Alas, not the inside of a gym

SheSpoke has been threatening, since the dawn of time, to join a gym. She was hitting her upper 30s, in both age and her hips. She was all set to go, had her appointment with the big box fitness center, then WHAM! a drunk driver slammed into her, injuring both body and car. Luckily, the car was totaled but the body was not.

Since then, SheSpoke has toyed around with the local recreation centers–but only for the swimming. Well, swimming is great if you’re recovering from an accident (which she was) or if you’re training for a triathlon. But adventurers like SheSpoke need a little more punch to their workouts, a little more excitement than smelling and drinking chlorine for an hour can deliver.

So she joined a gym over the weekend, at one of the big box, national chains. It was an incredible deal, and unlike those awful cell phone providers, did not require a long-term contract.

SheSpoke signed up Saturday and in the past 48 hours has:

• Swam in the tiny but uncrowded lap pool: 45 minutes
• Rowed with the iPod: 30 minutes
• Attended first spin class: 60 minutes

Not bad for a gym newbie, although all gym rookies begin with an overabundance of enthusiasm. Everyone is a fitness guru in January. Even yo mamma.

SheSpoke has tried to join gyms in the past, one that is made up of all letters and one that is designed exclusively for women. The reason she only went once and never returned to these places is because of customer service. With the letter gym, SheSpoke was told she would have access to a personal trainer who would teach her how to use the equipment and about target heart rates and all that. When SheSpoke followed up on this, inquiring about freeweights versus the other kind, she was brushed off. SheSpoke never went back.

With the lady gym, SheSpoke went once to get oriented on the circuit training. As someone who has never lifted weights, SheSpoke was particularly interested in learning the nuances of how to use some of the equipment. The franchise owner, instead of teaching her how to use the equipment, was also simultaneously trying to sell a membership to a teenager. SheSpoke never went back.

More recently, SheSpoke took what she thought was advantage of a yoga studio’s local discount. When she arrived at the yoga studio, all the doors were locked. SheSpoke walked around, called the main number, and finally was let in through the back door. She was told that she was late for class–except there was no class. Then she was instructed to “go find Shelly” for a free yoga class. Unfortunately Shelly did not have a name tag on and was wearing the same $80 yoga pants as everyone else. SheSpoke wandered around the lobby for a bit when the woman who had scolded her for being late to a non-existent class found her again and asked her if she’d talked to Shelly yet. Since SheSpoke had no idea who Shelly was, the answer was no. Shelly was a nice lady but merely scribbled SheSpoke’s name down on a random envelope. SheSpoke never went back.

Heed this, gyms, fitness centers, and yoga studios: If you want to get people like SheSpoke–athletic, outdoorsy folks who are squeamish about joining gyms because of the cost and indoor-ness of it all–then treat any prospective customer as if he or she really matters. Here’s how to do this:

• Listen thoughtfully as new customers ask dumb question after dumb question.
• Assume we know nothing about how gyms or yoga studios work and what the equipment does.
• When there’s a miscommunication about scheduling or price or anything, approach the situation with a listening ear. Remember: Dismissiveness begets dismissiveness.
• Stay open-minded about the fact that the error may be on your part and that in order to get or keep a customer, you may have to bend or admit a mistake.
• Do not misrepresent your services. The truth will out and then we’ll tell all our friends, and the blogosphere.

SheSpoke almost did not join the national gym chain this past Saturday because the manager on duty was reluctant to issue her the advertised free, seven-day pass. The manager did a whole bunch of eye-rolling, before*sigh* issuing one anyway.

The banner in SheSpoke’s mind read: Look lady, I don’t want to join this gym any more than you want to give me a seven-day pass, but I really need to get in shape and it’s too windy and cold out to frolick around. Give me the pass and let’s get this over with.

Funny. Once SheSpoke handed over her money, the gym manager was all smiles and greeted her superficially by her first name. SheSpoke will not forget the manager or her name.

Below are the top five reasons to hate gyms and fitness centers, in the same way SheSpoke has for years:

1. The expressions, “going to work out,” “going to the gym,” and “hot yoga.” Folks seem to pronounce rather than use these expressions. It’s annoying.

2. They’re crowded. Before and after work one has to wait for equipment. Some classes fill up, meaning you have to get to the gym an hour before class starts. With driving time included, that’s almost 2.5 hours spent going to exercise. Indoors no less.

3. They stink. Lots of sweaty people around, lots of different levels of hygiene.

4. They cost too much, and pretty much guilt you into working out.

5. They’re akin to a den of thieves. Stuff gets stolen out of the locker rooms and parking lots.

6. It’s a fashion show: chicks wear name-brand tank tops and makeup and dudes walk around in muscle tees.

To be fair, there are some upsides to gyms and fitness centers and yoga studios:

1. The fruit of your efforts are tangible: You can watch the inches melt away and the muscles, so overgrown with fat these past few years, re-emerge.

2. The variety of classes: spin, hot yoga, yoga flow, boot camp, weight lifting, Zumba. It’s all there.

3. It can be a social thing. Garner a workout partner and “head to the gym.” Just be sure to say rather than pronounce it.

4. Your can now justify the money you spent on your last iPod.

5. Strength, conditioning, flexibility, and six-pack abs.

Need I say more?

It's less windy down by the trees

The elevation starts out at 10,500 and the less-than-a-mile snowshoe to the top will take you some time. This is windy terrain, folks, and the snow gets crusted over. Still, it’s a beautiful, serene jaunt about an hour west of Denver. It’s perfect for getting your snowsports in when the snow is just not happening, like it’s not thus far this season.

You can never be too prepared for a snowshoe up a glacier. Snowshoeing will warm you up, fer sure, but bring your warmest mittens, thickest wool socks, gators, and 2-3 layers on the torso and legs. Bring a wind shell for the outer layer. It can get nasty up there.

Still a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon, as my friends and I did a few weeks ago…

To get to St. Mary’s Glacier: Head west along I-70 from Denver and follow the signs. Begin to look in earnest after Idaho Springs. If you hit the Eisenhower Tunnel you haven’t been paying attention and you’ve gone too far.

It’s less than ten miles from the exit to the trailhead. And a very beautiful ten miles at that.

Snowhiking on December 23 at Rabbit Mountain in Lyons

A little bit of snow in Vermont and the Pacific Northwest means the rest of us are suffering with 2-3 foot bases at our local ski hill, hardly enough to justify a $50+ lift ticket. Or in the cases of the chic resorts here in Colorado, $100+ (really, Aspen? really, Vail?) Vail is sporting 19 inches at the time of this posting, which means each inch of crusted-over snow costs about $5. That’s expensive.

But temperate temperatures means that the tough start looking beyond the ski resorts for winter fun. No, I’m not talking about quick getaways to Mexico. I’m talking about making the most out of winter, right there in your own backyard.

Some of the more hardcore among us are up for adventures like mountain biking on snow (done right here at Rabbit Mountain a few years ago). But for the rest of us mortals, having sports we can out (almost) out our front door will keep us healthy and happy until the snow dances kick in.

Read my lastest for TrailsEdge on the five sports you can do outside, snowgods be damned.

Well, this time I landed in the ER just because I’d been running out of steam and the immune system was down and one can ignore abdominal pain for only so long. I tell you this not to elicit pity, but to introduce my latest blog posting about how to prepare yourself for mindless and anxiety-filled hours in the ER. Cuz I’m an expert by now.

My latest for Trail’sEdge on being prepared for the emergency room.

And yes, I’ll be spending Thanksgiving alone (by choice, readers) at the Sand Creek Massacre site. To fully understand what I’m talking about, read about my adventure to Chaco Canyon when I decided to just say no to Thanksgiving over a decade ago.

I’m still grieving over the stolen Bianchi, but here’s her less expensive, more practical and upright replacement, a Schwinn Le Tour Suntour from the 1980s.

Maiden voyage tomorrow in the c-c-c-old seven-mile commute across town.

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I know I owe you the final installment of Day 3 of my snowboarding, mountain biking, exploring, and hot springing trip down to and through the San Luis Valley last month. But before I wrap that baby up, I wanted to interlude with a recount of my first-ever 50+ miles on a road bike. Since I began road riding six months ago, I have been looking for the kind of pain and gain that I get from mountain biking. I was able to find such pain/gain in late September at the Colorado National Monument, but until two weekends ago I had yet to feel the aches in my backside, groin, hamstring, and calves that tells my body it’s getting worked, and worked good.

Well, the nice young lady who lent me my road bike knows I like pain. So she invited me up to the farmlands of eastern Colorado, to ride the Poudre River Trail, a network of trails in and around Greeley, Windsor, and skirting just along the southern edge of Ft. Collins. (Note: at the time of this riding, the trail was closed due to fallen branches from the latest snow storm.)

The 50 miles were flat miles, so the distance was going to be the thing. We got a mid-morning start and headed out with water bottles and things that pack calories but don’t actually taste like food. These are the staples of road riding, as it is not cool to actually wear a Camelbak or pack too much when road riding. Someone wrote somewhere the road bikers are overly concerned with their silhouette and pesky water supplies just ruin your otherwise divine outline against the sky. Whatever.

The thing about road rides is unmarked, unseen obstacles can really ruin your day (or week), so we dismounted where the tracks dictated that we had to.

Them's cornfields ahead

Now folks who didn’t grow up in a state the size of a national park cannot appreciate the wonderment with agriculture and ranching that those of us who did have. So I insisted that we stop, play children of the corn, and frolic a bit among the decaying vegetables. 

Farms this big just don’t exist in Rhode Island, and I couldn’t pass up even this tiny little offshoot adventure.

My playmate frolicking around

Grasshoppers were covering the ground, crunching beneath our cleated feet, so we got back to our original adventure.

Now flat and brown is not usually my idea of fun. I’m from roly-poly, leafy New England and that topography and those colors have framed my aesthetic. But since moving to Colorado 16 years ago and since spending two of them in ranchland, I’ve allowed my aesthetic to be bended and molded by my more recent surroundings. Nuances of yellow, brown, taupe, tan, and other neutral-farming colors I have come to appreciate as beautiful. How mature and accepting of me.

Pretty, huh?

Back on the well-paved but sparsely populated bikeway (was it really a Saturday?), we wended our way through new developments with their curvy streets, overpriced cookie-cutter dwellings with oversized garages, and plenty of white folk and little else. These are the places that beg me to poke fun–the realization of the American dream has apparently culminated in hues of our least favorite color–brown and has been completely stripped of personality and vivacity. My mind was going on and on thus, until I saw the beach.

That’s right. The beach on the plains of Colorado:

The beach

Now making fun of how they imported sand, cattails, reedy things, and rocks just to keep the vegetation grounded during the next flood is also too easy. It smacks of the The Truman Show or Celebration, FL . There’s something insidious about these ready-made communities, and insidious is just too easy of a target.

Truth is: I would totally surrender my sanctimony regarding what it means to live well to be able to kayak or swim or fish or sunfish out my back door. Seeing the beaches put a big ol’ pang in the stomach as I remembered my recent, awesome kayaking adventures last fall at Worden Swamp and this summer at Point Judith Pond. How amazing would it be to end each day instead of being limited to a bike ride or one of those horrible jogging things and instead have the opportunity to paddle, swim, contemplate and fish, balance, sail, or oar it up?

_________________________________________________________

The cycling pace had been quite leisurely as we stopped for a few minutes to stock up on caffeine. The idea of lunch was bandied about, and as secure as I am in how I look, the thought of sitting down for lunch in Spandex was beyond my comfort zone. And this is a comfort zone I think everyone but dirty old men are glad exists.

My cycling partner promised we would click in and never leave the big chain ring for the last ten miles, which meant more power with each stroke and (finally!) some soreness.

Hours later I was joking about how tired I wasn’t. Until I tried to walk up the stairs and my leaden legs needed to be coyly coaxed up every step.

Thanks, road biking, for getting difficult. And thanks, Windsor exclusive community for having a beach and making me rethink before I make fun. Sort of.

Neat lady! All the humility of a sage but with the fierceness of the champ she is.

Read the interview with Georgia Gould.

Photo by Devin Graham

Do ya like watchin’ the boob tube and that reality TV stuff? Last fall’s cyclist extraordinaire, Jeremy Vanschoonhoven, who made bouncing around on his back tire and rolling up on cars and taking huge jumps look easy, took some time out of his busy schedule to chat with me about competing on America’s Got Talent,  bike trials, and his mesmerizing video that was shot in the Utah desert outside of Moab.

The pictures are cool, the link to video (all by Devin Graham) even cooler, and I put some words in there to tie it all together. The video has garnered 135K views, and counting. Join the crowd, readers.

Head on over to Trail’sEdge to read my interview with Jeremy VanSchoonhoven.

Now, SheSpoke is hardcore. She has camped out in single digits, blizzards, and really un-awesome conditions. But SheSpoke turned 40 last year and even though she’s got an extra coating (thanks to hormones and a slowing metabolism), camping out alone in weather that makes driving dicey is no longer her idea of a good time.

The paved path to some historical tidbits

So as she drove east toward the Great Sand Dunes with dreams of sandboarding, she spied the familiar sheet of white in the sky, touching not-so-daintily down to the ground. This forced her to look west, which were boasting clear skies.

The southern end of the San Luis Valleydidn’t look much better and SheSpoke knew the northern end led to a mountain pass, so west it was. When in doubt, it seems, head west.

Looking south down the San Luis Valley

SheSpoke had spent all of her morning and some of her afternoon recounting the amazing powder day she had at Wolf Creek Ski Area the previous day, so she was feeling more indoors than outdoors, on this particular day.

But outdoors was what was in store, so she turned the Subaru around and headed west to drier but certainly not warmer climes.

A few hours of daylight lay ahead, which meant setting up camp in Penitente Canyon, across the valley to the west, would be done with relative ease.

Alas, although SheSpoke has lived for many years with just a fireplace or a wood stove as the only means of not-central heating, she had trouble getting the campfire going and missed the brilliant luminescence that the San Luis Valley usually provides as it ducks under the western horizon. Still, she snapped a phone picture before sunset and was glad the clouds were moving quickly east.

After a tenacious half-hour, the fire got going and the pierogies got hot and the tea got started. SheSpoke ate about 3 meals in one that day in anticipation of a cold night and a physically demanding day on Day 3 of the road trip.

Almost sunset in the San Luis Valley. Sangre de Christos across the valley

Some time after sundown as SheSpoke was poring over maps of the San Luis Valley the coyotes started some eerie karaoke. SheSpoke drifted off until 8AM the next morning. A good 12 hours of camping sleep.

The next morning was prep time for a bike ride she had been anticipating since the prior spring on her last trip to Wolf Creek. She had heard about this trail years before from some blokes riding about on the trails in Durango. It was time to see what mountain biking Penitente Canyon was all about.

At the main trailhead I met up with Justin, who worked in the Forest Service in the nearby town of Sagauche (pronounced sa-watch). SheSpoke has been to Sagauche many times, as it is the gateway to beautiful Crested Butte, if one is into driving the backroad of Colorado Highway 114  and mountain biking the Continental Divide along the way. Buffalo Pass Campground is a cheap ($5) option for an overnight stay on 114. Driving into Sagauche one encounters some super cool topography:

Sagauche, straight ahead

On to the ride. Justin told me the way to go, as detailed trail maps can only be gotten from the Forest Service office in Sagauche, which was closed on this Columbus Day. The Loop A trail is north of the climbing trailhead and Grand Central of this particular outdoorsy playground. You ride for a mile or two on dirt road and just as you begin to wonder if you’re going the right way, a singletrack appears to your left.

Flecks of white appeared 50 yards away and even though my horror film warning light went off, I abandoned the trail, drawn to the out-of-place colors in the earth-tone palette of Penitente Canyon:

Horrifyingly, this little ball of fur was just a few yards away:

Hey, dude! You dropped your coat.

Folks overuse the word haunted quite a bit. But that’s how my ride started that day, until I came across more petrified bone, this one all eaten up and holey:

Holey bones!

But rides are made to be ridden, so I set off with the kind of singlemindedness that hedge-fund managers would envy. I wanted to ride.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of Day 3 of this Road Trip.

Read about Day 1 here.

A groomed run at Wolf Creek

Road trips rock. Even Hollywood knows that. Pile all the hot folks into the classic convertible, have them eat gas station food, camp out in the desert (even though they didn’t pack sleeping bags), and run into all sorts of trouble on their way to their destination. For Hollywood, it’s about depicting the journey as the destination.

For snowboarding powder days in October, it’s about the destination.

It was Friday, October 7 and I was all packed for Moab. I had neat piles of boxes and bags in my kitchen. I had slept four hours a night for two nights, going over maps, cooking food, double-checking my toiletry bag. I hadn’t been to Moab since Thanksgiving 2008, and I had been missing it sorely. I was psyched to go. Mountain biking is my first love, after all.

Colorado fall colors: green, gold, brown, and...white?

But somewhere around Thursday night I had heard it was dumping at Wolf Creek, my favorite ski area. The knot-nag in my stomach was telling me I had committed to Moab and needed to push powder pipe dreams out of my head. I was going mountain biking, not snowboarding that weekend. 

But then plans fell through. At 7pm on Friday, I was no longer going to Moab for the three-day weekend. I was free to go to Wolf Creek. I went to bed at 8pm (not hard, as I was working on maybe 10 hours of sleep for two days) and set my alarm for 4am. Two hours of cleaning and a little repacking, and I could be at the lifts by 11am and board until 4pm. Five hours of boarding powder for $33.

The color of autumn under a white blanket. Weird.

But the thing about snow dumps on your favorite ski area is that they’re not very cooperative with your driving schedule. And so it was, early Saturday morning on October 8 that I drove right into a snowstorm. It wasn’t snowing heavily and the conditions were not white-out, but the roads were icy. Driving on unplowed, icy, snowy, and dark roads is something I’ve done (a lot) and something I hate. I drove with an envy for the other, paved side of the road that only extreme dieters can understand. I white-knuckled it in places, slid a little here and there, and arrived at Wolf Creek by 11am.

Temps were warm, maybe upper 30s and I wondered if I hadn’t overdressed with three layers on the top and two on the bottom. My first run was off the Bonanza Chair, a long, winding, easy-peasy run that’s good to warm up on. It’s called the Great Divide and it’s a great introduction back to snowboarding after a three-month hiatus. But the trail was longer than I or my legs remembered and somewhere, about three quarters of the way down, it burned, burned, burned. That IT band, it burned, and the calves followed suit.

Those rocks are unmarked obstacles--a fact of early season boarding

The iron deficiency thing I have kicks in just over 10K feet, so I was huffing and puffing like an emphysemic wolf at the straw house. I chilled out for a few minutes at the lodge before I headed over to the the Treasure Chair, where I would stay for the rest of the day. The Treasure Chair had the powder. That’s the beauty of Wolf Creek–the more eastern you go, the further away you get from the main lodge, the more powder you can find. And I found it by ducking into the trees along the Tranquility run. I was swishing and laughing, all by myself, forgetting that it was October, that I had driven five hours to get there, that I hadn’t sleep much that week, and that I was 41 years old. I forgot all that and used my x-ray vision to find more untracked powder even though it was getting on in the afternoon.

The stuff of early season powder dreams

I found an open field of untracked powpowpow, which had what looked like pieces of straw sticking up. I leaned back on the board with my weary-heavy legs and shifted my weight back so I could literally surf over the snow. That feeling of gliding over snow is what makes skiers turn into snowboarders. Snow-surfing is surreal and full of quiet, save the the board fwapping over the straw in the field. I went back for more. And again.

Exhausted by 3:30, I called it after about 10 runs. I had packed my New Mexico maps just in case I wanted to duck south and do some mountain biking. I knew I wanted to mountain bike Penitente Canyon on Monday, but I love northern New Mexico I dream about it. Often. So I headed to Chama.

The drive down the mountain to Pagosa Springs is ridiculously scenic, so I pulled over, with a dozen other cars, to the overlook to click and capture some magical moments:

I took highway 84 down to Chama, New Mexico, home of the famous Cumbres and Toltec scenic railroad that winds through the countryside/mountainside just like back in the days of old. I was hoping to stay in Chama and ride my mountain bike nearby the following day, but there was no room at the Chama Inn. Or the Chama Motel. There were no beds on which to rest my weary head.

So I parked in town, watched the sunset, then drove north through another snowstorm.

Stay tuned for Day 2.

Mountain sunset in Chama

Read about SheSpoke’s last trip to Moab, Thanksgiving 2008: mountain biking the Monitor and Merrimac Trail, camping at Island in the Sky section of Canyonlands, the Shafer Trail and some killer overlooks, and hiking in the rain at Arches National Park.