Where Water Buffalo Roam

Yesterday was a reminder of why it pays to stay stubborn and keep the soul happy by tackling objectives that seem lofty.  Alycia and I woke up at 3:30am and drove down to the Tushar Mountains. A range I’d heard about but not yet explored. At 8:00am I lined up for Tushar Crushar, a 70 mile gravel road bike race with 10,000 feet of elevation gain. Most of the course hovers at 8,000ft and the finish was up at 10,600ft. The race starts in Beaver, Utah, the same town Butch Cassidy grew up in.   I raced on a borrowed one speed bike I’d ridden twice. Hard as the course was, riding with one gear in a place I’d never been brought me back to those youthful days of riding my BMX bike around Hollywood Hill where I grew up.  If it’s steep you have to pedal harder, if it’s flat you cruise, and down hill always means coasting. The Tushar Mountains are the third highest mountain range in Utah. The range is polka dotted with alpine lakes, lichen covered granite walls, and tight aspen groves a

Salmon Run: exploring the Elwha River Valley January 2017 By Andrew Fast There was a time when we were cowboys, sailors, and natives living in a world of vastness that started at the edge of my driveway. The great density of adventure lingering like a low hanging fog on the bay behind my grandparents house on the Puget Sound or as palpable as wind on the tent wall of our family camping trips.  Loading up an aluminum flat bottom boat with snacks and abecedarian spears made of grandma’s old silverware on the end of a broom handle, we’d point the nose upstream against an outgoing tide.  Shirts tied around our heads, one man standing on the bow scouting for fish and the other at the stern.  Tilting the prop to clear the shallows and leaving the blade flaring loud like a long tail boat in Southeast Asia. It was our Mekong River. That was back when folks gave boys of eight or nine as much freedom as they could take.  So we would take it all.  And later, tucked in and topped