Friday, January 13, 2006

Off-the-beaten track

BLOG is short for Bike LOG

Here are some bicycle blogs that are worth a visit.
  • VeloGal likes men in bike shorts and takes photos of them.
  • Cyclosm "is a fully independent pro cycling news and commentary blog. What you won't find here are blocks of text lifted from Cyclingnews, meditations on my ride home from work, or vague, cookie-cutter product reviews. What you will find are race reports on everything from Milan-San Remo to the local training crit, utterly unfounded opinions, plenty of OLN-bashing, and twice the journalistic zest of The New York Post."
  • VJ writes about cycling around Portland, Oregon in Tales of Slow Brave Athena.
  • Oil is for sissies: Adventures in cycling.
  • Experience Plus reports on bike touring and cycling advocacy, focusing on Fort Collins, Colorado.
  • Bike Pirates Bike Punx is a large and active LiveJournal group blog.

Colorado Snow Ski

I've been snow skiing this week, hence the dearth of blogging entries. My son flies down the trails faster than me. "Hey Dad, this trail's called Death by Gravity. It looks fun. Let's go!" He disappears over a ridge, I shush up to it and peer down into a chasm with rock ledges hanging out and my son is disappearing into the murky fog far far below.

My son started skiing Black terrain at the end of last ski season. This is the year that Blue runs have become boring for my son. I've done more Black runs today than I have in my previous 25 years of skiing. I also feel the same pain today than in my previous 25 years of skiing, combined.

If you're not into skiing, trails with a "Green" rating are for beginners. These have a shallow slope and are groomed to be nice and smooth. "Blue" trails are for intermediate skiers. They're a little steeper and offer more challenge. "Black" runs feature terrain for advanced skiers: steeps, bumps, powder and trees. Truth be told, I enjoy the easier Black trails, though my knees like well-groomed wide paths.

In Colorado, we also have Double Black Diamond runs. These are the ungroomed, powdery, death-defying cliffs with moguls, trees and the occasional man-eating monster that invincible ten-year-olds love and 40-year-old knees hate.

When we weren't destroying my legs on steep bumpy runs, my son and I were killing ourselves in the freestyle park. Or, more accurately, my son was grinding rails and flying from ramps with the greatest of ease, while I killed myself. I think it's time to censor those Warren Miller extreme skiing videos. I think I'll also pass on the group bike ride tomorrow morning.

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2 comments:

Pete LaVerghetta said...

VeloGal is Sammarye Lewis and she is quite a trip. She has "Go Lance" tattooed on her ankle. She's written a couple books on cycling. We've worked together at the USPRO Championships, Trenton, Lancaster, NY, SF and the Tour of Hope. She's also sort of a kook, but in a nice way.

Anonymous said...

If your community needs a bicycle advocacy group (I know, it's hard to move from the "let's ride" mentality to the "let's kick some butt" and make your City Council pay attention to the bike community mentality, but it's worth it!) don't forget the Thunderhead Alliance. Here in Fort Collins we needed to turn the head of council so we organized, bombed them with e-mails and bodies and turned a 4-3 vote against a city bike ombudsman into a 7-0 vote in favor. We formed a bicycle advocacy group, joined the Thunderhead Alliance (http://www.thunderheadalliance.org/index.asp) and are now on a roll. Think about organizing for your community. You can read about our experience at www.bikefortcollins.org. The best thing about Thunderhead is you get 119 other organizations to network with (we were # 113 when we joined in October).