The Big Kid.

In early October, J came for a visit. Back in March, he packed his little red Toyota Matrix full of everything he owned and headed south and east, to Austin. It reminded me of when I left Missouri with my little red Toyota Tercel loaded with all of my worldly possessions. Like father like son, apparently.

He flew into Seattle and spent a couple days with his mom and her family before jumping on the Amtrak out to Wenatchee. To kick things off, the plan I concocted for us was I'd pick him up at the train station downtown at 9pm and we'd drive a couple hours into the North Cascades to crash in our van at a trailhead. Then get up bright and early the next day for a fifteen mile out-and-back climb to the top of a mountain before driving home. Seemed proper and I knew he'd be game.

J hasn't spent much time in the North Cascades. When he was eight, we went down to the Sierras for the first time and got hooked. So we spent every summer since spending a week down there. Before that addiction, J and I did a trip together when he was seven years old. K and I took him to the top of Trapper's Peak when he was twelve on a scouting trip for a climb I led back in my days with REI. He of course was part of our wedding in the Enchantments, but that's technically more central than north Cascades. There's a difference. The North Cascades are just, maybe summed up in a word, epic.

I wanted to show him epic.

At just shy of nine thousand feet, Black Peak stands tall amongst the mashup of mountains where the glacier-clad western peaks and granite eastern crags come together in the North Cascades. The summit is a walk-up with a couple of exposed, spicy moves twenty feet below it. I thought J would appreciate both, the unique vantage point Black affords and the little bit of spice required to stand on top. My own motivation was I've been to Black Peak many times, but hadn't yet stood on the summit. This would be fun.

It was a chilly night in the van. Below freezing outside. We were up just before the sun. After coffee and a quick breakfast, we were off in the early morning light. The only bother was I was struggling with an upper respiratory thing I couldn't seem to kick (thanks preschool!). I was motivated to get to the top, breathing be damned. We took it slow. Ish. At one point we were passed by a guy who wasn't. He was running up and down the route we were climbing. Impressive. 

After some concerned hacking and wheezing on our climb above Wing Lake, I committed at least to getting to the col for the view it would give J. Then reassess. Once there, my cough calmed down and I was stoked to keep going. Up.

It was a straightforward route to the ledge where we found the couple of moves needed to make the summit. There were options along the way that seemed to appeal to J. I shared with him how straying off route by simply picking a way up that seemed to go could end up putting us on even sketchier terrain. It's an important lesson. We found the correct notch and he led the way to the top. The moral: stay on route.

Then, we were on the summit.

Coincidentally, a few days prior K and I were staring at Black from the little spot where we spent our ninth anniversary. The two lakes we climbed to looked small and indistinct from Black.

After spending maybe twenty minutes on top, we reversed the couple of moves and started our descent.

Back again at the col above Wing Lake, I captured a pano of the eastern North Cascades.

Then some additional photos as the afternoon crept on and we made our way back to the van. The larch were late in turning this year and still not their full, incandescent yellow.

On our way home that evening, we stopped for pizza in Winthrop. It was a good day in the mountains with that kiddo.

Next on our list was to have him help see if we could make a hydraulic dropper post I picked up at a used gear shop for thirty bucks work with my new-to-me-last-year mountain bike. It seemed it would, so I splurged another twenty bucks on the bleed kit in order to install it.

Backing up a bit, for the longest time I had been riding this mountain bike. A Novara Ponderosa, circa late 90s that I coincidentally also picked up for… thirty bucks. It's a classic.

Then, last autumn our neighbor bought a new bike and offered to sell me his old one for a couple hundred bucks. Built in 2006, it's not new. But it's a good decade newer than that ol' Pondo. After taking it out for a test ride and being genuinely impressed with the upgrades it offered (namely, disc brakes and full suspension) I handed him over some cash.

Not surprising, it turned out this Gary Fisher guy was a sort of legend in the bike world. This bike was a few grand when it was new. Still, it's nearly two decades old and archaic compared to modern mountain bikes. Whatever, I don't go out that often. In the used gear shop when I came across that end-of-season clearance RockShox Reverb dropper post, I thought it'd make another good upgrade. J scoffed at the hydraulic design, fairly stating a cable dropper post would be the way to go. Also, whatever. I'm not into spending much coin on bike stuff and would be stoked just to have the option of dropping my seat on descent. Differing opinions aside, we got to work.

It began with having to drill into the frame. The Reverb is meant to be internally-routed and, well, my bike certainly pre-dates cables run through the frame. So we drilled.

I had a bunch of grommets leftover from our van build so we placed one of those on the cable and got it situated. Threading the cable through the grommet required removing the nipples of the trigger and the post.

Then reinstalling and bleeding the hyrdaulic fluid. Like brakes, it's actually a pretty straightforward procedure. Now working at a bike shop in Austin, J has done it many times.

After some fiddling with the trigger adjustments, we got it working. Boom. It's pretty sweet, I'm not gonna lie. Thirty dollars was a good price.

In between that, J was treated to a sight of the Northern Lights while he was here. It was a nice display. Just certainly nothing to what we experienced back in May.

Also, we of course went out a couple days to ride mountain bikes. J had shipped his new bike from Austin so he had to get some proper use out of it while staying with us for a week. I took him up to a great area, Sage Hills, a bit above town. It was a ton of fun.

In between all of that, we made wood-fired pizza, played "The Train Game" (umm, Ticket To Ride), and saw "The Wild Robot" in the theater (highly recommended, the animation is beautiful). Then, a week after he arrived, I took him bright and early back to the train station so he could catch a ride over the mountains. As always, it was great to see him.