I'm going to be on NPR!

At least ... that's the theory. Laura from National Public Radio's "alternative" morning show, the Bryant Park Project, called me today to set up a short interview for tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I'm going to talking about biking, specifically snow biking, specifically snow biking in the Alaska wilderness. I hope I can think of interesting things to say, and I hope not too much fun is made at the "crazy biker's" expense.

The plan is to go live with the interview at 7:30 a.m. New York time, which, last I checked, was the sleepy side of 3 a.m. here in Alaska. That's either really early or really late; no matter how you slice it, though, it's the middle of the night. I'm terribly nervous and don't think I'll be able to sleep anyway, so I'm going to opt for the "really late" designation. This could be a good time to kick in some midnight training - something I sorely need, but that's really hard to motivate for. What better excuse do I have to go for a bike ride in the middle of the night than this? It's like the cyclists' equivalent of downing a few shots before a live performance.

I don't know how many local NPR stations pick up the program, which I think competes directly with "Morning Edition," but here is where you can catch it:

Bryant Park Project podcast

Bryant Park Project Web site

KCPW 88.3 FM in Salt Lake City between 5 and 7 a.m.

Sirius Satellite Radio

Me and horses

Date: Nov. 13
Mileage: 26.4
Hours: 2:00
November mileage: 304.6
Temperature upon departure: 37
Rainfall: 0.07"

I was speeding down a steep descent on the North Douglas Highway, tears freezing to my cheeks in the windchill and ankle still throbbing from an earlier spill, when I saw a dark figure in the distance. At first I thought “jogger,” but it was going to fast, approaching me with shadowy urgency, and my second thought was, “Oh crap! It’s a moose!” My heart shot into danger mode as my eyes darted back and forth, confirming that, yes, there was still a cliff directly to my right and the channel on the left. I had no way to escape and this moose was coming right for me and surely it would stomp me to death right here on the road before I ever got the chance to visit Antarctica or catch up on my New Yorker reading.

But wait ... there are no moose in Juneau.

I squinted at the figure and realized there was another animal right behind it, and behind that, headlights. It took me several seconds to figure out they were two horses - like moose, an animal I have actually never seen in Juneau - that were apparently either being chased or herded by a Department of Fish and Wildlife vehicle. It was hard to tell which. I pulled all the way off the road and watched as they went by, their wild eyes fixed forward as they pounded across the pavement. I decided they were being chased.

Not even ten minutes earlier, I had been writhing in pain on the Rainforest Trail. The trail, which is best ridden in laps, is a short, narrow stretch of raised singletrack that is more fun that can be justifiably had in a half mile. It was built for walking, not cycling, and its turns are really tight. If I don't hit them right, my rear wheel falls six inches off the log-lined gravel - a drop I have not yet learned to take without tumbling. I took two slow-speed spills while riding down. Then, while climbing back up with a maximum heart rate clouding my vision but gravity on my side, I somehow tipped over without even leaving the trail. My right foot stayed lodged in the cage and my ankle wrenched sideways. The initial shot of pain was awe-inspiring ... the kind if quick, intense moment in which you taste metal and see angels. It was a moment in which I convinced myself my ankle was broken, and I laid in the mud, still lodged inside my bike, gazing up at the silhouettes of trees in a sea of white shock.

It’s strange how sometimes the most intense pain ends up being nothing at all. I have limped for months on nagging soreness, but after a few seconds of stillness on the Rainforest Trail, my ankle pain had subsided. I slowly removed my foot from my bike and rolled it around a few times. No pain. No injury. Perfectly fine. Strange.

And then the horses. Those were strange minutes, those ten minutes. I essentially spent all of my adrenaline for the day, and the ride home disappeared into a sleepy blur.

Training for pain

Dan V. asked a really good question today: What's my game plan for training for a minus 40 or minus 50-degree cold snap that could hit during the Iditarod Invitational? The truth is, I haven't really worked it out yet. I can buy all the gear in the world “rated” to these temperatures. But until I actually experience the danger cold, it’s impossible to know how my body will react.

Like at least 98 percent of Americans, I will never see those temperatures in the place where I live. Juneau is in the Alaska tropics. Only on rare occasions does it even drop below 0 here. The coldest temperature I have ever ridden a bicycle in was minus 18 degrees, pushing minus 30 degrees with the stiff gale windchill. It was brutal. I had to stop three times in a 150-minute ride to run up and down the highway just to warm up my feet. But I wasn’t wonderfully prepared back then. I think I was still in my cotton sock phase. And, when all was said and done, it wasn’t really all that bad.

At least once this winter, I hope to hop a ferry to seek cold-weather experience in the Yukon Territory. Maybe repeat pieces of my toasty August bicycle tour of the Golden Circle, only in January. There’s a couple of problems with this plan. First, taking a couple of days off work and buying ferry tickets means I’ll have to plan the trip weeks in advance. I may not get the cold snap I’m hoping for. I may get another toasty warm front that gives me Juneau-esque temperatures. And I will not likely be able to coordinate such a trip on a whim. I can just imagine approaching my boss with the request ... “But the weather is supposed to be terrible this weekend.”

Another concern is the border gate. I’m worried that I’ll plan the trip, pack all my gear, ride the ferry to Skagway, approach the gate that's a mere five miles outside of town, and be deemed so crazy or incompetent by the guards that they won’t let me into Canada. I can just imagine approaching the frost-coated building on a bicycle, requesting access to a remote road that leads to a 3,000-foot mountain pass, in the winter no less, with all of the earnestness I can muster ... "But the weather is supposed to be terrible this weekend."

Other suggestions I've heard is to simulate danger cold by going out biking in 25-degree weather wearing nothing more than a short-sleeved bicycle jersey and shorts. But this seems idiotic to me. I already know what hypothermia feels like. The idea is to avoid it.

There are a few things I know: It's better to keep moving through the danger cold. Stopping to bivy in the cold isn't the best idea, unless you find yourself in trouble. If that trouble is the cold, though, bivying might not be enough. You need to start a fire, eat food, drink water, eat food, and run in circles with whatever energy you can muster to generate warmth.

I've heard matches won't strike in the danger cold. But I haven't heard negative reports about cigarette lighters.

I need to practice changing a flat with gloves on. Mittens I imagine are nearly impossible, but touching a metal rim with bare hands is out of the question.

Gas stoves are likely not to work at all when the temps drop really low. Liquid stoves will withstand colder temperatures, but tend to be worse in the wind, and all the effort to set them up and light them may discourage use. Snow will melt inside the bladder of a camelbak next to the body, but very slowly. So drinking water can become an issue. I continue to consider solutions.

There's an obvious advantage to experience in this department. Racers from Fairbanks continue to shine in the Iditarod Invitational. Anchorage people also tear up the trail. I can't say I've ever heard of anyone from Juneau in the race. But if someone from California can survive it, well, so can I.

Hopefully.

Sun therapy

Date: Nov. 11
Mileage: 17.2
Hours: 1:45
November mileage: 278.2
Temperature upon departure: 35
Rainfall: 0.0"

I woke up this morning to lead legs. Stomped around the house, ate my carbohydrate-and-caffeine breakfast, and couldn't stop the sensation of blood congealing like cement in my veins. Clearly there would be no purposeful exercise this morning. I thought about building a cardboard divider shelf for my piles of winter clothing. I thought about cleaning the bathroom. I thought about reading Geoff's copy of "The World Without Us." I thought about the sunbeams streaming through the still-drawn blinds. I thought about the way the warmth of the sun trickles through clear air. I could probably go out in the 35-degree morning wearing polyester pants and a T-shirt. I thought about visiting the places where summer still lingers. Places best reached with a snow bike.

I shook out my legs some more and slogged over the bridge. The Gastineau Chanel was a stagnant sheet of glass. As a body of water connected to the Pacific Ocean, it's strange to see it so still. Like the world stopped spinning, and where gravity settled is where I stood. Strange to feel so heavy and light at the same time.

Out Thane to the Dupont Trail, a cliffside that holds onto its mossy greenness and thick shade well into November. The sunlight dissipated in the frosty humidity of the rainforest. I finally began to warm up, at least enough to melt some of that seemingly lead-based cement from my legs. Maybe too little too late, with a dozen places to be and no more time or reason to head further south. But for those few moments, everything looked like June. If I closed my eyes, I could almost feel it - as though summer is a state of mind, like tiredness. And suddenly I was lighter on my legs, lighter on top of the mud. Just lighter. And free.

Hit the beach on the way home. A stretch of jarring boulders gave way to perfectly smooth sand. I skirted the surf as it crept up so calmly it was nearly impossible to detect until it was on top of me, like a bathtub slowly filling with water. I returned home cured of my lead legs, feeling like I could go back out and conquer an entire afternoon if given the chance. Not what I expected ... but could it be true? Is the best way to relieve fatigue just to ride it out, ride it out? Or is the best cure simply to spend some time in the sun?

The hours

Date: Nov. 9 and 10
Mileage: 18.1 and 30.2
Hours: 1:20 and 3:45
November mileage: 261.0
Temperature upon departure: 37
Rainfall: 0.30"

My recent realization that the sun now sets before 4 p.m. has been a bit of a blow to my mood. At the beginning of the week, I was riding a sugar snow high and it was all I could do to straighten my face after hours of silly perma-grin. Now I am feeling the effects of greasy snow indigestion (not literal indigestion; just sort of a sinking feeling that not all is well.) At first I blamed the waning daylight. But now, I'm wondering if some of it could be mild overtraining.

For this race I plan to line up for in February, spending as much time as possible on the bike, on the toughest trail conditions, in the crappiest weather I can endure, is the most valuable training I'm going to get. Speed intervals, "time trials," weight lifting, hill climbing - these were all great exercises to build up my base. Now it's time to build up endurance. Even more so, it's time to toughen my morale. I need to learn to spend hours on the bike, days on the bike, learn to trudge beside my bike for hours, days, and not lose my mind in the process. It's a daunting task - especially because I there's a decent chance I could jump the gun and lose my mind in training.

The first 10 days of November, there has been a lot of riding. The miles don't show it, because almost all of the riding has been snow riding, muddy trail riding, road miles on the mountain bike, and trail-hopping road miles on the Pugsley (which so far I have been unable to coax over 14 mph without the benefit of gravity or wind.) So while the miles don't show it, the sheer hours of exercise have stacked up. I've probably jumped from 9-11 hours a week at the end of October to 16 this past week. Maybe more. I don't know. It's obviously not wise to make jumps like that, so I'm going to start keeping track.

It's funny, because I haven't felt any physical effects of "overtraining." There have just been a few hints of slipping morale. Like yesterday, when I purposely set out on my road bike in marginal weather and turned around at the first sight of snow flurries. Then today, riding the trails on a Saturday morning, I became overly annoyed with just about everybody I saw. Two people on the Salmon Creek trail stopped me to point out the girth of my wheels (Don't they know it's rude to call something "fat"?) and then chide me for not riding with studded tires. The trail was wet gravel covered by about two inches of slushy snow. I wanted to launch into a lecture about how studs are great on the street but nearly pointless in these kind of trail conditions - but instead I just smiled and through clenched teeth said "Yeah. We'll see how it goes." As I headed back up the trail, even as I vowed to never, never go trail riding on a Saturday again, I wondered about the real reasons behind my quick-tempered irritability.

I think I'll keep increasing the hours of my long ride(s) each weekend, the way I planned, but flatten out my weekday riding (I don't have much more weekday time to burn, anyway.) See how it goes. Hopefully it will keep me from snapping at a hapless hiker. Then, when training calls for the necessary dissection of my morale, at least I'll have happy memories from November.

*****

Late, completely unrelated tangent: I don't do political diatribes on my blog, but Geoff and I just returned from a showing of the documentary "No End In Sight" and I can't get it out of my head. This movie about the Iraq war isn't simply a vehicle to preach to the enraged choir, as Michael Moore's movies have done. It's a very simply laid-out, calm play-by-play of the events and decisions that led to the current situation in Iraq, as told my members of the military, former members of the Bush administration, and others who were very close to the process. The feeling it ends with is not anger, but an almost overwhelming sadness. That's why I highly recommend seeking it out and seeing it. Not because it will leave you in despair, but because it will inspire you to take action. It definitely has me asking myself what I can do. Especially today ... Veterans' Day.

Five hours of fog

Date: Nov. 8
Mileage: 56.2
November mileage: 213.6
Temperature upon departure: 33
Rainfall: 0.0"

Juneau can be so cruel. Even when the clouds break apart long enough to reveal more than a few fleeting moments of sun (and even that's rare. So rare), high pressure systems tend to build up a lot of fog. In many ways, fog-shrouded sunlight is the cruelest weather of all. You've been told the sun is out. You can sense it. You can imagine it. You can cling to the faith that it is in fact up there, somewhere. But you can not feel it. And you can not see it. In fact, you can't see anything further than five feet in front of your face. And, come to think of it, you're becoming more than a little tired of staring at the patterns made by the frost granules collecting on your handlebars.

So it went for my five-hour ride today. It started out well with a jaunt up Perseverance Canyon with Geoff in the morning. We were able to climb out of the clouds early and ride most of the trail with the sunlight in view, even if the canyon itself was entirely cast in shadow. After lunch I set out for what I was hoping would be 3.5 more hours of fast-paced distance riding. But my legs were feeling sluggish after a week that consisted mostly of hard climbing and weight lifting. I wasn't thrilled to be on my mountain bike on the road when just a few more degrees of warmth would have allowed the road bike. And I was grumpy about the fog. As it became even thicker in the waning afternoon, I became even more grumpy. Have you ever ridden a spin bike all alone in an empty room with four white walls? It was a little like that, except for add the terror of streaming headlights created by drivers who probably have no clue about your existence. Lucky I was on my mountain bike. I spent most of the afternoon bouncing across the snow-covered soft shoulders.

It was not my favorite ride ever. I thought I had until 5 p.m. to ride but I was wrong. Sunset was at 3:53 p.m. today! I had no idea! (curse you, Daylight Savings Time.) I did not have appropriate bike lights (yes, I know I should have been using lights in the fog. But I did not know the fog was as bad as it was when I left the house, either.) I would not have even figured out how early the sun was actually setting if the fog hadn't lifted a little as I worked my way north. I was tipping my head back and reveling in the newfound warmth and light streaming over the Lynn Canal when I first noticed that the sun was low on the horizon. Really low. Holy cow!

I had to turn tail there and ride south like a banshee. Of course I couldn't resist stopping to take a few pictures. It was like I had just been granted sight after an afternoon of blindness. Everything I saw was amazing and colorful and beautiful ... trees, ravens, even the cars that were attached to the headlights. It was so nice to actually see them.

And of course I did that thing where I point the camera straight at the sun. The lens can't quite handle the glare, but I always enjoy the otherworldly images it compensates with. Plus, I just like to take pictures of the sun.

The break in the fog was short-lived, though. The blue sky was nearly gone by Auke Lake, and the fog only thickened up as the sunlight faded away during my frantic ride home. I tried to mash out those last miles before my invisibility became absolute. I will never ride in the winter without a headlight again. Another long ride, another lesson learned.

Recovering junkaholic

Date: Nov. 7
Mileage: 15.2
November mileage: 157.4
Temperature upon departure: 34
Rainfall: 0.01"

I went to the dentist this morning, a few days after I became convinced that I had a massive cavity threatening to abscess into my jaw. Turns out I have nothing of the sort, but at least now there are a dozen really expensive digital photographs of the insides of my teeth stored in a computer somewhere in the purgatory of Airport Row.

I’m of course relieved by my no-cavity status, but there’s a thin layer of disappointment on the periphery. As the season of giving in approaches, I’ve been harboring this crazy scheme to reduce sugar in my diet. So far, I have struggled to find the motivation to even begin. I was beginning to believe a massive cavity may be just the kick-start I need to motivate toward ultra-clean living. But I need to be honest with myself. I’ve set a lot of goals in the past two years, and none of them have touched my diet. The sugar that remains is going to have to be surgically removed.

Not that I haven’t made an honest effort to cut back. For as much junk food as I eat these days, there was a time when I was absolutely devoted to it, defended it, and would have starved without it. When my friends and I ate dinner on our backpacking trips, I’d smirk as they toiled over their little camp stoves while I munched effortlessly on Snickers bars. Food is food, and energy is energy, I reasoned. I believed I was free. But I’ve changed since then. In my blog description, I define myself as someone who “likes to eat goldfish crackers and Pepsi for breakfast.” This isn’t untrue, but it is, and is becoming more so, a remnant of a past life. For as much as sugar calls to me, the lingering benefits of “healthy” food shout louder.

Geoff and I buy our fresh produce in bulk, Costco style, and even with the lag time of Juneau shipping that cuts longevity in half, we never fail to finish it. Geoff's a vegetarian, so there's not much meat. When I buy cereal, I try to stick to the whole-grain, low sugar types, and Geoff’s job as a cook at a natural foods deli has infused a lot of organic flax-seed hippy food into the mix. I’m a lot happier now than I was when I was a junk food junky, and my energy levels are off the chart compared to then. I attribute much of this to “better diet.”

And yet, my devotion to junk food remains. If sugar cereals show up in the house, I devour them enthusiastically and without regret. There’s a cupboard in the house I can’t go near - stocked full of store-bought cookies and six different kinds of chips and and Pop Tarts and Wheat Thins and granola bars and fruit leathers and trail mix and hot chocolate and ... the list goes on. Every time I open this cupboard, large amounts of simple carbohydrates disappear just like that. The reason this cupboard exists is because a former version of myself converted the once sugar-free Geoff to the church of high fructose corn syrup. Now his grocery choices (and mine) threaten to lure me back to the flock.

It seems a noble but impossible battle. Just tonight, I polished off a dinner of veggie burger on whole-wheat bread, green salad with sliced apples, baby carrots and balsamic vinegar, and a huge bowl of Rocky Road ice cream. I can’t help but wonder if my dentist had the decency to chew me out, if I would have eschewed the ice cream and munched on a banana instead. Probably not.

On the bright side, the dentist appointment got me out of bed in the pre-dawn darkness of 6:45 a.m. That gave me time to ride Pugsley up Perseverance canyon, eat lunch, and complete my lower-body weight routine at the gym. I should make a habit of waking up early. I wonder if that would convince me to go to bed before 1 a.m. Probably not.