The Mongolia Chronicles

One More Payment.....

And it's OURS!!!!!!! The woods - as always - hacks up another hairball. I noticed this roof line through the woods, had seen it before, but am usually moving at say like 14 mph, instead of like 2. I was looking for a place to have some water and a candy bar - and WALLAH - there 'tis. I am looking forward to pulling up on this porch, with a few cold ones, and watching a sunset sometime soon - IN THE HEAT. Summer. Spring is here. You can feel it in the snow and the light and the moisture...and that means summer is right on the tail.

Bizzzzzzizzzzzzzzy week, ending with the man of Nate, at the pub of craig with little man and woman and having a great discussion about all things important. Went to Eldo yesterdya and went way deep. Did some hiking, some dropping and exploring and came home and managed to get a skate in before the flakes flew. It was special. Tagged the switch backside pivot to fakie on the midi...which is moving up. Such a cool trick when done right, as you just kind of hover in space...and then you 'glide' back in. It's a timing thing with just this little pause right there in the middle, and a lot of hips.

Stoked. Double naps today, I have some kind of sinus invasion happening...but that's ok. Rest up. Chill out. Go for long skis and find bizarre cabins. It's going to be 60 Wednesday, and hopefully this week's panic peaks on Tuesday with a big afternoon presentation. Push goal is a singlespeed cross ride up to Jamestown on Wednesday in the sun - with a stop for pie and coffee on the way back.

Reasons # 3,234 and 8,237 we live here

As soon as tech problems allow, I will have a killer video of deep trees at Eldo up here to share the few hours in resort this am. Great snow, great folks, and well.....the season is shaping up. That first photo on the left is as much of my board as I saw today. It was submerged, it seemed, permanently.

The better turns, however, were at dusk tonite as the sky cleared, the temp dropped from 12 to 10 and I skinned up the ridge, amde some turns and made it home in time to clear the bowl with mom and Quinn. A Fitzkingsbury juggernaut out in near single digits clearing the skating feature at twilight........kinda priceless after a weekend of choking on snow. Priceless.

"Daddy's Home"

One of my favorite stories involving skateboards and life is when Tony Alva first showed up at Coronado. Apparently, he waddled his dreaded and 40-something ass up to the side of the bowl and said "Daddy's Home". This is maybe 9 years ago before there were killer skateparks on every corner. He proceeded, on his first run, to rip that flow bowl by the water by the bridge right down to it's foundations.

Well, it wasn't my first run at Eldo today. Doing the basic math, I'd say it was about my 11,000th (I did the math - I think this is fairly accurate: 85 days a year for 21 years averaging 6 runs a day) but it really is opening day for the inner wood snipe in me. As related ad nauseum in these digital pages before when Eldo is good - it's grand. And the sticks in the faces nad the rock scrapes and the pungees to the face and all the WIND - did I say wind - really pays off. With the season - or NON-season we are having - or I should say we had been having - my favorite parts of the mountain...what I would refer to as the furry backside, even more accurately the furry butt-cracks of the backside - well they have just been unsafe, and plain gnarly and not do-able. You can't jump off a ten foot rock in tight trees without a certain amount of fluffyness. It doesn't negate the risk - it just reduces it.

So, today, I finally got to what I think I will now call 'steez' rocks, and did launch said rocks. There are lines that I hit today that I haven't ridden in 10 months...so it's such an amazing feeling to come ripping into places, doors open in the mind and you recall (hopefully accurately) that you veer slightly left on the first two pillows, then right through the narrow aspens over the third, and that you need to go straight out on the steez rock, and turn about 30 degrees right to avoid the branches and deadfall at the bottom. Tight trees, woods, unknown and untracked or trammeled places. Sounds like summer. Only, there's no pedaling.....just a steady feed of gravity, silence and bliss. It's puking snow like it means it....it's gonna get deep.

All I Need # 7,432,769

 

Is this freezing cold ride. This hot ass great coffee and some tools. And a session at the velodrome with my wife and son. And the knowledge that in a few short minutes I will be heading west into the beer, and circle of friends - the REAL trust tree if you will - and forever more west.

And as to plans of future love and suffering: "Ever since I was a young boy, couldn't leave well 'nough alone, It's a fine line, that's caused me some anguish, but I never could leave it alone".
  

February Doubles = Joy

It was 12 this morning and I was feeling pretty roached. Riding back from my lunch at Natural Capitalism Solutions (www.naturalcapitalism.org) with e belly full of bacon and potato chips and macaroni salad....i was kind of asleep at the wheel. Or, the handlebar - as it were. I never really woke back up. So, I crawled on The Junkyard Dog, rode slow, didn't freeze too bad, rolled by Rabbit, Inc., caught the DTT, did some work, rolled out, rolled up, and watched the snow mount and rolled home on icy, snow-covered roads in near zero visibility. This made me very happy. Shenna reminds me that I like things that aren't easy - perhaps why I ride when it's in the teens and snowing when there are two perfectly good cars in the driveway.

For the same reasons - I am committing to The Vapor 125. Details to come, but I am in. IN.

If you ever.....

Need a firefighter, competent in vacum hose firefighting, who can see underwater (sort of) we may have someone you can call. 

Get Back, Honky Cat. Better get back in the woods......

We had a great discussion - in a fog - that so thick yesterday it ALMOST seemed like smoke....why do we go into the woods? What is it there? That feeds us - make us all Marlee Matlin - like - you know - complete.

While D.C. and wherever are getting dumped - so are we. We had a bona - fide fucking powder day today. Like...I didn't feel the bottom in a LOTTA places. And it was effortless, and blissful, and I giggled and laughed and snickered with friends. And it was simple, and it was grand and I can't wait to do it again tomorrow.

Here endeth the lesson.

Party @ The Factory: Wed Night

The environment - is a terrible thing to waste. As such, we have been spending some time at the office incubating and helping a great man develop and launch a great business: Green Garage. WWW.greengarage.com. Your car - greener - and easier on your wallet - this afternoon. He's taken it so far as to have bicycle concierge service - yep - that's right. A Green Garage Car Hugger (tech) will ride his/her bike to your office, pick up your car, Green it, and bring it back - and ride away on their zero emission, community friendly, community building bike (maybe - even a bcycle (www.bcycle.com).

Yes, I am shilling. Butt - I am shilling something I am truly passionate about and something that should matter to all us folks, and our kids and their kids.

We are having a coming out party this coming Wednesday at 4pm. There will be celebretards. There will be beer, and speeches, and beer and love and all types of green things. And beer.

Any way you look at it - it's the future. OUR shared future. And that my friends - is the best and only place to invest.

Check it out: http://ryanferrero.posterous.com/green-garage-launch-preview

Watch the vid, call or e Megan and let her know you are coming.

Tomorrow - is today.

All I Need

Snow. And beer. And beer and snow. 

One Tree Hill

22 years ago - I lost two friends in a slide in Telluride. Had I smoked that bowl, done that line, I would be dead. Nothing against weed...then or now...but the simple fact that I dropped something else (Little Rose - that didn't slide that day) instead of the front (Tempter - which did)) meant that I was the one behind the bar that afternoon when the Sheriff came in , rather than one of the two in the black body bags being choppered over town to the courthouse. I was I.D.'ing a friend via polaroid ( that's how they do it - may you never go there) and walking out of the cold room into the embrace of the now 'widowed' engaged to be spouse person rather than being swept away at untold speeds and buried (the slide blew threir boots off...ever tried to get a ski boot off without unbuckling it?).

This, among many other things, actually, everything, makes me feel like I need to fucking represent. Every day. For Paul. For Vaughn. For others who haven't made it. I have been doing a pretty good job. I try to eek the juice out of every single day. But, you know what? I could do better. If there is one example I want to set for my son - it's that he should hurl himself at every day. Every challenge. Hurl. Like repeated hits into the brick wall of shit that so much of life has become. In order to teach the little dude this - I need to do it myself. I am durable. This is not new to me,

"nough said. Lookout shit-wall - I am inbound. And I am strong, and pissed, and this time (Rambo), it's fucking personal.