Sometimes preparation is all about what you leave behind

In one way or another, we all want to become better cyclists. At the same time, we also want to have more fun on the bike—with the possible exception of triathletes, because if you love riding your bike, then why would you want to run away from it afterward?

Of course, the cycling media has no shortage of tips for how we can better our riding experience, but most of these tips also involve spending lots of money. Either that, or you get to keep your money just as long as you make yourself miserable in exchange. This is the basis of the entire cycling industry: when presented with a choice of doing intervals or spending $2,000 on a new wheelset, the vast majority of riders will opt for the former, and an elite group of wealthy masochists who look like they sprang from a Rapha ad will do both.

Fortunately for you, the best ways to improve your overall cycling experience are both inexpensive and enjoyable. Here are some tips to ensure you never have to read an in-depth article about exactly how many eggs you should be eating at breakfast ever again. 

Don't Carry More Than One Water Bottle

I think I first picked this up from the excellent book A Dog in a Hat, by Joe Parkin. In it, he explained that the old-timey Euro pro sensibility is to only ride with one bottle in order to encourage café stops and that you should only carry two bottles when you're actually racing.

This immediately rang true for me. Think about it: if you take $100 out of the ATM before hitting the bar, what happens? You spend $100. Isn't it smarter to take out $60 so you don't overdo it? Of course it is.

Same goes for riding bikes. A single water bottle on your downtube is a great way to help you pace yourself and think ahead. In fact, I've even gone so far as to take the second bottle cage off some of my bikes, and the effect of adopting this approach was two-fold:

1. It did indeed encourage me to stop more often, which in turn made the ride more enjoyable and kept me better hydrated than if I'd been sipping warm fluid out of a plastic bottle.
2. It saved me like 700 grams, which is the equivalent of like $2,000 in upgrades. Unfortunately I then went and blew the $2,000 I'd saved at the bar, but that's something else.

(And yes, obviously this approach doesn't work if you have no place to stop for water, so if you live in the desert and you think this tip is irresponsible, here's another one: Don't take things you read on the Internet too literally.)

Don't Carry Food

Given my success with the one-bottle philosophy, I then extrapolated what I'd learned to carrying food. In short, don't do it—at least not all the time. Why? Because, again, stopping is good for all the reasons listed above, and the food you eat wherever you do stop will probably be more nourishing and enjoyable than whatever crap you stuffed into your pockets. (If it's not, you need to plan your rides better.)

Plus, when you ride without food, you're more inclined to have a good hearty meal before heading out in the first place. This is important, because some people have pretty wacky ideas about nutrition. For example, did you know there's something called "fasted riding?" It's true. The idea is that if you head out on an early stomach in the morning, you will improve your fat-burning metabolism. Incredibly people consider this a training technique, when it is in fact quite clearly an eating disorder.

If You Do Carry Food, Carry Regular Human Food

As is the case with water bottles, obviously sometimes carrying no food with you is simply unrealistic. I get it. After all, not everybody lives in an area full of cyclist fueling stations where they can clomp around in cleats sipping lattés and lifting each other's bikes. ("Wow, so light!" "Yeah, I removed a water bottle!") Plus, while it's nice to stop, sometimes you just don't wanna.

What you can do, however, is spare yourself the liquid diet (and spare everyone else your flatulence) by carrying actual real people food. Slurping up packets of energy goop like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly is no way to live, and anybody who gets excited about the latest flavor of gelatinous cube or pre-packaged ersatz waffle has become disassociated from his or her palate in a way that is, quite frankly, disconcerting.

Oh sure, this stuff may be portable and easily consumable on the bike, but nature solved that problem eons ago with something called "nuts." If the company that makes your cycling fuel has the word "labs" anywhere in its name, then stop, go back inside, and make yourself a sandwich. Or, if you insist on eating a science experiment, at least consume a successful one like gummy bears.

Systematically Downgrade Your Components

Cycling is about making the most of your energy, and as such we're constantly waging war against excess weight, wind and rolling resistance, and of course that most dreaded of enemies, bottom bracket flex. (Yes, somehow a microscopic amount of bottom bracket flex is supposed to be a meaningful factor on a bicycle equipped with pneumatic tires.) The problem is that we tend to confuse natural exhaustion or our own inherent suckitude with all of the above, which can send a false signal to the brain that it's time to spend money on an upgrade. Even worse, upgrades only lead to more upgrades, and before you know it you're buying $165 "race-day-only" chains and sending them out for customized lubing.

To combat this, systematically downgrade components whenever it's time for a replacement. The truth is that if you ride a decent bicycle it's pretty difficult to find genuinely shitty parts for it, but it's way too easy to spend too much for no reason. The key to downgrading is to ease yourself into it; I've been working my way down from the pinnacle of self-delusion (Campy Record, at my worst) for years now, and as I finally reach the supposedly "entry-level" groups, I can assure you I've never been happier or enjoyed better performance.

All those high-end refinements ultimately work their way down anyway, so stay ahead of the tech curve by remaining resolutely behind it.

Austin Horse on working as a courier in the age of apps

Some would describe zipping in and out of Manhattan traffic on two wheels as suicidal. Austin Horse, a Red Bull–sponsored bike courier (yes, that is a real thing that Red Bull sponsors), thinks it’s romantic. “Being a bike messenger in New York City is intoxicating,” he says. “To get paid to ride with a purpose is pretty remarkable.”

Horse worked at a bike shop throughout high school and often helped the messengers who came in. After stints of firefighting, working on a fishing boat, and campaigning for Ralph Nader, he moved to New York to pursue his dream of cycling around the city for a living. Horse made a name for himself in the local alleycat scene, a series of unsanctioned street races created by bike messengers and designed to mimic a typical messenger route. He compares the races to scavenger hunts on two wheels. “Alleycats get back to the heart of being a courier, when you really had to know your city and you couldn’t just punch an address into your smartphone,” he says. In 2007, Red Bull took notice of Horse and sponsored him. But the three-time North American Cycle Courier Champion and two-time Cycle Messenger World Champion isn’t just riding for messenger bags (the typical race prize). Horse is also using his bike as a platform to raise awareness for causes like health care reform and cyclists’ rights.

Age: 35
Job: Bike messenger for Clementine Courier
Home Base: Brooklyn. “I love the history and energy of the city and that feeling of possibility. Sometimes it can be a frustrating place to live, but that’s also part of why you stay.”
Bikes: “I alternate between my All-City Macho King cyclocross with disc brakes and my Brooklyn Machine Works Gangsta Track fixed gear.”
Helmet: Lazer Z1
Favorite Bike Lock: “The Abus Bordo is so versatile. It can fit around any pole.”
Favorite Messenger Bag: “R.E.Load, a messenger-owned company out of Philly, makes the best bags. And my friend Rob Nelson, of Mer Bags in Brooklyn, makes me a lot of super custom bags.”
Winter Essentials: “I swear by Gore-Tex Outdoor Research gloves.”

On Getting Started: “This is one of the most egalitarian jobs you can have. You don’t need any education or certification. Just don’t be a jerk. I tell people starting out to buy a smartphone and a fixie. The first company I worked at I found through an ad in the back of the Village Voice. Today, a lot of companies have messenger apps, like Caviar and Street Stream, to churn out couriers, kind of like Lyft or Uber.”

Hours and Pay: “Generally, riders work for one service, and that service has a number of clients. If you’re not busy, then you’re not getting paid. Some services, particularly food-delivery apps, pay an hourly rate, like $25 an hour. But historically messengers get paid commission, and that’s often $10 to $20 per trip. Some services pay a better percentage if you’re more reliable. As you get better at the job, you do more work. New York City has a bigger zone than any other major city, so you ride a lot more here. I work 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. and ride anywhere between 25 and 60 miles in a day. But starting out, before the Red Bull sponsorship came along, I worked crazy hours, like 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.”

Making Ends Meet: “Back in the old days, messengers could buy a house with their earnings, but I don’t think that’s possible just on a messenger salary any longer and definitely not in New York. Cargo work has a lot of money to be made, and if you get a sweet food-delivery situation, you can really make bank off the tips.”

His Workspace: “In movies, the dispatch office always looks like this old-school New York City hole in the wall with bulletproof glass. We’re in a co-working space. The new economy has won. We drink coffee for free and at the end of the day hang out and drink beer.”

Most Heroic Delivery: “My most epic delivery was a super-rush job for a client whose father had just passed in Bellevue Hospital. He called to say the family was en route to see him one last time, but his dad’s dentures were in his apartment in Stuyvesant Town, and he wanted the family to see him for the last time with his dentures in his mouth. I had to race the family to ICU but got the dead man his dentures before the family arrived.”

Strangest Delivery: “An enormous jack o’ lantern for Wendy Williams.”

Urban Bike Pro Tip: “Never lock your bike to scaffolding. It might seem like the scaffolding has been there forever, but one day it’s going to come down, and when it does, your bike is going with it.”

Favorite New York City Road: “I always show someone new to New York the Park Avenue Viaduct, which goes through the Helmsley Building. The first time I rode it, I thought it was so cool that you could ride through a building.”

Pet Peeve: “Cyclists who stop in the crosswalk.”

Taking Home the Prize: “We have this tradition in the messenger world that we kind of took from the rodeo, where the rider gets a prize saddle. Well, the messenger gets a prize bag when you win a race. You get to wear it to the office the next day and look like a badass.”

Silent, Speedy Statement: “Earlier this year, I road from NYC to DC, ghosting my late messenger friend who died from a preventable medical condition that he couldn’t treat because he didn’t have health care. Ghosting is when you pedal your bike and hold onto the other bike alongside you as you ride. The ride took me three days. I’m going to do it again in October but ride to Albany to spread the message for affordable health care.”

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Whether you’re gym-averse, looking to track your latest vert, or trying to perfect your swim form, the right app can help you reach your training goals, says Los Angeles–based personal trainer Mike Donavanik. But with countless options hitting the market every day, it can be hard to find the right fit. We want you spend your time training and playing outside, not scouring the app store, so we picked Donavanik’s brain for the best options that meet outdoor athletes’ needs. Here are his seven picks.

To get strong and lean without picking up a weight, use this app, Donavanik says. It creates personalized 10-to-30-minute bodyweight workouts, pulling from a library of more than 140 different exercises. The routine is based on how often you want to work out, your performance goals, and your fitness level. After each workout, the app analyzes your work and adjusts future training sessions accordingly.

Although not a traditional training app, FitRadio’s music and remixes keep the outdoor athlete dialed in when they’re cruising on singletrack or pushing the pace during a tough uphill climb. Input your planned running/cycling/climbing cadence ahead of time, and the app will suggest playlists to keep up. “There’s nothing worse than being in the zone during a run and having a super-slow-tempo song come on and mess with your momentum,” Donavanik says.

Yoga is key for boosting mobility, recovery, and core strength, but it’s often neglected by outdoor athletes who spend most of their time logging big miles. This simple follow-along app makes getting started so much easier, Donavanik says. “All you need is the download and an exercise mat.”

Strava remains one of the best tools to track your training on a per ride/run basis and from a more meta perspective. It provides real-time feedback on pace, distance, and elevation gain and maintains a record of all your previous efforts. To bring out your competitive side, the app creates public leaderboards for local loops and straightaways, plus monthly challenges for you and your community.

It’s not designed for outdoor use, but the MoonBoard indoor climbing app can improve all your trips to the crag, Donavanik says. Use it to explore, sort, and filter thousands of climbing problems. Sync it to any LED MoonBoard (found at many local climbing gyms) to see the problem illuminated on the wall. You can also save your favorite problems and connect with other climbers for group training sessions.

Discover, rate, and save more than 50,000 trail maps around the world with AllTrails, while gaining access to info on difficulty, special features, and user reviews and photos. The app also gives you driving directions for getting straight to the trailhead—perfect for staying fit on the road where you’re less sure of your surroundings.

“A lot of people hear how great swimming is for fitness and health, but they have no idea how to create a workout around it. This is a great solution,” Donavanik says. MySwimPro gives structured swimming plans and video demos to help you build from the ground up.

It takes more than a pack of toothpicks to feel fresh and clean on the road

The reality of travel toiletries can be pretty grim: tiny shampoo bottles, brittle bars of hotel soap, products unceremoniously confiscated from your carry-on by airport security. Here are six travel essentials that will see you through your trip.

Malin and Goetz Essential Kit ($30)

This kit is a significant upgrade from generic hotel shampoos and soaps, but it’s complete with everything you might usually find yourself without on a trip, including cleanser and lotion. What Malin and Goetz does best are natural scents like bergamot and cilantro, an elegant comfort that can help obviate the stresses of travel.

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Neutrogena Face and Body Sunscreen Stick ($9)

Let this stick live in your suitcase and you won’t have to spend the first day of your vacation getting sunburned. Bonus: The small solid stick won’t get confiscated by airline security.

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Minisoak Detergent ($6)

Minisoak is an exceptionally easy to use no-rinse detergent you can use in a sink. All you have to do is wash your clothes with one of these sachets, squeeze out the water, and then air dry. Most of the low-suds soap comes out of your clothes along with the grime, and the rest simply evaporates. It’s also a great tool for washing delicate fabrics at home.

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Ursa Major Essential Face Wipes ($24)

Soaked in a face tonic that makes it easy to feel clean, these individually wrapped wipes are perfect for degunking your face after a long sleepless night on an airplane. A quick cure for “travel hangover,” they also save time that you might have spent heading to your hotel for a shower and have an herbal scent that gently masks airport and train station smells.

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Vitaman Lip Moisturizer ($19)

Do not be fooled: As simple as this minty lip balm may appear, it’s actually an incredibly versatile product. Thanks to the mildly antiseptic ingredient called pawpaw, Vitaman’s lip balm is perfect for minor scrapes and burns and helps soothe irritated skin, cracked knuckles, and, of course, chapped lips.

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Spray ’n Wash Stain Stick ($3)

Most of the time, the Tide-to-Go pen is a miserable failure. This stuff, meanwhile, has all the power of spray stain removers but in a solid, travel-friendly form that looks like deodorant. The trick: Apply it to a stain, let it sit for a day, and then rinse it out in a sink.

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There’s possibly nothing more therapeutic than going into the woods solo

For the last week, I camped alone in the high mountains of Colorado. It might sound weird or misanthropic to go camping solo, but I’d prescribe it every time over antidepressants or a shrink.

My wife, Jen, had to return to Santa Fe for physical therapy following a second surgery on her infernal broken arm. I probably should have gone with her for moral support—and to do things like slice bread, put the toilet paper rolls in the dispensers, and button her shirts, all of which are about as fun without your dominant hand as writing a journal entry. But in truth, her injury has made the last two months for us a study in co-dependency, to the point that I wasn’t sure if Jen was more tired of her broken arm or of me. I took it as a sign that we needed a break when she said she’d happily eat tortillas, leave the TP on the floor, and go topless around the house in my absence if need be.

I had an over-the-counter elk tag in Colorado, which for weeks I’d assumed I would not be able to get away and use, so I loaded my gear into Artemis the Airstream and set off north, guilt gnawing at me all the way. Are you a bad husband if you abandon your injured wife, even as she’s sighing with relief as you roll away?

A smug-looking horse and its trailer had appropriated our favorite spot on Cumbres Pass when I arrived, so I had to find a new place to park. On a previous visit, Jen and I glanced a couple other possible sites up a ropey dirt road, which looked good but also tight for turning a 23-foot trailer. Artemis and I charged straight up that abraded path, a move that I knew Jen never would have agreed to make without first taking the bike up to scout. She is the voice of caution—or reason, depending on perspective—and we usually come out better for it. But after months of surgical planning and maneuvering, I was exultant to be in the driver’s seat. Jen and I probably make the best decisions when we make them together, our personalities and impulses a solid counterbalance, but one of the great freedoms of going alone is the autonomy to act as you wish.

Camping a week by myself was, as always, an act of returning to the bachelor state. I am a fastidious person, perhaps to a fault, so rather than head out in search of elk that first night, I set up and double-checked my setup, downloaded emails and dealt with work, re-sighted my bow, and basked in the quiet of a long sunset and no commitments. This is one important difference of camping solo: there is no distraction, for better or worse, from where your mind moves. Want to sit and glass through the binoculars at those distant elk until it’s too dark to see? That’s precisely what you do. Want to skip dinner in favor of a bourbon? That’s your prerogative.

But on a hunt, you still must wake at 4 a.m.

And so it went: rise in the dark, chase the faint bugling through the surge and fall of dusky mountains, get on elk and pass or fail because they’re not right or you aren’t, sleep in the middle of the day, which is a great luxury that we humans seldom afford, return to camp well after dark. Then repeat, day after blessed, restful day.

Artemis makes a perfect hunting lodge for one. While she has plenty of space for two, it can get tight when you add in unwieldy packs, bows, and muddy boots. The slop and wet is also easier to manage alone, and since I was in mountain Colorado during the monsoon, I spent several afternoons huddling from the storms over a good book and a coffee. This was a Zen mountain retreat, silent and simple.

While Colorado’s mountains are stunning, thanks to the influx of immigrants come for the industry and the marijuana, as well as the ease of getting over the counter hunting tags, it does not offer the lonely isolation I’m spoiled by in New Mexico. One morning, after leaving Artemis by headlamp two full hours before sunrise for a promising spot six miles back, I found another hunter sitting in the exact rocky crook from which I’d intended to glass and call.

That afternoon, I loaded provisions for three nights on my back, locked up Artemis, and grunted a dozen miles into the wilderness. I wouldn’t see another human till I returned to the trailer. I set up my tent on a grassy, hoof-etched bench at 11,500 feet that made a bed more soft and silent than any high-end mattress. That night, I slept better than I had in months, waking only once to the eerie shrieks of a pack of nearby coyotes. I clambered out of the tent to hear better and, cuddled in my sleeping bag for warmth, eventually faded back to sleep in the wide open under the wan light of the sickle moon.

Jen and I have hunted elk and deer together for years. We have slaved over hauls and been fortunate enough to fill our freezer each season. Yet alone, it’s a different experience. You move more like wildlife, where the wind and hoof tracks and energy take you, not where you collectively decide to do go. Creeping through dew-damp forests, listening for the whisper of a bugle for guidance, lying prone in a sun-swamped meadow of high-alpine wildflowers and feeling the mountain wind on your face—I’ve done all that with Jen in the past, but alone it feels more visceral as you sink completely into the experience without constantly checking in. 

If you don’t hunt, you may not appreciate the nuance of chasing through dark timber and learning the land on your own. But you might fathom what it means to come home and be so exhausted from tramping up and down precipitous hills littered with deadfall that you appreciate a partner to make coffee and a bacon scramble burrito—or have a partner whose tired appreciation for you making that breakfast outweighs your fatigue. While I savored the solitude of my wilderness respite, I also lamented not having company to share the moments. That’s the other nice thing about time alone: it fortifies you for the work ahead and makes you appreciate everything your partner adds to your daily experience. 

At the end of the week, when I returned from the deep woods to the Airstream, the road was snot slick with mud from the rains, and I only barely extracted Artemis, fishtailing nauseatingly down the eroded track. Jen never would have gotten into such a predicament. The pavement and the promise of returning to my regular schedule brought an exhalation of relief. Being alone and fully responsible for every detail is rewarding and important, but it is also demanding. As the first globes of rain detonated on the windshield, I drove away from the graphite storm clouds that rolled down the pass and toward my waiting life.

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Human society is made possible by rules, both written and unwritten. Yet there’s no such series of concrete, accepted rules for dog owners, and that’s becoming a problem.

Take my experience this past weekend. In need of a quick getaway, my girlfriend and I booked a room at the Kimpton Goodland, in Santa Barbara, California, with our two mutts. All Kimpton hotels are incredibly dog friendly, which makes the boutique chain a unique resource for dog owners. There’s no extra deposit or fees for dog owners, and the pups are allowed anywhere in the hotel. (Except for the restaurants.) It’s a unique opportunity to enjoy a nice hotel with your dogs. But this weekend, even we were annoyed with the behavior of other dog owners. Dogs locked in rooms unattended barked persistently. Owners let their small untrained and unsocialized pets bark at other guests in the lobby and hotel bar. Some took their dogs to the poolside lawn for bathroom breaks. 

Of course, Kimpton, and other dog-friendly businesses, has some basic guidelines for dog owners: pay for any damage the dogs cause, pick up after them, keep them under control. But rules like that are both vague and extremely basic. There’s no further instruction on how to behave in public with your dog from dog owner organizations like the American Kennel Club. While the AKC offers a Good Canine Citizen certification to the dogs themselves, it offers no guidance for owners. 

If we want to be able to take our dogs into more hotels and businesses, and if we want to be welcome in public places and in general get along with the rest of human society, then us dog owners need a rulebook—an agreed-upon set of behaviors that will allow us, as a community, to better share our limited resources and to interact with the non-dog-owning public in a way that’s positive for everyone.

This is my best effort at setting those rules down in writing.

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Not only is this one of the few dog owner rules that’s written in law, but it also infringes on the rights and wellbeing of people with genuine disabilities. Taking your emotional support animal into a business or claiming that your pet is a service dog when it’s not is a violation of federal and state law. Here in California, for instance, that action is punishable by six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

An exhausted dog is a good dog. Providing your dog with significant exercise, appropriate for its size, age, and breed, is the best way to ensure its behavior. An adequately exercised dog will appear calmer, make less noise, and be less reactive to other dogs. Always give your dog ample exercise before taking it to a public place.

If you’re going to walk a dog on city streets, take it to businesses, or visit public parks, then you need to make sure your dog is able to be around other dogs while remaining calm, friendly, and under control. If a dog is fearful or aggressive, it is not welcome in public.

We are only as strong as our community. Contribute to it by being polite and patient with other dog owners, even if their dog is experiencing problems. Help them if they are in need. Do not be fearful of others’ dogs, or assume that yours is unique or deserves special treatment.

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Due to health codes, dogs aren’t allowed inside restaurants, and other places that make or sell food. They may be allowed on restaurant patios and inside businesses that don’t serve food. But it’s impolite to assume your dog is welcome. Rather than simply walking right in, stop outside the door, look for any signage that may indicate whether or not dogs are welcome, then catch the attention of an employee and ask permission to bring your dog inside.

Allow your dog enough slack in its leash that it may walk, sit, or lay down immediately by your side, no more. Not only do loose leashes represent a tripping hazard, but other customers may not welcome the presence of your dog. 

Whenever you’re not moving around a business, your dog should remain seated or lying down. This demonstrates control on behalf of both the dog, and the owner, and works to put other patrons and business employees at ease.

It’s rude to ask other people to squeeze past a seated dog or step over one that’s laying down. Keep your dog under your seat or table, or against a wall, away from foot traffic.

It is normal and expected for a dog to occasionally bark or whine. But it is invasive and annoying for a dog to continue to make noise after it is asked to stop. If you are unable to stop your dog from making noise, leave.

If you have a small dog, it may seem convenient to place it in your lap. However, this puts the dog in close proximity to table tops, counters, and seating surfaces used by humans, and is considered unsanitary and impolite. Have your dog sit or lay on the floor.

Other people visiting the business may not welcome the presence of your dog. If you are seated in close proximity to other patrons, or if someone does not appear to be comfortable with your dog, ask their permission before bringing the dog into their space.

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Even if your dog has never before been a problem barker, being left alone in an unfamiliar environment may cause it to persistently make noise.

Your dog needs regular opportunities to go to the bathroom, and you should ensure it does so outside the hotel, in areas that aren’t used by other guests, such as lawns on the parking lot perimeter. Ornamental landscaping and poolside grass are not acceptable places for which a dog to relieve itself on.

Kept on leash, in a confined area, dogs who are otherwise friendly may display defensive behavior. In hallways, on patios, and in other hotel areas, allow other dog owners plenty of room to pass or be seated in their own space.

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Once in the appropriate, off-leash portion of a dog park, all dogs who visit should remain off-leash. Dogs get along better when unleashed, and the mixed presence of on- and off-leash dogs often leads to aggressive behavior. If your dog cannot behave off-leash, you should not visit a dog park.

See above. Some dog owners need to remain in on-leash portions of public parks and that need should be respected.

Keep an eye on your dog, and clean up after it. If possible, also clean up any unclaimed poop.

Dogs like to run, jump, bark, and wrestle. Dog parks are safe places for them to do all that, and are a necessary resource for many owners. Be tolerant of a dogs’ need for exercise and play, and leave if you are uncomfortable.

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Dogs should remain on-leash in areas where it is required. These trails are frequently busy, and used for multiple purposes, so leashes are required as much for your dog’s safety as they are for other people’s comfort. If you want to take your dog off-leash, visit a trail where doing so is permitted.

Hiking with your dog may take place within a city park, where you should bag the poop, and carry it to a trashcan, or it may take place several days into the backcountry, where you should just make sure the poop is off the trail, and away from campsites and water sources.

Keep your dog within range of your voice and sight, and recall them before you have a problem with other animals, or other people.

Keep your dogs out of other people’s campsites. If other trail users appear uncomfortable with your dog, recall it, and have it sit next to you while they pass. Be especially careful around horses.

Even in remote wilderness areas, you may encounter situations that put your dog in danger, or where it needs to be leashed temporarily for the wellbeing of others, or the environment.

Weather, terrain, wild animals, and other factors can quickly make the outdoors dangerous for both owners and dogs. Scale your activities in proportion to your experience, and make smart, conservative decisions about your dog’s safety.

Masters Athlete

The Ultimate Gravel-Grinding Buddy Trip

What two longtime BFFs won’t do to make more memories, courtesy of their Frankenstein bikes and Rebecca Rusch’s epic, painful, 100-mile Idaho adventure ride

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Oct 12, 2017

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Oct 12, 2017

What two longtime BFFs won’t do to make more memories, courtesy of their Frankenstein bikes and Rebecca Rusch’s epic, painful, 100-mile Idaho adventure ride

“A little public-service announcement,” declares off-road riding legend Rebecca Rusch, also sometimes known as “the Queen of Pain.” My childhood buddy Adam Willner and I lean in, along with perhaps 200 other cyclists. We’ve each traveled many hundreds of miles—I’ve come from Texas, Adam from California—in the name of two-wheeled adventure and affirming 40 years of friendship on this September weekend. Tomorrow we’ll ride an off-road challenge, which Rusch unabashedly calls Rebecca’s Private Idaho (RPI). The particularly masochistic, century-length option that we’ve chosen is appropriately branded the “Big Potato.”

Standing at the foot of a pretty Idaho meadow, Rusch faces a gathering of RPI participants who’ve opted to attend the Saturday pre-ride. We’re taking a break halfway through the 20-mile, out-and-back workout, and Rusch is bent over a beast of a road bike, and giving welcome guidance. Adam and I, and no doubt many in the helmeted tribe all around us, may know plenty about cycling. But the two of us can talk a sliver of nothing about the form of riding known as gravel grinding, which we’ll be doing, for many hot and dusty miles, within 24 hours. We’re grinder rookies, and we’re learning that, in the simplest of terms, gravel grinding is road riding on everything but road.

“It’s a lot more secure and safe to descend in your drops. You’re all tucked in,” says Rusch, flexing her forged arms so that she can wedge her hands into the curves of road-bike style handlebars. The bike underneath her has, for a road-type bike anyway, supremely fat and knobby tires, as well as disc brakes. All standard gravel-grinding fare. “If you’re descending up here on washboards and going super-fast?” she says, tapping on the tops of the handlebars. “You have a lot more opportunities to come off.”

Rusch says that the final, bumpy, 1,500-foot, dirt-and-dust descent ahead of the finish lacks a guardrail, and that the drop-off is sometimes 1,000 feet. 

“You know, it’s narrow,” she adds. 

Welcome to the kind of stupid-great adventure that two young-thinking but old and nostalgic pals might embark on. RPI, which is in its fifth year and climbs over 5,000 feet across nearly 94 miles through south-central Idaho’s Pioneer Mountains, initially felt far more doable and digestible to a couple of bike-loving friends than, say, a weeklong Ride the Rockies. Adam and I figured that we’d frame a bro weekend in Idaho’s mountainous Ketchum and Sun Valley terrain around RPI. When we weren’t on our saddles, we’d kick back at the condo, or feed at some oft-Yelped, quaint eatery. On the continuum of BFF reunions, we thought that this one would lean closer to a spa weekend than to Deliverance.

But then the gravel reared its head.

A day earlier and on Adam’s and my first Idaho ride together, we’d loaded up on a Mexican lunch, pulled on spandex, and grabbed our bikes. We agreed to pedal at an easy pace on one of the many dirt roads leading from town and then… we suffered. Our lungs, which live a lot closer to sea level than Ketchum’s 6,000 feet, groped for oxygen. Our 52-year-old legs felt wooden on a climb that didn’t ease much over 10 miles.

The worst, however, was yet to come. The last time I’d descended miles of dirt on a suspension-free bike, the Berlin Wall remained upright. Even in the 1980s, I was still riding dirt on a truly fat-tired mountain bike. In Idaho, on the other hand, I was on my new, rugged aluminum cyclocross bike, which I’d fitted with oversize tires and extra-low gearing, specifically for RPI. A mechanic at my local shop called my ride a “Frankenbike.” It was expensive, too. But hey: Can you put a price on lifelong friendship?

Frankenbike, cyclocross bike, whatever—the dirt-road descent seized up my shoulder blades and hands. My ligaments and muscles shook like dice in a cup. Adam, on his new carbon-fiber gravel grinder, fared no better. By the time we reached pavement, I felt that a couple of aging athletes were about 20 years too late for the moment.

A day later, and with Adam and I still smarting, Rusch concluded her public service announcement by telling us and the rest of the pre-ride crowd to rest up ahead of tomorrow’s RPI. Rather matter-of-factly, she told us that if we wanted to be Big Potatoes by day’s end, we’d need to suck it up.

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Persistent shoulder pain or no, I still felt overwhelmingly happy. The love and understanding of an old friend is one of life’s most glorious intangibles. You can’t put a metric on, say, the soothing feel of cool dew meeting bare feet on a crisp morning. Or how great it is to watch your dog go legs-up on a patch of grass, and zealously roll and roll on its back. 

The same kind of joy comes from a friend gently laughing at you when you get frustrated—as you did in his company 35 years ago while you were traveling abroad together, when he watched as you pushed back on a prickly inn-keeper over the money spent for a dumpy room in Brixton—because you’re burning through all the zip-ties while wrongly fastening your racing chip to your bike fork. Doesn’t really matter that you’re no longer a teenager. 

“Drew, it’ll be OK,” he says with a chuckle as I fume over a job poorly done. “We’ll get more zip-ties back at the packet pickup tables.”

Adam is gray-haired but still ever cheerful, with a round, unlined face that defies the weight of life encountered by so many of us in middle age. Adam also looks about as lean and strong as he did when we met as freshmen at San Francisco University High School back in the fall of 1979. And where he once was an entrepreneurial restaurateur who only occasionally found time to ride, Adam and his wife, Marta, are now nearly empty nesters. Over the last decade he’s gone from cycling enthusiast to mileage monster while thriving as a father, chef, and host. In 2017 alone, my friend has ridden three organized 200-mile rides. 

I’ve been riding since I was 18, and my three oldest friends in the world have each been part of the journey. In my early 20s, I toured across Europe with Dave Rosenthal. I raced bikes all over the west with Peter Wood in my 30s and 40s. Now on a brisk Idaho morning in summer 2017, Adam and I were about to pile more stories onto a friendship that already included memories of high-school parties, weddings, births of children, and celebrations of families and careers. Adam and I fasten our helmet straps before walking out the condo door.

Glorious intangibles. Adam’s cleats click into place, and I watch as my longtime friend takes his first pedal strokes toward the RPI start line.

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Soon, after almost 1,000 riders bow their heads in downtown Ketchum for "America the Beautiful," I do what any compulsive, longtime, self-important bike racer does: I drop all the riders that I can, including my best friend. The four-mile dirt climb up Trail Creek Road near the start of RPI plays to my scrawny frame, and my often short but intense training. Adam, whose natural bulk steered him to play lacrosse in high school, still has 40 pounds on me. 

“Hey, Texas,” Adam says as he comes up behind me, two-thirds of the way to Trail Creek’s 7,800-foot summit. “Nice riding.”

Even though we haven’t hatched a genuine strategy for RPI, Adam and I both understand that the day’s priority is to take on the ride, and the bumps and dirt and heat, together. Sure, some participants race RPI. Former Tour de France rider Ted King is among RPI’s entrants. No doubt he’s already many miles ahead of us.

The top of the climb brings several rewards. At the pass a huge and beautiful basin inside the Sawtooth National Forest, which includes broad peaks, open grassland, and clusters of evergreens, lays ahead of us. Maybe best of all, the endless bumps and ripples of the Trail Creek climb give way to extended stretches of smooth and fast dirt.

Adam looks over his shoulder as I push myself to stay on his wheel. Clearly he’s enjoying the flat and rolling terrain. “Like pavement!” he yells, and for maybe nine miles we often find ourselves grouped with other riders and riding roadie style. We draft, and take pulls leading others.

We also owe some gratitude to our tires, or more specifically our tire pressures. Gravel grinders obsess over tire firmness the way Taylor Swift sweats shades of red lipstick. Too much air in gravel grinder tires and you’ll feel every pebble. Too little and you might flat, as the tire deforms on big hits and either pinches a hole in your tube or perhaps, on tubeless tires, causes a sidewall to tear. But get the air pressure just right and a fat gravel grinder tire provides a happy blend of speed, traction, and shock absorption. Adam and I had picked up some intel during the pre-ride: run our tires at 30 to 40 pounds per square inch (PSI), which represented a lot less air than we’d used for our first two days of Idaho riding.

RPI is going great—our legs humming, our asses and hands retaining sensation—when, about 35 miles into the ride and on the thick gravel of East Fork Road, the ride gets better. None other than Rusch latches onto our group of eight.

“That a way, ladies, looking strong,” says Rusch to the four women among us. She’s all smiles under her Red Bull helmet. “Keep rotating off the front.”

Rusch is chatty, pulling out of the slipstream in order to ride alongside me. Only one of us fights for breath as we talk, and it’s not the woman who owns a first (female) ascent on Yosemite’s El Capitan, once raced for top international adventure-racing teams, and has won the Leadville Trail 100 MTB (100-mile) mountain-bike race four times during a career as an outdoor athlete that has spanned decades.

“Several years ago, one of my sponsors told me: you have to go do this event in Kansas,” says Rusch, referring to gravel grinding’s iconic race, the Dirty Kanza 200. “I thought, that sounds heinous. I’m a mountain biker. That will be death by boredom.”

But Rusch loved how the 200-mile race meshed the demands of riding on- and off-road. She’s now won the DK200 three times. “The technical aspects of the uneven surfaces felt a lot more like mountain biking than road riding,” she says as my bike steers nervously and only semi-straight through 50 yards of deep gravel. “Someone couldn’t just ride in a pack and then outsprint you for a win.”

Rusch brought RPI to her adopted hometown of Ketchum in 2013, and precisely because she’s the Queen of Pain, Rusch believes that she’s attracted a disproportionately large chunk of female riders (about 30 percent). It’s also no accident that gravel grinding in general and RPI specifically (average race age: 46) bring out many older athletes who are a lot like me and Adam: aging riders who don’t always want to tangle with traffic or with hard-charging pelotons in Gran Fondos or road races. Instead we’re finding fun riding squirrelly road bikes over dirt, while trying to win one more bout of rider-versus-the-elements.

RPI remains fun even after Rusch is long gone, and Adam and I are a little more than halfway done. Then I get a flat.

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What does a real friend do when you’re hot, dirty, thirsty, and watching your new, $55, tubeless front tire that had been filled to exactly the right PSI continue to seep goopy sealant, and air, courtesy of a sidewall tear? He pumps. He pumps like a madman.

“Drew, maybe we can keep it filled long enough to reach the next rest stop,” says Adam, his whole body moving like a piston in time with the hand pump that’s breathing a little life into my tire. “I don’t think we’re terribly far away.”

My shoulder blades had already been tingling for a while, and my hands were tired. An uncomplaining, salt-stained Adam can't be feeling much better. I don’t know how he’s able to pump so furiously. 

“OK, bud. Thank you,” I say, lifting my leg over my bike’s frame. “Let’s try it.”

Slowly and now literally feeling every seam in the dirt, Adam and I creep for miles before we reach the aid station. When we leave, my mortally wounded front tire is now armed with a tube, with an empty energy-gel wrapper acting as a liner at the place of the tear. In the hopes of reaching the finish line, the tire now has the qualities of a taut balloon: it’s extra-firm in order to best avoid flatting again.

For several miles of riding over washboard road and sloppy gravel, the Frankenbike resembles a jackhammer. Nerves in my neck and upper back feel like they’re aflame. I quietly throw myself a pity party. This is the dumbest fucking sport ever, I say to myself. What fool rides 100 off-road miles on a bike that’s as stiff as an I-beam?

A short while later, I notice that Adam is slowing. He keeps changing gears, which likely means he's searching for a pedaling cadence that will deliver less pain to his legs. He drinks a lot from his bottles.

Now my friend needs a friend, and that notion thoroughly invigorates me. I catch Adam’s eye and point to my rear wheel. As instructed, he lines up his bike behind mine. 

The road rolls up and down. The gravel goes from soupy to nonexistent to soupy again. Bumps come and go, pickup trucks pulling fifth wheels cover us with more Idaho dust, and two exceptionally large deer—maybe they’re elk, honestly we're too tired to tell—sprint across the road just ahead of us. The final, 1,500-foot, dirt plummet back to the outskirts of Ketchum is insultingly painful, a true violation of my body’s connective tissue best handled by—yes, Rebecca Rusch—staying low in my handlebars. Adam regains strength and takes the lead, and after seven taxing hours, we finish what we’d started. We are "Big Potatoes," and only two-and-a-half hours behind winner Ted King.

In Ketchum, Adam and I unfold our bodies off our bikes, and soon thereafter, drink beer and eat grilled cheese-and-bacon sandwiches. Then we eat hamburgers and fries. Then we buy two pints of ice cream.

“You know, I thought about Advil a lot,” Adam says back at the condo, between spoonfuls of our cold and creamy, salted-caramel reward. “I mean, that descent was not comfortable, or fun. It wasn’t scary so much as something to just endure.”

He swallows one more bite of ice cream. “But weren’t those some great views?” he asks. 

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John Steinbeck said that there’s only one story in the world, and we tell it over and over. If you live in a resort town, that story is about the lack of affordable housing, which leaves no aspect of the community untouched.

Consider, for example, composting.

Many restaurants compost food-waste in and around Aspen, where I work. But not everybody does it. In one location, a guest asked a manager: “Why don’t you compost here?” The manager responded: “You may not be aware of this, but my business had a severe labor shortage this year—region wide, we were down 60 employees. Composting takes labor. If we were fully staffed, we’d be able to do it no problem. But right now we don’t even have enough cashiers.”

Why the labor shortage? It turns out that employers can’t house their workforces. The ski company I work for is short some 600 beds alone, even after spending tens of millions of dollars on housing. Workers apply for jobs, realize there’s no place to sleep, and move on.

Let’s dig deeper. The person who asked about composting is likely part of what I’d call an “old school” environmental community that practices preservationism—of small town character, of land, and of history. She almost certainly also opposed recent efforts to increase density—read: affordable housing—in our town in the name of, you guessed it, protecting the environment.

This worldview is widespread. Mountain communities are often run by environmentalists from 40 years ago whose thinking has not kept abreast of the development in their hometowns. They champion stasis over change, open space over density, and consider development evil. They hate crowds—even though crowds are the foundation of the entire resort economy. “The only thing they hate more than sprawl,” an architect told me, “is density.”

Parts of Aspen look like they did decades ago, with Victorian houses and big, lovely parks. There are, however, no people in those houses (often second, third, or fourth homes), and a long line of traffic every morning and evening as people forced to live downvalley, where real estate is cheaper, end up commuting 20, 30, and even 50 miles to work.

There’s nothing environmental-friendly about any of this. The long commute creates pollution. It blocks guests from the ski hill. It wears out the road. It’s the exact antithesis of all the ideas Aspen was founded on—about renewal and escaping from the world.

I don’t mean to pick on Aspen. All resort towns—from Jackson to Telluride to Crested Butte to Conway—experience the same challenges. Ditto for Aspen’s down valley neighbor, Basalt, where I serve on the town council. “But we don’t want more people in town!” a local radio host told me once. Residents, who mostly make decisions based on what will affect their property values, vote along those lines every time.

So what’s the fix? For one, we need to embrace density.Basic urban planning principles offer some solutions. Build infill housing in the urban core, or at least within the urban growth boundary, along transit routes. Make it dense, which means small units that go up instead of out. Change codes to allow for smaller houses, which are more affordable (Carbondale, Colorado, just eliminated minimum house size requirements) and enable mother-in-law units with occupation requirements.

There are gnarlier answers, too. Proposed legislation in California would get rid of zoning restrictions around transit hubs in bigger cities, making it easier to build thousands of new units near bus stops and train stations. You can see how this would scare residents concerned about community character. But it was their unwillingness to plan ahead and accommodate others that led to the crush of housing in the first place.  

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not advocating for totally unrestricted growth. The goal isn’t to “let everyone in,” as people fear, or exceed carrying capacity. It’s for communities to be able to house their workforces. In doing that, we should respect urban growth boundaries and oppose unmitigated sprawl. But we must also welcome changes to our towns and understand that nothing living gets locked in time.

How do we get to the above solutions? The short answer is that we need a civics revolution, whereby younger citizens—the very ones who need housing—or enlightened elders either run for office or amp up pressure on those already in power. We need to bring to the table something missing from American politics: a commitment to the community over self interest. We need a new YIMBYism—Yes In My Back Yard—versus the current NIMBYism. We need to learn again how to live together. 

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Hammond Canyon is a stunning green meadow flanked by white sandstone towers in what, just yesterday, was Bears Ears National Monument. The remote canyon, home of the Three Fingers Ruin, is an archaeological hotspot, but it does not fall within the new Indian Creek or Shash Jáa national monuments, which President Donald Trump created Monday with a disputed use of the Antiquities Act. White Canyon, Valley of the Gods, Grand Gulch, Cheesebox Canyon—pending litigation, these areas all lost protection when Trump sliced nearly 1.15 million acres off Bears Ears.

“You cherish Utah’s gleaming rivers and sweeping valleys. You take inspiration from its majestic peaks, and when you look upon its many winding canyons and glowing vistas, you marvel at the beauty of God’s creation,” Trump told a friendly audience at the Utah state capitol. “And that’s why I’m here today.”

The President then proceeded to sign executive orders opening up such vistas to mineral extraction. His proclamations chopped up Bears Ears, and replaced Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument with three smaller monuments—Grand Staircase, Escalante Canyon, and Kaiparowits. Combined, the boundaries preserve one million acres, down from 1.9 million that were protected by the original 1996 declaration. Oddly enough, in shrinking Bears Ears, protection of which was instigated by Native American leaders, Trump painted himself as a champion of American Indians.

“We’ve seen how this tragic overreach has prevented many Native Americans from having a voice on their sacred lands, where they practice their most important ancestral and religious traditions,” Trump said. The line elicited applause from the mostly-white audience.

A day prior to Trump’s announcement, I toured Bears Ears and met with Mark Maryboy, who kickstarted Utah Dine Bikeyah’s push to protect the Bears Ears region when he began surveying tribal elders about sacred sites in 2010. “Total ignorance,” he said of Trump’s approach to the national monument. “No respect for Native tribes, for Native American people across the country.” Jonathan Nez, the Navajo Nation vice president, put it even more simply in a Monday press conference after Trump’s announcement: “What happened today is a slap in the face.”

Maryboy and his Dine Bikeyah team began considering formal protection for the region about eight years ago. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke came to the decision to shrink Bears Ears after just 45 days. In shrinking the monument, Trump could negate unprecedented tribal collaboration, the first indigenous-led national monument designation, and an expression of tribal sovereignty.

In response, the five nations that supported it will respond in a fashion Utah’s tribes are quite familiar with: Lawsuits.

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The creation of Bears Ears was an unprecedented act of diplomacy. When a legislative push failed in 2016, Utah Dine Bikeyah took its proposal to the elected leaders of the Navajo, Ute Mountain Ute, Hopi, Zuni, and Northern Ute tribes to advance the idea to then-President Barack Obama.

“You talk to somebody from another country, it’s complicated,” says Shaun Chapoose, an elected leader of the Northern Ute tribe and member of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition. “It’s the same thing when you get this many tribes together. We have histories. Good relationships, not so good relationships. This collaboration should be celebrated.”

The tribes’ historical link to Bears Ears proved powerful enough to overcome those differences. Their ancestors lived there at least 3,000 years ago, and the desire to save an estimated 100,000 remains, artifacts, and other cultural sites united a diverse coalition of nations. When Obama designated the monument in December 2016, he included a requirement that a tribal advisory group help manage the monument. As a result, Bears Ears garnered support even among tribes that lacked a direct connection to this corner of Utah. Garon Coriz, a doctor from Richfield, Utah, and member of the Santo Domingo Pueblo tribe, grew up hunting in the Bears Ears region, and continues to climb and backpack there. “With Bears Ears … there’s a whole cultural dimension to the landscape. It was acknowledged by the tribes, and fought for by the tribes.”

With his Monday proclamation, Trump has followed a consistent pattern in U.S. history: the federal government making a land-management promise to Indians, only to later renege. “I wasn’t surprised,” Chapoose told me in November, shortly after news broke that Trump would modify Bears Ears in some way. “The history of the relationship between the federal government and states and tribes has always been based off of lies, broken promises.”

The role of tribes in creating and managing the monument has been seemingly ignored by both Trump administration officials and Utah politicians. Orrin Hatch, the Utah senator who pushed the Trump Administration to change the monument boundaries, previously said, “The Indians, they don’t fully understand that a lot of the things that they currently take for granted on those lands.” This flies in direct opposition to Obama’s proclamation, which mentions traditional hunting, firewood harvesting, and herb gathering. (The only access curtailed was for future grazing and extraction.) Yet notions of a bureaucratic choke-hold on the land proliferated in Trump’s Monday address. 

In fact, the only regulation monument proponents sought was protection for the 100,000 ruins and artifacts in the area—which have been incessantly looted—and the ecosystem that sustained those who left the artifacts behind. “There were Anasazi ruins and artifacts all over the place,” says Mary Benally, a Utah Dine Bikeyah board member. “My family said to leave those alone—those are the people who have already been here. Leave it to them.”

Monument opponents have repeatedly been framed as disaffected locals overpowered by the federal government, but that ignores the Navajo residents who advocated for the protections. There’s precedent for this in San Juan County, which is approximately half Navajo. Tribal members, often led by Maryboy, a former county commissioner, have had to file suit over school-district measures, access to ambulances, and other county-provided services. Pervasive gerrymandering has ensured a majority-white commission for decades.

To combat Trump’s action, the tribes will do what they’ve been required to do in San Juan County for years. A series of lawsuits filed by tribes, outdoor retailers, and environmental groups in the coming days will argue in federal court that the Antiquities Act doesn’t allow a president to modify national monuments. The lawsuits won’t just seek to clarify the Antiquities Act; to those being represented, they will serve as a statement of tribal sovereignty and communities flexing greater political influence.

“No matter what happened today, history was made,” Chapoose said of Bears Ears. “Five sovereign nations worked together, and saved this land for the benefit of the American people. And that attitude of cooperation will save this monument.”

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In the spirit of “energy dominance,” President Donald Trump lavished gifts on the extractive industries over the holidays. The Trump administration finished 2017—a year that saw the shrinking of two national monuments and the general favoring of private industry over wild lands—with an anti-environmental bang.

For example, at the end of December, the Interior Department eased the offshore drilling safety rules put in place following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which killed 11 people and released 3.2 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. That action could have impacts beyond the Gulf; on Thursday, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced plans to open up the majority of both the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines to oil and gas companies.

That wasn’t all. The Trump administration was busy over the holidays, so here’s what else you probably missed.

In 2015 the Bureau of Land Management issued tighter guidelines for fracking on federal and Native American lands. The goal was to prevent groundwater contamination, because the fracking process shoots a chemical-laden solution into the ground to crack fissures in the rock. Among other things, the guidelines required operators to receive BLM permission before fracking, provide information about their water source, disclose chemicals in their fracking mix, and test the cement-lined wells to ensure they wouldn’t crack during the process.

The BLM scrapped the rule on December 29, citing the president’s earlier executive order to remove burdens on the energy industry. Lawsuits by extraction-reliant western states and industry groups prevented the 2015 rule from ever being implemented, and in repealing the rule, BLM essentially sided with those plaintiffs by saying it lacked authority to impose such restrictions.

In general, regulators have struggled to keep up with the fracking boom over the past two decades. And by announcing this rule repeal, the BLM made clear that it feels state and tribal regulations are enough to prevent groundwater contamination, even though there’s evidence to the contrary. The BLM also calculated that rescinding the 2015 rule would save oil and gas operators almost $10,000 per well in compliance costs.

Energy development is hard on birds. Each year, approximately 175,000 of the animals collide with wind turbines, 750,000 perish in oil-waste pits, and some 25 million die on power lines. Since 1918, the Department of the Interior has used the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) to prosecute energy firms that don’t take precautions against wanton avian injury. Federal circuit courts have come to different conclusions on whether companies can be held liable for accidentally killing birds. Further legal clarity won’t be coming anytime soon, though, because the Trump administration has decided not to prosecute these types of cases.

Interior Department Deputy Solicitor Daniel Jorjani decided on December 22 that the MBTA doesn’t prohibit the accidental killing of migratory birds. He reasoned this by saying that “the phrase ‘incidental take’ does not appear in either the MBTA or regulations implementing the Act.” This means corporations will face prosecution only if it can be proved they killed the birds intentionally.

Jorjani has deep ties to the Koch brothers, and his opinion would have real consequences for oil and gas producers. After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, for instance, BP pleaded guilty to violating the MBTA and paid $100 million to the North American Wetlands Conservation Fund. If a similar oil spill took place today, such a payout wouldn’t occur—BP didn’t release all that oil to intentionally kill birds, so the feds wouldn’t hold the corporation liable.

Jorjani’s pre-Christmas work extended to a controversial mining lease that borders Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. In December 2016, the Obama administration opted not to renew a Chilean mining company’s leases, which were necessary for a proposed underground copper-nickel mine. The Interior Department also imposed a moratorium on all new mines in the area while the U.S. Forest Service conducted a two-year study on the environmental impact of such projects. Jorjani, however, said the Interior Department lacked the authority to deny this lease, opening the door for further extraction near the Boundary Waters.

Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of Chilean mining titan Antofagasta, says the leases would provide 650 jobs and operate for 30 years, but others worry that the mine would squander the blossoming adventure-based economy around the Boundary Waters. Interior’s legal opinion doesn’t immediately green-light the mine, and the BLM and the Forest Service have pledged to continue the environmental impact study.