Patio Spider Part 1: Prey Revisited

Several days back, the Hunky Neighbors had us over one evening for dessert. The adults were inside chit-chatting, and the younger kids out front playing, when Bird Whisperer, who was hanging out by himself on the rear patio, called me out to check out a spider he’d found.

Tangent: Our circle* has 2 other families with kids the Twins’ age. But Bird Whisperer is the oldest kid on the circle by 2 years. His nearest same-age friends live at least a mile away, so during these neighborhood get-togethers, he by and large does his own thing. Which works out fine, because he’s a patient, good-natured and introspective little fellow, filling his time reading, playing make-believe and poking around at things like birds, and of course, spiders.

*By “circle” I mean the actual circle/cul-de-sac/dead end on which we live. I don’t mean circle as in “social circle”.

It was an interesting spider, and very unlike the typical Wolf, Triangulate Cobweb and occasional Black Widow I’ve found around house and garage, so I had BW keep it corralled while I sprinted next door for the camera. Orange body, almost hairless, I figured it would be easy to ID when we got back home, and it indeed it was. It’s Dysdera crocata, known as either the Woodlouse Spider, or, even better, Sowbug Killer.

Oftentimes in this project I’m forced to choose between competing common names when blogging about something or other. Usually I try to use either a) the name I knew already, or b) what seems to be the most commonly-used common name in the Western US. But whenever one of the candidate common names has the word “Killer” in it, that automatically beats out all other candidates. So Sowbug Killer it is, or SKiller for short.

It turns out that the SKiller has a really cool story. First a few basics. SKillers are nocturnal, running hunters. They don’t spin webs, but they do spin little silk nests or “cocoons”, located under rocks or logs or bark in which they pass away the daylight hours. Come nightfall they emerge and run around over patios and such hunting their favorite prey, that being- you guessed it- Woodlice (also called Sowbugs, but here I’m following rule “a”.)

So one of the first interesting things about SKillers is that they’re exotic. Dysdera is a genus of over 200 species, all of which are native to the Mediterranean region and the Atlantic Islands off the coast of North Africa. Of those 200+ species, 1- just 1- D. crocata- is cosmopolitan* in distribution. The distribution of Dysdera spiders, and how it came to be that just 1 species colonized the world, turns out to be way fascinating, but before I tell it, we really ought to spend a moment or two on their prey.

* I am embarrassed to admit that before I started this project, I didn’t realize that the word “cosmopolitan” could be applied to non-human creatures. But of course it can, as it means that something- a spider, a plant, a bird- can be found practically worldwide. I always assumed cosmopolitan simply meant a person who was multi-cultural, or somehow transcended traditional boundaries of culture and/or nationality. Either that or a scantily-clad female on a magazine cover at the supermarket check-out.

I’ve mentioned woodlice a couple of times in this blog; they’re so common it’s hard not to. When we last saw them was last November in my garage, where we left them on a somewhat uncertain note. Woodlice are crustaceans, like lobsters and crayfish, but they bear a remarkable physical resemblance to Pill Millipedes, which although not at all closely-related have evolved a remarkably convergent body form, complete with an independently-evolved ability to roll into a defensive ball, protecting their vulnerable undersides. And I left them admitting that while I suspected my garage denizens to be Woodlice and not Millipedes (based on the configuration of the exoskeletal plates toward the rear end), I wasn’t really sure.

Well now I am sure- they’re Woodlice, specifically Armadillidium vulgare, the Common Pill Woodlouse. Here’s how I know:

In this close-up photo of the underside of one, you can see that there is 1- and only 1- pair of legs per body segment. Millipedes have 2. And there are exactly 7 pairs or legs, as is always the case with Woodlice.

Tangent: The specimen for this Woodlouse photo was provided by Twin B, who is diligent, reliable and fearless when providing invertebrate specimens, with the one notable exception I have mentioned before- spiders. I swear, with any other bug- Woodlice, flies, Box Elder Bugs, beetles, ants, moths, whatever- she’s like this little Gandhi, always carefully handling them and then releasing them outside, never swatting or killing them. Only spiders freak her out.

A. vulgare is, like D. crocata, an exotic* in North America, native to Europe. It’s sort of as if predator and prey have chased each other around the world.

*When I started this project I already knew that many, many plants and birds around me were non-native. One of the surprises along the way has been how many bugs are exotics as well. Just in my garage Woodlice, Triangulate Cobweb Spiders and Paper Wasps have been 3 recent examples.

There are some other great things we can see in this shot. Toward the rear can see a number of whitish plates in the center between the 6^th and 7^th leg-pairs. These are pleopods, which are actually modified gills, which leads to probably the most interesting thing about Woodlice- They’re the only crustaceans* that have fully adapted to life on land. And though they’ve adapted well, they’ve done so differently than other invertebrates that emerged from water onto land, such as insects and spiders.

*Specifically, they’re Isopods, which are an order of crustaceans with 7 pairs of legs.

Woodlice never evolved the waterproof waxy cuticle that keeps things like insects and spiders from dehydrating, so drying out is a constants threat to which they’re adapted in several ways. Many of these ways are behavioral; Woodlice avoid direct sunlight and favor damp, moist places. Pleopods need to remain moist to function, as in gills the gas-exchange occurs across a wet surface. But they’ve also evolved a few tricks, including the ability to routinely withstand and fully recover from up to 30% dehydration. (Humans are generally dead by 15% dehydration.) More impressively, they can absorb water vapor directly from the surrounding air at humidity levels of greater than 87%. Hardly any other animals* can pull off this trick at less than 100% humidity.

*Ticks can.

But a number of Woodlice species, including A. vulgare, have also evolved additional “dry-land” lungs to augment respiration, and these, called the corpus alatum, are also clearly visible in the photo. The corpus altum is a system of pseudotrachea, so named because they are vaguely similar to trachea, which in insects deliver oxygen directly to tissues, but work a bit differently, delivering oxygen to the “blood” (or rather the Isopod version of it) which then carries it to tissues throughout the body.

Tangent: There’s something really cool to think about here. As large verterbrates, most of us have some knowledge of the whole fish-evolving-its-way-onto-land thing through the evolution of primitive “lungs” (probably from a modified swim bladder) and modified lobefins, and the eventual evolution of reptiles, from which things like mammals and birds came about.

But invertebrates- “bugs”- obviously worked their way onto land separately, and what’s interesting is that different groups of arthropods did so independently and came up with dramatically different ways of surviving on land. We’ve already looked at the radically different respiratory architectures of insects (trachea) and spiders (book lungs). Woodlice represent a third way of evolving a terrestrial respiratory system (pseudotrachea). This is one of the things that fascinates me about evolution, that nature comes up with so many different ways of solving the same problem. And yet in so many cases they end up- like Pill Millipedes and Woodlice, like Old & New World Vultures, like Old & New World Porcupines- amazingly similar things that came to their respective “thing-ness” via completely different paths.

When I thing about all of the examples of convergent evolution here on Earth, I sometimes figure that if life exists elsewhere in the universe, for sure it has pillbugs and vultures and porcupines. But then I think about trachea and book lungs, and I suspect I don’t have any idea what life elsewhere would be like…

Before leaving our Woodlouse friend, there’s something else about him we can tell from this photo. And that’s right, I said “him”, for this A. vulgare is male. Males have elongated, curving, backward-pointing first and second pleopod pairs, which guide the transfer of the sperm packet when mating, which he deposits at the base of the female’s pleopods while crawling across her back.

The entire underside of the Woodlouse is obviously soft and thin- translucent even- compared with the hard armor covering its top/backside. The soft exoskeleton provides flexibility for movement but represents a vulnerable area, which is why these guys roll up into a ball when threatened. The obvious challenge for anything that wants to eat a Woodlouse- say a SKiller for example- is how to get at the soft underside.

Which brings us back to…

Next Up: The Spider, Already!

Note about sources: I used 2 excellent sources for most of the the Woodlouse anatomy stuff: Lander University’s* Invertebrate Anatomy Online and Northern State University’s** Educator’s Guide to South Dakota’s Natural Resources page.

*It’s in South Carolina.

**It’s in South Dakota. Kind of counterintuitive…

Singletrack, Chukars, and a Really Long Tangent About First Class

When I got the helmet-cam I didn’t really didn’t think much about how I’d use it. Oh, I expected I’d email videos to friends and post some on the blog, but what I didn’t anticipate is how much I’d enjoy watching the videos. That sounds dumb. After all I was on the ride- why do I need a video of it? But when I’m away for work in some hotel room or stuck on a long flight (like right now) and feeling penned-up, it’s remarkable how weirdly liberating/ escapist it is to “re-live” the ride.

Tangent: This one is long and bizarre, but culminates in a great half-baked conspiracy theory, so stick with it.

I guess this flight isn’t all that bad, as I’m sitting in first class. I fly often enough that I get upgraded on domestic flights about half the time. I’ve always found the whole coach/first class thing to be kind of weird. When you think about it, we live our whole lives in a world carved up by socio-economic divisions. Yes of course there’s the whole first world-third world thing, but I’m talking on a smaller scale. Every metro area has class divisions in it’s neighborhoods/suburbs, and these divisions are evident in homes, roads, shopping mall anchor-stores, signage (billboards), even the type and condition of playground equipment in public parks. And within neighborhoods, there’s another mini-class-tiering at play in the schools which the neighborhood children attend.

Extra Detail: In my East Side* neighborhood, there are probably 4 distinct schooling classes. 1st is Rowland Hall-St. Mark’s (Episcopal private school- way snooty.) 2nd is other private schools, such as McGillis (affiliated with Jewish Community Center.) Third is kids who go to out-of-zone public schools. We’re in this category- our kids, and several others in the neighborhood attend an out-of-zone public school to which we applied due to its strong academic reputation. Catholic schools probably also fit in this class. Fourth would be the school we are actually zoned for.

*BTW, have you noticed that in inland US cities situated alongside mountain ranges, the higher-end neighborhoods are always on the mountain-side of downtown? Salt Lake, Denver and Albuquerque are 3 big examples, but the rule holds for smaller cities as well, such as Ogden, Provo, Boulder and Fort Collins.

The funny thing is, all of these schools are actually quite good. Oh sure, there are differences in class size and such, but I’m pretty sure a reasonably bright kid from a decent home would thrive in any of them.

Extra Extra Detail: There’s a another dynamic in our neighborhood school class divisions, one that is at play in neighborhoods all along the Wasatch Front, which someday, in another post, I may blog about more fully, and that is the church issue. In Utah, non-Mormons routinely make public-private school decisions in large part due to the perception- rightly or wrongly- that the public schools are the Mormon schools, in which their children may experience, in some way, a minority status, or be somehow left out socially. I’ve never noticed this in other states, but in Utah it’s a fairly standard school-choice consideration among non-Mormons.

Though I generally scoff at such small-mindedness, I have to admit that among the reasons we selected the (public) school we did for the Trifecta was the “diversity” of the student body. And in Utah, much of the time, “diverse” is a thinly-veiled code-word for “not Mormon.”

And then you get on an airplane, for just a few hours, and there it is again: the wide comfortable seats of first class in front, and the cramped human-cargo aka “coach” class stuffed in back. As a frequent flier I’m of course glad for the space, but the closet-socialist in me is perpetually offended. Why can’t- instead of a few really great seats and a whole bunch of really crappy seats- why can’t we all have decent seats. Would that be so bad? Yeah, yeah, free markets, supply and demand, invisible hand of my economics professor, blah, blah- I get it already. But really, it’s just a few hours- it’s not like we’ll all turn into Marxists or Canadians or something. Couldn’t we all just have OK/tolerable (non-reclining) seats and be happy with it?

Of course, as any frequent flier knows, first class isn’t what it used to be. There’s no real meal* on any flight under 4 or 5 hours, no more ice cream sundaes, and the warm, moist pre-dinner cloth seems to have disappeared over the last year or so**.

*Now, on any flight under 4 hours, they just serve the same crappy snacks- peanuts, pretzels and “biscott (WTF?) cookies”- as they do back in coach, but in first class they serve them in a special wicker basket. Seriously, the flight attendant will come up and present this basket full of crap with this theatrical flourish, as if she’s offering you beluga caviar or something.

**Which was fine by me. I never really knew what to do with the towel anyway. The presentation of it would always guilt me into a sort of Potemkin-“washing” of my hands, something I never do when seated at a normal restaurant. Some guys would wipe their faces with a big relaxing sigh, as if they’d just stepped into the shower and which I always found a bit weird. (You’re in public, what are you- washing your face? Hey, don’t let me stop you- get behind the ears!)

Nowadays, the only redeeming features of first class are wide seats, and friendly flight attendants. Seriously, up here the flight attendants are all smiley, helpful and re-affirming. But walk past the coach-curtain*, and it’s like Dr. Jekyll – Mr. Hyde; they get all snarly and reprimand-y.

*Oh yeah, that curtain. Don’t you love that? It’s like we high-class people don’t even want you little people looking at us…

Nested Tangent: Is it just me, or are flight attendants getting older? When I started flying, ~20 years ago, flight attendants were all like 25. On tonight’s flight the lady pouring me coffee looks like she fought in the Spanish-American War.

It’s almost as though the only really worthwhile thing about first class left is that it’s not coach. And this leads to my brilliant half-baked conspiracy theory, which is that several years back the airlines decided to give up on trying to make first class better, they could just make it seem better far more easily and cost-effectively simply by making coach suck more.

Woo. That was long- almost forgot I had a post. Anyway, here’s a clip from early last Friday morning, just before a small storm blew in.

The Video Already

Couple of notes, mostly for non-local readers. This is the lower part of the descent from the antenna towers North of downtown Salt Lake. At 0:13 I pass a real nice magpie nest in the scrub oak on the right. At 1:06 you see my front tire pop into view as I wheelie over the curb and onto the singletrack, which immediately turns to the right/North, at which point you can see the refineries of North Salt Lake in the upper left of the screen. After the switchback I’m generally heading South. At about 2:00, downtown comes into view; the state capitol is on the left, the tall white building in the center is the LDS church HQ. The snow-covered mountains appearing to the left of downtown are the Wasatch range; the peak at the apparent right end of the range, just to the left of the capitol, is 11,253 ft. Lone Peak.

At 2:15 a chukar flies across the trail. We’ll come back to this guy in a moment.

Most of the homes along this stretch BTW, didn’t exist when I moved here in ‘95. It’s sort of bizarre in that they’re pretty pricey houses, but basically look down on refineries, rail-yards and a freeway, and experience a fair amount of noise as a result. Sunsets are nice though.

At 3:19, downtown returns to view, now much closer, and to the immediate right of the church HQ tower you can see the LDS temple, a lower-height white building with several spires, silhouetted against the darker mid-level office building behind.

So, back to the chukar. They’re not unusual around here; I always seem to see them when up around Antelope Island. But it turns out there’s something kind of interesting about them here in Utah, and the Intermountain West in general.

Chukars, Alectoris chukar, (pic right, not mine) are native to Eurasia, but have been deliberately introduced to the Western US as game-birds, multiple times, starting in the 1890’s. They’re partridges, which belong to the pheasant family, Phasiandae. As a rule, partridges are medium-sized birds, bigger than quail, but smaller than pheasants. Chukars are considered more challenging game than pheasants or quail because they’re faster flyers*.

*Just to be clear- this isn’t the interesting thing; I’m just laying the groundwork here…

Phasiandae in turn is part of the order Galliformes, or landfowl, which in turn is part of the superorder Galloanserae, or “fowl,” which in turn brings up something I keep meaning to get around to, but haven’t, so I’m just going to do it now.

Here in Utah- or anywhere in North America for that matter- all of the birds you see fall into 2 groups, or superorders. The first, Galloanserae, are all of the pheasants, ducks, geese, swans, chickens, turkeys, grouse, quail, etc. The second superorder, Neoaves, includes every other bird you see- pigeons, crows, finches, hawks- you name it, they’re all descended from a common ancestor. So when you see a duck or a grouse or a chukar, you’re looking at a sort of “other” bird, that hasn’t shared a common ancestor with all those “regular” birds since there were dinosaurs walking around. They’re kind of like the marsupials of the bird-world.

Side Note: Actually, there are significantly more “otherly” birds in the world, more deserving of the marsupial comparison. Neoaves and Galloanserae together form an “infraclass” called Neognathae, which includes all living birds except for ratites (ostriches, emus, rheas, etc.) and tinamous, which belong to a sister infraclass called Paleognathae, and have significantly different anatomical features including jaw, metacarpals and vertebrae. But since here in the US you’re only likely to see paleognaths in a zoo or aviary, a “fowl” is about as “other-ish” a bird as you’re likely to see out and about*.

*No, this isn’t the interesting thing either- I’m getting to it already…

Additionally, paleontologists believe that there were other more distantly-related, or more basal, orders of birds way back when, all of which are today extinct*.

*Nope, still not the interesting thing.

So chukars are pretty common in Utah. Like pigeons, starlings and house sparrows, they’re exotics, but unlike those birds, their North American range is largely restricted to the Intermountain West. Why?*

*OK, this is the interesting part.

Guess what chukars’ favorite food is? Bromus tectorum, or cheatgrass (pic left) seeds. Those same, annoying little seeds that get stuck in your socks. That's right- chukars thrive on exactly the exotic grass that’s pretty much taken over the Great Basin, starting in the 1880’s. We’ve looked at cheatgrass before; it does so well here* in part because it grows and seeds earlier in the season than native grasses. Though B. tectorum now occurs in all 50 states, the Intermountain West has the the most extensive/ densest “cheatgrasslands.”

*Cool factoid: botanists believe that the cheatgrass in the American West today is the result of 7 or 8 separate introductions.

So how fortuitous (for chukars) is that? We settle North America, and subsequently accidently introduce cheatgrass, which pretty much takes over the Great Basin. Then a mere decade or two later we release a bird that loves cheatgrass. From the perspective of the bird, it’s as if someone captured it and then released it in place that’s almost like Heaven (with the obvious exception of all those guys trying to shoot it, I guess.)

I don’t ride the antenna-hills trails all that often, usually only in winter or early spring. It’s mostly South-facing and open, and so melts out faster than most other trails in the foothills. Riding here now is only possible early in the morning, ideally around dawn, while everything is frozen hard. And if you oversleep, and start your ride too late, as I did Sunday morning, well, you might be OK on the way up, but on the way back down… well, that’s a whole other deal, and a whole other post.

Next Up: What is the deal with clay?

Diamond Fork: Atheism, Values and Hot Springs

May 2010- Yeah, that's right. I stuck it back up. I always liked this post and was bummed to have to pull it. It was a while ago, and the neighbors mentioned here recently moved away. Sometimes things just work out.

Note: This one is long and weird*.

*Yes, I know that most (all?) of my posts are long and weird, but this one is long and weird even by WTWWU standards. I just had a lot of ground I wanted to cover.

I woke up Sunday morning in a foul mood, after a fitful sleep. Earlier last week, Clean Colin had invited us to a BBQ at his place Saturday night. I was excited to go; several good friends would be there, and rumor has it that Clean Colin- an accomplished chef- makes an outstanding burger. But when I mentioned it to Awesome Wife, she reminded me that she’d already invited a few neighbor-couples over for drinks and dinner, following the Twins’ birthday party that afternoon. (pic right = party setup in backyard*)

*Yes, my lawn looks pretty beat, but it actually looks way better than it did a month ago, when I almost killed it.

So I was a little disappointed, but not too much. We have- as I’ve blogged before- some really great neighbors. As it turns out, we also have some not-so-great neighbors.

I mentioned in a post a couple months back how happy I was that a new family had moved into our neighborhood. Now, I’m not so happy. I won’t get into details, but I’ll give you a little hint. As longtime readers know, when I blog about various friends, associates or acquaintances, I give them nicknames. My nickname for the female half of our new neighbor-couple is “Ann Coulter”*

*No I don’t have a nickname for the male half yet. Everything I’ve come up with so far involves a part of anatomy.

So it wasn’t a great night, in part because of obnoxious guest behavior, in part perhaps out of the realization that the new neighbors wouldn’t turn out to be great friends after all, but also, I am chagrinned to admit, because of my own behavior. I could/should have just shut up. I could/should have smiled blandly as I was rudely interrupted and berated in my own home. I could/should have bit my lip as I was lectured with falsehoods by a couple of self-serving, screw-the-poor jerks… But I didn’t. Something sparked inside. Something about being “town-halled” in my own home, and a light went off in my head that said “NO”, and I gave it right back, refusing to be interrupted or talked over, and in less than a minute we were yelling, talking over each other…

I wish I’d just shut the hell up. They were only over for the drinks part anyway. I could’ve shut up, then bitched later on to Awesome Wife about how awful they were, and never, ever invited them over again. But I didn’t. That spark, that same inner spark, that drives my enthusiasm, my love of life and the natural world, that pushes me through tough spots in races and out of jams in the backcountry, it got the better of me.

So I woke up feeling crappy, and ready to ride hard.

The Ride

OCRick, Clean Colin, Vicente and I drove South an hour to Spanish Fork Canyon, then East and up into the Southern Wasatch , then turned North up Diamond Fork drainage. Right away, Diamond Fork looks different than the standard Wasatch side canyons. It’s broad, and the sides are rolling grassy hills, dotted with widely spaced scrub oak and Juniper. The hills are golden in late summer, and the first time I drove up, years ago, the impression I had was of somewhere in Central California, between the Central Valley and the coast. In the center of the valley runs a beautiful, winding shallow clear river, lined by cottonwoods. The road is paved but twisty, and driving from the mouth of the canyon to the trailhead takes about 15-20 minutes. By the time you get there, the sprawl and smog and heat of the valley seem hundreds of miles away. There’s a network of trails that can be accessed from here, following the various creeks, streams, and draws that drain into the river from the Eastern slope of the valley.

There are 3 main routes for the “Diamond Fork Loop.” The first and easiest climbs Second Water drainage to a paved road (Rays Valley road) then follows that paved road North until it intersects Fifth Water drainage, then descends back to the trailhead. The second route continues up Second Water, past the road, clear up to Strawberry Ridge, where you continue on an old jeep road that straddles the ridge separating Diamond Fork and Strawberry drainages before dropping down Fifth Water from the top. The third, least traveled, toughest- and our favorite- route lies in between the first two, and uses an old, neglected, overgrown, technical singletrack called the Center Trail to forge a path in between the ridge and the road.

All About Riparian Riding

The trail up Second Water is twisty, windy and fun, but that’s not what makes it worth the drive for me. The trail follows a stream and runs almost entirely through a riparian zone. Riparian vegetation is that which occurs right along streams in otherwise dry country, usually in a belt between 10 and 80 feet wide. Standing along a stream in these parts, you can be surrounded by tall cottonwoods, box elders, alders, water birches, and maples, while 20 feet away from you is a gravely slope covered with juniper, yucca, sage, and prickly pear. Riparian zones aren’t- or weren’t- uncommon in the Intermountain West, but trails through them- particularly bike-able trails- are extremely rare, for two reasons: First, as a rule of thumb, most easily accessed trails in the West are on public lands. Most public lands are administered by the Forest Service or the BLM, and generally these 2 agencies, when they were formed, lapped up lands that hadn’t been homesteaded or otherwise claimed by settlers. Settlers when they arrived naturally chose the lands with the best water. River Valley bottoms were the best, as they offered both farming and grazing, and this explains why you almost never find public lands in broad river valley bottoms in the Intermountain West. But riparian zones were also desirable. The density of lush vegetation in riparian zones makes them far better grazing areas than the surrounding hillsides. Thus, today a high proportion of riparian zones today lie within private lands.

The second reason is that those riparian zones that lie within public lands are often some of the most heavily used, abused, and overgrazed areas you can find. Excessive grazing removes the low-lying vegetation that holds the stream banks together, allowing the streams to erode dramatically. All this means that there aren’t that many riparian zones on public lands in good condition, and there are even fewer such zones with well laid-out trails. When you do find one, riding can be wonderful. The tall leafy trees are reminiscent of riding in the East, and the fact that the trail follows a watercourse usually means that elevation changes gradually, and the trail twists and weaves its way up or down the canyon. Riding the trails in the Diamond Fork area is often surreal- pedaling through a damp, sometimes steamy forest, with semi-desert hillsides a stone’s throw away.

Back To The Story

Together we wound our way gradually up the canyon, following the stream, through the lush riparian forest. About 5 miles up we climbed up and out of the forest, and through a series of pastures before reaching Rays Valley Road. We regrouped, greeted a group of bowhunters coming down the trail, and continued up.

It’s been a dry couple of months, and most of the Diamond Fork trails are worked pretty hard by cattle and, to a lesser extent, motorcycles. As the grade stiffened we battled our way up eroded troughs filled with moon-dust, huffing, spinning and dabbing our way up to the junction with Center Trail.

Between Second Water and Fifth Water trails, Center Trail climbs 5 times and descends 5 times. Each climb is stiff and fairly technical, and a couple of the descents are a touch hairy right now, due in part to the dust. The climbs are all South-facing, working their way up hot, Scrub Oak-covered hillsides, while the descents are through cooler, North-facing Aspen and PLT forests. On the tough climbs, we gradually strung out, each rider picking the pace at which he was most comfortable negotiating the rocks and dust while maintaining a ride-able line. We’re all strong climbers, but my race-seasoned legs settled into a slightly faster pace, and soon I was climbing alone.

Everyone has their own tonic for a sour mood; some of us just take longer to find theirs. Mine, which I found in my 30’s, is a tough, technical climb on a clear day. The exertion, focus and light work together for me to bring a clarity of mind that helps me disassemble, parse and work out the things that are eating at me. As I pulled away and rolled up one ledge after the next, I mulled over the previous evening. On the first climb, I mainly chewed myself out.

At the top of climb #1, the trail rolls into an Aspen grove and then opens into a small meadow. I pulled over in the shade and one by one the guys joined me- Clean Colin, Vicente and finally OCRick. The shade and cool breeze was a welcome break from 2 hours of climbing. We sat on the grass, de-helmeted, ate, and lingered for a bit, none of us in a hurry to get rolling right away. Finally OCRick rallied us and we continued, dropping down the North side.

I called a quick halt about 100 yards down the trail. To the right here, easy to miss while you’re descending fast, is the largest- or at least fattest- tree I’ve come across in the Wasatch. It’s a White Fir, and this shot doesn’t do it justice (Colin is too far in front of the tree.) It’s probably about 5’ in diameter at chest-height.

Side Note: For Northwest readers, I know this is not all that impressive a tree. But here in the Utah it’s a giant.

I only know of a couple other trees like this along the Wasatch Front. I don’t know if it’s just a lucky escapee from past loggings or fires or blights or what, but its sheer mass makes it remarkable in this part of the Wasatch. I always like to stop to check it out when we pass through every couple years or so, and my friends- who’ve known me long enough to tolerate my various tree-obsessions- always indulge me.

The first descent included some rocks, roots and some sketchy pools of moon-dust, but we arrived crash-free at the bottom, crossed a small stream, and began the 2^nd climb, breaking out again into the open. As before, I soon pulled ahead.

I wonder if my disappointment with the neighbors was in a sense heightened by surprise- they seemed so much like us. It’s not like everyone- or even most people- especially in Utah- agrees with my views on politics or values or ethics, and that rarely upsets me. I’ve been part of political and religious minorities here for over a decade, and it hasn’t really detracted from my great experience living here. But these people weren’t regular Utahns. They were like us- out-of-staters, well-traveled, outdoor-oriented, social drinkers, blah blah- and this similarity somehow made our wildly differing values more shocking, more alarming, more wrong.

At the top of the next climb, I rolled over the open knoll, and came to a stop in the shade of the Aspens. There was a breeze, and the leaves rustled overhead. Below the Aspen canopy was a stand of Serviceberry shrees*, branches loaded with berries, and I absentmindedly remembered that summer was ending. Vicente rolled up, then Colin, then Rick. We dropped down descent #2, zipping through forest again, on a trail faster than the first descent. We bottomed out, shifted into granny gears, and began grinding up, stringing out all over again, each in his own, hot dusty thoughts.

*New word. More than a shrub, but not quite a tree.

The False Bond Of Unbelief

In particular, I’d heard through the grapevine that they were fellow non-believers. That’s right, atheists. As longtime readers know, I’m not a theist, or a believer in a religion or god or what-not. But I don’t generally use the term atheist. I’m not offended by it, but it carries all sorts of cultural baggage, and more to the point, it doesn’t tell anyone what I believe; it just tells them one very specific thing that I happen not to believe. In general, it’s not a big deal. I have many “believing” friends, and I certainly don’t consider “disbelief” to be any kind of requisite for friendships. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that sometimes, when I learn that a friend or associate is also a non-believer, I feel just a teeny little twinge of camaraderie or even brotherhood. Atheists are in a weird position in American culture- the term is used by so many as a synonym for lack of morals or values, and poll after poll shows that an “outed” atheist would be virtually unelectable to public office. And so sometimes, when I learn someone is also a non-believer, I sense-or perhaps make the mistake of sensing- some common ground in world-view and values.

At the top of climb #3 there was one of those super-ATVs parked- the ones that have a roof and look sort of like a baby Hummer. It had come down via an old jeep trail running down from the ridge, probably carrying bowhunters. As we waited and re-grouped, a group of several dirt bikes passed us. We waited a few minutes for their dust to settle before continuing.

Tangent: Though motorcycles can and often do cause considerable wear and tear on trails, I’m far more favorably disposed toward them than I am ATVs on trails. They don’t turn trails into roads, operating them requires some skill, and their riders seem to take safety (gear, terrain, speed) much more seriously than typical ATVers. In fairness, they’re also far fewer in number…

Descent #3 was the smoothest and fastest yet- winding through fast, dusty S-Curves, shrubs and grasses brushing against our shins. The best descent yet, it was over too soon. We bottomed out, wheelied across a mud-bog, and started the fourth climb. Though we strung out again, it was a relatively short ascent, and the easiest so far.

The assumption of “common values” between non-believers is not completely baseless; 83% of self-described agnostics or atheists voted for Kerry in the 2004 presidential election*. But it’s folly to assume it a rule. Non-believers hold all sorts of different values and views. One non-believer perspective I run across from time-to-time is a sort of Libertarian world-view, advocating strong freedoms for individuals, along with minimal government interference, involvement or support in the lives of citizens. On the surface this perspective, and Libertarianism in general, is based on sound logic; individuals thrive given freedom and opportunity, and societies that suppress such freedoms inevitably stagnate.

*Sorry, I can’t remember the source. Pretty sure it was the Economist, but can’t swear to it.

But when you really talk to many so-called Libertarians, a dark, accompanying undertone often appears- a weird, almost eugenic theme of pseudo-social-Darwinism, of leaving the weak, the less capable, the less deserving to their own devices. A theme that sees a ”justice” in such “survival of the fittest”, because it somehow is thought to emulate the “natural order” or progression of the world. (I find such a theme/tone repelling, not only because it runs so counter to my own values, but because it always seems that the people who long to apply “Darwinism” to socio-politics are folks who don’t understand jack about how evolution and natural selection actually works.)

Climb #4 was short but I’d still gotten out a bit ahead. I rolled again up further just a bit to wait in the shade. The ride was gradually unwinding my frustration, my tension, my anger. The breeze had kicked up and the Aspen leaves rustled loudly. Aspen leaves- as I’ve blogged previously- have a stem architecture that causes them to swish back and forth sideways across each other in the wind. The swishing sounds a bit like whispers, or even soft voices, and sometimes, when I’m alone in an Aspen forest I find myself unconsciously straining to hear the words… as if I could just listen a little more closely, maybe I could make it out…

Way back when, when I was into science fiction, I read a story of some people who landed on an alien planet. Before they landed, their instruments warned them they could live there, but only for about a month. When they landed they were so relaxed, so at ease and so calmly enchanted with the place that they lost all sense of time and urgency and surely would have lingered until they died, had it not been for their pesky-yet diligent Spock-like* fellow-astronaut.

Tangent: Every sci-fi story, movie or series has a Spock-like character. It may be an alien, or a robot or a hot cyborg in high heels*, but there is always a Spock-like-voice-of-logic-sounding-board character.

*Yes, Seven of Nine’s outfit in STV actually included high heels.

Waiting at the top I had just a tingling of that same weird sense. That I could stay here for another hour, the afternoon, maybe days even, and that if I just opened my mind and listened real carefully, I could maybe make out… Colin rolled up, snapping me out of my reverie. Vicente was close behind, and finally, a hot, tired and grumpy-looking OCRick. Whatever was on his mind, it wasn’t Aspens whispering, old sci-fi plots and hot cyborgs. No, it wasn’t at all- in fact it was me.

“Hey! “ he snarled, pointing at me, “How ‘bout you go last the next descent?” Feeling suddenly sheepish, I realized that I’d been blasting the lead down all the descents, choking and blinding my companions with dust. I apologized and promised to “sweep.” The 3 rolled off before me, and I lingered for a moment to let their dust settle. Not too long though, lest the Aspens charm me again…

The 4^th descent was smooth and quick, and I was soon climbing again, grinding my way up climb #5. At an early switchback Colin spun out and quickly stepped aside, letting me pass. I settled in behind Rick.

People will always hold different views, and try as you might, it’s ultimately impossible to fully comprehend the motivations and drivers behind a set of values and beliefs radically different from your own, and whether those beliefs are truly held, or serve primarily as a rationalization for existing desires or self-interest. And to be completely honest, it can be tough to determine whether our own values and opinions reflect what we really believe to be right, or our just our self-interest, or something in-between.

Midway up climb #5, the trail eased off a bit and entered a stand of Aspens. At a wide spot, OCRick pulled over. “Go ahead, I’m trashed.” I mumbled something encouraging and kept on climbing.

Tangent: OCRick is 18 years older than me, but only on the longest, hardest climbs do I ever wait for him. The guy is the toughest geezer I’ve ever known. Coincidentally, OCRick’s son is exactly 18 years younger than me. I like to kid OCR that when he gets too old and slow I’m going to “break up” with him and start hanging out with his son.

It so happens that OCR Jr. is 17 and 19 years older than my two sons respectively, so we can probably keep this joke running a couple more generations.

The SPT

The best values sanity-check I’ve been able to come up with is what I call the Selfish Prick Test (SPT). The SPT goes like this: Whenever your beliefs and values dictate a given position or course of action, stop and ask yourself this: If my only “value” were Being A Selfish Prick, is this what I’d do? Now sometimes, to be sure, the right thing to do really is going to happen to be the same thing a Selfish Prick would do. But if your values and beliefs repeatedly and consistently guide you to the same decisions, viewpoints and courses of action that Being A Selfish Prick would lead you to- say always denying help and support to those in need and believing the answer to every societal problem is a tax cut for yourself- then you have to ask yourself: How am I not a Selfish Prick? And if the answer isn’t clearly, immediately and overwhelmingly obvious, then maybe, just maybe, you should take a step back and reconsider your values.

I caught up to Vicente. He greeted me and then asked, “Tell me again about your job, Alex.”

ME: I sell technology research services.

VICENTE: No, no, tell me more. Tell me, on a typical day, exactly what you do, from the time you arrive in the office, to when you leave in the evening.

I laughed, for of course I’ve done this to probably a hundred other riders on a hundred other climbs- get them talking to slow them down. But I was still feeling strong, and I was ready to take a break from thinking deep thoughts. So for the next 10 minutes or so, as we crested the final climb, I told Vicente all about my job, my day and my routine. FWIW I still don’t think he has any idea what it is I sell.

We regrouped up top and dropped the 5^th descent and longest descent, me sweeping again. At the bottom we joined into 5^th water trail and zipped down smooth S-curves back to Rays Valley Road. After the road, the trail passes through a gate-closed to both motorcycles and cattle- and suddenly the dust was gone. Weaving our way down the Juniper-lined trail through the suddenly-clear air, we sped down to our final stop- the Hot Pots.

All About Hot Springs

Given how important it is in our lives, it’s remarkable how little we think about the ground we stand on. In our short little snapshot lives the planet seems static, unchanging. But of course the planet is changing constantly, and glaring evidence for the change is all around us, in hills, valleys, mountains and plains, even (especially!) in highway road-cuts. But in our day-to-day lives we overlook these features, and generally think of the planet beneath us as, well, solid. Until we see something really weird.

Hot springs are really weird.

The furthest piece of land on Earth from Utah is the Kerguelen Islands. They’re a cluster of treeless sub-Antarctic islands owned by France, inhabited only by a crew of French researchers. If you started digging more or less straight down toward the Kerguelens, you’d get there in somewhere around 7,500 miles.

After your first few hundred feet, you’d notice that the rock around you was starting to get warm. By about 500 feet down, it would be a good 7 -9F* degrees warmer. By ½ a mile down, it would be almost unbearable- 35-40F degrees warmer than at the surface. And if somehow, someway you made it down to 50- just 50- of those 7,500 miles, you’d be sitting in molten rock at something like 1500F degrees. The Earth isn’t solid; it’s a superhot molten ball covered by a papery-thin solid crust.

*Calculations, conversion all mine, and may well be way off.

Side Note: It’s actually way more weird and complicated than that. By the time you get down to the Mantle, the layer underlying the crust, stuff is thought to be solid again, but acts- in the long term- sort of like a liquid*. Further down, the Outer Core is thought to be liquid, but then the Inner Core solid. Maybe. Anyway, whatever it is, it’s way, wicked hot.

*Know what else is like that? Glass, which I may come back to as a metaphor for perception-of-self in a future post.

Hot springs are some of the clearest, easiest evidence we have of this heat. Springs- of all types, hot or cold- are outlets for groundwater. Rainfall and snowmelt that doesn’t run off into streams and rivers percolates underground and settles in deep reservoirs or aquifers. As these aquifers fill, the water level and pressure within them rises. Underground rock contains various cracks and fissures, and where water finds and easy path through such channels, springs occur. If the reservoir is deep enough- and it gets to the surface quickly enough- it’ll be hot.

Some hot springs, like Warm Springs out the Snake Valley, are barely lukewarm, and make for a pleasant swim on a cool day. Others, like the famous pools in Yellowstone are hot enough to quickly scald or even kill an unwary visitor. But when spring water arrives at the surface between say 105F and 140F, it can be mixed with cooler surface waters and channeled into comfortable pools.

Actually it’s not that simple, because the Earth’s crust isn’t anything near uniform. In some places it’s thicker, some thinner, and when big plates of crust push up against each other the crust gets all crazy-mangled. Above ground that crazy mangling manifests itself in things like mountains, our own Wasatch an example of the crunching and buckling along the Wasatch fault. But underground things get twisted and convoluted and mangled as well, which means that oftentimes the places where big plates of crust push against each other are also places where “hot stuff” is closer to the surface. The classic example is the so-called “Ring of Fire”, the series of 400+ volcanoes ringing the Pacific crustal plate. And where “hot stuff” is closer to the surface, the likelier it is to be in proximity with underground water feeding a spring. What this means to us is that there are lots of hot springs in the mountainous Western US- particularly in places like Idaho and Washington and Oregon and California and even Nevada.

Utah has over a dozen “soak-able” hot springs, but none near as nice as the Fifth Water Hot Pots. In the 2 years since we last visited, someone’s made fabulous improvements to the site, including several deep, rebuilt/redesigned, attractive pools downstream from the main pools.

We soaked and kicked back in a couple of the deepest, switching between the hotter pools and the warm creek. The moon dust washed away, and when we climbed out I felt clean, refreshed and clear-headed. We zipped down the last three miles to back to the trailhead, alongside Fifth Water and then the larger Fifth/Sixth Water combined Creeks, my worries, tension and disquiet left- for the most part- scattered across the dusty hills behind.

5 New Summer Wildflowers, 3 Revelations About Me, and TdF-Related Shocker!

Ah, another great summer weekend. Racing, wildflowers, pool-time with the Trifecta and margaritas with the neighbors. Summertime does not suck. Lots to blog about, so let’s get rolling.

Sunday morning I did a nice, mellow Mill Creek mtn bike ride with OCRick. I hadn’t ridden with OCRick in a couple of weeks and we were both in the mood for something easy. Usually OCRick has zero tolerance for my stopping-and-checking-out wildflowers/moss/lichens/shrubs hijinx, but yesterday he was not only indulgent, but even encouraging, of my frequent stops. I attribute this to 2 reasons.

First, OCRick has finally figured out that frequent photo-geek stops have the side-effect of moderating my pace. I tend to be a fast climber on a bike, which sometimes means I set a faster pace than some of my friends- OCRick included- are entirely comfortable with. After 13 years of riding together, he’s finally figured out that encouraging my stops slows the overall climbing pace of a ride*.

*In marked contrast to UTRider, who figured out the same approximately 20 minutes into our 1st ride together, and cunningly loaned me his camera- as a substitute for the one I’d just dropped on the road- for the remainder of the ride.

But the other reason was that we were both beat. OCRick had just returned from a week+ combination mtn/road biking trip in Colorado and…

Tangent: OCRick (pic right), who did this trip while recuperating from recent knee surgery, managed to crash in Carbondale and received about a dozen stitches in his arm as a result. And this brings up probably the most remarkable thing about him*: out of all my circle of friends, OCRick has been to the emergency room at least 5 times as often as any of the rest of us. At age 63, his extremities are festooned with scars and held together with the help of several pins.

*Other than never reading my blog.

First Thing About Me

…and I was trashed from Saturday’s race, which brings me to the first- and only one of which I am proud- thing about me in this post. Over the last 2 weeks I mentioned my recent racing-category-upgrade to Cat3, and my ensuing self-doubts concerning both my ability and sanity in doing so. Saturday was my first Cat3 race, the Porcupine Hill Climb up Big Cottonwood Canyon, and I’m pleased to report that I did not embarrass myself: I placed 4^th.

Tangent: Because when you get right down to it, for us 99.99% of bike racers who never get anywhere near being pro, there’s really only one thing that matters- Not Embarrassing Yourself. That’s it. That’s all we really care about. Guys will tell you they like the camaraderie, they like being part of a team, they like challenging themselves, and maybe some of that stuff is at play too, but mainly we just don’t want to embarrass ourselves.

This leads me to ponder on the bizarre nature of hill climb-races. In a hill-climb, you just go up. That’s the whole thing; there’s a minimum of strategy or skill required. The experience is a little over an hour of pure suffering. This was my second year doing the Porcupine Hill Climb, and both years, around Silver Fork Lodge, I thought, “This is awful. I am so hating this. Why did I pay $40 to suffer like this?” But then you finish and everyone’s telling each other what a great job they did, and within an hour you forget how much you hated it and are already thinking about next year’s race. Why is that? Why does my memory suck so badly? Oh wait- I’m going to get to that in the second thing about me…

So anyway, back to the ride. The upper Mill Creek flowers right now are fantastic. Even if you know absolutely nothing about flowers, you can’t helped but be blown away up there right now. The trails are lined with touches of almost every color- white, blue, purple, yellow, red, pink- and every open meadow is just an explosion of color. It just doesn’t get any better than right now.

Many of the flowers blooming up there are flowers we’ve looked at already- Columbine, Wild Rose, Thimbleberry, Scarlet Gilia, Utah Sweet Pea, Chokecherry, Ninebark, Small-Flowered Stickseed, Indian Paintbrush, Sticky Geranium, Richardson’s Geranium, Showy Penstemon, Mountain Bluebells, Western Larkspur, various Arnicas, and so much more. But what’s really cool about riding in the Wasatch right now is that after almost 16 months at this project I can ride a trail I’ve ridden probably a hundred times and still pick out new wildflowers. In this post I’ll highlight 5 great ones I either hadn’t seen, or hadn’t ID’d before today.

Flower Number One

First up is one I’ve been looking for for a long time- Orange Mountain Dandelion, Agoseris aurantica (pic left.) It’s closely related to the “standard” Mountain Dandelion, A. glauca, which we looked at back on May in Round Valley, and in fact the 2 species sometimes hybridize. I’ve seen this guy in every flower guide I own, but never spotted it till yesterday, trailside up at the meadow on the saddle between Mill Creek and the Canyons at about 8,500 feet. This one is a stunner- it just might beat out Blue Sailor for my all-time favorite composite.

By the way, an interesting little anatomical thing (besides their ray-only flowers and calyx-parachutes which I explained last year when I blogged about “regular” Dandelions) about both orange and yellow Mountain Dandelions is that their “stems” aren’t really stems. They’re peduncles, which is technically the connecting stalk between the base of a plant and its flowers

Second Thing About Me

So many composites are yellow, one that’s not is really eye-catching. If you don’t pay close attention, yellow composites can start to run together. And that brings me to the 2^nd thing about me of this post, of which I’m considerably less proud, as it suggests that I’m inattentive, gradually senescing, or possibly even a little bit racist. But here goes: little blonde-haired children are all starting to look the same to me.

Twin B has 4 friends in the neighborhood. All are little girls, 7 or 8 years old, with blue eyes and shoulder-length blonde hair. And I’m starting to get them mixed up. It’s to the point now where I deliberately avoid using first names (“Hey there!” “Hi kiddo!”) because I’m afraid of making a mistake. Of course this could be attributable to my previously-blogged-about dismally low Dunbar number, but I sometimes wonder if there’s some strange sub-conscious race-recognition/categorization thing going on.

I grew up in a place where blonde kids were fairly rare. Oh sure there were blonde kids around, but they were maybe like 1 out of every 10 or 15. But here in Utah it seems like 4 out of 5 little kids are blonde. And because I didn’t grow up around so many blonde people, well, sometimes, when I’m tired, or had a couple of drinks, they all look the same to me. Is it racist or something to admit that? Oh boy, I feel terrible just writing it. I probably just lost a bunch of (probably blonde) readers. Well, all I can say is, it probably didn’t freak you out as much as the next/third revelation of this post will, which is a Total Blasphemous Shocker.

Flower Number Two

The second flower is considerably less spectacular, but one I’ve pedaled by countless times before finally knuckling down and IDing yesterday: Large-Leaf Aven, Geum macrophyllum (pic left). It’s all over the place between 6,000 and 7,500 feet, low to the ground and easy to ignore. It’s not spectacular but it’s so common that it falls into the I-really-need-to-know-what-this-is category. This little guy has an impressive range; it occurs all over Western North America, from Alaska to Mexico, and it’s yet another member of the fabulous Rose family. It belongs to that first subfamily I blogged about in the monster-long Rosaceae post I did last week, and so is more closely-related to things like Wild Rose, Raspberries or Thimbleberry than it is to say Serviceberry or Chokecherry. A good clue for this guy is its distinctive leaves (pic right).

Side note: “Aven” is a tricky name. It’s most often used for plants like this guy, which is part of the Geum genus. But it’s also used for plants like Mountain Aven or Drummond’s Aven, which belong to the genus Dryas, and are part of a completely different subfamily of Rosaceae, specifically the Cliffrose-Mountain Mahogany group.

Flower Number Three

The third flower is also yellow, but it’s a total looker: Common Yellow Monkeyflower, Mimulus gutattus (pic left). Like Penstemon (and Toadflax), Mimulus is part of the Snapdragon family, and the flowers are obviously similar in form. But in Monkeyflowers, the “face” is the showiest part, whereas the “tube” of a Penstemon flower is considerably longer than the “face” is broad. There are about 20 species of Monkeyflower in the Intermountain West, more than half of which are yellow. And there are all sorts of varieties of M. Gutattus, so this group can be a bit confusing. But there are at least 2 cool things about this flower. First, all Monkeyflowers have hinged stigmas at the ends of their styles. If anything touches it, it closes. But- and here’s the cool part- if it closes on anything other than pollen from the same species of Monkeyflower, it re-opens in a few minutes! Even cooler, it will re-open if it closes on its own pollen, meaning from the same plant, whether the same or another flower!

Side Note: Supposedly this is easy to see later in the summer, as the petals and stamens fall away, leaving the style exposed. I’ll be on the look-out for it.

The second cool thing is that over the last 60 years, Mimulus has been one of the most intensely studied plant genera. It includes tremendous variation, with different species adapted to deserts, mountains and even aquatic environments. It includes both annuals and perennials, herbaceous forbs and woody shrubs, diploids and polyploids, and best of all, it has a small genome, making it well-suited for genetic study. Anyway, even if you don’t care about that stuff, it’s got those cool red dots inside its “throat.”

Flower Number Four

Three down, two to go. This next guy is another in the category of “small, unspectacular, but I see it all over the place, so should get my act together and ID it." It has a cool name: Leafy Jacob’s Ladder, Polemonium foliosissimum (pic right). It’s a perennial, so you’ll see it in the same spots from year-to-year. Polemonium includes about 25 species and is part of Polemoniaceae, the Phlox family, and the various phloxes we saw early in the season in the foothills are the things we’ve looked at most closely-related to it.

Now here’s the interesting thing about Leafy Jacob’s Ladder: If you live in Colorado or New Mexico, or other stretches of the Rockies, you may be saying to your self, “Hey wait a minute- Jacob’s Ladder is blue!” And mostly it is. But here in Northern Utah, almost all of our P. foliosissimum is of the subspecies var. alpinum, in which the flowers are white. So if you fall out of an airplane in the night in July between San Francisco and St. Louis, and wake up* in a Mountain meadow and want to figure out if you’re in Utah or Colorado, check out the color of these flowers.

*OK I grant that it would be extremely unlikely that you would in fact, “wake up.” But it is possible. This, right here, is my absolute favorite falling-out-of-a-plane story. Seriously, how amazing is this?

Third Thing About Me – The Shocker

OK, I saved the best flower for last. But first, I need to deliver on my aforementioned third, shockingly blasphemous self-revelation. I hesitate to share this, knowing that a good portion of my readers are cyclists, and fearful that this will alienate me from them forever, but I just have to come clean. I can’t keep living a lie. Here we go:

I don’t watch the Tour de France.

That’s right. I- an avid cyclist, epic mountain biker and Cat3 road racer- do not watch the Tour de France. I don’t know what stage it is* or who’s wearing what jersey now or who’s shooting up what. Of course I admire the racers and the event and tradition and all, but I’m just not that interested in watching. Here’s the deal: I am the World’s Worst Sports Spectator. I don’t watch the Superbowl, the World Series, the NBA Playoffs** or the US Open. I’m just not interested. Part of it is probably that I come from a total non-sports-watching family, but I think an even greater factor is that I am fundamentally and inordinately self-involved; if I’m not playing, I don’t care who wins. You know, there’s 2 good tangents here:

*I think it’s either Alpes d’Huez or Omelette du Fromage…

**It’s the “Playoffs” in basketball, right? Or is there some other big event I’m missing?

Tangent #1: One of the absolutely weirdest things about me is that I am at all athletic. The rest of my birth-family is like an advertisement for poor fitness and lack of coordination. My Mom (who was and is pretty much the Best Mother Ever) always dutifully asks me about my races. She’ll ask how I did, and then ask the distance. And here’s the great part- whatever distance I tell her, say 80 miles, she’ll scream “Oh My God!” as I if I just told her I had paddled a canoe across the Pacific or derived a Unified Field Theory. The idea that someone could pedal- much less race- a distance on a bicycle that would take longer than 15 minutes to drive in an automobile is utterly incomprehensible to her.

Tangent #2: OK, so you think I’m a whack-job because I don’t watch the TdF. But can we at least agree that sports fandom often borders on complete lunacy? Here in Utah, the most bizarre rivalry is the football rivalry between the U. of Utah and BYU. Grown men- even old men- get phenomenally amped up about these games and their outcomes, which of course involve… a bunch of 20 year old kids throwing an oblong ball around. The fans profess to hate the other school and all it stands for, as if they were Jews and Arabs fighting over the Golan Heights. Which is odd because both schools are largely composed of… white, mainly Mormon, kids from Utah.

This wacky fandom extends to the Tour. All kinds of people tell me how they record and watch the Tour nightly, which is all well and good, except that many of these people- who react incredulously when I confess I don’t watch it- are people who pretty much never ride their bikes. They’re like, ‘What? You’re not watching the Tour??”” And I’m like, “Well I’ve been busy doing stuff- like actually riding my bicycle.”

Phew, good to get that off my chest. Well, if there’s a still a reader left who hasn’t clicked away in revulsion or disgust, I’ve got a great flower for you. Check this out:

Flower Number Five

It’s Case’s Fitweed, Corydalis caseana, ( pic right) and it’s a member of the Poppy Family, Papaveraceae (and in fact I think it’s the first member of this family I’ve blogged about since the rare Bearclaw Poppy, which we saw last Spring down in St. George.) Its flowers are unlike any others, with 2 white outer petals flaring out at the top, and 2 reddish-purplish petals nestled inside, joined at the tips. This species is pretty rare in the Wasatch- and in Utah in general, and occurs most often streamside in PLT forests between 7,000 and 9,000 feet, which is exactly where you can find it in Upper Mill Creek Canyon (see map above), along the Great Western Trail (pic below, left).

It’s called “Fitweed” because of its effects on sheep and cattle. Although they find the foliage tasty, the plant contains the alkaloid Bulbocapnine (diagram below, right), which is toxic to livestock. Late in the summer the fertilized flowers will transform into inch-long seedpods, which will burst explosively to scatter their seeds.

There were at least 3 other new flowers up there I could’ve blogged about, but well, you need to stop reading now and start composing your TdF-related hate-mail. But I am telling you, this week is spectacular up there. Make sure to check it out.