Ponderings on a passion for bikes

   Lately, life feels a little bit like a repeat of my last backcountry ski trip in Washington; the mountain covered in a few feet of fresh snow, struggling to follow a steep skin track the whole way up.  Now and then my skins will lose grip and I slide backwards a ski length or 2, maybe tumbling over into a small tree, filling my pants with snow.  Eventually I have to cut off and break my own less-steep trail.  The going is incredibly slow and frustrating, but despite minor setbacks I'm picking myself back up and climbing steadily at a turtle's pace and can finally see the top getting closer.  As good an analogy as any for coming back from an injury; for every three steps of forward progress I'll slide back a step or so every week after getting too excited and overdoing it again.  Generally things are much improved from week to week even though day to day can vary if I spend too much time in the sun or don't rest enough between active days.  This past week after being cleared for more moderate activity I was able to ride to the beach in Tahoe Vista, about 10 minutes away.  Along with several other rides of similar length and effort this was a small victory, but considering where I was 2 weeks ago, or a month ago, it's something to get excited about!

   Being able to ride even for such short distances feels great, partly because I'm able to pedal on a bike again, and partly because I am becoming less dependent on my truck to get around.  Driving in Tahoe in the summer really stinks dealing with tourist traffic, road construction, parking, and all this to get just a few miles away from home.  When I bought my truck after living car-free in Tahoe for 4 years I continued to pretend I didn't have it for much of the time, using it mainly to shuttle downhill bikes and get to climbing crags some distance away, or make backcountry skiing excursions.  Working at Alpine Meadows got me free bus passes to further save on gas, and if I planned right I could snag an extra 10 rides toward the end of the season to use in the summer.  Everything else within the north Lake Tahoe area, from grocery shopping to work I was able to ride a bike and get exercise while running errands all summer long.  Even now with my summer job in Truckee, I had planned to commute 10 miles each way by bike 3 days a week or more over Highway 267's Brockway Summit.  Being trapped in a car for such mundane activities is borderline painful compared with the thrill of flying down pavement on two human-powered wheels at 6:30 AM and arriving at work more awake than ever.  Then a pedal down the Truckee River bike path to Tahoe City completes the triangle and makes a 40-mile bike sandwich day, fun for variety instead of climbing back over the pass.  Wow, do I ever have a bike problem!  I'll have to put in some smaller road rides before attempting to ride to work, but I hope that at least this late summer-fall will be filled with more bike commuting and less icky driving.

   My mom gave me a book about cycling in Amsterdam for my birthday,  In the City of Bikes, by Pete Jordan.  After eagerly tearing through it in a couple of days I'm convinced that I had to have lived there in a past life to develop such an unusual addiction to pedaling.  It was fascinating delving into the social aspects of cycling's evolution in Amsterdam, and how cars very nearly took over the city at one point but were fought back by an overwhelming number of cycling advocates, with the extra help of a gasoline shortage.  Most interestingly, I also found the correlation between one's vehicle and social status doesn't exist to such an extreme degree in the land of bicycles, with all walks of life pedaling the city together from students and nuns to politicians and successful businessman.  As someone who watches Hummers and Cadillac SUVs with chrome wheels cruise up and down my street before parking in front of a trailer or dilapidated motel, I am puzzled by this.  Sure, you drive a fancy car, but you live in a shack and eat cheap garbage food in order to feed the monster with gas?  If gas prices went up to $10 a gallon, would you move out of your trailer and live in the car?  Convincing people to ride bikes where it makes more sense is looking like a lot more work than just making safe places to ride; it entails changing the cultural view that bicycles are for kids and poor people, and why should one ride if they can drive instead and make a bigger impression.  That kind of change can take generations, and I wouldn't expect to see it happen in my lifetime, barring a drastic event such as running out of oil...but then we would have much larger problems to face.  I just can't imagine any way to make a majority of average folks get out there and ride bikes for some part of their daily routine.

   I can only dream of living in such a place where cyclists are accommodated with as much space and respect as cars instead of being relegated to a 2-3 foot (if even that) shoulder with RVs and boat trailers zooming past with inches to spare, or squeezing past cars parked IN the bike lane.  While some parts of Tahoe are lucky enough to have a separated bike path to ride on, much of the north and east shore is devoid of such luxury and leaves one to ponder how much less of a mess parking and traffic might be if the lake was completely surrounded by a bike path and bike rental shops in every town.  Tons of people probably would still drive, but at least riding bikes would be much safer for the rest of us who like to pedal.  Who can complain about cutting down on both pollution and traffic in this amazingly beautiful mountain lake basin?

And now, for something completely different:

Porky with a baby chicken. He is actually terrified of them and ran upstairs to hide after this.

A happy garden. No vegetables yet but the squash are ginormous! Most of the plants survived an invasion by the chickens one afternoon, though I lost the cucumber (WAAAHHHHH!) and one tomato plant.