My Bike History

Since I haven't been able to make it out for a trail ride yet, I thought I may as well put down a little description of my bike history...

One of my first bikes memories is riding my BMX off of a curb and breaking the frame. I was pretty young, 5 or 6, and had picked up the bike new at Toys-R-Us. This was a big deal for me since we didn't have much money growing up and I rarely got anything new.

I've owned two hard-tail mountain bikes. My first mountain bike was a Diamondback of some sort. The guy at the bike shop must have thought I was destined for a growth spurt because the bike was too big then, and it would still be to big for me now. Adding to the awkwardness of the overly sized bike was the fact that it had a "splatter" paint job. I'm pretty sure the base color was black, but the frame had been splattered with all different color paint, very Jackson Pollock. I'm pretty sure it was a steel frame bike and it had a solid fork.

My next mountain bike was a GT Aggressor. I think it was an aluminum frame. It was bright red and had a front suspension fork (although a pretty lousy one). I bought it when I was around 17 to replace my car, which had been totaled when I was rear ended while stopped at a light. I only go $500 from the insurance company for the wreck, so I used it to buy a bike. It was a good bike, but was horribly uncomfortable. For some reason my hands would fall asleep about a mile into every ride. I didn't take the bike with me when I was in the Marines, but I grabbed it on my way up to Alaska. It took me a while to get tired enough of it to replace it, which I finally did in fall of 2008.

That's when I spent a few weeks searching the Anchorage bike shops for just the right ride. I found it at Paramount. I rode a couple of Giants there and decided that they had the right fit. I settled on a Giant Trance 2 and couldn't be happier. I'll provide more details about that in a later post.

Getting Started?

It's Spring in Anchorage, the snow is melting and it's icy in the morning (all day in the shade). In a couple of weeks the snow will have melted away but the ground will still be frozen, which means every trail that isn't paved will be a muddy mess. This is why the Municipality's policy is to close dirt trails during break-up (what we call this time of year). The dirt trails will be closed until June 1, which seems like a very long time from now.

The delay in opening the trails is all the more difficult to bear since I've been off my bike all winter. Partially due to hip surgery in October and partially due to having a full suspension bike in Alaska. It turns out extremely cold temperatures (like the ones we get here in Anchorage) are devastating on suspension components. Luckily I didn't learn this first hand.

I spent most of the winter recovering from my surgery. I was able to ride a stationary bike starting in about December, I was able to start playing hockey again in February, I went snowboarding in March, but I wasn't able to ride outside because of the whole full suspension bike thing. So now that the weather is warming up I'm ready to hit the trails. In fact, I slapped my studs on this weekend and went for a 19 mile ride (round trip from my house to Westchester Lagoon via the Chester Creek Trail).

I'm thinking I've got a couple of weeks before it gets to a point where all the dirt trails are off limits. I've also got 135 miles of paved trails I can conquer, so I'm thinking that I'll be able to keep myself busy enough. Of course these aren't the ideal conditions upon which to base a trail description. I'll have to play the blog by ear for the near future, or just ride the trials again once they are clear.

The mission.

Anchorage is a city of 260,283 people living within 1,961.1 square miles and surrounded by 250 miles of trails. Just over half the trails are paved (135 miles), the rest are gravel, grass, or simply dirt. Many of the trails are located in parks or in vegetated buffers next to the city's creeks. While traveling Anchorage's trails you can easily forget that you are right in the middle of civilization.



I've personally ran, hiked, biked,and skied along many miles of trails in Anchorage, but have only scratched the surface of what's available. Which is why I'm setting out to ride every trail in Anchorage. I plan to ride all 250 miles of trail and provide a description of each one. I hope that this blog serves as a place for me to assemble all of my thoughts and impressions for future reference, and as a place for others to learn more about the opportunities available in this great city.