Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Eat, sleep, fall of your bike, repeat.

Because who doesn't floss their teeth with a scalpel while your friend pretends to listen to his heartbeat?

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...and...

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Yeah, what winter? I guess someday soon we'll look back at this and think how good we had it.

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The former '2834'. I found it while biking in the pre-dawn icy blackness of Fourth Street last week, spent about a half-hour, and cracked the code. I don’t know if I have been plain lucky or good at looking, or if this happens to everyone. Anyway, I seem to come across a lot of good gear out there on the streets and trails. The past couple of years have been especially fruitful. Among the finds:

*A pocket knife in Butler Fork in Big Cottonwood Canyon. I used this a ton until I left it in a bathroom in a restaurant on the Spanish side of the Spanish-Portuguese border.
*A multi-tool lying on a tree stump near Gash Point. I keep this in my pack all the time.
*A military grade Camelbak in the high Wallowas. I felt bad about taking this, but it was alongside the trail in the morning and still there in the late afternoon, and I had not seen anyone all day.
*A handheld digital weather station in an overflow parking area on the east side of Glacier National Park. I was super stoked about this, but unfortunately some of the functions stopped working almost as soon as I learned how to use it.
*A pair of Skullcandy ear buds in the parking lot of the cross country ski area at Whitefish Mountain Resort. This was fortuitous as at the time I owned four pairs of ear buds, each of which had only one working speaker.

I’ve lost a few things, but still I’m way out ahead. Actually, the only thing that I can definitely recall losing, except the aforementioned pocket knife, was a snow saw that popped out of my pack in Mill B, in Big Cottonwood Canyon.

All of my finds, however, were eclipsed by one mega find in 2003. Laura and I were two months into a three-month circumnavigation by bike of the South Island of New Zealand. Fall was progressing, it was cool and wet, and we were biking a deserted road along the southern swing of the island. It was windy, and I was biking with my head down and slightly to the side so I could keep an eye on the shoulder. Suddenly I noticed a spot of color on my peripheral vision, and stopped to wait for Laura to come up. She held my bike (our bikes weighed ridiculous amounts and even leaning them against road markers was not always wise as the markers could be pushed over) while I waded into the wet grass to see what it was. It was a yellow Australian bill. Australian money is color-coded – one denomination is yellow, one is red, one is green, you get the picture. I looked up and the field before me was covered in colorful confetti. When the find was totaled, we had just under $300 US.

I don’t remember what Laura did with her money, but I bought a nice bottle of wine when we got back to Christchurch.

Wait, did someone say icy streets? Just in time for the thaw, I pull out the big guns:

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Was someone just complaining about this non-winter? Huh, well go uphill a bit and you get this, my first check each morning when I get online:

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If you look in the right center of that picture you can see the remains of a snowstake, which is currently almost buried but if you look closely shows there is seven feet of snow on the ground. Odd to think that the trees next to it would not fit in most living rooms. Here's what it looks like in real life: pinballing down a tunnel of snow:

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Last fall I paid $149 for a $299 Patagonia Troposhere jacket. It's got h2No waterproofing, which works pretty well:

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But I still sweat a little on the inside.

The snow was so deep on Sunday on Lolo Pass that it was not possible to turn. I just had to point the skis straight, find something relatively steep, and go, and hope I was not running into anything. Floating suspended on snow like that, able to see nothing for it flying in your face, is memorable.

Since everyone cares:

Wait a minute, the Tea Party was supposed to fix government, right ?

On deep days, Whitefish should pass out simple information brochures like Mount Baker does to prevent this .

And ...

"Rehberg said then that people had begun contacting him, asking that he consider running for the seat he held for 12 years ." Oh really? What people are those?

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