Cyclist, frustrated

Date: Dec. 23
Mileage: 17.0
December mileage: 342.1
Temperature upon departure: 33

Today I went for a short ride. Words have not been invented to describe the unpleasantness of it.

Sleet is a word I might use, but it doesn't exactly do justice to the ice daggers that tore through the air, piercing exposed skin like millions of hot needles.

Windy is a word I might use, but it doesn't really describe the terror of leaning my bicycle 20 degrees this side of vertical as 55 mph crosswinds threatened to toss me off a 100-foot bridge without warning.

Slippery is a word I might use, but it in no way conveys the oil-slick sludge gushing down the pavement, giving my tires traction equal to that of an aluminum saucer and turning my single rear disc brake into an icy grip of death.

Wet is a word I might use, but it doesn't explain how, despite wearing the equivalent of a garbage bag suit, I still had to wring out my underwear after an 80-minute-long ride.

Cold is a word I might use, but the mild statistic of 33 degrees doesn't justify the searing pain my swollen-white feet endured to come back from the numb onset of frostbite.

And so I am left to wonder. Why do I keep on keeping on? These are not isolated weather incidents. These are the hard realities of my climate - more bewildering than even the -11-degree trail rides and -40-degree-wind-chill descents of last year. My plastic suit doesn't keep water out and I am going to have to find another option. As far as my feet go, I am ready to admit the neoprene booties, Vapor Barrier sock and wool sock combination won't work. I am moving right on to the N.E.O.S. overboots, covered by gators, covered by baggier waterproof pants if I can find some. But I feel a bit frustrated. I already dress like an astronaut just to do a daily-routine ride. My next, best option is to seek out an enclosed space. Like a car.

On the bright side, I received a great Christmas surprise today from Shawn Kielty, who also is learning to deal with the wet climes of San Francisco and incidentally is an amazing photographer. He sent me a great camera to upgrade my current digital. It's a Canon Power Shot S70. It also surprisingly came with a waterproof case: So I could take this camera deep sea diving if I wanted to; or, you know ... outside in Juneau.

I feel inspired by Shawn's generosity but I'm not sure where to take that inspiration. I guess I have an extra digital camera now, so maybe I can pay it forward, in a lesser sense of the idea. My camera is a Fuji FinePix 2650. I believe it's 2.1 megapixels. It probably retailed for $14.95 back when it was new in 1987 (just kidding! I received it as a Christmas gift in 2003.) But I'll say this about the FinePix: It has accompanied me across the shutter-choking sands of the San Rafael Swell, over the muddy waters of the Dirty Devil River, through the crushing cold of the Susitna valley in January and inside my waterlogged pocket over countless rain rides. This camera, I'm convinced, is hurricane proof. And it's taken nearly every single one of the pictures that have appeared on this blog.

And it's yours if you want it. I'll just mail to you, with a USB cable, (small) memory card, and even batteries. No shipping payment required. Just shoot me a comment with basic contact information, and maybe a short description of what kind of pictures you hope to take with this humble little piece of ... technology (just in case more than one person replies and I have to choose.) And either way, have a Merry Christmas!

One way to make a short day long

Date: Dec. 21
Mileage: 60.0
December mileage: 325.1
Temperature upon departure: 32

Today at 3:22 p.m., the northern hemisphere titled as far away from the sun as it's going to get, officially kicking off the winter season. At that time, I was standing beneath a spray of lukewarm water in the shower, wondering how much counseling it would take to get this self abuse out of my system.

I made (mostly) good on my plan to spend the daylight hours of winter solstice riding. It took longer than planned to get Snaux bike up to snuff, but I was out the door by 9:30 a.m. There was about an inch of new snow and it was building fast. I had to wipe off my goggles every two minutes. It was as wet as precipitation can be and still qualify as white stuff - slippery, slow, and cleverly camouflaging the slew of slush puddles left over from yesterday. Snaux bike doesn't have fenders. I was soaked by 9:45.

From there, the blizzard continued for most of the morning. I rode to the end of North Douglas Island and back, coming within a half mile of my warm, dry house before rounding the corner to cross the bridge and head north again, this time on the mainland. Snaux bike was having shifting problems that I could not figure out how to remedy. I could only ride in the lower gears, but with three new inches of slushy snow to plow through, I considered this a hidden blessing.

I made it to the Mendenhall Valley, where I did all of my riding on unplowed bike paths and a few completely snow-packed trails. This was the only time all day that I actually felt somewhat warm (I never froze, but I think a good term for my condition would be "groggily damp"). The hard work lulled me into thinking that I had my body temperature back up to normal, so I stopped long enough to choke down a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and take the above picture. Bad idea. My hands went numb and did not respond well to the wet neoprene gloves. I had to ride two more miles of snow-covered trail with my fingers in a tight fist, steering with my wrists.

I wanted to stay out until 3:22 or at least the 3:07 sunset, but by 2:15 I was wet, cold and generally sick of Snaux bike's shifting shenanigans. So I spun out the last 10 miles at crazy high RPMs, and made it home just shy of 3.

I'm really not as grumpy about my ride as I sound (a little zapped, but not grumpy) Based on the places I went (I no longer have a working odometer but I know the mileage by heart) I think I still rode between 57 and 60 miles in 5.5 hours today (I'm going high because I deserve it.) That's really not too bad for the conditions - 10 mph on snowy roads was about the max I hit last year, and today I threw in a lot of trails. I really feel like I'm stronger this year. Plus, Snaux bike is actually lighter than my full-suspension mountain bike, and has better control. Now I just need to work on my snow riding.

But you know what the craziest thing is? After today's experience, I'll probably still continue riding.

SAD ride

Date: Dec. 20
Mileage: 15.0
December mileage: 265.1
Temperature upon departure: 36

I’m beginning to think Geoff has just about had enough of Juneau. It’s strange, because we have so many things going for us here: Three times the annual rainfall of Seattle; more days of 40-mph-plus winds than Chicago; constant temperatures in the 30s from March to February. And no roads out! Clearly, he’s just not looking on the bright side.

That said, it has been a rough month - and isn’t looking to become any better. I haven’t seen the sun since Utah, going on three weeks now. The daylight has whittled itself down to about six hours - and even those hours are only marginally brighter than pitch black. The continuous precipitation has been mostly wet snow and sleet - some rain - and the wet weather creates conditions that make it impossible to keep all parts of the body warm while cycling. IMPOSSIBLE. I am especially having a hard time with my butt cheeks. (Which doesn’t make any sense since my backside is the best-insulated body part I have.) And so even I, who fears long exposure to direct sun the way some people fear frostbite, am beginning to feel a little SAD.

Thursday is winter solstice. I am hoping to do a long ride on the shortest day, but it will be interesting to see how much I can endure. I headed out today in sideways rain for a quick ride before work. I really only had about a 45-minute window to spare, but even that felt like it was going to be too long. The rain blew due north, so I decided to head into it going out and let it push me coming back. I took the road south.

Skirting the narrow strip of road that divides the channel and the mountains, I watched the disorienting dance of whitecaps as they swelled and exploded on shore. As I passed the sheer cliffs, I had to swerve to dodge giant blocks of transparent ice - the remnants of icefalls now gushing brown water. The manuevering was no small feat as sideways rain stung my eyes to the point of blindness. And just when I started to wonder if my 30 minutes of indentured service southward was up yet, a spotted the strangest glimmer of yellow light.

When the rain began to let up, I realized that I wasn’t hallucinating. Amid the liquid crush of gray in every direction was a tiny patch of clear sky. Streams of sunlight pierced the billowing clouds, casting spotlights on the churning water. I felt my legs surge with energy as I pedaled toward the clearing. I stopped looking at my watch and began to crane my neck at orange highlights on the trees, until I passed the sign that read “End of Road 1,000 Feet.” And there, drifting over a pile of dirt-crusted snow, was my own little sunspot.

And so I stopped, climbed over the berm, and stood there, quietly, watching the clearing crawl south and not paying attention to the fact that, 40 minutes into my ride, I was flirting with late arrival at work. It didn't matter. If the road kept going, I would have followed that sun spot all the way to Ketchikan.

Tomorrow, sunrise will happen 8:45 a.m. and sunset is planned for 3:07 p.m. I hope to stay out that entire time. Forecast calls for “70 percent chance of snow with accumulation of 2 to 3 inches, west winds 25 mph, high of 33.” Wish me luck. Seriously.

Get a life

Date: Dec. 18
Mileage: 25.0
December mileage: 250.1
Temperature upon departure: 35

Geoff chided me tonight for making snap judgments and prejudicial statements based on an unfair assessment in yesterday's "Nordic Nazi" post. I was just letting off steam and it is my blog, but I am sorry if I offended anybody. That said, I'm a little disappointed that no outraged skiers shot me an insult-laced comment or two.

The other night, we watched a hilarious documentary called "Spellbound," which follows the ups and downs of eight young spelling champions as they prepare for the National Spelling Bee. At one point, the filmmaker asks one of the 13-year-old prodigies if she has any hobbies besides spelling. She gazes at the camera thoughtfully and says, "Well, I like to ride roller-coasters." She stops and thinks a little more. "I'm a vegetarian and I like to drink coffee."

I thought more about this girl - I think her name is April - today while trying to motivate myself to put in more mileage on the bike. I'm a little disappointed with where I am - behind where I was this time last year - but a little daunted with the options I have to possibly do more. They include, but are not limited to: Riding after work (I leave work at 10 and sometimes 11 p.m.); waking up earlier; limiting the quality breakfast time; and cutting into my other hobbies.

And then the little voice in my head said, "Other hobbies? What other hobbies?"

"Well," I reasoned, "I'm learning to ski (not happily). Sometimes I go to my friends' house and play Guitar Hero. I'm a sushi addict and I like ... to ... drink ... coffee ..."

The thought just trailed off. And after laughing at the idea of poor studious April's non-hobbies just days ago, I realized that I understand perfectly what's it's like to singletrack through life. That maybe I'm even guilty of it. And I started to wonder if maybe I should be out there exploring all the options - reading books instead of Outside magazine on the elliptical trainer; writing thoughtful letters instead of bike-oriented blog posts; painting instead of pedaling; volunteering instead of working long hours to support my habit; learning to knit or speak Spanish or bellydance.

Or maybe I should just spend more time on the bike.

Nordic Nazi

RANT ADVISORY: Anyone who considers themselves an avid cross-country skier should probably just skip this post.

This morning, I agreed to go cross-country skiing with friends up at Eaglecrest, a (shudder) groomed loop near the downhill ski resort. I have probably been skiing too many times this week for my liking; I was grumpy and a little undercaffinated; and I took a nasty fall while walking across the parking lot, which left my knee swollen and bruised. In every way, I was not off to a good start.

After a long weekend of partying, my friends were somewhat grumpy themselves, and the general environment of parka-piercing winds and sticky snow put us all in a surly mood. So we stomped our way over the trail, collecting clumps of snow under our skis and trying to shake it loose. This created a lot of awkward downhill moments when one leg was sliding and the other was sticking. I was skiing in this one-legged position down the set tracks when I came around a corner and met an oncoming skier. Since I was the downhill skier, I did what I considered the polite thing - I veered off the tracks and did a faceplant in the powder.

And as I looked up through a face full of snow, I could see this guy grimacing down at me. He was clad in one of those yellow single-piece spandex suits that makes a person look like a walking condom, and he was practically wagging his finger at me. “You are going zee wrong way,” he said in a German accent that my friend mimics so well.

“Huh?” I said.

“You can not go zis way on zis trail, especially because you are accident-prone perzon,” he said. (Never mind that the trail is in no way marked one way or the other, there is no map indicating it is not a two-way trail, and we had already been passed by countless people going the same direction.) He continued to lecture me about arrows (There were no arrows) and learning to read signs (no signs either) and “accident-prone” even as he started moving back up the trail.

I used to run into Ski Snobs all the time in Homer. The seem to make up a larger-than-average percentage of the sport's population. I always want to open my mouth to respond to them, to say, “Don’t you realize that because of your rabid exclusiveness and hostility toward beginners, your culture is going to age and die out? That pretty soon there will be no one left to defile all of the best frontcountry trails with corduroy groomers and parallel tracks that serve only to funnel people ‘in zis direction.’ And when that day comes, we’ll no longer have to yield to your totalitarian toe-the-line regime. We will take to the trails with our snowskates, our fat bikes, our airboards and skiboards, our snowshoes, our Yak-Tracks, our skijoring dogs and horses. So what if we have to dodge the ruts and postholes? We are not that fragile. And we will not submit to going ‘zis way.’ We will go wherever we want to go, whichever way we want to go, however we want to travel!”

“Multi-use winter trail enthusiasts, unite!”

But I never actually say this. Usually I just say something witty along the lines of “Whatever, Dude.” Then I daydream about escaping to the backcountry ski trails, where I can eat up great singletrack with my snaux bike and smile at the snowshoers as they stomp by. Someday. Someday.

Get in mah belly

Date: Dec. 15 and 16
Total mileage: 35.1
December mileage: 225.1
Temperature upon departure: 26

I always read with great amusement other cyclists' accounts of mid-ride hunger attacks - knocking on a stranger's door to ask for crackers, pocketing Snickers bars at a gas station or fashioning a bicycle pump into a weapon and using it to hold up the nearest McDonalds. These stories have novelty for me because I don't suffer from this problem. If anything, I suffer from the exact opposite. I have mid-exercise food aversion. As long as my heart's pumping, the thought of digestion repulses me. Once, while sitting near the top of Kings Peak in Utah, Geoff actually force-fed me a cheese sandwich after I had spent the entire day refusing to eat breakfast, lunch or snacks. To be fair, we were huddled under a rock during a lightning storm, and I didn't think I was going to survive long enough to require energy for the hike down.

If a bike ride is long enough, I will (usually) force myself to eat. But if I'm planning on being out for two hours or less, I don't even bother bringing anything, knowing the only purpose it will serve is gooing up my pockets. Now that it's the dead of winter, when bottles freeze and camelbaks give me shoulder pain, I often don't even bother to bring water (I know, I know. Feel free to lecture.) But that's how I set out today.

Conditions were a little closer to awful than not. At 11 a.m., we were in the midst of an heavy snowstorm that had dumped about two inches of new snow so far. Where I rode, on the shoulder of a narrow highway, the plows had pushed chunky piles of snow that ranged in depth from 2 inches to 7 inches, changing often and without warning. Riding in loose, uneven snow is fairly unpredictable, and the proximity of traffic forces me to keep a straight line, which means I have to slow down when I'm not sure what's ahead. Add to that the icy blizzard and a fierce gusting-to-40-mph headwind that brought windchills, well, far enough down to create a solid ring of ice around my face mask ... and I have what Geoff calls "perfect conditions for training for the Susitna 100."

Anyhow, it was tough. Covering 24 miles in two hours - because I was riding on a road and expected to go at least that fast - took about all I had to give. Despite the aforementioned facial ring of ice, I was sweating buckets while riding into the wind and even tore open my coat and thin fleece layer, exposing the bare pink skin around my collarbone. I was really that hot. I was in deep focus, earning ever pedal stroke through the deep stretches of snow and occasionally correcting a wild fishtail. I hardly even noticed the miles go by.

When I got home, I couldn't strip fast enough. I tore off clothing, leaving a trail of ice-caked layers on my way through the house. And standing in my bedroom wearing only a pair of socks, longjohns and a sports bra, I first noticed that I was wicked thirsty. So I went to the kitchen and started chugging warm water from the tap. And when that craving was abated, I started to feel something else - something that started deep in my head, a distant cry that fired over my synapses, rushed through my blood stream and emerged screaming from the depths of my stomach. It screamed "ice cream." And without even making a conscious decision to do so, I grabbed a half gallon of huckleberry swirl out of the freezer and began shoveling in large spoonfuls right from the carton. I did not even bother to mine the boring vanilla crap for the swirls of sweet, sweet huckleberry. No. I ate it all. I mean, I didn't eat the whole carton. Really. I promise.

But I did finally have a taste of what it's like to need a particular food so badly that the subconscious muffles out the rational voices and pushes a person toward instinctual gorging. I know it's not rational because after I finished inhaling about 500 empty calories of sugar and saturated fat, I felt intensely guilty. But not enough to skip lunch.

Ski by day, ride by Northern Lights

Date: Dec. 14
Mileage: 25.0
December mileage: 190.1
Temperature upon departure: 30

The afternoon is for skiing at Eagle Beach. The thick crust of old snow holds the sticks to the newly-dusted track, so all there is to do is stab, glide, stab glide, stab. The movement becomes a little tedious after three 2.5-mile loops around a state park, even as distant storms bleed splashes of black over the sky. Geoff seems to think otherwise, especially when he has finally found the perfect wax combination for his Rossignol classics. I ride some No-wax No-names, at about half the speed, and I consider it a triumph if I do not fall flat on my back (Atop a snowshoe-stomped ice patch, I was not so victorious today.)But we move and glide, taste the sweet rot of birch leaves that have somehow escaped the suffocation of snow, and I guess there are Zen moments in here somewhere, somewhere between the boredom and the terror.

We head home in the 2:30 p.m. twilight, and by 3:45 the sky is dark quilt of clouds patched with star-speckled squares of the night sky. I have hardly noticed how early it becomes dark because I work evenings. So the act of settling out for a night bike ride before rush hour traffic has even hit the streets is an unexpected thrill. My LED light illuminates the snow on the shoulder. In the flat light I have no concept of the ruts and ridges, and therefore no obstacles to dodge. I realize I am riding much faster and smoother than I have since the onset of winter. So I burn hard - and sweat hard, because I dressed for a crisp night chill even though 30 degrees is still 30 degrees no matter how dark it is. Quickly, I pedal beyond the subdivisions and the car lot, beyond the mailboxes and the trailer park, out to the old homesteads and cabins, the modified boats, the scattered Christmas lights blinking into the lonely wilderness - until civilization is behind be, and all that's ahead is the end of the road. And so I go there, and don't even notice the sky behind me clearing dramatically, until I turn around.

It is, simply, a moment of instant confusion and awe, the kind in which I'm off my bike and bounding through the knee-deep snow before I even take the time to process what I'm seeing. Across the channel, just beyond the moonlit mountains, I watch sharp streaks of white light slash deep, defined lines through the starry sky. And just to the north are the shimmering green waves that are so unmistakable and yet so elusive - the Aurora Borealis. I have lived in Alaska 15 months now, and never in this state - either by providence or bad luck - have I seen an Aurora so well-defined, even as this one sparkles and fades beyond a patchwork of clouds. And I don't know what to think about it, so I just stand there on the beach, up to my thighs in snow, while red blinky flashes unintentional holiday cheer - and everything becomes so breathlessly inadequate against the cold fusion tearing up the night sky.

And I don't know what to say, so I say "Thank you."