Travel Week: Coeur d'Alene and Missoula

Holy crap it was a relief to get out of Walla Walla. That place is more of an armpit than Pocatello, and that is saying something!

You know what, that was mean. Pocatello is fine, it just needs waaaaay more breweries to be somewhere I'd want to stay long-term.

Within 3 hours of Mike seeing the last patient on the last day of his rotation, we were back on the road towards Bozeman.  The trailer was not quite winterized yet, and we didn't want our water tanks or pipes freezing in the chilly air of Montana, so we stopped off in Coeur d'Alene for a few days to explore and stay (relatively) warm. However, we had both had a rather tiring day, so we only made it to a rest area a few miles west of CDA before stopping to sleep for the night. It was still better than staying one more nanosecond in Walla Walla.

I do not know how I ever functioned in life without Google maps.  To find a place to put the trailer while wandering around on Saturday, I zoomed in on the satellite map and found a parking area with big trailer-size pull-through spots south of downtown, and thence we proceeded on Saturday morning in search of breakfast and internets.

The parking area was next to the City Hall and library, and also serviced a large park with a fenced doggie play spot, brightly colored playground and picnic pavilion, all within spitting distance of Lake Coeur d'Alene to the south. It was really quite lovely, and we walked the dogs around for a few minutes, taking in the wonderful non-inversioned air of not-Walla Walla.

Hm, we thought to ourselves.  There's something about this place.

After breakfast at Bakery by the Lake (recommend) Mike went to the library to continue interneting and I went for a shopping spree at Costco, because we hadn't had access to one in W^2 and the dogs had been out of their Costco-brand chow for a solid 3 days. (Not that they were terribly broken up about it -- their backup food is white rice and boiled hamburger, which they adore.)  What does it say about me that I feel deprived by not being able to shop for economy packs of folding chairs at a giant wholesale store for a couple of weeks?  'Murica!

Then it was off to the nearest bike shop to ask about area trails.  I went in to Coeur d'Alene Bike Co. to find a super cute flannel-and-beanie-clad blond girl at the front counter, and proceeded to speak in standard mountain-biker lingo, with many "sick"s and "epic"s and "rad"s, presently gleaning much good beta.

Super Cute Shop Girl asked, in order to determine what trails to recommend, if I was an advanced rider, and I replied, rather equivocally, that I liked to think so.  What is that about?  Why can't I just say yes, I am solidly in the 'advanced' category?  I mean, I'm not really up to huge drops or gap jumps just yet, but I've ridden some decent gnar.  Note to self: own it next time.

Since I had a good feeling about the shop, I also mentioned that I didn't notice any bike-related jewelry on display, and perhaps they would be interested in carrying some, more specifically, mine. She said the owner would probably be interested, but he had just gone out for lunch and I should come back after 1 or so.

Roger that.

Back to the trailer to figure out where to put all of the 10-pack family-size Nutella jars I had gotten from Costco.

Mike returned from facebooking studying at the library, and we took the pups for an explore around the Tubbs Hill hiking area, which has a trail that runs along the lake with excellent views of the surrounding hills.  It was a glorious day, if a tad chilly, and at the first opportunity Paddington got into the water to cool off. Ellie, after some plying with a sufficiently large tree branch thrown into the water at a reasonable distance, also swam for a bit.  Although we had finally gotten her to jump/stumble off of a dock on a pond in Pocatello last summer, we were sadly unable to convince her to launch into the water off one of the many boulders on the shore, which would have been wonderfully entertaining and not a little harrowing. We made it to a miniature peninsula and chased each other around on the beach briefly, took the obligatory “us” selfie, and then decided that we had accomplished enough exercise to reward ourselves with beer.

But first: back to the bike shop to do some schmoozing and selling.

Success!  The owner, Chris, was indeed interested in the earrings, and took twelve pairs on commission.

Bam!

We chatted with him and TJ and Syd (Super Cute Shop Girl) for a solid hour, learned more about biking around CDA, played with Syd’s puppy Beemer, and commiserated about the unsuitability of Cannondale lefty forks. When we asked about places to take the trailer for camping, Chris told us to just park it in the lot behind the shop, which we did almost immediately.  (When you’re a gypsy, you learn to take every opportunity like this. I sometimes wonder how serious people are when they offer space or showers or whatever, and whether they are surprised when I take them up on it. Let this be a lesson to all: don’t offer unless you mean it.)

Jewelry hawking and accommodations thus accomplished and established, respectively, it was actually now time for beer and food. There were several breweries quite nearby, but we were charmed by the name of Daft Badger brewing, and went there first.  It was quite busy, as befits a Saturday evening, and when we sat on two of the few open stools the gentleman next to us asked us if he could get us something, adding that he was the owner of the establishment. Once again, we jumped on an unsolicited offer like Ellie pounces on unfortunate rodents (clumsily, and without regard for personal safety or decorum).

 I found myself assuming that this was meant to be an opening for socializing, and with great effort tamped down my natural shyness and conversational awkwardness and pretended to be a normal human being who can talk normally to other normal human beings.

The owner and his wife (Darryl and Val) were extremely cool, terribly nice, and wildly informative about the population, activities and merits of CDA.  We learned that the cost of living is fairly low, the outside opportunities are endless, the ski/DH bike areas are close and world-class, the winters are manageable and the beer is right up there.  It got to the point where I had to ask: what’s the catch?

The catch, Darryl said, is that the town is still very very conservative. “Narrow-minded,” he said.

Ah. Well, that’s nothing we didn’t already live with in Pocatello.

But, it stands to reason that as CDA attracts more under-30 folks looking for adventure and less expensive housing, it will naturally turn a little more purple. At least that’s what I like to think.

Anyway, the beer was good and the food was great at Daft Badger, and I certainly recommend it to all.

It was only 8pm at this point, but since it had gotten dark at 4 it felt much later, and we made a stop at Slate Creek brewing for a couple tasters before going back to the trailer and crashing out early like the party animals we are.

Unfortunately for us in that particular situation, but not necessarily in general, downtown CDA apparently has a bit of a nightlife, and also apparently most of the participants in that nightlife like to take a shortcut through the parking lot of the bike shop to the bar on the other side.  The lot is ostensibly surrounded by chain-link fence on 3 sides, but we observed the following morning that there is a large gap at one corner through which people avoid going an extra 20 feet to the intersection and around the shop building.  Starting at 10pm and continuing until 3am, loud voices permeated the supposedly insulated walls of our so-called winterized trailer as though the owners of said voices were right in there with us.  At one point we heard, very clearly, some apparently amorous male declare “I just want to snort cocaine and fuck fat bitches.”

Indeed.

In the morning, detritus of the previous night was scattered over the parking lot in the form of a Styrofoam container, deposited improbably under the very middle of the trailer, and bits of burrito everywhere else, which Paddington kept trying to scoop up as we walked her to and from the park by the lake.

The nice weather of the day before had, sadly, not continued, and a gusty rain greeted us.  The plan had been to go riding, but here’s the thing about living in a camper: nothing ever dries in here.  Ever. It’s a hermetically sealed box of four respiring and perspiring organisms with no air flow.  So, if we were to go out riding in the rain and bring our nasty damp selves back inside, we might as well throw our clothing in the trash because it wouldn’t by dry again until Christmas.

Also, I’m a big wimp about being wet and cold. So, instead, we took the dogs for a hike on the Canfield Mountain trail system, which was supposed to have good riding. Like total jerks, we hiked up the down-only flow trail, but as there were no vehicles at the trailhead with the means to transport a bike, we figured it was pretty safe. The trail was cool, and the dirt was impressively non-sticky after a day of rain, which we were told is the norm for the area (and also helped by a very dry summer).

The following day’s weather was the same, which meant another hike, this time at Beauty Creek.

When we arrived, we must have just missed a departing hunter, because right there next to the trailhead sign was a pile of very fresh deer guts. Miraculously, we found the pile before the dogs did, which meant we could prevent them from rolling ecstatically in it as they most surely would have done otherwise. We spent a moment dispassionately identifying the organs in the heap, then began to make our way up the winding trail.

Right away we discovered that the trail would be really excellent for mountain biking. It had lots of little technical rock features and tricky moves, and the scenery was absolutely gorgeous. The sign at the bottom said the top of Mount Coeur d’Alene was 8 miles away, which would make for a decently burly out-and-back ride. We will definitely have to go back there at some point.

That evening, we met Mike’s classmate Fallon at Mad Bomber brewery and got to hear about some of the misadventures of the other ISU PA students. Let’s just say, for all of my complaining about Walla Walla, the clinical year has not been a cakewalk for most of these folks.

Finally, the next day, the sun broke through the clouds and riding was back on the menu.  At least it was for Mike, because it was still too cold for me to voluntarily freeze my hands off.  I hiked the dogs around again while he did a quick 1.5 hour loop at Canfield, ending on the flow trail we had explored the first time. The verdict: thumbs up, even if it is easy to get lost up there.  On our way back to the trailer, we picked up a six pack of beer to take inside the shop as thanks for letting us stay in the lot. TJ was the only one there, but Beemer the puppy was also in attendance, so we got to play with him while we chatted with TJ.  Another employee stopped by to pick up a paycheck, and the other owner, Alex, also came in briefly on some errand, so they joined us for a beer as well and we had a right nice conversation about this and that. Definitely a good community in CDA.

On Wednesday, it was finally time to get back on the road. Our final destination was Bozeman for Mike’s third rotation, but as he didn’t need to be there until Monday, we would make a stop in Missoula to hang out with classmate Meadow for a few days.  She had offered to let us park the trailer at her house and use her internets, shower and laundry facilities, and (are you seeing a theme here) we took her up on it.

Meadow’s house is up on a hill south of town, with fabulous views of the surrounding mountains. We rolled in just after dark, and she immediately set about feeding us dinner like the badass mom she is (she and her husband, Clint, have five kids between them).  Meadow was supposed to be in Walla Walla right after Mike, but he gave her a heads up about how awful it was in time for her to find something else, and happily she was able to get a hospital in Missoula to take her on so that she could be with her family. We chatted with her about rotations for a while that evening, and also learned some of the places we should take the dogs exploring for the next couple of days.

On Thursday afternoon, having spent the morning basking in the glow of central heat and fast Wi-Fi and doing a couple loads of impressively stinky laundry, we took the dogs up Mt. Jumbo, just north of I-90.  It was blustery and cold, but there was still a surprising number of people out there at the same time.  A guy was even up there getting ready to go paragliding, but the wind was strong enough that we wondered what his plan would be once he was 100 miles away five minutes after taking off.

 Mt. Jumbo features a large “L” on the west face, and we got to see it up close:

Because Mike is a huge bike dork, on our way past it he identified the pattern of a Maxxis DHF tire, left by some brave or crazy soul on the steeply inclined concrete letter:

We also had a panoramic view of Missoula from there:

Once I was sufficiently cold and cranky, I decreed that it was time to turn around.  Halfway down, we looked back to see paraglider guy hovering gently above the ridge, even though the wind was still valiantly trying to freeze my ears off.  I do not understand how air works.

Once down, we went in search of beer, and found ourselves at Kettlehouse Brewing, where we were greeted by a sea of beards, flannel and Patagonia. I got the sense that Missoula is a good town to be single in: small enough that it’s not overwhelming, large enough for a decent dating pool, and outdoorsy enough that most people you meet will be into some kind of interesting activity. The beer was pretty good, and the best one by far was a 10.5% Imperial Porter.  There’s no food there, though, so don’t go if you’re hungry.

We met Meadow and Clint downtown that evening for dinner at Flathead Lake Brewing Company. Great food and beer—definitely recommend.

The next few days were more of the same: relaxing, interneting, laundrying and hanging out with M&C. Their daughter Makenna was very taken with Paddington and Ellie, although the resident dog there, Pokey, was rather nonplussed by their arrival and attempted to mark his territory by peeing on the couch. (This earned him a lot of laughter and temporary banishment to the basement.)

I explored downtown and spent an absurd amount of time in a bead store, as I tend to do whenever I find one.

Finally, it was time to say goodbye and drive the remaining three hours to Bozeman, where there was a spot waiting for us at the KOA at Four Corners.

Next up: Bozeman Part 2!

Trailer Life Stop #2: Walla Walla Internal Medicine Rotation

This place can pretty much be summed up by a conversation I had with a guy on a mountain bike while I was out walking the dogs.  He saw my Colorado flag hat and stopped to ask what part of Colorado I was from. I told him Denver, and asked where he was from.  When he answered “Durango,” I said “I love Durango!  But wait—why are you here instead of there? Durango is so much better!” He replied that his wife got a job here but they’re trying to maintain the house they still have near Mesa Verde. Then he turned the same question on me, and I explained about Mike’s 5-week rotation.  He then said it was a good thing we wouldn’t be here for winter, since it’s basically 30 degrees and damp every day with a constant weather inversion.

If you don’t know what a weather inversion is, it’s basically the visual manifestation of lung issues. The clouds and the air below the clouds switch places, and the air squashes the pollutant-heavy clouds down like a bully squeezing the lunch money out of Steve Urkel. Salt Lake City is famous for its nasty winter inversions:

Ew.

By the way, where I was walking the dogs is the only place within 20 miles where I can hike them off leash.  It’s called Bennington Lake, and it has the distinct air of being grudgingly afforded to Parks and Rec by the surrounding agricultural interests. AND it’s also a hunting area from October to January, so I have to put orange things on Paddington so she doesn’t get mistaken for a wolf and shot.

For the record, this is a wolf:

This is not:

Note the brindle fur, white feet, and curly tail.

So everybody can stop saying she looks like a wolf now.

The trails at Bennington meander around a medium-sized body of irrigation runoff water, and there are lots of charming signs around warning of the danger of “toxic algae,” which will apparently really fuck your shit up and that of your animals and children (though if you let your children go near that water, maybe you should get out of the gene pool anyway). So even when it’s hot out and the dogs could use a drink and a wallow, I keep them well away, and they are very sad.  The trails are open to bikes, but I think riding here would just be depressing because I’ve been spoiled by actual mountain biking. It’s also popular with equestrians, which means that although I have to carry my dogs’ poo around with me until I find a trash receptacle, I have to constantly sidestep enormous piles of horse crap on the trail. Thanks guys.

This is what the place looks like:

Ugh.

Its one redeeming quality is this cool Great Horned Owl that I spotted the other day. I shall call him Archibald.

So this is basically all we have for outdoor exploring around here unless we want to drive for over an hour.  This is clearly not a haven for adventurous souls like Boulder or Bozeman, and I would advise anyone who likes doing anything other than drinking wine to give it a miss.

We had originally bought the trailer with the hope that we could find nearby Forest Service land to drop it on for free in each rotation location, and then run electricity off the solar panels and generators.  On our second day here, we found out that W² is not that kind of place.  The closest we’d be able to manage was at least an hour out of town on roads with very sharp, tire-puncturing gravel, with no cell service.  That was simply not going to happen, so we admitted defeat and paid for a month in a spot at Four Seasons RV Resort.

The pros: 1.5 miles from Mike’s hospital

                   Fresh water

                   Electricity

                   Showers and laundry

                   Nearby grocery store

The cons: It’s a goddamn RV resort

Oh well. It’s only 5 weeks.

Hey, at least there’s a resident gang of turkeys! Stuffing. Let’s say a group of turkeys is a stuffing. So wrong it’s right.  Paddington and Ellie really really want to chase them, and I kind of want to see what would happen if I let them.  But I can’t help remembering the time Ellie chased a cat and got a claw scratch down the cornea for her trouble.  So…they will remain leashed.

Yes, I know there's a tortoise in the photo.  Look past it.

 I thought our trailer was decent-sized (in any case, it’s a major pain to get situated anywhere that’s not perfectly level) but it is downright tiny compared to the behemoths in this place.  Everyone’s got massive 5^th wheels with multiple pop-outs, and since this place has DirectTV, you can see their enormous TVs through their windows at all times of day and night. ‘Murica!

We’ve done no mountain biking here.  There isn’t any.

We did some wine tasting.  Woo.

I made a display rack for earrings out of bike spokes.  Yay.

I realize this post has probably been a major downer, but in less than a week we get to go back to Bozeman! It will be considerably colder, yes, but there will be so much more funtivities! Stay tuned!

Trailer Life Stop #1: Bozeman

In a word: idyllic.  This is the kind of place in which I think I would have very much enjoyed growing up.  The public school bus ride would have been a bear, however; the place is 15 miles north of town on a winding road that, combined with the environment of a lurching bus, would probably create perfect conditions for motion sickness.  The neighborhood is just across the road from the Bridger Bowl ski area, and our hosts’ property comprises 12 acres of spruce and lodgepole forest backing up to a gentle peak.

The first thing you notice about the house is the giant stacks of firewood surrounding it.  Montana, as we all know, is a cold place for quite a lot of the year, and the felling, cutting and splitting of suitable trees is a constant activity in the late summer and fall. Thanks to the pine beetles infesting the west, there is no shortage of dead standing trees that make for good burning.  The dogs especially enjoy sniffing around the piles after chipmunks though they do tend to knock huge heavy logs off of the pile occasionally. I fear for my toes.

The house has a large parking area (which is where the snow plows pile up the drifts in winter) and a little grassy yard with a deck and fence-in garden featuring a few small tomato plants and a large patch of brambles The house itself is stacked lodgepoles on 3 sides and a stone façade on the fourth, and it is, at least to me, the exact right size: two rooms upstairs and a large open living area, kitchen, and bathroom on the ground floor. The wood burning stove keeps the whole affair toasty in winter and the skylights provide abundant natural illumination.

The trailer is situated about 20 yards away from the house on a small flattish area sheltered by evergreens.  This is nice for keeping the wind down, but it also means that the trailer stays fairly cold until the sun makes its way above the trees in the afternoon. This is quite amenable to Paddington, who, being extremely fluffy, is always much too hot if the temperature is anywhere above freezing;

"It's 50 degrees in here. Too hot. Turn on the AC." -- Paddington

however, for high surface area-to-volume-ratio individuals such as myself, it is slightly unpleasant, and when I came across a set of fleece sheets at Costco I bought them for immediate use. (Two thumbs up, by the way.)

One of the major perks of the situation is the availability of power and water, because otherwise we would be dependent on solar panels, gas generators and propane tanks to charge our various devices and appliances. The trailer still has to be taken to town every couple of weeks to empty the holding and gray water tanks, but it is downright luxurious compared to the National Forest campground we were using in Pocatello.  The house is also conveniently close to a lot of Forest Service land and trails.  The dogs are getting spoiled by all of the sparsely used open space (and I suppose I am too). T their credit, although there are many things to sniff and chase, and plenty of opportunities to run off and become feral, they like to stay within sight of their humans.

Bozeman itself is an interesting place. According to our hosts, it has absolutely exploded in size in the past decade, when someone decided it was a hip place to go and pretend to be a lumberjack, complete with beard and inexplicably expensive flannel shirt. It used to be a bunch of old hippies who worked hard all summer and spent the rest of the year skiing every day.  When Mike and I rolled into town at 3:oopm on a Thursday, we were confused by all the traffic at every stoplight. Who were all these people, and why weren’t they at work?  It turns out that Bozeman is basically Boulder, but with a Costco. It is also another place I wish I’d known about when I was applying to colleges. Of course, if I had gone to Montana State I might have ended up like Mike’s brother, who spent more time skiing than going to class and subsequently transferred to the Northern Illinois University, where the lack of any stimulating outdoor activities meant an academic environment more conducive to studying.

We also had the opportunity to do a bit of weekend mountain biking.  Mike particularly wanted to bag Sacagawea peak, so on our last Saturday there we undertook the unpleasantly bumpy 6-mile drive from the trailer to the parking area and made our way through the throngs of hikers up to the saddle overlooking Bozeman.  The trail itself was narrow, switchbacky, and actually fairly technical, which was a welcome change from the buff and mostly smooth trails we had encountered at Grassy Mountain, Stone Creek and Olsen Creek. The weather was nice but the top of the saddle was worrisomely windy, and it was with a not-unreasonable amount of grumbling that I agreed to accompany Mike up to the tippy top of Sacagawea.  We were rewarded by the sight of a couple fluffy white mountain goats strolling around the peak, nibbling here and there at the few ambitious plants that had managed a toehold in the rocks.  There was another couple of hikers there as well, with a German Shepherd that, incredibly, did not seem terribly interested in the other quadrupeds occupying the area (my dogs would have been losing their goddamn minds). The goats did not seem to take any notice of us, but I, remembering the story from a couple years back about the mountain goat in Yellowstone that GORED A GUY WITH ITS HORNS AND FREAKING KILLED HIM BECAUSE IT WANTED THE SALT IN HIS PEE (!!!!!), still became a little uneasy when one of them started moseying in our direction.  I was also freezing, so we took some photos

Fun fact: a plane crashed into the mountainside behind me in 2004. 

And then bailed.

The descent was a rip-roaring good time, and although I rode pretty well I was frustrated by a couple of tight switchbacks that I didn’t clear, so now I’ll have to go back sometime and conquer them. I’d recommend the trail to anyone in the area with a decent bike and who can handle a bit of exposure.

We also went for a ride on Emerald Trail on the advice of host Matt, though we didn't find out until we got back that this was the trail on which he had crashed very hard and knocked himself out a few years back.  Happily, we had no such issues, and after a few miles of moderate pedaling found the eponymous and very pretty Emerald Lake.  I hadn't taken a #freetheboobies photo in a while, so I gave my phone to Mike, who naturally couldn't resist turning it into a selfie:

Sigh.

Besides adventuring, I knocked out a bunch of earrings during our stay there and sold some of them to a bike shop on the main drag, Chalet Sports. I also came up with this fun new design:

 I wouldn’t say that the jewelry business is paying the bills just yet, but it’s certainly funding itself and it’s neat knowing that people are wearing it in a few different states.

So, Bozeman was a pretty nice first stop, and it will be our third stop as well, in November, when mountain biking will probably be done for the season.  However will we occupy ourselves?

Next up: Walla Walla Washington! Where the sweet onions come from.

VIDAmtb: Long Live Ladyshred!

It's both a blessing and a curse to be a lady mountain biker: on the one hand, you have an automatic sisterhood with every other girl on a bike, because you've probably had a lot of the same challenges and experiences. On the other hand, if your parents weren't cyclists or if you didn't start out riding motos, it's likely that you were taught to ride by a significant male presence in your life, such as a boyfriend, and many times it does not go well. My personal history started off a little rocky, with the requisite clipless pedal slow side fall and a trail not at all suitable for beginners, but fortunately my boyfriend-now-husband was patient and encouraging.  I persevered, and since then I have heard many variations on the same theme of traumatizing introduction to the sport.  Boys tend to push us too far too fast and neglect the foundations of good form and technique, preferring to shoot ahead of us on the trail and take a nice long break at the top as we puff our way up, while we're either pretending to have a super time or getting ready to pitch a major fit.  And then on the downhill, they are off again, leaving us to navigate any number of obstacles with incorrect body position and too many fingers on the brake levers (see Step 8 of How to be a Mountain Biker). It's a wonder that those of us who have this experience ever get on a bike again.  Luckily, even if bad habits have been ingrained over years of riding with boys or, indeed, for any other reason, there are mountain bike skills clinics that can help wipe the slate clean. The VIDAmtb clinics, in particular, focus on mastering the basics and building up to achieve confidence and competence in all situations on the trail.  VIDA also has the benefit of being for women, by women, and is the brainchild of two awesome lady shredders who have spent years in the industry and know that having more women on bikes is good for everyone.

(EJ Dilley Photography)

Last weekend I was lucky enough to participate in a VIDA clinic held at the Valmont Bike Park in Boulder, CO, as an ambassador and general helper-outer for the coach of one group of five women who wanted to up their on-trail game.  The coach, Lauren (aka Professor Shred), had a gold helmet festooned with stickers and a brilliant green dirt jumper with bright blue Spank wheels.  I knew we were in for a good time when she said she was from Seattle: those PNW folks really know what they're doing.

The organizers, Sarah and Elena, had used questionnaires to group the women together by skill level and preferences of things to work on during the clinic, but Lauren still had each of the five women give a quick personal background and specific aspirations for the day.  All of them had been riding for a few years, but they wanted to get more comfortable in sketchy trail situations like drops, jumps, and corners.  But instead of getting straight into the more advanced techniques, Lauren wanted to make sure everyone had the basics down, mainly body position, cornering and braking.  There are two reasons for this: first, most women (and guys, for that matter) never got proper instruction on the basics; and second, everything more advanced that we wanted to tackle later would build on having good starting technique.  So many people are shocked to find that they've been doing things wrong for years, and the concept of changing is both daunting and freeing. At VIDA, the correct way is clearly explained and demonstrated, and all that is left to do is practice until it becomes second nature.

Anyway, we started off with a powerful demonstration of why the one-finger (read: pointer) braking plan is best, then moved on to attack position, which allows maximum adaptability in trail situations (body low, weight on feet, elbows and knees loose and bent). Quick note from a previously guilty party: DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, GRIP YOUR SADDLE WITH YOUR THIGHS.  On to cornering: this proved a bit more challenging.  A surprisingly large percentage of riders have a great deal of trouble with bike-body separation, which is critical to good cornering.  Plainly said, it means leaning your bike, not your body.
This is correct cornering form:

(EJ Dilley Photography)

This is incorrect:

And this is just completely nuts:

But that last one is Matt Hunter and he can do pretty much whatever the hell he wants.

During this segment I benefited from Lauren's coaching as well, as she pointed out that I was moving my knees all wrong and then showed me how to do it correctly.  Score!

Next, we moved on to rolling up, over, and off obstacles (in this case, a big wooden box). The first drill focused on preloading the front of the bike to pop up over curb-sized things instead of just bashing into them, which suspension forks make possible but is still not ideal.

(EJ Dilley Photography)

After that, and at the request of the ladies, we stacked a second wooden box on top of the first and attached a ramp to the front end to create about a 12-inch edge for them to roll off of.  It was obviously a perfectly rollable distance,but it provided plenty of height to practice shifting weight properly and also "sending" a small drop, or "lunging" as Lauren called it. It took a few laps, but eventually everyone had it down, and we raised the box by another 6 inches.  At that height, rolling the edge at slow speed would be iffy, and only two of the five in the group wanted to try hucking off of it.  They played on it until lunchtime, and then we quickly stuffed our faces with great food provided by Real Athlete Diets so that we could get back out there before it started storming on us.

Lauren took us on a quick lap around the south part of The Glades, which has a few small rock ledge drops with similar heights to what we were working on with the boxes, and then we joined another group that was learning to pump the rollers in the north section of The Glades. Lauren gave a quick tutorial on the anatomy of a roller and what your bike and body should be doing in each part. I rode through while they watched to show how it looks, and apparently the demonstration was well received because they made me do it again while both groups watched, which, even though I've done it a million times, made me unaccountably anxious.  I managed not to pull an endo or get my shorts caught on my saddle or anything, and then I joined Lauren in fussing at the ladies as they did laps around the track. I also demonstrated my utter ineptitude at taking action photos:

Afterward we moved up t the large pump track at the top of the park, which proved more challenging due to the tight berms.  I was struck by how hard it is to explain the motion of pumping; when I learned to do it, I had trouble getting the timing right, but once I did it was easy to tell that I'd gotten it.  A couple of the women had the same experience, and I was impressed by the improvement I saw.

Then, it was on to the dirt jumps, where we practiced rear-wheel lifts and level lifts (bunny hops are hard to master on clipless pedals, which most of us were using that day...oops) as helmetless male youths provided aerial distraction nearby:

We took the hopping to the XS and S dirt jump lines with the daunting goal of using parabolic motion to clear the small, friendly table jumps.  Lauren showed us how much more fun dirt jump bikes are on dirt jumps:

Braaap! (EJ Dilley Photography)

With ominous black clouds looming over the Flatirons, we used our last hour to play around on the small slopestyle line. I finally got our group to tackle a small drop at the top of the line, which, not being entirely rollable but only needing moderate speed to clear safely, was fairly intimidating to begin with.  I remembered feeling squirrelly about it when I finally got back on my bike after a nasty spinal injury at Keystone in 2011, so I totally related to their trepidation.  Lauren and I clowned around on the drop first:

"Magnum! Dear God, it's beautiful!"

Tongue-out jumping: don't try this at home.

Yes, it's a small drop.  But a drop is a drop, and drops can seem really sketchy until you get the hang of them.  This one is 99% mental, which you can see from the concentration on the faces of these two:

But they totally rocked it, and once it struck home that they really just did need a little speed, it was all rainbows and butterflies!

Watching other women shred is one of my favorite things.

The participants reconvened at 4:30 for wrap-up, a raffle, and tech talk, while the coaches and ambassadors took advantage of the continuing lack of rain to play in the park a little longer.  We finally had to retreat to food and beers when the storm began at 6, almost as if it had been waiting all day for us to have a successful clinic.

I've taken several clinics in my seven years of being a mountain biker, and each time I've had my mind blown in one way or another by the difference between doing something the right way and the wrong way.  More than once, one of the women in our group expressed amazement at the ease with which Lauren or I performed a skill that has become natural to us.  This is not to say that I'm a pro or anything; I'm just lucky that I was taught by people who really know what they're doing.  Good clinics and coaching are critical to those of us who didn't grow up with a pump track in the backyard, and in addition to giving women a supportive and fun environment to practice skills right alongside other motivated and rad women, they are an investment in a future of better riding.  It's also an opportunity to network and find other folks to ride with in your area.  The ladies in our group were excited by their own progression and kept saying their friends would never believe what they had managed to do during the clinic, and they are going to take that enthusiasm out on the trail with them and hopefully inspire more women and girls to go out and ride.  I can't wait to see what happens next!


*Thanks to EJ Dilley Photography and Sarah Rawley for providing the good photos.  The terrible ones are, obviously, mine. Also, thanks to Real Athlete Diets for providing the delicious breakfast, lunch and afternoon snacks. And much thanks to Professor Lauren Shred for having a great sense of humor and being generally rad.*

Go Forth and Coach!

I've posted previously about my volunteer coaching activities with the Pocatello high school mountain bike team, and last weekend I started the process of becoming an official assistant coach.

Fellow assistant coach and parent of a team member Troy and I traveled to the Idaho Leaders' Summit in Eagle last weekend to undergo training and get some coaching tips from our Lord and Savior Lee McCormack (and, as a bonus, take advantage of the much more varied opportunities for craft beer sampling in the Boise area).

We left Pocatello on Friday afternoon and arrived at The Edge brewing company right as our stomachs started to grumble, and our first glance at the bar made me feel like I was back at a proper Denver tap house:

So many choices!  Also, the bartender had lots of tattoos and an ironic facial hair thing going on.  I told him I wanted ALL THE BEERS, so he asked if I trusted him, then poured me a flight of 4 of their best.  He chose wisely, so after that flight I had another and a gigantic burger as well.

Once I had mopped most of the barbecue sauce off my face, Troy and I continued on to our lodgings for the weekend: his sister's house! She had generously offered to put us up, and we were happy to save the team a few bucks by forgoing a hotel.  Even better, they had an enormous, very enthusiastic young German shepherd named Henry, who immediately shanghaied me into playing tug with him (I lost).  After a glass of delicious oatmeal stout with our hosts, we were off to bed and resting up for a long next day of Powerpoint presentations.

The summit began at 8:00am, so Troy and I left the house at 7:00 in search of bagels and coffee.  When we arrived at the venue, we found...bagels and coffee.  Blast.  I chose a seat at a table about halfway from the front and close to the exit, but as soon as the room filled up, a guy came and asked if there was space for him to squeeze in next to me, then proceeded to slurp the bejesus out of his coffee for the entire morning.  Blast again.  This is why I can probably never go back to school: other peoples' noises.

The guys running the show, Austin McInerny and Dylan Gradhandt, kicked things off by having everyone introduce themselves and say where they were from and what they hoped to get out of the summit. The answers to the latter question mostly followed the theme of getting more kids on bikes.  There were  lot more women in attendance than I had expected, and they all (myself included) expressed a specific goal of getting more girls on bikes and onto teams.  Several people also mentioned creating lifelong cyclists, and biking has an advantage in this area over other sports, because how many kids keep playing football or soccer or water polo after high school?

After the introductions, we dove right in to starting and managing teams.  Austin's presentations included lots of personal anecdotes from his time as a coach (he's now the head of NICA) and were very relatable and easy to follow.  Next, we got a quick tutorial about registering teams online, and crash courses on the NICA rulebook, connecting with and motivating the kids, convincing school administrators to let us steal kids from their precious football teams so they can get fewer concussions by riding bikes instead, raising funds and finding sponsors, and involving parents in the community.  It was an avalanche of information, and since they gave us flash drives already loaded with the slides and a whole mess of other stuff, I just jotted down ideas for our team here and there.  I especially liked the suggestion of a "bike check" at the beginning of the season, which wold be a mandatory meeting of all the kids where they learn how to make sure their bikes don't have flat tires and aren't about to break into a million pieces (aka trail-ready).  We also heard about a flat-fixing competition, with the first person to swap a tube and pump the tire up to a predetermined PSI winning some kind of prize; I thought that was pretty ingenious, and I hope we can incorporate it into a team practice at some point.  We're lucky it's only April and we've got plenty of time for planning all the season's activities.

For pretty much the entire time we were sitting there, it had been raining continuously outside, and the prospect of a group ride once we had adjourned for the day looked bleak.  However, about an hour before we were scheduled to be done, the rain let up and the sun made a timid appearance.  It was decided that we should venture onto the trails around the Avimor Community Center (where the summit was being held) and turn around if we encountered high levels of mud.  Those of us that were itching for a ride hustled to get changed and saddle up before the weather turned nasty again, but we only made it about a mile when rain started falling.  We regrouped at a spot with a vantage point of a steep, tough-looking switchback climb that will be part of the course for the Idaho league State Championships in October, then the locals led the group up a pretty tight ravine where the trail was mostly flowy singletrack with some rocks thrown in here and there and a couple of creek crossings.  It was reassuring to be on lower ground when thunder started rumbling, and because the trail wasn't overly muddy, we only turned back when the ravine opened up onto more exposed ground. I had very wisely elected to wear a cotton flannel shirt on the ride, so the descent was a mite chilly.

Of course, it was still a good time, though it was a bit disappointing to discover the lack of a bike wash station (aka hose) to ameliorate our crunchy drivetrains.  The center did have very nice shower facilities, but, me being me, I had forgotten a towel.  I dried off as best I could with a T-shirt, then Troy and I made our way to the Winding Creek Grill in Eagle, where the organizers had reserved a table for the folks who hadn't had enough of hanging about with the same people all day.  It turned out to be a nice small group, and we talked bikes and kids and race schedules over good microbrew drafts.

The next day was almost entirely devoted to a skills/coaching clinic with Lee McCormack, but first we had a useful presentation on risk management and insurance.  I discovered that: A) I'm going to need a bigger pack for spare parts, emergency rations and a first aid kit, and B) coaches aren't supposed to transport kids in our personal vehicles, because car insurance companies are jerks. We're also supposed to limit physical contact with the kids for obvious reasons. Commence air high fives!

Lee took the floor shortly after, and went through some basics of coaching, as well as bike setup and body position fundamentals.  His mantra (or one of them, at least) is "heavy feet, light hands," and the cornerstone of his on-the-bike teaching is the "attack position." He gave us a visual of this concept by pulling two tables together, balancing his bike between them on the cranks, and straddling the bike with his feet holding the pedals in place.  Then he demonstrated how his weight stayed centered over the bottom bracket whether he pushed the bars forward as in a descent or pulled back for a steep climb. It was an excellent way of getting the idea across, and it came to him, he said, in a fever dream during a bout of influenza.  Hey, whatever works.

We broke for lunch, and because I am wildly inept at putting in my contact lenses, I went to wrestle them onto my eyeballs and put on riding gear before eating. When I returned, someone had found the streaming video of the World Cup downhill race in Lourdes and put it up on the projector.  I saw Emmeline Ragot smash Manon Carpenter's time and half of Rachel Atherton's run before we were summoned out into the sunshine for the practical part of the summit.

I had previously taken two clinics with Lee in Boulder, and I always waved hello when I saw him at Valmont Bike Park, so I was gratified when he stepped into the middle of the circle to address us as a group, stopped short, pointed at me and asked if I had done a clinic with him before.  But the downside of this was that he singled me out a couple times as an example.  And as anyone who knows me knows, I (sarcasm alert) just love being the center of attention.  Well, I guess it's true when there is tequila involved.

Lee took us over to a stretch of not-busy road and started demonstrating techniques of proper attack position, braking, and turning, then divided us into two groups: one performing, the other coaching.  I know the point of the whole exercise was to practice giving constructive guidance, but it felt so bizarre to coach other coaches.

Here is a not remotely interesting picture of Lee telling us we're doing it all wrong:

A quick, not at all catty observation of my fellow participants: the bike/outfit combination really ran the gamut from an enduro-ish vibe such as on myself and Dylan, and major Trail Freds on hardtail 29ers in their full matching spandex team kits. Most folks were somewhere in between, but the notable outliers were the dude on the commuter, complete with fenders and pannier rack, and the fatbike with funky handlebars like these:

Hey, people should ride whatever they like.  But I reserve the right to be amused by them. I'm sure that I look like a total doofus to some most people, and my therapist says I'm okay with that.

Lee then led us to a parking area with a short, steep embankment and drilled us on staying loose on the bike to soak up bumps and ride smooth, then on getting out of the saddle and straightening arms for more efficient climbing.  At the end of our allotted Lee time, I accosted him for a selfie with me as Instagram proof of my being on a bike for Day 12 of 30 Days of Biking.

Then, after changing and thanking Austin and Dylan for putting on the summit, Troy and I hit the road.  We brainstormed ideas on skills clinics, team events and everything else, and arrived back in Pocatello ready to give our report to Coach Dan and get started on an awesome season.