Dirtbag Stage Racing

(It’s a real thing!)

The last few weeks have been a crazy mix of old and new. Old friends in new places, new friends in old places, friendless in old places, friended in new ones; in short I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing. I’m like this big anxious mass of memories wading awkwardly through the present with half an eye on the future- I’m generally not having much luck at anything. According to 30somethings, this is how 20somethings are supposed to feel, which is really comforting. Really.

So I try to verbalize. I thought about lists, photo blogs and a how-to guide I had no business writing. I even thought about making a really reflective, sincere effort at processing this last chunk of life, but instead I’m just going to pick a few things and reminders that have made me really happy in the last twenty days, four states, and eight couches/beds/sleeping bags. Because without the stuff that makes you happy, what’s the point?

Chicken Soup in a Ball Jar

I was really sick when I drove to New Mexico to race Gila, but I’d already paid the entry fee so damnit, I was going! My mom loaded me up with herbs and soul food for the drive, and I prepared for what I fully assumed would be the hardest four days of my short, melodramatic life. The first two stages did indeed feel like death but day three felt ok, and by the time I rolled up to my last start I’d kicked my fever and pedaling felt great. It’s very likely that Moms and Chicken Soup alone could keep the world turning.

Dirtbag Stage Racing

Turns out you can have a lot of fun bike racing while also sleeping in a van and cooking all your meals on a camp stove. Special thanks to Silver City KOA for supplying showers and cookies(!) Javelina coffee for letting me loiter excessively over my kombucha, and my pals Kim and Marcus for extracting me from my van when I got lonely. Thanks also to ziploc for making the magical sealed glass tupperware, my new favorite travel item.

Little Kids

…And big ones. The kids I coach are awesome. Seriously. They ride their bikes on/in/through everything and their constant shenanigans remind me why I started doing this pedaling thing in the first place. They all have badass  spirit animals, sport terrifying tanlines and can probably beat you at your sport of choice. They’re also a big part of the reason I’m training at all right now… must. keep. up.

Montana Afternoons

Old friends, rooftops, warm nights- I’m really going to miss summer in Bozeman this year. I felt so incredibly lucky to have a few days back in town  for some quick friendspiration, coffee in old haunts and unabashed groping of rocks- no matter how much time I spend elsewhere, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fully quit that place. And I mean, how could I when my cruiser bike still resides there? 

(To whoever stole my cruiser bike; Karma is coming. That is all.)

Drytooling

Because sometimes you’ve just gotta get on the ceiling.

Long Drives

Made better by a climbing intermission in Lander. The limestone there reminded me of Spain, and dramatic skies made for good contemplation. We climbed a few pitches, then disposed of burgers and malts in quantities completely disproportionate to our exertions. Through Splitrock by twilight- here’s to adding new memories to old roads.

Great Danes

Or just this one. Because he’s a total sweetheart and everything he does is hilarious.

I try to Verbalize, but it seems like I can never do these things justice. I used to write funny reports about bike racing. Then I wrote sad reports about not bike racing. Now I write hopelessy jumbled reports about some bike racing and some other things. Love the struggle! Or something like that… Thanks for checking in.

Impossible

“Just kind of stack your fingers in there and twist them till they get stuck”

Say what?

I’m learning the masochistic art of crack climbing and nothing makes sense anymore. My once-articulate fingers have morphed essentially into meat-cams, and my toes are contorted sideways and wedged into the crack. Even on toprope my panicked head is acutely aware that nothing more than their combined friction is keeping me attached to the rock

Above, I see two endless sheer walls of blank red stone; below the same. I feel like a speck lodged improbably at a strange vertical crossroads, and the crack is getting smaller.

Up, down, left, right- I breathe to myself and finally just jam my mangled fingertips into the seam above, grappling for some sense of security. No dice- my hips swing out and I’m off.

It’s a pretty typical introduction to this side of the sport. You’re given something impossible, and then you flail at it and try to make it something else. All signs continue to indicate that “impossible” is indeed the case, but then something happens; your body finds just the right way to jam or friction or in some cases just brutally will itself upward, and impossible begins to change. It’s that easy.

pristine new tape glove and happy fingies

Soul Searching

So I’m in Spain. In a climbing hostel in the small town of Finestrat, to be specific.  I’m still a little baffled about how exactly I ended up here, but I can say that when someone offers to barter with you for tutoring, you should just go with it. Especially if you’ve already rationed off the time for “soul searching.”

I’m trying to make peace with that term but to be honest I kind of hate it. Are you searching your soul or searching for your soul? More importantly, what do you expect to find?

It seems like people often say they’re “soul searching” because they’re uncomfortable saying they’re uncertain, that they don’t know what the hell they’re doing, or (god forbid) that they’re doing nothing. Rest assured, I am fully happy admitting that I am all of those things (and more!) but sometimes it’s hard to explain that to people. 

Instead I wish I could explain my perfect occupation, to which I will soon be happy to devote myself.  I wish I could explain the thrilling plans I have to use the degree I supposedly got, but the truth is I haven’t got a plan and sometimes I wonder if my degree is even real. It’s hard to explain (to both others and myself) why I quit a perfectly decent job and moved back to my parents’ house, so I don’t. I just say I’m Soul Searching, and then I try not to gag as the words come out of my mouth.

All I can really offer in way of defense for being uncertain, not knowing what the hell I’m doing and, in fact, doing a lot of nothing, is that it’s the only thing I haven’t tried yet. I’ve been driven, I’ve been efficient, I’ve worked hard and I’ve reached all sorts of goals- yet none of it brought me more than a fleeting sense of satisfaction, usually based on someone else’s approval. So in hopes of finding the bedrock this soul’s supposed to stand on, I decided to just hold still, keep my eyes open and let myself settle to the bottom.

What’s strange is that as soon as I resolved to do this, I got swept over to a different country, where I’ve been surrounded by endless winding roads and more limestone than I could climb in a lifetime. A nice Spanish lady grabbed both my cheeks and my ass during our brief conversation this morning, and a few days ago some Germans offered me their dachsund as we rode through a thunderstorm. Last night I got to walk home through impossibly narrow streets as the sun set over the olive orchards and a sea breeze tickled my face. I’ve learned British climbing grades and I ate some baby squids.

Ah, yes. I can feel it all becoming clear now…

To the Desert!

“What’s your best Moab story?”

We’re five hours on the road and my little brother is getting desperate. I’ve resorted to my old fallback, the Lady Gaga pandora station; he’s apparently resorting to conversation.

“Uhhh…”

How much do I tell him? Is this my baby brother, whose diapers I changed and whose cartoons I censored? Or is he finally a peer, a partner in crime- a true road trip buddy? I mean, he is taller than me now- that counts for something, right?

Moab has had a pull on me since I first saw my mom cry on slickrock. She was very pregnant with my future road trip buddy and we were stranded in the middle of a biblical storm, of the sort that cause those legendary desert flash-floods. Don’t ask me what a pregnant lady was doing out there- or any of us, for that matter. My mom works in mysterious ways.

In short, I was terrified, she was terrified, my grandpa and other brother were terrified, but for some reason my memory skips from that snapshot (the rain, the rocks, the terror) to one of us sitting happily in the back of our station wagon, munching our way through a shocking quantity of skittles while a corresponding rainbow bloomed over the red rocks. Moab has remained that way in my mind- awesomely powerful when upset, but inevitably too beautiful and too magnetic to stay scared of for long.

So I’ve kept going back, and every time I do those rocks speak to me. I could tell my brother about my friends getting married under the arches, about the weak beer and semi-legal campsites, about the bonks, scrapes, cactuses, tears, vomit, hangovers, and that persistent, pervasive red sand. I could tell him about the sunflower-plastered trailer we once crammed 15 people into or the tents with only stars for company, but should I?

Lady Gaga offers some sage advice: “can’t find my drink or man, where are my keys I lost my phone- what’s going on on the floor?”

I shrug and spill it. He is taller than me now, after all.

Goodbye Bozeman

After nearly two years as a professional hostess, I finally decided to call it quits. I thought about going all office space on my apron or making some kind of scene involving menus, chalk boards and those little black paper clips- but in the end I just decided to step back, appreciate the place I’ve been a part of, and enjoy my last few weeks with the best coworkers I’ve ever had.

And then, almost by accident, I found myself once again moving my life into my car. One moment I had a comfortable nest lined with memories and the little decorations I’ve gathered over the years- the next I was drinking boxed wine in my sleeping bag, surrounded by bare walls and with no real plans save movement.

The weeks since then have been a blur of snow, ice and goodbyes. Bozeman has an uncanny way of becoming the best place in the world the minute you decide to leave…

SNOW/COOKE CITY

Since I first heard about it, Cooke has been a mystical land steeped in lore of avalanches and epic snowfall. Basically I’ve understood it as a place to either have a ton of fun or die. Luckily Ullr gifted us with a relatively stable snowpack and some fresh new pow for the fresh new year, so we headed over to check it out.

A short skin got us to the Woody Creek Cabin; the coolest fort ever and our gateway to some really beautiful backcountry skiing. We made a valiant effort to ring in the new year right, but despite an abundance of champagne and some semi-violent card games, we ended up citing time zone differences and lighting our sparklers at about 8:30…

Somewhere between breakfast and enough vert to toast my legs, I remembered that it’s been close to two years since I’ve seen real powder. I ride a pair of skis shaped like baby dolphins, but I’ve never really seen what they can do. In fact I almost sold my whole setup and swore off skiing forever this year- I was sick of falling off things and getting hurt. The verdict: I’m glad I didn’t. You really just can’t beat a bluebird day in the backcountry with your friends.

ICE/HYALITE

It took me nearly five years in Bozeman to discover the bizarre world of vertical frozen water. I resisted for a long time because, lets face it, ice climbing sounds really dumb.
Fortunately the snow was so bad last year that I was left with few other choices. Before I knew it I was shaking out screaming barfies, drytooling for fun and finding those rare moments of quiet, freezing exposure with just the sound of water bubbling somewhere below.

I really like ice. I like how it can be elastic or brittle or sticky or colorful or bubbly, and I like playing on it.  I didn’t really give a crap about rope systems or going up anything until I met ice- and then I knew I wanted to learn more about all this nonsense. So I did, and now I’m in trouble again because the more I learn the more I want to know.

I’m sad that my season in Hyalite was so short this year, but I’m glad I got to pay homage, wear knives on my feet, rap in the dark a few times (as per tradition), and suppress my own vomit while my hands struggled back to life. It sounds unlikely, but interspersed between these moments of intense discomfort lie moments of sublime beauty. Like I said, it’s a bizarre world.

GOODBYES/BOZEMAN

I’m going to keep this short and sweet; my friendships in Bozeman have changed who I am forever, and I treasure each one, new and old. I vastly underestimated how it would feel to leave- but in a bittersweet way I feel really lucky that it turned out to be so difficult. It just means I’ll be back someday. For now; on to the next adventure!

above photo: Travis Corthouts

Dream Machine

It’s that time of year again, when it’s cold and not yet snowy; shoulder season, the doldrums. I don’t have anything to train for these days, but I’ve been riding the trainer a bit, just to take the edge off. As I was pedaling/staring at the wall the other day, running all the familiar thoughts through my head, I realized that my road bike is eight years old. I don’t know how old that is in bike years, but it’s a hell of a lot of trainer time together.

Eight years means I met this bike when I was fifteen, which means that it knew me before I’d left home, started college, started drinking coffee, or even had my first real boyfriend. It’s stuck around longer than every boy since, and no matter how much I neglect it or how often I crash, it’s always right there when I need it.

This bike has traveled to California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Arizona, Utah and Colorado. I’ve ridden it, driven it, and packed it in boxes. Once, I had to clean feathers and guts out of the cable housings after an unfortunate incident with a flock of Wyoming sparrows. When I crashed my car in Island Park it hit the ceiling so hard the derailleur hanger got bent- but we were both ok. I’ve slept next to this bike on the floors of strangers houses and woken up with chain grease on my face- it’s every mile the vagabond I am.

I’ve sweated on this bike, I’ve cried on this bike, and I’ve bled on it plenty. I’ve ridden it with my arm in a sling, I’ve ridden it with stitches in my knees (don’t tell my surgeon) and I’ve ridden it in all states of fitness or… otherwise. It never judges me, but it always forces me to be honest, which I grudgingly appreciate- It’ll never tell me I look good in those jeans if I don’t.

And we’ve both had plenty of parts fixed up or replaced over the years. A set of new tires here, an ACL there, plenty of nuts and bolts between the two of us- this bike knew me before my knees looked like this:

and not many people I know can even say that.

I tied this weird piece of hemp onto the handlebars six years ago to remind myself never to take racing too seriously. Afterwards I ate an entire container of vanilla cake frosting and proceeded to vomit it up during (and after) a criterium. Not sure what the lesson was there, but the hemp remains!

This bike and I have poured dreams and ambitions out onto the pavement together. It’s usually the training tool and rarely the machine I “race,” but that means it’s seen my daily moments of hopelessness and of determination, when the routine of training seems utterly stupid or utterly transcendent. It’s calmed my frenetic brain for eight years, and through simple acts like reaching a new town or the top of a hill, it’s taught me that our limits only ever exist in our heads.

I’ve met some of my best friends aboard this bike.  I’ve also had some of my best solitary time, on those mornings when the seasons are changing and you’ve got the horizon to yourself. But it’s not that time anymore- it’s trainer time, staring at walls time, and that’s oddly comforting lately. Almost everything about my life has changed drastically in the last eight years; this bike’s one of the few that haven’t.

 

Like Riding a bike…

photo: Aaron Bennett

…only totally different.

As with many things I love to do, I once approached cyclocross with a semi-irrational hatred based on one bad weekend. I’d gutted myself a few times on my seat, fallen over a couple barriers, and discovered how quickly my adolescent heart rate could skyrocket out of control. My (equally adolescent) conclusion: Cyclocross Is Dumb. And Hard.

Yet as I’ve become older and less wise, riding around on dirt with skinny tires has begun to look less and less insane- and I love nothing more than being an absolute noob, so I figured I’d give it a try.

In my first race I was vanquished handily by an eleven year old. I crossed the finish line coughing that rusty blood-taste and grinning maniacally- this was familiar. This was fun! I picked another race and asked local sensei Lisa Curry if she could make me a ‘cross rider in twenty days. Training had officially begun.

If you know Lisa at all, it’s probably not difficult to imagine her sitting serenely inside a
pagoda while I carry my bike up endless flights of stairs and practice punching my way through barriers. Occasionally I try to beat Lisa, but she is supernaturally quick and always just makes me look silly, as a true sensei should.

In fact, I’m pretty sure that at one point in our training she even said “It is the board that should fear you!” which is totally cool. Add to that some bleeding knuckles, a scene of me struggling to feed myself at night and the basics of the five-point palm exploding heart technique, and you’ve got (more or less) my month leading up to Rolling Thunder. I figured I was about as ready as I was going to get.

Still, I spent the three hours en route to Missoula filled with doubt. After all, ‘cross is unpredictable, and if I was honest with myself, my month of “training” really just boiled down to a day of running around a field with Lisa and then watching Kill Bill.  I had to admit that I still only knew how to explode a heart anaerobically- and then the injuries I’ve had this year started to speak to me. In a nutshell I was really nervous. But then my old racer brain kicked in, the part of me that is stubborn to the point of my own ruination, and I knew there was no turning back.

Now picture a (large) group of spandex-clad cyclists dancing gangham-style between port-a-potties and tents. Everywhere you look there are beers, wigs, tutus, beers, money, beers- and the race t-shirt features a honey badger with demonic glowing eyes. I pulled up my knee socks, doubts dissolved; after all, ‘cross is unpredictable. I’d come to the right place.

For those with less imagination:

The race itself is a blur, literally. All I really know is that myself and nearly fifty other women (in widely varying stages of sobriety and costume) raced from twilight well into the night. Lucky for me the course was more like a MTB short track than a road race, leaving little room to think about old injuries or anything not immediately related to keeping the rubber side down. Focusing is a funny thing to suddenly remember you can do.

At one point I was pedaling desperately through a sand pit while a rowdy gang of middleschoolers tried to hand me beer and dollar bills. “Take the money! Take the money!” they screamed, running next to me and drenching me in alcohol. It was good to see the next generation in acton.

Between the community in Boulder who got a bike together for me and the community in Missoula for putting on such a great event, I was feeling the love from cycling this weekend- something I’ve been missing for about two years. The course was thickly padded with heckling spectators. The prizes were awesome and plentiful, and everyone was just, well, stoked. I caught up with old friends, made new ones, and for the first time in my life three laps to go actually seemed like too few.

Another Conversation with an Inanimate Object:

Me: Hey, bike. It’s… been a while. 

Bike: …

Me: Uh… I bet you heard about the other sports.

Bike: …

Me: Oh come on. I just needed a change- I thought about you the whole time, I promise. Even when I was climbing. You’re the best, bike. You know I love you more.

Bike: …

Me: You’re seriously not going to say anything? After all we’ve been through together, you have nothing to say to me?

Bike: …

Me: Ok. I guess it’s pretty unreasonable to expect you to talk.

Bike: …

Me: Look, I got you your favorite kind of trail. We’re on an epic, just like old times! Please take me back? We don’t have to talk if you don’t want…

Bike:

I can’t remember my last mountain bike crash, and I’m glad I finally had one. I’ve been treating myself like glass for six months while my knee heals, and getting pitched into a garden of sharky rocks felt strangely cathartic. It reopened not only old scars but the channels of communication between me and my bike- from that moment on I felt like a rider again. Except, of course, for the fitness part.

The cool thing about being four hours into the wilderness is that it doesn’t matter how out of shape you are. I am definitely not as strong as I have been on the bike, and I’m no longer a fearless eighteen-year-old bent on fame and glory (read: I’m slow as shit) but once you’re out there you’ve got to keep moving, and the sooner you make peace with yourself the better. I started my ride with intense criticism of myself and a lot of “you should be able to’s,” but the woods don’t care about things like that and eventually I didn’t either.

About the time the ride turned epic at hour six, it all just came back to the simple things I’ve always loved about this sport; the sun, the dirt, the speed, and the rusty smell of my blood drying, mixed with the mineral hints of loam and the familiar musk of pine. I love how acquaintances become comrades, comrades become family, and food becomes gold. I’m slow and slightly fearful, maybe, but I’m living the good life.

Back to the Plateau

When we were little our parents loved to take my brother and me backpacking, though why exactly remains unclear. We were notorious for forgetting our shoes, dropping important things in water, and quickly consuming huge quantities of dried apricots (to disastrous effects). I have distinct memories of bushwhacking in tears through the twilight,
of the beanie babies we’d stow around the tent, and of my dogs paws, bloody from snowy miles covered. She usually found some poop to eat right before bed, giving her a unique odor which, combined with tent fabric and our four sweaty bodies, eventually came to
form the smell by which I identify family.

I was thinking about them as I stumbled into the Beartooths last week wearing my ice climbing boots. True to form, I’d forgotten my shoes, and was quite thankful to have something in the car more wearable than the legendary red cowboy boots my brother had once sported in a similar situation. They’d dyed his legs bright red from knee to toe for about a week afterwards.

My ice boots didn’t dye my legs, but compared to the little sneakers I’m used to backpacking with, they did make me feel like a drunk robot for about the first four miles. The 22 after that felt fine.

Safety Pins

When I woke up yesterday, there was a bike race going on; not the one happening in Sun Valley but a criterium running literally around my house. This was just another in a long string of events that seem to be wafting me back towards cycling- and so far the hardest to ignore. I rolled out of bed, made a french press and some oatmeal, and then sat on the curb watching the cat5 masters race to the death. Shit, was what I thought to myself. Shit.

I walked down to registration barefoot, found old friends and familiar forms, and signed up. Cat4. One-day license. I’ve only been pedaling semi-regularly for about two weeks, but how could I ignore a race happening around my house? It was like the universe was dangling it in front of my nose, and I ended up thinking about my teammate Erin Huck, who once said that for her racing off the couch is far better than racing overtrained. I could believe it even if I’d never experienced it, yet in the nervy hours before warmup I wondered how far into the couch I’d actually sunk. The logical indicator, obviously, was safety pins.

See, there was a time in my life when I was in possession of an absurd number of safety pins. When I needed ten I usually grabbed twelve, and the spares slowly filled the ashtrays of my car, my toiletry bags, my purses- until at any moment I was prepared to pin a number on a jersey. Like if a race struck as I was brushing my teeth, for example.

I hadn’t been expecting to pin any numbers any time soon, but it was still a strange shock yesterday, when I suddenly needed them, to find that the safety pins had gone. None in my purses, none in my toiletry bags- even the ashtrays of my car were deserted, though one held a lonely pair of brake pads. Finding those felt like discovering some sort of artifact, which was when I realized it’s been kind of a long time since I entered a bike race.

As I pedaled around through my old warmup, I continued to wonder somewhat idly if I’d gotten completely out of shape. I felt fine, but along with the safety pins my computers were ancient history- I had no idea what the numbers indicating my watts, heart rate, or even my speed were doing. Maybe I was feeling fine because I was pedaling two miles an hour. Maybe my watts were that of a small child. The safety pins were gone, after all. It was possible that I was no longer on, but rather in or even under the couch.

Luckily I drag raced a truck as the official conclusion to my warmup. The driver stayed next to me a little longer than drivers usually do, and I glanced over and smiled, in case they were getting ideas about running me off the road. Peace, driver- I mean you no harm. We went like that together for a while more until she rolled down her window. I flinched, expecting the customary barrage of criticism and/or a beer can to the face, but she just yelled, “You’re doing 25!!” and gave me a grinning thumbs up. I laughed and gave a thumbs up back- who needs computers?? Safety pins? Pah.

Thus I rolled up to the start with a stupid, shit eating grin on my face. It didn’t go away until long after the finish. I rode really hard and it felt amazing. Just amazing. Erin was so right, and now I’m wondering just how far I can take this undertraining thing.

photo cred: Joe Eldring. Thanks Joe!