Pugsley's first taste of snow

Date: Oct. 31
Mileage: 13.2
October mileage: 648.1
Temperature upon departure: 37
Rainfall: .98"
October rainfall: 15.65"

This morning, I dressed to go to the gym. Lower-body weight-lifting day. Ug. I thought I should be grateful for the diversion because the weather outside looked monstrous, as usual. But as I walked outside I noticed, stripped ever so lightly below the low-lying clouds, hints of powder white. That meant the snowline was low! Low enough to cover the Perseverance Trail! I had to go to it, to see it, to remember that there is life beyond relentless rain. But I didn't have much time. I ran inside and threw on a fleece hoodie, my helmet, some neoprene booties over my gym shoes, and my snowboarding gloves. With a cotton gym outfit as a base layer, I knew I wouldn't last long out there. But I didn't need long. I needed fast. And I needed snow.

Pugsley and I set out in light, sprinkling rain, but the lack of fenders had me soaked in about 55 seconds. We burned quickly through the late-morning traffic and up the canyon road, hitting the deserted trail in a splash of puddles and scattered leaves, the snowline now mere feet above us. And then, within minutes, it was below us.

I can't call it Puglsey's first snow ride because an inch of warm slush that melts on contact doesn't quite fit the description. But snow was there, coating the canyon like a thin confection glaze, oozing from the treetops and infusing the air with a sweet, metallic taste. I was filled with anticipation I could hardly mitigate. And like a kid who knows the free reign of her Halloween candy is all too temporary, I just had to go for broke.

I launched into a pedalling frenzy, fueled by a sugar snow rush and propelled by the never-say-die burliness of my monster bike. Despite the slush and ice, I was climbing the canyon better than I ever had, clearing a lot of rocky stretches that I usually don't. It's a strange working relationship that I have with Pugsley - it weighs as much as a downhill bike, and doesn't have the suspension that I'm used to, but the big wheels make me feel like I can do no wrong. They instill a confidence that suspension never could. And we burned, really burned. I was sweating bullets and feeling bulletproof.

I stopped at the top of the canyon to take a picture and finally put on the rain shell I had stuffed in my hoodie pocket. I realized there had been a light breeze at my back the whole way up, and it stabbed through my fleece-and-cotton ensemble as though the clothes were made of water, which, for all practical properties of absorption, they were. I knew I could make it home in 20 minutes at a good clip, which is a short period of time regardless of how poorly dressed one is. But I knew it was going to hurt. And I knew how it was going to hurt. And in the novelty of the tiny, sharp flakes of wet snow swirling around me, I took a sick sort of satisfaction in that knowledge.

The descent was short, wet, muddy, and felt like I was on the verge of being sliced to pieces by a chainsaw made of ice. It was everything I needed. For the first morning in a while, I did not miss the sun.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Choices

Sometimes I wonder about the fundamentals of life. There is food, water, air, shelter; these things are absolute. Then there is human contact, required by all but a few. After that, in deciding what I, as a human, "need," there is a lot of gray area. I have my job, my source of income, which my lifestyle demands I make an effort to keep. But my lifestyle goes way beyond food, water, air and shelter. I have my family, who provides love and support when I need it. But at the same time, I don't feel a strong drive to start a family of my own. What I have left are the optional things I "do:" socializing, reading, writing, studying, and of course, somewhere near the top is the cycling. These things consume enormous amounts of time and I wonder to what end. Certainly they are the choices I've made, but how much do they reflect my needs?

Of course the complexities of human emotions obscure any simple explanation about our needs. If everything a human needed was food, water, air, shelter and human companionship, we would all conduct our lives very differently, and would probably not have evolved into the intelligent but befuddled creatures we are. Some philosophers have hypothesized the humans are motivated by a need for meaning; those who fail to find satisfactory meaning are driven to further extremes. There is a lot of room for religion in this theory. But it also includes the drive of the explorer, who in modern times has few places to go but within.

A couple of autobiographies I have been reading both draw interesting conclusions about the need for exploration in their prologues. As both men prepare to launch into their own amazing tales of misery and triumph, they make simple statements that in essence express a belief that they are not crazy, and they are not brave. They simply did what they had to do. It's not unlike the Buddhist monk who, when asked why he made a walking journey of 3,000 miles by dropping to his knees, hands and face with every step, simply looked away in silence, completely serene.

In "Minus 148," Art Davidson's enthralling account of the first winter ascent of Denali, Davidson writes: "During that summer expedition, Shiro and I caught only a few glimpses of what the McKinley winter would be like, but they were enough to infect us with what many explorers have described as a fever to go back to a region or landscape that has a grip on you. Not really understanding why they go, men have returned to the sea or to deserts, to jungles or to frozen wastes in the Arctic, knowing they will be miserable and frequently in danger."

Gary Paulsen closes his prologue in "Winterdance," his account of the Iditarod Sled Dog Race, by concluding, "I thought any sane man who was in his forties and had a good career going would quit now, would leave the dogs, end it now and go back to the world and sanity. I knew what scared me wasn't the canyon and wasn't the hook hanging by one prong, but the knowledge, the absolute fundamental knowledge that I could not stop, would not stop, would never be able to stop running dogs of my own free will."

It makes one wonder where the line between need and choice truly begins and ends.

In the spirit of giving in

Date: Oct. 29
Mileage: 25.1
October mileage: 634.9
Temperature upon departure: 39
Rainfall: .51"

I had decided to finish out the rest of my week's workouts at the gym; give myself a mental vacation, where I could just lift weights and read books and not worry about my disintegrating rain jacket or the wind cutting through my neoprene gloves. Then I thought, why should I let the weather beat me? I only have a few days left in this training block anyway.

Today: Intervals. Two miles on, two miles off. They're part of my month of "speed" training. Sometimes I think I really do feel stronger, and sometimes I think I'm fooling myself no matter what I do. But since I'm only playing this game against myself, I have to decide whether I win or lose. Sticking to a plan is only fleetingly satisfying, but movement through the landscape always feels like a win.

In the driving rain I look directly at the ground. The scattered leaves on the pavement blur into color bars. The debris - bits of shattered ceramic, an old boot, a quarter I never stop to pick up and neither does anyone else - give me an idea about where I am. I watch my odometer tick away, but wind gusts make it hard to measure my progress by speed alone. So I usually turn up my iPod. If I care too much about the song that's playing, I'm not pedaling hard enough.

I was doing well enough today that I didn't even notice when the shuffle switched over to a song I downloaded a while back, for nostalgia's sake, and promptly forgot I did so - an old song by Buck O'Nine, pop ska music circa mid-90s. Sometime within those two miles of wheezing and streaming and seeing nothing but abstract leaf patterns, I started to huff along with the rhythm ...

"All the water, all the water in my head (Oi! Oi! Oi!); All the water, all the water in my head (Oi! Oi! Oi!)"

Fragments of memories flooded in ... brick walls and red sneakers, cold lips and snow. They meant nothing in the moment, but they carried a vicarious feeling of distant warmth. It was a strange mosaic, beauty without meaning. As I slowed down for my recovery, I started to piece the images together.

And then I remembered ... Basement of Club DV8, Salt Lake City, November or maybe December 1996. Two friends and I went to see an all-ages show headlined by Buck 'O Nine. After the concert, the boy we were with, chivalrous as he was, offered to run and get the car from the many, many blocks it was parked away as we waited outside the building. Being teenage girls, we had worn no winter clothing of any kind. I was probably wearing thrift store cords and a baby T-shirt, or something equally ridiculous. All I remember are the red shoes. And the dry snow swirling around us. My feet were so cold that they burned.

I was dancing around to stave off the numbness when the club's front door swung open, and members of the band filed out. Last was the trumpet player, a tall, chiseled man with black dreadlocks. He was the "cute" one.

"'Sup girls, show's over," he said to us. We smiled. Probably giggled. A little awestruck to be caught in this unlikely position. "Damn," he continued. "You mountain locals are crazy. Don't even wear coats in the winter. If it ever got this cold in San Diego, half the city would probably die." We giggled again. I rifled around in my pocket until I found my ticket stub. "Um," I said, trying to muster my best "I'm-not-really-this-lame" tone. "Could you sign this?" He smiled and nudged someone who was carrying equipment out of the building to ask for a pen.

He handed the stub back to me and I promptly stuck it back in my pocket without looking at it. Our friend pulled up in his beater car and we crawled inside, teeth chattering, feet burning, squealing and slightly starstruck. "What's that guy's name anyway?" my girlfriend asked me. I pulled the ticket out of my pocket. In tiny cursive in the corner, the trumpet player had written, "You're hot. Anthony."

I remember clearly now the flush of blood to my head. I thought I'd never forget the way I felt so cold and warm at the same time. But eventually I did forget, essentially, until today...

I laughed at the randomness of the memory, the way time sometimes seems to slosh back and forth without continuity, like the tide. Or intervals. With my two-mile recovery nearly finished, I tried to zero back in for the sprint, but it was hard to focus. They're always funny, these games my mind plays to get through the hard times, to get through the hard rides, to get through the day.

Gone 'til November

My weekend ride:

Geoff's weekend ride: (photo by KanyonKris)

Date: Oct. 28
Mileage: 36.4
October mileage: 609.8
Temperature upon departure: 42
Rainfall: .29"

A couple of weeks ago, Geoff was eating breakfast and staring at a slate of gray outside the window as I rattled off the day's weather report. I don't remember the weather report. It probably contained rain and wind and a whole lot of windy rain. Then I began the half-hour-long process of suiting up for the day's ride as Geoff calmly walked over to the computer, called up his Delta Airlines account, and spent every last one of his airline miles to reserve a plane ticket to Las Vegas. "If I don't get out of here soon," he said in his calmest voice, "I'm going to snap."

On Thursday, Geoff left for his I-can-no-longer-tolerate-Juneau-in-the-fall vacation to the Mountain West. The premise of the trip was a bit shaky - a chance to visit friends in St. George, a White Rim ride with strangers he's been communicating with on an Internet forum, a Halloween party in Springville. He tried to talk me into coming. "I can't afford that," I said. "I was just there." Then later, in that eerie calm voice, he wondered aloud: "So what would you do if I didn't come back?"

"I don't know ... move to Anchorage, find an Alaskan sugar daddy to buy me blinged-out bikes and plane tickets."

"No, seriously."

Fall in Juneau is enough to make anyone snap, especially as the temperatures keep notching up a degree and the mountain snowline retreats into the monotone sky. Every day is Groundhog Day, except for it's windy, and rainy, and chock-full of rainy wind, and you know there's a whole lot more than six weeks of winter ahead. So I don't blame Geoff for escaping to the White Rim, to watch the October sunrise stretch across a limitless horizon. I would do the same, and have, with the Grand Canyon, a month ago.

But to go as far as to seriously consider leaving Alaska forever? I can hardly bear the blasphemy. But I can, and do, as raindrops patter on my PVC jacket and the duct-tape patches on my rain pants rub against my cold skin. I think of the desert, and I wonder, what if?

Eating and hypothermia

Date: Oct. 26
Mileage: 32.5
October mileage: 573.4
Temperature upon departure: 39
Rainfall: 1.36"

I had a cold-weather epiphany today: The secret to staying warm is staying fed.

It seems pretty simple, but it hadn't really occurred to me how important fuel is to the whole equation. I've been reading different accounts of people who contracted hypothermia while mountain climbing. In many cases, they were bundled up and climbing fairly strong. The temperature didn't change. The weather didn't change. One minute they were fine, and the next minute they were hypothermic. What happened? Does hypothermia really strike at random? Without warning? The whole idea was very scary.

Here in Juneau, during the fall monsoon, the temperature drops very slowly over time as the wind gradually picks up strength. It gives off the illusion of consistency, but there is change. By late October, the tail-end of the monsoon, the daily high temperatures have dropped from low-50s to high-30s. The 15 mph south winds gusting to 25 are now 25 mph south winds gusting to 50. If I was transported through time from early September to late October, I would likely change my habits drastically to match the change in weather. But when the cold weather settles in over weeks of barely-detectable increments, I may add a layer here and there, but I do little else differently.

However, the 30-mile rides of early September were not the same as the 30-mile rides of today. I set out with the same goals and the same destinations, forgetting that now the same distance takes longer, seems harder, and generally consumes more energy. What I feel at the end of these rides is cold. Sometimes it's a barely noticeable drop in my core temperature. Sometimes it's enough to spur shivering ... mild hypothermia. I thought the causes were failures in my clothing system. The next day I would add layers that I usually ended up getting rid of because I would overheat early in the ride. But today I tried something different ... something I don't usually do ... I set out on a 30-mile road ride with an Clif Bar in my pocket.

Chugging straight into a headwind at a screaming pace of 9 mph during my return ride, I caught the full force of a monster gust that nearly stopped me completely. I had to click out of my pedals to keep from tipping over. An amazing gust - the kind that sucks the oxygen right out of my lungs and leaves me gasping and sputtering. I could feel the wind tearing through my layers, prickling my skin and chilling my torso. The cold was already setting in, and I still had seven slow-moving miles before I would be home. It seemed a good time to eat the Clif Bar.

After that, I perked up considerably. My pace picked up; my body started to produce heat again; I could feel the core fires flare and beads of sweat began to form on the back of my neck. A few more monster gusts slowed my pace to 5 mph at times, but they didn't stop me. It finally made sense - it's been true all this time. I hadn't become overly susceptible to the mild cold of the fall monsoon. I had bonked.

When I came home, I finally began to leaf through the promisingly thorough but deathly boring medical booklet I recently picked up, "Hypothermia, Frostbite and Other Cold Injuries."

"In wilderness environments, hypothermia results from:
1. Inadequate protection from the cold.
2. Inadequate fluid intake resulting in dehydration.
3. Inadequate food for metabolic fuel to be burned during exercise."

Without caloric replacement, the body becomes much less efficient at regulating its own heat. It begins to tap fat stores to keep organs and muscles functioning, but these sources of fuel are too slow-burning to be efficiently used to produce heat. So even the early stages of a bonk can be dangerous at low temperatures. One of the first remedies the medical book recommends for a mildly hypothermic person: Sugar drink (one of the most quickly metabolized sources of fuel. Interestingly, the book said it doesn't matter if it's hot or cold. Hot drinks do little in the longterm to warm the body's core temperature. They just feel good.) Once you've had the sugar, embrace the urge to shiver violently. And try to commence exercising. The body can bring itself back from hypothermia, as long as it has something in the tank to burn.

Interesting. It seems so simple, but this is a real breakthrough for me. It's inspired me to take more stock of my energy level and food intake while riding. Bonking is annoying in the summer; it can be deadly in the winter.

Thursday Pugsley expedition

Date: Oct. 25
Mileage: 9.4
October mileage: 540.9
Temperature upon departure: 41
Rainfall: 0.25"

Another Thursday, another low-mileage, time-consuming, mud-slinging, shin-bashing exploration ride on the Pugsley.

Another ode to the big wheels, great conquerors of mud.

Geoff told me I should try to ride the Treadwell Ditch Trail, the closest trail to our house. It's a cross-country ski trail that's marginally bikeable in the winter, when the snow conditions are good (which is to say, terrible for cross-country skiing.) But in the off-season, the trail is so crappy muddy that even hikers rarely use it. An endless web of wet roots makes it completely unrideable (wet roots are, after all, the slipperiest substance known to mountain bikers. You could run an oil slick across a patch of glare ice, and it still wouldn't be as slippery as a string of wet roots.) But Pugsley is such a tank that you don't even have to pick the perfect line through the roots. You just point the bike forward and go. (Which is good, because I still think the Pugsley steers like a bus with a flat tire.)

I know that riding muddy trails is generally a violation of mountain biking ethics. But the reasons for that ethical code don't really hold up here in the rainforest: The trail won't dry with deep tracks through the center, because the trail never dries. Rain works faster than even the best intentions. It won't take more than a couple of days for all evidence that I came through here to be wiped away. So yes, I do ride in the mud without guilt. I ride in the mud at 4 mph. I ride in the mud with a big mud-eating grin on my face, because my teeth are full of mud, and my torso is covered in mud, and my wheels are sinking to the hubs in mud, but I'm still riding ... in the mud. And I've never been able to do that before.

It's a ton of fun ... but not exactly efficient. It took two hours to cover less than 10 miles today - only seven of which was actual trail. Ever since I finished this bike, I have only used it as a toy. On the beach ... in the mud ... weaving through abandoned army infrastructure. It's all been about having fun. Someday, not too far into the future, I plan to use this bike for serious training. And right now, it's hard for me to even imagine it. Hill intervals? Nordic trail laps? Day-long endurance rides? Overnighters?

For now, we will splash in the mud and enjoy the last days of our innocence.