From “The Escape Artist”:

The road makes a hard bend to the right and then straightens to point directly downhill to the valley floor. If the surface is dry and you are running on good tyres, if the way is clear and you can use the width of the road, if you have all your courage and your wits about you, you can make it round that curve without touching the brakes. You hit forty-five, fifty, right at the apex. You cannot see the exit and it is crucial to pick the right line. If you start running out of road, the camber will be against you, shrugging you off the blacktop. Once committed to a line, it is too late to use the brakes. To crash at this speed is unthinkable.

And then, in a split second, you are round and free… You have taken flight.

Matt Seaton’s book The Escape Artist is one of the few books I’ve read more than once, and I read parts of it again today, as low clouds and snow visited us again here in Boulder. Matt’s descriptions of the cycling subculture and the joy of cycling in general are wonderful, and his integration of his Real Life with his cycling story is simply fantastic. Matt’s book was inspiring when I first read it, as a commuter train-bound rat race runner. Now that I am back into the cycling world, Matt’s book and his words hold a newfound meaning, and connect to a deep love of bicycles that I have—and have had since I was five years old. Living in Boulder and brushing up against some of the legends of US cycling, having a neighbor who is actually using his USCF mechanic’s license—the same one I got in 1991—living next to the Rocky Mountains, riding my bikes against and in the amazingly beautiful backdrop of these humbling formations; once again, I’ll say it: I can’t believe I live here.

After a long, long, very long winter, I’m here to tell you that spring is on its way, and is settling in nicely. I realize I just marshaled the weather gods to unleash a furious last ditch winter storm sometime in the coming weeks, but I don’t care; Colorado is becoming beautiful again!

I went for a bike ride today, in 70 degree weather under blue skies (and discovered that my new bike has a really nasty propensity for high speed front end shimmy). Last week I read the latest Backpacker magazine and picked out a few choice fourteener hikes I want to do this year. Brenda and I made some headway on our foyer & landing flooring project this weekend, and I hope to be done with that one soon so we have more free time on the weekends to go hiking. This time last year, we had already crested Green Mountain and Bear Peak, but this winter was a whole different animal—one that I hope is an endangered species.

The point is, summer is on the way, and I couldn’t be happier.

Repeat after me: “Maxxis Locust CX tires are the greatest thing since coldcuts.”

After the third friggin’ 12+” snowstorm in as many weeks, it was time to get the last of our Christmas packages mailed off since we could not deliver them in person, but today, Brenda had the car. So, with my packages loaded in my messenger bag and my tires pumped to 75psi, I slowly rolled out on the Skunk Creek Path, slipping a bit but generally biting into the slushy icy muck. By the time I was at Scott Carpenter Park, I was passing mountain bikers and plowing through the worst of it, recalling the salient message of my very first bicycle lesson from thirty-three years ago: the faster you go, the easier it is to stay upright.

I have now mentally mapped out every single turn (especially the off-camber ones) on the Boulder Creek Path, and have a new desire for disc brakes on my everyday bike, but overall today’s ride was one of the most enjoyable rides I’ve ever taken.

P.S.
I got more coldcuts. Pending a favorable second tasting, I will post a review.

Well, if this ain’t the most non-standard Christmas I’ve ever experienced, I don’t know what is.

After the Blizzard of the Universe rolled into town Wednesday, dumping nearly three feet of snow in Boulder and Denver, our office closed on Thursday—my first-ever adult snow day! But the nagging pain in the back of my mouth that began with the first snowflakes continued throughout the snow day, and so Friday I found myself in the dentist’s chair, looking for answers.

Answer: my wisdom tooth needs to come out.

Extra information: It’s Christmastime, and no one is friggin’ around to do the job, so I get to complain to Brenda about my aching mouth until friggin’ Thursday. So, with my jaw barking at me, we decided to cut our losses and reschedule our east coast swing, avoiding the fallout from the blizzard at the airport (turns out our scheduled flight was only delayed an hour on Saturday) and allowing me to self-medicate with alcoholic beverages and rich food (I made steak tartare last night).

Last year was the first time I spent Christmas without my mom and my sister (we went to Brenda’s Mom’s place), but this year we will not be with any family at all. We’ve been wanting to do a Christmas in Boulder, but this certainly wasn’t the way we wanted to do it. But, we are lucky to have already amassed some great friends here in Boulder and we will party with them tomorrow and hopefully I’ll forget all about my tooth situation for at least five minutes or so.

If you have any painkillers lying around, mail them to me. The airport is open once again, and you could expedite the shipping. Meanwhile, accept my deepest wishes for a Merry Christmas and an enjoyable holiday season.

Sometimes you look out and it looks like a postcard… I’m motivated by the mountains. For some people it’s the ocean, for me, it’s the mountains. – Scott Moninger

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, I haven’t hiked a step since our Long’s Peak ascent three weeks ago, but rest assured I’m still here and loving every second of Colorado living. Been on a few bike rides, and every time I go I’m awed by the backdrop of the Rocky Mountains’ Front Range. What really hit home for me though, what really smacked me in the face and told me that I’m lucky to be here, was the arrival of the new Colorado Cyclist catalog on Friday. This is a catalog that I used to get regularly back east in my Hoboken apartment, my Glassboro dorm, and my Blackwood home. And when I’d look at the pictures of the models wearing the cycling clothing they’d invariably have these unbelievably beautiful mountain backdrops behind them. I used to wonder who these people were, and what they did to deserve to live and ride amidst such beauty.

And now I live here, and ride the same roads, and stare at the same mountains. I still can’t believe my luck.

The pictures in the Colorado Cyclist catalog took on a whole new dimension for me this time around, because now they were actually familiar. After twenty years of staring at those pictures and wondering who those people were, on Friday I realized that now I am one of those lucky people. And the article in the latest VeloNews—the one that contained the Scott Moninger quotation quoted at the beginning of this post—was fun to read, because it essentially pegged Colorado as the great cycling state that it is. I felt a sense of pride knowing I was a resident. After just 15 short months, I feel a deep attachment to this state, its scenery and its people. I think that says a hell of a lot.

Cyclocross, that quirky combination of cycling, cross-country and steeplechase, was always a curious mystery to me back east. In two weeks, the inaugural event in the annual Boulder Cyclocross Series will take place, right across the street from our house. I have access to miles of bike paths right outside my garage door. My neighbor across the street is the head mechanic for the Trek Mountain Bike Racing Team. Can you believe this shit?

I’m surrounded by mountains and cycling culture and loving every minute of it.

And I’ll scare them all away for you.

This weekend Brenda & I drove to Avon (a few miles west of Vail, CO) to meet my Cousin and Uncle for some fly fishing on Gore Creek and the Eagle River. I stunk up the joint.

To say my Uncle is an experienced fly fisherman is a serious understatement; he’s an ichthyologist by trade, has discovered an entirely new species of fish, and has been fly fishing since he was sixteen years old. He loves fish and fishing, and over the years we had thrown words at the idea of hooking up and having him teach me the finer points of the wonderfully archaic world of fly fishing. When we moved to Boulder, that put Brenda & I just under a few hours away from my Cousin in Avon, and so this summer Uncle Bob came out for a summer visit that included lots of fishing and a visit from his favorite nephew.

After a trip to the park for practice casting, I tried on the rental waders, which make you look like half a fireman. It’s not a good look. Down to the stream we went, but instead of flinging flies into the water we got a full education on the main food source of the trout—the mayfly. Picking up rocks from the creek bottom, we saw primordial creatures in the midst of metamorphosis, culminating in watching one mayfly literally crawl out of its skin, spread its wings and fly off of my Uncle’s thumb. It was pretty cool. Time to fish.

Uncle Bob set us up with some nice kit, some quality rods and reels and expertly rigged line, leader, tippet and fly. And that’s when everything went down the shitter.

I propose we change the term from “fly fishing” to “untangling”, since I spent 45 minutes out of every hour untying complete bird’s nests of leader line that got created after mere seconds of inattention while casting. Oh, and did I mention that trout have excellent eyesight, and so the trick in fly fishing is to use a super-thin leader so they can’t see it? If they can’t see it, you can bet your ass I can’t see the goddamned line either, especially when I’m standing in a river trying to untangle the aforementioned bird’s nest of this invisible thread for the umpteenth time.

Uncle Bob was more of a hunter on the water, able to spot the fish in all conditions (“there’s a fish, right there; you see it Rob?”; “yeah.” (no)), and his actions were more like stalking, his casts more like setting a trap. Me, I was wandering around the river like a drunk, sliding on the rocks and mindlessly casting into the river at nothing in particular and hoping for the best. I might as well have been playing the slots in Vegas, my odds of catching a fish probably longer than hitting a decent payoff on the reels.

But I learned a lot, Brenda & I had fun, and standing around in the Eagle RIver under a beautiful blue Colorado sky is not a bad way to spend a Sunday. Seeing Uncle Bob and Kate was great, and Kate prepared an awesome dinner Saturday night out of a 21.5” rainbow trout that Uncle Bob caught the day before we rolled into town. That fish was the largest he’d ever caught in all his yeas of fishing, and carries its own story which I’ll not get in to now. Naturally, his luck changed as soon as I arrived.

Brenda & I also got a taste of the hell that is I-70 east on a Sunday evening. I’m told this stretch of highway—the gateway to the Rockies from the Denver area—is a nightmare during winter, as all the weekend warrior skiers and snowboarders head back to civilization, but I was hoping that in summer the crowds would be a little lighter. Boy, was I wrong. After sailing all the way to the Eisenhower Tunnel, shortly thereafter we hit a traffic jam that brought us to a 12MPH crawl for an entire hour. And I thought the Jersey Shore traffic was bad!

We stopped in Idaho Springs for ber and burgers at Tommyknocker Brewery and formulated a plan to get home by staying off I-70 as much as possible: we took Rte 6 through Clear Creek Canyon, which revealed—once again—a beautiful, unwinding vista, this time all the way up to Golden and then it was a short ride back to Boulder.

A couple of odd sensations hit us as we arrived on the outskirts of Boulder. First, as “the flatirons” appeared on the horizon on our way, we felt like we were “home”. The flatirons are now “our” mountains, our identity with our place called home. Second, all our empty water bottles were compressed on arrival. This makes sense, since the atmospheric pressure in Boulder is much greater on average than it is up in Eagle. But that means that now when I think of going to Boulder, it’s going down to Boulder, even though Boulder’s at 5,400’ above sea level. After spending 37 years living basically at sea level, it’s kind of odd to consider this place, 5,400’ high and nestled against the mountains, home. But it is home, and I’m just as happy as ever to call it such.

Yeah, that’s right, there are trolls guarding the pedestrian bridge over Foothills Parkway just a few hundred yards from my house. This story should give you a good insight to some of the characters that inhabit this fine town of Boulder. I consider these people to be my outdoor pets.

Today marked one year since I moved to Boulder, Colorado. Lots of shit has happened in the last year, and since almost a month has elapsed since I’ve posted a word on this site, I figure I’ll throw down a quick recap.

First off, I am really, really happy living and working here.

Brenda is finally back in Boulder, after spending seven weeks in Santa Fe working for the Santa Fe Opera as a costume draper. She did well, but it’s definitely better to have her here than there.

Some more good sunsets have happened; I have pics.

The drive back from Santa Fe was along route 285, which took us through some of the most beautiful country I have ever seen. After a whole year of living in Colorado, I found myself falling even deeper in love with this part of the country. The mountains and the valleys between them are simply awesome.

I’m back into cycling, a lifelong love, in a big way. I have acquired three bicycles since moving here; one, I ride every day, my on-one singlespeed commuter bike. I scored an Independent Fabrications cyclocross bike on eBay last fall, which is one of the best fitting, best riding bikes I’ve ever owned, but I don’t really ride off-road so it’s been collecting dust since I built up the on-one. Still debating whether to try and fit it out for road riding or just sell it (or start doing more trail riding). Recently I bought another bike on eBay, a vintage Eddy Merckx that I have since taken all my Campy parts from my Zullo and hung on that. It rides like a dream, and it’s a dream come true to finally own and ride a Merckx. (The parts from the Merckx (all Dura Ace) are now hung on my old Zullo frame, and that bike will likely end up on eBay craigslist soon. Wanna buy a 60cm classic steel road bike?)

I have added hiking to my list of hobbies, and it suits me well living out here. But camping and sleeping in the snow, something that everyone seems to do out here, is not gonna happen anytime soon. Hiking a high summit is on my list of things to do this summer, though.

Flying has taken a back seat to my other interests, but remains a deep-seated passion for me. The expense, the fact that I no longer own a plane and the fact that flying in the mountains will require a concerted investment of time and money that I don’t have to spare right now have conspired to put aviation on the back burner for me for the time being. But I get a kick out of watching the gliders being towed to the Front Range right in front of my office window every day, and ride my bike to the Boulder Airport to watch the activities there every once in a while.

I went for a bike ride today. Twenty miles or so, along Arapahoe and 95th Streets. Riding along 95th Street northbound, I looked west at the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains and tried not to cry or run off the road as I took in the majesty of the mountains and pondered the amazing fact that after spending years in New Jersey riding and racing road bikes and reading magazines and catalogs depicting riders enjoying this backdrop, I was actually here (on my Merckx!), barrelling down the road in the thin mountain air.

This is a good place to live. I’m happy to be here, and I’m happier that Brenda, Emma and I are all together again. Twelve months after arriving here, alone, with two suitcases and living in a hotel room, we own a condo here and Brenda & I watched the Folsom Field fireworks from our front porch with Emma blinking inquisitively from the other side of the screen door.

It’s all good.

At last, a quality sunset has graced the skies over Boulder. One of the things I loved about living in Santa Fe oh so long ago was the amazing sunsets that were an almost daily occurrence. Usually in the afternoon the sun’s rays would have spawned a good thunderstorm, and the scattered clouds left in its wake would become the perfect reflectors of the setting sun’s rays. It seems that Boulder is almost too clear, its skies almost always devoid of those great puffy cumulus clouds that are a requirement for a quality sunset.

But today we had three storms in town, the result of the brutal heat and relentless sun we’ve been experiencing, no doubt. These storms left behind a ragged collection of clouds and overcast right through ‘till sunset. And as the sun went down, the low angle rays caught the edges of clouds and bounced off the overcast, rendering our living room in an eerie orange glow that brought me outside, to this:

Tonight’s sunset was, without a doubt, the best sunset I’ve seen in Boulder since moving here.

P.S.
Speaking of Santa Fe, I was there again this weekend, where Brenda & I celebrated our belated anniversary. We ate dinner at the Santa Cafe, a joint that was beyond reach of two apprentice/staff opera people, but now was more doable. We stayed at the Inn on the Alameda, again enjoying the life that all Opera apprentices deserve but cannot afford. And yesterday was truly hump day, in that it marked the exact halfway point of Brenda’s contract; she’ll be home in Boulder by July 4th (which will also be my one year anniversary of being a Boulder resident).

A year ago, I would have been affected by this: “Power Failure Snarls Commuter Traffic”

A year ago, I would have been one of those poor bastards shuffling along for a MILE to get to some other mode of transportation, cursing the whole way. A year ago, today’s latest regular dismal failure of the northeast corridor railway system would have likely hatched a profanity-laden tirade about how shitty my day was, followed by several gin and tonics.

But today, I rolled out of my house and took pictures of the goats (yeah, that’s right, goats) trimming the field across the street from my house, and arrived at the office 5-10 minutes later after dodging prarie dogs on the bike path and watching the occasional hawk.

So instead of complaints, you now get gloating. Sorry about that.