Urban shoe trees?

Something strange is happening on the west side of Salt Lake City.   I first suspected something was up when I saw a solitary pair of shoes hanging from the power lines near a certain intersection in the Poplar Grove neighborhood.  Now shoes are hanging from the power lines all over the place. 

At first it was just a single pair.  Then a second pair showed up.  Then a third.  Last week I counted twelve pairs on my bike ride home.  Somebody is trying to tell us something.

They are spreading too.  I’m starting to see them at other intersections.  There’s even one pair above a particularly busy intersection I pass through every day.  Have you ever tied the laces of a pair of shoes together and thrown them into the air?  It takes a bit of luck and a lot of athleticism to hook them over a power line.  Considering the number of shoes I’ve seen lately I’m pretty sure we’re not dealing with amateurs.  These people are serious.

At first I thought somebody was trying to start an urban version of the classic western shoe tree.  I’ve been interested in shoe trees ever since Mags and I stumbled upon one on our honeymoon in Oregon.  I tell you, just looking isn’t enough.  You’ve got to throw a pair of shoes into the tree yourself to fully appreciate the singularity of this populist form of art.

Since then we’ve found several other shoe trees in our travels across the west.  One Cottonwood in Nevada has at least 1,000 pairs of shoes adorning its branches.   A Doug-Fir in Washington has shoes hanging 80 feet above the ground.  I hear there’s a shoe tree in Park City, but I haven’t seen it.  I will stumble upon it sooner or later.   

Shoe trees are a little understood, always under-appreciated expression of the American Spirit.  They occupy a lonesome niche in modern Americana.  They have been the purpose behind many otherwise purposeless road trips. Shoe trees come in all sizes and species.  Some are sparsely populated with shoes and others are so heavily laden that branches break with each rain storm.  But they are always miles from nowhere on a back road traveled more by cows than cars. 

I’ve never seen an urban shoe tree.  And shoe trees don’t spread across neighborhoods like the shoes in Poplar Grove are.  So I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. 

Another theory is that shoes hanging from power lines is a sign of gang activity in the area.  But that theory has been scientifically debunked.  Besides, if you were a gang member, would you hang up a sign notifying police where you operate? 

So what is going on here?  Is it a bunch of bored teenagers looking for something to do?  Meddling hipsters trying to drum up material for a cover story in City Weekly?  Fifth grade bullies reigning in terror?  Have you got a better theory? 

I don’t know what is happening here but somebody’s got to find out. 

Grandma's home cookin'

I spent Friday afternoon helping my mother clean out the basement of her old house.  It is the house she grew up in, and has housed five generations of my family.  One of the tasks Mom had for me was cleaning out a cupboard full of canned fruit that her mother, my maternal grandmother, had canned. 

The steel lid of the first jar disintegrated at the touch of my finger and I thought this was going to be a messy job.  The fruit inside had morphed into an unidentifiable, desiccated black lump. 

While there was no date on that jar, some of them were dated, and most were in much better condition.  The oldest jar I found contained pear halves canned in 1963.  There were a lot of jars of cherries from 1968, which, from the number of jars, must have been a bountiful year.  What amazed me most was the condition of the jars; most of them were still sealed.  The fruit inside looked pretty good, if maybe just a bit darker than it should be.  There was one jar of tomatoes from 1972 that was bright red and looked like it had been canned yesterday.  I was starting to get hungry. 

Mom thought I was nuts, but I had to inspect every jar before I threw it out.  See, I never knew my grandmother; she died three years before I was born.  To me she had always been just a character in a story or a woman in a black and white photograph.  Now for the first time I was holding something that was a part of her life.  It was something tangible that I could feel.  Something I could heft and know that her hands had once hefted it too.  She was becoming a real person right there in my hands.   

I knew what I had to do.  I had to eat some of Grandma’s home cookin’. 

I found a small jar of black cherry jelly from 1971—four years older than me.  The seal was still tight, the jelly looked fresh.  The lid didn’t have any of the corrosion I had seen on the other jars so I set it aside.  I envisioned myself going on a bike ride with my jersey pocket stuffed with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich made with Grandma’s jelly.  I thought I would finally have a snack from Grandma’s kitchen. 

Again, my mom thought I was nuts, and when I mentioned the idea to Mags she forbade it.  She says a fresh looking jar could still be contaminated with botulism—or something worse. 

So sadly, I have put the idea on hold.  I still want to have a taste of my grandmother’s life, but not if it’s going to kill me.  I’d like to get to know her, but not that soon.  I wonder if any of you know if there is a way I can get it tested.  Until then, I have set the jar aside to wait.  It’s waited 36 years, I’m sure it can wait a little longer. 

The most important ride of the year

This weekend Mags and I are doing our most important ride of the year.  The Josie Johnson Memorial Ride is a sub-20 mile, leisure ride from Sugarhouse Park to Mill Hollow Park.  In years past there have been hundreds of cyclists, most of whom seem incapable of riding with a group, enduring cold, wet weather to honor Josie Johnson and other cyclists killed or injured on Utah roadways.   

It’s short. It’s slow.  It’s chaotic.  There’s a 40% chance of rain.  So why is this ride so important?  The purpose of the ride is to raise awareness of, as well as among, the cycling community.  Cyclists are equally responsible as motorists to know and follow traffic laws.  If cyclists know and obey traffic rules, motorists are more likely to respect our rights on the road.  If motorists see thousands of cyclists out on the streets on Saturday morning, they’re more likely to keep an eye out for us at other times.   

So if you live or ride in the Salt Lake area, you should join Mags and me at 10:30 Saturday morning at Sugarhouse Park.  We’ll be cruising our tandem. 

<p><del>12</del> 9 Hours of Sundance&nbsp; </p>

I raced the 12 Hours of Sundance as a duo with my teammate Aaron on Saturday.  The first 8 hours were great.  The course was just less than seven miles, with 900 feet of climbing per lap.  Clouds loomed low all day, and there was a bit of rain here and there, but the trails were in great shape. Aaron and I were a well-oiled machine; we never lost so much as a second in any of our transitions.   Josh Wolfe and Matt Harding were giving us our stiffest competition, but we took the lead on our fourth or fifth lap and settled into a steady rhythm after that.  One of us would ride a 35 minute lap while the other rested.  Then we would switch.  It was like clockwork. 

On our fourteenth lap the heavens opened and the rain finally made good on the threats it had been making all day.   We were 8 hours into the 12 hour race.  When Aaron met me at the transition area he told me it was slippery and sticky, but when I went out for our fifteenth lap I didn't think it was as bad as he had described it.  This is until I got to one of the service roads that we had to climb.  Both wheels were bound with mud within seconds.  I tried to carry my bike but it weighed about 50 lbs by then.   I pulled some mud away with my hands and pushed my bike up the hill where I could coast down the other side.  But I was losing valuable time. 

About a quarter mile from the lap area the trail turned uphill for about 50 feet.  I foolishly tried to shift to a lower gear (I had been having all sorts of shifting problems in the mud) and my derailleur shifted into the spokes, which sheared the derailleur hanger clean off.   I had to get off and push again to the top of the hill where I stopped and pulled the derailleur and chain out of the spokes so I could coast down the paved road to the end of the lap.  I had to kick at the ground like I was on a skateboard a few times to get across the line.   I was thinking I was lucky to have my brother's bike there as a backup but Aaron met me at the line in his street clothes and without his bike, and told me the race was over and we had won. 

It was a sloppy, sticky good time, but all I won was a silly medal, which when I went up to accept, someone shouted “Give him a derailleur.”  I owe a big thanks to Mags and my mom, and Arthur, who provided support for us.  Maybe I should give them a chunk of my medal. 

Pure hooptedoodle

"I
like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the
guy looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks.
. . . figure out what the guy's thinking from what he says. I like some
description but not too much of that. . . . Sometimes I want a book to break
loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. . . . Spin up some pretty words maybe or
sing a little song with language. That's nice. But I wish it was set aside so I
don't have to read it. I don't want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the
story."
    Spoken by Mack
in Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck.

There is a
group of us at my office that likes to go on lunchtime rides. We don’t go far, 20 miles or so, but we go
three or four times a week. One of the
guys in the group is named Zane. He’s a
very fit, highly cynical, fifty-something triathelete. He likes to talk politics on our rides, which
used to really annoy me until I figured out that he can’t talk politics at
speeds above 23 mph. I’ve turned it into
a motivator to take long pulls on days I don’t want to hear his political
slandering.

Sometimes Zane
falls over with no apparent reason. One
time he was bringing up the rear on a brisk ride with a tailwind when we came
to a stop sign. Those of us in front
heard a crash and a thud as we slowed down. We looked back and saw Zane picking himself up off the road. Naturally we circled back to see if he was
OK, to which he nodded in the affirmative, but he didn’t say anything. He just got on his bike and we continued
riding.

Last week
Zane fell as he was trying to open a gate through the airport bike path for
us. Most of us can open these gates
without putting a foot down, open it enough to get through and give the guy
behind a chance to make it through too, but Zane just wasn’t in his rhythm that
day. I watched him miss the gate, then
miss his handlebar, then fail at getting out of his pedals. His fall wasn’t terrible, but it must have
hurt a bit. Once again, he didn’t say
anything. He just got back on and
started riding.

I used to
think Zane fell down because of the aerobars on his bike. But seeing him miss the gate showed me
otherwise. Now I think he’s just trying
to give me some hooptedoodle to think about when I ride my bike.

The girl, the moose and the lost keys

Today’s post was supposed to be about how, near the end of our weekly Wednesday night ride last night, Aaron and I had to don our arm warmers for the final downhill.  And about how that was the first time I had done so since sometime in May, and how doing so signified the end of summer and the onset of autumn.  That’s what it was supposed to be about, but that was before we saw the girl pushing her bike downhill, and the moose, and the guy who lost his keys. 

The girl
Our ride had taken us up Millcreek Canyon, down the Ridge Connector trail to Park City’s Mid-Mountain trail, which we rode for a bit before turning around and returning the way we came.  Near the top of the Ridge Connector we came upon a girl pushing her bike—downhill.  And she looked exhausted.

Normally when we see somebody trailside working on their bike we stop to check if we can help.  We’ve fixed flats, adjusted brakes and tuned shifting for countless people on the trail.  One time Leif and I spent an hour reassembling some kid’s rear derailleur.  But last night when we saw the girl pushing her bike downhill toward Park City we figured she knew where she was going.  We wish we had stopped, she wishes we had too. 

The moose
One mile later we came around a bend and came upon a moose and a calf standing right on our trail.  We stopped and considered our options.  A third rider joined us and we decided we weren’t going to get the moose and her calf to move so we walked our bikes up and around them, keeping at least 30 yards away.  The cow watched us the entire way, and took a couple of steps toward us once or twice, but she let us get by. 

The lost keys
Another mile later we came upon another guy going uphill.  He asked us if we had seen his friend, the girl we saw pushing her bike. Aaron and I stopped and told him what we knew, that she was still heading toward Park City, that she looked pretty beat, and about the moose (what’s the correct plural of moose? Meese?).  He (Jared) told us that she (Amber) had missed a turn and in the meantime he had somehow lost his keys.

As we were considering what to do we heard Amber coming down the trail.  She was crying.  No, she was sobbing hysterically.  Jared went to comfort her and Aaron and I decided to skedaddle rather than witness the awkward exchange. 

It all comes together
Then on our way down we realized that Amber and Jared still weren’t out of the woods yet, so to speak. It was dark by then, and they had no lights.  It was getting cold (remember that this post was supposed to be about me putting my arm warmers on?) and they didn’t have keys to their truck.  So Aaron and I turned around and started back up the trail.

When we found Amber she was with three other bikers with lights, but they didn’t know where Jared was.  Amber showed us why she had been crying.  She had tried to walk around the moose like we had, but the cow had charged her and actually kicked her on the back of the leg.

Fortunately Amber was able to get her bike between her and the moose and get away.  I wonder why the moose charged Amber and not us.  Was Amber too close?  Or was it because she was alone and we had numbers?  Or had we exhausted the moose’s patience?

Jared showed up a minute later with a twisted chain that had kept him from riding his bike.  He would have to coast or push his bike all the way down.  The three bikers with lights continued their ride up the trail and the four of us started down with one little light among us.  It was mountain biking by Braille.

Eventually the three bikers with lights returned to light our way and we all made it down safely.  Amber said she still loves mountain biking.  You can read her version of the story here.   

Vive le Velo!

Mags and I recently spent some time in Montreal.  In 1999 Bicycling Magazine rated Montreal as the number one cycling city in North America.  But we didn’t go there for the cycling, we went for the French pastries, the poutine and the feel of a European city just north of our border. 

While we were duly impressed by what we went for, we were truly amazed at the number of bikes we saw.

There were bikes locked to every stationary object. 

There were cyclists on every street.

There were bike paths throughout the entire city.  They even had their own traffic signals. 

There were all kinds of people riding bikes.

We looked at a few thrift stores for bikes we could ride, but quickly discovered that even the junkiest of beater bikes sell for a premium.  A rusty, but functional department store bike would go for about a hundred dollars. 

I even saw a Huffy mountain bike with a $65 price tag.  After seeing that I knew it was time to rent.

We  Americans have a few things we could learn from our neighbors to the north.