Christmas in July

I need to find an online photo workshop for "Taking Photographs with Your Limited Point-And-Shoot Camera While Trying To Keep Up With A Massive Peloton During A Group Mountain Bike Ride." It can be frustrating to watch compelling image after compelling image rip by you, only to whip out your camera and grab a blurry shot of half of somebody's butt. Faster members of Missoula's Thursday Night Riders simply blaze ahead and then wait at a strategic perch, capturing dynamic shots of a 21-rider paceline grinding up a smooth ribbon of singletrack.

The rest of us get rear shots. And a face-full of this grass that I am fairly certain I am highly allergic to. During my Friday Death Ride, I attributed my early bonk to overtraining, but now I'm wondering if part of it was allergies. John and I went whipping through a few miles of this stuff on Friday night, and shortly after that I began to feel like my entire head was slowly filling with warm ooze. Then again, on Thursday, a ride through the grass was followed by lots of sneezing, coughing and more of that disorienting "lead head" feeling. For five years in Alaska, I had nearly no problems with allergies, but now I am back in the land where summer can be mildly toxic. Time to go purchase some Claratin.

Right now, I am looking to purchase a new point-and-shoot camera. I like the Olympus Stylus, but now that I am living in a spot where rain and grit is much less prevalent, and destruction of the camera isn't imminent, I'd like to buy something with a better lens and stronger zoom. Someday I will upgrade to an SLR with the goal of shooting a few magazine images, but I still suspect I'll carry the point-and-shoot on most of my rides, so that priority comes first. Anyway, I've already received a few good recommendations, but I'd love to hear more if you have any.

Being able to shoot close-up images would also be nice. I spotted these fireweed blooms as I was walking down the loose scree of the "Huckleberry Headwall." As I moved off the trail to take a photo, Bill asked me about the famous fireweed gauge. "Doesn't the flower height mean there will be a lot of snow this winter?" he asked. "No," I replied, "When the blooms reach the top of the plant, that means summer's over. So, see, this one shows summer is half over, which makes sense, cause it's late July." Just as we were discussing this, another guy came skidding out of control around the corner and toppled over himself, landing face first in the dirt. And I totally missed it, because I was taking a dumb photo of a flower.

Spending time at higher elevation helped clear my head, but then it was time to get back into the grass on the descent.

These Thursday night groups have been great fun, but my giddiness about a month straight of near-perfect weather and excitement for my upcoming weekend hiking trip to Glacier National Park could only be eclipsed by the arrival of my first new bike in two and a half years:

It's a fixed-gear commuter! Built by Mr. Fixie himself, Dave Nice of Over The Edge Sports in Hurricane, Utah. When I first moved to Missoula, I was badly in need of a new commuting bike. My old Ibex touring bike has served that purpose well, but it recently lost a bit of its brake lever and rear brake arm (Who knows when or how. I can't even say I was 'just riding along' when this happened.) "Roadie" has served me well, but I've had it now for more than six years and who knows how many thousands of miles, and it's starting to become difficult just to keep it on the road. When I considered my needs - a simple bike for commuting in a flat city, where the weather can be icy and wet during the winter, and a bike that doesn't have pieces regularly falling off of it - the fixie made perfect sense. Enter Dave, who had a vision, and an extra Fuji Obey frame lying around. He built it up and shipped it via UPS - i.e. "Brown Santa" - and it just arrived today.

The funny thing about purchasing a fixie is that I've never ridden one; not even once. I knew it would take some getting used to, so I took it out for a spin around the neighborhood, sticking to side streets and cautiously approaching intersections like a teenager in driver's ed. I learned that the fixie is a strict interpreter of Sir Issac Newton's First Law of Motion - a fixie in motion wants to stay in motion, and a fixie at rest is difficult to coax forward again. The pedals fight a lot when you're trying to achieve a quasi-stop. I can finally understand why some fixie riders don't bother with brakes, because your legs pretty much serve as your stopping force. The front brake just makes you feel a bit better. Anyway, it was a fun experiment. I can't wait to start commuting with it next week!

Dave asked me color of chain I wanted, and I said "pink." I thought he was kidding, but I guess chains really do come in colors. I love the look of this bike - it's so sleek and stylish. I am thinking about naming her "Contessa." Contessa is the word for an Italian countess, which seems fitting for a skinny (only 21-22 pounds!) rigid, fixed-in-her-ways bicycle with the model name Obey. But really, I came up with the name from a song that popped into my head earlier today, "Streets of Fire" by the New Pornographers:

Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, fire in the street,
Let's sully every stage.
Lick my lips, twist my hips,
But Contessa ... I already did.

My new favorite trail

One of the best aspects about being new to a region is that sense of discovery in everything you do - like a trail was created just for you; like you invented that tricky traverse. Of course this is far from the case; these places have been explored again and again, by tourists and college kids and REAL Montanans, who are second only to Alaskans in their ability to view long-term residency as a quantifiable gauge of status. So everyone and their brother has been to this lookout or that trail. What matters is that you haven't. You wander these mountains with an explorer's eyes, and you still see the mystery and wonder that are too easily forgotten.

I've had a bit of a hard time recovering from Hell Week. I took Monday completely off, as planned, and then on Tuesday headed out for a mellow ride with the Dirt Girls. We rode the Ravine Trail loop, about 25 miles and 2,000 feet of climbing total. The Dirt Girls are known for their fun, social pace, so I felt discouraged by how creaky and tired I felt trying to hold the paceline up Grant Creek Canyon. We collected the rest of the group at the trailhead and tackled the shaded singletrack 14-strong. I started off the far back but eventually passed most of the group. At the saddle, three of us encountered three guys who told us there were 17 men total in their group, all gathered at the SnowBowl Overlook. When we told them we were heading a group of 14 women, one guy said, "Awesome. We'll have a party at the top."

One woman replied, "Sorry, most of us are married."

"I didn't mean it like that!" he exclaimed with a huff, and took off. I had to laugh at the implication, but it's still quite the phenomenon when you think about it - 31 mountain bikers in two separate, segregated groups, all gathered at a remote little mountain knoll on a Tuesday night. But, unfortunately, there was no "party at the top." The guys took one look at our massive group of girls crowding the overlook and fled.

I still felt wooden and achy on the long, rolling descent, and contemplated taking Wednesday off as well. But then - and I should mention this happened while screaming over some guy's painfully earnest rendition of Bon Jovi's "Bed of Roses" at a karaoke bar late Tuesday night during Dave's wife's 26th birthday party - Dave mentioned a trail he was thinking about riding Wednesday night. "I've never ridden it before," he said. "So I'm not sure about the conditions. It could turn epic. "

How does one say no to that?

We got an early start right after work Wednesday evening, and brought lights and extra water, braced for a hopeful three-hour ride but a possible six-hour adventure. We churned up the loose gravel of Mormon Peak Road. My legs started to ache early and I decided not to push it, hoping Dave wouldn't mind of I dawdled a bit. Even on the access road, the ride was stunning - sweeping overlooks around every corner, soft evening light filtered through dark thunderstorms, and even bright pink fireweed blooms lining the hillside (I didn't even know Montana had fireweed!)

I thought, "The trail can't be better than this."

We came to the Mill Creek trail junction and started up the singletrack, lined with sweet-smelling spruce trees and bright green groundcover. After the fireweed sightings followed by a trail through a loamy corridor beneath thick, tall forest canopy, I felt like I had found my own little slice of Alaska in Montana.

I thought, "The descent can't be better than this."

We came to a junction where Dave pointed out where a mountain biker could climb another 2,000 feet to a high ridge on a more ambitious day. The ridge offered high-alpine hiking access to the Bitterroot Wilderness and a number of peaks. I vowed to return on a more ambitious day, and we dropped into the singletrack descent. A thin ribbon of moss-lined dirt switchbacked tightly through the woods and suddenly popped out along the edge of a steep, rocky ravine. That's where the rock gardens started, and Dave attacked them with zeal, yelling out as his single-speed Karate Monkey rodeoed over the boulder minefield. I took the obstacles a lot more slowly or not at all, my rock technical skills largely untested and my confidence small. But I vowed to return to this Mill Creek trail again and again, and practice and practice until I too could squeal out uncontrollably as I bucked down the trail.

"I forget sometimes that riding a new, awesome trail is the best feeling in the world," Dave said at a rare quiet moment against a sweeping backdrop of green mountains.

"Pretty much what I've been thinking for the last month," I said. "But this one is definitely the best."

If a ride is nothing but amazing fun the entire time, does it even count against recovery or toward fitness? Often, I wonder.

Dave thought Mill Creek was fantastic, too: "Ride of the Year."

Hell week, finished

Last weekend, when I first formulated the idea to do one week of intensive time-in-the-saddle training, I knew I would either end up going pretty big this weekend - days six and seven - or do close to nothing at all. I even had a fairly ambitious out-and-back overnight ride tentatively planned. After Friday's big misadventure, I woke up too early Saturday morning with a throbbing dehydration hangover and not a single thing packed. I knew I was never going to make it happen. Instead, I spent the day doing a lot of neglected life maintenance. I even took my car into Jiffy Lube for the post-AK-drive Signature Service, and was conned into spending $121. Yeah, I'm one of those people. I can't even walk up to the free sample tables at Costco because I end up going home with one of those 174-packs of frozen taquitos that haunt me for months afterward. Every time I open the freezer, the giant frost-coated box taunts me with whispers of "what the hell were you thinking?" until I finally move out and have an excuse to throw it away. No, it's best that I avoid capitalism. Which is why I rarely spend Saturdays doing life maintenance chores.

Late in the afternoon, I started pedaling toward Mount Sentinel. I figured if I felt badly, I would simply go to the peak and back on the singletrack, ending with about 20 miles and 2,000 feet of climbing. If I felt good, I planned to drop into the canyon and work my way toward the upper ridge. But I did not feel good. I felt the opposite of good. I was in survival mode from the get-go, and I never perked up. My legs felt like they didn't have any power of their own, but were simply being propelled by imaginary fraying strings attached to the bike's wheels. I had to walk spots I never thought I would have to walk. I didn't even take any pictures, even at the peak where rich golden light stretched across the valley, because I was so frustrated and grumpy. Maybe it was time to cry uncle on Hell Week.

I don't like to succumb to mental defeat. I realize there are limited (if any) benefits to running oneself into a deep physical hole, but I'm the kind of person who likes to crawl up to the edge of these holes and look for ways to climb out of them. That way, in some future time when the going gets rough, as it inevitably will, I'll remember where to find that hidden source of strength. I decided, no matter what, come Sunday, I was going to at least set out looking for it.

Then, on Sunday morning, I got an unexpected hit of motivation. In general, I'm not all that competitive of a person in regard to other people (competition with myself and with the world at large is another story.) But I occasionally get hit with the race bug, usually in the unlikeliest of ways. This time, it came in the form of a simple Web post from my friend Sierra in Whitehorse, Yukon. Sierra and another friend, Jenn, are registered as a women's team in this year's Trans Rockies, so they are on the same training track as me right now. The three of us were supposed to go head-to-head-to-head in the solo category of the 24 Hours of Light in June, but I unfortunately had to move to Montana a week before the race, thereby posting a shameful DNS while those two killed it. On Saturday, Sierra and Jenn completed their big ride for the week, a "Triple Crown" of three mountains in the Yukon, for 100 km and 2,500 vertical meters (translated to American, that's about 60 miles and 8,000 feet of climbing.) I needed to try to match that! Never mind that I didn't stand a chance of matching it - but it at least gave me a high, high ceiling to shoot for.

I decided to return to Blue Mountain (location of the fire lookout) to check out a jeep trail that I had seen on my map. The jeep trail, called Forest Service Road 17806, intrigued me because it seemed to trace the high line of a ridge for a long distance. It sounded like a grand time, riding the contours of a ridge high above the canyons below, taking in endless sweeping views, rolling terrain and pretty wildflowers.

My legs felt encouragingly better on the highway ride out of town, but then came the 2,800-foot grunt just to get to the ridge, at 5,900 feet elevation. I came to an intersection with five roads veering off in all directions. Four of these roads looked relatively flat and gentle, but one shot straight up the mountain on a loose, rocky doubletrack with a two-foot-deep, three-foot wide runoff trench cut right down the center. And, much to my dismay, that one was FSR 17806.

I pushed my bike 300 vertical feet to the top of the first knoll, where the road discouragingly dropped just as steeply down the other side. In daydreams of my fantasy ridge road, I hadn't deduced the obvious - that high line meant fall line, with impossibly steep, loose climbs that led to difficult steep, loose descents. There were no switchbacks, no gentle grades, no skirting around the high points. This road hit every high point in the quickest way possible, which is fine if you're a gas-powered jeep but not so good if you're a mountain biker with weakened legs. Still, I had climbed all the way up here, and GPS said I had only traveled 20.5 miles and 3,200 feet of climbing so far, so I was going to give it a go.

Even now, my memory of my time on the ridge is a bit hazy. I was sweating a lot, and pushing my bike a lot, and once my rear wheel slid sideways on a heavily braked descent and I had to bail. One guy on a motorcycle passed me. He floated up the fall line in a ethereal cloud of dust. I was beyond envious. About eight miles and two hours into FSR 17806, my legs mutinied. They've done this to me a couple of times before, and it remains a terribly alien sensation. I was struggling to ride up a hill, and suddenly, my legs involuntarily stopped moving. I jumped off the bike just in time and stood there, staring up the hill. I envisioned myself pushing my bike up it, but nothing was happening. I just stood there, and stared, and my legs did nothing. I leaned my bike against a tree and sat in the shade. I knew that however far I traveled on this ridge, it was going to be just as long and hard getting back. I checked my water supply. My three-liter Camelback was nearly empty, and I had already downed my bottle of Nuun, which meant I had already consumed a gallon of liquid and only had a two-liter reserve bladder left. I had promised myself that no matter where I was, I would turn around as soon as I was down to the reserve. So that cemented what my legs already knew. The limited water supply was my ticket out. My legs cheered and we got back on the bike. The road quickly bottomed out and started up the next 300-foot climb, the first of several just to get back to the trail junction. We still had a long way to go.

According to GPS, I finished the ride with 54.3 miles and 5,214 feet of climbing - significantly less than what Jenn and Sierra did on Saturday. (Jenn and Sierra, if you read this, you guys rock, by the way. I'm sure glad I'm entered in the mixed category of TR so I don't have to do head-to-head with you two, because I'm sure the competitive spirit would be fierce :-P) But it was a sufficiently indulgent way to end Hell Week. Sunday's was the only ride I GPS'd, so I don't know my total mileage or elevation, but I ended the week with 29.5 hours of saddle time. I'm happy with it, because my body is partially wrecked, but I found that ever-elusive reserve of strength that I can tap down the road.