Great Basin weekend part 2

We took a day off between the hike and the ride - I had intended to get out on the Mtn bike and do the trail where last years disaster occured the week before Leadville but we took the kids to the Snake Valley Days Parade instead where they rode the fire engine and threw otter pops.

The parade was in Baker, which is also where the climbing starts on the bike ride. But first things first. When there's a parade in Baker your either part of the 50% that's in the parade or the 50% that's watching it. Also, Baker consists of about 2 blocks, so to keep the parade from being an anticlimatic 5 minute event, you do 2 laps around the blocks, you know, to stretch it out a little bit. It's the only option really, if they add more floats or parade participants to stretch the procession out - you start tapping into the 50% left to watch the procession, and then it get's a little lopsided - best to just do a two lapper apparently. I may add a parade post later.

The work starts here at 5,300 ft.

It's about a 5 mile/1,200 foot approach before the real work starts, which is here. There are a few spots where it levels out briefly between here and the top, and briefly is probably overstating how long they last. In about 100 yards, we got buzzed real close, not by a car, but by this dude.....

It was just off the road, and we never would have seen him if he'd stayed quiet, but apparently 3 or 4 ft on a bike was within his personal space so he made his presence known. Annie had no interest in slowing down, I of course, had to turn around and go back for pics and video - will add ride/snake charming video later if I get around to it. It was healthy, one of the larger rattler's I've seen in the wild. Wasn't another 500 yards up the road that there was a bull snake that was quite a bit larger also just off the road - spent the rest of the day riding less closely to the shoulder, didn't see another one.

Maybe 3/4ths the way up at this photo stop, where you can see the road winding up the mountain below, and the straight road where the ride started way down there at the bottom.

Annie working her way up, it was the biggest climb she's done, and thinking it's probably also the biggest single climb I've done, don't know that I've ridden another route that bit off 5,000+ ft on a single climb. Similar total gain of the AF canyon ride from the house, but would have to stick the S. Suncrest climb at the top of the Alpine summit to get a similar bottom to top climb.

Getting closer to the top, with Wheeler Peak in the background.

The signage is almost as if it where made for cyclists. These elevation signs are posted every 500 ft.

And the trail/lookout signs feature the profile of the mountain, not unlike the elevation profiles that cyclists spend so much time admiring themselves for having ridden. Just don't take that profile at face value - those downhill or level sections you see on that sign - non existent on the road.
Descending back down the approach into the town of Baker and the desert. Have to say, riding with my wife is one of my most favorite things, and the fact that she keeps tackling this kind of stuff with relative ease excites me. I'm scheming some adventures we can do that might up the ante a bit.

The longest and luckiest day - LOTOJA 09'

It was a long day, a tad over 13 hours, which may translate into a long post - be forewarned.


First item of mention, to stick with what seems to be the overriding theme of the race reports thus far - how on earth does an organization that pulls off a massive undertaking in putting that race together, let some ridiculous suggestion at some meeting that all but one person had to have been sleeping at, come to fruition by having boxes full of clothes hangers - that's right, clothes hangers, to hand out to the good folks who had put in a grueling 206 mile ride as a congrats for their finish. Would poke fun at the guy who invented the stupid thing, but he's trumped on the bad idea scale by the guy who bought boxes full of them. Suspect maybe a family favor or something, don't know how else it could have happened. Those things don't even qualify as a decent swag bag item.


But I digress - the ride...

Lined up with the following intent given the circumstances of my summer and the implications they had on this race/ride (see the "gimp" category). Priority 1 - finish. Had no intention of starting and seeing how far the hand would hold up, or how long the legs would last after the month off. The inner argument all week was knowing that if I started I wouldn't quit, and trying to decide if the wouldn't quit part was going to be a reasonable thing to do. Priority 2 - Race it as far as I could, then get home from there.


There were some things that went great, relatively. First, the hand held up really good for about 70 miles, a good bit further than I had thought best case scenario would be. Had guessed it to be 40 miles, so my attitude was that I'd gotten a 30 mile hall pass in dealing with the hand. Part of the deal with myself was to go au naturel, no pain killers or other aids for the hand - let it be what it be, so the 30 mile bonus was a blessing. Second - the legs held up all right for about 50 miles, until the pitch turned permanent for a time. Rode with my start group until then, felt good and was really enjoying being back on the bike. It wasn't for lack of trying that I peeled off early on the Strawberry climb, the legs just weren't there, and probably the more pronounced weakness from the time off, was the lack of capacity to recover - I just couldn't, at all, so when I blew, I didn't bounce back - ever. So that was my race, it lasted 50 miles, and was really enjoyable, and I gave it all I had in me that day.


With priority 2 out of the way, the remainder of the day reverted to nothing more than sticking to priority 1, regardless of how bad or miserable it got.


Steve, Mark and Sam came by fairly early on Strawberry, leading a massive group up the climb. Adam came by not much later, told me to jump on his wheel and come on, and I was sorry to have to tell him I couldn't, and to have a good ride.

For a 206 mile ride, there were relatively few highlights, but here are a few of the moments that defined my limp home to the finish line.

• Mentioned the hand lasted till mile 70, from there it slowly deteriorated and had gotten to that worthless state I've mentioned before by around mile 76-77. Worthless may be a little dramatic - I could find positions on the bar where it could bear weight with pretty minor discomfort, so long as the road was pretty smooth. I had lost all capacity to shift, brake, squeeze hard enough to hold or grab a water bottle, or reach into a jersey pocket with the left hand, or hold the handlebar steady with the left hand so the right could grab a bottle or reach into a pocket for food - with the exception of really nice stretches of smooth road - and there were some.


• Biggest joke of the day - me having Mussette bags. Rachel had been kind enough to make a few extra for me, and pre race I actually loaded them with my food and intended to use them. By the first time I came up to Annie in Montpelier - I had absolutely no intention, nor physical capacity, of riding through and grabbing it out of her hand - Didn't have a spare hand, and I was looking forward way to much to the stops to waste one. Mark's dead on - if your slowing enough to put a foot down, the mussettes are unnecessary and kind of an embarrasing public display of how much you overestimate yourself. Maybe useful for me in a much shorter race, but plain stupid and vain of me to have them in this one.
• I had the completely counterproductive desire to avoid people and ride alone. In part because of handling challenges with the hand along with the accordianlike behavior of most packs I did ride with for a few minutes - the constant surging then braking can be more taxing that riding alone. But it was mainly due to attitude. You know how sometimes animals, when injured, leave the group and wander off by themselves to suffer in isolation and die a lonely death. It was weird, but I get that now, I really wanted to be by myself, so I was, with the exception of the first 50, a few miles coming out of Afton with EB and ER, and maybe another 5 miles of cumulative group riding throughout the afternoon/evening - and for whatever reason, I liked and preferred the loneliness that day.
  
• The luckiest seconds of my entire life....

My biggest fear in cycling is a high speed crash on a descent. What you see in the photos happened at 50+ MPH going down the backside of the Geneva Summit. I had just gone by Taylor Wiles and the three girls she was bombing the hill with when it happened in what felt like slow motion... the sound - It didn't just start to soften, it blew, instantly, tubies are loud when they blow at 160 psi, the realization of what had happened, the immediate fishtailing - you've seen PBR on Versus, the bike bucks just the same at 50 MPH on a blown rear tire - whipping the rear end back and forth, the several things that flash through your mind - a few of which are completely unrelated to the moment - just like you hear in the stories, the huge surge of adrenaline that hits as you prepare for the inevitable - it was surreal, and I didn't think for a second that it would end any way but very badly. And then....... I clipped out and put my foot down as it rolled to a complete stop. I don't know how many, or the summation of all of the things that had to go exactly my way during the episode, but I know a few..... 1 - Taylor and her train, along with the rest of the folks descending that hill doing a hell of a job handling their bikes at speed to get around the guy that looked to for sure be going down, the lightest of contact would have been disasterous. 2 - having tires glued and having them stay glued to the wheel, would have been a much different story had that happened with a clincher. I've replayed it over and over and I still don't know how the bike managed to stay upright, I can't begin to tell you how bad it would have been had it not. That shredded tire will be my momento for this race/ride - not the stupid hanger.

• Insult to injury - so the hand was what it was, I knew what it would be going in and was prepared for it. That, along with the sheer distance of the day should provide plenty of suffering right.? I agree. So explain to me why the hell 1 - I even start the day without chamois cream and 2 - how the hell I manage to forget, every time, to tell Annie to bring it to the next feedzone. There were no open wounds by the end, to the credit of Pearl Izumi's fantastic bib shorts, but there was no need to ride that far without the salve either - stupid, stupid ommision and contributor to a long day on my part.
• Did anyone still like their shoes at the end of that race? If so, what kind did you ride in? I hated my Nike's by Afton - my feet hurt, bad... sat and rubbed them at every stop from Afton on in.
• The road from Afton to Alpine was the roughest part of the day on my hand, and by default, my right arm and shoulder which bore the brunt of it. I felt lucky that the road up the canyon/river was nice and smooth for the most part, I really needed it at that point.
• From Afton in, stops at feedzones were measured by remaining time till darkness, not wanting to leave any earlier than necessary, but leaving a little cushion for a brief mishap or two. This was absolutely the right way to manage my day - I think I needed every bit of the rest I took, as much for my brain as for my shattered body.
• I made a conscious effort, once we turned off the highway near Jackson, to forget the struggle of the day behind me and try and really enjoy the rest of the ride in. And I did, that tree lined road is a place I'd go ride to relax any day, and in the condition I was in, I thought it was a really great stretch of the course to enjoy at the end of that long day. I was grateful for it.
• There was no big sprint, hard push, rush, sense of exhileration, any of that stuff for me at the finish. There was a small sense of winning the contest I'd made up in my mind with the hand and not letting it prevent me from another race/ride, but it was mostly a sense of a really long day, and a pretty pathetic, broken and crumbled man being really glad it was finally over.... and I'm still glad it's over...
  

Cycling Great Basin National Park & visit to Papa and Grandma's

Made a late week decision to ditch the rain forcast here at home along with the race plans at five mile pass, and head for the rain forcast out in the west desert, where we could be hero's for taking the kids to visit a few of their favorite people and all the animals, eat a few loaves of homemade bread, watch some basketball with my dad, and maybe get a few rides in if the weather cooperated.

The ride down - Chesney held out longer than Brock, primarily so she could decorate him with stickers. Once her task was over she crashed too.

Heading up Snake Creek on the mountain bikes - you can see the storm brewing up the canyon.

May have to throw some hiking shoes and the climbing gear in a backpack next time up - those walls look like there's a couple weekends worth of exploring on them.
12.5 miles up, steady climbing, start in the desert sage brush and end in the quakie's at the snowline. Longest mountain bike ride Annie's done, and she still has the 12.5 mile descent. She could have done more.

At the snowline - climbed as far as we could go on this day.

The video below is probably the highlight of the post - 1-because Annie's in it. 2 - because Annie didn't get clipped out - and we all know what happens next, and I got it on the video clip. 3 - because it's also got Annie bombing her first real fast downhill - she likes to go fast.

Day two was on the road bikes, with the intention of riding to the top of the park, or as far as the snowline would allow. Annie went out on the town with Leslie for the Garrison Girls night out when we rolled in Friday night and met Chandra - a local happened to be an avid cyclist along with her husband Ben. Worked out that they were able to join us for the ride which was great, they were strong and good company to boot.

Ben, Chandra, and Annie finishing up the approach to the park...

View of Wheeler Peak from a pull off a little further up the mountain....

View of the road winding up the mountain and the base of the valley where the ride started.


Ben at the end of the line, climbed as far as we could go again, only to be turned back by the snowline before getting a taste of the top.
Guess it means we'll have to go do it again.....

The descent was good, did have some gravel on the road that kept your attention and the corners are sharp enough to make you scrub speed, or at least make me scrub speed - so maybe not quite as good as AF canyon, but still, it's something like 13-14 miles without so much as a flat or little roller to pedal up, it's straight down hill, the whole way - and a very worthy reward after the effort of the climb. Finished with some good flat road to spin the legs out on the ride back across the valley to Garrison (dad's house) - tried one good sprint effort at the end and there was nothing left in the legs, they lasted about 3 rotations before officially quiting for the day - they were cooked. Good weekend of riding and company - thanks to Ben and Chandra for the company on the ride, and Grandma and Grandpa White for letting the rats of the rug rule the roost for the weekend. More on the kids weekend later...

Snakebitten - chapter 2

For the most part, I consider myself a pretty lucky guy - so I don't like adding chapters to this heading.

So, after my previous post on getting a little concerned all over again about the tubular tires I've started to experiment with - I decided to strip them off of the Tufo tape and reglue them with the glue recommended by continental - the maker of my conti competition tires - and you guessed it, they recommend continental glue be used to glue their tires - go figure. But I bit, you know, just in case it actually might hold them on better on top of conti selling an extra can of glue.

I won't beat around the bush. Installing tubular tires is laborious. Stretch the tire. Put a layer of glue on, let it dry, put another layer on, let it dry, put another layer on, then wrestle with the wheel while trying to stretch the tire over it, while it has wet glue on it - yeah, it's like that. But once on, you should be set for a might long time right. That's how it's supposed to work.

So after this process - I got out Tuesday night with Zeph (who recently got caught wrestling something else), Brandon and Tyler - a few of the conmen who suckered me into leadville, and piled it on by making throw my name in the hat for LOTOJA. Once again am crossing my fingers I don't get drawn. Anyway, back to the ride. I put on the Easton Aero wheels with the newly glued tubies on them - thumbs still raw from wrestling the tires on - and head down the north side of the hill to the local grocery store, then back up to meet the gang for a quick tour into Utah County and then back up the hill to get home.

First item of note - those of you who ride suncrest know that when descending the north side, you need to be ready for some wind coming around the second left handed bend on the way down. There's a little there more often than not, and sometimes it can be stiff, which can be sketchy at 50+ mph. I learned real quick that those deeper dish wheels make my bike buck a little harder when that wind hit's it - no fun crash story, but pucker factor none the less.

I meet a guy named Paul on the ride back up who was good company which makes the climb go a little faster, and meet up with the guys. We race down the south side trying to keep up with EB who makes his bike go pretty fast down hills and settle into a nice ride. The tubies feel great, no sketch factor at all. Then it happens. PSSHH. It wasn't pssssssssssss, it was PSSHH - and the whole group heard it. At first I thought it was my front tire, which had sealant in it, which I thought worked great. But no such luck - it was the rear tire, which had no sealant, and no sealant worked about as well as you'd expect.

So before I can rave about the pros of my new tubular tires, I've got a couple of con's to bring up.
1 - Your screwed if you get a flat. Granted- sealant should eliminate this the large majority of the time - but if not, your screwed. No tube to throw in or patch to throw on. The only fix is to carry an extra tire, which you'll need to throw on and ride gingerly home since there's not much besides a tight fit holding it on your wheel. After having to wrestle it on in public on the side of a road.
2 - Carrying an extra tire isn't really that much more of a deal in regards to weight and room than carrying your standard spare tube - other than I think I'd feel a little silly announcing to the group - "uh, hold up once second, forgot to grab my spare tire".
3 - Carrying that spare tire is that much more of a deal on a cost basis. That flat tire I got - it was a bad one, large slice on the sidewall, not sealable with sealant - so the tire's shot, with less than 150 miles on it. Here's the rub - those things cost $100 a pop. Yes, there are cheaper tubies, and I'm a frugal guy for the most part, but not in this case. So yes, I was a little peeved at ruining an expensive tire after so little use, and more peeved about the prospect of having to wrestle a new one onto that dang wheel again - it's currently being "stretched" in preparation for install tomorrow night.

While on the topic of cons - here's another. Cell phone reception can sometimes be spotty where I live in Suncrest - it's great most of the time, but there are moments. So, tire's blown, I tell the guys I forgot my spare tire, and to go on without me, I'll call my wife for a ride. It's about 7:30 and I'm up by Cedar Hills Golf Course - can see my house across the way. In fact, I can almost hear my wife's phone ringing, in my house, while looking at it while calling - but what's really going on in my house - silence - wife's cell phone is sitting on the counter taking a nap, and pretending I'm not calling it. No ring, no indication that I just left my 8th voicemail saying it's 8:30, cold, and I'm standing on the side of the road in cycling shorts and a sweaty jersey - trying to dramatize the phone into working by explaining I'm dipping into a hypothermic state. Still didn't work.

Luckily - the conmen's phone's were working, and after hitching a ride down to the gas station by a sympathetic fellow cyclist - thanks Kyle in the yellow truck, Brandon was gracious enough to drive back down the hill and pick my sorry behind up and take me home. First time I've been snakebitten on a road ride - and think I'm not due again for quite some time.

Scenes from a west desert weekend

Friday night we loaded up the Honda Pilot and made the three hour trek to Garrison, Utah - home of my dad, Leslie (step mom), some cows, horses, and a few other folks. It's one of my favorite places to go for some unwind time - and it sounded like a nice place to go to celebrate my 33rd birthday and watch the Superbowl. Two dangers in driving across the west desert at night:

1 - breaking down, you may spend a night before potential help arrives via another vehicle coming by.

2 - Hitting a cow or antelope at night

We managed to dodge the black cow standing in the road about 20 miles outside of Delta - were fortunate enough to be watching and saw it with some room to make a Nascar pass around it. But as we pulled into my dad's driveway, we noticed right away that someone else hadn't been as lucky - and they were sitting at the kitchen table when we pulled in. My dad is the local constable so his place was where these locals came after hitting a bovine at about 55 mph. Yep - cows will leave a mark.

In the country you make do with the cards you've got in hand - so instead of calling AAA or a tow truck, the wife, who was sitting in the passenger seat (these folks must have been late 60's/early 70's) does her best to pick the glass off of her face after getting decked by the airbag, grabs the quilt she was knitting when the accident happened, and uses it to hold up the windshield as best she can while her husband, who was also rattled and had been decked by an airbag, drives the 40 miles to get to the next village - Garrison - where my dad lives. While desert climates can get toasty when the sun is up - they get brutal cold within a few minutes of the sun going down. I know my kids last about 5 seconds when I yell freeze out and row down the windows in high teen/low 20's temps - and their young with good circulation. Not sure what it might feel like to go 40 miles in said freezeout, i.e. no windshield, but am pretty sure it could not have been much better than miserable. Maybe the adreneline from the wreck helped, but probably not enough. This all happened Friday night - the photo was taken the following morning. A short follow up to this in a moment.

Annie and I took the road bikes down - so that I'd have something to distract myself from the homemade bread and other goodies in Leslie's kitchen - on the topic of cows, I tend to eat like one when I go to Garrison. Grazing begins just after hello hugs, and doesn't end until just prior to goodbye hugs. We got out Saturday morning for a couple of hours and rode up into Great Basin National Park until ice/snow on the road turned us back. All in all it was about 30 miles with about 2500 ft of steady climbing between miles 8 and 15. A solid workout where your burning up on the climb up, and bone cold on the decent. Am thinking this may be one of my best little training destinations this year as I try to get in shape for leadville - once the snow melts and the roads are clear all the way up, that mountain will be a stout ride.

One of the cons of being out in Utah's west desert - if you hit a cow, your not going to have much traffic come by to help. One of the pros of being out in Utah's west desert - if you feel like riding your road bike, for the most part, you've got two full lanes of prime road/highway pretty much to yourself - with some really fantastic climbing if you want it. Just don't hit the cow.


As we're descending from the park, the van pictured above that had been run over by the cow, comes cruising by with our new friend from the night before driving at about 35 mph - apparently taking his trusty steed home to be put out to pasture.

As much as I love a weekend in Garrison - the rats of the rug get even more excited about a trip to Grandma and Grandpa's. Horse riding, chores (feeding the animals), climbing haystacks, chasing cats, the nearby playground, the novelty of different toys, etc... and adoring grandparents all are things that they look forward to a lot.
Annie riding "Chief" - the girls favorite horse.
Queens of the haystack
Evening bull riding contest before bed. Chesney won this night.

Heck of a game Sunday night to cap it all off.