Mountain Biking

Posted by Roie R. Black on Fri 05 June 2015

Since my cancer adventure started I have had two surgeries requiring skin grafts to cover the damage they were doing to my face. I never realized my legs were actually tissue farms for just this kind of situation. Anyway, I now have two long scars on my legs (one on each side) where they have "borrowed" tissue to graft to my face. (Part of one leg now lives in my mouth. Weird that it is still hairy!)

They did not take muscle, but my legs are not as strong as they were before all this. I was running almost 13 miles a day when I got hit by the cancer train. That is a half-marathon every day! Wow!

I have always found running more satisfying then any other form of exercise, but I am considering returning to biking, just in case I cannot run the way I want to anymore. And that got me remembering my adventures on a mountain bike!

What is a Mountain Bike

Lots of people ride mountain bikes, but few of them have ever ridden one on an actual mountain! I have. For that matter, I bet most four-wheel drive vehicles have never left the pavement!

A mountain bike is a more durable bike than those racing bikes (which have probably never raced either) you see on the street. They have beefier frames, fatter tires, and often have shock systems to absorb the bumps they will take when you go airborne (yikes) or slam them into stuff in your way!

Mountain Bike

I bought my first mountain bike while I lived in Dayton Ohio in the 1970s. Actually, it was my second real bike (not counting the couple I had as a kid). My first was a street bike with really skinny tires. On one of my first rides on that one, I was riding along a residential road when the wide curb lane for bikes or parked cars came to an end. I had to move into the main road to continue on my way. So I glanced behind me to make sure there was no traffic, and rode right onto a rain grate covering where water flowing down the gutter went into the sewer system. No big deal, right? Wrong! The tires on my bike were so skinny they fit between the rails on the rain grate which was aligned in the direction I was riding. (Boy is that a law suit waiting to happen!) My tires slipped between the rails, the bike fell down about a foot, and came to a screeching halt. I flew over the handle bars and tumbled into the grass beyond the grate. The wheel looked like a pretzel when I managed to pull the mess out of the grate! It looked something like this:

Broken bike wheel

Maybe I should have sued, but I was fine. My bike should have sued, though. It was a wreck! I had to buy a new wheel, tire and all. In the end, I traded it in for one better suited for riding in my neighborhood. That was my mountain bike.

First Rides

I put a lot of miles on that bike while living in Dayton. Most of them on paved streets. I worked up to rides over 100 miles long. My rear end was very sore as I learned to do that. The seats on these things were not really designed for human beings. After a while you do get used to things, but it took a while.

Mountain Bike Seat

I never felt like I was really getting any exercise, though. I would ride, sometimes in a group, and after 40 or 50 miles, I would get off any not even feel like I had worked up a sweat! When I ran, I was soaked in sweat, since I was running reasonable well back then. The Air Force expected you to stay in shape, and tested you every year to make sure you could run at least a mile and a half at a pretty quick pace. I ran way more than that, usually at least 10k on any run I did.

One day, I climbed off of my bike after a 50 mile run with a group of riders in my neighborhood, and decided I needed more exercise. So, I put the bike in the garage, buttoned up my house, and started off running.

Big mistake!

If you ride a bike at any kind of speed, those muscles in your legs ARE working, even if you do not feel like they are. I got two blocks, and my legs felt like Jello. I could hardly stand up. So, I gave up on the run and weakly limped back to the house. I guess you do get exercise when riding the bike after all!

Riding in Nebraska

When I moved to Nebraska, I ended up getting into Arabian Horses, and the bike stayed in the garage! I did all my riding on my horse! It was fun, but I got no exercise that way. I went back to running, and running a lot!

The base gym started a program for runners where you logged your miles, and every 500 miles they would give you a tee-shirt so you could brag about your mileage. A few of my friends and I decided to train for the marathon in Lincoln, Nebraska, so we signed up for the program and started piling on the miles. I was averaging about 10 miles per day during the week, and ran about 15 miles on the week end. We burned through 500 miles so fast, the gym had trouble printing up the tee shirts for us. In the end, I ran 2500 miles between Jan 1 and the end of August. I ran my first half-marathon (at Lincoln that year, and that is the only time I have set foot in Husker Stadium! That shrine to University of Nebraska football is one of the biggest "cities" in Nebraska on game days. They have sold that thing out every game since the late 1960s!)

My goal that first race was to finish the half-marathon in time to see the winners complete the full marathon, and I did. I managed to get under the finish line clock in 2:00:10! I saw that time coming up as I ran around the track that surrounds the football field, but could not beat the clock to two hours! Durn!

The next year, I did better, and managed to complete the half marathon in 1:35. But when I worked my way up in miles for a full marathon, things happened. I was running over 21 miles on weekends, and was ready for the marathon, when I got transferred to New Mexico. I missed the Lincoln Marathon, and got to Albuquerque right after they ran their marathon. So, I never ran one! I did run about six half marathons during this time, though!

Riding in New Mexico

Ah, Albuquerque! There are REAL mountains there. Mountain bikes are everywhere, even in the mountains! Now there is an idea. And, all around the city is this thing called a desert!

I lived on the west side of the river, in an area next to something they called an escarpment. That was the edge of a kind of cliff formed by flowing lava from long extinct volcanoes in the area. The cliff face was all lava, and ancient Indians carved all kinds of images, called petroglyphs, into the rock. It was an interesting area, and site of a National Monument if you get to the area.

Petroglyph National Park

Beyond the cliff was pure desert, and miles of trails for runners, hikers, people on horseback, and mountain bikers!

The ground was rough, so I had the front fork on my bike replaced with one with a shock in it, and that made riding on real dirt much easier! I would come home from work, and jump on the bike for a 40 mile ride. I would ride from my house to the escarpment, up a road to the top of the cliff, then ride over trails to a set of extinct volcanoes at the top of a mesa.

The three volcanoes

From there you could see the entire valley, Albuquerque to Santa Fe, and Los Alamos! Quite a view.

View from the three volcanoes

Zap!

Many of my rides ended up at the three volcanoes, which was probably one of my favorite rides, just because the views were spectacular!

To get there, I rode up the cliff by the park, then down a paved road to a model airplane flying field, and then into the dirt trails that went to the volcanoes. About a half mile into that trail it went under a high tension power line that brought power into the valley, from where I never found out! The lines were at the top of huge towers, but something weird went on as you got close to them.

power lines

Electricity is very interesting stuff. When it moves through a wire, it generates an electromagnetic field that moves away from the wire at the speed of light. You know about those waves, they are what we know as radio signals. The really interesting part is what happens when those waves hit another wire, like an antenna. They generate a current in the second wire, even though there is no connection between them. That is how radio works. The current in the second wire, which we call an antenna, is very weak, and a radio has to amplify that current to pull out the signal being transmitted by a radio station. Neat!

But these power lines were not generating music, they were just sending huge amounts of power to Albuquerque! They did generate a "radio" signal, though, that pounced on my bike, which was made of metal. The bike got charged up with a small current moving through it. I never felt that, though!

Now, my bike had a 21-speed transmission on it, something I really liked for reasons we will talk about later. There was a seven speed hub on the rear wheel, and a three speed setup on the crank you turned with your feet. The mechanism that let you change speeds was manipulated by steel wire cables running from the handlebars to each mechanism. There was a lever near the front crank where the front cable was connected.

21 speed mechanism

That cable was bolted to the lever, then ran about two inches beyond the lever, where it ended. The manufacturer of the bike had put a plastic cap on the end of the wire so you would not poke yourself if you reached your hand down there. That was nice. However, the wire was there and you leg moved close to it as you pedaled the silly bike. My leg passed within an inch of the end of the wire, and I never noticed it. Until I rode under those line, that is.

That current moving through the bike, moved into that wire, and when I was directly under the tower and my leg was close, there was a spark between the end of that wire and my sweaty leg. I saw it one time, and felt it several times. The first time it happened, I almost jumped off the bike! Then I figured out what was going on, and bent the wire so it moved further from my leg! Glad my curiosity taught me all about that. Otherwise, I would have been looking for evil ghosts with ray guns!

It turns out that if you take a fluorescent light tube with you and walk under power lines like these, the bulb will light up! That is something strange to see!

I was still running, riding my bike, and riding my horse all over this area. It was an amazing place for exploring!

Retirement

When it was time to retire from the Air Force, my mother was in the middle of a very serious surgery, and I elected to pack up all my belongings, and move back to D.C. to help her through all that. I shipped my bike, enough clothes for an extended stay, and rode a train across the country back to live in her apartment while she recovered.

That was a hard, but interesting time. In the end, my mom died from the surgery, and my time was spent working on dealing with her apartment, and working with my sisters to get through all the pain of this loss. That is another story.

I rode the bike all over the area. I grew up here, and knew the area well. So, I jumped on that bike and rode everywhere. I was living in Annandale, about 10 miles from D. C., and about five miles from my home town of Falls Church. I rode back home and explored my town, I rode to Mount Vernon and explored George's old home, I rode along the Potomac River, and up the Mall and the museums I had spent so much time is as a kid. I had a blast.

I even rode what used to be an old railroad line, but is now a bike path called the B&O Bike Trail, that runs over 70 miles from the Blue Ridge mountains west of D. C. all the way to the Potomac River near Alexandria. I explored the battlefields near Manassas. I went everywhere.

Then all my work there was done. I bought a car, packed up my stuff, including my bike, and headed back to Albuquerque. I had to restart my life after 20 years in the Air Force.

Job Shopping

When I got back to Albuquerque, I rented a small apartment and started up the resume mill. Every morning, I would scour the want ads for jobs in the area, and even went to the local book store and looked over newspapers with ads from surrounding areas. I sent resumes out in Albuquerque, in Santa Fe, in Los Alamos. I looked at jobs in Socorro, in Flagstaff, in Phoenix! Everywhere an old computer geek might find employment.

In the end I landed a job with the city of Omaha, working in their IT department. And that is yet another story. Back to biking, though!

Riding on Kirtland AFB

My work day went like this: In the mornings, I was shopping for jobs. I would print up a job application, write a cover letter, tune up a custom resume for that particular job, and ship it off in the mail. When I ran out of prospects, I was done for the day. I would jump on the bike and ride. This time, I was living near the base so many of my rides were onto the base, which is huge. At the far back part of the base there are a bunch of labs where specialized experiments are conducted. There are miles of roads around there, with all kinds of interesting things going on. Fortunately, as a retired Air Force Officer, I had permission to wander all over that place.

Public Trails

The local bike shops all had maps showing public trails in the mountains, so I started riding those as well. I would stick my bike on a rack on the trunk, and head out to the start of a marked trail and ride the trail. There were over 200 miles of marked trails on one of those maps, and I used a highlighter to mark the ones I rode. Eventually, I rode most of them! That was fun, but a bit dangerous.

I was riding alone most of the time, although there were usually others on the trails as well. However some of the trails were seldom visited, unless you were on a quest to ride them all, like I seemed to be doing.

I once rounded a curve in the trial, out in the middle of nowhere, and ran smack into an old (20 years or so) police car. I have absolutely no idea how it got there. I finally decided some helicopter dropped it there just to confuse poor saps like me! I looked it over for bit, then rode on. Weird.

The problem was that if I ever fell off and broke something (like myself). I might be stranded there until someone rode by. You could not use a cell phone then, they were too new, and the signal did not reach into the mountains anyway. I did have my amateur radio with me, which worked extremely well in the desert, but in the mountains I had the same problem, no signal!

I would have been bleached bones by the time I was found, if anything really bad happened. Fortunately, I was immortal back then, and never had a problem. But what if?

The Big Hill

One of my rides was a killer. I would ride along the river from my apartment to the far north part of town, near a private airport. I usually looked over the planes there, then steeled myself for the next part of the ride.

Tramway Road runs from the Interstate in the middle of the valley straight towards Sandia Mountain. The climb is over six miles long, and all uphill at a pretty steep angle. This is a good test of your cooling system if you drive it in your car. It is also a good test of your human cooling system if you ride it on a bike as well!

Tramway Road

It is also a first gear hill. I would switch to first gear, and pedal furiously to the top of the hill. On a hot day, and there were many, I probably lost five pounds just in sweat!. It was a real sense of accomplishment when you reached the top.

By the way. Just behind that first set of hills on the left side of this picture is the base of La Luz Trail, which climbs to the top of the mountain, over nine miles of hiking. Before I retired, I ran the La Luz Run. We "ran" all the way to the top, then hiked a mile and got a free ride on the tram back to the bottom. Another mile of hiking got us back to our cars. What I was doing at the top could hardly be called running, more like shuffling along in a vain attempt to keep moving, but I made it. We climbed over 4000 feet straight up on that run!

My goal, in riding up Tramway, was always the turn off that took you to the tram. From that point you had a clear view of the entire valley and the city below. If you rode the tram to the top of the mountain, the view was even better!

Sandia Tram

After I recovered from the climb, I would ride along the base of the mountain, another 10 miles back to the base. It was great exercise!

On occasions I would get caught in the rain on one of these long rides. Rain in Albuquerque is strange. It hardly ever rains over the whole city. Instead it rains "somewhere", and you have to ask what block the rain is falling on. I could stand next to the mountain, survey the valley, and decide on a route home that avoided the showers on my route. That was fun! And if that did not work, Who cares? I was already wet from sweat, maybe that would keep me from needing a shower when I finally got back home (NOT!)

Mountain Riding

The best times I ever had were riding in the mountains. That is what mountain bikes were built for.

There is a ski area on the East side of Sandia Mountain, which towers over Albuquerque. At the top, it is over 10,000 feet above sea level. At the base, around 6000 feet. The city is about 5000 feet. During the summer, they run the ski lifts up to the top of the mountain, and you can rent mountain bikes to ride down the trails that line the actual ski runs. That is what many folks do, and the rides are very nice. Lots of mountain scenery to see, and not much work, since it is all downhill!

Me, on the other hand, did it differently.

I would drive to the ski area with my bike, and park there. The elevation was around 7000 feet. High enough to make exercising a problem. Then I would get on my bike and ride up the road to the top of the mountain. That was another first gear ride and it took over an hour to get to the top. By the time you did that a number of times, the altitude ceased to be a problem. Then, I would ride about a mile along the ridge at the top of the mountain to the ski lodges and restaurants there. That is where the tram from Albuquerque also stops, carrying skiers and tourists from the city.

From that point, I would ride down the trails back to my car. All in all, about four hours of riding. And I did those rides often.

On one of my rides to the top of the mountain, I ran into a hang-glider contest, where over a hundred pilots were competing. They would strap themselves into their gliders, then run to the edge of the cliff and jump into the air. That cliff had a 4000 foot drop straight to the bottom of the mountain. It also had a huge updraft caused by wind hitting the mountain and going straight up into the sky. Those updrafts could keep a glider up for hours. Eventually, they would land in a clearing right back at the top of the mountain!

Sandia mountain glider

I was thinking about lemmings rushing into the ocean when I saw about a dozen of these folks all standing in a line, then running one after another to jump off that cliff! I never had the nerve to try that!

Bear Country

On another one of my rides, I was riding down one of the trails back to the car. I was snaking my way through the forest, making sure I did not run into any trees, when I popped out into a clearing. The trail went through a field of tall grass, then reentered the forest. I was moving fast! All at once, I spotted something standing on the side of the trail!

Black Bear

He was just standing there, with his nose right in the middle. I was moving so fast, there was no way to stop, and I did not want to stop anyway! Instead, I moved to the side of the trail, and sailed right by him! He was probably as surprised by this as I was. If I had reached out my hand, I would have smacked him on the nose, we were that close.

I was by him and back in the trees before I really realized what had just happened! I stopped a bit further down, and looked back to see him staring at me, but not moving! I bet he wrote about that day in his blog as well! Weird humans!

I may buy another bike, and do some riding to help build myself back up after my cancer ordeal. It might be another mountain bike, but I may go back to those skinny tired beasts. I will remember to look out for rain grates, though! (They are much safer these days, I bet more than a few idiots like me did sue!)

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tags: Stories