My Daughter: Playing Chicken in the Alley

A couple of years ago, don't worry Vance wears a helmet

The other day I was out riding bikes with my kids. It occured to me that they love to ride. Olivia does very well on a bike, she cannot go fast enough. Although she seems to be in control she makes me nervous. Vance does not understand the concept of brakes. He goes fast and is out of control which makes me very nervous. Imagine if you will a 7 year-old girl and a 4 year-old boy racing in the alley. It should make you nervous.



At one point, Olivia thought it was fun to play chicken with Vance. Neither he nor I thought that was at all fun. What was fun though, is that we were all out riding bikes together. My kids love it. Our alley is paved and has the perfect slope for learning to ride bikes. I look forward to the day that Vance can ride without training wheels.



Every now and then, Olivia and I will jump on our bikes and ride to Wendy’s for a daddy/daughter date. I love sitting down with her and talking about life. Olivia usually orders a frosty for Emily which goes in her tattered handle bar basket (it is mostly zip ties due to the fact it gets crushed every time she wrecks). One day she crashed in the alley, it is a good thing that the hamburger tastes the same in a crushed from as it does in the non-crushed form.





I took her to a bike shop and she took a mountain bike for a test ride. She did surprisingly well with the brake levers. I am sure the crashes would increase until she gets used to them. She keeps asking about it. I see her riding some dirt trails by the end of the year. She also saw a handlebar bag with a zipper. She said "hey dad, if I had that nothing would fall out when I crash!" At least she is realistic.



I am glad that my kids love to ride bikes as much as I do. I hope they continue that trend through life.

In the Dark

I would like to start off this post by making a confession: I am a big dumb animal. I learn the hard way. Baptism by fire. This has made my life hard, but rewarding.

A couple of months ago I was tired of getting flat tires. I was flatting a couple of times a week. I learned you can put about 5-10 patches on an inner tube before it is done. I learned that RitcheySpeed-max 'cross tires are not even close to puncture resistant. So I reluctantly gave in and ordered some nice Michelin City tires with extra puncture resistance.

On this particular morning I was on my way to work when my light died. I was not far from the office when I ran through a patch of glass (clear glass is hard to see in the dark). It was at that point that I learned a valuable lesson, 5 layers of puncture protection are not a guarantee. I also learned another valuable lesson, one I have learned many times over, tools are good! I was sitting on the edge of the Petersburg Battlefield in the dark with no light, no tire lever, and a tire that is an extremely good fit. I tried brute strength, I tried sticks, and I tried crying (temporarily rescinding my “crying in the shower only” policy).

Then it occurred to me that the quick release skewer would make a good lever. So I wedged it in there, applied all of my brute strength and tears (I mean manliness), shredded the inner tube beyond repair, and the tire came off. Good old fashioned American ingenuity.
Later that day I was looking at my bike and noticed a strange bulge in the tire. In all of my efforts I had managed to rip about 2 inches of the bead off of the tire. That translated to $45 down the drain. Queue the tears. My wife was also thrilled that she had to load up 3 kids and pick me up after work.

These are the hard lessons learned. It takes less than one minute to inspect the tool kit I now carry everywhere; It took me 35 minutes to destroy a tire. Oddly enough, I have not gotten a flat since I carry the kit.

Simplicity

It is official; the newbie is causing sleep deprivation. I am getting just enough sleep to avoid insanity. That is normally a short trip anyway. I have not ridden all week and I have miss it. In fact, I have missed the exit to get off the interstate twice this week, forcing me to drive an extra seven miles to get to work. I guess I am lucky I haven't crashed and burned in a fiery inferno or driven off of the bridge into the Appomattox River.

I don't recall ever riding my bike and missing a turn on the way to the office, of course I have gotten lost on new trail or route. But really, who hasn't gotten lost in the mountains of West Virginia, alone and wearing spandex (queue the ominous banjo). Even so it is simple to correct yourself on a bike. Even when I am exhausted I feel refreshed and awake after a couple of miles on my bike.

Simplicity is the key:

While serving over seas, I lost something. Altough this is not something I am prepared to discuss in detail right now, my life has become clouded with complexity. That is why I love bikes, I am drawn to their simplicity and they make me feel like I did when I was a kid. When I am on my bike I am focused on the road and the traffic around me, nothing else. It allows me to escape.

I can remember all of the bikes I have owned over the years, each one brought the same joy to my life. In 1994 I saved all summer and bought my first decent mountain bike. It was an simple aluminum GT, no suspension or frills and very purple. It got increasingly more complex; I wanted suspension, then I wanted "V" Brakes, and then purple anodized bar ends....it was as if life got clouded with getting the next component. My life was simple, the bike was becoming complex.

Today, as my life becomes more complex, I search for simplicity. Each bike I get gets more basic. When I started shopping for a new mountain bike (to replace the 1994 "purple people eater") I was looking for simplicity. Steel, rigid, and 9 speeds. I am ready to make the next step and move to single speed.

In a world full of complexity, I do not understand why people seek more complexity. I do not worry about style or popular opinion, for me, I'll take simplicity.

The Ride of Non-Epic Proportions

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I had our fourth child. Mainly my wife. I took the week off to take care of the other three so she could focus on the task at hand, the Newbie. Since I didn’t have to get up early, which I hate, I stayed up to enjoy the silence. If you have kids you know what I am talking about. The only quiet time I get is after everyone is in bed. This makes the morning painful. However, with a new baby I could blame my exhaustion the next day on the newbie. This is a great plan except for the fact that he sleeps all night.

Anyway, I spent the nights reading my favorite blogs and then some. I found one in which a woman from Alaska documented her ride down the Great Divide trail http://arcticglass.blogspot.com/ . What an adventure. I was inspired, so much so that I decided I would do my own exciting adventure.

I will be doing my own unsupported bicycling adventure. Although it will not be to the magnitude of the Great Divide, it will be my first overnight bicycling trip. I am sure that because I am unprepared, out of shape, and inexperienced it will be full of calamity and pain. But whatever, that is what makes life fun. Get out of the comfort zone. I will be doing a rails to trails ride called the New River Trail. It will only be 100 miles round trip. For the first time I am going to start small and try not to get in over my head.

I do have one outstanding question. There are a lot of people that seem to do major bikes rides, month long deals. What do they do for work?

I will publish the results of what will probably turn out to be a nice, painful couple of days. After all, I am getting soft.

True Love: It has to be

My wife and I just celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary. It doesn't seem like 11 years have passed. Ok, maybe I had more hair and less weight, but time has flown by. This is a story of true love, one of fairy tale proportions. It has to be true love or it wouldn't have lasted 2 years!

True Love Part 1:

In 1996 when Emily and I were still dating, I convinced her to buy a mountain bike. You know the plan, "hey, I've got an idea, lets find an activity that we can do together." That always works out.....right? She did very well, only a few scrapes and bruises, at least there were no broken bones. Then I convinced her that clip-less SPD pedals were the way to go. More bruises and scrapes, but she stuck with it (more importantly she stuck with me). As memory serves, she crashed the day before our wedding and scraped up her knee, her mother was less then impressed. But we were married and have been since.

True Love Part 2:

Fast forward to 2007, I had just purchased my first bike in many years. We were living in Alaska and about to move to Virginia. I trusted the moving company with all of our heirlooms and precious things, but I could not tolerate them packing my brand new Salsa, so I packed it in the van for the 5,000 mile drive. It couldn't go on the roof rack because it was -40 degrees and the next 2,000 miles would be as bad as the moving company. I carefully packed around it, taking care not penetrate it's aura. Did I mention that we had two kids and two 50 pound poodles in the car as well (yes, I have poodles). The bike even stayed in some hotel rooms, I am not sure why, it might have been better for it's aura.

Anyway, we had been in Virginia for a several days, we were living in a hotel room until our townhouse was ready, nothing like a hotel room with two adults, two children under the age of 5, and two 50 pound poodles. Oh yes don't forget my bike. Of course when you live in a hotel room you are forced to eat out a lot. So there we were getting ready to go through the drive through, my wife was driving, I had dozed off when I was awakened by a blood curdling crashing sound. My heart sank, my bike was on the roof and had just met the 8'6" clearance sign. I know that my wife felt bad, the bike only had a couple of hundred miles on it. I fought back tears (I cry in the shower so no one sees the tears).

I had the rear tire zip tied to the cargo basket due to a flaw in Yakima's Load Warrior Basket. True, the "flaw" may have involved me ripping a clearance sign off at the Mall of America when I left the front well on the wheel mount on the basket. But I digress, so there we were in the Burger King drive through, we can't go forward, we can't go back and I am trying to get my bike off of the roof. The lady behind us, clearly seeing the struggle, started honking and gesticulating. It was at that point that I learned that people are generally intolerant of bikes, on or off the road. It was not until we got back to the hotel that I assessed the damage. My beautiful bike's top tube had a series of scrapes several inches long. True love, although my wife clearly violated the aura of my bike, I still love her.

True Love Part 3:

In November 2007, I received a large bonus that involved a few years of commitment. I thought that if I would potentially end up in Iraq or Afghanistan, I might as well enjoy life. So I convinced my wife that I needed a new mountain bike. I wanted simplicity, just like I had when I first started mountain biking in 1994. Nothing that was clouded in technology, I wanted steel, I wanted 29 inch wheels. So I ordered another Salsa, the El Mariachi.

It arrived and was ready for pickup on 21 December. I picked it up, it was just like my first Huffy (wait, that doesn't sound right). I was a 32 year-old kid that just got a new bike, like when I got my first Huffy (that sounds better). I spent the next couple of days trying to escape so I could ride it. Christmas day, we sat around the tree opening presents, of course my family sent bicycling stuff. Olivia and Vance were excited. Emily did not look so excited, it was at that moment that I realized I had done wrong. I was so focused on my new toy, I had forgotten to buy Emily a Christmas gift. I guess it is a good thing that we have true love, especially as I dug a hole about the true spirit of Christmas and that it wasn't about material things. She still loves me.

Fairy Tale Romance

Once again, my wife and I have a wonderful relationship. It is truly based on love, when she gets frustrated with me she doesn't yell, she says "Why don't you go for a ride." She gets it. Maybe someday Disney will make a cartoon about us. Maybe they will illustrate me with hair.

That would be cool since I noticed most have mullets!

The Race Against the Clock

The Comfort Zone

Vance "riding the fence"

My two biggest fears in life are neck ties and cubicles. One is a leash and the other is a kennel. Both crush human spirit. I believe that these two things lead to comfort and complacency. Once comfort and complacency set in it is all over.

I was fortunate that my family always pushed me to challenge life, step out of the comfort zone, and experience life. Living rather than merely existing. Well after 20 some years of seeking the next adventure, a major life change has happened and I have to realize one of my greatest fears. I regret to inform, my recent job in the Army has landed me in a cubical. I know, the agony.

Fortunately, I have my wife, four children officially "The Irish Tsunami" and my bicycles. My children are not only smarter but they serve as an example to me about how important it is to get out of the comfort zone and challenge life. In the picture above, Vance is "riding the fence" after watching Danny MacAskill literally ride on a fence. My daughter cannot go fast enough on her bike. It has been amazing to watch her zoom down the hill. No baby gate in the world can hold back Simon, the 2 year-old. Don't get me wrong, they are good children, however, they do not live in the comfort zone. Therefore, I don't live in the comfort zone.

I have found however, that the best way to beat the cubical doldrums is through bicycling. I have spent the majority of my life pedaling around. What an amazing source of freedom. In recent years I have worked on mastering the art of bicycle commuting, 7 miles each way to Fort Lee. It took me about one year to experiment with equipment and how to carry it. Figuring out the best route was the biggest challenge; what is better, getting mugged/shot or hit by a car going 65 mph? I have opted for the mugging/shot route. I survived 16 months in Iraq, I hope I can survive a few years of commuting.

If I cannot ride my 'cross bike to work, I throw my 29'r mountain bike in the car. I am blessed that the Petersburg Battlefield National Park entrance is hundreds of feet away from my cube. Who would have thought that a civil war battlefield would provide an outlet for my personal battles.

Bicycling provides two things for me right now simplicity in a complex world and the ability to get out of the comfort zone. I have commuted in the sub-zero weather of Montana and Alaska (-35 degrees) to the 100+ degrees and humidity in Virginia.

I encourage every one to step out of their comfort zone. True every now and then I may end up doing the "walk of shame" or calling for SAG support from my wife, but that just adds to the adventure of life.