Rolling Boulders Down Cliffs is Just the Beginning
I came here for the mountain biking, and got taken in by the pickleball cult. I even dusted off my old Diplomacy box game.
Cards, disc golf, walking the neighborhood, hiking. trash pickup.
I needed a spare bike. What if my bike got injured? What if I had a friend? What if an existential crisis over the need of every biker for n+1 bikes overtook me?
When we first moved down, we stopped off in Rocky Point to pillage the house for any and all things that might be useful in Baja, and I didn’t want to simply give to renters. It filled and SUV, inside and out. I stuffed in an EZ-Up, a beach tent, beach toys, a bocci ball set, yoga mats, plastic hangers, liquid soap, extra iPhone charges, pepto-bismo, a cooking wisk, a cutting board, a vacuum, old towels, a whale vertebrae, and my 2010 Salsa Mukluk fatbike.
The fatbike has yet to be used, but in time I am sure it will. I think I may drop it downwind on the beach for the inevitable inumerable times I will kite without yet knowing how the heck to tack upwind. Its a glorious, elegant idea I have not yet seen expressed on any kite-surfing forums. At least I can be competent at self-shuttling.
I knew I need a guest bike. G would visit, friends from home would visit, friends in town would need a loaner for their friends which would surely come back to me in good karma.
When I got divorced, my Ex and I divvied up our art. I shed so many things that were not essential, but the art I slogged from my apartment to my rental house to my new home. Art is an intentional statement toward expression and identify. When a 13 year old hangs a Nirvana poster on their wall, even if they never heard of Kurt Cobain of “Come as You Are” (which is so much better than “Smells Like Teen Spirit”) its a line in the sand of self-identification. I read a book called “Untangled” when my girls were growing up, and one of the most important lessons I took from it was to let the girls try on different identities as they were shedding their dependencies and becoming self-aware. And so it is for adults and art.
And so it was that I got tired, disgusted actually, of the art I bought with my Ex. I wanted to shed it like my daughters wanted to drop the baggy Stone Temple Pilots t-shirts for tank-tops and cargo pants. I priced most of it out for selling on the secondary market. I might, maybe, have made $400 for 5 pieces. On the other hand, my Ex was hanging on to some tools and bikes that I knew she probably hated. They were probably rotting in her head like the art I held onto was rotting in mine. Out of no sense of warmth or kindness, but purely out of predatory transactionalism, I offered her the art back for my mountain bike. And an air compressor and bike workstand. I knew she was locked in acquisition bias out of her hatred for me and need to win every trinket from the divorce back, and I relished the dramatic transformation to a seller’s market. I take particular enjoyment in knowing I got the far better end of this deal, and she will gnash her teeth thinking of me everyt ime she looks at the art just like I did.
I got my 2012 Kona HeiHei back. I missed this bike. I bought it in 2009, an early but not first-gen 29er. In 2011 the frame cracked, and Kone replaced the white frame with this awesome silver and orange look. I also bought a 2011 Pivot Firebird, so for six more years split time on this 100mm travel rocket and the 160mm slinky. I put 1000s of miles on this bike. Endurance races, overnights, it was predictably snappy and fast and exceptional on Arizona terrain.
In 2017 I bought its successor, an all-carbon Pivot 429, and the HeiHei became the extra XC mountain bike . The third cat in the cat hierarchy. It didn’t get ridden much, and even before the divorce was the target of my Ex’s complaints and grumbling.
Originally published: January 30, 2026
Last updated: July 4, 2026