Geoff and me

Date: Aug. 22
Mileage: 22.1
August mileage: 729.5
Temperature upon departure: 53

So Geoff bought me a copy of "24 Solo" for my birthday. I found the film entertaining enough, but I think Geoff took its motivating message to a farther extreme. Ever since we watched it, he has been scheming about adding even more events to his already overfull schedule. And since the place we happen to live is the isolated hamlet of Juneau, Alaska, I think it may be safe to assume that he's going to be gone, well ... all of next year, at least. Happy birthday to me.

I keep trying to tell Geoff that I am really not interested in following him into the madness. I don't actually want to live homeless in the scorching heat of a Mountain West summer. I don't want to subsist on sponsor snacks, or train eight hours a day, or set out to ride a sub-24-day GDR. That is really not my bag. That is way beyond my bag. That is a bag that belongs to a climber on Everest compared to my K-Mart bookbag. I like my domestic, balanced life. I like employment. I like income, and shelter, and the ability to purchase food. Geoff seems to think these things are optional.

It's funny, because I think most of our Alaska friends believe Geoff and I originally connected because we have similar "nutjob" qualities and a mutual respect for the other's rabid individualism. But that's really not the case at all. We met because I was inexperienced and naive, and Geoff had this compulsion to do beyond-the-call-of-duty good deeds for complete strangers. It's a good story, actually. And I'm going to tell it, because this is my blog and I'll do what I want. (Sorry, Geoff)

We had a mutual friend who invited me to visit her in upstate New York for the New Year's 2001. I didn't really take the offer too seriously. The next day at work, I was playing around with priceline.com, one of those Web sites where you name your price for just about anything, but you're held to it if your offer is accepted. I entered an offer for a plane ticket to New York City ("All those Eastern states are small. How far away from Syracuse could it be?") on Christmas Day ("That must be a busy day for flying anyway") for the crazy low price of about $150. Imagine my shock when the offer went through.

At the time, I was 21 years old. I had never flown by myself or even traveled by myself. Only briefly had I ever even travelled east if the Mississippi, at age 15. I had no idea New York City and Syracuse were more than a five-hour drive apart. I had no idea how to find transportation. And I wasn't surprised when my friend said, "No, I can't make a 10-hour trip to pick you up at an airport on Christmas Day."

For a while, I thought I was just out $150. But then my friend told me that a friend of hers who was in Syracuse visiting his family might be able to come pick me up. I had met him briefly on several occasions because he had recently moved to Utah, but I hardly could say I knew the guy. The plane touched down at La Guardia airport at 12:05 a.m. on what was by then Dec. 26. It proceeded to sit on the tarmac for another 60 minutes, waiting for the all-but-shut-down airline to open a gate. By the time I stumbled off the plane, it was after 1 a.m. The airport was so empty you could hear clocks ticking, and I knew there was no way this random guy was actually going to be there waiting for me. But I turned a corner, and there was Geoff, calmly waiting for me in the abandoned corridors of a distant airport on the wee hours after Christmas as though he did things like that every week.

The cold in New York City that night cut deep, close to 0 degrees, the kind of temperatures that drive even the most sleepless cities into darkness and silence. We pulled up into Times Square and parked right on the main drag, the only car to be seen for blocks. Everything was closed for the holiday. All the lights were dimmed, turned off, subdued. There wasn't a single other person on the sidewalks ... no transients, no teenagers, no homeless people, no one. It was a though the nuclear bomb had finally hit and we were the only people left alive in this vast and unknowable city. It felt completely natural.

Geoff and I crawled Manhattan for the rest of the night, talking about the everything and nothing of our lives. I think I could count the cars I saw - all taxis - on one hand. We circumnavigated Central Park as I shivered in my jeans and light cotton jacket, hatless and gloveless, slowly becoming a true solid. The deep freeze settled in so completely that I could scarcely keep enough blood flowing to my legs to continue walking. But I continued walking, because I was so enthralled by the very idea of New York City, and winter, and Geoff.

Can't exactly say it was love at first sight. But it was on those deserted city streets that a younger and much more naive version of myself first planted that seed. At the time, it was my grandest adventure. And it was only a foundation.

Mellow hikes and bikes

As I was rolling into Skagway on Friday, I remember feeling on top of the world, still stoking a decent reserve of energy, and thinking "I could keep doing this ... tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day."

Who knows? Maybe I could have kept going at that rate. But it's funny ... when you set these specific goals for yourself, your mind says "time to stop," and your body says "OK. Stop I shall." And that's it. It's like irreversible shutdown.

So the past few days have been a lazy sort of slog through the fog. I don't have any residual soreness from my long ride, but I think my mind is just tired. I went out for a short ride yesterday and just couldn't amp it up. It never hurt ... it just never had any fire. Also, similar to the week after the 24 Hours of Light, my job also has chosen an inopportune time to became particularly high-stress. There isn't much left to me but fumes; I feel like I burn those well, but a high-performance vehicle I'm not.

I've ambled along a couple of mellow hikes that have been really nice, though ... social walks in the woods with friends; actually getting out just to "get out." It's a nice way to start out the next month. My aim is to become a more proficient hiker. I'm planning to hike the Grand Canyon from the south rim to the north with my dad in late September. Before I moved to Alaska, this dayhike was becoming an annual fall excursion for us. I've completed the trail in worse shape than I'm in right now, but I definitely have some concerns for this year. For one, my heat acclimatization is awful right now (Since I nearly passed out in 90 degrees last week, I figure I'll need at least six gallons of water to survive 100 degrees.) For two, walking downhill seems to be the main holdout of my old knee injury. I'm far more worried about the prospect of pounding down 6,000 feet in elevation than I was about a 370-mile bike ride. So this month is going to be about more quad strengthening, and more hiking to get used to that motion (although hiking in Juneau, where single miles often gain/lose 1,500-2,000 feet in elevation, takes downhill strides to a whole new level.) The inevitable gallons of rain mean there will still be plenty of biking, but I have a new focus this month. I'm actually pretty excited about it. Health will be mine.

28

Date: Aug. 20
Mileage: 20.7
August mileage: 707.3
Temperature upon departure: 63

Today's my birthday

Late twenties, and still I feel

Like I'm just starting

Golden Circle

Haines Highway, Day 1

As I was cinching up my saddle bags at the Haines ferry terminal, a woman broke away from a guided rafting group to talk to me.

"Are you all alone?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Really? Just you?"

"Yes."

"Wow. You must be brave. Or crazy."

And with that she laughed and walked away. She never asked where I was from, where I was going, or even what kind of gear I had stashed in my bags. The only detail she seemed to care about at all was that I was alone and on a bicycle in Southeast Alaska. Apparently, that was enough information for her.

As I pedaled along the cracked pavement toward town, it hit me. I really was alone. All alone. And for the first time in my life, I was striking out on an adventure with no one to rely on but myself.

I let my doubts wash over me as I worked my way along the flat road lining the banks of the Chilkat River. Even where Alaska is paved, it can feel stunningly remote. I remember describing it to Geoff in 2003 as "being hit head-on by the Wilderness Express." A sign that says "Next Services: 147 miles" can be daunting. Summer storms. Early snow. Hungry bears. Massive breakdowns. Crashes without 911. And yet, the thing that bothered me most was the garbage truck that kept passing me, again and again and again. By the time my mind conjured up all kinds of crazed stalker scenarios, I began to realize how silly dwelling on all of these fears really was.

I have to admit, though, that I was relieved to cross into Canada and out of the garbage man's territory. Right after customs, the road begins to climb to the pass. I had read horror stories about this climb, but the effort of riding up passes is never as bad as cyclists make it out to be. I felt the satisfying pull of elevation, and became completely engulfed in the rhythm of steady pedaling. I was almost surprised when I made it to the summit, feeling as though the day had just started, right there, at mile 60.

Despite the crush of mileage and time I was facing, I had already slipped deep into bicycle tourist mode. It has been nearly three years since my last tour, and I had almost forgotten how much I enjoy being out in the world, just me and my bike, together sharing everything we need. It helps me keep perspective on my outside life ... that for all of the complicated layers I wrap around it, life at its core can be starkly simple and small.

Bicycle tourist mode also lulls me into a dreamlike state where time and space begin to blur. Much of the Haines Highway looks so much like Wyoming. I couldn't help but drift back to thoughts of my ride across the state in 2003. And even as I told myself that it wasn't 2003, and I wasn't in Wyoming, and I was in fact going to have to ride a few hundred miles in the next two days and then go back to my full-time job in my soggy hometown ... part of me just didn't believe it.

I passed my first 100-mile mark at Million Dollar Falls, the place where I promised the Canadian customs guy I would stop for the night. But the sun still lingered against the mountains; my legs still felt strong; and there was a light tailwind out of the south that I did not want to waste. I decided to go as far as the wind carried me.

The sun set before the wind stopped. Darkness wrapped around the valleys and eventually engulfed the mountains. I rode with my headlights and taillight blinking for no one. I didn't see a soul out there for more than an hour. Aloneness began to settle in again. I had already ridden farther than I could have hoped for on the first day ... nearly 140 miles in a little less than 10 hours. The destination I had in mind, a campground, turned out to be a couple of kilometers down a side road. Deciding that it didn't actually matter where I curled up to sleep, I wheeled my bike off the road right there and laid out my bivy on a small patch of ground beneath the trees. I ate a package of tuna and three chocolate chip cookies for dinner. I was as happy as could be.

Alaska Hellway, Day 2

So I didn't take any pictures on Thursday. Not a single one. I think it's a good illustration of just how much my mood had swung, just how much I hated wind and hated heat and hated bicycles and hated any situation that would combine the three.

I rolled into Haines Junction at 8 a.m. Yukon time (having lost an hour) and ate a lingering breakfast at a motel. I had already pegged Whitehorse as my destination for the day and thought that, at 120 miles, it wouldn't be that hard of a ride. I didn't have any mountain ranges to climb. I was on a main road. What could be difficult?

By the time I left town at 9:30, the west wind had already kicked up. By 10 a.m., it was steady at at least 15 mph and gusting to 30, right into my face. The heat of the sun blasted off the pavement and I stopped to lather myself in SPF 45, again, and readjust my knee brace - which was chafing so bad that open sores were starting to form. "It's just a little wind. Just a little wind," I kept telling myself. But then my odometer dropped to 12 mph. And then 11. And then 10. When I began to struggle to push it out of the single digits is about the time I ran out of water.

The running out of water is my fault. I learned on Wednesday that squeezing water out of my filter bottle was quite a task. It was probably no more work than pumping a normal filter, but on Wednesday I was passing glass-clear, cider-sweet mountain streams every two miles and that had made me complacent and lazy. But in the dry spruce forest that lines the Alaska Highway, there are few streams and even fewer rest stops. With the wind and sun sucking every ounce of moisture out of my rainforest-acclimatized body, filling up just the one bottle was not going to cut it ... a fact I learned too late.

Running out of water made me really, really grumpy. When I finally did find a stream, it was the greenish kind of cow creek that no one wants to drink out of. Still, I chugged a full 24-ounce bottle full right there and filled it up again. But I didn't fill my other bottles because, I reasoned, there had to be a better creek coming up soon. Of course there wasn't.

Running out of water a second time made me really, really, really grumpy. So much so that I didn't know whether to laugh at myself or flag down an RV and beg for mercy. The wind never let up and I chugged into Whitehorse knowing that I wasn't just making a social call. I didn't have the energy or strength to go a mile further. I stopped at a gas station and bought two bottles of Gatorade and a Pepsi. I called Anthony and Sierra, who invited me to their house for a big barbecue with their friends, plied me with veggie or turkey burgers (I ate both), and set me up with a nice cold shower and a bed to sleep in. It wasn't exactly great training for roughing it out in the wild, but I didn't care. I was as happy as could be again.

White Pass, Day 3

I woke up at 3 a.m. Alaska time and was on the road by 3:30. The air was so cold that I could see my breath, and the morning fermented in darkness and silence. My friends encouraged me not to wake up that early, but I was no longer even trying to meet my 48-hour cutoff. I just wanted to make my ferry, and if Thursday's performance was any indicator, I needed all the time I could muster. Those dark miles were awful. I watched my odometer creep along like a working stiff watching a clock; when I finally turned the odometer screen off, I still counted every kilometer marker, then did the mileage conversion in my head. I knew it was going to be a long, long day.

Watching the sun rise in the midst of a long bike ride is always an amazing experience. It burns through negative emotions and washes over with a renewed sense of well-being. As much as I hated the sun on Thursday, I was genuinely excited to see it again.

By the time the sun crawled over the mountainous horizon, I had already pounded out 45 miles. The wind had completely subsided and I was moving along again at a respectable pace. I knew wind would be back with a vengeance at the pass, but for that moment I wanted to cease the gruelling march against the clock and just enjoy where I was again. Back in bicycle tourist mode, I lingered for a while at the Carcross Desert, running my fingers through the cold sand.

Climbing back into the high country was a visual bombardment that I could scarcely cope with. In my sleep-deprived, carbo-loaded, bike-addled state, I wasn't just watching the mountains, trees, lakes and sky ... I was rocketing into another world with colors so intense, they seeped into all my other senses. I would think things such as "It smells like vermilion" and believe it. Yes, I was crazy, but I was having fun again.

Later, all of these pictures I took would disappoint me. They nearly broke my heart. They didn't show what I saw out there at all, with their washed-out colors and flat contours. My memories of White Pass already only flicker in the transparent space between perception and reality. I do remember that the 40 miles before the pass netted the most difficult riding of the trip. The road surface switched between gravel and rough, rock-strewn semi-pavement that was worse than gravel. The route bypassed the series of lakes that define the headwaters of the Yukon River by rising and dipping over steep drainages ... every mile was a big climb followed by an only slightly shorter, screaming drop. The famous prevailing wind showed up right on time, bringing gales so strong that I had to hold onto my gloves when I stopped for water, to keep them from blowing out of my life forever.

I was moving at a snail's pace the last 15 miles to the pass. I distinctly remember looking at my odometer several times and never seeing anything above 7 mph. But I was not bitter about it, or disheartened, or demoralized, or everything I was on Thursday. I no longer cared about the numbers, or the ticking clock, or the mad race toward arbitrary goals. It was just me and my bike, and we had everything we needed. The rest would come together in its own time.

I knew I was close to the end of the trip when I looked toward the condensation forming over the mountains. Nothing says "Welcome to Southeast Alaska" like a wall of clouds. And even as I chugged toward the pass with fatigue and dreams of warm pizza creeping back into my consciousness, I was still a little sad that my trip was nearly over.

At the pass was a block-lettered sign that said "Entering the United States." That was the final blow ... so formal and uncaring. From the pass, it is only 11 miles into Skagway. Even with the fierce headwind, one could coast the whole way and hardly even turn the pedals. I was terrified *terrified* of the descent, so I mostly inched down it at 20-25 mph, pumping my brakes and grinding my teeth. My fingers went completely numb so I stopped once at a runaway truck ramp to warm them up. A group of shuttled cyclists was there taking pictures of a waterfall while their sag wagon idled alongside. One of them called out to me, "Looks like you earned this!"

"Yeah, I guess" I said with a small laugh, but what I really wanted to do was ask for a ride down in their sag wagon.

Back in town and sucking down cold sodas at the pizza parlor, my brain began to shut down pretty quickly. I pulled out a pen and piece of newspaper in hopes of scribbling down some quick numbers or final thoughts. Most of the time, when I am embarking on an adventure that I think of as challenging or even "epic," I think I will come back a changed person, or at least different somehow. I always return understanding that I will not change, and I won't be different, but I will have a better realization of who I am.

Greetings from sunny Skagway

Date: Aug. 15-17
Mileage: 371.5
August mileage: 686.6
Temperature upon departure: Scorching
Inches of rain: 0"!!

My pinky fingers are numb, so it is hard to type right now.

I am killing some time in Skagway while I wait for my ferry. I rolled in at 12;51 p.m. this afternoon. I left the Haines ferry terminal at 12;38 p.m. Wednesday, which means I ~almost~ made it in 48 hours.

It's true, though, that 48 hours and two days are not the same thing. I divided this ride into three pretty equal days ... 140 on Wednesday, 120 on Thursday, 110 today.

I might have made my self-imposed time cutoff, but I stayed up late hanging out at a Whitehorse barbeque and slept in ... a little. (It was still as dark as the massive dark night when I left at 4;30 a.m. Yukon time)

Everything went about as well as I could have hoped for. Wednesday and today were two of the most beautiful bike rides I have ever experienced. Thursday doled out the heaping helping of suffering I was hoping for at least a dose of - 120 miles of mostly Alaska Highway, into an unrelenting 15-25 mph headwind all day long, ran out of water twice, with temperatures that climbed to 30 degrees Celcius (what is that? Like 90? Ouch.)

I have some good pictures to post when I am back in juneau. I definitely recommend this bicycle touring route to anyone. I used to think that riding Moab to Hanksville, Utah, via the San Juan Mountains and Highway 95 was the most beautiful road bicycle route in North America. I think I may have changed my mind about that.

I brought way too much food.

And too little water.

But I think my knee held up well, which is definitely encouraging. If it weren't for my pinky fingers and the red welts across my skin (an allergic reaction to the sun, I think ... not sunburn, actual welts) ... I'd be the picture of health.

Well, my Internet minutes are nearly up. Thanks everyone for the well wishes. Luck definitely smiled on me this weekend.

Yukon Ho!

Date: Aug. 13
Mileage: 21.1
August mileage: 315.1
Temperature upon departure: 68
Inches of rain: 0"

"But if something hurts so much, how can it be enjoyable? At the point where physical stress begins to take you beyond what you imagine to be endurable, you enter new territory of understanding, an expanded psychological landscape. ... The pleasure comes when you grasp just what has happened inside your head and spirit. It doesn’t stop when the bike stops, when you reach the top of the col or peel off at the end of the ride, so tired you can hardly think or stand straight. That’s where the pleasure begins. The self-knowledge."

Graeme Fife, "Glory Through Suffering"

I took Roadie out for a short test spin this morning (Yes, I really did wear that T-shirt and those socks. I really am turning into my father.) I was planning to weigh the bike before the trip. But as I huffed and puffed and hoisted it up the stairs, I thought better of it. I don't want that number spinning through my head as I'm chugging up a 3,500-foot pass tomorrow. In cases like that, ignorance is about as close to bliss as I'm going to get.

The first few seconds on a loaded bicycle are always a scary experience for me. I feel like I'm going to tip and tumble and I wonder how I'm ever going to pilot the thing one mile, let alone 100 miles or 1,000 miles. But once the tires get rolling, I find my balance and almost forget about all that extra weight ... until the first hill, that is.

Eight hours from now, I'm going to leave on my trip around the Golden Circle. I don't know what I'm going to tell the people at Canadian customs. That I'm going to be back in Alaska in 48 hours? They'll never buy it. They'll tell me it can't be done. Maybe it can't be done (by me.) Or maybe it will be frighteningly easy. Most likely, the effort will fall somewhere in between ... full of that phantom fatigue that burns behind your eyes when all there is to see is endless miles of raw, uncaring beauty.

I don't have any expectations for myself but to finish; I don't have anything to do out there but ride. If only life could be as simple as the road. And yet, I fully expect to suffer in kind. A road with no forks means there is no escape; and, not unlike life, its unrelenting pull only goes one direction.

I wonder if the Canadian customs agents will ask me the omnipresent question ... Why? As in, "Why would you try to bike to Skagway in two days, when you could just do it in nine - with vehicle support, and smoked salmon for lunch, and a place to lay down for the night where you will not have to shiver yourself to sleep?" It's a good question that ripples across most aspects of modern life. This ride does not need to be hard. I make it artificially hard. I seek out the suffering. I do not know whether I do so because there is something missing in my life, or because there is something to gain. It may be a little of both.

I can not visualize the words, but there must be a reason to choose battle over comfort, even when the fight is an entirely selfish one, and there is nothing to gain but a vague notion of self-confidence. Will I earn it? I don't know. Every battle won only leads me deeper into the war.

"Herein lies the heroism of this beautiful sport — the inner revelation that makes the cyclist impervious to ordinary weakness because every ride he has ever made exposes him to that defeatist voice; he has known it, faced it and conquered the fear of it, again and again and again."

- Graeme Fife

Everything I need

I spent all of what turned out to be a beautiful morning finalizing my touring gear, setting it up on my bike, repacking, adding things to my list, buying more stuff ... in short, not riding. But I think it will all be worth it on Wednesday when I take off from Haines with what seems to be a pretty complete load. It feels heavy, but it's about as compact as I can go with the gear I own and the uncertainties I'm facing - two small saddle bags (one for camping gear; the other for rain gear and extra clothing) a frame bag (food) a seatpost bag (bike repair stuff, first aid kit, and batteries) and a handlebar bag (Everything else. No backpack! Yeah!)

On of the new innovations that I am especially excited about is fork-mounted water-bottle holders. This will allow me to carry ~72 ounces of water on the frame. That amount should be plenty, even with the forecasted warm temperatures. I found a detailed milepost guide to the Haines Junction and Klondike highways, and it seems that never more than 20 miles pass without at least one stream or river crossing. One of my water bottles has a built-in filter that I can pour all of my water through, and I am carrying back-up iodine pills just in case. (One thing that surprised me in packing for this trip is just how many different pills and drugs I require.)

The frame bag holds all of my food - six Clif Bars, 6 oz. turkey jerky, 10 packs fruit snacks and 22 oz. almonds and cranberries, for more than 5,000 gut-busting calories. Actually, gut-busting is the wrong word. This food has proven to be basically the only stuff I can digest in long-burn situations. Food that's too "real" (i.e. sandwiches and pasta) doesn't sit well in my stomach, and I haven't been able to trust myself to actually ingest food that's too "fake" (i.e. Perpetuem and Gu).

Of course eating Clif Bars for all of my meals and sleeping in a bivy sack do not exactly make for luxury touring, so I'm allowing myself one comfort: platform pedals. The thought of riding 12-16 hour days in my cycling shoes made my toes curl up and scream for mercy. Plus, only having one set of shoes means I'll need something to wear in stores, around camp, etc. Also, should anything happen, I may have to hitchhike for a long while.

The plan is to leave Juneau on Wednesday on the 7 a.m. ferry. I arrive in Haines at 11:30, where I'll probably grab a quick lunch in town and hopefully be on the road north by 12:30. The plan is to bike to somewhere south of Haines Junction (mile 148) that night, to Whitehorse (mile 245) the next day, probably stay in Whitehorse, and wake up long before the crack of dawn on Friday to ride to Skagway (mile 355) in order to hopefully complete the distance by 12:30 p.m. I have a grace period of about four hours before my ferry leaves town at 4:30. If I don't make it to Skagway by then, I'll have to eat the cost of the ticket and wait overnight for the next boat. I'm hoping the threat of that will be motivation enough to meet my goal ... riding about 360 miles in 48 hours. The fact that the ferry schedule forces me to do it over three days is, I think, an added comfort bonus.

While researching the route today, I found this site, which advertises was is essentially my trip ... minus the nine days to complete it, the bed and breakfast lodging, the sag wagon, the three square meals a day, and the $1,995 fee.

This site also includes some nice details about the tour. Reading through this today made me realize that I'm not just going on a training ride ... I'm going on a vacation. Yeah!