Two beautiful days

Date: Nov. 29 and 30
Mileage: 21.2 and 80.4
Hours: 2:15 and 6:15
November mileage: 793
Temperature upon departure: 28 and 25
November rainfall: 3.94"

This is one of those posts in which I tried to decide on a favorite picture, but couldn't do it, so I'm just going to post seven. It was two days of regular rides with spectacular scenery.

On Thursday, I rode the trails out in the Mendenhall Valley. It was a bit of a "recovery" ride. That is, recovery from my failed camping attempt. Despite being really glad to have met Rebecca (who is amazingly nice, I agree, and who has invited me to come visit her again in the near future), I am a little bummed about missing out on the camping experience. The next time I try, (hopefully this weekend) there are likely to be windchills near 25 below, so I will not be able to venture too far from my house (can't pass up a chance to experience temperatures that low when they happen, although it will probably be rather brutal for a first-time try, and I don't want to take any big risks.)

So my trail ride was a recovery ride in the psychological sense. It was everything I needed. The weather was perfect, just perfect, and the trails, though still devoid of snow, were frozen to a hard sheen. Mountain biking does not get better than this in the place where I live. It really doesn't.

I stopped for 20 minutes to just sit on the beach and watch the alpenglow move across the Mendenhall Glacier as the sun set.

Today I had hoped to do a longer ride, but I slept and slept the morning away, and it was 11 a.m. before I got out the door. In a place where darkness descends just after 3 p.m., it was a terrible waste of sunlight. All my good training intentions had me hoping to increase my long rides by 30 minutes to an hour each weekend. But between the temptation to sleep in and my evening plans, I've had a hard time carving out cycling windows longer than six hours. I'm still making encouraging progress, though. The six-hour rides feel easier each week.

Herbert Glacier. This is view I was hoping to wake up to Thursday morning. Instead I was out there near sunset today, making frosty figure-8s on the frozen mudflats. The mountains were bathed in yellow light. So much beauty.

How can I ride my bicycle so much and continue to be so awestruck by the experience? It's a mystery to me, and one I don't plan to solve anytime soon. Sometimes, when I am having a good day, I remember a thought that occurred to me way back in 2001, as I was swimming across a lake in eastern Texas. Geoff and I were criss-crossing the country in my Geo Prism, held by necessity to a budget of less than $100 per week. He was in the woods cooking green beans and cream of mushroom soup for dinner. I hadn't bathed in days and was sitting on the shoreline when a random flash of inspiration convinced me to strip to my skivvies and jump in. The cold water chewed at my capillaries until my skin went numb. But there was something very real in the feeling, and when I looked to the other shoreline, I knew I could make it there. I just knew it, like it had already happened. I swam toward the open water without fear, nearly blind against bright hues of red and gold shimmering on the lake's surface. At one point I rolled over on my back and gasped at the nuclear sunset stretched across the horizon, like a ceiling splattered violently with a million cans of paint. I didn't even have enough money to see a movie, but in that moment, the entire sky belonged only to me. And I thought, right there, that I would never find another moment in my adult life that would make me feel so free.

But I keep re-discovering that moment, everywhere.

I've been really lucky to be a witness to a lot of beauty and goodness in this world, and for that I am grateful, every day.

Flat disaster

Date: Nov. 28
Mileage: 29.1
Hours: 2:30
November mileage: 691.4
Temperature upon departure: 30
Rainfall: 0

Well, I'm back from my camping experience, sans camping experience. I was feeling a bit despondent last night about the way in which I failed, failed before the cold settled in, failed before the darkness tightened its grip, failed before the lonliness gnawed at my sanity, failed before I had to gather water or eat food or even pull my sleeping bag out of its stuff sack. I failed. But it's a pretty funny story. Here's what happened.

I set out into the darkness with the evening rush hour traffic, swaddled in my best cold-weather clothing and hoisting what I estimate to be about 55 pounds of obese bicycle, food, water and winter camping gear. I was styling. A commuter passed me as I was climbing a short hill on the bike path, and then looked back as if to inquire whether I was going to give him chase. Excuse me? You try commuting with the necessities of life.

But the night settled in clear and cold, quickly dropping into the 20s, and I felt amazingly good. Better than good. I felt fresh and strong, like I had to hold myself back just because I didn't know what hardships lay ahead. All that energy conservation left me as relaxed as if I was at home sitting on the couch, and I was toasty and happy, a bit overdressed as I was. It seemed like no time at all had gone by, though it had in reality been about two and a half hours, when I felt that mood-plunging bouncing in my rear tire. Flat.

I pulled off to the side of the road and began to undo my set-up, pulling out the repair gear that I really didn't think I'd have to use. I had never bothered to practice changing a tire on the Pugsley (I know, not smart.) After wrestling with the wheel for about 10 minutes I finally just unbolted the caliper of the rear disc brake. I learned later that I have no choice but to do this anyway (curse you, Surly, and your horizontal dropouts!)

Tire off, I realized that the tube had snapped at the valve, a circular, unfixable hole (probably caused because I inflated the tires to full pressure before I left, after running them 15-20 psi for the past several rides, they were then up to the maximum 30.) So my Surly tube was history. I went to work installing my spare, which is a regular mountain bike tube, rated for tires 2.1"-2.5" (Endomorph tires are size 3.7") But I'd heard this works fine from credible sources. So I set it in place, took out my tiny hand pump, and pumped. And pumped and pumped and pumped and pumped and pumped. Fifteen minutes went by like this. I took breaks to rest my arms. I felt my fingers slowly losing circulation, estimating it was about 20 degrees out by now, and I had been trying to fix a flat with my bare hands for 45 minutes. One car went by in that entire time. They stopped to ask if I needed help. I said no.

So I pumped and pumped and pumped. And progress was being made. I was beginning to feel much more positive. Then everything deflated very quickly, literally. As the gush of air poured out of the valve, I screamed. No! No! No! No! All my hard work, torn asunder. I tore off the tire and squinted at the tube in the low light of my headlamp. A circular tear at the valve. I had managed to do the exact same thing. Two unfixable flats. No more spare tubes. (Geoff and I have probed the valve area extensively. We are still unable to figure out what made that happen twice.)

I began to assess my situation. I had a flat tire I could not fix, which meant I could not ride. But I was only two or three miles from my camping destination, and I could walk there if I needed to. But then I would only be stranding myself into the next day, when Geoff would be at work. I was out in the boonies. I had been out there one hour. I had seen one car go by.

As I mourned my bad luck and stupidity and everything else that left me in the bind I was in, another car went by, and kept going. Not a huge surprise. I don't expect everyone to stop. I got up and began to put my bike back together. I had seen a spattering of cabins along this road, and figured if I walked toward town, I would not have to walk more than five miles before finding someone who would let me use their phone. Just as I was doing this, a car approached me. It was the one that had passed me five minutes earlier. A woman stopped. "Do you need help?" she said. I asked her if she had a cell phone. "There's no reception out here," she said. "But I live a half mile down the road. You can come use my phone. I'll make you some tea."

By the time I arrived at her house, she had already brewed up some wicked good Chai, called Geoff, who was not home, and left a message explaining my predicament and whereabouts. We talked for a while. Her name was Rebecca and she once lived in Fairbanks, and now lived in a cabin with her husband on the outskirts of the Juneau Borough. Her husband was in Anchorage. She had rented a movie to pass the cold night away, "Hairspray," and asked if I wanted to watch it with her. I did.

We laughed and giggled at the silly movie like girlfriends, sipping our tea and making jokes. I found out she once toured cross-country on a bicycle, and she did a fair amount of skiing in Fairbanks, and she told me, before I set out on the Iditarod trail, that I really need to read "To Build A Fire." I also need to learn how to change a flat, I remarked.

Geoff arrived shortly after the movie ended. His timing was perfect. I thanked Rebecca for her unconditional generosity and we set out into the cold night. The night was still not without its casualties. I had torn two tubes, broken the mount to my headlight, lost one of the bolts to my brake caliper, accidentally left my sleeping bag at Rebecca's house, and managed to completely wreck my first winter camping bicycle experience before it even started. But when all was said and done, it wasn't a bad night. I walked out of it laughing. And I will try again. Oh yes, I will try again. And when I do, I will be one flat experience wiser.

Going camping

Well, it's time to bite my bottom lip and plunge into the deep end, head first. I had the day off today as my obligatory "Thanksgiving" work holiday. I spent most the morning doing laundry, scrounging up food from our woefully empty cupboards, gathering camping gear, sorting clothing and stuffing my sleeping bag in its stuff sack. That last chore was a particularly evil beast. Either I am going to have to get much better at that, or I am going to have to allot a full hour and about 200 extra calories each day during the Ultrasport to sleeping bag duty.

The plan is to leave the house around 5:00 p.m., when the city is already shrouded in darkness, ride 30 road miles out to the glacier trail, and continue to ride, probably by doing out-and-backs on the glacier trail, until I am ready to go to sleep. I will then crawl into my sleeping bag/bivy combo, sleep as much as nature will allow, and then get up and ride home. That's the plan. I hope it works out as something similar. The forecast tonight calls for clearing skies and lows north of the Mendenhall Valley in the teens. In my camping spot, with the wind wafting off that big glacier, I could find local temperatures near 0. Hooray!

This is the food I will be carrying: Five assorted power bars, baggie of Wheat Thins, six fruit leathers, random old airplane snack and a thick peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Carbolicious!

I'm not going to take a stove, because I'm not sure whether there will be snow out there or not. Instead, I'm taking my filter bottle and planning to drink out of streams. I'll sleep with the empty bottle in order to keep the filter from icing up. The top picture shows my bike completely packed up for the night, minus the Camel Bak I will be carrying with little more than water and a camera. That, for the most part, is nearly everything I hope will serve me well during the Ultrasport, minus, of course, the stove, extra clothing and food. But everything else is in there: -40 sleeping bag, bivy, sleeping pad, entire change of base layer, two pairs extra socks, extra hat, extra mittens, aforementioned food, eight batteries, tube, repair kit, tire levers, pump, multitool, knife, lighter, first aid kit, chemical hand warmers, camera and cash. I have to say, those frame bags that Epic Eric makes are amazing. Time will tell if this is the stuff I want to use in the race, but the pursuit of knowledge is the reason I'm heading out tonight. That, and it's going to be lots of frosty fun.

Wish me luck! And have a great Wednesday/Thursday.

38 and raining

Date: Nov. 26
Mileage: 31.2
Hours: 2:30
November mileage: 662.3
Temperature upon departure: 38
Rainfall: .38"

Today was Groundhog Day, again. It's hard not to think about Bill Murray's bewildered face as the morning opens up to another gray slate, with snowfall at the same spot on the mountain and rain hitting the same spot on the porch as I look toward my routine: to bike, to eat, to work, to sleep, then to wake, again, to the gray. The weather has changed little in the past couple of weeks, and when I say little, I mean I'd be surprised if the temperature has varied more than 10 degrees. There's a bit of sun here, a blast of wind there, 30 degrees here, 40 there, but for the most part, it's just 38 and raining. Day and night. If it wasn't for my habit of crawling to a different corner of Juneau on my bicycle most every morning, I fear these days would be devoured by eerie sameness.

At least my rides are going really well. I have my 38-and-raining gear system to a science and the cold precipitation no longer makes me even remotely uncomfortable. I guess I can't complain about conditions in which I'm comfortable. But even beyond the variety I so deeply miss, I crave a ride that will challenge me ... force me to think ... force me to make mistakes, and learn to correct them. Give me 20 and snowing. Give me 0 and windy. Give me 95 and sunny. But please, make it different.

This weekend I hope to seek out a more challenging ride, but I haven't decided yet what to do. I don't want to launch into too long of a single ride, or two long back-to-back rides, because that may be too much of an increase to the weekly mileage for my knee to handle. I'd like to go for a campout, but unfortunately I don't have great gear for 38 and raining. It's going to have to get a bit colder before my bivy can handle the precipitation. Otherwise, I forecast a late-night onset of 38-and-soaked-through-and-through.

And to answer anybody's question who has read this far, yes, I am a bit concerned about my lack of extreme-cold experiences. Last year, during the Susitna 100, I made a few mistakes that no one who regularly rides in temperatures near 0 would ever make. Juneau just has mild winters, and access to extremes is limited, and it's easy to become complacent about conditions that never change, and forget that in most parts of the world, weather can and usually does change, sometimes very quickly. But what can I do about it? Juneau is where I live. To quote the wise sage Donny Rumsfeld, "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want ..."

Went for a run

Date: Nov. 25
Mileage: 16.2
Hours: 2:30
November mileage: 631.1
Temperature upon departure: 40
Rainfall: .03"

I rode all the way up the steep face of downtown Juneau just to confirm that my favorite trail near town is in fact closed. A sign at the trailhead informed me that it would remain that way until after Christmas. Apparently, the CBJ (an acronym which, when spoken out loud, can only be a disdainful reference to the City and Borough of Juneau) decided that the Perseverance Trail isn't enough of a highway already, and they're blasting out big chunks of mountain until the New Year. Truly disappointing.

So instead I wheeled over to Salmon Creek with this crazy idea to run up to the reservoir. I haven't done any free running, at all, since knee problems bogged me down in February. I haven't even hiked since the foot fiasco in late September. But I'd like to get back into both for the fitness benefits, and two slow, uphill miles seemed like a good start.

Salmon Creek is a lightly technical trail with steady but steep elevation gain. These are the kind of trails where Geoff does most of his running, and I think I may understand why. I became so absorbed in dodging wet roots, leaping over mudholes and sprinting up veritable cliffs that I completely forgot that running is tedious and not very much fun at all. And in a matter of minutes (maybe 20?) I was at the top, lungs searing and face soaked in sweat because I am just not used to high intensity. But it feels good to get back out there in the world where bikes can't tread, to pound my bones a little, to overtax my heart a little, to feel shaken and alive.

I walked back down the trail, lined in brilliantly green moss and fresh shoots of some kind of leafy groundcover. I took this photo about 150-200 feet below snowline, which is nearly 1,000 feet above where the snowline was two weeks ago, when this area was likely covered in at least six inches of powder. This is one thing I really like about living in this soggy part of the state. Even during the early winter, spring is always just around the corner. All it takes is one warm week, even if the threat of a dozen frozen weeks lie in the near future. New life just keeps on trying.

Creating motivation

Date: Nov. 24
Mileage: 25.1
Hours: 1:45
November mileage: 614.9
Temperature upon departure: 39
Rainfall: .19"

I've been feeling really strong lately, and I figure I should continue to chip away at base miles as long as the blurry line between buildup and overtraining hasn't been breached. I've decided that all of the training I do for the next four months is going to be entirely dedicated to three things: conditioning my body to stay hunched over (or beside) a bicycle for a long, long time; practicing different camping, repair and survival situations; and keeping my bad knee healthy. Speed won't serve me at all after several days on the trail, and I'm not even going to flirt with it. A rookie like me will benefit most from longevity, patience and confidence - as much as I can trick myself into mustering.

That said, there are definitely going to be numerous days, like today, where I am going to have a hard time dredging up motivation to ride. Surprisingly, the threat of a slow, cold, bonked-out death isn't really doing it for me. So some days I have to contrive little rewards. Today, my reward was "I'm going to listen to Korn."

Yeah. I know. Korn was one of the more self-indulgent bands I circulated on my sticky CD player in the 90s. I didn't pretend that they made good music, or that I even really liked them. But, just as a band can manufacture music, a band can apparently also manufacture anger. And when I needed a funnel for my flailing teenage angst, Korn was there for me.

The appeal of no-strings-attached anger could be why nu-metal didn't die the death it deserved in the late-90s, as was the fate of the Big Band revival and California ska. Korn persevered, and today I downloaded their latest (released in 2007?!) untitled album. I set out on my bike for a sluggish warm-up, as per usual, worked my way out to the solitude of North Douglas, and kicked on the iPod early, losing the raspy rhythm of my flem-coated breaths to a barrage of bad noise.

Irritability was instantaneous, they way it was the one time I saw Korn in concert, in an overcrowded hockey arena with hypnotic strobe lights the stench of sweat and stale water and my friend Adam in his black eyeliner trying to look his gothiest. That was the basic setting, but the only specific I can remember is that everything was so, so loud as I followed Adam through a violent sea of fists and flailing steel-toed boots and I was getting bruised, everywhere, but I didn't care. We were mad and we were going to get to the front and we were going to plow through the fortress of churning bodies if it killed us all.

Why seek out directionless anger? I didn't know then and I don't really know now. But here I was in the year 2007, a full-grown woman on a bicycle, with Korn pulsating through my little white earbuds. I felt my lips tighten, felt my eyes narrow, felt my legs pound into the pedals, felt the wind and rain tear at my face, felt my heart rate explode. And then I felt hate ... hate for the November rain, hate for the gravel-strewn road, hate for the puddles and the invisible craters, hate for the cars and the taxis and the gravel trucks coated in new snow, hate for my bicycle and its tires with the pressure too low and its stupid mud-streaked fenders and cheap headlight and odometer that ticks up in steady increments while I hate and hate and hate.

And just like that, I found myself transferring this rush of new energy to crazy speed that I rarely see. I ccould hear my raspy breaths again even over the battering noise; I was all but gasping for air. And I realized that I didn't actually feel hate. I felt great.

We all need to vent sometimes.

90 miles of Thanksgiving

Date: Nov. 22
Mileage: 91.1
Hours: 6:05
November mileage: 589.8
Temperature upon departure: 38
Rainfall: 0"

Mile .5: If all is quiet on New Year's Day, Thanksgiving Day must make up the balance. In the minimalist light of 8:36 a.m., traffic pours over the bridge, steaming to the A&P, turning for Wal-Mart and Fred Meyer. It's rush hour with cranberries. My dreams of solitude diced, I'm reminded of at least dozen Thanksgivings, in the back seat of my parents' vehicles, with the low winter sun glazing the roadside grass in iridescent shades of yellow. It was over the river and through the woods with a freeway and strip malls. We would marvel at the stream of empty parking lots until we passed a single store buffered by a wall of cars. "Look Dad, ShopKo is open today!" "Anyone who has to shop on Thanksgiving is a loser," my dad would proclaim, and we'd all feel self-satisfied, but secretly, a little bit lonely.

Mile 31: I can't believe how warm it is today, and calm. Despite the ideal traveling weather, I'm having a hard time finding my legs this morning, and the first two hours inch along. Many years ago, when my maternal grandmother was still alive, my family always split the holiday between my two sets of grandparents. When you're a kid, there aren't many holidays more pointless than Thanksgiving, unless it's time for pie. Unfortunately, that pie usually just comes as a stomach-churning punctuation point after a long sentence of only vaguely familiar relatives and smothering questions and gray stuffing and sticky yams. My mom's mom, fortunately, always understood that Thanksgiving was not set up for kids, and always had some new toys to present us. Then she looked away wryly as we slipped into the hidden safety of the back room. She was all-knowing back then, and ageless, and I never imagined there would be a time when I would not know her.

Mile 39: The pace is starting to pick up. I'm beginning to feel more pep, more alert, and I can even see the sun trying to slip through thick strips of clouds. My dad's mom never kept many toys in the house. My cousins and I always ended up rooting through a musty box in the basement for an ancient, truly ancient game of Life. For many years, we just played with the money. Eventually, we taught ourselves the board game. After we revised the rules to work around a myriad of missing pieces, we were hooked. We dug it out every year. Something rang true about simply choosing the color of your car, rolling the dice, and watching sheer chance make everything work out. We were certain that's what Life was all about.

Mile 45: I don't think I have ridden all the way to the end of the road since August, or perhaps September. It looks different stripped of its green and framed with the thick snow that now coats the mountains. But it no longer feels very far away, and even the memories don't seem too distant. The adults would never let us eat pie until we finished all of our Thanksgiving dinner, which I rarely had much interest in. However, one year I discovered a dessert loophole through my Aunt Marcia's gigantic bowl of Chex Mix. Mixed with chocolate, powdered sugar, corn syrup, peanut butter and the vestiges of breakfast cereal, I was allowed to snarf all I wanted under the guise that it was an "appetizer." I was always grateful to Aunt Marcia and her Chex Mix. She was an real Ironman, a finisher of crazy triathlons, and built of pure steel, although I had no idea what any of that meant back then. Now that I have an idea what it means, what it feels like, to aspire with all your heart for a chance to be an Ironman, I'd like to go back to those Thanksgivings, with my face stuffed full of gooey "appetizer," and ask her where she found her strength.

Mile 55: I take my last picture for the day. The lighting makes everything look like sunset, but it is only a little after noon. I was well into adulthood the Thanksgiving I bowled a 131, at a quiet little bowling alley in Ogden, Utah, where my sisters, cousins and I sneaked out after dinner. Having just won the game with a surprising number of points that I would never see again, I was sure I was strong and in charge and could do no wrong. We drove back to my grandparents' house on a street with railroad tracks built high above the pavement. A short, steep hill bridged the tracks, and usually cars slowed to a crawl over this daunting obstacle. But there weren't many on the road that day. As we approached the tracks, my cousin behind the wheel announced, "What do you think? Should I gun in?" The others in the car were silent. I was the oldest. "Well, yeah," I said. She punched the gas and charged at full acceleration toward the hill. I remember feeling a G-force rush as we shot up the berm, but that was the only rush that came before the world disappeared beneath a slow and deadly silent place. The group of cousins following behind us said they saw sky, blue sky, deep below our wheels as we rocketed off the tracks and plummeted to the road that seemed a mile below us. We landed in a barrage of screeching and sparks. My cousin panicked and overcorrected. I saw and experienced a lot of different things in that swerving moment of helpless momentum. My cross-country road trip. The turkey I ate for dinner. My maternal grandmother. That moment represents what I think it feels like to know it's all over. But my cousin managed to regain control of her car, and we somehow returned to our lane without flipping over. I'll never understand how. I think I was the only one in the car who was that frightened, although I'll never know. We never spoke of it again.

The final 35 miles of my ride pass by in a blur. I'm really feeling great now, and my legs are warm and strong. I munch on Goldfish crackers out of a frame bag, trying hard not to overindulge. In just a few hours, I'll be gorging myself with barbecued turkey, cranberry-pomegranate sauce and apple pie. There will be dozens of people in a hot room and I will have to meet many of them, an inundation of information and food and possibly new friends. But for now, I just want to pedal, and I want to quietly miss my family.