Weekend in the city

Flying is a strange experience. It's similar to an endurance event in a lot of ways. I usually spend my day wrapped in varying levels of anxiety, subsisting on Power Bars and Advil and copious amounts of caffeine. And just when I'm locked in the most uncomfortable position, head spinning as cramps crawl up my legs, I look out the window and see views like this - a crisp moment of clarity that convinces me it's time to just quit my job and toss my Advil and devote my life to mountaineering.

Of course, it's too easy to feel this way from the seat of a plane, even cramping and a little bit airsick, I'm still in a bubble of relative safety, warm and dry. This is similar to the work conference I attended this weekend, in a lot of ways. It was the Alaska Press Club conference, or "J-Week (J for journalism)" to the wide-eyed reporters who attend. It's a rallying cry for those of us who are trying to convince ourselves the newspaper industry isn't dying. We talk about ethics and community responsibility. We give ourselves awards and cheer on the work we do for the greater good. It's easy for us to believe in the comfort and safety of our conference group, and it feels great to do so, but the knowledge feels different when I step out onto the terrifyingly unnavigable one-way streets of life ... or downtown Anchorage.

Because I live in a small town on the outskirts of Alaska, I always have this sense of the smallness of civilization versus the hugeness of wilderness. But in Anchorage, a small city by most standards, the opposite feels true - civilization is bearing down and the wilderness is slipping further away. I had a whirlwind weekend trying to connect with everyone I know in the city. It seemed like one second I was meeting old names but new faces at a slide show in the Mat-Su Valley and the next I was at a random Anchorage watering hole, lapping up the gossip of a place I no longer live with a boss I no longer work for. I slept about four hours total each night and didn't work out for three days. That's right. Three days rest. By day three, I don't know that my gimp knee ever felt worse.

I'm not quite sure what to think about that. I have this theory about sitting in chairs and cars, and the way that can keep my knee at bad angles, generating fluids and other such waste products that just sit there, festering and swelling. But I don't think that theory has any medical backing. I finally got out for a hike this morning with two hardcore adventure-race types/Ultrasport veteran cyclists who are coincidentally also dealing with knee problems right now. (I won't mention names, because there seemed to be some concern about Internet anonymity :-) We went on a "gimp hike" somewhere in the front range. I didn't pack any clothing for outdoor activity, so when I took this picture, it was about 40 degrees with 30 mph-wind gusts, and all I was wearing was a single layer with a cotton hoodie pulled over my ears. I didn't even have gloves. It felt great. Like I was draining out all of the gunk - not that that's a real treatment ... and it probably did help that I was coming out of three days of terrible nutrition, sloth and sleeplessness that probably needed its own share of draining.

Now I'm back. It feels like a crazy long time lapse, when in fact it's only been a few days. I was surprised to come home and see some snow on the ground still. It seems like weeks should have passed. But I think all I need is some sleep and a good long day in grayness to snap me back to reality.

MRI results

So what I actually have is chomdromalacia patella. ("Runners Knee," as opposed to "Jumper's Knee.") Softening and swelling of cartilage between the knee cap and femur. I also have a fairly large Baker cyst as a result of fluid buildup. This is good news, actually, on all sides. It nearly always is recoverable without surgery. Should be better by now than it is, but I have not been known to rest well. I have been told to REST WELL, but overuse only prolongs recovery; it does not usually do further damage.

I am headed out to Anchorage for a work conference and it may be a few days before I post again. I just wanted to leave on a happy note with another picture of sunshine in Juneau, because it may not look like this again for weeks. Have a great weekend all, and Ride Well.

Light torture

I stumbled into radiology at 7:15 this morning. I know that doesn't sound all that early, but with my work schedule and habits, 7:15 a.m. to me is like 5:15 a.m. to most people. They directed me to strip down and then steered me still crusty-eyed and wobbly-legged into a strange, silent room - large and empty with the exception of a single MRI imaging tube. I've heard that these tests are to be feared, but only by the claustrophobic, so I wasn't feeling too anxious. I laid on my back and the radiologist asked me if I wanted to listen to the radio. I just stared up at her, trying to coax my sleep-addled brain to turn on. Radio? What's that? I nodded weakly. "What station?" Station? What's a station? I mumbled something about NPR. She nodded and wrapped my leg, then left me alone in the room while the platform slid ominously into that alien tube.

I had been instructed NOT TO MOVE, and to NOT TAKE DEEP BREATHS, and my concentration on that made me not only twitch involuntarily, but breathe at a rate I usually reserve for sprinting up hills. I tried to slow my breathing but NOT TAKE DEEP BREATHS, and I thought about the beach, swimming, cycling ... but for some reason my thoughts kept returning to sitting on a plane. Twitch.

The radio switched on to mumbling static, and then the radiologist said something about 15 seconds and URRRRRRRRRRMMMMMMMM ... loud buzzing jolted me out of my airline fantasy and into a state that I'd have to describe as light panic. It sounds like an extreme reaction to a very minor thing, and it was. But I couldn't shake the thought that the loud buzzing was the sound of an alien machine shooting waves of magnetic resonance or radiation or whatever they use, directly into my body. The radio only made it worse. When the machine wasn't buzzing, static voices rattled off the morning's news. URRRRRRMMMMMMMMM ... sccct scct "170 sccct died today in bombings around Baghdad" .... URRRRRRRRMMMMM URRRMMMMMM ... "Tech killer Cho Seung-Hui said in a video sccct sccct ... URRRRRRMMMMMMM."

The minutes ticked on. My muscles were so tense that I felt like I was going to roll right off the platform. Thinking about breathing wasn't helping, so I did something I haven't done since I white-knuckled the passenger's seat of a turboprop plane making its way up to 15,000 feet to outrun a big storm in southern Montana ... I started chanting the Lord's Prayer. You know "Our farther, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name." It's not even my religious background, but for some reason, it relaxes me. Yeah. I'm a nut.

But that's my MRI story. I've never dealt that well with anything medical. My sister's a registered nurse and I'm the type that gets lightheaded at the sight of blood. I'm also a bit of a technophobe. Combining the two is about guaranteed to send me into a mild psychotic episode. Especially when I'm directing all of my focus into NOT MOVING.

After my appointment, with the sun out and 50-degree clear weather, I thought I deserved to spend a better part of the afternoon relaxing on the beach and barbecuing Not Dogs with Geoff. Now I'm back to sane. Mostly.

Really warm

(This is the Douglas Island bridge. I realized that of all the pictures I post here, very few of them are actually of Juneau as a city. So I'm adding this to my "urban" series.)

It hit 50 degrees today. It may not be the first time we've climbed out of the 40-degree range this year, but it definitely seemed to be the most sustained and noticeable duration of warm weather yet. My neighbors were out in droves - laughing, jogging, riding their bikes. I was having a generally bad day. Early doctor's visit. Left my jacket there, with my camera inside the pocket. May or may not get that back. Reality-check call to my health insurance company. Bad run on a treadmill. Tight deadlines at work. Had to run a bunch of errands with my car. Every time I climbed inside, the sticky heat of the interior stoked my grump. The most beautiful day of the year, and I was stewing in my own bad mood. Well, that and a cloud of stagnant moisture that is finally evaporating after a winter of ice buildup. I opened the window because I thought the cool, salty breeze and sunlight would make me feel better. But it doesn't really work that way, does it? Bad moods definitely want to go and hang for a while in the dark.

Not that it was that bad. Everyone has bad days. Everyone. All the time. They're good for the soul, in the long term. I think some of my mood today stemmed from a doctor-scheduled appointment to get an MRI tomorrow. This can only be a bad thing, and here's why: If they find nothing, then I'm no better off than I am now, except for I'll never know what's wrong with me. I could just be a massive hypochondriac. And how do you recover from that? But if they find something, then that will confirm another fear of mine - well, two fears - fear of surgery and fear of the implication of wasting two whole months and then losing an entire summer. How will I forgive my lazy self? And if their findings are inconclusive, which is the most likely scenario, then not only have I wasted two whole months, and who knows how many hundreds of dollars, but I'll likely have to go on believing I'm a hypochondriac until I can plunk down a few thou for a specialist in Seattle. Wow. Getting old is fun.

So no, I'm not real excited to get an MRI. I can't make myself believe that anything that can come out of it will be good news. Why get it at all? Because life never changes through inaction.

Climb mix

So the other day, Fat Cyclist challenged his readers to come up with a list of seven perfect songs to listen to while grinding the pedals up a killer hill. I didn't give such a list much thought until today, while turning the elliptical pedals at the gym and listening to the new Modest Mouse album ... yeah, again. So there I was, cycling through my boring routine and staring off into space when I noticed my field of vision begin to narrow. I snapped out of la-la land and realized that not only was my heart racing, but I was turning some crazy RPMs on the digital display. I didn't even make a conscious choice to go so hard. What made me do it? "Florida."

Exercise music is completely personal, of course, based on cadence preferences and general taste, among other things. But in my opinion, "Florida" is the most perfect hill-climbing song ever recorded. It has everything I need in a climbing song - a catchy beat punctuated by bursts of energy, an ethereal enough melody to mimic complacency whilst pushing through the pain tunnel, and lyrics that won't challenge you to think too hard while you're in there.

This got me to thinking about taking up Fatty's challenge to make a hill-climbing playlist. So these are my seven songs. They are not my seven all-time songs, really, just the ones I'd put on my iPod right now, today. This list would probably be different tomorrow. I'm not sure how well these links will work. Not all of the songs had handy YouTube videos, including "Florida."

A lot of you have probably already posted your own seven-song list at Fatty's place. But feel free to send it my way. My iPod is dying for some diversity.

"Florida" by Modest Mouse - "I stood on my heart supports thinkin', 'Oh my God, I'll probably have to carry this whole load.'"

"Fire It Up" by Modest Mouse - "When we finally turn it over; Make a beeline towards the border; Have a drink, you've had enough."

"The Bleeding Heart Show" by The New Pornographers - "Watch 'em run, although it's the minimum, heroic."

"Wolf Like Me" by TV on the Radio - "We could jet in a stolen car; but I bet we wouldn't get too far; before the transformation takes; and bloodlust tanks; and crave gets slaked."

"What Never Dies" by Sense Field - "Some don't want to see you win; Some don't want to see you fly; Some don't want to see you live; They just want to see you."

"Looking at the World From the Bottom of a Well" by Mike Doughty - "Oh all the days; That I have run; I sought to lose that cloud that’s blacking out the sun; My train will come; Some one day soon; And when it comes I’ll ride it bound from night to noon."

"Miami 2017" by Billy Joel - Hey ... don't judge me.

Gear displacement

I've been on a bike-gear acquiring tear lately. It's hard to say why. Logically, I know I'm only compensating for my current cycling inabilities. And psychologically, it hurts to watch this stuff linger unused in its original packaging. But emotionally, it feels so good to receive shiny little bike pieces in the mail and dream of a parallel universe where they're getting all that shine scuffed off on mud-soaked trails (or roads).

My recent purchases include a seatpost clamp, several water bottles, tire levers, tire pump, bike shoes and clipless pedals. This is my first clipless system ever. I have come out strongly against such a system in the past. I do not like the idea of being attached to my bike. But, then again, I do not like the idea of being detached from my bike, either. Clipless may aid an eventual transition back to cycling. And they may help better align my pedal stroke. So I placed an order for Look pedals and some skinny, ugly roadie shoes. When they came in the mail, I was so excited that I wore them around the house for an hour.

Also arrived recently in the mail were a couple of pairs of Ergon grips. Mr. Ergon himself sent them to me. Honestly, I was more excited about the idea of Jeff Kerkove offering to send me something than I was about the gear itself, but they do seem pretty cool. My hands regularly lose circulation and go "dead" when I ride for long stretches of time, so I'm excited to try them out. Someday.

Then, today I was struck with - in several separate instances - urgent desires to go out and buy a new seat, a new bike rack, and a short-sleeve jersey. I don't currently own even one short sleeve jersey. I need one, I reasoned, for my trip to Utah. Ha! That trip's in just over two weeks. What are the chances I'm even going to be bipedally mobile by then, let alone be up for a long enough ride to necessitate sweat-wicking technology? I'm better off spending my spare cash this week on a hair cut and a 40-ounce bottle of SPF 45, which is something I really will need for a week in Utah (but don't think merchants actually stock in Juneau.)

Even though Geoff's birthday was the other day and I didn't have any other ideas for a present, I have purposely been avoiding the local bike shop. I'm concerned I'll walk out with the latest carbon-fiber bank-account-drainer. I'm lucky that I live in a small enough town that I couldn't find a Pugsley if I wanted to. But why must eBay have such a convenient payment system? And why is Nashbar having so many great spring sales? Wait a minute ... free shipping? Must ... close ... Web ... browser. Now.

Breakup

Signs of spring everywhere lately. Not new growth, per say; not sun, either. Just melt and light. Melt releases a world long smothered by winter. Streams flow free again. The tips of small willow trees peak out from the mushy snowpack. I go snowshoeing on an old, familiar trail and it becomes new again.

Early in my walk, I found a green plastic Easter egg. It had a fun-sized Hershey bar inside. It was all alone in the snow, in an odd enough place that it must have been dropped, not hidden. This is where I found it, near a half-frozen waterfall. And I was in a strange enough mood that I carried it with me on my hike and made it the subject of photographs.

My outdoor activities as of late, as sparse as they've been, have been fairly uninspiring. I'm reading nonfiction books about long-distance bicycle touring again, which, if my past habits are any indication, is a fairly clear sign that I'm slipping into a rut. I've been envious of Geoff and his training. I try not to let that sentiment show when he describes his latest adventures to me, but sometimes I find myself tempted to turn the conversation back to baseball.

At least I still have snowshoeing, but likely only a couple more weeks worth. Rain showers strip the snowpack away like acid. April is the beginning of the dry season in Juneau, but that's definitely relative. Dry season here would be monsoon season in Utah. At least we're not having snowstorm tornadoes like the rest of the country.

I also have Folk Fest to drain me of all of my energy, and a 3 a.m. night does that well. Last night at the Alaska Hotel, I ran into a friend from Anchorage plays fiddle in an old-timey band. Her real life is filled with legislative lobbying and bar exams and "good, old-fashioned Asian discipline." But fiddling is her passion. "Folk Fest changed my life!" she screamed with startling intensity that could have been the Alaskan Smoked Porter speaking, but I think any self-restraint would have only stripped away the truth. I envied her too, because she had lifelong love where I only had a flirtatious night out.

Today, while burning my way through 90 cardio minutes at the gym with a Runner's World magazine, I read twice an article about marathoner John Kelley. In his story arc, it seems he never experienced a life half lived. He just started out strong and kept going. He's still going.

"The things we do should consume us," Kelley told the reporter. "If they don't, our lives won't have any meaning."