Some Would Call It Summer

Its been a while so I thought I might be due for an update.  Fire season has been in sort of a lull since the Schultz fire nearly burned down parts of east Flag.   We took a ten day trip to the North Rim of the Canyon and a long 18 day trip to Northern California, only four days on fire.  Honestly fire work can be alot more boring than staging work.  The staging parts of the trip brought us to Mount Shasta and South Tahoe, much finer places than the sage and juniper country outside of Susanville where the fire burned on our first days of the trip.  So for my summer vacation I "got to" hike 2500 feet up Mount Shasta not even breeching tree line at a pace so blistering I couldn't even fathom looking around at the beauty and completely missed the waterfalls flowing off the glacier nestled on the mountain...all with my fire pack on my back and an infection in my lungs....somehow I dodged out on carrying the chainsaw that day.  We did manage to run to a sweet swimming hole flowing directly off the glacier some distance downstream to find a rope swing dropping willing flyers directly into water colder than I can ever remember swimming anywhere in northwest Montana.

Daily threats of going home turned into a trip to South Tahoe being put up in hotels and working 13 hour days doing harder work than we somehow do on most fires.  All told, our hotel was across the street from the finest sushi joint I have ever been to...in admiration the chef made me the custom Moustache roll after recruiting me to the bar, a hilarious spectacle.   And it turns out that Sake is a damn fine beverage when served cold.  Right down the street was the Stateline Brewery...nothing to write home about, but here I am writing home about it.  Apart from battling the illness our stay was capped with an hour swim in the blue lake on our last day...then Las Vegas on the way home.   Vegas puts me in a bad mood.  Its a huge whitehead zit on the planet.  Everything wrong with the world erupted in the desert just to prove itself.  Gluttony and vanity breathe from its every pore.  I just don't get it.  It makes me uncomfortable.  And somehow I've ended up there something like nine times since I've worked on the hotshot crew on the way home from California or where ever.  Bleh!

In actuality, my summer has allowed me some fantastic bike rides and a little shop time to boot.  Riding in Flagstaff in the summer is as good as it gets.  Days are long, the sun gets up before 5:00, but outside of work I rarely take advantage of it.  I tend to fancy starting later and getting caught in the summer monsoon.  When monsoons are good here there's nothing like it.  Clouds start building over San Francisco mountain by 10:00 or so and a few hours later they can no longer contain themselves and pour themselves out with incredible violence...rain, hail, lightning, thunder, more rain.  This summer's monsoon was predicted to be weak and late, but not the case.  Days of seven inches of rain back to back to back instead making a wreckage out of the drainage where the Schultz fire burned.  Flooding in the desert.  All said this has been a summer of biblical scale.  No locusts, but plenty of Secedes.  But the point of the tale here is the riding....yes the riding.  I headed out to the west side of the mountain...a two hour ride to access alone.  Getting lost on the way, but knowing the direction I needed to go I ended up bicycle bushwhacking through the Pondos until I found myself on more familiar trails....eventually flying fish to Snowbowl road up to the AZ Trail.  I was trying to ride out to Andrew Frost's house under construction.  A place only accessed by skis or snow machine in the winter.  He's building a one room straw bale cabin with a detached shop out in Hart Prairie with the help of the Zach Attach.  All by hand, hoisting locally cut timbers with home made cranes, pretty bad ass by the sounds of it.  There's access of the new section on the AZ Trail but the clouds and lightning were building just over the route and the ground strikes made me reconsider my trek to the north.  I decided I'd take the section to the south that I'd never ridden before hoping to escape the storm.  Whatever.  It was on top of me within fifteen minutes.  Lightning, rain, hail, the works.  I rode for my life....or so it felt.  All of a sudden the trail diminished.  What had been a freshly cut bench of singletrack into the side of the mountain became a sawline of trail yet to be dug and shortly thereafter a flagline of trail yet to be started.  Flags led to flags, I thought I was following some sort of trail, and then I ended up by some science experiment involving white containers and flags of a different color than I had been following while soaking myself in the downpour.  I followed the new flags down to another trail...I'd been here before, except now the trail was a flowing river.  A problem commonly faced here.  The trails are not properly outsloped, thus turning into gutters, big ones, creeks even.  I followed this trail back to flying fish, a gusher in itself.  I've never ridden such a continuous streambed before. This stream led me to a trail I built a few summers ago with the YCC known now as Scrotus, which fared a little better against the first rain of the year.  Trails known led to trails unknown let to bicycle bushwhacking led back to familiar trails led to home six and a half hours after I left that morning, sans shirt, and almost as dry as when I'd  first left.  Awesome.

The second ride stuck in the monsoon happened almost intentionally.  When we got back from California, Lynn, my riding partner for the last year and a half, and I were due for and adventure.  We left her house under gray and threatening skies and questioned our sanity only once, briefly.  We proceeded.  Ten minutes out we passed some riders heading back to town as lightning struck ground just off in the distance over their shoulders.  We proceed.  Rain starts overhead and clouds grow darker, lightning closer.  We ride on.  Into the canyons for shelter.  We thought we'd explore into Walnut canyon, considering we had no leash today.  The strikes grew closer and closer until finally one of them made me crash my bike into the side of the trail and jump off and crouch down under the trees on the canyon wall.  Short, young pondos make the best cover from lightning, especially in low ground such as this canyon, as lightning strikes the tall trees in the open most frequently, but canyons are hardly the place to ride out the summer monsoon as we would soon remember.  No matter.  We were here, riding it out, off our bikes.  Good thing we stopped to get Tequila on the way out.  As the hail bounced off our helmets and rain jackets we crouched in a squat and drank to warm our bellies, laughing all the while.   Complaints were made, briefly, as were threats of not riding on when the storm passed, but we knew we were getting into this.  Eventually the storm passed and we disrobed, wet cotton does no good, and rode on down canyon into the flooded mess of Arizona mud.  We figured our best bet of continuing a ride would be to climb out to the rim, so we did.  A mile up to Fisher Point via the AZ trail again.  This trail takes you just about everywhere around Flagstaff.  My house is a few hundred yards from it.  Lynn's house is a half a mile from it if that.  Utah to Mexico.  800 miles.  I'll ride it someday in its entirety.  For now though we're just following it along the north rim of Walnut canyon as steam rises of the rocks in the cloudy humid warming period after the storm.  Its very surreal.  100% humidity and steam rising through the dark coniferous side canyons of Northern Arizona, like we'd been teleported to British Columbia.  We eventually wound our way back, smiling and laughing all the way....as rides with Lynn tend to be, I can't remember a bad one, she might tell you the same.  Happy Summer.

Lost In The Mix

I managed to finish up the Heinchez 650B bike.  Scott picked the build kit and he know's what he's doing.  King bearings all about, XT/XTR drivetrain, Avid BB7s, Paul levers.  He's been riding the piss out of this thing and has almost worn out the back tire already.  The chainstays are shorter than most 26" bikes and the rear wheel backs out of the frame without having to remove the caliper.  Check out the bulges on the seat tube and the custom bent seat stays.  Word so far is that its super stable and if the Heinchez were forced to evacuate due to fire and was only allowed to take one bike (Heinchez has a fine collection including an old Fat Chance road bike with a Mavic kit, a Rock Lobster, a Geoffrey Butler with friction Super Record, and a few other unmentionables), it'd be his Moustache Ride.  Hell Yeah!

Flagstaff Burning

As you may have guessed I am in the full swing of summer work fighting fire with the Mormon Lake Hotshots here in Flagstaff.   We've now had a total of four days off since May 25th of something like that.  So the paychecks are good but, man, am I worked.  We typically go out for a maximum of two weeks but this last trip we were hurried off the Tecolote Fire in New Mexico when word broke that a fire popped and was threatening homes in Flagstaff.  We were sent home with the thinking that the crew might need to evacuate our homes, but we all knew we couldn't return home to take days off when our back yard is burning down, so we extended our tour for a week.  Many of our crew has been fixed here for years, while some come only for the fire season and have no real ties to the forest.  Either way, I knew that this fire would be different than the others.  We travelled to Albuquerque that night and I spoke to some friends in town and the mood there was just eerie.  The forest we live in is dominated by San Francisco Mountain (Kinlani to the Hopi).   The center of ancient trade routes and the ground that bonds a community of avid climbers, mountain bikers, hikers, runners, and equestrians is now engulfed in flames under a huge billowing plume of smoke spanning the gray scale from white to black.   People in town were freaked out, scared, somber, sad, a full range of emotions comparable only to that of the color spectrum in the smoke column.  We rolled into fire camp on the east side of town just after noon after watching the column close in from a distance in its second day of burning.  It was the heat of the day and fire activity was picking up.  I was speechless, and I have never seen of felt such concern for any piece of ground on which we've worked such as this one.  This feeling was echoed throughout the crew.  It would all have to be put aside for the job ahead.  


We were put to work griding for spot fires out ahead of the main fire in the last stand of forest between the fire and the structures of a community east of town.  The line I walked back and forth for hours paralleled a trail I would ride to my friend Isaac's house in that community.  Fortunately that stand had burned back in the nineties and offered little for fire to get established.   Our day came to a close without any direct excitement, and for once I was relieved about that.  In a job where you live for excitement to relieve you of boredom, today I preferred  boredom.  We were allowed to go home that night and it wasn't until the stories start coming from the townspeople that you realize the urgency of the situation.  Town felt like a war had broken out in the middle of it with a faceless enemy, but its people stood united together.  It was the buzz everywhere you went, and still is.  

With the fire in check where the houses were threatened, our second and remaining days brought a new assignment.  Prepare and indirect (away from the fire's burning edge) control line up Shultz peak to keep the fire in check on the wilderness flank, and keep it from progressing further onto the San Francisco Peaks.   The line was cleared and prepped to burn in a day and a half with the work of three hotshot crews, but before we could burn we had to handle a  slop over that threatened the security of our mission.  Fire had started backing down the ridge between Shultz mountain and Doyle peak (the eastern most of the San Francisco peaks).   It would take the rest of the day to secure it.   The burnout operation down Shultz mountain would begin in the morning when conditions were dry enough to ensure a good burn (full consumption of ground fuels for no possibility of reburn).  It commenced around noon.   One of the other crews started burning and were about to hand it off to us when the winds shifted causing the main fire to the east of us to make an impressive crown run up the mountain pulling in with it the back burn from the other crew.  We waited it out at the safety zone at the top of the mountain, but felt the heat from 150 foot flames at a distance that tickled some nerves.

  As soon as the run was over we all knew the mission, control spot fires.  We moved swiftly down the line and into battle past the other crew looking completely dazed.  We started picking up spot fires instantly and continued the rest of the day.  To complicate things the burn would have to be continued downhill torching out trees and sending more spots until the burnout was completed or else we could have been outflanked by the fire that sent the first crown run.  Heavy helicopters were used to make water drops a thousand gallons at a time on the green side of our control line in hopes of mitigating any of the spot fires from getting established in the fuel beneath us on the opposite side of the ridge.  Between running the burn out, holding the line, directing the helicopters, griding for spots, and a respiratory ailment that was taking its toll on our crew, we were spread thin.  We called for reinforcements, realizing that we would not be able to complete the burn ourselves and hold it.  Three more hotshot crews came to our aid and eventually we passed our burn off to the next and them to the next.  As soon as we passed the torch the winds switched back to favorable and the burn continued until 1:30 in the morning.  We would spend the next two days controlling the edge which we had burned before finally being pulled from the fire for some much needed rest.  With the fire now more or less contained at 16000 acres, all the citizens of Flagstaff can do now is wait for their forest to be re-opened to go and explore and reminisce.  

Bike to Work Week

We celebrated bike to work week a couple weeks ago.  Its so nice to live in a town that puts on an event such as this and people actually support it by participating.  I was lucky enough to be able to ride everyday that week.  I try to ride whenever I can anyway but being on call for the forest service sometimes means hauling large amounts of laundry and showing up before dawn and my 45 minute ride just doesn't happen under those conditions.  The commutes this particular week were amazing though.  So many friendly smiling faces and hellos.  There were also events and fun rides to mark the occasion, most notably the tweed ride and bike to breakfast day.  The tweed ride was just as it sounds.  Show up to Mia's Lounge dressed in your finest wool attire, drink some whiskey, socialize, and then pedal around.  We pulled up in front of Zach's house where he sped ahead and readied a bottle of scotch.  Those informed on our whereabouts wheeled into the yard and took a pull.  The ice cream truck at Thorpe park forced another stop.  And this sort of behavior continued until the sun went down.  A fine evening.  Thursday morning was bike to breakfast day.  I managed some coffee and some coffee cake and fruit, but I guess I missed the real gems of the morning by leaving too late and opting for my usual breakfast burrito and its load of calories.  I did however find myself in some interesting conversations outside of the breakfast stops.  Something about bikes and free food puts people in really good moods.  This should happen more often, the biking to work that is...for the masses anyway...the free breakfasts and coffee too.

A rant about road bikes

What are road bikes anyways?  I can define this in several ways.  A purposeful bike that keeps speed and distance at the forefront of its personality perhaps.  But perhaps also the bike with the most constraints strapped to it.  Tunnel vision.   The truest road bikes can only travel where that web of connected asphalt hold their strongest bonds....or for the daring, only slightly farther into the tierra.  I used to ride road bikes a lot back in the Athens days and if I still lived there I'd probably ride them a lot still.  But in the days since leaving, the nice network of farm roads has become an ever extensive network of rock strewn forest roads and a road bike just wouldn't hack it.  

There are about 3 road rides in Flagstaff according to the city urban trails map.  Snowbowl road: the 2500 ft climb to the ski area, out and back.  I've never done this because trails also lead to the snowbowl parking lot in the summer and riding that road during ski season is just a bad idea.   Mormon Lake:  a 4-5 hour lollipop out to and around Mormon Lake, the largest natural mud hole in Arizona and a nice flat paved road with a huge shoulder/bike lane.  This is the most popular ride here by far.  I've only ridden this on the way out of town to Tucson, a very long and very awesome road ride.  And the Sunset Crater - Wupatki road: 30 or so miles gradual downhill from Sunset Crater to Wupatki National monument starting in craggy volcanic lava fields, traveling past 1200 year-old ruins and ending in the painted desert.  This could be done as a loop with highway 89, a route heavily trafficked with drunk drivers or as an out and back.  The preferred method of travel though is the full-moon downhill shuttle run.  The ride from town to sunset crater isn't all that great anyway so the shuttle run just seems to work out.  This is one of the top two road rides of all time for me.  The other being the Going to the Sun Road in Glacier, also in a full moon.  All the other road rides pretty much feature jumping between descent patches of pavement via interstate highways or dirt roads.  

I began realizing the limitations of road bikes in the days of my beloved Klein.  R.I.P.  I discovered the back ways of Oconee county by assuring myself that roads with powerlines on them, be they paved or otherwise, were through roads.  This logic never failed to get me home, but there were many nights of racing daylight to get to the familiar ground of Milledge avenue.  Oddly enough the Klein never flatted on a dirt road ride, no matter how rough or how many creeks it crossed.  But that beautiful beast obviously had its limitations.  I've never had a true road bike since.  That was 6 years ago I think.  I had a crosscheck for a while, but I quickly realized its limitations too.  The 45c tires rubbed the frame, clogged with mud, and stopped the back wheel from moving when I broke a spoke at the end of a tour.  Plus the geometry was too slack and it fit me poorly.  The bike I built for myself as my new "road" bike attempts to hit on all these shortcomings while hopefully keeping alive the essential elements of a road bike, the ability to go far and fast. 

My commute to work at The Man starts up my driveway and most commonly heads for Elks Lodge trail, a commuter trail that frequently features sad attempts at closure by seasonal residents.  Most folks in town use this as access to the trails of the Coconino National Forest, but for me it is my wake up commute from the sticks across town.  Really, riding this trail every morning to work is my favorite thing about work anymore.  Its a pretty high standard.  I cut right onto a short pavement descent on Quintana and then left on fort valley road or the path that rides beside it to Quinn's restaurant, featuring the best breakfast burrito known to man.  Then its a bit more downhill to town, then across the tracks to cut through the NAU campus.  I tend to hop curbs and cut through parking lots as I see fit.  A few more lefts and rights through the hilly section and up the steep driveway to the Mormon Lake ranger station.  There are infinite variations and other cut throughs, most of them involving trails.  The longest of which would take me 4 hours one way and be entirely singletrack.   My route takes about 40 minutes.  Going home hosts about 500 feet of climbing that can be done all at once or broken up into chunks.  My favorite is doing the elks lodge trail in the dark, nothing but starlight.  There are often large bull elk hanging out in the meadows.  One night I passed two cyclists with headlamps that looked lost.  They said they were just looking around and I rode on past.  They asked how I could see without lights down the trail...I told them it doesn't help when they shine those bright beams in my face, and rode off into the darkness.  Some people will never even begin to understand the ways of a ninja.  

So here's my new rig as it turned out.  Its the only full XTR road bike that I know of.  The wheels are M-950 hubs that came off of Puc's breezer laced to Sun Equilizer 29 rims.  Check out the bolt on conversion.  The cranks I picked up NOS at The Hub a couple of years ago with only the big ring and I ended up running it that way.  The cantis I picked up at the Tucson bike swap last fall for $15 and the levers I bought off a kid when I was in high school and when the shifters failed I sawed that part off.  The headset is a WTB grease guard also off the Breezer and the handlebars are GT brahma bars off the wall of 21 ridgecrest, my old house. They were hanging as art.  And the seat is from the Klein.  I probably have no more than $400 into the build plus the cost of the frame and fork which I may never bother to know.  As it sits here it weighs in at about 20 lbs and it is definitely the fastest bike I've ridden in a long time, and it is definitely a road bike.  It'll take 45c tires with gobs of clearance, gears if I ever want them as well as racks and fenders front and rear.  Keep your eyes peeled for a large hauling front basket.

Tour Log: Baja - Day 11-12...for anyone still reading this...

Today is how I test my mind.  The RV stretch of Arizona.  Come to think about it, snowbirds have been the story for the last stretch since Puretecitos.  This part just gets ugly though.  Up and pedaling before dawn again.  Through Quartzite before 8:00 AM.  Now 30 miles on I-10 to get off at US-60.  The longest, flattest, straightest, most Texas-like stretch of Canadian and Californian RVs in the state of Arizona.  I cracked, knowing that 140 miles to Prescott on the Mochilero fully loaded, sore, and tired is just not possible in a day and stuck my thumb out while pedaling down the road.  No luck.  I stopped along side the road on the way out of some trailer community in the cactus and tried to thumb a ride.  I guess pedaling was the way for now.  I flatted just after another highway intersected the 60 and stuck my thumb out.  The second truck...hey, thanks for the ride..."gotta help your fellow man" in a slow Arizona desert drawl that had spent many years building character in the desert sun.  He said he was kind of in a hurry.  It just didn't make any sense.  He was only able to get me up to the next crossroads four miles up where I changed my tire and bought some donuts.  Sugar diet.  I tried again to thumb it out of town but no luck.  Pedal on.  If I don't get a ride at some point this just isn't going to work out.  A car with bikes passes as I ride.  I'd have to take my whole bike apart.  Bikes are not the most convenient baggage when hitchhiking.  I reach the turn off for Prescott and I'm within 60 miles...that would mean I've done about 80 today.  The thumb.  A guy in a monster truck stops and introduces himself as Nick and I shake his slightly mangled hand.  He's about my age and it turns out once again that the Forest Service is a small world.  We rolled up to elevation @ 5700 ft and I watched all the fun and pretty riding roads go by at warp speed.  Oh well.  I gave Allie a call when I got into town and I met up with her and Laura to go hike to a waterfall.  Its spring in northern Arizona and all the washes are pumping clear cold snowmelt.  The waterfall was awesome as was the dunk in one of its lower pools.  We went for beer.  And for me....meat.  Two meals and a pitcher at the Prescott Brewing Co.  I was falling asleep at the table.  We dropped of the friend and in returning home passed a strange sight and Allie demands her sister to stop so we could help that woman.  She was probably 70 and wearing a white hoody zipped up on her chest and a red one wrapped around her waist.  Bare legs, no shoes, its cold out.  Allie jumps out of the car and before I know it I'm scooted over in the back sitting beside this woman who is terrified and can barely speak from the shortness of breath.  Allie has an amazing way with people in general and has worked with people like this.  The woman talks slowly but isn't saying anything...and now the police have pulled in behind up.  We drive to the nearest parking lot and the police pull in behind us.  The man starts immediately with direct questioning but the woman only gets more scared.  It was interesting to see the cop mentality at work here in a situation where they were there to help both the woman and now us.  Allie requested the cop out of the way when he asked if the woman had been drinking and explained to him that it was us who'd been drinking but not Laura, then she asked to speak with the woman to try her efforts.  We got to where she's a good christian woman and there are people who come from a different sect in their christianity but they are TRULY Evil.  It sounded like the man who runs her assisted living home was one of this other sect.  Hence the fear, panic, and attire.  She still couldn't remember her own last name.  She wanted to go to Albertson's, or Camp Verde where people could vouch she wasn't crazy.  Eventually someone from the home came looking for her and told us where to take her.  Not even a block from there.  She panicked at the sight of the man she described earlier.  The police escorted her inside and made sure we were well today.  Allie, you have an enormous heart and endless patience and I'm glad this isn't lost on everybody. 


We all got up early this morning after trying to distract ourselves to sleep.  I got 5 hours.  Laura was flying back to Kentucky and had to turn in the most ghetto rental car ever...plastic mexican hub caps and a red dome light, and plastic dome lights and plastic bits that would fall out when you closed the door.  Allie and I went to breakfast and i was rolling towards home by 8:00.  After and enormous breakfast and two dinners I was hungry ten miles down the road.  I should have done a little more about this.  The ride is one I've wanted to do for a few years now...Prescott to Flagstaff with about 30 miles of graded dirt road.  The Perkinsville road its called is awesome.  Flat to rolling to long downhill followed by rolly follwoed by long 20 mile uphill.  I thought I'd make it to Williams by 3:30 and decide to do the 30 mile interstate stretch thta the snow on the ground would mandate.  At 4:00 I was still climbing back up the Mogollon Rim...always the task.  I was tired, hungry, and impending bonk status.  I called for a ride and arranged to meet Cole at the Pie shop in Williams.  A fine ending point for the tour I thought.  And it was.

I got home and paced at the thought of that idea.  Home.  My house.  It seemed so weird.  It had stayed right here all the while I was moving.  It was a little discomforting even.   So much stuff that I call mine waiting for me here as I'd left it in our little domicile.  On the bike things that are extra come at the cost of precious calories and weight.  I tend to carry some of these things.  This was probably the heaviest tour bike I've ever rolled.  The real bummers are those items that started and returned to here without being used (rain pants, some bad snacks, winter gloves, tights, a book that would be better read at home).  Some of the unused I will always bring (tools, first aid).  Well I'm glad that's over.  Baja is beautiful and has lots to do but bike touring is not atop that list.  It occupies a lot of your daylight hours.  Tomorrow is the second day of spring.  River trip!

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday....

This about says it all...