Albuquerque NM

Well here we are. It has been three months since I posted anything at all but we have been busy. Vermont to Albuquerque NM. Big changes in geography and climate. 300 + days of sunshine here and the days that aren't sunny by their standards are by mine Back East. It is even sunny when it rains here. Clothes dry on the clothesline about as fast as it takes to hang out a full load so you can almost finish hanging at one end and go back to where you started and start taking them off again. Of course Albuquerque is an enclave of green in the high desert provided by the Rio Grande. Go to far in any direction (especially south) and it gets dry like you read about. This country was notoriously difficult to cross before the railroad and the advent of paved roads and internal combustion. Between the natives and the environment a white man would be hard pressed to survive here for long. When I was in Death Valley years back there was a big picture of some famous party crossing Death Valley complete with tattered Conestoga wagon etc. These poor souls eventually became so thirsty and hungry that they resorted to cannibalism to survive like the Donner Party. In the painting there are natives lying down behind a small ridge watching the party traveling across the floor of the valley. Natives who knew how to survive in the valley, natives who knew where the fresh water springs were. I always wanted to go back and pen in what the natives might have been saying to each other like Mystery Theater 2000: "They are looking mighty dry eh?"

So I have been here a week and have ridden my bike in the city a bit and am pleased to say that Albuquerque is doing a fair job making the city bike friendly. As usual the folks that drive in the city aren't always in possession of a clue about cyclists but at least there is a terminal mass of cyclists andthe motorists are used to seeing them. There are bike lanes, and bike routes and even a bike boulevard (albeit on just one street). There is a published map showing all aforementioned bikeways and various published books on both roadbiking and mountain biking routes and trails. I have had two pretty amazing mountain bike rides on canyon singletrack that was GOBS of fun. It is a great city to have various bikes in your quiver so I am glad that I brought all of my bikes in spite of the space that they took up in the truck.

Winter Cycling

Question: Am I insane, stupid, addled, strange, odd, 'tetched'? Every time ... let me stress EVERY time I tell people that I ride my bike to get around in the winter in Vermont I get some pretty strange looks. Even if the person knows that I ride a bike in the winter they often look at me like they can't quite believe I really, REALLY ride a bike in the winter. My contention is this: that I am normal and there is nothing at all wrong or indicative of any sort of deficiency with riding a bicycle when there is snow on the ground. I choose to do it in the land of internal combustion. I own two vehicles that burn gasoline: a car and a motorcycle and I would rather ride a bicycle if I can. Further I contend that in general this country is soft and spoiled and lazy. Owning a car is a luxury. We don't treat it as such but it is. We spend way too much money on buying, fueling, insuring, and maintaining our vehicles. 100 years ago EVERYONE rode bicycles or walked or took the train. What happened? The cultural expectation that EVERY person should own/drive a car as primary mode of transportation has done us all as much harm as good. You want to really feel independent? SELL your car. You will save thousands of dollars every year but we all know that for most this is not about money but the personal sense of freedom a cars can give you. Noone walks anymore, even people with good, young legs drive a 1/4 mile to buy snacks at the convenience store. I commute through a college campus and watch students drive to the store just off campus that is within sight of their dorms. I am not that old but when I was at UVM (a school where most of the students have a huge sense of entitlement now) I walked everywhere, I hitched and rode my bicycle before I was a bike nut. What happened to enjoying the journey?

AHA! You exclaim. "I have you! : What does Winter Cycling have to do with enjoying the journey?" I am sure you have seen the short cartoon at the top. It is classic because like Bugs Bunny it is funny to more than one sense of humor for different reasons. When I read it I agree with the final statement:"And Miss This?" without any sense of irony. I enjoy riding my bike in the winter. That's right. I LIKE IT. But the cartoon is funny to most of us because so few people can believe that WE LIKE IT, therefore the final statement "And Miss This?" comes off at least ironic and possibly sarcastic.

I like riding my bike when it is snowing like hell and cold and icy. Erin, my sweety, secretly thinks I am a nutjob. At every opportunity she offers me a ride to/from work as though somehow I own a car. As though one of these days I will suddenly come to my senses and realize 'Oh my God! It is winter. What the hell am I riding my bike for?' I always say the same thing. 'Erin, if I wanted to drive I would.' She just doesn't get it. Not that I really need her to.

In Europe owning a car is treated as a luxury. Most people do not own cars. Most people do ride bicycles and walk and take public transportation. Of course Europe supports this sort of behavior with a vastly superior public transportation system than we have in the US, bike lanes, bike parking etc. but in Europe riding a bicycle is so integral to getting around that while most people ride their bikes in winter they would not be considered 'bike nuts' by their peers. They just ride a commuter bike, kinda like sensible shoes. Japan is the same, in fact in many cases bikes aren't even locked in Japan. In the US I am treated like a weirdo and a sort of extremist if I commute by bike IN ANY SEASON, especially in winter. In Europe I would be one of thousands in any city were I to commute by bike in the winter. Everyone does it.

I have to admit that sometimes I get an iconoclastic rush from putting my bike skills to work just to get to work during a snowstorm. I wouldn't do it if being labeled weird really bothered me. That said I would love to see the US change just a little in it's cultural perspective on cars and bicycles. I understand that most people don't like riding a bicycle in the winter and still wouldn't even if it was more 'normal' accepted practice here. I am willing to be 'that guy' who rides all the time. I would love to have some company out there. Popular opinion holds that if you are riding a bike in the winter you must have lost your license etc. The same is true for using the bus in Chittenden County, noone with a car takes the bus!! This unfortunate perspective perpetuates because many people who might take the bus DO NOT because they don't want to deal with the people they imagine are on it: homeless, punks, poor, and criminal types etc. Sigh.

Then there are the drivers ... I am a driver. When I am on a bicycle and am forced to use a major thoroughfare for lack of a realistic alternative I am consistently amazed at how many people just act as though cyclists just have no right to be on the road at all. Not very many people say anything (they would have to roll down the window and get a blast of cold air) but I can tell from the way they drive that for many the only thing keeping them from just dinging me into the ditch is fear of legal reprisal. They pass way too close, beep horns, creep forward behind me as though to nudge me into the intersection or (this is the worst) fail to see me. My family, my working cohorts all voice concerns for my safety knowing I ride on the same streets that they drive on. Doesn't this speak to something deeper? They know it is an unfriendly environment for anyone trying to make their way on foot or bicycle. Sad.

When the latest gas crunch hit and prices topped $4/gallon I was secretly happy about it. Of course the prices came back down and everyone went back to their normal driving routines. The only thing that is going to change the behavior of the vast American driving public is an economic pinch. For folks to stop using a car to get them where they need to go it has got to become financially painful to use a car. Bottom Line. Advertising and friendly cycling ambassadors have a small effect but the real motivator is money. That day is coming. We must find a way to get around that does not involve the internal combustion motor using refined petroleum as fuel. That is clear. What is not clear is will the American public start seeing the advantages to bikes and feet or will they just trade petroleum for another fuel source?

Screaming Babies

I (we: Erin and I) have a new baby as of 6 weeks ago. I think by now we know that she is kinda fussy. I don't know if I will go as far as to label her 'colicky' but she cries a bit. This weekend she got a sniffle. Not terrible but enough that her breast feeding tapered off because she could not breathe well. Turns out the bottle works better than the breast when she can't breathe through her nose very well. So she spent some time screaming this weekend and ... I struggle with this.

I don't know how else to say it. I really struggle with this. I work with mostly women being a nurse and female nurses usually don't stray too far from a certain ... personality type. I won't go into it further but suffice it to say that most of them are good mothers and this is also their 'style' of nursing. They mother. So I have heard certainly enough advice and possibly too much from my working cohorts about babies. Some is of great use. Some feels like an bird telling a fish how to ride a bicycle: pointless.

I have taken to wearing hearing protection while she is crying in earnest. Erin thinks this is ... a suspect behavior in a father but I know other men who do the same including her own brother. There is something maddening about the noise she makes that turns my ability to maintain love and patience for my daughter to mush. At some point without my ear muffs I just want to break her in half. TOTALLY irrational? Definitely. Shaken Baby Syndrome makes sense now. I am not justifying it but I do understand the urge. A patient of mine said "Oh, I wanted to chuck mine in the woodstove more than once." They estimate that annually 50,000 babies get shaken hard enough to sustain some damage and 1/4 of them DIE. Holy Shite. That's a lot of shaking. I get it though. Scary. So I am trying to practice just putting her down and walking away.

An old friend says I am 'cranky' about the whole crying thing. That would be an old friend who is a mother of two. Politely I would respond: THWWWWWWP! Call me a wimp, roll your eyes in motherly indignation, bask in the glorious female role imperative that you take inconsolable, screaming babies in stride without any real struggle. Let me congratulate you! You are more of a woman than I am! I am not a woman. I am a man and this man struggles with it.

The Latest Obsession

I have long fantasized about owning a Land Rover. This has been nothing but a pipe dream but I did enter into it deep enough to buy a nice repair manual long since lost. I test drove a Defender 90 15 years ago and liked it a lot for what it was. I could not afford a new or close to new Defender now so that route is out. I remember (recurring theme here: see 'Things that Beep') the Defender 90 in spite of being a new vehicle had very little in the way of 'extras': no carpet, no electric windows, no heated seats etc. All the ridiculous little gee-gaws that cars of every price point seem to have that you pay for and don't necessarily want were missing. Simple.

So I was looking around thinking that maybe once I get to Albuquerque I might get a LR. Well there are all sorts of rigs out there for sale, some for too much, some for a reasonable amount. My favorite find is this one: http://agustinspurlock.com/gallery1/index.htm This is the sort of fantastic exploration that gets you little nuggets of interest for future reference. For example: check out this guys name: Agustin Spurlock. Initially I thought NFW this guys name is really Agustin Spurlock. Sounds like a pulp fiction detective.

The thing I really like about old Land Rovers is there timelessness. At some age it ceases to be important exactly what year they were built but what condition they are in, how many miles since the last motor rebuild, what sort of transmission is in it, is the frame galvanized, does the winch work etc. This vehicle is nearly forty years old. It does not have ANY thing extra by todays automobile standards. If you are hot you open a vent just above the hood beneath the windshield by hand and air comes in. The beauty of this sort of engineering is it lasts because it is simple and if it breaks you can fix it. Land Rovers have aluminum body panels that don't rust, they are simple and flat and bolt to a frame: Old school. No unibodies. Land Rovers for all there British quirks and poor 'performance' by modern standards achieve something that most cars do not: they last. They do not last because they never break down or never rust (they do both). They last because they are the sort of vehicle that someone wants to maintain.

I made a deal with Erin (the mother of my sweet daughter and my favorite person on the planet) that we would NEVER drive a minivan. Bear with me, this is germaine. Along the continuum of vehicular soul minivans are bereft. They have no soul: they are conveyance, they are convenience, they are convention, but they do not have that something that a vehicle must have to engender LOVE. They are a Land Rovers antithesis. Thus my love for LR's. So.

There is something about the pace of Land Rovers that I like. It runs against the mindset of ever increasing media distraction and multitasking imperative that our culture and its advertisers push us towards. There is something peculiar and eccentric about LR's that adds to their 'soul' value.

More later.

Curious about the bike?

Well if you are curious about the bike in the picture listen up. It is called a Zoo Python, that is like Chevy Camaro: Marque and Model.

Some background: Observed Trials is a judged competition where competitors use bicycles to navigate a course over VERY uneven ground, rocks etc. The object is not to finish in the least amount of time but to 'clean' all the obstacles on the course. To 'clean' something you must ride over it without touching down with feet or hands and staying in the confines of the marked course. You would not believe the stuff that the really good trials riders can ride over. Crazy.

So in trials there are different types of bikes: like in auto racing there are different types of cars. The bike in the picture is a 'Modified' trials bike. There are also 'Stock' trials bikes that look like mountain bikes. A modified looks like a bmx bike but there are some marked differences. Modified trials bikes have 19" wheels and relatively small frames compared to the stock class which use 26" wheels.

Trials has been around for years but it has gained popularity in European cities and much more recently in some US cities. Cities have all sorts of 'terrain' that provide a challenge for trials riding. Trials, like any sport, evolves and trials has evolved in the last twenty years. Hans Rey, who rides for GT Bicycles has done a lot to make the sport known but there are many riders that are 'pushing the envelope' as far as what is possible on a trials bike. BMX and BMX trick riding both have evolved and now there are some very talented riders that are using techniques and styles from both in urban trials. Check out the videos to see what I mean:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F7z4HxpWfA Ryan Leech

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjJkiF-xVNk Ben Travis

Things that beep.

I am a nurse in a hospital. There are a lot of things that beep. Call lights, IV pumps, tube feed pumps, ... even the refrigerator beeps when someone leaves the door open. Since I have become a nurse I have become 'sensitized' to things that beep to the point where I get really annoyed in my car when I leave the door open with the keys in the ignition. I want to disable all the alarms. Somehow a bird chirping repetitively outside the window is fine but a very similar and not necessarily shrill or loud beep from something electronic is maddening. Go figure.

In the eighties I had a girlfriend Heather Drewes who's grandmother had a convertible K-car that talked. I was in my twenties but in spite of my open minded age the car drove me bonkers. If the keys were in the ignition and the door was open a mild (and therefore maddening) voice said 'Your door is ajar.' I always heard it as 'Your door is a jar' which makes no sense ... I don't like cars telling me what to do. I always wear my seatbelt except when I don't and when I don't I have a good reason and hate the dinging reminder that the seatbelt is not fastened.

Another erstwhile friend of mine: Laurel Saville, had a great line that fit this sort of thing; 'It's like being beaten to death by moths.' Perfect.