Ranch Work Bike Challenge Update

April is half way gone and today it really feels like spring after a return to freezing temperatures and snow yesterday. It is amazing how each day is totally different this time of year, it is hard to prepare. I am at the halfway point of the Ranch Work Bike Challenge for April!

I am at +5 on my bike trips to gas trips, and so far have used my bike for half of all my trips counting walking and horseback trips. The Challenge has also made me smarter about using my gas trips. The only time I have used the 4-wheeler to go to the fields recently was when I changed checks and had to carry the irrigating canvases a long distance (one from the ranch itself and two from the bottom to the top of the East Side) and otherwise have mainly used for gas for trips requiring the carrying of a large load. I have gotten a lot better though about biking cargo, even making a couple of trips with the propane gas burner, which is a bit terrifying as pressurized gas is never my favorite thing to deal with, and especially not with how much the B.O.B. bounces. But it went great, the weight held the trailer down and it was actually smoother than carrying the tank on the 4-wheeler. I got the ditches cleaned so that we are now irrigating the check below Grandpa's poplars, which is one of my favorite places on the ranch.

My body is feeling a little tired from the combination of different activities, it's not like the rhythm of regular biking. Yesterday Bodie fell in the ditch and got soaked on the coldest day lately. She was shivering at first, but by the time we had crossed the Big Creek she had gotten herself warm again.

Irrigating is repetition and movement at the same time. I repeat the same motions, the changing of the canvases, over and over, but also move across the field. This becomes built into the feeling of the mountains and sky at all times of day. In that rhythm one begins to become the part of the place. Using a machine, this is all cut up by noise and fumes, but breathing along on the bicycle bumping through cow tracks and avoiding greasewood spines and branches, I feel it.

On a more practical note, when I went to Winnemucca last week I invested in two Specialized slime tubes at Bikes and More and since then I haven't had a flat on my ranch bike (knock on wood). But I still haven't gotten around to fixing my flats on the Surly—bad Dan—although I have decided I am going to switch my Surly tires from the 700X32 Ritchey Speed Maxes I am using now to an old set of 700X35 ones. I'm hoping the change will give the Surly a bit more traction in the sand. I am also thinking of investing in a set of Specialized Armadillo tires for Surly ranch life. These are the tires that Chuck at Bikes and More recommended to me and I trust him to understand conditions out here in the sticks (literally, greasewood spines) better than anyone.

Wish me luck, the weather is supposed to be completely clear next week and it's definitely time for a longer trip, so we may duck out of the ranch for a few days next week ~ I'm already thinking about routes toward the Refuge, or maybe up into Oregon ~

Bodie checking the rig (for anything to eat).

Changing the water at dusk.

Bodie alongside and in stride.