Herbert Glacier Trail

Date: Oct. 26
Total mileage: 13.2
October mileage: 332.3
Temperature upon departure: 39

Here is one trail that I would just love to give myself most of a day sometime to ride repeatedly, again and again, five or 10 times. Geoff thinks I'm crazy in this regard - why ride the same trail even twice, let alone over and over in the same day? (and it's not even a 24-hour race) But the Herbert Glacier Trail is one of those rare trails that I could lose myself entirely in. It's flat and fast, protected from the bog by a fine layer of gravel and sand. But upon this narrow strip of civilization I can move freely through the dense forest, skimming virtual walls of sky-blocking trees at 10, 15 - even 20 mph, if I felt so motivated. The flow becomes so natural that it's easy to forget I'm destination-bound, until, after about 4.5 miles, I arrive at a stunning dead end.


The trail may be on the easy side - but it's not mindless. There's a few quick rock jumps, some mud holes, some stream crossings, some tight edges. Geoff mulled this tight spot for about five minutes before deciding that the margin of error was too small, and the consequences of error too high.


I had decided long before that I wasn't about to risk a five-foot dive into a fast-flowing glacial river while air temperatures struggled to hit 40 degrees (and the water was most definitely a bit colder.) But the time spent off the bike was short, and was quickly reimbursed by four miles of flight, tearing through deep, winding canyons of trees as the Herbert River gurgled alongside.

As we pounded out the last mile, the sky broke open into a fierce hailstorm. Chunks of ice trickled down my collar, hit my nose, landed in my eyelids. I held my eyes wide open against the sharp edges, waiting for the hailstones to melt rather than brush them away. I didn't want to take my hands off the handlebars and risk a disruption. I was moving, flowing, a river.

We tried another nearby trail - made, mostly, of wood planks and muddy roots - and both took a beating. I went down hard on a wet wooden bridge and developed a throbbing goose-egg the size of a softball on my left arm. Geoff's water resistant coat soaked through and he was fastly approaching hypothermia. But I still felt tempted to do another run up to Herbert Glacier. I didn't tell Geoff that.

Maybe someday I will go back and do it again. And again and again. To see what it's like. To feel the hard effort of a good endurance ride. To feel the soft rain filtered through thousands of evergreen branches. To feel the smooth flow of the forest in silence.

To feel like a river.

Sugar in pieces

All this time I've been desk surfing at work - busy, busy election season, you know - Geoff's been overhauling bikes like it's his job. He spent the past two on my mountain bike. Since yesterday he removed just about every moving part, greased it up, installed a new chainring and chain (my last one was stretched two inches from its original length), massively degreased the drivetrain, re-adjusted both the derailleurs and pumped up the rear shock. I don't even knowing what else he did to it when I wasn't looking. I, um, cleaned the cassette. Yeah, I've been working pretty hard.

I haven't had a chance to ride it yet, but I feel confident in making the statement that this is pretty much the best Gary Fisher women's specific Sugar 3+ mountain bike of unspecified year ... ever. I think the green sticker on the handlebars is what really puts it on top. That sticker has survived more rain and mud and abuse than even the headset could handle. You know that's quality craftmanship, right there. Thanks, Carlos :-).

As this all came down, and as my mountain bike became temporarily unrideable, I had a little time to reflect on how emotionally attached I can become to certain inanimate objects. It's interesting, because I'm not exactly one of those people who goes nuts about "stuff." I make a terrible consumer. I never buy anything new. I wear all my outdoor gear into the ground and then grind it further into the dirt just for good measure. Then, when it finally comes time to toss it away, I never give it a second thought.

But every once in a while, something clicks. I think about a happy memory or a harrowing adventure, and I remember the object and the way it carried me though. It's rare, but therein lies the beginning of an attachment that runs deep, a vulnerable yet sincere emotion so close to human that when I say I "love" my Sugar, I'll almost mean it. I actually feel this way about my car. People give me a lot of crap for this - it's a 1996 Geo Prism, 145,000 miles, lucky if it's still worth more than $1,000. But I've had it for six years. It's taken me across dozens of states and most of the Canadian provinces. It's been driven over boulders and 100-mile-long dirt roads. It's been bashed into a parked car and pummelled by a downed sycamore tree. I'm convinced that when it does cease to run, I'll cease to own a car. But not until then.

Now, I look at Sugar in his dozens of pieces, and I think that I'll probably just continue to fix him up, add new parts, do what I can to keep him on the trail until the frame disintegrates (or I do.) I know that's not what's actually going to happen. Mountain bike relationships aren't meant to last forever. But it's romantic to pretend it could.

My weather prediction

Date: Oct. 21 and 22
Total mileage: 49.4
October mileage: 319.1
Temperature upon departure: 43

I should be a weather guesser. Predicting the weather in Juneau would be my easiest job since I worked as a hamburger bun warmer at Wendy's. Why, just now, I pounded out a 195-day forecast that should get us through May 6, 2007. I'm betting on 75-percent accuracy, which is a better average than the NOAA. Our current weather guessers wouldn't dare put out such a report - they probably can't deal with the bleakness of reality. But, I gotta tell you, that one day of partial sun is worth living for.

I installed fenders on my road bike about a week ago, and I was happy to discover that they do in fact dispel road grit with about 95-percent accuracy. It's also nice to have water continuously splashing on me from only one direction - the sky. Someday they'll invent fenders to combat that pesky precipitation problem. Until then, I'll just have to rely on a marginal rainsuit and a helpfully high tolerance for wet feet.

It would be interesting to hold a vote for the absolute worst cycling weather. Although I enjoyed today's ride, I'd have to nominate 35-40 degrees and raining. I've experienced a range of conditions ... -11 degrees and windy, 18 degrees in a blizzard, 107 degrees with heat waves wafting off the pavement. On second thought, -11 degrees and windy is probably worse. But 40 degrees and raining would at least be a close second. There's just about nothing you can do to stay warm, except ride hard - and even the slightest cooldown will make you uncomfortable for miles. It's a challenge. It really is.

But that could just be me, watching my wet wool socks and leggings drip gray water all over the carpet and feeling compelled to gripe about it. What's the worst weather you've ever ridden in?

The precedent

I read in a recent issue of Backpacker (yes, while goose-stepping on an elliptical trainer) an article exploring the argument that adventure is dead. Obese accountants can eat filet mignon while rafting through the Grand Canyon. Weekend warriors with low-grade GPS units can trek the furthest reaches of the Brooks Range. The summit of Mount Everest can be bought. This article made a lot of points, but the basic idea I came away with was that the age of information has rendered the death of discovery.

It didn't leave me with any lasting disappointment. My opinion about exploration has always been that if I've never been there, it's new to me. I'll probably never vie to be the first person atop random peak #37 in the Alaska Range or to ride my bicycle across the frozen Bering Sea (not that I wouldn't love to ride from here to Russia.) But as long as I can wrap my adventure around dodging porcupines on a leaf-littered trail or carving tracks through thick, crunchy snow, I stay satisfied.

This human need to explore one's own surroundings is trumped by the even more primal need to do so before anyone else beats us to it. But we have satellite technology that can peer into every window on earth. Scrutinizing the detailed topography of Sibera is a simple matter of having $9.95 and an active eBay account. We know this, and so we're inclined to settle into life, taking comfort in the fact that everything's been mapped out for us. We sometimes feel a tinge of pity for people who whittle their time and savings away to become the first 37-year-old grocery store clerk with a bum knee to paraglide across XY glacier.

"That's, like, so been done."

I guess this is how we compensate for doing what's been done - we claw our way to the fringes, the furthest extremes, the only places left on earth where we feel like we can distinguish ourselves. In Alaska, I always hear about stomach-dropping new adventures, like the cyclists who ride the frozen Iditarod trail for 1,000 unbroken miles. But it never takes long to discover stories like those of Ed Jesson, a Dawson City caribou hunter who rode his bicycle over 1,000 miles over the frozen Yukon River to Nome. After spending one night at 48 below, Ed wrote in his diary:

"The oil in the bearings was frozen. I could scarcely ride it and my nose was freezing and I had to hold the handlebars with both hands, not being able to ride yet with one hand and rub my nose with the other."

He sounds so edgy yet vulnerable, so tied to the postmodern notion of exploration on the extreme fringes. Except for Ed wrote this particular entry in the year 1900. Ed was a gold rusher.

Adventure is more a way of being than an actual path, exploration more a state of mind than an actual game. I try to remember this with I head out to face a road route I've ridden dozens of times, or a fitness jog down a well-worn path.

I never fail to find something new.

Heartbreak

Date: Oct. 19
Total mileage: 36.0
October mileage: 269.7
Temperature upon departure: 49

I'm really not a sports fan.

I'm fair-weather to the very extreme. Meaning: I have no clue about backstories or statistics or strategies or, sometimes, even the basic rules. I carry all of this eye-rolling apathy into random games where everything is on the line and everything matters and everything comes down to one heart-stopping moment.

I always get sucked into the drama.

I always have my heart broken.

It happened in 1996 when the Alta High School basketball dynasty dropped right out of the bottom.

It happened in 1997 when the Utah Jazz lost the last two games in the championship series, both of which came down to three or four points right at the very end, to the Chicago Bulls.

It happened to me in 1998 when the University of Utah clawed their way into the NCAA championship series only to lose to Kentucky.

After the late '90s, my interest in basketball mostly dried up. I was happy again, as apathetic as ever. Then I had to go and meet a person who talks continuously about baseball, even in January, and somehow dragged me into the forlorn world of the modern Mets fan.

So the Mets lost to the Cardinals in Game 7 of the NLCS. How does that affect my life? How does it change anything for me?

Exactly. So why did I sit there for three hours, fresh off a fairly hard bike ride and coping with a stress-induced 90-beats-per-minute heart rate?

Why did a literally, involuntarily, jump off the ground when Chavez leapt like 14 feet beyond the back wall to steal that home run away? Why did I sneer and become so incensed by that Cardinal guy with the stupid red soul patch hanging off his chin like a dead caterpillar? Why do I feel so sick inside? I could barely eat dinner.

I'm so confused. I don't even like baseball.

I think that's it for me. Destiny has given me the rare (or maybe not so rare) ability to be driven to emotional extremes by distant events but the wherewithal to choose apathy.

Sweet, stagnant apathy.

On again, off again

Date: Oct. 17
Total mileage: 25.2
October mileage: 233.7
Temperature upon departure: 42

Many cyclists I know, especially those who race their bicycles on a regular basis, have begun to talk about the "off season." As in most sports, cycling has found its drastic ebb and flow, which means from March to September all I hear about is trainingracingridingracingtraining. Then, October hits ... a couple of leaves drop ... and suddenly ... nothing.

Up in Alaska, far away from the velodromes and crits and Cat-4's and what have you, this "off season" is still very much a mystery to me. For what little racing I do - and for how liberally I'd have to use the term "athlete" to call myself one - I tend to have events spread fairly evenly throughout the year. I've been in a bit of a slump - I'll call it an "off-season" - since July. But pretty soon, at about the beginning of November, I'll have to think about upping the training and scheduling focused workouts if I want to be in shape come February. It's the depths of cold, dark winter. It's when I like to be "on."

So now that I have to gear up, and watch my fellow cyclists wind down, I can't help but speculate on the mystery of it all. Where do cyclists go during the "off season" to give it such a defeated, fatalistic name? I have some theories:

"Beer and television:" I think the smart athletes would give themselves some real time off, and do as Lance Armstrong does. You know: go for easy spins with President Bush and party all night with celebrities. And if, unlike Lance, they were willing to give all that up to go back to the lonely, relentless life of a racing cyclist, I would think that beer gut would give them all that much more motivation in the spring.

"Trainer hell:" These cyclists I know, they're so preoccupied with going fast that they forget they can just put on a big poofy snow suit and mount some flood lights to their Bianchis so they can keep riding outside during cold, dark winter days. Instead, they put their poor bicycles on rollers and spend two to three hours a day dripping sweat all over the carpet of their cold, dark basements. As a former gym rat, I actually have no problem with the concept, especially if you have access to a good iPod lineup and all three seasons of Arrested Development on DVD. But every day? All winter long? Eee.

"Cross-training:" I don't how many cyclists also Nordic ski. But I definitely think more should. Not only do you work all the important leg muscles, you also have an excuse to continue wearing spandex all winter long. Mountain bike racers should snowboard ... good practice for dodging trees and grabbing that sweet, sweet air. I'd also suggest snowshoes, but I don't know many cyclists who also run (except for those crazy triathletes). The rest of us, I believe, are opposed to unaided human power on principle.

"Real jobs:" Some people who race all summer long take so much time off that they have to buckle down and work day and night throughout the winter just to support the habit. I admire that, but I don't really have any good advice for such a person.

"Hibernation:" This is different from beer and television, because to actually be in hibernation, I don't think you can be doing what 95 percent of everyone else is doing. No, you actually have to be fast asleep. Dreaming of green trails and dry roads. I also don't have any good advice for you.

"IceBike:" It's everyone's favorite novelty Web site, but so few seem to actually do it. Trust me, once you experiment with the wonders of snowbiking, you'll understand why I consider late summer the "off season."

But seriously, "real cyclists," where do you go during the winter? I used to pass you on the road all the time. Now your numbers are diminishing. Soon you'll all be gone, and I feel lonely just thinking about it.

Zen and the art of ...

Date: Oct. 16
Total mileage: 40.2
October mileage: 208.5
Temperature upon departure: 48

Geoff informed me today that I'd have to be a very cold-hearted person, or, in better words, an idiot, to even think about riding my mountain bike before it gets a complete overhall, which includes new parts that have to be shipped to Juneau on a barge. Somehow, over a few months of tender, loving abuse, I managed to almost completely wear down all of the teeth on the middle ring. Then I rode it long enough in that decrepit state so it now also requires a new chain. And pedals. And shifter levers. And I think that in one or more of my many crashes, I may have slightly bent the rear derailleur. Other than that, it's golden! Why can't I ride it?

On the bright side, Geoff has been working almost nonstop for a week on our five bikes, and roadie has never been in better shape. Geoff even installed fenders. So the theory is now that I can go for a ride and not be sprayed continuously with road grit. I'll believe it when I see it. I have perfected my rain-riding ensemble, however: waterproof jacket over a thin fleece liner, rain pants over nylon longjohns, earwarmer and neoprene socks, booties and gloves. You'd think with all this armor I could manage to stay dry, but you would be mistaken. I don't know why I didn't just give up early and buy a wet suit. If you can swim in them, I bet you can bike in them. And they're so aerodynamic!

I found a couple hours to ride in beautiful weather today, so I'm not in a position to complain. It always amazes me how much less physical effort the same distance requires when there are no elements to fight. A 40-mile rain ride is downright epic, and yet the same ride, just one week later, in sunlight, feels like a boardwalk cruise. It's always faster, too, even though there's typically more wind when skies are clear.

I haven't really had very many chances to observe the bicycle maintenance routine during the past week - although the truth is I have little patience for it. I'd like to become a better steward of my stuff, but how do I overcome a severe personality flaw that makes me want to scream and start throwing things every time I wrap my fingers around a screwdriver? The theory is in the next month or two I'm supposedly going to start building a snowbike, and I hate the thought of recruiting Geoff to do all of the grunt work for me. I need to set some goals.

I will watch Geoff rebuild the crank.

I will help clean out the hubs.

I will read Web sites on bicycle building, even if the my chances of understanding them are about as good as Sugar's future chances of selling on eBay as anything but a hurricane bike.

I will try meditation.

I will practice the power of positive thinking.

I will stay dry.