Mooseknuckler Cycling Alliance

I’m tired. This is probably going to be incoherent, poorly organized and make little sense. But if you’ve been here before you already know that.

So, this mooseknuckler is moving to Logan. I had been playing around with the big questions in life for the last couple of months. Like “What are you going to do when you grow up?” and “Can you really stand to work with these guys for the rest of your life?” and my favorite, “Are we going riding?” I have to admit that I have absolutely no desire to make more money than I am right now. I have even played with the idea of maximizing my income at just the level so I don’t have to pay income taxes, but that would cut into my bike expenditures. At the end of the day, I want to write and roam and stuff. I don’t want to manage or own a shop for much longer. Although I enjoy wrenching and being in the bike world, I would prefer to write something worth reading than wrench something worth riding. Both are valiant goals, mine just happens to be the first. So at the end of April, after the Fat Tire Festival in Fruita, I will be returning to Logan and Sunrise Cyclery to hopefully refine myself into a free-lance homeless writer.

Once again, I’m off to some other place to do something I can’t do here. If it was up to me, I would make USU come to me. Unfortunately, they don’t listen when I tell them what to do and they don’t offer journalism over the internet.

I plan to come back and ride a lot… Alliance rides will still be held, I’ll just be doing it on the other side of the state. I would hope that the rides continue here, but I haven’t had much luck while I’m here so when I’m gone is not looking good.

My right hand man from the last time I was at Sunrise came down this weekend. Mr. Anderson and I will be doing the Goose tomorrow. Finally get to try out the new brakes. They are the most beautifull brakes on the market. I hope they work as well as they look. I got them Thursday for QBP day. The hoses are a little long right now so they look funny but they will be changed sometime this coming week.

This guy is a drunk. And not very happy I’m leaving. It’s been a while since I was afraid of the big headed Gurrman, but yesterday I was scared. He kept shaking his head at me and telling me he was really really dissappointed. Whatever…

The weather here in S.G. has been a bit breezy. This year has been a bit on the strange side. First we had a January with record breaking cold. February was pretty damn cold too. Then March rolls in and we have record breaking heat, for most of it. This past week has been chipper, and hell-o-windy. The only thing that has gotten me into doing any commuting is thinking that if Ryan can do it so can I. Nothing better than some manpride to get you clipped in and pedaling.

And an orator said, Speak to us of Freedom.
And he answered:
At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom,
Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them.
Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff.
And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.
 
You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief,
But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.
 
And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour?
In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle your eyes.
 
And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard that you may become free?
If it is an unjust law you would abolish, that law was written with your own hand upon you r won forehead.
You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor by washing the foreheads of your judges, though you pour the sea upon them.
And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.
For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their own pride?
And if it is a care you would cast off, that care has been chosen by you rather than imposed upon you.
And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.
 
Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape.
These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.
And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.
And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.
From The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

I’ve been reading Jared Daimonds book Collapse for a while now. It makes you look at modern society in a different light, mainly through the glow of a catastrophe. The one thing that I can’t get past is how easy it would be to starve this nation. Can you imagine if food distribution stopped? Take S.G. as an example, we live in air-conditioned cubicles in the desert. There are 120,000 of us now in this little valley. The little agriculture that once took place here has vanished except for a few isolated fields of corn and alfalfa. Apparently our food grows in the grocery store because that is the only place we can get it. If distribution stopped for a month we would all starve.

Now think of how our food is distributed. If oil production was to peak or stop, or the oil producing people just stopped selling it to us, our food would never make it to us. Our complex economic system has removed the basics for survival from the equation of settlement. S.G. should only have a couple thousand people at most. It’s all the desert can truly support. Which brings us back to the idea of a bloated nation. Wealth gave us air conditioning and allowed us to get out of the natural environment. The problem with a bloated society is the fact that we will eventually over bloat ourselves and cause our own demise or nature will dictate when that demise will happen. Either way, we’re stuffed.

Declare your sovereignty.

I had a great weekend. I know I haven’t posted in a few days but do any of you really care? I didn’t think so…

This is where I spent Saturday

And here,

That should take up some space on this page.

Sunday was a riding day. Mr. Gurr and I went and rode the Toquerville loop. That makes two rides the Tarmac has weathered so far. I’m not sure that I will ever ride it much, but damn it looks pretty in the garage.

I know there is a lot of scary stuff going on, but I will wait to comment until….

Peace.

Ahhhhh! Finally I get to have a day off. I felt pretty burned out at the bike shop today. The shop is a great place to work and I truly enjoy it, but I need time off every once in a while. You know to ride and stuff.

Mr. Pratt posted the pictures of our alliance ride here. He got a bunch of good ones of Danny as well, but the hoser left his helmet at home and rode without it. It tends to be a bad thing to post pictures of helmetless riders. So, like always, there are only pictures of me and some flowers. People are starting to wonder.

Every Friday I think of all the awesome things I am going to do over the weekend and then don’t do most of them. This Friday is no exception. Pine Valley Mountain is calling my name very strongly and I’m having a tough time resisting. I hope to get up there for at least a couple of hours if not make a summit trip. I would expect a little bit of snow and colder temperatures still. I’m afraid if I don’t go soon there won’t be any water on top. My family is going out to the Coral Pink Sand Dunes tomorrow to ride where my dad grew up. There are some amazing canyons and remote areas that most people have no idea exist. It should be pretty fun and photo worthy.

I received my first Ironweed film today. It’s Rank, a documentary about bullriders, finally something I can share with my dad. It also has a few shorter films that look interesting as well.

I think that may be all for now.

Peace.

Yesterday was the weekly Alliance ride. We moved it up to 6, or right after the shop closes, to enable certain light-lacking riders to come along. Apparently it didn’t help much. I say much because it did bring along one new rider to add to the usual suspects, Danny. He’s one of the Team Red Rock riders. It should go without saying that he kicked our asses, and he was on a geared bike. Pratt and myself rounded out the crowd of three.

Bryce and I left from the shop at 6:22. Danny met us at the Church rocks trailhead around 7. For some unknown reason, Danny and I thought lights were optional on a two hour ride that started one hour before dark. Go figure. We headed up the trail. Danny quickly took the lead. Bryce and I struggled to stay on his wheel, but stay we did. Of course, Pratt, being the unrelenting light smith that he is, made us stop ever so often to snap a few shots. Supposedly, he has a couple really cool ones of me side hopping off the steps. Maybe if he posts them we can all see otherwise, he can go stuff it.

Back to the story, by the time we had made it up to the ridge darkness had begun to set in. It was that type of twilight where you can see but you lose all depth perception. I stuck to Danny’s wheel and hoped like hell he didn’t stop suddenly. When we arrived back at the Prospector section of the loop, it was all dark. Luckily the sand is lighter where the trail is and we were able to do a night ride with no lights. Fun but not recomended.

Bryce and I both came home with some slight carnage.

I hope to see you all next week.

It looks like rain. This afternoon we got a few drops but we are forecasted to see more this evening. This means one of two things, it will be too wet to ride tomorrow, or we will be going to Church where the sand will have subsided a bit. Remember the ride time has been changed to 6:30 p.m. Same place.

The warmer weather has brought the really busy season to us at the shop. We are always busy but Spring and Autumn fall under the we-are-swamped periods. To top off the busy season, Ryan is off learning as SBCU in Salt Lake and won’t be back till Saturday. Which would be fine, but it seems that everyone except me gets to have a day off when someone is off. Last week I covered Thursday for Bryce so he could go to Tucson. That Thursday we still had four people at the shop, the same as always for a Thursday. Now that Ryan is gone, Bryce took today off and Jerry is taking tomorrow off. That leaves three people at the shop to cover those days. Three people can not cover the shop. It just doesn’t make sense that one week I have to work all week long so we have four people and then the next week it’s ok to have just three. But all in all, complaining won’t change anything, unfortunately.

Anyways… It’s a beautiful day and I’m going to go enjoy the rest of it.

Peace.

I’ve decided to manufacture cod pieces. I really can’t figure out why they went out of style but with an alliance dedicated to mooseknucklers I think it is fitting.

We finally got our t-shirts. They are very cool as those who actually read this already know because all three of you already bought one. If I get out of this lazy stage I’ll post the graphics and stuff, but until then… If you want one, drop me a line, lukas at mooseknuckleralliance.org, or stop by and see us at the shop. They are 15 bones if you pick them up and 20 if you want them shipped somewhere. The Alliance used an ally to get this done check ‘em out, they are crazy.

I took this weekend off everything, except work. I didn’t write, ride or do anything. My little sis was down from Logan and we hung out a bunch. 

Today was my happy day for the year, I am now on the down slope to thirty, which means absolutley nothing to me. Moving back to S.G. really brought this home for me. People who are my age are old, I am not. I still where the same size pants, ride my bike all the time and basically do whatever it is that I want to. What that means in real life terms is that I have weathered eight years since graduating from high school and I haven’t sold out to the lack of a dream that is the ‘Merican Dream. You take it for what it’s worth, right?

Unrelated news, it always catches me off guard when I tell someone that Veronica and I are getting a divorce and they get depressed and say they are sorry. At first I really didn’t understand at all. I think most people view love in a way that when it ends you lament that it is over. I guess I see it as an opportunity to ride the train I’m on, enjoy every minute of it, but when it’s over you don’t regret the end but rather savor the memory of the time that you had. I see the last five years of my life as a dream. I was able to do alot of things that would have been impossible had I been with someone else. We had some great times together, had some shitty ones, but all in all we lived the dream. Yeah, it hurts that it is over, but I’m just glad I had a chance to ride it while it lasted.

Prozac and I rode the Barrel Ride after work today. For a freeride trail it sure has a lot of climbing. I would guestimate it at about 90% climbing and 10% descending. Not what you would expect from a freeride trail, but damn it’s still fun. When we got back to the car there was a guy who was your typical newcomer to our sport. He was wearing basketball shorts and had lots of questions for, as he said, “hardcore riders.” I like to see these people. They are always so damn excited because they feel like they found the awesomest (yes, I am a wordsmith) thing in the world.

While I was taking my after-ride bath, I picked up Bicycling and read a few pages. There was an article about the Biketown project. The project is somewhat of an essay contest with 40 people win bikes based on a survey of what they would do with them. The interesting thing is the change those 40 people who are completely new to the sport noticed. Every single participant, according to the article, noticed both physical and mental health benefits. I’ve always said that the bicycle could change the world. I guess I was right.

Well, that was a mumbo jumbo of different stuff. I hope you enjoyed.

Life goes on. Ride it on a bike.

My commute last night set me in positions to view one of the most amazing sunsets I’ve seen in a long time. Unfortunatley, I didn’t have my tripod so the pictures didn’t turn out that great. Here is a bit of a taste of what I saw.

Peace.

Ahh, life is good. I spent this weekend getting caught up on a few things and riding.

Pratt, myself and a few racers planned on riding Little Creek yesterday. Racer #1 (names have been changed to protect the innocent) got sick and was worshipping the porcelain goddess all night, or so he says. Racer #2’s mommy caught him trying to get out of town and wouldn’t let him go. So, Bryce and I rode Little Creek. And then we thought it would be twice as fun to do the Goose right after. So we rode both mesas in one day. Fun, yes, but I definitely felt it this morning. They had to get a spatula out to peel me off the matress. No kidding, I didn’t even have time to eat breakfast, let alone ride to work.

A couple of bad pictures of Bryce, I only had the point-and-shoot and the lighting wasn’t exactly conducive to photography. They are what they are, but they do prove that we rode.

One product of our two in one day was my realization that I desperately needed a new helmet. I know you have all heard the stories of helmets with odors that are alive and the likes. Mine didn’t smell too bad, but mostly it could stand upon on its straps all by itself. It had reached the end of its useful lifespan. I wish I didn’t have to but it had to go. Second, my gloves were in about the same position as my helmet. I have to say I was highly disapointed with these gloves. I’ve only had them for about six months and they are already worn out. Not my idea of a good product.

The old helmet

And the new one

I do appologize for the pics, I know they aren’t really up to quality but I’m in the mood…

I guess that is all I’ve got today.

Peace.

“Consensus is not a fact based exercise.” Bad Religion

Democracy is the monarchy of the majority. When democracy was first decided as the model for this social experiment called America, the fathers were hoping to rid themselves of the tyranny of the king. I believe it was in the mid 1800’s that a sociologist came wandering over to our side of the pond (his name evades me, but just ask the Soc. 1010 kids they all should know). He observed U.S. culture. Upon returning to Europe he stated that the king was replaced by the monarchy of the majority. Democracy has given us an idea of what self governance is, but it has not allowed us to govern.

On my way to work, pedaling, I was thinking about rights. I personally believe that humans have rights, inaleniable rights. No government or institution can take those rights away from me or you without our permission. The constitution “guarantees” us some of those rights. The problem I see with that guarantee is the fact that no government can or will give me permission to exercise my ability to act how I please. If our democracy drew its power from the people, it would be us allowing the government to do certain things and not vice versa. The way I see it, the constitution is a document that numerates the powers that a people is willing to concede to the government as a means to satisfy the demands of the masses. I believe that it was written with that spirit. The issue at hand is that the government now uses that document to enumerate the rights and privileges that we as citizens can exercise.

Consensus is the basis for democracy. Those who can rally the majority to their cause will hold the power to rule. Mr. Brett, quoted above, was the first I heard articulate this point. The biggest downfall of democracy is that it is based upon the shifting sands of public opinion. Those who hold the power (media) to sway public opinion are who truly reign as the tyrants of modern society (gatekeepers).

On a lighter note, as in I’m done ranting for now, I’m planning on heading up to Pine Valley tomorrow. I’ll take the dog and maybe the mom. It should be photo worthy so we’ll see what I can rummage up.

Declare your sovereignty.

Hooptihoorah!

I just got back from the Alliance night ride. Yes it is usually on Wednesday but the “guys” wanted to go tonight instead of playing pool. Who am I to say any different? We met at Mr. Pratt’s house at 7 p.m. and drove over to the bottom of the Bear Claw Poppy trail. Bryce didn’t make it very far. I rode for a few minutes and turned around to see the Gurrman’s headlight but Bryce’s was nowhere to be seen. I waited for Ryan and we then both waited for Bryce. After a few minutes we could see him and he was moving for a second, then he stopped. We turned around to see what the hell was wrong. Apparently, he had replaced his chain with a gold one, and his cogs with ten speed, Miche cogs. Remember, he is riding a single speed. He readjusted his chain length and we rode about another 100 yards and his chain falls off again. Bryce is out, he turns around and rides home. Now it’s just me and Sir Gurr. We rode up to Clavicle Hill and then branched off to the Stucki Springs trail. Then we climbed. After climbing to the point where we both thought our lights were going to run out before we got back, we turned around. This is where it gets fun. We bombed that shit. Yes, bombed it. Gurr was in front and the rooster tail of dust he was throwing at me was serious. I couldn’t really see because of the dust and was just riding on pure faith. Did I mention I’m a religious man? We bombed all the way back to the car. I hope we didn’t hurt anybody with all those bombs. Damn that was a kick ass ride. One of the better Alliance rides we have had.

 In unrelated news, I’m getting divorced. ‘nuf said.

Let’s see, I had something else I was going to write about. It seems to be evading me right now. Anyways, my new wheels are the pimpdiggity or something, they really kick ass, for sure. It sounds like a 30cc two stroke engine when I freewheel, but that is awesome cause it scares the competition. Sir Gurr kept saying that he felt like he was running away from one of the plagues. If you haven’t seen these yet, check ‘em out.

Apparently, I may have offended those readers of the crawling spider gallery who are racers. I’m sorry but there was a team out on the Goose this weekend that really pissed me off. Basically, they didn’t yield to ProZac and I as we were climbing. I’m sure they had to keep their heart rate up and stuff, but I don’t care. They should have stopped and let us pass and then they could have continued. They were riding paceline style and everything. As I said. I’ll leave it at that.

Well, I got to prove that I know something about Spanish history so I’ll let you posers go.

Life goes on. Ride it on a bike.