Pugsley's first birthday

Date: Sept. 15
Mileage: 25.7
September mileage: 360.6

My bike Pugsley turned one year old today. Although he was conceived sometime in July of last year, he wasn’t fully built up until Sept. 15, 2007. I asked him how he wanted to celebrate his birthday, and, predictably, he blurted out “Week in Hawaii!” I said my PFD check wasn’t that big, and offered him the next best thing - North Douglas beach party!

Unfortunately, we arrived at the wetlands right around the high tide mark, so there wasn’t much beach left to ride. We skimmed the shoreline and bounced over some boulders. Late-morning fog hung low over the water, but across the channel I could see a small window in the clouds around Mount McGinnis, with an unmistakable new coat of termination dust near the peak. “Look, Pugsley, snow!” I said, but he just grumbled. “This is boring. I’m tired. I hate the beach.”

“Ok, then,” I said. “It’s your birthday. What do you want to do?”

“I wanna go tear up some trails,” he said. “You’re always taking that skinny brat on trail rides. I wanna go sometimes, too.”

“Don’t call your little sister a skinny brat,” I said. “Fine. There’s the Fish Creek trail over there. It’s just a mud bog with lots of big roots and stinky fish guts. Your sister hates that trail. It always turns into a hike-a-bike.”

Pugsley’s spokes lit up. “Fish guts?” he said. “Does that mean there’s bears there, too?”

“Probably lots of big scary bears,” I said.

His rear fender started to wag a little. “I wanna go there!”

“Ok,” I said. We followed the delta shoreline beneath the highway bridge and started climbing along the creek. Pugsley enthusiastically took on his role as trail crusher and we cleared a nice long line of roots and puddles before a log grabbed his pedal and threw me sideways. I swore quietly as I crawled out of the blueberry bushes and started guiding Pugsley back down the trail.

“What are you doing?” Pugsley protested, “I can handle this!”

“Sorry, Pugs,” I said, “it’s just a little too much for me. I never said it was your sister’s fault she and I always ended up hike-a-biking this trail.”

“Man, this sucks,” Pugsley said. “What a crappy birthday.”

“Sorry, Pugs. I know it was hard to be born in these inbetween times,” I said. “But you remember last winter, right?”

Puglsey sniffed. “Yeah.”

“Well,” I said, “winter’s coming back. In just a couple more months, the snow will start to fall, and it will be just you and me again. We’ll go play on new trails and have new adventures and we can even come back here to Fish Creek. If the hikers don’t stamp down a trail for us, we’ll stamp down our own trail. What do you say?”

Droplets of rain dripped off Pugsley's frame but his head tube seemed to brighten. “Cool!” he shouted. “But this year, I’m driving.”

Sniff ... My baby’s all growed up.

Quiet days of fall

Date: Sept. 12 and 13
Mileage: 31.8 and 32.0
September mileage: 334.9

There's a sameness to the air again as the sky sinks down and the clouds settle in for the long season. For many, fall is a season of color and change. In Juneau, our colors are subtle and often washed in gray. Change here is subtle as well; as autumn rain takes over, temperatures drop in undetectable increments until one day, you walk out the door and it's winter. When I lived farther south, fall was always my favorite time of year. I loved the vibrancy and crisp air and promise of new passion. But since I moved to Juneau, my experience with fall has been muted at best - as though the entire season passed in one drawn-out, gray day. If I was given the choice of two months to do away with here in Juneau, I would pick September and October, without regret.

That's why it's vital that I kick myself out the door once in a while, but I admit, my motivation has been flagging. My cycling has continued since I stopped training for Trans Utah, though on a less focused level. Because I recognize that I will lapse into a bad cycle if I don't do something I feel is productive, I have been working hard on my writing project again. Basically, what I am doing is drawing up some of my past experiences into literary essays of sorts. I wasn't always a blogger, so a lot of my experiences are being increasingly diluted in an ocean of memories. I wanted to get them down on paper (well, computer). Dredging my memory bank has been fun, but surprisingly exhausting. I am remembering all kinds of nearly forgotten details that really make the moments come alive for me again. At the same time, I'm not a tape recorder. I find myself taking some creative license with conversations in order to avoid being completely vague. So it's not journalism in its pure form, but there's no intentional fiction, either.

The project was unfocused at first, but has started to develop around the theme of "how did a scared little suburban girl from Salt Lake City end up on the Iditarod Trail." It's really not nearly as hokey as it sounds. Anyway, since it is September 2008, it just made sense to center the essays on the Iditarod race because that is my most recent and dramatic life experience. It's been really interesting to revisit that week through the lens of six months later, now that I have had more time to process different events and decide what it meant to me as a whole. Plus, I have a really great record of it already, so it hasn't been hard to fill in the gaps.

So that's what I've been up to this weekend: boring riding, but interesting writing - even if only to me. Last year, my grandmother published her memoirs and distributed them to her whole family. It's been a fun document to have - not only to learn more about my grandma's life, but to see how she views her own life. Writing about past experiences, good or bad, is a project I would recommend to anyone - it's a great way to learn a lot about yourself, and much cheaper than therapy.

Pre-season explorations

Date: Sept. 11
Mileage: 37.8
September mileage: 271.1

It's starting to be that time of year when snow and cold creep into my consciousness. Long before the ice forms and the snow actually flies, I find myself thinking often about winter ... about the transformation of the landscape, the blank slate surfaces and all of the possibilities for new adventures. I want to try harder this winter to access more terrain (and yes, a lot of that will have to be on foot.) But I'm also starting to think about new options for my bike.

So I set out today on a recon trip around the Eaglecrest road. I actually found a few sections of new-to-me singletrack. With endless gloppy mud and big, slippery roots, I have to say these trails don't do much for me in their summer state. But if I were to get ambitious this winter with a pair of snowshoes, the clearings they twist through could provide a fun spur where I could stamp down a snowbike trail.

The singletrack explorations were slow-going, and I became cold enough that I finally just had to get off the bike and jog. For most of the afternoon, it rained really hard. (Camera flash used for emphasis.)

But this was pretty ... (Devil's club: Beautiful to look at, deadly to brush up against.)

I continued up the gravel road, stopping often to survey the sidehills. I think this new road is likely to be mostly rideable uphill during the winter, as long as it's groomed at all (Although I fear the ski resort may just let the snowpack cover it. I'm hoping they decide to groom it as a fun, easy "green" run.) If it is groomed, it will open up a ton of new terrain for Pugsley (Only when the ski area is closed, of course. I don't want to annoy and/or be killed by skiers and snowboarders.) I'm excited!

The construction guys who are building the road tried to shoo me out of the area because they're still blasting. They were really nice about it - too nice, actually - and agreed I could hike around some more as long as I was off the mountain by 3:30. I really pushed my timetable by taking a meandering route up the bowl and starting the climb toward the ridge. By the time I looked at my watch, I realized I only had about 20 minutes to get down what took me 40 minutes to climb up. The terrain was so slippery with mud, runoff and wet groundcover that I could hardly stay on my feet walking down. Finally, I just sat on my butt, pushed off a rock, and slid. You know how mountaineers sometimes glissade down snowfields? Yeah, imagine doing that during the summer. I hit a small rock and it didn't even slow me down. Now I have a bruise in the area where I sit on my bike saddle - but I did make it back to the road by 3:30. There was a construction guy parked at my bike, waiting for me. I felt horrible - and apologized profusely for wasting his time. I was never anywhere near the blast zone. You'd think they were about to blow up the whole mountain ... but I can understand why they have to be careful. (And they should probably just close the whole area off. I won't go back up there again while they're working.)

It was a good day exploring. But, yeah ... I'm about ready for winter.