Mountaineering 101

My friend Bjorn is teaching me how to climb snow-bound mountains. It is not an enviable task. First, you take this rank beginner person whose natural inclination toward vertigo has led her to avoid climbing all of her adult life, then drag her up to a cold and barren environment that is completely unforgiving of any error. I certainly don't try to hang out with people who may turn out to be liabilities, and yet Bjorn was the one who called late last night and asked if I wanted to accompany him on a November trip up Mount McGinnis.

We both brought snowshoes but never took them off our backs. The snow was weird and unconsolidated, meaning I was slipping on frozen grass even as I stood in knee-deep fluff. We picked our way up a thickly wooded area between two large avalanche gullies, using tree branches as pull-up bars to lift ourselves over chin-high bluffs and grabbing at thin blueberry twigs when the footing gave out underneath us, which happened frequently. It was surprisingly strenuous, more new stuff that I'm not quite in shape for, and a couple of times I had to concentrate hard to direct all of my power to my quads just to thrust my body over another waist-high step. Feel the burn.

We broke out of treeline and entered a very steep, icy slope. It was the kind of snow slope that as recently as three months ago would send fleeing downhill for fear of slipping, and this was during the soft, slushy summer months. Now these slopes were covered in a hard crust, so much so that Bjorn had to use his ax to carve out steps so we could climb. I waited patiently behind, watching low-level clouds move in fast from the south, quickly losing heat because I was not working very hard. I started shivering but I didn't want to take off my pack and pull out more layers, for fear of throwing off my balance. We reached a wind-scoured saddle, with exposed rock and grass and a lot of solid ice, and decided it was time to put on the crampons. My first time in crampons. I never actually took the time to practice putting them on before, so I played with the straps and fiddled with the adjustments while my fingers quickly went numb in the strengthening wind.

The storm moved in as I sat there. Temperatures and visibility both plummeted, and streams of snow hit us sideways. I was worried about descending our ice steps in low to zero-visibility, and Bjorn agreed that it would be pretty sketchy, so we decided to turn around shy of the summit. I didn't feel sad about that. After all — it's just McGinnis. I didn't feel all that afraid about descending, either. Bjorn gave me a tutorial about walking in crampons, and how I needed to take extra care not to cross them and spur a big fall. Then we saw ptarmigan fluttering around the ridge. Bjorn wanted to get pictures, and I decided to take a few admittedly bad ones with my point-and-shoot. As numb as my hands had gotten putting on my crampons, as a cold as it had become and as low as my core temperature was getting, this was a stupid idea. I lost all feeling in my right thumb. I've done this enough to know the difference between numb and partially frozen. I put my mittens back on and braced for the downclimb.

McGinnis in all of its wind-scoured glory. We slowly and methodically worked our way down. Despite the security of the crampons, I did much of it backwards, tracing my way down the snow steps. It felt just like climbing down a ladder, and was somewhat disorienting in the way ladders can be when you spend all of your time looking for the next step rather than observing the terrain around you. Just as I was doing this, my thumb starting to come back to life. I had mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I was happy because I knew the thaw meant my thumb was still very much alive. On the other hand, thawing body parts is remarkably painful. It's like having someone hold a hot iron to a crucial appendage while you're trying to concentrate on something difficult and scary. My thought process for the next 10 or so minutes went something like this: "OK, feet apart ... GAAAAAA thumb! ... pant, pant .... Ok, step slow .... UGGGGGH ... feet apart ... thumb, thumb, thumb, stop, hurting, please ... OK, down .... GAAAAAAA!"

It finally dissipated just as we were getting back down into the subalpine. My thumb is a little sore and shiny red now, but for the most part it's fine. It was a little refresher course on the perils of too much skin exposure when I'm already shivering. And I learned a little about the wonders of crampons. Many valuable lessons were learned today. Thanks, Bjorn.

Breaking trail

The other day, while I was musing about starting to train for the Susitna 100 and/or the White Mountains 100 (i.e., my winter bike race season), a friend asked me if I planned to start doing intervals. I avoided the question, unwilling to admit that I was still planning on training for real races that involved bikes by doing whatever I felt like doing, which recently hasn't involved nearly as much cycling as my previous winter bike race seasons, and even less in the way of something resembling an interval. "There must be a way," I thought, "to incorporate strenuous, lung-busting workouts, like the kind you get when you sit on a bike trainer and pedal really hard for three minutes and more slowly for one, into an winter outdoor activity that is actually fun."

I think I found it.

Snowshoeing. Now stay with me here. You take a layer of bottomless fluff and spread it over a slope that varies from 30 to 60 degrees. Then you try to climb it, for two and a half hours. The result has all of the upper-body thrusting of swimming, the lactic-acid-generating leg work of speed-interval cycling, and the raw power of running. My heart still hurts.

I tried for the top of Mount Jumbo today, stupidly thinking that if I gave myself an extra hour than what it usually takes me during the summer months, maybe I'd make it to the top. I didn't even come close. Trekking poles may have helped, but not much. I worked close to my maximum capacity for much of those two and a half hours, weaving up the steep slopes and swimming straight up hill when the trees closed in, stopping frequently to catch breaths, then hitting the max again. I made it about two-thirds of the way up to mountain, to about 2,500 feet, before I absolutely had to turn around to make my work meeting. It ended up taking me about 55 minutes to descend what had taken me two and a half hours to climb (and would have been less had it not been for the icy exposed roots below 800 feet.) My summer split between climbing and descending this mountain is almost exactly 50-50, and the hike rarely takes me more than three hours total.

Weather permitting, I am strongly considering going back to this same mountain tomorrow to take advantage of that nice trail I broke, and aim for the top.

Sunday with Pugsley

I woke up late and intended to bike commute to work today, so I set out for a meandering pleasure ride through the Valley. Friday's strong cold front brought 170-knot winds to Sheep Mountain and mudslides to downtown, but it also brought something nearly everyone at city level has been craving — snow.

This isn't exactly what I consider snow biking — it's a soft dirt trail with a couple inches of fluff on top. But it is sweet just the same — the silence and simple beauty of white powder, the brow-furrowing challenge of negotiating well-disguised-but-not-yet-buried roots and rocks. Basically everything that Pugsley is good at, but then again, Pugsley is good at everything.

The Dredge Lake trails always flood in the fall, and they haven't yet completely frozen, so riding around the glacier moraine was a fun mix of powder skimming and "bike-swim."

I circled my favorite singletrack loops a couple times and veered onto the beach, where the sand was partially frozen and firmer than usual despite a blanket of snow.

I veered left and started following the Mendenhall River, biting my lip and throttling the grips as I tried to bulldoze small boulders that I could not see. It was a fun challenge, and I wanted to see how far I could follow the river downstream — something I had never tried before. I have been reading "A Long Trek Home" by Erin McKittrick, who in 2007-2008 walked and packrafted 4,000 miles from Seattle to the Aluetian Islands with her husband, Hig. She's coming back to Juneau for a book tour at the end of the month, and in anticipation of an interview with her on Monday, I've been speed-reading her book, which is beautifully written. It also inspires me to consider the possibility of overland, off-trail adventures in my region. After all, Erin and Hig managed to walk away from downtown Juneau, cross Stephens Passage in a packraft, and eventually end up in Anchorage and beyond. As someone who often feels trapped in a town disconnected from the North American road system, the idea of walking away from here is a beautiful dream.

I followed the river bank until a bend forced me into the woods, where I connected up with a faint deer trail and rode on the soft moss, weaving between trees, through spaces so narrow I could barely fit through most of them (and couldn't fit through the rest.) I thought I was heading toward the main trails, so when I got tangled in alder thickets, I kept pressing forward. Then I reached an impossible bushwhack, veered left, pushed forward, turned right, and found myself inexplicably back at my own track. I turned the other direction, continued for a while at what I thought was mostly forward, and found my own track again, except for back a ways, where I was still riding and there were no footprints. It was impossible to tell which direction the track was headed. #$@! I was lost.

Funny how the simple act of being lost is so unnerving, even when you are in a small area and know that if you just picked a direction and walked in a straight line, you would fairly quickly come to a familiar place. But I was sick of bushwhacking with the bike and didn't want to go all the way around the lake again — I had pretty much already used up my time window for bike commuting and was going to be late for work as it was. So instead of following my path, I crossed my fingers that the river was to the right and pushed blindly through the alder thicket, with snow-covered branches slapping my face and grabbing my bike from all corners. I just yanked and thrashed and swore. I'm probably lucky I didn't snap a derailleur. I did sustain a few scratches on my neck. But I emerged from the thicket to this place, this tranquil beach, with small hints of sunlight stretching beyond the clouds, and the trail entrance in clear sight.

Happiness is forging your own route ... and finding your way back.

A strange form of life

There is an incredible wind and rainstorm going on outside right now. Boats are knocking around in the harbor. Water is streaming across the road at a hydroplaning velocity. The Sheep Mountain weather tower at 4,000 feet recorded wind gusts of 115 mph, which on the East Coast would be a Category 3 hurricane, with below-freezing temps and daggers of snow. Here at sea level, we're getting gusts to 65 mph. It's entirely too insane to try to pilot any kind of bicycle. I wavered on going out for a run. I'm still wavering.

This reluctance to go out in insane weather has instilled a certain sadness, because it reminds me that I'm not training for the Iditarod this winter. There's a sense of loss, not having that in my life, which right now means I don't have even a remotely rational reason to go out and face the 65 mph blowing rain with a sense of duty. Now, if I go out in the hurricane, it's because I'm crazy enough to go out in the hurricane, not because I have to go out in the hurricane to learn crucial survival skills, and have the wherewithal go out into the Alaska backcountry and experience the scope and awe of deep winter.

I have been continuing my mountain walks, which in their own way bring that scope and awe closer. On Wednesday I headed up Thunder Mountain in the fog with Bjorn and his brother. They wore fleece pants and cotton T-shirts, but I got my first taste of snow-stepping on a short but near-vertical, icy-hard pitch.

Thursday I did a long bike ride out the road - probably the last I'll be able to comfortably ride on the skinny tires this year. The air was nearly calm, and a lingering sunset bathed the mountains in lavender light.

On Friday, I hiked up the Grandchild route in a snowstorm. A thin dusting of snow soon became waist-deep up high. I relished in the brute exercise of wallowing, pitching myself forward like a loping bear, but I was regretting leaving the snowshoes at home. Outside my outside life, it's been a strange kind of week, and it left me feeling in a somber mood, wallowing solo in that frozen, black-and-white world, shuffling through music like Bonnie Prince Billy ... "a hard way to come into a cabin, into the weather, into a path, walking together. A hard one."

The Sun Bowl in a snowstorm. Wind whisked through the trees, but in the lolls, it was eerily quiet. It took me a while to climb up there and I continued upward far too late. I had to climb down a ways in the dark. I was prepared for it with a headlamp, but I haven't yet become accustomed to that deep, penetrating loneliness of the winter forest at night, with its ghost trees looming ominously over hollow black space. I was more than ready to rejoin civilization at the bottom of the mountain, at what felt like midnight but in reality was 5:30 p.m. I put away my pack and ax, changed out of my ice-crusted shoes and shells, and went to see "Men Who Stare at Goats."

On water, on ice

The alarm clock went off well before sunrise, to a morning thick with fog and drizzling rain. Sean and I had harbored ambitions about Mount Olds, that scary mountain that I couldn't summit a month ago — and now it's November and requires snowshoes and an ice ax and an avalanche beacon and seven hours of free time before work. Those ambitions dissolved in the cold rain, and it was not hard to let them go. Sleep comes easily to the relieved.

And just like that, it was nearly 10 a.m., and I was just about ready to give up on the day when Sean suggested we go sea kayaking on Mendenhall Lake instead. I really wanted to, but wavered. For reasons that wouldn't make any sense to him, I am every bit as scared of paddling across the calm surface of a lake as I am of climbing a 4,500-foot monster mountain on November 10. I have an irrational fear of water that runs deep, which I can trace back to the time I accidentally wandered into a water-blasting ride at Sesame Street World in Texas at age 3, or fell into a fishing pond at age 4, or ended up temporarily trapped underneath an inflatable "water weenie" while being towed behind a jet boat in Bear Lake at age 8, or being swirled around in a keeper hole while tubing through Lava Hot Springs at age 18, or catching a rope around my neck underneath a whitewater raft in Cataract Canyon at age 21. I have frequent dreams about drowning. Water haunts me in a way that nothing else can. I wish it wasn't this way. I'm actually a naturally strong swimmer; I'm convinced I could build up impressive endurance for long, difficult swims if simply training for them didn't make me so uneasy. Also, I live in one of the most amazing water playgrounds in North America, a passage of rivers and channels and fjords and great swaths of wilderness that can only be accessed by boat. So I try to take my baby steps away from my fears, but I can't say it's not difficult.

The late morning was calm and cool, about 38 degrees. I pulled on a pair of fleece gloves because they were all that I had, but my fingers quickly went numb as I started to draw the paddles through the teal-colored water. The nose of my borrowed kayak plowed through a thin veneer of clear ice and the boat teetered. My heart nearly stopped. Calm water is not too intimidating for me - like I said, I'm a pretty strong swimmer. But the temperature of Mendenhall Lake, with its waters that until very recently were frozen in the Mendenhall Glacier, registers at just a few degrees above freezing this time of year. Tip a kayak that I have no skills to flip back over, and I'd have five, maybe 10 minutes tops to swim to shore before I succumbed to hypothermia. So the tiniest little jolts would make my heart race and head pound. But eventually, I started to find my flow, and came to the conclusion that this boat probably wasn't just going to randomly toss me into the calm water — given my irrational fear, a truth difficult for me to accept.

We made it to the face of the glacier and hauled out on shore. The last time I was out this way was January, when the lake was frozen, and I don't remember this particular rock wall — I'm fairly certain that it wasn't exposed 10 months ago. That's how quickly the Mendenhall Glacier is melting. My friend Brian tells me that in only five or so more years, the glacier is going to permanently lift off the surface of the lake, and we'll no longer be able to paddle (or in the winter, pedal) right up to its face. It's sobering, to see how quickly great things disintegrate.

And with that came a feeling of tranquility ... acceptance of loss and fear, and human ability to keep moving through both. They say you should do one thing every day that scares you. As I skimmed the smooth water through a maze of floating ice formations, I was amazed at how peaceful that act felt.

For a comprehensive guide on how to choose the best kayak for you, visit https://www.globosurfer.com/best-kayaks.

Gold Ridge

Another stellar day today. Sean and I were able to get out for a fun hike up Gold Ridge - a little wallowing in waist-deep drifts on the way up, and a little sledding on our butts on the way back. I'm plotting another adventure, so I don't have much time to blog tonight, but I wanted to post my pictures. Bluebird sky and sparkling snow — it's like a divine, calorie-burning dessert. I'm a happy hiker.

Sean standing over Gastineau Channel. This is before the wallowing began in earnest.

The wind-drifted snow created cool ice formations.

Juneau's version of the desert.

Sean walks along Gold Ridge. I really like this photo.

The Juneau Ridge and a fog-shrouded Blackerby Ridge in the distance.

Looking toward Sheep Mountain and Clark Mountain.

This tower of unknown origin toppled over and was devoured by rime ice.

Sean brought homemade pizza, topped with asparagus, tomatoes and Yukon Gold potato slices, to snack on at the top. It wasn't even frozen yet.

As we slid down, clouds started to move in from the southwest.

Heading back down to town. Total distance was about eight miles. Total time was four hours. The waist-deep wallowing definitely slowed us down, but for the most part, it made for a relaxing morning.

For some reason, I feel a little guilty leaving it at that. Maybe I should take an "Up in Alaska" reader poll. Does anyone think I should spend more time writing and less time taking photos of mountains?

Mount Meek

Two days ago, my friend Bjorn and I made plans to climb Mount Meek on Sunday, "rain or shine." I expected the former to a brutal degree: heavy rain, breathtaking wind, and eyeball-freezing whiteouts above 2,000 feet. But I had never been to Mount Meek before. I didn't even know what Mount Meek was until I finally bought a USGS Juneau map about a month ago. It's the last prominent peak on the Douglas Island Ridge, about 3,000 feet high, accessed by an unmarked hunting trail/muskeg traverse on the north end of the island. And I was going to go there in November. This was an important detail: Mount Meek would be another small step into the hugely intimidating world of mountaineering.

So I first met Bjorn on the Sheep Creek Trail about a month ago. He was the guy who expounded on the cleansing power of Taku winds. With nothing more than my first name and the place where I worked to go by, he tracked me down - the magic of owning a heavily Google-crawled Internet blog - and e-mailed after he saw me prowling around The Alaskan in my tiger costume on Halloween. He's officially the third friend I've met this summer on Juneau's largely deserted trails, which makes me feel lucky - most women have hang out at bars to meet single 20-something guys. (Ha ha, just kidding, Bjorn, since I suspect you'll see this blog post. :-)

The weather was forecasted to be not good, and it hasn't been good since before Halloween, which was why it felt so strange to wake up at 7:30 this morning to soft peach light amid the swirling clouds. Could it be possible? Was Mount Meek going to bless me with an easy passage? It seemed too good to be true, so I packed the face mask, the expedition socks, crampons, ax and a slew of dry layers.

Bjorn was a good hiking partner ... kept an even pace and insisted on breaking trail. Turns out this guy is a serious alpinist with all kinds of Brooks Range and Alaska Range trips behind him. He taught me french stepping and we talked about avalanche signs.

I was so enthralled with the warm light, swirling clouds and sparkling ice that I forgot we were climbing, and suddenly, we were at the top, surrounded by rime and intense blasts of cold air.

As we braced ourselves against the 40 mph winds, I stood facing Mount Ben Stewart and loudly declared my desire to traverse the ridge over to that summit. Bjorn looked over at me like I was crazy and I added, "Probably not today. I have to go to work today."

We lingered on the peak only a few more seconds and quickly dropped below the brutal exposure. He said, "OK, now we're back in a happy place." I scanned the expansive horizon, heart vibrating the way it always does up high, and realized that my inexperience is what makes everything about this so beautiful. Bjorn and I talked about some of his more harrowing climbs, and his tendency to "take all of my angst out on the mountain." I, on the other hand, seem take all of my happiness out on the mountain. I come to a small peak like Mount Meek, climb snowsteps to a summit bathed in the glow of unexpected sunlight, and suddenly I remember what it was like to be 5 years old and clinging to the top of the big slide at Liberty Park with a warm summer breeze whipping through my hair. I remember exactly what that was like.

This is my happy place.

Now it's October

I feel like I should have a better blog post lined up after four or so days away, but, sadly, the weather has just not been conducive to good outdoor blogging. On the indoor front, I have been socializing more than normal, finally worked out of the writing block I've been struggling through in my winter project, and finished the books "Swimming to Antarctica," "Addicted to Danger" and "Me Talk Pretty One Day." I really liked "Swimming to Antarctica" by Lynne Cox. Talk about someone going far in life on pure determination (and a fair bit of natural resistance to cold water.) Highly recommended.

So the weather: Gray and cool and raining. I continue to rave to anyone who's willing to listen to me what an amazing autumn I had. But I'm slowly starting to realize that I didn't actually get a free "out" from Juneau's autumn. It just came a month late. September was August. October was September. This month, this late-year month that is supposed to see a fair amount of white stuff, feels a lot like early October. I've been doing lots of drenched road riding on the Karate Monkey, a couple runs, and a few trips to the gym. On Thursday morning, I got out for a hike with my friend Sean. He wanted to take me to see his favorite place to ski, the dramatic, cliff-encircled bowl above Fish Creek. We climbed to about 2,500 feet elevation and it was still warm and still raining, hard. In November. I could almost hear his skier's heart breaking.

He'd never hiked to the bowl in its "summer" phase (as he described the route, which was still carpeted in bright green plants and moss.) He sloshed confidently across this fast-flowing creek and I followed at the same speed, forgetting what a super klutz I am compared to most people (especially skier types). I went down hard and started sliding just above this waterfall, and likely would have plummeted down it if I hadn't blindly groped at the rushing water and managed to grab a random piece of driftwood wedged between two rocks. I was elated that, while I may have poor balance, my reflexes seem good. Sean seemed to think I should be upset that I fell full-body into a creek when temperatures were in the high 30s. Given the state of the weather, I didn't think it mattered.

After the hike, despite being soaked head-to-toe-to-core, I still took Pugsley for a quick jaunt up the mountain at Eaglecrest. The snow was rain-saturated and as thick and mushy as warm oatmeal. I abandoned the quest about halfway up the hill and hiked without the bike the rest of the way to the ridge, where it was still raining. I think I could skiers' hearts breaking across Juneau. If November doesn't come soon, it's going to be a long winter.

Dressing for cold and crappy

"How can you possibly ride a bicycle this time of year?"

It's a question I hear a lot from people around Juneau, even outdoors-type people. I think it's because people around here understand that I'm not simply trying to ride in the rain or the cold or the snow, but rather a volatile combination of all three. Weather forecasters call it "wintry mix." I call it "snain." It's seriously wet, right on the cusp of freezing, and a stream of slush is falling from the sky. It mixes with the night snow and day rain to form a putrid, gritty Slurpee that covers icy roads and trails inches thick. Ride through it, and one will have to endure the barrage of a frigid gray geyser that no fenders can hold back. Not to mention there's still Slurpee falling from the sky. It's like that often here, especially in November, December, January, February, March .. well, often. And it guarantees two things: You're going to get wet, and you're going to be cold.

So when I want to ride my bicycle when it's 35 degrees and slushy, I just assume I'm going to get wet. Trying to stay dry is an excercise in futility, and I've been a lot happier since I gave up the battle and turned my strategy to "wet and warm." I've found a system that works really well for me:

Base layer: I like to wear a thick synthetic base, such as polypro and polyester long johns, which maintain nearly all of their insulation capabilities even when wet. I have a couple of wool base layers, but usually don't wear natural fibers when it's wet because they absorb so much moisture; you start to feel like you're wrapped in a clammy towel. (And, yes, I am talking about Smart Wool here.) Synthetics absorb much less water and maintain more of a semi-dry feeling even when they're soaked. Also, they're much cheaper, so you can throw them away when the start to hold onto that lovely laundry-soap-mixed-with-sweat odor.

Mid layer: When temperatures are in the 30s, I need a mid-layer on my torso. I usually wear one of an assortment of polar fleece pullovers, which also maintain most of their warmth when soaked, although these tend to become quite heavy under saturation.

Outer layer: I have an $8 pair of Red Ledge rain pants that I love, although like all nylon products, they only hold rain out to a certain extent, which is to say not very long. What they are really good at is blocking the wind. I rely on my thick polyester long johns to keep me warm. On my torso, I usually wear a plastic jacket, which is a completely nonbreathable jacket made out of PVC. Basically like wearing a Hefty bag. Some cyclists complain about the sweat condensation generated in this miniature biosphere, but since I don't believe it's possible to stay dry, I don't really care about where the sweat moisture ends and the snain moisture begins. It's all the same, wet and cold, and after more than three years in Juneau, I've resigned myself to the fact that moisture is going to seep in no matter what I wear. Rain even finds its way into my plastic jacket, usually through the neck, arms and bottom.

Outer Outer layer: If I am going out for a really long ride, longer than five hours, I will actually carry a Gortex winter shell or another large polar fleece to throw over my plastic jacket when my core temperature starts to drop, which it inevitably does. The wet and warm strategy can only work as long as I am pedaling at a certain level. During long rides, when my effort starts to drop, so does my body temperature.

Head: I release a lot of heat through my head and hands, so I go pretty light in these places. On my head, I usually just wear a fleece ear band. During long rides, I will bring a thin polyester balaclava to throw on when I start to get cold.

Hands: I usually wear fleece liner gloves with snowboarding mitten shells (Sometimes I start with just the liner gloves and throw on the shells later). Like my leg system, these eventually soak through but do well enough to block out wind and hold in heat. On the long rides, I will simply throw my pogies on my handlebars. Pogies are actually perfect for cold rain. They take a long, long time to soak through, so if you want your hands to stay dry, pogies are the way to go. I usually have to go bare-handed with pogies because they are so warm when it's above freezing, however.

Feet: Lately, I have been a big fan of insulated vapor barrier socks like the ones made by RBH Designs. I just wear a wool liner sock with these, and my regular running shoes (which means you clipless types could wear them with your bike shoes.) They do a great job of keeping out the slush water for a long time, and when they do soak through, they still stay relatively warm. I've completely converted to these, over from neoprene socks and booties. If I want my feet to stay completely dry, I wear a pair of NEOS overboots. I usually only do this for particularly long or wet rides, because they're floppy and annoying. I may have to start wearing them more often, however, because I've noticed my frostbite toes on my right foot are particularly sensitive to the wet cold compared to the toes on my left foot, and I should probably take more precaution to avoid further nerve damage (read: trench foot).

But that's just my system. I wouldn't expect it to work for everyone. Maybe there are some out there who still claim it's possible to stay dry while riding in slushy weather. I'm beyond skeptical, but I'd love to hear your strategy.

Thanks for reaching out

I had to do a long ride today to work out a thick case of malaise. I'm not really sure what caused it ... hormonal, maybe, or possibly because the end of daylight savings time means that darkness starts creeping in at 4:30 in the afternoon. Either way, there are just some days that I wake up feeling bad about myself, which necessitates going out into the gray morning and pounding out 40 or so mindless miles on pavement, with 10 fast and fun miles of swooping, Ewok-forest trail on the skinny tires, even if it's snaining and there's slush on the road. I almost never return from a bike ride grumpier than I was before I left. Tired, sometimes. Cold, sometimes. Wet, many times. But usually with a brighter outlook on life.

I am grateful for a couple of people who contacted me this weekend, and inadvertently helped me work through the grump. I was wedged in a thick Halloween crowd at the Alaskan last night, wearing a tiger costume with a hood and pointy little ears and looking decidedly different than I usually do, when I woman pushed her way toward me and yelled over the bluegrass band, "Don't think I'm some kind of crazy stalker or anything, but do you have a blog about biking?" She went on to tell me that she just moved to Juneau from Seattle on Tuesday to work as a nurse at the local hospital. "Your blog is pretty much the reason I came to Juneau," she said. "I wanted to get out of the city and be somewhere where the wilderness was all around me."

Then today, I received an e-mail from a woman who wrote, "I got myself in the Iditarod Invitational and it is pretty much your fault. :] I am always looking for a new adventure. A friend of mine gave me your book to read and I was hooked." She wanted to ask for some advice for the 2010 race, which she's signed up for.

I think the most any of us aspire to is to make a positive difference in the world or in the lives of others. It's nice to think that in my own small ways, I helped inspire other women to embark on new adventures. I like to think that's the difference I can help make in the world. If more people come alive, than the world will come alive.