when he took his eyes off the trail for a second.

I will grant you that I am not yet at the ability level to ever take my eyes off the trail, because even when I'm staring right at them, rocks are tricky little bastards lying in wait to wreak havoc on my forward momentum. I also am still on the Kindergarten-level trails in the National Forest, meaning I can't even handle the trail that leads to the Ferrin Trail.

However, word on the street is Collins dislocated his hip, which is clearly a nasty-ass way to end a summer afternoon. This biking shit can get serious. And yet I still went out on the trails this weekend, which probably says something negative about my sanity, 

So good luck and speedy recovery to Derek Collins and here's hoping none of the rest of us (including me) have to call on Search and Rescue any time soon.