Day 35 of rain

Date: Oct. 17
Mileage: 24.6
October mileage: 337.7
Temperature upon departure: 41
Rainfall: .13"

There actually have been breaks in the weather this month - big, beautiful holes sky that occasionally remind the skeptic in me that there is a great emptiness beyond the crushing ceiling of clouds. But as soul-lifting as these weather breaks have been, none of them have been long enough to encompass a 24-hour period between midnight and midnight. And so the rain streak continues. Day 35:

I woke up late, finished a quick succession of sprint intervals up to Eaglecrest and took advantage of the fact I was on a mountain bike to practice my plank riding. Wet wooden planks are my worst nemesis, whether I'm on bike or foot ... even the crampons on the bottom of snowshoes don't seem to prevent me from flipping butt over back on the slippery surface. So I made a few runs on a quarter-mile-long section of planks across the Nordic park. During the snowless season, it's better known as "Slowly Sinking Bog."

Despite my trouble with them, planks are great practice for becoming a better rider on technical singletrack. You have no choice but to keep your (very thin) line. When the planks made a 45-degree turn to the right, I tried the same. When my back tire slipped off the "trail," I had a split second between that horrible slurping sound and the moment I had to put a foot down to pray that this particular mudhole was not a keeper. I nearly lost a bootie in one.

More moisture in the forecast this weekend. There's not much I can do about it, except pray for snow.

Stuff

My new sleeping bag arrived in the mail. I was thrilled. I carried it to the bedroom and pulled it out of its stuff sack, watching in wonder as it self-inflated to a mass only slightly smaller than my bed. I tugged at the industrial-strength zipper and crawled inside. It was there, enveloped in a mountain of down, that I basked in the afterglow of consumerism. I congratulated myself on my shrewd eBay shopping - well, lucky happenstance - that netted me a nearly brand new, relatively rare product for less than half its retail price.

Beads of sweat started to form on my neck as I slipped deeper inside the bag. Buyer's remorse was beginning to trickle in. What was I thinking? What was I planning to do with this thing? Good deal or not, how could I go and spend more money on a sleeping bag than I did on my first mountain bike? I'm a cyclist, for crying out loud, not a mountaineer gearing up for a solo summit of Kangchenjunga.

I have never been the ideal American consumer. It's rare that I buy any non-food item that isn't either secondhand or heavily discounted. My closet is stuffed with hand-me-downs from my little sister, who is eight years my junior but has eighteen times as many clothes as I do. It's not that I care all that much about money. It's just that I've never cared too much about stuff. I had a built-in Alaska mentality long before I moved here. I like things to be functional, not frilly. I like things to be burly, not beautiful. I like to condense and consolidate. If I truly believed there was a bike out there that could fit all of my wants and needs, you can believe I'd only own one bicycle.

My camera is a good example of this aspect of my personality. It's survived the full brunt of impact in a 20 mph mountain bike crash and endless hours in my waterlogged pocket. Its picture-taking capabilities, however, are about what you'd expect in a low-end digital camera. It is the only camera I own. My friends have asked me, "You seem to really enjoy photography. Why don't you get, you know, a real camera?" ... A real camera? You mean a camera with a highly focused, fragile lens and 100x optical zoom that will spend all of its time sitting in a protective bag inside my house while I thrash and trash my Olympus during my adventures? Yeah, no thanks.

However, I'm worried that my paradigm may be shifting. I seem to have succumbed to the mad impulse to spend! spend! spend! I own all sorts of stuff now that would have made the Jill of five years ago spray Pepsi out of her nose ... a cramped little bivy sack, a snow bike that's worth more than my car, GPS technology I don't even understand, enough neoprene gear to assemble a decent scuba suit, and now, a -40 degree sleeping bag ...

All in the name of the reckless pursuit of wilderness. I may be turning into a good little consumer. Or, more likely, I may just be on the slow train to crazy.

Eaglecrest, twice

Date: Oct. 15
Mileage: 34.6
October mileage: 313.1
Temperature upon departure: 43
Rainfall: .45"

I am very lucky that I don't have a coach to breathe down my neck and assault me with numbers and statistics and myriad equations to prove that I'm not trying hard enough. My imaginary coach is irritating enough, especially now that she has an odometer and GPS and my bad habit for reading training blogs to back up her claims. She hovers over my shoulder, chanting witless mantras such as "Go! Go! Go!" "I ... am ... doing the ... best ... that I ... can," I huff back, sometimes out loud, for emphasis.

My imaginary coach always backs down. I live with my guilt. I embrace my freedom. I adapt. When road interval training turned out to be a hideous exercise in breathing through an unmitigated runny nose, I took the intensity workouts indoors. I can run just as hard on an elliptical trainer, and while I'm recovering, I read books. I've burned through three so far this month. My current subjects of choice are nonfiction about Alaska mountaineering and dogsled racing. I am learning tons.

Now my imaginary coach is telling me I should spend more time climbing. "Best bike workout there is," she tells me. "Good for the quads." As limited as my climbing options are, it's not quite as monotonous as the gym. So I listened this time.

Today I rode the "Double Eaglecrest." My GPS tells me this ride climbs 2,958 feet in 34 miles. Of course, most of that climbing happens in the 10 miles it takes to ride up the Eaglecrest road twice. It's a respectable grade.

It seems a bit silly to use a 26" full-suspension mountain bike for a road climb, but that's my best option right now. Little did I know it was going to be the perfect bike for the job today. I was actually enjoying the slow comfort of the squishy saddle when I passed a large road machine - sort of an industrial weed whacker - about two miles into the climb. The thing was crawling down the mountain and leveling every bush and tree within 10 feet of the road - probably to make room for a snow berm come winter. The air was suddenly overcome with the strong scent of evergreen - the kind of overzealous pine aroma that reminds me of a kitschy Christmas store. And behind the machine, I could see why. The weed whacker left a trail of debris that stretched the entire width of the street - twigs, leaves, spruce bows, spiny devil's club shoots, even logs. It was a complete minefield.

I was gunning for 90 percent effort for the first climb, even as I ran over some obstacles and dodged others. Easy enough, right? Now turn that around, factor in a wet road and a 35 mph, teary-eyed descent, and you have a swerving, exhilarating mountain bike ride that is every bit as exciting as, well, a real mountain bike ride.

The weed whacker operator had destroyed another half mile of road by the time I climbed past him a second time. By then I was at 80 percent effort and starting to feel it. I was a little less alert on the second descent and nearly launched over one of the logs. I like to think I would have landed it. Towards the bottom, there was a break in the clouds and I could see a half rainbow floating overhead. I took a picture and continued on my way before the full view opened up - the rainbow disintegrating across a deep gray sky that stood in stark contrast of the snow-covered mountains, the low-lying clouds, and the muskeg bathed in new sunlight. The moment became so beautiful that I said so, out loud, adding a swear word for emphasis.

I think even a real coach would approve.