Told 'Ya So

IB 2011

At Interbike 2011people kept telling us 1x wouldn't really ever happen for MTBikers.  Everybody had different logic, but they agreed it was implausible that 1x systems would be widely adopted.

We've seen how that is turning out.   

Roadie 1x systems

We did find some people to listen, and agree, but suggesting 1x for road bikes or anything other than MTBs was a bridge too far for everybody I talked to.
Then in 2013 there was the first 1x production road bike. Now, all of the sudden this year, we're seeing all sorts of developments in that area.  Foundry Cycles is now offering a CC bike with SRAM's new CX1 system.  So the second largest drivetrain player has a 1x road based system available, and it's already being spec'd as OEM.  

One of the reasons often cited by doubters is that road bikers would never accept the gaps between gears necessary to run 1x on road bikes.  But then Tony Martins just won the only Time Trial in the TDF this year, and he did so on an 11-32 SRAM cassette.  Two or three years ago, that was a MTB cassette.  That's unusually large spread for road bikers, and almost on par with what's needed to run 1x.  Tony, I guess we should say Mr. Martins, is a TT specialist, a discipline where gearing and cadence are fundamental, so he's maybe a touch ahead of the curve with this progressive setup.  

Absarokee Days

High Summer in the Garden

The Echinacea this year is as tall as Rose.

FST 1: West Fork Rock Creek Trail in Red Lodge

With some family in town, I skipped a bike ride or two, but we did go on a great hike.  It was a blazing hot day, so we headed up in the mountains to a tight little valley.  It was a great hike, the only place to be when it's 100 degrees down below on the plains.

Is that a Mountain Goat?  He is scary on the cliffs.  

Absarokee Days Parade

It was Absarokee Days this weekend, and for the first time Rose was in the parade, not on the sidelines.  I guess we're really locals now!

HUGE Week
Some pivotal events this week in the Johnson Clan.
1st, tomorrow Yokie has her interview in Helena.  She's been practicing for weeks, and she's ready now, and I've gotten all the paperwork ready.  It's going to be a crazy day tomorrow!
Then we get to hit the hot springs on the way back, so that's always a highlight or us.  After a day or two here I'm off to Maah Daah Hey 100, my 100 mile singletrack race through the North Dakota Badlands.  I went on one of my last training rides last night.  This one was particularly focused on the bike setup for NoDak racing.  I'm going to post a bike setup breakdown soon, so more on that later, but as for what goes into a pack for a 100 mile ST race, it looks something like this:

Some things are missing:
* I've got a long sleeve white shirt coming so stay out of the sun as much as possible.
* The tomato isn't coming with; it's a stand in for my phone, which is also my camera.
* The Absaroka Beartooth map was for last night, I'll take a map of the Maah Daah Hey if I can get one.
* Bear spray and bug spray is for the Beartooths; for NoDak it'll be sunscreen.
* There is a bag of dog treats and food.  Instead of that I'll have some of our new Cowbot food treats.
* For most of the day I won't need the lighting system.
* After riding last night, I need a new shirt too.  Sometimes it feels so great to put on a dry one.
Some things are really unusual for most bikers:
* The Exogear sound system weighs a couple of pounds, and the backup battery system a pound or two again, but it's so worth it.  On long rides there is nothing like music to keep you going.
* The cassette cleaning tool is so useful for noisy drivetrains, and it weighs very little: always worth bringing.
* It may be a bit Eurotrash or Cowboy (strange how those two totally different styles agree on this one thing) but I'm bringing a bandana.  For 100 degree heat all day long, I think keeping as much skin as possible out of the sun is going to be critical.  Tried it last night and it worked great.
Other than that, it's a pretty straight forward set up.  I'm super stoked & can't wait to get out there!!!

Shrek's Stash Lap

My Go To 2014 Ride
About 500 meters up the Lake Fork Road outside of Red Lodge MT there is a pullout on the left.  Park here.  Head up the road for about a mile of paved warmup.
Then take FST 1 downhill, back down the other side of Lake Fork Creek.  It's about a mile and a half of really nice ST down in a cool creek bottom, some stuff to keep you on your toes but all very rideable.
Right towards the end of FST 1, you can wind right through a Lyons Youth Camp, and this takes you to the big parking / camping area at the junction of Lake Fork and Rock Creek, where you catch the double track uphill to Wyoming Creek.
This two mile section of doubletrack is really nice.  It's shut off to motorized vehicles but it used to be jeep road, and since it's on the other side of the creek from the highway you get a cool perspective of this lower section of Rock Creek Canyon, and it's really cool on hot summer days.
Once you hit Limberpine and Parkside campgrounds you cut through and link up with 2.5 or 3 miles of the nicest ST I've ever done.  It's all really smooth and flowy, but rocky enough you have to be on it, with a great pitch, and the forest is spectacular.  Greenough Lake is always a great highlight too; it's so overstocked that it's almost always boiling with trout hopping.  Very nice hue to the water too.
At MK Campground you hook up with the Rock Creek Road.  This is a five mile uphill to the Glacier Lake Trailhead.  The road gains over 1000' of vert, but it doesn't seem like it.  It's so scenic you never really have a chance to feel the burn of the uphill.
At the TH you can't continue (Wilderness) so you get the same ride back down: 10+ miles of insane downhill.  5 on the road, 3+ ST, and 2 great doubletrack.
This ride is a must for anyone in the area, and it links together some of Red Lodge's best sections.  I'm super lucky to be able to get there in about 45 minutes from my house.

Somehow a disproportionate number of my rides this year are actually creeks.

About 20 meters up the Glacier Lake Trail, there is this old decommissioned structure of some sort.  No idea what the original purpose was, but in its current state it lends a cool creepy Winterfell vibe.  In the wind it creaks and moans a bit, and all alone out in the wild, it's a bit spooky.

Moose at Greenough Lake, with Beartooth Pass Highway in the background.

Kip just knew to stay away from this one.  

You can't see it in the pics, but the risers were out of hand.
If you're in the area and you want a catching mission, more so than a fishing mission,
like if you have a kid or something, try Greenough Lake.  

Shrek's Ride
Every season, a biker seems to settle into a favorite area.  Some riders have their lifetime rides even, rides that become associated with them.  Tinker Juarez and Turnbull Canyon for example.
For many it changes from year to year.  Depends on our bike.  On where we live.  On what kind of riding or racing we're doing that year.  For many, it depends on whether or not we have a car.  There is a lot of amazing riding in Bozeman, for example, I never got to do because I usually didn't have a car when I lived there.  Even though it's a great outdoor town, without a car, your choices are seriously limited.
I've been lucky enough to have some great ones:
* Cardiac Hill (Between the Golf Course & Fish Creek), Steamboat CO, 1991
* Emerald MT, Steamboat, '92
* Tree Haus to Howelson Hill ST, Steamboat, '93
* Elena Gallegos, Alb NM, '94 & '95
* My Urban ST / Arroyo / Bike Path loop, Alb NM, '96
* Buffalo Pass to Spring Creek, Steamboat, '96
* Beehive to Lone Mountain Ranch, Big Sky MT, '97
* History Rock, Hyalite Canyon, '98
* Sypes Canyon, Bozeman, '98-2000
* Radio Tower Hill, Bozeman, 2002
* Daisy Pass, Cooke City, 2004
* Pueblo Lake State Park, Pueblo CO, 2005-2007
* Main Fork Bridger Creek, Absarokee MT, 2007-2009
* Zimmerman Trail, Billings MT, 2009-2011
* Indian Cliffs ST, Billings, 2011-2013
This year we keep ending up at Shrek's Loop in Red Lodge.  Even in the good company of the above list, it stands out as a great MTB ride.  In fact, if I could choose any ride to do today, there are only a few I'd choose instead (Pueblo Lake, Buff Pass, Emerald MT).
Then again, it's tough to say; looking at the above list, it strikes me how good all those trails are.
What a good life I've had!
Thanks Fam!  Thanks Lo Po!

Family Hike Pics

American Girl

Homeschool Lesson Family Style
Yesterday we had one of the coolest homeschool lessons, it was one part hike, one part American history lesson, one part wildcrafting class.
We went to the East Rosebud Trailhead at Alpine Lake, and hiked towards Elk (or Elizabeth) Lake.  It's a 3.5 mile hike, easy by hiker standards but for Yokie 3.5 miles uphill at this altitude is pretty challenging.  The trail is well-maintained, in fact it's the single most popular trail in the Beartooth Absaroka wilderness area; commonly called The Beaten Path it's part of a 26 mile trail that goes from the East Rosebud Trailhead all the way to Colter Pass outside of Cooke City.
As we were hiking, we cycled through 100 questions on flashcards.  These are the 100 things you have to know to pass the American Citizenship test.  Yokie takes her citizenship test on the 29th in Helena, so we've been prepping for it.  I have to say, I'm a history buff, and indeed a history minor from MSU, and I only knew for sure about 85 of the questions when we started.  I would say the average American would know less than 40 or so.  Some examples:
* How many voting members are there in the House of Representatives?
* Name one of the authors of the Federalist Papers.
* When was the Constitution adapted?
* Who was president during WWI?
* What is the Rule of Law?
I know it's maybe your immediate reaction to say that you got this, and those questions and 95 more of the same would be no problem, I had the same initial reaction, but, honestly, how many Americans would be able to answer these correctly?  Even the easiest one, about the 435 members of the House, how many people who really listen to NPR or the Blaze Network, or really watch the news and are interested in politics, could answer that correctly?  The author of the Federalist Papers, that's a tricky one even for history buffs.  If you know the era you can take a crack at it and maybe get lucky with a good guess (which is what I did), but to really know that for sure is to display a very rare command of American history.  I doubt that even here in Montana where so much is named after him,  many people have a command of Madison's legacy.

As a side note, one of the many things that's lost in the current debate about immigration is the perspective of the people going through it.  Maybe it's different for Latin immigrants, or for people not marrying a citizen, I'm sure that everybody has a slightly different experience.
What I can say is that for us the commonly held perception that marriage to an American grants easy and unfettered access to citizenship has been far from the truth.  We have spent a lot of time, money, and effort to get this far and we aren't there yet, and we've been married for 12 years.  And I'd love to see any of my American friends or family take on Yokie now in an American history or civics quiz.  She'd crush pretty much everybody now.

Anyway, there we were yesterday, on one of the most stunning hikes in the world, on a bluebird, perfect, hot Alpine day, walking up the trail, doing a family civics quiz.  At one point we walked right past a lady about my mom and dad's age, walking alone down the trail as we walked up, and she yielded to us.  Right as we walked by, Rose got her seventh answer in a row right.  She's listened to the flashcards so many times, she now knows more American history than most American adults.
The smile on that lady's face, as she took in the scene of our family hiking up the hill and Rose nailing a quiz on pretty tough civics questions, it was priceless.  In that one smile I saw validation and encouragement for everything that Homeschooling stands for.  To be tackling questions like that, with a rigorous memorization format, with the effective but underrated and indeed abandoned (by modern educators) flashcard approach, and to do it while walking, out in the woods, on a day like that, it was a perfect homeschooling moment.

Oh, and BTW, we accidentally timed the raspberry wildcrafting mission of our lives.  I've tried and failed dozens of times to time good raspberry picking missions around here.  Apparently I've been going too late.  If you go right now the Beartooth front, the raspberries are off the charts.  Thimbleberries too up higher, but down at the bottom the raspberries were the best ever.  We never made it more than 100 meters without stopping, and we kept saying to ourselves, OK, that's it, we have to move on, but then you'd see another patch even redder and more filled with raspberries than the last.
Great reward for Rose and Yokie for doing so well on the quiz.
And icing on the cake that was the best family homeschool day ever.  Post pics soon.

Two Days Riding in Cooke City

Day One: 

3.2 miles, 930' climbed,

1 Punctured Sidewall

So, after weeks fiddling with tire issues, I head up to start my weekend, get three miles up Goose Lake Jeep Road, and get stopped by water, everywhere.  Water and snow.

Latest I've ever seen trout spawning at this lake.

So I start heading down, and immediately I puncture my sidewall in a deep muddy pool in the road.  I get to walk three miles down a creek back to camp, wondering how I'll fix my tire.

It wasn't until I was walking I realized how crazy the road was.
It's essentially a creek right now, filled with sharp rocks.

At least it was a beautiful walk home.

Day 2:

35.2 Miles, 5,663' Climbed

In the morning light, I could see that the sidewall wasn't that bad.  It was a perfect little puncture, like from a skewer or something.  I cleaned it really well, and patched it with a tube patch, let it dry in the sun while I packed up, and it seems as good as new now.  So, a huge ride around Cooke City.

Changing weather all day

The view back down Lulu Pass

Scotch Bonnet Mountain

The road from the backside of Lulu to Abundance Lake and Daisy Pass.

I went the other way instead, up towards Goose Lake the back way.

Looking at Pilot and Index all day.

Survey marker atop Lulu Pass 

Sheep Mountain Pass

Sheep Mountain was maybe the best wildflower perfume I've ever smelled.

This uphill was. . . steep.

Kip is super scary on cliffs.  No fear.

Outside of Silver Gate MT.

Shy bull moose on the connector road between Daisy and Lulu.

Day 3:

9.6 Miles, 1,417' Climbed

For the last hurrah, I headed into dark grey clouds and out onto Line Creek Plateau, on top of Beartooth Pass.  It's one of my favorite trails, because it's not really a trail; it's just a giant tundra playground.  The wildflowers were insane, best ever for this area.  But the weather chased me home early.  Still, a great ride.

Wave of snow

The view down the other side of the pass into Wyoming farm country.
Tons of great pic spots after this, but the weather wouldn't let me stop to take any.