Spring, for real this time

Date: May 23
Mileage: 39.6
May Mileage: 357.4
Temperature upon departure: 57

A couple of weeks ago, when we still had several feet of snow in the yard, Geoff said the sure sign of spring would be the day we could see the tops of the backyard fire pit benches poking out from the crust. In less than 14 days, spring did even better - stripping away an entire winter's worth of snowpack and leaving behind only dry grass, wet firewood and the recently exposed debris of a long, stagnant winter. The yard looks awful. But is sure is warm.

I've felt surprisingly strong during my past several rides. I suddenly have all this extra pep and push, and the only reason I could think of is that the rise in temperature has allowed my body to put more energy into the actual pedaling and less into the whole staying warm effort. Just like my car's gas mileage goes up a few miles per gallon every summer, warm air seems to have a similar effect on my riding.

I love the smell of willow in the air, buds on branches and blazing streaks of green creeping out from the dry, yellow groundcover. The emerging colors and smells give new life to old routes, and now the miles are just flying by. I only get three months of this. Believe me, I'm going to cherish every minute.

Time to ride

Date: 22
Mileage: 30.4
May Mileage: 317.8
Temperature upon departure: 53

Just the other day, I was complaining to a friend about the difficulties of training for a bicycle endurance race - mainly, finding the time to put in any significant mileage.

"Most weekdays I have about two hours, tops," I said.

She stopped me there. "Wait - exactly how much time do you spend riding each week?"

I thought about it, "Taking into account the weekends, probably 12 to 15 hours. I wish it was closer to twenty."

"Twenty hours?" she said and rolled her eyes. "You might as well get a part-time job." Then she said something about her family that implied that she was too busy having a life do something as frivolous as ride a bike for 20 hours a week.

I do understand that I'm blessed with a lifestyle more frivolous than others. I'm single, no kids, unhindered by debt. Regardless, I'm still not rolling in unmitigated free time. I do have a full-time job that can reach 50 hours a week. I have my part-time, freelance projects that I tend to push on the backburner. I have to change the cat litter box once in a while.

So, even for me, it can challenge to carve out time for a bike ride. So - how to make the time? The best thing I ever did for my free time was move to an apartment that didn't get TV reception of any kind. I have nothing against TV. I actually like it. But not having the option to watch forced me to give it up cold turkey. I've been virtually TV-free for a year and a half. I even have to option to watch network channels now, but I don't. Truth is, I don't even miss it. I highly recommend this lifestyle change.

Minor changes help, too. Another thing I don't do is cook ... much. Granted, I do have someone hanging around that is more than happy to cook up a fresh halibut dinner for me. But when I lived alone, I ate a lot of salads and sandwiches and cold cereal. I survived. And I didn't have to spend as much time doing dishes or grocery shopping.

Ask yourself small questions: Do I really need to make the bed every day? Am I really the type of person that needs eight hours of sleep every night? Can't I just feed the cat twice as much every other day? If I sold my car and bought a faster bike, wouldn't that actually save me time? Maybe I can get one of those automated voice activation systems to answer the phone.

All it takes is small changes. Soon you, too, can carve out 20 hours a week to ride without people even noticing or thinking you have a deeply embedded problem. What's that? You think that these suggestions are sign of a deeply embedded problem? Well ... hmmmm ... I guess I should probably get some sleep now.

Across the Bay

Date: May 19 and 21
Mileage: 26.9 and 65.3
May Mileage: 287.4
Temperature upon departure: 39 and 48

Good weekend - went on my first bicycle ride where the temperature passed 50 degrees, and took my first trip across the Bay. Granted, in order to get across the Bay I had to join 12 teenagers on an eighth grade geology class field trip - but it was still a good weekend.

A teacher at Homer Middle School (who seems to have taken a shine to me after I wrote a series of newspaper articles about education programs at his school) invited me to join a trip to Grenwingk Glacier. How could I say no? It was basically a guided tour of the violent geology still ripping across Kachemak Bay State Park - the gravel-strewn moraines and retreating glaciers. The trip also included a float-by of what has to be the most beautiful coastal community in America: Halibut Cove. And it wasn't exactly a sedentary sit-and-wonder kind of a trip. The teacher even dragged everyone an extra two miles just to play on the hand-pulled tram that crosses the glacial creek.

All told, we probably hiked seven or eight miles. I was really impressed with the kids' stamina. I was braced for the worse, hiking with twelve 13- and 14-year-olds. But for most of the trip, we old folks had to practically jog to keep up with the kids. One kid even shared his dried mangos with me after I made the very juvenile mistake of forgetting to bring a lunch.

But the most interesting part of the trip was the actual field-trip aspect. You know. Education and stuff. It's amazing, really, how dramatically the area's ecology changes across just four miles of open water. The Homer side of the Bay is relatively new, with stair-step hillsides, spruce forests and mud bogs. On the south side of the Bay, the steep Kenai Mountains jut straight up from sea level. The face of the landscape changes in equally dramatic succession - beach grass climbs into old-growth cottonwood groves which change to ponderosa and spruce forests and finally to alpine tundra. Above that is the Harding Ice Field, which spits out several glaciers that are currently in dramatic retreat. The point where I stood to take this photo was buried beneath hundreds of feet of ice as recently as 50 years ago. Believe what you will about global warming, but Alaska is melting.

I couldn't complain too much about global warming today, however, with the sun out and temperatures rising comfortably into the mid-50s. Today was the first day all year that I rode with just one layer of clothing. Maybe someday I'll even be able to ride with actual skin exposed, maybe even pull out my bike shorts from the dusty cardboard box they've been stuffed in since I moved here. I can dream.

Sunset ... sunrise

Date: May 18
Mileage: 25.3
May Mileage: 195.2
Temperature upon departure: 42

I snapped a quick picture coming home from my ride today and I thought it looked familiar. So I dug through my archives and came upon this shot, which I took while standing on what must have been the exact same spot on Jan. 14. The cool thing about it ... at least, I thought ... is that today's picture was taken at 10:55 p.m. January's shot was taken at about 10:30 a.m.

Of course the mud and shadows of May don't quite match the beauty of January frost and a late-morning sunrise. But there's something about the synchronicity of the two photos that gives me comfort. I'm still trying to adjust to these chaotic swings of daylight. I felt fine beneath 19 hours of darkness, but now twilight lingers well past midnight, my biorythms haven't adjusted yet, I try to wind down for the night, I try to sleep, but my mind and body just want to play.

Ever see that movie, "Insomnia?" I kinda wish I hadn't.

Best flight ever

Date: May 17
Mileage: 31.1
May mileage: 169.9
Temperature upon departure: 43

Good ride today - mostly sunny, light wind, late enough to beat most of the traffic (which can be kinda bad, actually, because there are so few through-roads here, and so many more drivers in rented RVs than most towns this size.) The ride was so good that it was completely uneventful.

I'm still taking flack for my whiny airport post on Monday, so I thought I'd counter it with my "Best Flight Ever" story.

It was about this time last year that a friend of mine invited me on a morning joy-flight with some friends of hers from Pocatello. They picked us up in Idaho Falls in their four-seater Cessna, and we took off over the volcano outcrops and potato fields of northeastern Idaho. Our destination was Dell, Montana. Dell isn't really much of a destination town. If you blinked at the right moment while driving up I-15, you'd likely miss it entirely. But according to the Pokey residents, the town offered good breakfast and some semblance of an airstrip, so to Dell we went.

We killed a few hours over greasy plates of comfort food (I think I just had toast. Nothing robs me of my appetite more than flying, except maybe a 24-hour mountain bike race.) Upon leaving the diner, we were unpleasantly surprised by horizontal sheets of unseasonable snow - and thick clouds - whipping across the valley. The storm was moving quickly to the south, and there seemed to be blue sky behind it. The pilot decided we could ride this little patch of good weather home.

I'm not usually afraid of flying, but I distinctly remember taking one look at that blowing snow and telling my friend that I was going to thumb it home. "It'll be fine," she said. "Herb (or whatever his name was) is licensed to fly instruments down" (whatever that means.)

We took off into the backside of the storm, climbing through light fog until we reached the narrow eye. Clouds were swirling all around us, and Herb announced that he was going to climb to 8,000 feet to get well above any, well, mountains that could blindside us without warning. As we circled upward, more clouds encroached. Herb announced that he was going to fly above the storm, but all I could see were mountains of rolling white water vapor stretching beyond my field of vision.

Upward we circled, the engine growling, the plane lurching in cloudy turbulence, me clutching my earphones with every expectation that the next words out of Herb's mouth were going to be "Mayday! Mayday!" I began to notice deep shivers rolling through my body, but not until my teeth started chattering did I realize that I wasn't just nervous - I was cold. The sharp air tore at my throat. I glanced over at Herb's swirling altimeter ... 13,700 feet ... 13,750 feet .... 13,800 feet.

"How high does this thing go?" I yelled into my mouthpiece, gasping in the thin air and the realization that I was uncomfortably close to being as high in actual atmosphere as I had ever been ... without the benefit of slow acclimatization through hiking.

"About 16,000 feet," Herb yelled.

His wife, sitting shotgun directly in front of me, turned around and ominously shook her head. Her face said everything about Herb's machismo and the nonchalant way he was leading us to high-altitude oblivion.

As we reached the pinnacle of our climb, my mind when very dark. No deep, life-affirming thoughts revealed themselves. I didn't even have enough sense to properly pray. All I did was ramble the "Lord's Prayer" over and over in my head - and I don't even come from that kind of Christian background. But that's all I had.

I've lost track of most of those long, foggy, dark minutes. I don't even remember how or when we got out of the storm, but somehow we did. In fact, the only thing I remember after the Lord's Prayer is climbing through our last cloud on approach to the Idaho Falls runway, and how unbelievably happy I was that I could see that strip of pavement. So happy, in fact, that I still access it as one of my great moments of joy when life looks especially bleak.

I still maintain that the flights in which you think you're going to die are better than the flights in which you wish you would.

May night ride

Date: May 16
Mileage: 38.2
May mileage: 138.8 (inc. 17 miles May 5)
Temperature upon departure: 45

I tried to ease back into biking with a loop ride after work today. At 5 p.m. the wind was fierce and traffic was heavy, so I cut the ride short (I am the queen of the "If it's not fun, why bother?" justification.)

But when the calm of evening took over, I begin to rethink my riding routine. It seems a waste, really, to spend an entire ride fighting rush hour when prime time actually falls much later these days. As I unpacked from my vacation and watched soft light descend on the horizon out the window, I decided to squeeze in 15 more miles. It was 10:05 p.m.

I set out with my back to the sun, still perched in a blaze of orange above the tips of skeleton spruce trees to the southwest. The air was so calm I could almost hear its silence, amplified further by the occasional bird chirp or the distant hum of a motor. Traffic was nonexistant. People were in bed. I was just getting warmed up.

I can already tell that these months of almost endless daylight are going to seriously cut into my sleep habits. How can I resist riding when I'm just hitting my energy peak, the evening sky is at its most scenic and I have an entire sleepy little town to myself? That dosen't change the fact that I still have to be up and at work by 7 to 9 a.m. every day. No matter. It's light then, too.

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.