Pugsley's first sun ride

Date: Nov. 6
Mileage: 21.9
November mileage: 142.2
Temperature upon departure: 33
Rainfall: 0.0"

A perfect bike ride is a lot like a well-crafted chocolate chip cookie. Alone, the ingredients range from bland to intolerable: Tuesday morning, clear skies, light breeze, several inches of new snow, 33 degrees, early season inexperience, untested iPod mix and some tempered enthusiasm. But throw them all together, mix vigorously and bake in the rare November sun, and you have a bike ride that’s so rich, so sweet and so satisfying that you swear you could consume 100 of the same and never tire.

These rides are so delicious, in fact, that they inevitably stir up guilt from depths of pleasure. You question the wisdom of your line through the buttery snow; you wonder if its seemingly weightless airiness may suddenly turn on you, kick you sideways, send you sliding uncontrollably into a tree. You look up to a stream of snow tearing off mountain peaks in distant wind that hardly touches you; you feel the chill of ice water running down your neck. You ponder the tingling in your toes, and you think, “This can’t possibly be healthy.” And yet you crave more.

Three to four inches of new snow made the climb up Perseverance Trail extra tricky today - it was just enough snow to cover the rocks and roots to the point I couldn’t see them, but not enough to cushion the force of a direct hit. Luckily, Pugsley was more up to the monster trucking task than I ever anticipated, as I was completely consumed with staying ahead of the back wheel as it spun out atop the slippery surface.

Coming down the canyon was a passionate dance with terror and empowerment. My snow-riding skills are rusty, but my enthusiasm is as fresh as the day I first put a wheel to powder. Both are magnified by the sheer unpredictability of powder snow - I can lose control, quickly, sometimes for no discernable reason. My victories today gave way to horror, which in turn fed further victories. But after carving frantic cursive in the singletrack, skirting the steep edge of oblivion and swerving back to safety, my lingering impression told me I could do no wrong.

The final mile of descent, atop frozen gravel infused with soft patches of snow, was the most otherworldly experience of all. Sharp fragments of sunlight filtered through the trees; their bare branches were coated in snow, completely black and white except for yellow slashes of light. My iPod that had been playing really mellow Neko Case for the past half hour switched over the Jimmy Eat World’s latest. In a bombardment of amped-up rock, my speed increased to 25, 30 mph. The cold air tore at my face and tears filled my eyes as the wintry world blurred by. It reminded me of the time I rode the Slingshot - an amusement park ride that straps people in a large circular cage, pulls back on a fixed line and catapults them into the air. In the G-force rush, there is no up and down, no ground and sky, no real and imagined. There is only shadow and light, spinning and spinning to the end of the universe.

I rode to Salmon Creek afterward just to extend the fun, but by then my ride had consumed more than three hours, and it was time to go to work. These perfect rides are hard to come down from, and like a person sinking into the aftermath of a cookie binge, I feel a tinge of regret. Not because I overindulged, but because I was forced to stop.

My new frame bag

This just arrived in the mail today, a new frame bag custom-made by my friend Eric in Anchorage. The picture's not great because I just slapped the bag on the bike during my dinner break, pump mount and all. But it seems to form-fit Pugsley like a fine glove, matching gray colors to boot, and it's so sleek and shiny. It's my first-ever custom-made piece of outdoor gear. I feel like I'm moving up in the world.

Eric's an engineer by occupation, and he's created these frame bag designs that have a lot of clever and innovative features - an internal mesh pocket, removable dividers that allow different compartments and also reinforce the already-obvious bombproofness of the bag. The top edge tapers out to allow maximum space without compromising your leg clearance. There's reflective strips on the webbing, heavy-duty zippers ... I keep discovering new stuff. It's a baffling concept to me ... to tell somebody, long-distance, "Uh, yeah, I'd like a frame bag for my, um, let's see, it's a 16-inch Pugsley," and have them return with something so idealistically perfect. What those engineers can't do.

Frame bags themselves are a cool concept ... it's all part of the dream of carrying all of your survival gear on your bike, but keeping it off your back and off the back rack. They're very popular in Alaska winter endurance races, where equal weight distribution is crucial to maximizing your snow floatation, and a lot of time hopping on and off the bike means any bulk on the back is going to demand a fair amount of wasted energy while constantly swinging one's legs over it. I estimate my frame bag can hold somewhere between 350 and 400 cubic inches of heavy gear, all in the bike's triangle. Seems a whole lot more efficient than a water-bottle holder and a bike pump mount.

Eric is currently making these for anybody who's interested ... "Handmade bombproof in Alaska, Full suspension bikes, cruisers, funky geometry, whatever you want!" Here's his MTBR Classified ad. Or e-mail him at stampeeding_wilderbeast at yahoo dot com.

Hey, it's the sun, and it makes me shine

Date: Nov. 4
Mileage: 42.8
November mileage: 122.3
Temperature upon departure: 37
Rainfall: 0.0"

Don't you hate the mornings that you wake up feeling a lot less than spectacular? Maybe you have this lingering dull pain in your mouth, and a headache too because you were up for several hours in the night worrying that you have a cavity. And your legs still burn from weightlifting two days ago and your caffeine's not kicking in and you know you have a heavy afternoon workload waiting for you at the office and you think some Chips Ahoy and a nap sounds about perfect. These mornings are even worse when they happen on the only 25-hour day of the year. But even without that extra hour weighing on your conscience, there's the weather forecast calling for "mostly cloudy with a 20 percent chance of showers" to consider. Letting any morning that promises to be not only long but dry pass by in bed is an unforgivable waste.

It was in this condition I slogged out on my mountain bike this morning, anticipating ice on the road and hoping to hit some trails if I could muster the motivation to pedal all the way out to the valley. I caught the tailwind north and slipped onto the Mendenhall trail system as soon as I could, winding through the neighborhoods and homeless camps atop frosty mounds of mud.

I crossed over to the glacier moraine and continued to ponder turning around. The mud was becoming softer, and anything that wasn't mud was an outright puddle. Splatters of wood chips, dead falls and other beaver carnage obstructed the trail. I practiced my moving dismount to jump the gnawed-off logs without stopping, until I finally splashed down into a huge stretch of beaver dam overflow. Piloting the mountain bike like a paddle boat through the hub-deep cold water, I nearly bogged down in the silt before I made it to shore. But I hammered hard up the last knoll and cleared the swamp without getting so much as a knee brace wet. I stopped on the edge of Dredge Lake to stomp out the water in my booties and soak in the satisfaction of my small victory. It was there I first noticed the sky shining through a patchwork of thinning clouds, backlit by a hidden sun and bursting with rays that nearly reached the ground. The world was suddenly infused with shadows, and light, and slivers of warmth. It felt like newfound energy, and renewal, and, come to think of it, the aftermath of a pretty fun cyclocross-type obstacle course, which definitely demanded to be re-ridden, only faster.

Funny how some mornings start out with head/muscle/toothache grumpiness, and end with a 40-mile mountain bike ride. Don't you love mornings like that?

Looks like November

Date: Nov. 3
Mileage: 12.1
November mileage: 79.5
Temperature upon departure: 38
Rainfall: .10"

Perseverance Trail, again. I could ride this trail every day of the week, and nearly have this week. I usually avoided this trail in the summer because of the crowds. Hikers on Perseverance tend to be out to lunch - some literally were out to lunch, as in state workers on their midday break; and others simply could not or would not acknowledge me when I screamed "On your left! On your left!" as they staggered up the wide trail.

But as summer disappears, so do the crowds. I do not know where they go. This has always been a great mystery to me. Where do people go in the winter? The town's population doesn't change much. I still see garbage trucks picking up trash and baristas serving oceans of coffee. But everything else - the trails, the bike paths, the beaches, the back roads - seem to go into some kind of stasis. I wonder in passing where the people go. But frankly, I do not care. It means more room for me, and I am greedy greedy greedy when it comes to space. A trail doesn't have to be great for it to be my favorite trail - it just has to be scenic and deserted.

As I become more and more anxious for winter conditions, I wonder if it's really winter I like so much, or just the fleeting luxury of solitude? It must be a little of both, because there's something about following a light dusting of snow up the most popular trail in Juneau to its quiet and peaceful conclusion that's just so ... satisfying.

Good faith effort

Date: Nov. 2
Mileage: 54.2
November mileage: 67.4
Temperature upon departure: 39
Rainfall: .64"

I got a flat tire about six miles from home today. No huge surprise there - Juneau roads are after all approximately 19.76 percent glass. I've had so many flats, in fact, that I started carrying this huge but supposedly efficient bike pump that I never bother to carry, because it weighs approximately 19.76 pounds. Problem is, I never actually tested this pump, nor had I tried to use it. Today was the test run, and I failed miserably.

After about 20 minutes of fidgeting and taking the thing apart, when my fingers became sufficiently numb, I decided that even if this was a working pump, I was not going to figure out how to use it. Across the street were a gas station and the Western Auto Marine store. But I had no Schrader conversion piece for my Presta valves. And no money. Not a cent. I had somehow managed to leave the house with 19.76 articles of spare clothing and no cash.

I clopped in my bikes shoes over to the store, a treacherous journey with those silly LOOK bindings sliding all over the wet pavement, on the off chance that a store called Western Auto Marine sold bike pumps, and that some sympathetic employee might agree to barter my MP3 player for a $15 floor pump. They did sell pumps. Well .. the did sell "a" pump. It looked like it had been sitting there since 1976, seemed to be made of cast iron, and only fit Schrader valves. I felt so lost. There I was, standing in the middle of a store in the middle of town, completely stranded.

I didn't have the courage to ask anyone for so much as a quarter to make a phone call, because I found my situation to be sufficiently humiliating. I could hardly walk even a few steps in my bike shoes, so I grabbed a couple of real estate guides and stuffed them in the bottom of my neoprene booties. Then I put on my extra pair of socks, wedged my feet in, and resigned myself to a six-mile walk home in my sock feet.

Luckily, I live in a small city in Alaska. I hadn't even walked a full block when a crab fisherman named James stopped his truck and asked me if I needed a ride. He took me all the way home. Even though I had wasted more than an hour in the ordeal, I still had enough daylight to (mostly) salvage the ride.

Sufficiently humbled, I grabbed my old pump, an extra spare tube for good measure, and stuffed my pockets full of cash and a credit card (even though I had already decided to ride on North Douglas Island, which has no stores.)

The one blessing of that whole disaster is that it pushed my ride all the way back to sunset. I rode past the glacier beneath the heavily filtered waning light of the afternoon, cast in electric blue hues and framed in gray. I made a U-turn at the dead end and rode up to Eaglecrest, which was absolutely inundated by a downpour of sleet and snow that hadn't quite reached the point of accumulation yet. I felt like I had landed in the midst of an Arctic blast, with sleet so heavy that it actually stung my skin through my coat and stabbed my eyes. I turned around, descended through the rush of Arctic wind and rain that can only be described as cold shock, and returned to the relative calm of sea level. A yawn of blue sky had opened up over the channel, and streams of light from setting sun peeked through just long enough to cast a small rainbow beside the glacier. A fitting end to a strange afternoon.

Warming up to the gym

Date: Nov. 1
Mileage: 13.2
November mileage: 13.2
Temperature upon departure: 42
Rainfall: .58"

I had some time to burn this morning before I had to pick Geoff up from the airport, so I headed up the Perseverance Trail again. The snow was mostly gone, which was not surprising. Driving rain today, and wind, charging north at a steady 25 mph. More of the same tomorrow.

As I'm working on forming a plan for my winter training schedule, I feel like I have to make concessions for the paradox of this common weather: Juneau is just warm enough to be unbearably cold. When the temperature drops below freezing, and precipitation turns to snow, it's much easier to stay warm. When I was a completely uninformed winter cycling novice, I used to pedal around Homer in single-digit temperatures wearing fleece pajama bottoms and three pairs of cotton socks. Totally happy. Now I have a tough time staying warm when the temperature dips below 40, knowing that as long as it stays above 30, I probably never will have a chance to feel warm.

Having tested every piece of gear I own, I know I can stay comfortable while soaking wet in 35-degree weather for about two hours, maybe three if the wind is light. When it comes time to make longer, slower training rides - and I've already blown off a couple - I'm at a bit of a loss. I can't afford expensive new gear that might actually keep me dry (and I have too many doubts to take the gamble). I've actually been scanning the classified ads for used wetsuits. My jokes about riding a bicycle in a single piece of neoprene have crossed over into serious consideration. Then there's my other idea - carrying a complete change of clothes in a dry bag. Or at least some extra layers that I can bulk up with when the barriers start breaking down.

It's an interesting conundrum that I didn't run into much last winter, partially because I lucked out with the weather, and partially because I didn't do many daylong rides. I have more aspirations for longer rides this winter. After stalling last weekend, I was hoping to start the series tomorrow with a simple, four-hour ride. Right now, I can all too easily picture myself blowing it off again, but hopefully I'll make a good-faith effort. Maybe I'll give that dry-bag thing a try.

Sorry to blog yet another weather rant. It truly is, as my co-worker describes it, homicide-inspiring. Geoff came back from Utah today, and I don't think I'll be able to talk him into staying in Alaska if this weather lasts much longer than another week. On the plus side, I am really pleased with the progress I have been making at the gym. I slog through this stuff twice a week, thrice on good weeks, in the back of my mind skeptical that it's working at all. But today I made a bunch of additions to my lower-body weights, with encouraging results. My leg extensions have been by far the most promising. My physical therapist last spring recommended I do these lifts to improve my VMO quad and other knee-supporting muscles. Throughout the summer, I couldn't even lift my legs from a sitting position, once, with no weights, and not feel pain. In late September, I resolved just to wince through the uncomfortable knee crackling and start with a set of 3-5 reps, at 5 pounds. In six weeks, I'm up to three sets of 12 reps with 20 pounds, and no pain. That probably still sounds pretty lightweight, but this is an area of my body that, at least according to my doctor, had atrophied down to nothing as recently as late April. So as far as I'm concerned, I am now Superwoman. Bring on the rain!

Help me ride the Iditarod

Hi. My name is Jill, and I am planning to ride my bicycle in the 2008 Iditarod Trail Invitational. This event is a 350-mile winter wilderness race that follows the historic Iditarod trail from Knik to McGrath, Alaska. In order to get there, racers must pack all of their survival gear on bicycles specially built to ride on snow. Once out there, we must be self-sufficient for anything the Alaska winter can throw at us: wind, snow, flash blizzards, temperatures ranging from 40 above to 40 below, moose encounters, ice overflow, loneliness, isolation ... the list goes on.

I entered this event not only for the challenge, but also for the opportunity to ride my bicycle through 350 miles of some of the most beautiful terrain I can imagine. I am not a career cyclist. I do not have pro deals or corporate sponsorships. I am just a regular person with a passion for cycling - one might say a passion for extreme cycling.

I am self-funding this race on my small-town journalists' salary. It has really cut into the luxuries, but it is worth every penny to me. However, I have received tokens of help from people all around the world. I am always grateful to like-minded souls who generously give not only their monetary support, but also their emotional support. It feels great to be a regular passionate, cyclist sponsored by regular, passionate people.

If you would like to help sponsor my race, you can click on the gold button below to make a donation through the Paypal link. Or you can contact me by e-mail at jillhomer66@hotmail.com. I send to every sponsor a CD filled with scenic Alaska photography that I have taken - some that has appeared on this blog, and some that has not. The compilation now covers more than two years of Alaska living and offers hundreds of photos, open for any use - commercial or personal. I also include a link to blogs or other Web sites in my sidebar under the heading "this blog brought to you by." If you have any questions or recommendations, please e-mail me. And thanks again for reading.