Long way home

Sometimes, I truly believe that airline travel is the bane of modern civilization. Well, that and cell phones. How does something so unquestionably convenient become so inexplicably tedious? I've made the drive from Salt Lake to Alaska ... twice. Once I did Salt Lake to New York on a bike. I'd take these things any day over an equivalent flight.

Everyone has a "worst flight ever" story. I have several. Here's my latest:

I begin at 1:30 p.m. Mountain Standard Time, drive to the airport, leave a borrowed car in short term parking and check in. I leave the ground at 3:20, heading - confusingly - south for Los Angeles. I receive a packet of salted cardboard and 3 ounces of Diet Coke. Late lunch.

I arrive at LAX at about 4:15 Pacific Standard Time and receive another boarding pass for a flight with a different airline on the other side of the terminal. Scheduled departure: 9:30 p.m. I make the 15-minute walk and realize that I still have five hours to kill. So I step into the hot and humid afternoon and begin search for escape. I make my way to four dead-ends and three increasingly suspicious airport cops before I find what I believe is the only pedestrian exit at LAX. I walk in a nearly straight line down Century Boulevard for an hour and a half without ever completely leaving the wasteland of airport sprawl - hotels, synchronous palm trees and endless parking lots. Every restaurant, every storefront is nestled in unwelcoming concrete fortresses. By the time I make it back to the airport, the bottom of my feet burn with sidewalk blisters and it's time to catch my next flight.

Flight 8252 Los Angeles to Anchorage leaves at 9:30 PST. It begins with snack service. Flattened granola bar and 3 more ounces of Diet Coke. I pull out the cheese and crackers my dad packed for me and suck down a few Jolly Ranchers. At 10:30 PST I drift to sleep. At 10:35, the turbulence hits.

You know what's the most unnerving sound in the world? Those seatbelt-sign dings in a plane that is jolting violently back and forth. You know what's the second most unnerving sound in the world? Broadcast reassurances from "your captain speaking." You know what travels the least well in the stomach of someone prone to motionsickness in a rickety plane dancing through the night sky? Diet Coke and Jolly Ranchers.

I can't sleep, so I watch the blackness roll by. Around 1:00 a.m. Alaska Standard Time, a soft light reappears deep on the horizon. I can't tell if we're approaching sunrise or catching sunset. It doesn't matter, because it makes me feel better.

At 1:45 a.m. AST I land and make my way to yet another airline. My flight is set to depart at 6:35, so I pull out my sleeping bag and sweater and sprawl on the floor. Another passenger, bound for Kodiak, parks himself close by and commences with a virtual opus of snoring. The airline persistently, and loudly, broadcasts the time every half hour. I'm awake for every one of these announcements.

At 6:50 a.m. AST the plane pulls up. It looks like it just stumbled in from a bear viewing trip - stunted body, pointed nose, wing props spinning in an uncomfortable idle. The plane, in fact, seats all of 10. Only five board. The captain looks back from the open cockpit and rambles off the federal regulation rules. We take off into the morning fog. I scan the broken clouds for quick glimpses of the barren landscape I left behind while pouring through the last unread words of my tattered, soaked Sunday LA Times.

At 7:45 AST we land. I gather my 39-kg backpack (as weighed by Era Aviation) and head for work. I feel like 24 hours have passed. In fact, 20 have. There is no rest for the weary, no comfort for the economy traveler.

Grand Gulch

I spent the week backpacking through a backward sort of place - once a vast civilization, now wilderness.

Grand Gulch cuts into the Colorado Plateau on a meandering route to the San Juan River. It's a maze of sheer sandstone cliffs, towering cottonwood trees and scarce water - even in May. For some reason, about 900 years ago, many hundreds if not thousands of people decided to make their home here. They built a city of sandstone structures high in the cliffs - most accessible only to the bravest and strongest, but some accessible to anyone with some time to kill and a willingness to drink stagnant, salty water for four days.

This place is so congested with ruins that a hiker could randomly look up at almost any point in the canyon and see something - rock art, a kiva, another symmetrical stack of rocks. In the four days I spent in the canyon, stumbling over a cluster of pottery shards or even a human forearm bone became commonplace - almost boring. Not that I mean to diminish the experience in any way. It's just hard to spend the entirety of four days locked in wonder.

On day 3 we lost Craig. Backpacking is a strange state of social recreation, especially on a four-day trip. It's not quite enough time to make the dried beans and shredded tortillas in your pack sound appetizing, but it is long enough to to put hikers into the backpacking stupor - some might call it "the zone." You've already spent several nights working on rusty survival skills with the same people, bickering jokingly (and then not so jokingly) about startchy pasta and sore knees. So when you set out on the trail, there seems to be less talking and more rhythm. The result of this by day 3 was stretching our group out for several miles until we had no idea who was in front of the other. By the time we arrived at a possible camp, Craig had been missing for six hours.

While we organized a search, I started having a lot of anxiety. I joined the second leg, down-canyon party. We sat in a clearing near Split-Level Ruin and waited uncomfortably for Bryan to complete the up-canyon run. There was no getting around assuming the worse. And for the first time during the trip, as I waited in the shadow of the perfectly-preserved remnants of a lost civilization and the towering, impassable canyon walls that paralyzed it, I felt so small, so useless against the violent geology and relentless march of time.

When Bryan returned from upcanyon with no news, Geoff and I set out the way we came in a near-sprint, or as close as you can get to running in thick sand. We fully expected to find Craig sprawled out on the trail; we couldn't think of any other reason why it would take him eight hours to go five miles. We ran into him about a half-mile later. He was sweating but smiling, completely unaware of our anxious rescue effort. He told us he took a wrong turn and hiked up a side canyon - for three miles. It's funny how we never assumed the obvious. Getting lost is human nature, even when locked in a canyon. But it's funny how anxiety fades, adrenaline tones down, and suddenly you're seeing this sprawling sandstone graveyard in a different light.

I was happy again to stretch my legs in the sunlight, strenghten my quads while bouldering with a 35-pound pack, touch soft, green leaves for the first time since September and run my toes through the hot sand that I missed so much. Every time I visit the Colorado Plateau, I convince myself I could make a life in the sprawling emptiness. Unfortunately, I'm much better at weathering nine months of winter than I could be in nine months of intense heat and sun. As it was this week, it rained on us all day Tuesday, became cold enough that night to freeze all of our produce and scatter frost everywhere, and fell into the 40s every other night of the trip. Still, it felt refreshingly hot, soaked in sun, daytime temperatures in the mid-80s, which, up in Alaska, I may not see again.

Goin' back to the desert

Date: May 3 & 4
Mileage: 20.4 & 37.2
May mileage: 83.6
Temperature upon departure: 37 & 35

South wind and bike commuting in the rain, nothing much to do but stare at pavement and daydream.

It's high time to tap-dance barefoot in hot sand and go for swim in the abrasive water of a silt-choked winter. Soak up some of that sadist sun wrapped only in thin cotton and SPF 45. Wolf down burnt spaghetti in a tin cup and wash it down with sun-roasted water. Season my sunburned skin beside the spring-sweet smoke of a juniper fire. Watch the sun set before 10 p.m.

It's time to lay in the the shadow of endless canyon walls. Make sand angels in the wash. Watch clouds drift through a thin sliver of sky. Keep an eye out for coyotes and big horn sheep and eat gummi worms in my tent without fear of bears.

It's time to go back to the desert and go where cars don't go. Go where bikes don't go. Go where even feet shouldn't go but someone's going to make me get on that rope.

It's time to go back to the desert like I never even left. But I sure do miss it.

$3 a gallon

Date: May 2
Mileage: 26
May mileage: 26
Temperature upon departure: 46

Because of all the bicycle riding I do and the small town that I live in, I don't buy much gas anymore. Maybe one tank a month currently, but summer travel season is about to begin. While I was driving around town today, looking for an auto shop that could squeeze me in for a tire change, I noticed that gas prices have officially hit the $3/gallon mark. Wha?

In three days I leave for a trip to Utah, so I have to catch a plane in Anchorage - about 215 miles from here. I went online and did a little research, and realized that driving my car to Anchorage, parking it for 9 days in the Dimond Parking Lot, and then driving it home will actually be more expensive than simply flying between Homer and Anchorage. So I bought another plane ticket. Now, instead of slogging down the Kenai Peninsula in the middle of the night upon my return, I'm going to be napping through a not-even-long-enough-to-reach-cruising-altitude flight on a turboprop plane.

I don't know if I should be horrified that it's actually cheaper to fly than drive - or relieved. When you think about it, there are a lot of pluses to the skyrocketing gas prices. Those gas prices have motivated me to get my lazy morning butt in gear and start bicycle commuting to work. They've convinced a lot of other people to ride a bicycle, period ... something many haven't tried since they were kids. My hope is that people will soon discover that they don't have to wait for technology and politicians to sort out any impending "energy crisis." They will discover that they are their own alternative energy source. They'll reunite themselves with all those once-vilified-but-so-missed carbohydrates. They'll trade in their high blood pressure medications and diet pills for natural, old-fashioned shots of dopamine and adrenaline. The suck up some of that sweet clean air, and they'll get themselves to their destinations, with their own power ... be it 20, 200 or 2,000 miles away. The economy will make room for this slowed-down lifestyle, because demand will push it that way. All economy is, after all, is a well-organized way of life.

And people will forget what they ever saw in oil. They'll realize that they had possession of the most valuable commodity all along ... freedom.

May Day, May Day

This bleak photo, which was taken from my back porch at the very recent time of 9:55 p.m. AST May 1, really fails to capture the tiny flecks of horizontal snow whipping across the yard. And thus I, who did everything I could do to make winter my friend, am officially depressed.

On the plus side, the Internet has yeilded some great information about training for 24-hour bicycle races. Most recommend finding a mileage to shoot for, and shape my training accordingly. Unlike my last long race, in which I was just working to finish, I think I will go into the 24 Hours of Kincaid with a little more ambition. Because I'm banking more on my ability to remain in slow motion for long spans of time more than any actual speed, I think I'm going to shoot for 150 miles, or about 13 laps. It's impossible for me to really guestimate possible mileage because I don't know anything about the course. I may end up actually completing way less, but I think it's good to aim high.

Now the only thing I need to do is come up with some formula that will translate road-bike training into trail miles (which, as this picture shows, are impossible to ride at the present.) I could ride my mountain bike on gravel roads, but it's still not the same. I think I'm just going to ride my bike, a lot, and hope for the best.

Hill day

Date: April 30
Mileage: 75
April mileage: 568
Temperature upon departure: 40

Had a strange moment of de-ja-vu that inadvertently lead to yet another roadie crash.

Ok, Ok, the truth is, I'm just a sadly predictable klutz. But the timing was interesting nonetheless.

Today was a "hill day" - three big climbs with elevation changes between 1,000 and 1,500 feet in 2-5 miles, buffered by plenty of rollers. I spent most of the day listening to new music that I downloaded on my iPod yesterday. As I crested to highest point of the day - elev. 1,500 feet - the music switched over to a song I had heard only once before, a song implanted in such a surreal region of my memory that up until today I thought it was a dream. Turns out it's "DARE" by the Gorillaz.

Before I even registered the music, the memory came flooding back - midnight programming on the one radio station I could pick up on my little AM/FM, droning with Top 40 pop broken by frequent, jarring static. I was pedaling my mountain bike across Flathorn Lake during the Susitna 100. I had lost the trail the moment I hit the maze of snowmobile tracks steaking across the ice, but I was following a distant light that I knew had to be the next checkpoint. Its yellow glow flickered in the deep ink darkness, broken by its own static as drizzling rain slowly turned to snow. I got off my bike to negotiate patches of soft snow when I stepped directly into a shin-deep puddle of overflow. The change in terrain startled me so much that I lost my footing and, in catching myself, shoved my bike onto its side in the slush. I remember just standing there, looking at the fallen bike and listening to radio static. Then, just as I moved to pick the bike up, an eerie voice began to climb out of the hole. It started almost indistinguishable from the white noise, but began to gain almost disconcerting clarity against the darkness and snow ... "Jump with the moon and move it; Jump back and forth. It feels like you would let yourself work it out."

Today, the same surreal notes came on my iPod just as I was rounding a corner to begin my descent back to sea level. I hit a patch of loose gravel, swerved out of control, and ended up laying my bike down after I had slowed to about 8 or 10 mph. I sat up on the pavement and rocked back and forth as I waited for the blind streaks of pain to stop shooting through my left hip. "Wait," I thought ... "I know this song."

" ... It's DARE ..."

I think it's time admit that I have a road bike coordination problem. But, for now, I'm blaming involuntary flashbacks. Or self-fulfilling prophecy. Either way, roadie, again, came out impressively unscathed.

Tomorrow is May 1, which means it's no longer legal for me to ride - or drive - around with studded tires. I have to get my car changed first. Geoff and I spent a half hour excavating my summer tires from a snowbank. It was like looking for buried treasure, digging through six feet of condensed snow, hitting small trees, logs, and finally ... yeah! tires.

I'm going to wait another couple of weeks to change over my mountain bike tires. I'm still holding out for another day of perfect concrete snow.

Oh yeah ... don't forget to vote Buckwheat for President.

We are not unique snowflakes

Date: April 29
Mileage: 16
April mileage: 493
Temperature upon departure: 43

Today I read an amusing editorial in the Anchorage Daily News, addressing the grand delusion of many Alaskans - that we are unique, special, not like other Americans. Set apart by latitude and buffered by a rather large foreign country, I guess it would be difficult not to feel separate-but-equal.

But ever since I moved here, I've been more than a little bugged by the sense of entitlement at large. The state pays people just to live here, and still people whine about a 3 percent sales tax, they whine about paying for education, they whine about pesky federal mandates like wildlife refuge designations, but then beg the federal government for more road money. Alaska seems to have a serious case of youngest child syndrome, which of course bugs me because I come from an oldest child background. I'm the one who had to deal with a 10 p.m. curfew and had to begin working at age 11 to support my teenage lifestyle. So I can't stand to see an entire state act like the family princess, crying about the unfairness of a midnight curfew while Daddy doles out another 20 for a trip to the mall. You get my point, don't you?

So it gives me great joy to see someone tell Alaskans that they are, in fact, not unique and special snowflakes. While there is a small percentage of the population, mostly Native, who still live a subsistence lifestyle in remote villages, most of us are middle-aged, white-collar, suburban working stiffs with 2.3 cars and a lifestyle dominated by climate-controlled buildings. The only difference between us and some guy in Cleveland is that we can go skiing on glaciers in our backyards or drive to the closest body of water and catch a king salmon. But how many of us actually do?

Sure, there's a definite distinct culture in Alaska. The scenery is beyond amazing. The history is certainly on the interesting side. Latitude gives us the whole daylight thing and, economically speaking, we still have youth on our side. But does that give us a mandate to demand respect from the lower 48 while we cry to Daddy because Big Brother wouldn't give us bridge money? I may be an older child, an outsider looking in and looking out again, but I don't think so.