Alaskan Pack Fodder

On the last day of the 2017 Alyeska Mighty Mites season, Abby and I went skiing together. This doesn't happen as much as it used to, since she has other coaches now.    We got our father-daughter time after the race and barbeque. I had an interesting morning pulling one of my group out of a tree, where he was perched upside down and twisted in interesting ways but otherwise unhurt. It's never boring, even on the last day.   We decided to play on the steep slopes of Alyeska's North Face, traversing across to patches of less-tracked snow in the shadows of the Christmas and New Years chutes. She led the way, and it won't be long until she'll leave her old man behind. Hopefully I have a few more days like this before it happens.

I don't religiously watch professional races like I used to. I still follow them though, reading online race reports and occasionally watching streaming videos of portions of select races. There aren't many races I actively go out of my way to watch, and all of them are Northern Classics.   Something about the all-or-nothing nature of the one-day cobbled Classics in Northern France and Belgium really speaks to me on a primal level. Usually contenders make one huge move and then bury themselves in the effort. The smallest mistake or bit of bad luck and your race is over. Conditions are often brutal, leaving riders physically and mentally wrecked when they climb off their bikes. There is no tomorrow.   Don't get me wrong, I'm no Flandrian hard man. A single secteur of pave would likely wreck me for a month. I do ride in a bit of wind, rain, and on less-than-perfect roads, but 250km of the sort of pounding they endure at Roubaix? Not me. Maybe to a Southern Cal...

My Lynskey Urbano frameset arrived a couple weeks ago, but I didn't open the box. The other boxes of components were all stacked neatly, the various pieces out of the parts piles set aside for the that most rare of commodities- actual time to wrench.   When the glorious weekend morning arrived, I removed the frameset from the box, happy to discover it was well-packed and intact. I installed the headset, inserted the fork, and locked it temporarily in place with the stem. The seatpost was inserted. I took out the wheelset and installed the thru-axle end caps, cassette, tubes, and tires. Tacking the bike together was going well. I was making progress.   Then I wasn't.   Lynskey forgot to include the thru axle for the front wheel. I checked the invoice, and it indicated it was part of the transaction. I checked the box, carefully searching each piece of foam and wrapping material for the missing part. Nope. Not there.   The momentum faded right a...

When I was a high school freshman, my English teacher had us give speeches about our hero. Since all I ever did was play my guitar, I picked Eric Clapton, who I had recently seen in concert. As I recall, my presentation reflected the level of effort I put into all of my schoolwork, so it pretty much sucked. There was one girl in the class who had very nice things to say about it during the feedback session after I was done rambling.   When it was her turn, she gave an eloquent speech about her hero, who just happened to be her father. He somehow managed to smuggle the family out just before the fall of Saigon, leaving everything they had behind to seek a better life for them in America. Despite being a professional in Vietnam, he worked several low-level jobs in the US to provide for his family in their new country.   Somehow my idol looked a bit less heroic after that bit of perspective.   The ensuing decades have certainly allowed me to put things into...

After upgrading and simplifying my internet service (and saving a ton of money in the process), I looked for other ways to improve stuff (and save a ton of money).    My wife had always paid the cell phone bill, so I never paid attention to it. I never wanted a cell phone in the first place, because I don't like being interrupted when I'm riding. If you want to convey something, leave a message or send me an email and I'll get back to you. Few things justify your need for instant gratification and require my immediate attention (on the other hand, my needs...). However, you can't find pay phones anymore, and sometimes things go sideways on a ride. Eventually I caved in and got a burner phone. Then the wife forced me to get added to the family plan (to save money, she said). I eventually inherited her old smart phone, replacing the battery because I'd rather fix things than dispose of them needlessly while they still have utility. Life cruised on this way for a whi...

Every time I see a road bike on Craigslist, I have an almost irresistible urge to buy it, build it up with components that are far above the level of the frame, and then sell it for a loss. It's my own version of the tree in A Charlie Brown Christmas . " I never thought it was such a bad little bike. It's not bad at all, really. Maybe it just needs a little love."   Problem is, I don't have the resources or even the storage space to follow this impulse. Actually, maybe that's a good thing. I like riding all sorts of different bikes and figuring out what works and doesn't work for me. I like building up bikes for friends who wouldn't otherwise have the resources to take up road cycling. I like acquiring bikes that add new capabilities to my own collection, even if the differences are minimal.   For the most part, the bikes I'm most compelled to jump on and smother with love are the inexpensive, entry-level bikes, which means any scant return on ...

Internet forums have been dying a slow death, painful in the age of Facebook and other social media platforms (much like blogs), but there are still a few of us that frequent them. As with all things internet, any attempt to apply reasoned logic is immediately attacked.   Case in point was a thread on an internet bike forum about how racing on Zwift is becoming a big deal. It certainly seems to be a big deal, given the number of races happening on any given day, as well as the 3rd party ranking and validation systems  that have popped up to attempt to curb virtual cheating. While I don't participate in races on Zwift and therefore don't use these services, I think they're pretty good things for those that swing that way. Anything to gets people inspired to move. Maybe they'll ride more when the weather is good. Maybe they'll pin on a number and jump into a real race.   That last bit is a sticking point. Some claim that Zwift races are "real" racing. So...