Mylz and Doug arrived first, pulling a trailer complete with ladders, saws, work gloves and the other accoutrements of the trade. Cos and Laura weren’t far behind with three chainsaws between them and we were barely finished with our coffee when Paca rolled up with her own, very feminine looking purple and green one. Shortly after, Steve-O bounced his truck into the drive and unleashed yet another chainsaw. The sun was barely poking its way through the trees, but the neighbors were all up and out so it was time to go to work.
Living in the mountains during a multi-year drought comes with certain responsibilities, one of which is undertaking the act of fire-mitigation. This entails ensuring that the trees on your property are thinned to the point where a wild fire is unable to ‘crown’, or flit from one tree top to another. The trunks need to be clear of all branches to a height of 10 feet with dead wood and ground fall removed altogether. Also, any tree within 30 feet of the house must be felled. It was said that in the event of a fire passing through the neighborhood, the fire department will simply ignore any non-mitigated property and concentrate on the ones they have a chance of saving.
It’s a serious business, but despite living here for four years; we haven’t done it yet.
In my defense, let’s not forget that I have spent a ridiculous number of weekends working, particularly that first year. And that I don’t own a chainsaw. And that when we first moved here, we didn’t know many people so had no resources to call upon for help. And that the last two years have been damp, which has lessened the urgency. This winter however, has been bone dry with relentless high winds. And by all accounts, it’s going to be a long, hot summer. So, there’s no escaping it; a lot of our beloved pine trees are going to have to go.
Mylz announced upfront that she was going nowhere near the chainsaws so she and Dear Wife were elected slash-draggers. They busied themselves collecting the trimmed branches and stacking them near the road ready for the county to come with the chipper. Meanwhile, while the rest of us got noisy with the chainsaws. Sad to say, I have a little experience with these fabulous inventions but Doug is something of an expert so he gave me a lesson on the finer points.
"Always know where the chainsaw is; make sure you have an escape route, let the saw do the work." There was more, but that was the gist of it and soon I was slicing my way through pine trees like the lumberjack I was always destined to be. It wasn’t too long before I realized that chainsaws are bloody heavy and while it might be easier than hand sawing, this was still physically hard work. I pushed on, feeling manlier by the minute but nervously wondering how long I was going to be able to keep it up. Fortunately, the wood chippings finally turned to sawdust, indicating the chain was in need of sharpening and while Doug sat down to take care of that, I ambled off to supervise Raven who had arrived fashionably late.
With the aid of a smaller chainsaw she was making short work of several spindlier trees. I’m always happy to watch someone else work but when her biceps started to tremble I took over and by tag-teaming in this manner, we cleared ground at a record pace. Sadly it wasn’t to last as with a cough and a splutter the chainsaw stuttered to a halt, never to start again despite Cos’ tender ministrations. So, handsaws it was then and like a couple of hairy backwoodsmen we grabbed an end each and began the process manually.
You’ve probably seen photos of those enormous trees being carved up by two guys, one above and one below, hauling on opposite ends of the same saw? Apparently this is called a misery-whip, presumably because it must have been pretty depressing for the poor sod at the bottom. ("Misery-Whip" - See the stuff you learn from me?) Ours was more of a side to side action but something else we learned was that the width of a tree was no indication of its cut-ability. From checking the rings on the trunk, we theorized that trees which grew in the lean years were much denser than those which had sprouted during damper times and many of the spindly looking trunks were astonishingly resistant to the ministrations of the saw. Breath grew ragged, sweat dripped and if we hadn’t begun singing Monty Python’s lumberjack song, I doubt we could have kept it up.
Our fellow foresters were spread around the yard and every few minutes the air was rent with cracking and creaking as another tree toppled to the ground and like ants, the workers scurried around trimming off the limbs and branches before slicing the trunk into firewood sized segments. Blue sky began to appear above where none had been before and our acre lot began to take on a park like appearance with large open spaces and airy vistas. And still we were barely getting started. The pizza lunch came and went with the number of remaining trees scarcely seeming to diminish despite the wood piles growing ever higher.
None of us could keep up this pace and I’m sure I’m not the only one who was secretly relieved when one after another, the chainsaws began to give out. They say five hours of continuous use is about the limit for most saws and ours had performed longer service than that today. Dirty air filters, auto-lubrication problems, sheer-cussedness, whatever the reason, one by one they coughed to a halt and refused to restart. We hauled on the pull-starts, we tweaked the chokes, we used bad language but nothing would induce them to fire up again. So, like any conscientious lumberjacks would do, we dragged out the beer cooler, put up our feet and made ourselves comfortable for the rest of the afternoon.
Looking around, I’d estimate there are at least another 30 trees to come down and some of them are pretty hefty looking beasts. I already have a commitment for next Saturday but the coming weeks are all fully booked so Sunday it will have to be. But you know what’s really cool?
Everybody says they’re coming back to help.
Footnote:
For a completely different version of the same day, check out Fiddlebird's blog.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Connect 4
Prostitution is said to be the world’s oldest profession and despite the vigorous efforts of our political and legal systems, is thriving after all this time. Perhaps nowhere more so than in Thailand where rich and not so rich guys from around the world visit to take advantage of that beautiful country’s seamy trade. It’s difficult to determine the extent of this because for understandable reasons, most men tend to keep the details to themselves. However, I’m willing to go on record here and now, and admit that when I was in Thailand as a younger man, I spent money on a prostitute.
Oh calm down, calm down, it’s not what you think. I didn’t have sex with her. Nor did she have sex with me; or anything even remotely close to it. No, the money I spent was on something even more insidious...gambling. Remember Connect 4; the game where you take turns dropping little colored plastic discs into a frame with the aim of connecting four in a row before your opponent does? She stiffed me to the tune of about 50 cents over the course of the evening.
Now I know what you’re thinking. What kind of sleaze admits to spending an evening with a Thai hooker, and then claims it was playing Connect 4? Just bear with me.
Originally three of us were going out for the night. Unfortunately, Russell was feeling the effects of a little too much Mee-Kong earlier in the evening and had retired to his cabin. In case you’re not familiar with Mee-Kong, it’s the local Thai firewater and at least one good drunk is a rite of passage for backpackers. Popular lore has it that the base of this witches brew is formaldehyde, the stuff they use for embalming bodies. Certainly, it tastes as though it has already been used for that purpose but with a healthy dose of Coca-Cola it’s semi-palatable. Even so, it doesn’t take much to make one fall over and Russell had already reached this point.
If it wasn’t for the fact that he was from the south of England and therefore, a pitiful lightweight when it comes to alcohol consumption, I might have suspected he was faking the whole thing in order to avoid having to spend another night in the company of Windsor. His real name has been lost to the mists of time but we nicknamed him Windsor on account of his uncanny resemblance to the Welsh actor, Windsor Davies. He was what might charitably be described as “A boring bastard” and even though I’d been looking forward to the evening a few hours earlier, bedtime now seemed an interminable distance away.
They tell me that Koh Samui has changed unrecognizably since my visit and the pristine beaches where we lazed in the sun are now fenced off by luxury resorts catering to rich westerners who spend their mornings on the golf course, their afternoons by the pool and their evenings in the resort lounge and think they’ve visited Thailand. Some of the real old hands will tell you the place was ruined by the time I got there but as far as I was concerned, the handful of beach huts and primitive cabins only served to enhance this beachfront paradise.
Other than a couple of bamboo roofed beach bars, the nightlife, such as it was, could be found about twenty minutes down the coast. Twenty minutes during which Windsor regaled me with stories of the beautiful Thai girl he’d met the night before. The one who was totally smitten with him and who he’d had to forcibly evict from his beach hut this morning. Curiously, neither Russell or I had seen her even though we were up and she would have had to walk past us eating breakfast but I digress. Let’s just say it was a long twenty minutes and leave it at that.
We arrived to find eight or nine bars lined each side of the road with the hypnotic beat of trance music from the nearby nightclub thumping through the palms. The bars looked dead so we decided to check out the club first. If possible, it was even more dead. Oh there were people in there - a few dozen western guys in various stages of inebriation all staring at five or six Thai professionals dancing in a circle on the floor.
Riveting though that was, the novelty wore off after a while and as hookers in the bars had looked more attractive, we decided we could just as easily go stare at them and avoid having to listen to trance music. The short walk was enlivened by watching a drunken German attempt to fish his rental motorcycle out of a canal but in no time we were each propped on a bar stool surrounded by a bevy of beauties.
Windsor of course, was desperate to find his fantasy girl of the night before but as she was oh so mysteriously absent we ended up chatting to the ladies who were on duty. Their English was of the comic “Me love you long time” variety but once they’d established that I wasn’t buying what they were selling, things settled down and we were able to discuss the burning issues of the day such as what was my name, how old was I, was I sure I didn’t want a girlfriend, what was my name, how old was I and so on. This was in the days when I could pass for a good five to ten years less than my real age, which seemed to be a subject of fascination among the girls.
"It’s because you’re so small. It makes you look younger." reasoned one, a heartbreaker called Pen. "My little baby man" she said fondly, stroking my face. "Are you sure you don’t want a girlfriend?" Down boy!
Windsor on the other hand, did want a girlfriend. Only problem was, for professionals they all seemed astonishingly reluctant to take his money.
"I’m too tired" one told him, "My feet hurt" said another. The rest were willing if unenthusiastic, but wanted to go nightclubbing first. An evening spent ponying up for drinks would have meant Windsor easily paying two or three times the negotiated rate and he was balking at the prospect. So, like many men eager to assert himself in matters of romance, he resorted to whining.
In disgust, I looked for other ways to pass the time until he was ready to give up. It was then I spotted the Connect 4 game sitting on the bar. Following my gaze, Pen’s eyes lit up.
"You wanna play?"
The night had just begun.
Oh calm down, calm down, it’s not what you think. I didn’t have sex with her. Nor did she have sex with me; or anything even remotely close to it. No, the money I spent was on something even more insidious...gambling. Remember Connect 4; the game where you take turns dropping little colored plastic discs into a frame with the aim of connecting four in a row before your opponent does? She stiffed me to the tune of about 50 cents over the course of the evening.
Now I know what you’re thinking. What kind of sleaze admits to spending an evening with a Thai hooker, and then claims it was playing Connect 4? Just bear with me.
Originally three of us were going out for the night. Unfortunately, Russell was feeling the effects of a little too much Mee-Kong earlier in the evening and had retired to his cabin. In case you’re not familiar with Mee-Kong, it’s the local Thai firewater and at least one good drunk is a rite of passage for backpackers. Popular lore has it that the base of this witches brew is formaldehyde, the stuff they use for embalming bodies. Certainly, it tastes as though it has already been used for that purpose but with a healthy dose of Coca-Cola it’s semi-palatable. Even so, it doesn’t take much to make one fall over and Russell had already reached this point.
If it wasn’t for the fact that he was from the south of England and therefore, a pitiful lightweight when it comes to alcohol consumption, I might have suspected he was faking the whole thing in order to avoid having to spend another night in the company of Windsor. His real name has been lost to the mists of time but we nicknamed him Windsor on account of his uncanny resemblance to the Welsh actor, Windsor Davies. He was what might charitably be described as “A boring bastard” and even though I’d been looking forward to the evening a few hours earlier, bedtime now seemed an interminable distance away.
They tell me that Koh Samui has changed unrecognizably since my visit and the pristine beaches where we lazed in the sun are now fenced off by luxury resorts catering to rich westerners who spend their mornings on the golf course, their afternoons by the pool and their evenings in the resort lounge and think they’ve visited Thailand. Some of the real old hands will tell you the place was ruined by the time I got there but as far as I was concerned, the handful of beach huts and primitive cabins only served to enhance this beachfront paradise.
Other than a couple of bamboo roofed beach bars, the nightlife, such as it was, could be found about twenty minutes down the coast. Twenty minutes during which Windsor regaled me with stories of the beautiful Thai girl he’d met the night before. The one who was totally smitten with him and who he’d had to forcibly evict from his beach hut this morning. Curiously, neither Russell or I had seen her even though we were up and she would have had to walk past us eating breakfast but I digress. Let’s just say it was a long twenty minutes and leave it at that.
We arrived to find eight or nine bars lined each side of the road with the hypnotic beat of trance music from the nearby nightclub thumping through the palms. The bars looked dead so we decided to check out the club first. If possible, it was even more dead. Oh there were people in there - a few dozen western guys in various stages of inebriation all staring at five or six Thai professionals dancing in a circle on the floor.
Riveting though that was, the novelty wore off after a while and as hookers in the bars had looked more attractive, we decided we could just as easily go stare at them and avoid having to listen to trance music. The short walk was enlivened by watching a drunken German attempt to fish his rental motorcycle out of a canal but in no time we were each propped on a bar stool surrounded by a bevy of beauties.
Windsor of course, was desperate to find his fantasy girl of the night before but as she was oh so mysteriously absent we ended up chatting to the ladies who were on duty. Their English was of the comic “Me love you long time” variety but once they’d established that I wasn’t buying what they were selling, things settled down and we were able to discuss the burning issues of the day such as what was my name, how old was I, was I sure I didn’t want a girlfriend, what was my name, how old was I and so on. This was in the days when I could pass for a good five to ten years less than my real age, which seemed to be a subject of fascination among the girls.
"It’s because you’re so small. It makes you look younger." reasoned one, a heartbreaker called Pen. "My little baby man" she said fondly, stroking my face. "Are you sure you don’t want a girlfriend?" Down boy!
Windsor on the other hand, did want a girlfriend. Only problem was, for professionals they all seemed astonishingly reluctant to take his money.
"I’m too tired" one told him, "My feet hurt" said another. The rest were willing if unenthusiastic, but wanted to go nightclubbing first. An evening spent ponying up for drinks would have meant Windsor easily paying two or three times the negotiated rate and he was balking at the prospect. So, like many men eager to assert himself in matters of romance, he resorted to whining.
In disgust, I looked for other ways to pass the time until he was ready to give up. It was then I spotted the Connect 4 game sitting on the bar. Following my gaze, Pen’s eyes lit up.
"You wanna play?"
The night had just begun.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Milestones
We have three major milestones to celebrate this week.
On Wednesday, I will have been a Colorado resident for exactly four years. I grew up in a beautiful corner of England surrounded by lakes, rivers and green, green hills. Which meant that a move to the Arizona desert was something of a culture shock and as I've said, I was never really happy there. Arriving in Colorado was like being given a berth in heaven. My true spiritual home, I can't imagine living anywhere else.
Another milestone occurred on Sunday when Angus the 4Runner notched up his 250,000th mile. I missed it of course; noting when he was only 8 miles off and 2 miles past, but failing to catch the actual moment. 250,000 miles is the equivalent of ten times round the equator or to the moon and back five times; although even in 4-wheel drive, I think he'd struggle to make either of those journeys. His rust spots are spreading alarmingly and his shock absorbers appear to have given up the ghost recently but even with his dents and scrapes, he's still a reliable old bus and we're happy to have him in the family.
As for the third milestone; well, if you've been keeping track you'll know this epistle marks the 99th edition of The Gunsmoke Files. Yeah, yeah I know '99' isn't really a milestone the way that '100' is but if I wait until next week to write about it then it will be a week past the other two milestones and that will throw off the whole symmetry of the thing so just work with me here, OK?
I'm well aware that The Gunsmoke Files doesn't follow the pattern of a traditional blog. Rather than posting a paragraph or two every couple of days, I set myself a target of one article, 1,100 words long (with a leeway of 15 words either side), to be uploaded every Tuesday night. My original goal was to see if I could meet this self-imposed deadline in the way I would be required to if I were a real writer with an editor tapping his foot. And for the most part, I've succeeded. A couple of posts didn't make it online until Wednesday morning, although in both cases, Internet access or the lack thereof was the challenge rather than no article to post. And there was a spell last fall where my work schedule was so intense that I simply had to stop updating the site for a few weeks in order to cope.
In fact, rather than the deadline, I've found more of a challenge in coming up with a new subject each week. My original vision was to restrict the theme to life in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. A worthy subject, but the problem I ran into was that while my home is indeed in the mountains, the sad fact is that much of my waking hours are spent in an office downtown. That or in the car between here and there. When the weekend rolls around, I often do little more than walk the dogs, pay the bills and take care of things around the house. That's a pleasant enough way to live but it doesn't for interesting reading make. Not week after week it doesn't.
So after a 10-week hiatus in 2004, I re-launched The Gunsmoke Files with a broader scope, including events that occurred previously in the soap-opera which has been my life. Not necessarily stuff that will ever grace the shelves of the autobiography section, but things that were fun at the time. As well as things that weren't fun at the time but which seem a lot more so looking back.
Then there was an article on a subject far from fun. In March 2005 I hit and killed my first deer while driving home from work. In The Headlights was painful to write and even reading it now, is emotionally tough. However, writing it provided me with a much needed catharsis and the piece has probably brought more people to The Gunsmoke Files than the rest put together. It was also my first ever published article, appearing in the Frisco based Mountain Gazette in June. MG were also the publishers of my second article to make print, A Walk in Winter which appeared in January of this year.
I've made friends via The Gunsmoke Files too, from around the US but also Britain and elsewhere. I'm not going to turn this into an Oscar speech, but you know who you are, and I'm grateful to have met you, even if only on-line. The visitors' log shows me I have regular readers in France, Australia, and New Zealand and have been read by people in places as diverse as Iceland and India, Poland and Western Samoa. The 'search query' statistics tell me some of those folks were looking for information on the TV show, others on firearms in addition to dozens of other subjects, some of which I've actually discussed. Although I have to wonder what the person who googled 'gunsmoke spanking' was hoping to find. I hope he wasn't disappointed.
Occasionally, I'll glance back and re-read some of the earlier Gunsmoke Files. I have my favorites of course, but it's always obvious to me which ones were written in a hurry, to meet the self-imposed deadline. And I find it astonishing that no matter how many times I've read the articles, either through the composition and editing process, then later for my own amusement, I still find typos and grammatical errors. Maybe when I'm rich and famous I can get me one of them fancy editor type assistants, but 'till then, I'm afraid you're stuck with the goofs.
So where to go next. There are still lots of stories to be told, yarns to be spun. I've only scratched the surface of my adventures with a back pack and summer is just around the corner which means fishing tales and bike rides and picnics and yard work (oh crud, the yard work!), so I'm sure I won't run out of things to say for a while. I may or may not absolve myself from the 1,100 word rule and if I do that, I might post a little more often than once a week. But I'll continue to write. For posterity and nephews and nieces and friends from miles away.
And for me, when I'm old and grayer, and can't remember all this stuff.
On Wednesday, I will have been a Colorado resident for exactly four years. I grew up in a beautiful corner of England surrounded by lakes, rivers and green, green hills. Which meant that a move to the Arizona desert was something of a culture shock and as I've said, I was never really happy there. Arriving in Colorado was like being given a berth in heaven. My true spiritual home, I can't imagine living anywhere else.
Another milestone occurred on Sunday when Angus the 4Runner notched up his 250,000th mile. I missed it of course; noting when he was only 8 miles off and 2 miles past, but failing to catch the actual moment. 250,000 miles is the equivalent of ten times round the equator or to the moon and back five times; although even in 4-wheel drive, I think he'd struggle to make either of those journeys. His rust spots are spreading alarmingly and his shock absorbers appear to have given up the ghost recently but even with his dents and scrapes, he's still a reliable old bus and we're happy to have him in the family.
As for the third milestone; well, if you've been keeping track you'll know this epistle marks the 99th edition of The Gunsmoke Files. Yeah, yeah I know '99' isn't really a milestone the way that '100' is but if I wait until next week to write about it then it will be a week past the other two milestones and that will throw off the whole symmetry of the thing so just work with me here, OK?
I'm well aware that The Gunsmoke Files doesn't follow the pattern of a traditional blog. Rather than posting a paragraph or two every couple of days, I set myself a target of one article, 1,100 words long (with a leeway of 15 words either side), to be uploaded every Tuesday night. My original goal was to see if I could meet this self-imposed deadline in the way I would be required to if I were a real writer with an editor tapping his foot. And for the most part, I've succeeded. A couple of posts didn't make it online until Wednesday morning, although in both cases, Internet access or the lack thereof was the challenge rather than no article to post. And there was a spell last fall where my work schedule was so intense that I simply had to stop updating the site for a few weeks in order to cope.
In fact, rather than the deadline, I've found more of a challenge in coming up with a new subject each week. My original vision was to restrict the theme to life in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. A worthy subject, but the problem I ran into was that while my home is indeed in the mountains, the sad fact is that much of my waking hours are spent in an office downtown. That or in the car between here and there. When the weekend rolls around, I often do little more than walk the dogs, pay the bills and take care of things around the house. That's a pleasant enough way to live but it doesn't for interesting reading make. Not week after week it doesn't.
So after a 10-week hiatus in 2004, I re-launched The Gunsmoke Files with a broader scope, including events that occurred previously in the soap-opera which has been my life. Not necessarily stuff that will ever grace the shelves of the autobiography section, but things that were fun at the time. As well as things that weren't fun at the time but which seem a lot more so looking back.
Then there was an article on a subject far from fun. In March 2005 I hit and killed my first deer while driving home from work. In The Headlights was painful to write and even reading it now, is emotionally tough. However, writing it provided me with a much needed catharsis and the piece has probably brought more people to The Gunsmoke Files than the rest put together. It was also my first ever published article, appearing in the Frisco based Mountain Gazette in June. MG were also the publishers of my second article to make print, A Walk in Winter which appeared in January of this year.
I've made friends via The Gunsmoke Files too, from around the US but also Britain and elsewhere. I'm not going to turn this into an Oscar speech, but you know who you are, and I'm grateful to have met you, even if only on-line. The visitors' log shows me I have regular readers in France, Australia, and New Zealand and have been read by people in places as diverse as Iceland and India, Poland and Western Samoa. The 'search query' statistics tell me some of those folks were looking for information on the TV show, others on firearms in addition to dozens of other subjects, some of which I've actually discussed. Although I have to wonder what the person who googled 'gunsmoke spanking' was hoping to find. I hope he wasn't disappointed.
Occasionally, I'll glance back and re-read some of the earlier Gunsmoke Files. I have my favorites of course, but it's always obvious to me which ones were written in a hurry, to meet the self-imposed deadline. And I find it astonishing that no matter how many times I've read the articles, either through the composition and editing process, then later for my own amusement, I still find typos and grammatical errors. Maybe when I'm rich and famous I can get me one of them fancy editor type assistants, but 'till then, I'm afraid you're stuck with the goofs.
So where to go next. There are still lots of stories to be told, yarns to be spun. I've only scratched the surface of my adventures with a back pack and summer is just around the corner which means fishing tales and bike rides and picnics and yard work (oh crud, the yard work!), so I'm sure I won't run out of things to say for a while. I may or may not absolve myself from the 1,100 word rule and if I do that, I might post a little more often than once a week. But I'll continue to write. For posterity and nephews and nieces and friends from miles away.
And for me, when I'm old and grayer, and can't remember all this stuff.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
That New Bike Smell
I've been working my way through a mid-life crisis for almost 25 years now and while I've quite enjoyed it so far, I haven't really had much opportunity to take full advantage of it. The bank manager won't let me have a red Ferrari and teenage girlfriends are out of the question for several reasons. However, I did mark my fortieth by treating myself to my first ever mountain bike. Sadly, that didn't lead to the life of adrenaline-filled adventure that I'd anticipated.
For one, I blew my knee out on the very first ride, less than 2 miles from the house, which required extensive physical therapy. For two, I found that even once I was back in the saddle, I was disturbingly lacking in confidence while riding. At first I figured this was simply my natural cowardice combined with my advanced age. I was fine while on easy terrain such as cycle paths or dirt roads, but whenever I tried anything more ambitious, I just didn't feel very…self-possessed. It wasn't until I'd tried and failed to complete several (fairly easy) trails that I did some more research and discovered that the bike I'd purchased was way too big for me.
Yes, I know, I should have found this out before I bought the bike but I was used to road riding and didn't realize that mountain frames are supposed to be considerably smaller. My fault, I admit; but I still like to think the salesman could have pointed out my misconception rather than simply taking my money and sending me on my way. I pushed on for another couple of years but there was no denying, I just wasn't getting as much pleasure from the sport as everyone else seemed to and more demanding trails looked to be forever beyond my grasp.
So, when I recently learned that I would be receiving a small, but in my far-from-humble opinion, very well deserved bonus, I decided that rather than allow the whole amount to be frittered away on bills and house repairs as usually happens when I come into money, I would take a portion and treat myself to a new bike. Ah, but what kind?
The basic geometry of the bicycle changed little over the first 75 years of its existence and a bike made in 1995 looks pretty much like a bike made in 1905. Many still do but in addition there's a dazzling array of freakish looking frames that bear little resemblance to the steel clunkers of my youth. The development of the rear suspension concept has probably given bicycle designers more opportunity to run amok than any other and each manufacturer has their own variation on the concept. Will these still be around 75 years from now? Somehow I suspect not but I have no doubt the 21st century will bring far more advances in frame technology than the 20th did.
Even trying to make sure I bought the correct size frame this time round was more challenging than I expected. It used to be that one simply straddled the frame and checked the distance between crossbar and groin. Nowadays, the cross bar (if it exists) is quite likely to drop off at a steep angle, joining the frame somewhere around knee height. Saddle position too, doesn't help much because as any serious mountain biker will tell you, you're supposed to shift that up and down depending upon the terrain and your direction across it. (Lower for steep downhill, higher for steep uphill - write that down).
"So how do you know which is the correct frame size?" I asked the salesman.
"Go out and ride a few" he told me. "And don't forget to try several different makes because each manufacturer has different specifications."
So that's what I did. Over the course of several weeks while awaiting the painfully slow arrival of the bonus, I went from bike store to bike store checking the models on display and playing around in their parking lots; bouncing over curbs and potholes, gravel patches and grass borders getting a feel for all the variations of the theme. It was a lot of fun too but finally the day arrived when it was time to get serious.
Eventually, I settled on a 2005 model (saving myself $400 by forgoing this year's phenomenon of disc brakes) with sophisticated rear-suspension, clipless pedals (haven't used those before either) and lots of other shiny bits and bobs. Because it was on sale the store wouldn't hold it for me without a deposit which left us living on fresh air for a week and me anxiously checking the bank balance every morning. Finally though, the bonus arrived and we headed downtown to pay off the rest and pick the thing up.
Of course, that wasn't as simple as you might think either. Unlike my last bike purchase where I handed over my money and walked out the store, the customer service at this place required me to make endless decisions regarding the pros and cons of handlebar extensions (a big help on the uppy bits), the minutiae of fine tuning the riding position, which required replacing the handlebar stem with one a fraction of an inch shorter and the selection of the coolest looking water bottle.
Of course, I'd chosen to visit the store on a Saturday. An early spring Saturday which happened to follow five consecutive days of beautiful spring weather. So, perhaps not surprisingly the place was hopping and the sales people were rushed off their feet attempting to service all their clients (and doing a darn good job of it too, by the way). This meant the whole process took several hours, punctuated by a trip to the coffee shop next door for a sandwich and a drink. I was in no particular hurry but after a while I started anxiously scanning the sky.
The brilliant blue sky to which I'd awoken was becoming increasingly cloudy and I had no doubt the weather Gods were watching with fat smirks on their faces. I've run afoul of them many times and their sense of humor has ruined enough camping trips, day hikes and yes, bike rides for me to know this is no coincidence. Sure enough, the moment I wheeled my new bike out to the car the heavens opened and the first rain we've seen in months came a-tumbling down. Now of course, my bike's going to get wet eventually - I don't intend to be a fair weather rider and trails are often muddy.
But even so, it would have been nice if I could have got ONE ride in.
For one, I blew my knee out on the very first ride, less than 2 miles from the house, which required extensive physical therapy. For two, I found that even once I was back in the saddle, I was disturbingly lacking in confidence while riding. At first I figured this was simply my natural cowardice combined with my advanced age. I was fine while on easy terrain such as cycle paths or dirt roads, but whenever I tried anything more ambitious, I just didn't feel very…self-possessed. It wasn't until I'd tried and failed to complete several (fairly easy) trails that I did some more research and discovered that the bike I'd purchased was way too big for me.
Yes, I know, I should have found this out before I bought the bike but I was used to road riding and didn't realize that mountain frames are supposed to be considerably smaller. My fault, I admit; but I still like to think the salesman could have pointed out my misconception rather than simply taking my money and sending me on my way. I pushed on for another couple of years but there was no denying, I just wasn't getting as much pleasure from the sport as everyone else seemed to and more demanding trails looked to be forever beyond my grasp.
So, when I recently learned that I would be receiving a small, but in my far-from-humble opinion, very well deserved bonus, I decided that rather than allow the whole amount to be frittered away on bills and house repairs as usually happens when I come into money, I would take a portion and treat myself to a new bike. Ah, but what kind?
The basic geometry of the bicycle changed little over the first 75 years of its existence and a bike made in 1995 looks pretty much like a bike made in 1905. Many still do but in addition there's a dazzling array of freakish looking frames that bear little resemblance to the steel clunkers of my youth. The development of the rear suspension concept has probably given bicycle designers more opportunity to run amok than any other and each manufacturer has their own variation on the concept. Will these still be around 75 years from now? Somehow I suspect not but I have no doubt the 21st century will bring far more advances in frame technology than the 20th did.
Even trying to make sure I bought the correct size frame this time round was more challenging than I expected. It used to be that one simply straddled the frame and checked the distance between crossbar and groin. Nowadays, the cross bar (if it exists) is quite likely to drop off at a steep angle, joining the frame somewhere around knee height. Saddle position too, doesn't help much because as any serious mountain biker will tell you, you're supposed to shift that up and down depending upon the terrain and your direction across it. (Lower for steep downhill, higher for steep uphill - write that down).
"So how do you know which is the correct frame size?" I asked the salesman.
"Go out and ride a few" he told me. "And don't forget to try several different makes because each manufacturer has different specifications."
So that's what I did. Over the course of several weeks while awaiting the painfully slow arrival of the bonus, I went from bike store to bike store checking the models on display and playing around in their parking lots; bouncing over curbs and potholes, gravel patches and grass borders getting a feel for all the variations of the theme. It was a lot of fun too but finally the day arrived when it was time to get serious.
Eventually, I settled on a 2005 model (saving myself $400 by forgoing this year's phenomenon of disc brakes) with sophisticated rear-suspension, clipless pedals (haven't used those before either) and lots of other shiny bits and bobs. Because it was on sale the store wouldn't hold it for me without a deposit which left us living on fresh air for a week and me anxiously checking the bank balance every morning. Finally though, the bonus arrived and we headed downtown to pay off the rest and pick the thing up.
Of course, that wasn't as simple as you might think either. Unlike my last bike purchase where I handed over my money and walked out the store, the customer service at this place required me to make endless decisions regarding the pros and cons of handlebar extensions (a big help on the uppy bits), the minutiae of fine tuning the riding position, which required replacing the handlebar stem with one a fraction of an inch shorter and the selection of the coolest looking water bottle.
Of course, I'd chosen to visit the store on a Saturday. An early spring Saturday which happened to follow five consecutive days of beautiful spring weather. So, perhaps not surprisingly the place was hopping and the sales people were rushed off their feet attempting to service all their clients (and doing a darn good job of it too, by the way). This meant the whole process took several hours, punctuated by a trip to the coffee shop next door for a sandwich and a drink. I was in no particular hurry but after a while I started anxiously scanning the sky.
The brilliant blue sky to which I'd awoken was becoming increasingly cloudy and I had no doubt the weather Gods were watching with fat smirks on their faces. I've run afoul of them many times and their sense of humor has ruined enough camping trips, day hikes and yes, bike rides for me to know this is no coincidence. Sure enough, the moment I wheeled my new bike out to the car the heavens opened and the first rain we've seen in months came a-tumbling down. Now of course, my bike's going to get wet eventually - I don't intend to be a fair weather rider and trails are often muddy.
But even so, it would have been nice if I could have got ONE ride in.
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