Stupid Whiny Times

Things are going very well. Yawp has been offered the lease for the space it wants to occupy. There may be some rad events in the works. Life, as they say, is as good as puppies on a rainbow trampoline. 

Despite the general top-notchness of things, there come days when everything inexplicably seems horrid, and a person comes to hate one's own marvelous life. This is the worst kind of badness. This is even worse than first-world problems such as "I've run out of storage room in my larping shed" and "I hate how long it's taken me to count all of this money." This kind of problem is saying "I'm alive in one of the best times and places that has ever existed on this planet, and it sucks." 

I knew I was in the midst of stupid whiny times, and there I did not want to stay, so I took a trip to Three Sisters. I rode up to the fork near the top of Evergreen mountain and told the trail "I'm having stupid whiny times," but at that point I realized that I was no longer having stupid whiny times because I was really enjoying myself. Stupid whiny times had ended, unnoticed by me, within two minutes of the trailhead.

Riding a bike is preventative maintenance for stupid whiny times, eliminating at least 80% of them. So lets do ourselves and all of our friends a favor and get out there as often as we can. Sometimes I wonder what my dog would be like if I didn't walk him for three days and then gave him a bunch of and caffeine. He would be like the Flash in that he'd be able to vibrate through solid walls. People probably aren't much different.

Tangentially related, here are all of the pictures I've taken at that particular fork. In fact, let's have a quiz. Question: which of these bikes is not like the others? 

Answer: the invisible one. You're right!

In closing, I hope your week is free of stupid whiny times.

So Much Face

If you're on acid, maybe don't watch this right now. 

Five Other Things to Do

There are things that keep us from riding our bikes. Injury. Broken equipment. Ennui. Weather (although there's no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing). Sometimes, these things keep us from riding our bikes for a long time. Unable to concentrate, we pace about like a dog that's missed his walk. Here are ten things you can do to occupy yourself, provided your injury doesn't involve a full body cast.

1. Read The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined  by Steven Pinker. If, say, the reason you're not riding your bike is injury, you may be spending more time in the car than you were, which would mean that you're seeing a lot of humanity at its worst and barely avoiding accidents far more often than when riding a bike. Should this be the case, Mr. Pinker's book will remind you just how lucky you are to live where and when you live. If you did not get shot, stabbed, or tortured today, you are ahead.

2. Watch all three seasons of Louie on Netflix. It's a wonder that this show can be so funny and serious at the same time. If you don't like laugh tracks, this show is for you.

3. Call three friends you haven't spoken to in a month. They will likely be out doing something fun and active with their uninjured bodies, but hey, at least you tried. 

4. Cook a really good meal. Spend a few hours in the kitchen making something from scratch. Since you're not riding your bike, you'll be putting on weight anyway. Why not do it right?

5.  Clean your bikes. Sometimes parts fall off. Cleaning your bikes will help you to notice these things and prevent future injury. If you like your front teeth, you won't want to ride without all of your chainring bolts.

So take it easy. You deserve it, you crusher you. 

"You will believe your eyes."

Flipbook: Absolutely Killing it

You know how it goes. There's a section of your favorite trail that is so difficult that you can barely even hike it in cycling shoes. You refer to this section as "the last pitch of El Capitan." Then, one day, as you're dismounting your bike for this section, you hear a bell ding behind you and, to your complete astonishment and horror, a stranger rides past without breaking his pace or his face. Then you might discover that all of your friends ride this particular section. When you show a picture of this section to your grandma, she says she cleans it on a unicycle. So then you get up your courage and you attempt to ride El Capitan, and then for the next few months you refer to the section as "the place where I broke my helmet" or "the place where front wheels become Pringles." A few months pass. Something very weird happens when you arrive at this section. You clean it.

One year later, as you ride this section, it occurs to you that it once seemed difficult and made you anxious, and now it's just a bump in the trail. When other people talk about "the terrifying shin-tenderizer" it takes you a minute to remember what they're talking about.

Getting better at something is usually a difficult thing to detect. Am I a better person this year than last? I wish I knew (or maybe I don't). While I'd hesitate to say I'm a better person because I can now clean "section faceplant," it is important to experience improvement.

Click on the pictures below to watch Biggity absolutely kill a tricky switchback. Confidence + 10.

Remember: you can do it. If not now, someday (though you can probably do it now). As the weather is getting colder you'll be wearing more clothes anyway, so give that tricky switchback a try. 

Don't let Ogre and Krampus fool you. Not all mythical creatures are pink and green.