The modern name for Persia

Despite the early-season teaser, it hasn’t snowed in earnest yet, so rather than making good on my predictions of skiing in October, it’s now the last day of November, and I still haven’t been on skis.

Sure, I could have been on skis by now, but my general policy is not to switch from biking to skiing until the skiing is better than the biking and not to switch back in the spring until the reverse is true. The little bits of snow at upper elevations notwithstanding, there isn’t enough base for skiing to have turned that corner. Which is saying something, because the bike riding isn’t so great right now either.

Desperate as I was for some post-gluttony exercise, on Saturday morning, I went for a run. I know. The earth is spinning off its axis. The fourth horseman of the apocalypse just rode through your front lawn. Something is clearly wrong. But I figured running was better training for ski season (the uphill part) than cycling is, so I’d give it a try.

The cardio part was no problem. I could have kept going for hours. My legs, however, started to give out on me after about 50 minutes. Good thing I was five minutes from home at that point. And since I was back in the neighborhood, as much as I wanted to walk, I had to keep running lest the neighbors think I was some kind of ninny that couldn’t finish his run.

Obviously it was a good workout. So good in fact, that yesterday I could barely walk. And this morning when I pulled into the parking garage and harbored thoughts of taking the stairs up seven floors to my office, that notion was abandoned as soon as I bore weight on my legs. But I think I’d get used to it and the soreness would go away with time.

The really cool thing about my run was what I saw while I was out there. I ran from my neighborhood west along the Traverse Mountain ridgeline towards the high point/summit where there’s a surveying beacon, the same one I hiked to several weeks ago with JunkieBoy and Keiki (cool map of my neighborhood courtesy* of Alex).

*Is it still “courtesy of” if you didn’t ask first?

As I crested the second-to-last hill and could see clearly the summit ridgeline, I saw silhouetted against the sky a large bull elk, similar to the photo below. The only difference being the elk I saw was facing the other direction, and I wasn’t quite close enough to see the detail you see in the photo (not mine).

 

After the bull looked down the other side and evidently gave some sort of all clear, his harem of some 20 or so cow elk followed him up over the ridgeline. They just hung out and foraged while I ran, eventually moving out of site by the time I reached the summit.

A wildlife sighting like that is cool in pretty much any context, but when it takes place during a run of less than an hour that starts and ends at your house, I think that makes it extra-cool.

Whether it’s cool enough to get me to go running again is another matter entirely, though.

[Bows head and utters unheard prayer for snow.]

Pie

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. I’d like to take the high-minded approach and claim that this is because setting aside a day to just give thanks is a good way to accentuate the positive things in our lives and remind ourselves of all that should make life enjoyable. Notwithstanding the day-to-day difficulties we all face, most of us have much to be thankful for.

When I was younger and perhaps more passionate about such a noble cause, that would have been the complete answer as to why it’s such a great holiday.

Over the last twelve years or so, my worldview has changed. Because for that amount of time, Thanksgiving has also been marked by delicious pie. Such as pecan, my favorite, but also pumpkin, apple, peach, chocolate cream, or whatever else my dear wife has decided to treat us with.

As far as turkey goes, I can take it or leave it. Stuffing is nice, as are sweet potatoes, but I could forego either one if it came right down to it. Pilaf is a family tradition and would stand out for its deliciousness at any other meal. But my goal every year when I sit down for Thanksgiving is to just not eat too much. Because it’s all just a savory prelude to the sweetness of the main event: pie.

Rachel’s pie fillings are nearly perfect. The sweetness of the fruit, the richness of pecan, the creaminess of pumpkin. It’s all dialed, and each filling could stand alone. But then she wraps them in the most divine all-butter crust you can imagine. My hand gets slapped from time to time during the preparation because the dough is so good, I’ll eat it raw. There are very few foods I consider worth getting fat over, but any of Rachel’s pies would make that list.

I love Thanksgiving because I’m thankful for pie. But as much as I love the pie, I’m way more thankful for the pie maker.

A modest proposal

I’m no fan of dopers. I see why pros do it. There’s money at stake, and the guys that win get most of it. But that doesn’t make it right.

When I hear rumors of doping at the amateur level, though, I’m dumbfounded. Seriously? You’re a Cat. 4 and decide that upgrading to Cat. 3 is so important you’re willing to dope to get there?

I race because it makes me happy. I can’t imagine anyone being happy with a result he cheated to get. If there’s a bunch of money at stake, I can see someone cheating anyway. But when the winner gets back in cash what he paid as an entry fee, there’s just not that much incentive. And yet it happens.

One of the problems with dopers is that there’s no way to know for sure who’s doing it. Sure we have the guys who test positive, but they wouldn’t have been doping if they thought they’d get caught. And the main reason to think they wouldn’t get caught is past experience. It doesn’t take a genius to deduce that there are guys who are doping and not getting caught. At the amateur level, there aren’t even tests.

I’ve heard it suggested multiple times that doping rules should just be done away with. If someone is willing to accept the risk of side effects, more power to him. Allow unrestricted doping and see just how much athletes can achieve. Or create two leagues, a doping league and a clean league. If you ever ring the dope-o-meter in the clean league, you can never compete there again.

The prospect of running redundant leagues for the same sport is problematic, however. First of all, it would be expensive. Multiply the cost of everything times two. Second, we as fans don’t want to admit that star athletes aren’t just well-trained and genetically gifted, but also juiced to the gills.* As long as there’s testing in sport, we can pretend like these are legitimate performances. There’s also the question of which would be more popular. Are we ready to embrace a world where the doped league outshines the clean league in television ratings and therefore sponsorship dollars? It’s much easier to just bury our heads in the sand.

*Remember William “Refrigerator” Perry from the ‘85 Bears? At 6’2” and 302 pounds, he was MASSIVE. Now we have high school kids that size. I spent a lot of time in the weight room in high school. I watched a lot of tall kids between 6’0” and 6’5” desperately try to bulk up to get above 200 pounds. You think a high school kid that’s a relatively lean 300 pounds is natural? Think again. There might be one on every five teams. But not five on any one team. 

A simpler solution would be to just require all doping manufacturers to put a substance in their product that turns the user’s skin purple (this is easier than you might think—according to a well-informed acquaintance who works in the pharmaceutical industry, anabolic steroids have this side effect, and chemicals must be added to counteract it). Doping tests would be completely unnecessary because it would be obvious. In fact, we could use the chemicals already added to steroids to color code the drugs: purple for anabolic/androgenic products such as testosterone and HGH; orange for blood boosters such as EPO; and green for stimulants such as amphetamines. Then we’d not only know that someone is doping, but in what way.

Organizers and competitors could be left to decide how to handle it if someone entered an event but had the wrong-colored skin. Cyclists could pull a Theo Bos at any point during the race to take out a doping competitor.

If the athletes took matters into their own hands, officials would have to decide how to respond. Would it be justifiable if the person taken out had orange skin? Would promoters have signs saying “colored racers not allowed” at registration? Would colored leagues be established to provide the dopers a place to compete if they were shut out from competition? Such matters are not without precedent.

Sponsors would similarly have to decide whether they want a purple-skinned running back pitching their product on television. Would we as viewers eventually become numb to it, accepting green, orange, or purple skin as typical of our heroes? The multi-colored Olympic rings would take on a new, albeit likely more appropriate, meaning.

Would the phenomenon become so rampant that children begin dying their skin, not for the performance benefit, but so they can look more like their role models? It would be like Star-Bellied Sneetches, except in real life. Actually, I can really see this happening. Look what’s happened with athlete tattoos, after all. They’ve gone from a subtle statement of belief or aesthetic to ridiculously ignorant and misguided ideological billboarding in less than a generation.

Maybe orange, green, or purple skin would eventually become no different than having a tattoo, however absurd. In fact, tattoos are a great test case here, because as ludicrous as I think they are, I’m the last guy that’s ever going to give MMA fighter Melvin Costa crap about his tattoos. But that doesn’t mean they won’t keep him from competing.

Nature versus nurture

Before I get into today's post, I'm extending an invitation to anyone who cares to join me for a Turkey Day ride on Thursday morning. Trails are a mess in Draper right now with more snow falling last night, but the road up American Fork Canyon was dry yesterday. 7:30 from the 4-way at Suncrest or 8:00 at the mouth of AF if you're interested. Or you can go play touch football and risk a PCL tear, a broken tooth, or a permanently crooked finger.

More than half a century ago, my mother and her family decided to go see Baldface Mountain. Baldface Mountain is supposedly one of the more spectacular peaks in the Eastern US, since, as the name implies, it's bare rock rather than forested.

Like so many other points of interest, the government charges a fee for the privilege of seeing Baldface Mountain. When the party arrived at the fee booth, the sky was foggy, and they were skeptical about whether or not they'd actually be able to see the mountain they'd come for. The Ranger in the booth assured them that they'd soon be above the fog and the mountain would be in full view. Taking his word, they paid their money and proceeded.

When they arrived at the view point, the fog was no less dense than it was at the fee booth, and they couldn't see a thing. Everyone was disappointed but willing to let it go. Everyone except my grandmother, that is.

As they reached the fee booth on the return trip, my grandmother told my grandfather to stop the car. She got out, walked over to the booth, and told the ranger she wanted her money back since he said they'd be able to see the mountain and in fact they couldn't.

He indicated that there were no refunds and he was unable to return her money. She encouraged him to give her a refund anyway, but he held firm.

She then walked up the road a bit and waited for the next car to arrive. As it did, she told the occupants that the mountain was socked in with fog, that the ranger would tell them it was visible but it really wasn't, and that they should turn around and go back.

They thanked her for the information and turned around. My mother, who was five years old at the time, was horrified. She knelt on the floorboards trying to make herself invisible. She was aghast at the embarrassment and shame her mother was bringing on the family. My grandfather and his sisters just sat there and waited. They'd seen this before and knew there was no sense in trying to talk her down.

Another car came, and my grandmother did the same thing. Then another, and perhaps another. My mom isn't sure, since she was hiding rather than counting cars. Finally, the ranger came out and offered a refund if she'd just go away, an offer she gladly accepted.

When my mother told me this story, more than fifty years after the fact, it was apparent there was still some residual embarrassment that she wasn't quite over.

Whatever the gene governing such behavior is, it evidently skipped a generation. Because I just laughed and told her I would have done the exact same thing.

Worth a thousand words

Rather than writing a full-fledged post today, I have two photos I want to post instead. I’ve got a topic brewing, but I haven’t had time to write it all out yet, and I haven’t quite figured out how to handle a somewhat sensitive, potentially controversial even offensive aspect of it. So it will have to wait. Enjoy the pictures in the mean time.

There are no women on the upper floor of Steve’s office, but there are men’s and women’s restrooms. This was not staged.

Second is courtesy of my brother-in-law. I’m not a big fan of Christmas lights. Seems like an enormous waste of energy for something that has absolutely nothing to do with the nominal basis for the holiday. But I really like this yard.

Spooning your tracks

A backcountry ethic espoused in some circles is the notion of “spooning your tracks.” What this means, in a nutshell, is that you ski down essentially in adjacent (think parallel, even though they’re not really parallel since you’re not going straight unless you’re Ben) lines so as to minimize the amount of snow disturbed on the descent and to maximize the amount of “virgin” snow available to subsequent skiers.

To those advocating this position, I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.

Seriously, you want me to spoon my tracks? I got up at 4:30 in the morning and hiked for these turns in the dark. As often as not my group broke the trail. And you, who apparently don’t have a real job, want to sleep in until nine, use the skin track I put in, and have me leave the snow as pristine as possible for your benefit?

That. Ain’t. Happening. I’m going to ski down where I feel like skiing down. If the tracks get spooned, lucky you. If they don’t, that’s my prerogative.

For one, I don’t see the need. Most of my skiing is done in what locals lovingly refer to as the sheep pen, the tri-canyons of Little Cottonwood, Big Cottonwood, and Millcreek. For what it’s worth, most of my time is in Little Cottonwood, the most crowded of them all. The one where the most popular backcountry runs have actually become bumped out on occasion. I’ve never even skied Millcreek.

And yet I rarely if ever feel crowded. I might cross over someone’s tracks now and again, but that really doesn’t ruin the experience for me. If it does for you, get up earlier, or go somewhere else. We have thousands of acres with approaches that would be considered negligible in Colorado or Idaho that hardly ever get skied because they take five minutes longer to get to.

Besides, most of the time in the Wasatch if it snowed today, there’s a good chance it’ll snow tomorrow. My tracks will be hidden. I may put new tracks down the following day since I’ve been known to get up early for consecutive powder days. But yesterday’s tracks will be a faded memory. You’re more than welcome to get up early and put in your own. With 500 inches annually, we don’t have a shortage of fresh snow.

The place where spooning tracks actually makes sense is in the resorts. Resort skiing concentrates thousands of skiers in one tiny spot where they have the ability to get back up the hill incredibly quickly and with zero effort. Unless you consider eating a PBJ or a handful of M&Ms effort. Yet nobody ever considers spooning their tracks at the resort. It’s every man for himself, get the freshies as fast as you can. And it’s usually gone by noon.

The Wizard, on the other hand, rarely skis anything but powder, no matter how long it’s been since the last snowfall. It’s out there. It’s almost always out there if you know how to find it. But please don’t ask me to save some for you if you’re home in bed while I’m skinning.

True grit

My sophomore year in high school, one of the tackles on the football team would frequently lead the running back 40 or more yards down the field and into the end zone. Running backs are supposed to follow the lead blocker, but only to a point. Eventually, they’re supposed to run past the lead blocker, given that they’re supposed to be faster. In this case, however, #77 was outrunning his backs all the way to the goal line.

Apparently this propensity to defy convention was genetic. Three years later, #77’s dad was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. He was expected to live between 6 and 24 months. Five years after the diagnosis, I was sitting around his campfire listening as he spun his yarn while on a fishing trip to Island Park, ID. The following spring when JunkieGirl was born, he claimed partial credit, insisting she was conceived on that trip (Rachel claims the math doesn’t quite work out, but I wasn’t going to argue).

N.J. lived with myeloma for sixteen years. He was too tough to die from just one disease. It took the help of esophageal cancer, pulmonary fibrosis, and pneumonia to finally take him down. He was adamant that it be mentioned at his funeral that he was a John Wayne fan. I don’t think the Duke ever played a character that tough. You’ll be missed, N.J.