Awful weather

Here in Juneau, we have to set the "awful" bar on our weather gauge a bit higher than most places. Raining? Windy? Snowing? Cold? Some combination thereof? That's just weather. Torrential downpours? Hurricane-force blasts? Blizzards? That's just interesting weather. The top level on the terrible weather scale is reserved for deep-set grayness that smothers multiple days and even weeks, grayness so thick it seeps down the mountains and into the moods of everyone you meet, and rain that falls continuously for 48, 72, 96 hours. I am not talking about wimpy storms that drizzle for a bit and then retreat behind overcast skies. No, I am talking about water and slush and snain pounding the ground without pause for three days straight.

You know the scale has tipped when people start talking about the weather. People in Juneau don't talk about wet weather for the same reason people in Fairbanks don't say "sure is cold out" and people in Las Vegas don't say "how 'bout that sun today." You don't bother to mention the things that happen most of the time. But when a week goes by without even a break in the clouds, wet weather begins to nervously trickle into conversation. You also know awful has come when you start to see umbrellas around town and it isn't even tourist season. Locals in Juneau don't use umbrellas. It's a symbol of Southeast Alaskan pride, a mark of non-sissiness and grizzled acclimation. Umbrellas are a sure sign of distress, our last act of desperation before we fall to our knees and pray for forgiveness before the apocalypse annihilates us.

Today I went snowshoeing up the Mount Jumbo trail. I wasn't even all the excited about getting out of bed. But even though I am dialing back my bike time, I still recognize the importance of going outside on a regular basis - lest I start to grow mold. At about 1,000 feet the sleet turned to snow, and by 1,800 feet I had entered a canyon in the crush of a full-on, white-out, 50-mph-wind-gusting blizzard. I glanced nervously in the direction of the steep surrounding slopes I couldn't even see and reminded myself that blizzards weren't so bad, but avalanches were really scary. I turned around. As I stumbled away from the storm, I began to rethink my resolve to take it easy this month. "I probably don't even need a break from the bike," I thought. "I probably just need a break from Juneau." Unfortunately, the former is much easier to implement.

Tomorrow's (and Tuesday's, and Wednesday's) forecast calls for a high of 40 and rain. I don't care. I'm going to buy an umbrella.

Fiddlin

I just returned from checking out my friend Kim's set at Folk Fest. Kim is a Type-A lawyer who lives in Anchorage. She's carved out this idyllic Alaska lifestyle for herself, though, residing on the outskirts of the city in a sod-roof cabin that has two big spruce trees growing out of the roof. Her nearest neighbors are sled dogs. She ice climbs. And she's an avid old-time fiddler.

As I watched her saw frantically at her violin tonight, I was flooded with the memories of the last time I saw her, on Feb. 23, the night before the Iditarod Invitational. The top picture is from that night. I realized that I never told my story of the night before the race. It was a bewildering tornado of a Saturday that couldn't have been a more perfect setup for the sensory overload of the next six days. The night of the 1,000 dumplings.

We stayed in Kim's cabin, all 500 square feet of it, during the nights leading up to the race. On Saturday night, she had planned a huge Vietnamese New Year party, and had coaxed (conned?) three of her friends into making 1,000 pork dumplings for the celebration. "It has to be 1,000!" she barked. "Bad luck for a whole year otherwise!" They crammed into her tiny kitchen and set to work first thing in the morning. Geoff packed his sled. I wrenched my bike. Kim pounded cocktails before 10 a.m. One friend drove to every grocery store in a 10-mile radius and cleaned all of south Anchorage out of leeks. Geoff and I went to our pre-race meeting. When we returned around 5 p.m., starchy steam clung to the windows. Dirty bowls and plastic grocery bags were strewn everywhere. Delirious laughter peeled out from the slave-driven team. They were up to about 500 dumplings.

"Don't you dare try to tell me why I'm driven to plan these huge parties," Kim told her psychologist friend. I looked up from my bike packing. "It's probably the same reason why Geoff and I doing this race tomorrow," I said. The psychologist friend nodded without a hint of irony.

I think there were about 700 or 800 dumplings by the time people started showing up. I was already eating them right off the platters, forcing the only available means of precious calories down my throat as the stink of leeks and sesame oil gurgled in my gut. By the time I remembered I needed to change my bike tubes, the tiny cabin was shoulder-to-shoulder with people: 60, 70, 80 people devouring dumplings, guzzling flower-garnished cocktails, playing fiddles, asking me why I was in Anchorage (and peppering me with the ensuing thousand questions.) My pre-race anxiety coursed through my blood like magma. The chaos rattled me to the core. I slipped outside to a dark corner near the sled dog cages. The temperature was about 10 degrees. The rims burned my skin and my headlamp flickered. As I ran my stiff fingers through the motions, I tried to tell myself this was good practice for the trail. But all I really wanted to do was scream, and smash my bike, and sprint all the way home to Utah.

The worst part was I couldn't leave. We had made plans to spend the night at the house of another friend in Palmer, but first we had to pick him up at the airport at 10:30 p.m. So I had to burn away the evening as the crowd became louder, and drunker, and larger, pumping old-time music into the cold air through a haze of dumpling steam and cigarette smoke. I wedged back into the crush of people to warm my frozen hands. Kim's psychologist friend was still steaming dumplings in the kitchen, 12 full hours after she started chopping cabbage. I asked her if she had reached 1,000. She shook her head and laughed faintly. Her eyes were hollow, with flecks of tears on the outer edges. Her cheeks were sunken and she pressed her lips as she smiled. I recognized that look, those eyes - the face of a broken-down endurance racer. "It's OK to cry," I said, sincerely. I could feel my own eyes misting up. "It's OK to cry."

Kim was deeply immersed in her music when we whisked away to Palmer and the cold dawn of the first day of the Iditarod Invitational. I never had a chance then to thank her for letting us stay at her house, or for unintentionally helping me put my own life in perspective when I needed it most.

Folk Fest

Date: April 10 and 11
Mileage: 19.1 and 38.5
April mileage: 286.6
Temperature: 44 and 38

It's a bit late to be blogging, but I feel like I need to unwind a little after a crazy "weekend" of Folk Fest. The Alaska Folk Festival happens once a year and the whole town shows up. Even a lot of people who don't live in this town show up. It's pretty much the only time of year that Juneau is visited by other Alaskans who have nothing to do with the Legislature or cruise ships. It's also the only time of year I "go out" every night for several nights in a row. Tonight was old-time Creole followed by Salsa and Fusion Celtic. I don't think I've danced like that since I was 17. Seriously. I was about to pass out and my friends still wanted to hit up the Rendezvous and The Alaskan afterward. Sometimes the endurance of people amazes me.

It's been a bad weekend for bike riding. The Folk Festing for all hours of the night doesn't help, but it goes beyond that. Geoff and I huddled beneath of canopy of rain-drenched trees this afternoon as I tried to talk him out of completing a planned 80-mile ride. Finally, I just announced, "Either way, I'm turning around. I feel like I'm on the burn-out track and I don't want to push it too far." That's the first time it hit me. I haven't given my off-season much time to actually be that. If anything, I was pushing even harder before the weather took a seasonal turn for the worse. I think I need to dial it back a bit. It will be hard, because there's not much else to do right now besides road cycling. But I think if I take the rest of April and spend more time hiking (i.e. snow/mud slogging), going to the gym (i.e. reading adventure nonfiction on an elliptical machine), and "fun" biking (i.e., beach and snow biking where and when the opportunities arise), then I'll be a happier person come summer. Once May begins, I hope to restart a fast-track endurance training program ahead of the 24 Hours of Light. I rode this race last year on a barely-healed knee injury and almost no training, and had a lot of fun. This year, I look forward to going hard. That is, if I don't burn out first.

Video blog

Since I discovered the motion picture button on my camera, I have become more interested in doing a little video blogging. Not a whole lot - because most home movie clips usually weave between grating and boring and mine are no different. I shot some footage up at Eaglecrest yesterday. I wasn't going to post it. Mostly because video always seems to take something I find scary and exhilarating - such as shimmying through fresh, heavy powder at a barely controlled 10 mph - and makes it look like a flatly lit slog down a ski slope. Plus, I shot an introduction, forgetting that my face was covered in mud from the sloppy climb and my bike helmet was pushed way back because that's what it takes to strap a camera to my forehead. I realized that I've never appeared "live" on my own blog before. This first shot doesn't make for a very flattering portrait. But then I remembered ... I've been doing this blog exhibitionist thing for more than two years. Since when have I worried about flattering or boring? So I'm posting my video blog No. 3. I attached a good song to it to make it more entertaining: "On the Radio" by Regina Spektor.

"Trickster"

April showers

Date: April 8
Mileage: 30.2
April mileage: 229
Temperature: 35

I love spring snow. I've always loved spring snow. But I even love it here in Alaska, where spring snow is not so out of the ordinary.

A thin white blanket settled on Juneau overnight, a temporary shield from the dull browns and wet yellows that dominate the landscape in April. So even though I had scrubbed Pugsley shiny on Sunday, thinking we would not be going out again for quite a while, I couldn't help but drag him up to Eaglecrest today.

Streaks of sunlight danced across the unplowed road, until the drifting clouds finally closed together. In a swirl of flurries I pushed up the slope, right on the trail of a pair of tele-skiers. When I caught up to them, they got a few good laughs. (I didn't point out that I, a post-holing hiker pushing a 35-pound bicycle, had caught up to them.) I did concede that I looked ridiculous, coated head-to-toe in slush and grit as I was, walking a bicycle up a ski slope in April.

"Can you control that thing downhill?" one skier asked me.

"When there's six inches of new snow, not so much," I said. "But the base seems good so it's worth a try."

I turned off at a green run called "Trickster" and kicked off. I don't remember much about the ride down because I was terrified, hearing only the squeal of my wet brakes and seeing only blasts of white, wet powder kick up from my wheels. Within minutes I was back at the road. The snowpack was quickly disintegrating to slush; my 4-inch tires blasted me with so much water I could barely keep my eyes open. There was little I could do but clench my fingers and toes in wet gloves and wet shoes and embrace the full-body pain that is a 20-degree windchill (downhill at 40 mph in 35-degree air) through soaked clothes on soaked skin. I hate it when rides come to this and I should, really should know better by now. I know enough to know that once the chill starts, I only become colder and colder and colder.

I also know enough to know that it's not the end of the world. Biking hard never seems to warm me up to optimal temperature (the faster I go, the harder the windchills cut through), but it does keep the hypothermia at its lowest level. The worst part about a too-cold, wet ride is coming inside once I'm done. I never have the time to warm myself slowly, so I have to go with the rip-the-bandaid-off route: A hot shower. It's the kind of pain that's hard to describe, but easily forgotten - memory is usually merciful when it comes to that level of trauma. If I could realistically remember the way those hot showers feel, I would probably never get on a bicycle again, at least when the temperature was below 60. Descriptions that run through my mind during those intense moments generally follow the lines of "A Million White Hot Needles of Death." That is, when I'm not trying to rip my hair out as a way to feel less pain.

So I took a bad shower and vowed, again, to always, always overdress when I'm cycling in wet conditions. Two more inches of snow fell while I was at work. The sun broke out again as I was returning from my dinner break. Filtered yellow light sparkled on the snow, which coated every tree, every limb, every tiny branch. Snow gave the land a color and depth that I had forgotten in the featureless wash of early spring. It looked so soft and billowy that I wanted to dive right in, and roll around.

It hurt to go inside again, but not in the same way.

Inbetween times

Date: April 6 and 7
Mileage: 12 and 29.5
April mileage: 188.8
Temperature: 41 and 39

I yelped as wet snow soaked through my socks, filling the empty space where I stood in a snowdrift, thigh deep and sinking. It was a struggle to even lift my leg in this slush, so close to liquidation that it had become a solid, like wet cornstarch or quicksand. A deceptive solid. Not solid enough to hold me, just solid enough to trap my foot - soon to be, I feared, trench foot.

I swung around to search for the trail. I had abandoned my bike a mile back to press on as a hike. Now I was swimming. It was time to swim home. Time to give up on this whole snow hiking/biking thing. Time to leave the mountains alone until their permanent surface re-emerged from this rotting seasonal veneer. Time to think about "summerizing" the Pugsley to prepare him for the season of salt water and sand. Time to give up on winter.

So we wait now, for something. Summer, I guess. I know summer only in vague terms. It begins the day the Mount Juneau trail finally clears; the day the first black bear makes a raid on the Rainbow Foods dumpster; the day I can finally wear bike shorts. Geoff, on the other hand, knows exactly when summer begins. He has the date marked on the calendar. April 22, 6 p.m. The day the last spring ferry heads south out of Juneau.

Then I will be alone all summer long, and it's starting to sink in. I remember the last time I lived alone in Juneau, watching 2 a.m. Cartoon Network in a damp hotel room and eating my best meals at the Safeway deli. I like to think I can keep my own bad habits in check. But then I think about the Subway guy who saw me so many times he had my *exact* sandwich memorized and even asked me out, and remember there are fates worse than loneliness.

Geoff asks me every day why I don't just leave with him. "Because I have plans," I say. "Because I have cats," I say. "Because I have health insurance," I say. "Because I have a job," I say.

"Always with the jobs," he says.

"I need to feel like I have a grasp on the future," I say.

"And that too," he says.

When I'm at work is when I feel most content about my decision to stay. It's earlier, when Geoff is elsewhere and my time is only mine, that I wonder why it's so right to aspire to life in front of a computer screen and so wrong to aspire to life on a bike ... even with cats to support.

But then I ride my bike and feel happy. And I go to work and feel content. And the snow will climb higher up the mountains. It will finally disappear. And then it will return. Not every moment inbetween has to be an adventure. There will be time for that later. Always later.

Training vicariously

Date: April 4 and 5
Mileage: 46.2 and 41
April mileage: 147.3
Temperature: 42 and 45

Just about every time I go out riding these days, I imagine what life will be like for Geoff during the Great Divide Race. Sometimes I feel jealous. But most of the time, I just feel a pained, pre-emptive sort of empathy.

I think a lot of casual fans imagine the challenge of the Great Divide Race is its length. And it is long - 2,500 miles long. But I think the most important route statistic, the one that is overlooked all too often, is the sheer amount of climbing - more than 200,000 feet along the way. And if you have a goal to ride this route in say, 24 days, you are going to be spending a lot of time in your granny gear slumped over your handlebars. 100 miles per day on a mountain bike? That sounds tough. 10,000 feet of climbing per day? That sounds like something that already has been outlawed in most developed nations.

So I think about the sheer audacity of the Great Divide Race and smirk when I set out on a training day like Friday - hill intervals. My goal was not to ride intervals up the hill but to ride the entire hill as an interval, then bomb down it, then up again. Since the "hill" is five miles long and gains about 1,200 feet, I didn't expect to just sprint the whole way up it. But my first run felt strong; I kept a good average up the steep stretches and didn't let up on the more gradual portions. I was a spin master, conqueror of hills.

I swallowed a lot of goo and gravel running 40 mph downhill without a front fender over my fat mountain bike tires, but I made the U-turn feeling awesome and thinking "this hill thing isn't so hard after all." Then, about halfway up the second climb, I started to unravel. I began to feel ill from all the acid gushing through my legs. I started hallucinating big sparkly snowflakes near the top, though I'm not sure it was even raining. I made the run back down and returned for a third and final climb, locked into the small ring before the end of the first mile, my quads transformed into tenderized meat mash by the top. I felt cooked, toasted ... which is good. It's what I was going for. But when I looked at my GPS for the day's totals, it told me I had climbed 4,183 feet. And all I could think about was multiplying that by 50.

Today Geoff logged his weekly "tempo run" by racing a 10K out in the Valley. He briefly urged me to sign up for the race and I briefly considered it. After all, I'm in ideal shape to go out and ride eight-hour days whenever I want - why not go out and pound out some easy nine-minute miles? But then I thought more about pounding my legs on pavement for six miles, and the fact that I haven't done any running, at all, since like ... well, let's just say I don't run much. I did a 45-minute 8K about two years ago and it completely wrecked me. All that impact left me sore and limping for two days. Not to mention what running does to my knees. It made me think about something I read in an article about the CrossFit trend. It made the point that in the modern world, people become so specialized in their fitness that nearly everyone, even the most "in shape" among us, is in actuality "unfit." All of the evolutionary skills our bodies are set up to master become lost as we cultivate useless pastimes and untested muscles. I need little machines to work my body? I can't run a 10K to save my life? If these were cavemen times, I would be the first to be eaten by a saber-toothed bear. Or so the CrossFit cult tells me.

Anyway, I did ride my bicycle out to the race to act as a roving spectator, and I had a lot of fun. I pedaled along the course and took pictures of Geoff and shouted encouragement to other racers and friends. I pedaled back to the finish line and watched Geoff finish in second place. As he cooled down, I returned for one final run to the turnaround. I passed the last runner, who was being shadowed by a couple of race sweeps on bicycles. I shot her my biggest grin and a thumbs up. "You're doing awesome," I said. She just lowered her eyes and shook her head. I got the feeling that she was burrowed deep in her pain cave, and didn't want some random chick on a bicycle shining any artificial light through her tunnel. I started to worry that I hadn't sounded genuine in my encouragement. It's tough to be in last place, especially when you have race sweeps hanging right off your rear. I wished there was a way I could turn around and tell her how much I admired her. I wanted to say "Look at you! You're running 10 kilometers and you're succeeding, which is a lot more than I lined up for this morning." But of course I didn't do that. I left her alone on my final pass. But I cheered really loud when she reached the finish line.

It inspired me to think about taking up running.

But first I need to master my distance climbing.