Photos and Progress

So Blogspot/Blogger/whatever fixed their photo posting problem, which means that I can put a few of my recent pics up.  That does two things: it lets me put up a post, and it lets me do it without spending a lot of time writing.

And I don't want to spend extra time writing because I'm currently funneling my creative powers into writing a short story/long story/novelette/whatever.  Don't know how long it will be, how good it will be, or how long it will take.  But when I finish it I'll post it on this very blog for the whole world to see (all you Ukrainians ready??!?)

Fog and snow at Beaver Creek

 

Self portrait in headlight, with my son and nephew.

 

Frost & fog at Lake Milton dam.

Vertical sunrise over the interstate.

Tree on foggy shore.

Fog, snow and sun over new singletrack at Beaver Creek.  This has to be one of the best photos I've ever taken.

 

One other thing, for those of you who ride bikes and are interested in reading about adventure: check out this guys expedition across the real wilderness of northern Canada.  Quite an amazing story.

http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?o=1&doc_id=8865&v=jg

Bear Rocks

There's a distinct flow to the long drive from my home in northeast Ohio to the heart of Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia. 

The trip starts on the big roads.  Being as populated as it is, you're never too far from a four lane highway where I live.  For east and west travel both I-80 and I-76 are within twenty minute drive, and I-90 is an hour north.  If you're heading north or south you can get to I-71, I-77 and I-79 within a short time.  And we have a couple of four-lane US highways that fill in the blanks between the interstates.

So when I put my backpack in the car, plugged a tape in the cassette deck and pulled out of the driveway, within 15 minutes I was on four lanes of concrete heading south at 70 miles an hour.  I've always loved that feeling of putting the miles behind when you get started on a long drive on the interstate.  You travel through the countryside so fast that you can see the terrain slowly changing.  The small towns and farms on the gentle hills of Ohio gradually gave way to the more heavily forested hills of western Pennsylvania, and once I was south of Pittsburgh those hills began to express themselves a bit more, growing taller and steeper, occasionally showing off bands of bare rock.

After about three hours I was leaving Pennsylvania on I-79 and entering West Virginia.  By now the hills were noticeably bigger, with just small flatlands lining the rivers between them.  Towns were further apart, and farms had been replaced by long stretches of unbroken forest.  Driving past Morgantown and Fairmont gave me brief glimpses of city development, but they came and went quickly - the extensive suburban belt I'm familiar with from Ohio doesn't exist here.

I finally turned off the highway onto a smaller state route.  The cluster of businesses at the interchange reached less than a mile, after that only scattered houses lined the road.  The state route was a nice two lane road, but my speed inevitably dropped because of local traffic and the constant curves and hills.  After a while I turned onto a smaller road.  The first three and a half hours brought me over 250 miles - the last hour only about 45.  This newer road was much narrower, and seemed to follow every contour of the mountainside, curving back on itself as it slowly made it's way southeast.  Small towns, some no more than a crossroads with a few houses and maybe a gas station, occasionally lined the road.  By the time I made it to the National Forest boundary dusk was upon me, and heavy clouds further darkened the sky.  I looked at the odometer and the dashboard clock - my average speed had dropped even further, to around 35 miles an hour. 

After checking the map, I turned off the narrow two lane onto a gravel road leading up the side of a broad mountain.  Slow and easy, I made my way into the growing dark as the wind picked up.  The forest road switchbacks were tight, and I slowed further as the road got rougher.  I was nearing the top when the first splashes of rain hit the windshield, first one, then another dozen, and soon the road ahead was blurred by the heavy downpour.  As the tree cover pulled back the road steepened and the occasional flash of lightning revealed scrubby pines among heavy rock cover.  I was almost there.

(Might be a good place to click on this link for a soundtrack:   Bear Rocks storm   )

I navigated the last switchback, a climbing left turn, and strained to see the edge of the small parking area that I knew was there.  As I eased the car into the lot the storm seemed to pick up in intensity, with lightning striking a couple of times each minute.  This was my destination - Bear Rocks in the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area.  I turned off the motor and listened to the sound of the rain beating on the car - not the weather I would have picked, but it wasn't anything I couldn't deal with.  That wasn't what I was thinking about though.  I was too captivated by the building storm to grab my pack and head off to find a place to camp.



Bear Rocks, with Dolly Sods in the background.  My parking space for the storm was off the road in the background, just about behind the second highest pine tree in this pic.

I sat on the shoulder of the mountain with the valley before me.  The windshield wipers provided a clear view of my surrounding with each swipe.  Lightning flashed across the valley every few seconds, seeming to be concentrated over the river below but occasionally striking close enough to make me jump.  The thunder was so close it felt like a tremor coming up out of the ground - like an echo of the artillery shells fired up here during Army training during World War II.

Trying to feel it more closely, I turned off the wipers and listened to the storm.  As the sheets of rain washed over the car and flowed down the windshield they provided a wavery version of the valley and mountains before me.  Each lightning bolt lit up the whole landscape with a blue-white intensity that lasted just a second, leaving a negative of the scene burned into my eyes as their brief illumination ended.  I could see the green slope before me that I had just driven up, the tree canopy boiling in the wind.  Below that the valley of the South Branch of the Potomac River could be seen in the distance.  Further away I could see New Creek Mountain, and the long shape of North Fork Mountain trailing away into the distance.

The black sky above me blazed up into an amazing vibrant purple centered on each lightning strike, then quickly fading, leaving my eyes dazzled by the contrast.  Outside the car window the white rocks along the edge of the plateau stood out brilliantly in the momentary flashes, forming a silent bulwark against the fury of the storm.  Gnarled pine trees, tough survivors on this exposed height, grew with their branches flagged off the downwind sides of their trunks.  The scrubby blueberry bushes that covered the rocks between the pines seemed to move like flexing muscles as the wind intensified and dropped off.  I watched, transfixed by the everyday magic around me, as the fury travelled east across the mountains.

After a while I realized that the lightning was moving off to the other side of North Fork Mountain, and that the wind wasn't gusting as hard.  The rain began to calm as well, fading to an even, solid downpour drumming the roof of the car.  When I turned the key to check the time I was astounded to see that it was approaching midnight.  I'd been sitting spellbound for nearly two hours, alone on the top of the mountain.  As the power and energy of the storm front faded to the calming susurrus of a heavy rain I began to feel tired - the aftermath from the adrenaline rush of the electrical storm combined with a long day made me want to just close my eyes and sleep in the car.  But I hadn't come all the way to Dolly Sods for that, so I started the car and backed out onto the gravel road. 

The road through Dolly Sods, near my camping spot.  Notice how the trees have most of their branches growing on the downwind side.

A short while later I was at another tiny roadside parking area, a place long familiar to me from earlier backpacking expeditions.  Rummaging around in the car I donned my rain gear and headlamp, then braced myself  as I stepped out into the steady rain and pulled my pack from the trunk.  Wrestling it onto my back, I prepared to hike back into the wilderness to find tonight's camp - but I stopped for a moment before setting off.

The glow of my headlamp seemed pitifully small, like a match glowing in the night, but the shifting circle of light showed the deep green of balsam pines all around me.  The sky was black - no more lightning to shock my eyes.  I switched off the headlamp - total darkness.  The rain came down as if I wasn't even there.

My son and I at Bear Rocks, more than ten years ago now.

Retrospect

When the calendar rolled around to 2012 I hoped that it would be a good year coming up, though the trend certainly doesn't seem to head that direction these days.  A lot of that was because the year before had not been so great, and I was desperately hoping for some sort of improvement.  Now we're one year further on down the road, so I thought I'd take a look back.

My line of work - architecture - was certainly one of the hard hit professions during this recession.  With construction taking such a huge hit the architecture market was forced into fevered competition for the remaining jobs.  The firm I work for was lucky to go into the recession with several good sized jobs, but after two years we were hurting.  Some local firms closed down for good, while others downsized to a bare-bones survival mode.  Our firm was forced to downsize as well, cutting some of the staff that wasn't as diverse their skills, while the remaining staff had their hours cut by 10 to 20 percent.  At the end of the year we're about half the size we were before the recession.  It seems that we're slowly starting to make some headway coming back, though we certainly could use a couple of big jobs to establish some real security for the near future.  My schedule has been set back to 40 hours a week, which is an huge weight off my back. So going into 2013 at least I'm not so worried about losing my job, which as you can imagine is a immense relief.

My family has been doing pretty well through the last year.  My wife had taken on more hours of work in an effort to make up for the hours I'd had cut, and was working up to 70 hours a week.  There is no way I can express my gratitude for her stepping up in such a way during this time.  She's a sweet girl, but she can be tough as nails when she has to.  That's one of the reasons I married her (our 19th anniversary was January 9).  Since I'm back to a full schedule she's been able to cut back on her hours, but being the person she is, she hasn't quit her second job - because she doesn't want to leave them hurting for employees.   My son has had a good year, though he's had a few typical 11 year old boy issues.  All in all they've come through 2012 pretty good and leave the in better shape than when they entered it.

And speaking of "in better shape", one of the major things about 2012 was the lack of a major injury for me.  I'm having some problems with my left arm from trail work, but I'm hoping that it will resolve itself soon (I go to the doctor about it next week).  In 2011 I had a double skull fracture, in 2010 I had a major knee surgery, and in 2009 I broke my leg in two places.  So just having a year when I didn't spend a lot of time in the hospital feels like a major victory.

One other notable thing happened in 2012 - the formation of Rust Belt Revival Trail Coalition, our new IMBA chapter for eastern Ohio.  I'd been considering trying to start a mountain bike club for our area for a couple of years, but when I met up with some other people that had similar ideas it finally happened.  We're still struggling to build a reputation and increase our membership, but we've got a lot of things going for us.  In the 6 months since we started we've managed to get some significant things done, but we definitely have a lot of work ahead of us to get to where we want to be.

There have been some not so great things too - some good people were lost this year.  I'm not going to dwell on that much because it's inevitable for us all.  But there were some that left that will be sorely missed, and for a long time.  And the state of the nation and the world is such that I've pretty much moved to a stance where I willfully ignore what's going on, choosing ignorance instead of a continual state of agitation over the stupidity of the decision makers. 

All in all I'm pretty grateful for the way things have turned out over the previous year.  I hope things turn out as well at the end of 2013, not only for me and my family, but for all of you out there.  Cheers.


PS.  I had some really nice photos to add to this post, but damn Blogger won't let me upload anything from my computer.  If Blogger screws me over ONE MORE TIME, I'm done fooling with them and I'll move this blog to a site that actually functions.

Fifty

Fifty.

The big five-oh.  Half a century.  Five decades.  Way too many months, weeks, days etc. to bother to enumerate.

The beginning of every decade of your existence is supposed to be some sort of milestone.  When you turn thirty it's supposed to be a big deal.  And when you turn forty everyone acts like it means something profound.  Again at fifty - ooooh, look at you being sooo old.

Bah. I'm basically not buying it.  I know people that are the same immature idiots at 55 that they were at 25.  In other words, growing older doesn't always equate with growing up.  We all know people that hit their maturity early as well.  Folks who show a wisdom and poise beyond their years.  So it's not quite as linear as all that.

But I am in a pretty sour mood.  I have 11 days off work, using the Christmas holiday, New Years holiday and my left over vacation time.  So I get to spend some time with my son while he's off school, which is nice.  But damned if the weather didn't get all wintry on me, so instead of my dream vacation featuring days of riding singletrack I'm moping around the house.  Too much snow to do trail work too, but I did get out for a couple of hikes.  Spending some time on the bike would have really helped take the sting out of this day, but you get what you get.

And really, I tried - I loaded up the bike and headed out to the trails to give it a shot.  The snow is right at the depth where it starts to make riding impossible, but I could make some headway.  It was great - unbroken snow on the trail in front of me, almost perfect silence in the sun - but I had to turn back.  This happens early in the year - snow lying on unfrozen ground.  And that ground was wet in spots, so that I'd be doing damage to the trail if I went on.  So it was a short ride, but I stretched it out by adding some snow covered road riding - lots of fun.

But  back to fifty.  I can reassure myself that I'm more fit at fifty than I was at forty, and that is a certainty.  My strength is better, my weight is a little less, and my stamina has improved.  But I definitely feel that I have a lot of room for improvement, so I hope to make some changes this year. 

I did pretty well early in the year with my nutrition, but kind of lost focus during the summer.  I was riding five days a week and with that exercise level I didn't have to worry about my calorie input.  But after getting sick in September and then getting really busy my riding schedule suffered, and the shorter days of fall made it even worse.  So I need to get back on track with my calories and with my exercise as well.  Just because it's snowy out I shouldn't just forget about exercise.  So I have to face the ugly reality and get back to riding the stationary bike in the basement (groan).  What I plan on doing is getting back into the habit of using MapMyRide as my nutrition and workout tracker.  It's a great site, especially since it's free, and I know from experience that it can help.   So starting with the beginning of January I plan on logging in and keeping my stats every day.

Hopefully that will result in losing some weight and improving my fitness a bit more this year.  I have a lot of things that I plan to do this year, from riding and trail building projects, to work on the house and time with my family.  Being healthier will make all of those things easier and more fun.  Wish me luck.

My next post will be more 'literary' in nature - I just needed to get this stupid 'fifty' thing out of my craw so that I can realize that today is just a day, and tomorrow will be yet another day.  Might get some more snow tomorrow - maybe I'll go sled riding...

Revealed and Concealed

I'd had a restless night, with sleep just beyond my grasp for too long.  I stumbled around the house, getting ready for work while coaxing my son into preparing for school.  Stepping outside and locking the door I was pleasantly surprised to feel how warm it was, despite it being the first week of December. The sun hadn't yet come up, but there was just enough light to illuminate the neighborhood, filtered through a thick layer of fog.  Streetlights stood out as beacons through the grey distance, and the sound of traffic on the busy street one block away was barely a whisper.  I stopped to enjoy the sight, and listened to the sound of moisture dripping from the bare branches of the oak trees.  I've always loved the fog, and this morning it brought back an experience from 15 years ago.

I'd gotten up early in the morning - before the sunrise on a late summer day - and loaded up my paddling gear.  It was a moist, cool morning as I strapped my kayak to the roof of the car and quietly slipped through the deserted streets, heading for the highway.  Less than an hour later I pulled into the parking area beside the ranger's office at McConnells Mill State Park. 

Me on Slippery Rock Creek in 2002.

 

The sun was just over the horizon, spreading a coppery light across the landscape, but the deep gorge that held the creek looked like a cauldron of shifting mist.  Heavy fog filled the depths of  the narrow canyon, rising to nearly the rim where a lazy breeze dissipated it across the ridge top.  As the sunlight strengthened I put on my sprayskirt and pfd, shouldered my boat, and hiked across the meadow to descend the trail to the water.

There is an easier place to access the creek - an old bridge where you can park beside the road and have your boat down to the water in thirty seconds.  But I'd always preferred the trail behind the ranger's office.  It was only a quarter mile or so, descending among the rock faces and dense forest via several rustic staircases.  Near the bottom, where it wasn't quite as steep, the stairs ended and you had to pick your way down a rocky path to the creek bank.  Though it wasn't exactly an easy trip carrying 50 pounds of boat and gear, I always looked forward to this trip and the feeling of immersing myself in the depths of the gorge.

This morning it was a mystical experience.  The fog obscured the edge of the woods, and thickened as I descended slick stairs.  The sound of the whitewater below, usually a roar by the halfway point, was a distant hiss.  The hemlocks and ferns slowly dripped fog borne moisture to the moss below, and occasionally a songbird would call, it's voice padded by the fog.  At the bottom of the stairs I carefully picked my way across the rocks, slowing to clear the crowding trees with the boat.  By the time I got down to the gravel and mud at theedge of the water the fog was so dense that I could barely see 10 feet.  The bright sunlight I'd experienced at meadow above was a soft sterling glow, giving a strange cast to the dark green and brown of the forest.

I slipped into the boat and stretched the skirt over the cockpit rim.  The water level was low enough that there was little risk, especially since I'd paddled this creek dozens of times over the past year.  By now I knew the path of the narrow whitewater creek very well, and felt confident in making a solo trip at low water levels.  I picked up my paddle and slid down the bank into the current, guiding the boat to the center of the creek.  Ahead of me I could hear the muted sound of a rapid, growing louder and sharper as I approached.  Yet the scene ahead was still a wall of fog, enclosed by the dark rocks of the banks to my left and right.  I knew I had to be to the right to enter the first rapid, and I eased the boat closer to that shore as the current picked up.  I strained my eyes, peering into the gloom - and now I could see the outline of the white foam on the dark water through the mist.  Another paddle stroke and I was at the lip of the ledge and then past, the fog slowly rolling in the breeze above the rapid.  I cut the boat into an eddy, looking upstream, but the waves were already lost in the fog.

I peeled out back into the main current, and guided the kayak downstream.  Once again the sound of whitewater slowly gained volume and focus - and then was revealed at the last moment of the approach.  This place that was so familiar to me seemed like somewhere new - yet it was only my familiarity that could allow me to press forward with barely any visual cues.  As the boat dove through the mist and turbulent waves the cool water splashed into my face, bringing the morning into sharp reality.  Each rapid was an experience, both the same and different than ever before, and I lingered at the eddies, reluctant to approach the end of the run.

Even longer ago - me in the Pirouette on Slippery Rock Creek in 2001.

Finally I made my way through the last rapid.  I knew the bridge for the takeout was ahead, though it was still concealed in the fog.  Floating on the current, I didn't paddle until it came into view, and then eased towards the shore where I gave one last strong stroke to push the boat onto the sandy shore. 

I left the boat hidden in the woods near the creek, and began the walk back upstream towards the car along the streamside trail.  At the halfway point the fog was beginning to thin noticeably.  And as I finished the climb out of the gorge the brilliant sunshine once again warmed me, with clear blue skies above. By the time I reached the car I was sweating.  Looking down into the gorge there was only the slightest wisp of mist to be seen, twisting and swirling as it slowly disappeared.

Trail Building: Making the Move to Become Involved

Everybody that rides a bike on singletrack has probably at some point wondered about the origin of the trail that they're using. More casual trail users, such as people who might get out for a hike or ride a couple times a year, may not consider such an issue, but those of us who are out on the trail nearly every weekend have a significant relationship with the trails we frequent.

Years ago, before I started riding, I didn't really think about where the trails I walked came from. If asked I would have guessed that they were either really old trails that were still in use or that they had been built by the CCC during the depression (an idea fostered by years of hiking at Mill Creek Park). And if the issue was pressed further I would have probably said that the park rangers took care of the trails and made sure that they were safe for us to use.

Well, those ideas are somewhat off base. We do still have a number of trails in our part of the country that date back to the CCC days, but there are very few that are any older. And with decades of shrinking state park budgets the idea of park rangers spending hours maintaining trails is becoming less and less real.

The truth of the matter is that many of the trails we ride were imagined by average trail users, be they hikers or mountain bikers. These people had an idea, pushed to have their ideas accepted, and then spent the hours to make them real. Some of these projects were years in the making, and took the efforts of dozens if not hundreds of volunteers. Most of the trails we ride in this area have this history - West Branch, Beaver Creek, Reagan Park, Moraine. As riders we owe a huge debt to the people who had the vision and energy to create the trail systems we love.

Those of us who have spent hours and hours on the trails, who have gotten the enjoyment of great rides for year after year, should consider what our role is in this history. Mountain biking has seen a huge increase in popularity over the last two decades, of which a large part rides on the backs of the first generation of mtb volunteers. These are the people who took our trails from poorly built rogue trails along railroad and powerline rights of way to the well designed, sustainable trails that we enjoy today. They fought resource managers for the chance to prove that they could be a responsible user group and could make a positive impact on our parks. The amount of resistance that had to be overcome by this first generation was immense, yet they persevered. And now we get to spend our free time enjoying the fruits of their labors - great singletrack spread all across the state.

 

It's perhaps pushing things a bit to say that those who use the trails the most have a responsibility to get involved with trail building and maintenance. There is no real obligation to give something back to the things that you have gotten benefit from. But as members of a sport that wouldn't exist if not for the efforts of volunteers, its not only part of our tradition, its an investment in our own riding future. Thanks to the efforts of that first generation of mtb trail builders everyone in Ohio is within an hour or so drive of some sort of legal trail. With continued effort from today's riders we can open more trails to mountain bikes and we can create more miles of high quality, sustainable trails.
 

If you're a rider and are interested in getting involved with the trail building aspect, but hesitate because of the level of physical labor involved, consider this: it takes no more effort than an average ride, and provides an excellent cross training exercise. Plus, our trail stewards aren't there to crack the whip and make you miserable - you work at your own rate, on jobs suitable for you, and you quit when you want. Our trail work days range from two hours to five hours, depending on the weather and the task at hand. Any time that you can give to help is gratefully accepted.
 

If you're hesitant to get involved because you wonder about coming in to a tightly knit group of builders who will look down on an inexperienced newbie, you need not worry. Our trail building days have a strong social side to them, with groups of volunteers involved in conversations ranging from jokes to trail tails to environmental and political concerns. People take breaks as needed to rest, get some water or a snack, and check out the work being done by their fellow workers. The experienced builders are always willing to take time to explain the concepts behind a job and to listen to alternate ideas for any section of trail. While we do get a tremendous amount accomplished at a typical trail work day, we also have a lot of fun and get a real chance to socialize with our fellow riders and club members.
 

This may sound like a lot of the same old talk trying to get people to be involved in a cause, but there is a basic truth behind it. If we as riders don't get involved in building and maintaining our trails then they will eventually just cease to exist. We all know we don't want that - what we want is MORE and BETTER trails. And that won't happen either unless we show up and make our contribution. We can make a difference for riders in our area, and you can be a part of it. Be a trail builder. 

 

Note: This is an article I wrote for the Rust Belt Revival Trail Coalition e-newsletter that I put together every month.  If anyone out there is interested in reading these newsletters let me know through the 'comments'.

One year plus

Yeah, I know.  I NEVER post two days in a row.  But there were a couple of things I wanted to say that wouldn't have fit in with the last post.  So I'm putting up a short, bonus post at no added cost to you.

It's been over a year since I started this blog.  And it's got 3,400 views - which is something I guess.  I still wonder who the heck in Ukraine is looking at my goofy stuff.  I do appreciate those who take the time to read, and especially the ones who submit a comment now and again.  It reminds me that I'm not just writing for myself.

There's been another milestone of sorts.  It's been over a year since my last injury.  Those who are familiar with my recent history know I've had a streak of not so great luck.  I'm hoping that I've learned enough to be able to end that baloney.

Here's a bit of video from a ride I took today.