February 21st is consistently the hardest day of the year for me. Even if it’s a good one, and today was solid, I’m exhausted by lunchtime just trying to pantomime normalcy. Today marks the 7th year since I stood in the hospice with my mom, my brothers, my gran, UBS, and my Aunt M, and together we said goodbye to my dad.
My pops and I didn’t see eye to eye on plenty of things, and right to the end our most serious conversations never happened organically. Still, we had a rock-solid relationship built on the fact that we both knew unequivocally that the other person was doing their best. And while we only said “I love you” in our most fragile moments, it was known constantly.
He was a good parent to three hardworking sons and a venerated professional, and I wish beyond wishing that he could have experienced more than three years working at his next calling – being such a rad grandpa.
Anywho, my dad didn’t mountain bike {more than once} but I still figured that in his memory I’d share six {sort of} bicycle things {stories} I’m stoked about that involved my pops.
My First Fork Service
Armed with my copy of Zinn & The Art Of Mountain Bike Maintenance, which my folks had bought me for Christmas {thanks Mom & Dad}, and complete “just put it back when you’re done” access to my pop’s workshop, I managed to completely strip down my hydro-locked {read, full of water} RockShox Judy XC without, as it turned out, damaging anything. The problem, of course, came when I tried to put it back together.
Even now I remember teenager-me being unpanicked. My pops, the engineer, had worked in production at a mine and I knew he’d know how to get it back together. So, then there we stood, looking at a rather greasy blown-damper-cartridge, exploded view of a mid-’90s RockShox fork. He silently assesses the situation, he nods, he looks at me. “Put this in a bag and meet me at the truck.”
Our first stop is the liquor store. My dad pops in and comes out with a case of beer and then we drive on to the bike shop I most often visited at the time. And, where we bought more than a few rigs. I’ve written about this previously {on this day in 2020} but way more important than any bike brand they carried, “…of all the shops I went into with my friends that was the one that treated me like a customer instead of some little sh*t (bike shops – there’s a lesson in there somewhere) and [dad] thought that was important.“
So we pull up, and he looks over at me, passes me the case of beer, and says something to the effect of “Give the mechanic the beer first.” And yeah, the folks in the shop had a solid, but friendly, laugh at my expense, and more importantly, they had my fork ready to go the next day, with a fresh damper cartridge even.
Be kind, be honest, and know the fine line between a gift and a bribe. Your local bike shop wants to help you out when they can, if they can, if you’re not a dick about it.
Switchback / Erik Dunning
Here at MEATengines HQ, mountain biking is an our-family-thing and hockey is clearly Claire’s thing. She was desperate to play from the time she was tiny after we sat and watched a North Van Wolf Pack practice. My dad, who loved hockey, never had the chance to see her skate in person, but I used to bring him videos of her pushing the crutch around and even her first few strides on her own.
He loved that Claire wanted to play. But maybe even more, he loved that despite my ambivalence I was all in on supporting her in the first big decision she had made for herself {I even borrowed some skates and hit the ice for the first time in two decades so I could teach her}.
And in talking about it we had the best laugh over the one and only time he ever went mountain biking with me. My dad had bought a ’90s Mongoose ‘Pro’ NX – which he used as a gravel bike before that’s what ’90s mountain bikes were for – and had decided that he wanted to come on a ride.
I had discovered mountain biking for myself and he had always been financially supportive but, as all of us have experienced at some point in trying to explain our love of mountain biking to non-mountain bikers, was more than a bit doubtful of how much fun I was claiming was possible riding a bicycle in the forest.
After a solid effort climbing up a gravel road, we opened our quick releases, lowered our saddles, and dropped into the Switchback/Eric Dunning trail. Me, confident on my Giant ATX 890. He, foot out, skidding, and fully panicked on his Mongoose. I can picture him now with his red beard, leather work gloves, and off-white pearl taped-shell helmet, one foot off his pedal, rear brake locked.
We reached the bottom and he looked me straight in the eye and told me I was an idiot. In an affectionate way. And, while he didn’t come out again, he did support my love of mountain bicycles until I started working at a shop and paying for my own bicycle habit.
Community Building
I love to take Claire out in the woods to do trail maintenance. Whether it’s the two of us dragging rakes or pulling holly, going to work on projects with our friend Penny, or just clearing drains after a heavy rain. This, and the number of hours my brother Crash Test Kevin (CTK) and I have spent digging over the years doesn’t come out of thin air.
I don’t remember much about being a kid {maybe it’s a normal amount, maybe it’s less} but I do remember going with Dad to help out with maintenance at the little member-run community golf course in the small town where I was born. Specifically, I remember picking up errant sticks and watching folks go up in the cherry picker truck that BC Tel would lend them to trim branches on trees.
One of the things I love about mountain biking is that feeling of belonging to a small-town community even in a large city. No Mow / No Golf doesn’t exist here on the North Shore {or maybe anywhere anymore?} but there are still a lot of folks who believe strongly in No Dig / No Ride.
The Roasted Brake Mount
My first Kona was a Roast hardtail with a Marzocchi Jr. T dual crown on the front. It was awesome. It had glow-in-the-dark decals! But by the time it was built, it also held as much sweat equity as cash within its tube set. The local shop ordered it for me, at a big discount, from Kona’s ‘scratch & dent’ pile and it turns out the issue that had landed it there was that the IS brake tab was welded on at an angle.
I had it clamped in the folding Park Tool stand my folks had bought me as a gift {which I still use today, thanks Mom & Dad} and after looking at it a while I went upstairs to grab pop’s opinion. He looked at the frame. He looked at the brake adapter. He walked over to a drawer and pulled out a metal file.
With the rear wheel mounted in my frame, using the disc rotor as a rough guide, I would know when I had achieved the correct enough angle. I clamped the brake mount in Dad’s vice and went to town. He went upstairs to watch golf {read, have a nap}.
I like to think that somewhere that Roast is still in action for some use, with its hand-filed brake mount getting the job done.
The Hard Way
I tell folks all the time that if you’re gentle and use the right tools {and insert those hex-keys fully into the bolt heads and only bell-ends use ball-ends} that there is very little you can mess up with a bicycle that your preferred local bike mechanic can’t fix. However, I’d recommend asking around and finding a bike tech who won’t be bitter about helping you solve your mechanical misadventures.
But sometimes, things go wrong. And that is simply the price of an education – whether paid in time or treasure. And frankly, compared to a lot of learning you can pay for, most screw-ups on a bicycle are a relative bargain.
Confidence, even misplaced confidence, can often achieve an acceptable outcome. For the first many replacement cartridge bearings I pressed in, I used the old bearing and a bench vise. Or, when the vice didn’t open that wide, the old bearing and a hammer. In the absence of the right tool and experience, sometimes you can achieve a good result – the hard way.
Where there’s a will, sometimes there’s a way. I learned this approach from my dad as a kid, but my favourite example actually comes from adulthood.
My dad and I installed the lock-together floating flooring in my apartment. I laugh about the experience all the time. It wasn’t the first go-around for either of us, and it had always gone by easily in the past, but this was brutal. Yes, I bought it cheap on clear-out. But still.
Pops was in his element roasting my purchasing decisions. We’d cut the sections to length on the circular saw and then we had to smash them into locking together with a mallet. By about half-way, we were fully done with the process when my mom, who was also about to help with some painting, came into the room. “What are you two doing?“
We explain just how total-shit the flooring I purchased is, she takes one distant look, and as she walks away she says “You’re putting it in backwards.” And, sure enough, we were. It locks together beautifully if we flip the boards around.
Dad nods and says that we have two choices. Pull up what we’ve done and go again. Or, the hard way. And without another word, but possessed with renewed vigor, we returned to smashing planks together with big mallets. Where there’s a will, sometimes there’s a way.
If You’re Going To Be Dumb, You’ve Got To Be Tough
I often tease Claire that I’m going to ask Cy Whitling to design us a coat of arms around our family’s motto: If You’re Going To Be Dumb, You’ve Got To Be Tough.
She despises it, particularly because it’s most often busted out as a remedy for the temporary pain of poor decision-making. Or, as a universal warning about questionable decision-making I’m witnessing at that moment.
To be clear, my parents never used those words precisely but it was implied always. It’s small-scale personal accountability. My left baby toe is killing me this morning. I broke it coaching swimming when I was a teenager – excitedly & accidentally kicking the metal handrailing of the stairs out of the pool. That’s life. No point in being all whiny about it or any of my other aches and pains.
*{The above photo of Crash Test Kevin is from a crash on the same Switchback/Eric Dunning trail where my dad went on his first and only mountain bike ride.}
My dad was missing the tip of one of his fingers. Personal Idiot Tax (PIT) paid in a shop class. I haven’t had any feeling in the tip of my middle finger for over a decade, PIT paid in full. The problem with my injury {incident} is that there’s no clear visual indication of the after-effects. Unlike my dad, I can’t just hold up my finger as the perfect workshop safety reminder. {Also, mine is the middle finger, so folks might misinterpret the attempt at communication anyway}.
And listen, if you injure yourself on the trail I’ll be the first one offering assistance. And it’s not that I won’t take some help if I really need it. But I’ll always own my shit and limp my way out of the woods under my own steam if I can. I don’t want my choices to impact other people if I can help it. Life & mountain biking.
Anywho, as I put the finishing touches on this on Saturday morning {I fell asleep working on it last night} I’m not sure I really nailed what I wanted to say, never mind approaching any deeper meaning of loss and memory.
But here it is. Six sort-of bicycle-related themes, or stories, related to my pops that I’m stoked about sharing.
Larry Talker Tunes for the Week
I had advanced notice of Model T’s choice of Richard Thompson for this week and I’ve given the album Ship To Shore a few full listens. It’s excellent. I love life-by-the-sea songs from groups like Rum Ragged so my favourite track by a mile was the first track, Freeze but Life’s A Bloody Show {“The trouble is that gold is all you worship”} is a song for the political moment.
Here are TW’s notes:
There are several moments during any month where the mood dictates rolling out a selection from the Folk/Rock scene.
Ship to Shore (Richard Thompson 2024)
Arguably, there is a soundtrack for everyone’s life and Richard Thompson has probably just about written everybody’s story. Thompson has been around the scene for long time, I’d recommend a deep dive all the way back to the late ‘60s. His newest album (2024) Ship To Shore is no exception; loves lost, PTSD, world travels, and despite it all – keep moving forward. I’m particularly drawn to his distinctive voice and guitar, along with smart lyrics and storytelling.
A worthwhile mix of upbeat tracks and somber tracks, along with a shanty or two.
Tracks: Freeze, The Fear Never Leaves, Singapore Sadie, Trust, The Day That I Give In, The Old Pack Mule, Turnstile Casanova, Lost in The Crowd, Maybe, Life’s A Bloody Show, What’s Left To Lose, We Roll
Terry Walker Bonus Feature! The documentary “Becoming Led Zeppelin” is playing this week and I caught the show last evening. Well worth it you have the opportunity in your location. One of many highlights; the producers incorporated a never-before-heard interview of deceased drummer John Bonham throughout the film.
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