Rain delay

Date: Dec. 4
Total mileage: 22.0
November mileage: 22.0
Temperature upon departure: 34

Today a warm front settled in, bringing with it the snowpack-decimating rain that drips like acid from an electric blue-gray sky.

It was a sad state for a ride, but I still felt happy to get out. It was a shower of slush and enough ingested road salt to replace any electrolyte drink, but my legs felt strong and my lungs were happy to be back in the humid, sea-level atmosphere again.

I took the above picture yesterday while Geoff and I were skiing along the campground trails. I am getting better on skis. I don't really hate skiing. In fact, it is kind of fun in a simultaneously relaxing and frustrating way. And I stopped to visit my first Juneau home, camp site No. 5:

And as bad as those first two weeks were, I have to say, I'm lucky I moved to Juneau in August and not December.

I am giving myself until Friday to make a definite and binding decision on the Susitna 100. There are a lot of people who can't imagine spending $700 for a race, but I'm not exactly spending all that money on a race. I'm spending it on an experience, much in the way some people buy time on cruises or helicopter ski tours. There are definitely sillier things I could spend that much money on. An LCD TV comes to mind.

Carl Hutch (a race veteran himself) suggested I take it a step further at enter the Iditarod Invitational. This 350-mile winter race is a big dream of mine. There are some ways in which I eat, sleep and dream the ghost trail to McGrath ... but ... it may be a little more than I can bear ... this year. Who knows? I have been known to take bigger, crazier leaps of faith. But there's still a part of me that hasn't quite conquered the Susitna 100.

Tim answered my question best when I pondered what Pete - inarguably the best endurance rider in Alaska - might do if faced with a similar choice:

"Pete would jump on the ferry to Haines, then ride his bike all the way to the start. And he'd still kick everybody's ass. Pete's a mutant."

I wish I were a mutant. But I'm not. I'm just a 27-year-old masochist with a desk job, a brand new snow bike, and a strange taste in vacations. Maybe I can offset the cost of said vacation by designing and selling T-shirts. I already have the sketch in mind. I drew it while killing time near a giant dead polar bear at the Anchorage airport. It could work. Stranger things have happened.

Should I do it?

I was crunching some numbers today when I stumbled across a page on the Susitna 100 Web site that I have never seen before, the 2006 Photo Gallery, and discovered what I believe is the only picture taken of me during the entire Feb. 18 race (thanks to Mike Schoder). The number I was crunching was the approximate cost for me to do the upcoming race, on Feb. 17, 2007. Money is the excuse I've been using for my indecisiveness, but the truth is I've been hedging on this far too long.

It's already Dec. 3. And so I must decide.

"It would be cool," I'd say to Geoff. "But would it be $700 cool? Or $800 cool?"

But secretly, I'd be thinking to myself: "Would it be buy a new sleeping bag and bivy sack cool? Take three or four days off of work cool? Fly out to Anchorage in the middle of February cool? Spend the next three months forcing myself on increasingly lengthy, sleet-drenched, Taku-wind-blasted bicycle rides cool? Plod through the sleep deprived physical delirium of 24 hours with a bicycle just to see the sun rise over the Susitna Valley once more cool?"

But then I look at this picture from last year, and I already know the answer.

There's still the problem with committing to it, however. What becomes easy to do in my mind becomes harder to do when I'm staring at the Alaska Air flight reservation Web site. So I have to weigh the pros and cons.

Pros:
- This year, I'll have a snow bike (which will probably be ready to ride by the middle of this month.) It's not a fatbike, persay, not a Pugsley, but is decidedly more snow-worthy than my skinny Sugar.

- This year, I'll have experience. Although that could instill a false sense of security, I at least won't walk into the frozen valley facing a complete unknown.

- This year, I'll have most of my gear upfront. It won't be like last December, when I started out the season riding in 10-degree weather while wearing four pairs of cotton gym socks.

- This year, I'll have more competitive drive. I've always been accustomed to coming in last, but the 24 Hours of Kincaid gave me a taste of the fresh air at the front of the pack, and I want more.

Cons:
- I live in Juneau this year, not Homer, which means an exponentially higher cost of travel to get to the Big Lake area.

- I live in Juneau this year, not Homer, which means training in conditions that are likely leaps and bounds away from those on the race course: Deep, wet snow; warmer air; and the possibility of driving rain (all of these conditions would have served me well when I was training for last year's race, but what are the chances it will be warm and rainy two years in a row?)

- I live in Juneau this year, not Homer, which means shipping my bike via USPS more than a week before the race. And who trusts USPS?

- Last year, I was training mainly to give myself something to do over the long Alaska winter. This year, I actually know what I need to do to get ready for such a race. And it scares the #$@! out of me.

So I look at the logistics and I ask myself: What would Pete Basinger do? What would Mike Curiak do?

What would you do?

Made it back. Mostly.

Date: Nov. 30
Total mileage: 28.0
November mileage: 279.9
Temperature upon departure: 18

(Today's photo is a picture of Spaulding Meadow as captured by Geoff on Thanksgiving Day. Of all the things I actually remembered to bring back from Utah, my camera was not one of them.)

I was sitting in an immobile plane at the Ketchikan airport, staring at the blizzard-obscured city across the channel and wondering just when my move to Southeastern Alaska went wrong.

Maybe it was the lady from Kenai who sat in the seat in front of me, jabbering joyfully about her epic flight from Anchorage to Seattle to Ketchikan, all in a so-far foiled effort to make it to Juneau. "I just know we're going to end up back in Anchorage," she laughed. "I hope you know people there because this airline (Alaska Air) knows better than to give people hotel comps."

Maybe it was my sinus infection and the unbearable pressure that only seemed to increase in intensity as we sat at sea level - a sensation of deep sea diving combined with menthol-laced strawberry cough drops and an iPod blasting Built to Spill. I just wanted my ears to pop. And I wanted to drown out the displaced cheerfulness of the Kenai traveler.

Maybe it was the laps that I speed-walked around a Seattle airport terminal in an effort to get some exercise during the long day of traveling. The fifth time I passed my departure gate, a woman asked me if I was lost. "I'm just walking," I said. "Flight delayed?" she asked. I just shrugged. "Can you believe this weather?" she asked. I shrugged again and looked toward the window. It looked like it was snowing.

Maybe it was the way that, in between blinding pressure headaches, I couldn't help but look back wistfully to the final few days of my Utah vacation - time spent commuting around the frozen city on a tiny mountain bike and communing with old friends who have no concept of weather slavery. They were all warm in their beds. I was on the wrong side of the nonexistent "Bridge to Nowhere."

Maybe it was the gnawing anxiety as the captain-of-few-words announced that he would "try for a Juneau landing," and took off after more than an hour of waiting. I have heard that descending into the wall of mountains that line Juneau can be terrifying, but could only imagine what that must be like as we bumped and bounced through the featureless static of driving snow.

Maybe it was the way in which every passenger erupted into a chorus of cheers before the plane even touched down, and continued clapping as it careened across a runway covered in two inches of snow, so unified in their appreciation that I couldn't help but laugh in spite of my wide-eyed terror.

Maybe it was just my need to grump because coming home from vacation is all about grumping - especially when it's December, and the sunset's now at 3 p.m., and the forecast calls for 10 days of warm sleet. I should have felt grateful to have slipped through the window of the storm. But somehow I just couldn't seem to find the method to this madness ... the happy medium in this land of extremes.

Cold in Utah

Date: Nov. 29
Total mileage: 24.0
November mileage: 251.9
Temperature upon departure: 15

Seems like it's cold everywhere. Just when I was lamenting the way the sunny tropicalness of my Utah vacation has been cut short, I checked out the West Juneau Weather Station to discover a record low of -12 last night and about 15" of snowfall today. Yikes.

Plus, I have a cold. It has been lurking all week and I have been generally ignoring it. But all this dry air and elevation finally caught up to me today when the mercury dropped into the teens before noon. I set out for a two-hour ride that I had all mapped out in my head before I left. I popped in a cough drop and headed up Wasatch Boulevard on my friend's midget mountain bike (I believe it has a 15" frame.) I was only about 10 minutes into the real meat of the climb before I started wheezing. "This is insane," I thought. "I haven't been doing much riding, but I shouldn't be this out of shape." I cut back the effort but after only 200 more yards I could hardly breathe. I jumped off my bike and dropped to my knees in the snow, wheezing, coughing, and spitting up all kinds of unpleasant gunk. I sucked at my camelback but it was already frozen solid. And just when I had made up my mind to turn around, my coughing subsided, my throat cleared and I felt more awake and alive than I had all day. And with the blaze of cold sunlight streaming over the whitewashed Wasatch mountains and crisp snow clinging to the pavement, I situated my balaclava over my face and finished my ride.

I know if I end up with bronchitis or the flu, I probably deserve it. But I think I am going to beat this cold, ride it out so to speak. I spent the night with my parents and sister, walking around downtown Salt Lake and looking at Christmas lights. My mom's and sister's terror-stricken faces as we stepped out into the "crazy cold" was almost as entertaining as the twinkling trees themselves. I told my mom she would never survive if she ended up in the upper Midwest or, heaven forbid, interior Alaska. She didn't disagree. Someday she and my dad will retire somewhere warm. Then I actually will be able to take tropical vacations from Alaska during the winter rather than just settling for a place where the low is 6, not -12.

Other stuff to do in snow

Today was a day to help teach my youngest sister how to snowboard and steal a few gleeful powder runs in the extra space of a resort day, the space that I usually reserve for eating lunch and going to the bathroom. My two sisters and I decided a week ago that snowboarding at Brighton would be the perfect sisterly outing, and somehow we picked the perfect day to do it (if your idea of "perfect" is a near-whiteout and 15-degree temps.) But what we did have was plenty of famous Utah snow - piles and piles of crisp, dry powder so indistinguishable from the blizzard-stricken terrain that I would occasionally blast through mounds as high as my waist, emerging from the swirling cloud of ice jolted but not slowed. I took a few swims, but the snow was so light and airy that it was easy to stay afloat, skimming the silent surface on my rental hovercraft. Even my newbie sister got the hang of it early on, and a good time was had by all.

It's days like these that cause me to take stock of my hobbies, in my continuing quest to make sure the bulk of my time and energy is going into the right one. After all, I have more than a few friends that are crazy dedicated to skiing, those who wheel their lives around it, who are (or at least were) willing to be "bums" for the cause. So I turn my focus from those eight perfect powder runs between the entertaining snowboard lessons, and rechart the day as a whole: wake up at 7 a.m.; drive to the ski shop to get fitted for a board ($16, at a 50% discount); Drive to the mouth of the canyon; catch the skibus ($6 round trip); buy a day pass at Brighton ($40); board board board board; wait for the ski bus; buy a $4 coffee cart drink while I'm waiting; wait some more; cram into the skibus with a full load of wet, lethargic people; sit on the bus as it inches down the canyon for 45 minutes; and leave the mouth of the canyon just in time to drive through rush-hour traffic all the way home. And all of the sudden, all I have left of my perfect day is about $70 less than I used to have and sore knees.

Don't get me wrong. It was a beautiful outing. Plus, the sisterly time is priceless. But, at the end of the day, I have to say that I'm still glad I'm a cyclist. And I sure hope all that fresh Alaska powder settles in and hardens up before I get home.

Pictures of Zion

I took a trip to the desert.

My parents first brought me here when I was just a small child.

I have spent many miles of the many years since trekking the length and depth of this land.

And still it awes and confuses me.

Most people know that "Zion" indicates a promised land, but don't know that the word "Kolob" indicates the place closest to heaven.

I believe everyone chooses their own heaven.

I already have mine picked out.

Gone home

Date: Nov. 25
Total mileage: 15.0
November mileage: 227.9
Temperature upon departure: 42

One of my favorite authors, Thomas Wolf, is given credit for coining the phrase "You can't go home again." I think about it every time I come home to Utah, when I struggle with the cognitive dissonance caused by the fact that I can, and all too easily.

I think this actually happens to a lot of people, because those who thrive on change can find the things that don't change slightly unnerving. So when I go to my grandparents' house on Thanksgiving Day, with the same early 70s cottage wallpaper I have always looked at, and the same mashed potatoes in the same bowl on the same table, and the same picture of me at 16 years old on the wall, and suddenly one of my cousins walks in and she's 10 years older than I remember her being, well ... it feels like ... unraveling.

But this is Thanksgiving for me. I easily become unraveled when the life that's my life now and the life that was my life sometime in the past collide. That's sort of what my week has been like so far. I thought I was starting to come out of it today - I helped my sister move into her new condo; then I borrowed a friend's mountain bike and tore through the singletrack that weaves between South Mountain neighborhoods. It felt like my life, only in this louder, sunnier place. But then I went to visit an old, good friend tonight. I had tracked down a rare CD on Amazon.com that I was going to give to her for an early Christmas gift. It's a 1996 release of a band we used to request ad nauseum on our favorite radio show, KRCL's Static Radio on Saturday nights, because we could never find it at music stores. It was a used CD, so I popped it into the stereo on my way over to her house. And suddenly, there I was again, driving down State Street on a Saturday night in the same 1994 Toyota Pickup I used to prowl streets in as a teenager, pumping Guv'ner and suddenly wondering if this whole Alaska thing, this whole adulthood thing, was really all just a strange dream.

Anyway, the involuntary melding of real and nostalgia isn't the only thing that happened to me since I flew to Utah. I played the Alaska card quite well last night, when a cop pulled me over after my friend Jen and I left a bar to head home. I was driving her truck because she had had a couple of drinks. I was trying to figure out a strange steering wheel and some intense blind spots when I spotted flashing red lights in the sideview mirror. I have to insert here that the truck is equipped with difference license plates than the ones actually registered to it, supposedly (Jen tells me) because the old ones are rusted on. Anyway, the cop of course asked me to get out of the car to take a field sobriety test. I thought for certain I was going to fail, because even though I was sober, that hasn't stopped me from failing field sobriety tests in the past (call me a bad driver with poor balance.) He was examining my driver's license when he asked me if I knew why he pulled me over. I shook my head. "You have a brake light out," he said, "and you were driving really slow."

"Slow?" I asked.

"About 15," he said.

I didn't know how to respond to that, but it all came spilling out anyway. "I'm from Alaska," I said, noting that he was still holding my license. "I don't do a lot of driving where I live and I'm not used to all these wide city streets and cars and lights and ..." I rolled my neck like gave him my best overwhelmed-wilderness-dweller smile.

He handed my license back to me. "You have a smart friend to let you drive," he said. "But just remember that here, you need to go at least 35."

Then he took off. No ticket for the illegal registration. Or the tail light. No field sobriety test. It was my best cop experience ever.

I guess I never even got around to talking about my bike ride today, but it's late and I should go to bed. Also, I don't think I'll have any pictures for the next few days. I'm pretty sure I've tried everything. Hope you all had a great holiday.