Category: Uncategorized

A few years ago I had the pleasure of taking now-Utah Senator John Curtis on a snowy day-after-Christmas hike on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail on the flanks of Salt Lake’s Mount Olympus and – as it turns out – very near where Senator Curtis grew up. We were discussing the potential Wilderness retraction of the sections of the trail that were “Wilderness” (despite the noise of I-215 a few hundred feet below us) to enable…

About ten years ago Ashley and I did a trip with our old friend Rocky Contos, the intrepid river adventurer who – true to his exploratory form – had decided to set up a rafting operation on the Usumacinta river in Chiapas, Mexico.  The “Usu” is the biggest river in Mexico and was rafted commercially until the mid-90’s, when the Zapatista movement (where the indigenous people of southern Mexico rose up to protest the colonial…

In the past week two different men died in avalanches in the Utah backcountry; the first two this season, and hopefully the last.   As always in these daze of social media, there were the standard RIPs and “died doing what he loved” comments, and as per normal in fatalities in activities that some people think are extreme there were the righteous comments along the lines of  “what are they doing out there!?  They should…

Being on a recent river trip reminded me of another trip that happened pretty long ago, where we had a memorable incident.  It may be that it’s more memorable to me because I’ve told the story so many times – so many, in fact, that Ashley can tell the tale as well as I can – but I’ve never written it down, and it’s kind of a fun tale.  In about nineteen hundred and ninety…

As published in Cycling West’s Fall 2024 edition It’s no secret that Colorado has more than its share of great riding, from many long road passes that go high into the mountains to a big chunk of the Great Divide Route to a lot of great singletrack. Crested Butte (CB) – partly as the town credited with the origin of mountain biking, and partly as a famous destination for a zillion miles of beautiful, high…

We’ve had plenty of bike tours in really fun, somewhat far flung places, but the truth is that southern Utah has some of the best riding anywhere; thanks to the proliferation of old roads that – for better or worse, depending on your perspective – were hewn in the quest for oil and uranium back in the day.  Their industriousness – again, for better or worse – enables our ability to do surprisingly-big rides in…

With all the buzz of the Olympics and the very impressive performance of the Americans in track and field, and not only in the typical sprint events, but this time even the US distance runners had some very impressive results with bold, gutsy, and powerful finishes.  Watching the amazing finish by Kenneth Rooks in the steeplechase to take the silver (the video is very much worth watching!) – I was reminded of an equally-fun and…

Recently I was digging through some of my archives and happened upon a copy of the Gloucester, Massachusetts “Summer Sun” from July, 1994, and it reminded me of a story that I had just recently told someone, and it’s just kooky enough to create a short(ish) blog post. I had recently moved to the Boston area to take a job developing shoes for Saucony and didn’t know anyone and was trying hard to make my…