Blue Monday

I read this article that said today, statistically, is the most depressing day of the year. This assessment comes from some psychologist in Britain. Really, though, it doesn't take much of a genius to place the frowny face stamp on a random Monday in January. Who's going to disagree? It's 0 degrees outside. I had to spend the whole day staring at a computer screen. And my gatorade froze solid in my car while I was running at the gym. Still, declaring a day "most depressing" when you're only 23 days into a new year does cast a rather optimistic glow over the rest of 2006, doesn't it?

Geoff and I went to see the Telluride MountainFilm festival tonight. I always enjoy these film fests (I used to catch Banff every year), but they've especially become better as they've spread themselves further from the adrenaline-pumped, Limp Bizkit-blasting outdoor porn that used to fill the playlists (sure, every year, you have to endure one long film about crazy kayak stunts. But the rest of the films usually make up for it.) Telluride offers a lot of cultural films that really aren't as intellectual as they'd like to be, but are still entertaining. However, my favorite by far was the short story of a philosophical highway flagger who keeps a diary of his musings as stands alone along a remote and rural road. He writes poems, too:

I am Flagger, You Flagee
You must slow down when you see me
Your speed determined by my hand
Your will is now at my command
The limit's 20, not 23
I am Flagger, You Flagee

I am Flagger, You Flagee
I'm begging now on bended knee
Please, won't someone notice me
I am Flagger, You Flagee

His cry for recognition reminded me of the plight of the blogger:

I am Blogger, You Blogee
You must read while you upload me
Your attention determined by my haste
Your coffee break has now been a complete waste
The url's .com, not .php
I am Blogger, You Blogee

The last stanza, of course, needs little editing:

I am Blogger, You Blogee
I'm begging now on bended knee
Please, won't someone notice me
I am Blogger, You Blogee

On a related note, T. Stormcrowe had Gizzogle translate my blog into Snoop Speak yesterday. It definitely adds a spot of urban personality to my usual bland bike reports. So I, of course, have to post a link. But I also have to put in the obligatory disclaimer: It's a little less, um, PG-rated than my blog. Funny still. Here's the report from Drug Deala, Alaska Fer shnizzle.

Skeek

I meant to take a full rest day today, but eight inches of fresh powder was just too much to resist. So I went cross-country skiing.

My timing this weekend has been absolutely impeccable. I managed more than eight hours of biking yesterday just before the big storm hit, and found a 90-minute window between blowing blizzard and more blowing blizzard to skim the smooth ski trails. (Look at that fresh track, groomed only for me. Our local Nordic ski club really stays on top of things.) That didn't change the fact that it was 5 degrees out, but for the most part, it was ideal.

Sometimes I think it's strange, given the area I grew up in, the friends I keep and the lifestyle I've adopted, that I never became more of a ski geek (or, in the lingo of the knuckle draggers I rode with in high school, a "skeek.")I just took up the sticks this year, and I dropped the hobby pretty quickly when my ice biking efforts amped up. My downhill experience is almost nonexistent. Sometimes I wonder why I don't care more about skiing.

When I started snowboarding, I think there was a general consensus among the lot that skiers were snobs who thought everyone else was too late for the party (the theory was vocalized by a very popular bumper sticker at my high school. The sticker read "Alta Sucks," a reference to a Utah ski resort that refuses entry to snowboarders. Incidently, Alta was also the name of my high school.)Maybe there was some disdain developed early. But now I'm over the hill, and all my friends ski, so there's all kinds of questions about why I don't switch ... or at least try both.

The truth is, I'm an adequate snowboarder, but I'm a flailing mess when I combine skis with any kind of downward slope. It's funny because today, on my skinny cross-country skis, I did fine - even on the steep stuff. I probably forgot that I wasn't pedaling (After all, I've circled the same trail many times on my bike.) So maybe I'm not a bad skier. Maybe I just have a little too much of that "skeek" attitude ingrained.

Five miles went by pretty fast, and I made it home with a growing blizzard riding my tail. Now there's a good 14-16 inches outside, still coming down hard. Don't think Geo will be able to clear Shelton Drive (my street, rarely plowed). I wonder how the biking will be.

Long ride

Date: Jan. 21
Mileage: ~50
January mileage: 351.1
Temperature upon departure: 19
Total riding time: 8 hours, 33 minutes
Total full-tilt falls: 2

I have a little of that serene, drugged-out drowsiness going on right now ... long ride, big dinner, warm house, storm raging outside.

Today I set out just before sunrise with the intention of putting in an 8 to 10-hour ride that would mimic my attack of the Susitna 100. To do that, I had to ride on a lot of soft, rutted trails that are just punchy and slow and there's no way around it (winter riders call this stuff "mashed potatoes" ... in my case, very lumpy mashed potatoes). I rode the ice roads, open snow (about 5 inches of powder)and Caribou Lake itself. I also did a fair amont of pushing. Any food I ate, I ate while pushing. I kept my full stops to an absolute minimum, to keep my core temperature higher, and also because it's the way I deal with the muscle strain of long rides ... just keep moving, moving, moving, and there's less time for hurt.

My odometer crapped out right at the beginning of the ride, so I have no idea how far I actually went. But taking into account trail conditions, pushing hard and fast when I could on the ice roads, and overall time walking with the bike, I think guestimating my average speed at 6 mph is more than fair. Since my stopping time was almost nonexsistent, with 8.5 hours of riding, 50 miles is probably pretty close.

That's half my race distance-wise, and probably about a third of the effort required if conditions are similar or a little worse than what they were today. So I feel pretty good about the day, because I feel pretty good right now.

For all of the calculated logistics involved, today's ride was actually very enjoyable. The distance allowed me to ride out to some of the far reaches of the established snowmachine trails in the area ... windswept, frostbitten swaths of land peppered with mongrel hemlock trees and scrub brush. The snowmachiners I met out there regarded me with varied expressions ranging from subtle amusement to outright indignation. After all, a little mountain bike rolling across the open tundra is an affront to common sense. I don't deny it. My funniest encounter came as I was bombing down a steep and narrow trail. Two snowmachines stopped on the pond below to wait for me to pass. As they waited and watched, I felt compelled to let off the brakes and tear over the trail's mogels like a drunken downhill racer. It's amazing I didn't plant myself, as I did (and did quite well) a couple of times today. As I finally rolled to the safety of the pond and passed by with a hapless wave of my mitten, a little girl sitting in front of her older brother on one of the snowmachines screamed "I told you! I knew it was a girl!"

Several snowmachiners felt compelled to stop and warn me about the storm of the century headed my way. Though a light, misty snow fell most of the day (with about a 30-minute window of sunlight), the weather couldn't have been much better. I did end my ride about an hour early because the snow started to come down hard, and I was a little concerned about my Geo making the 45-minute drive home. Still ... 50 miles ain't bad. I guess I don't know that it was 50 miles. But, as Geoff said to me yesterday, "Eight hours on a bike is eight hours on a bike."

Still no pictures

Date: Jan. 20
Mileage: 26.9
January mileage: 301.1
Temperature upon departure: 15

I don't have much time to post tonight because my computer is still choking on me, and I am in the midst of packing for my big full-day bike excursion tomorrow. Weather forcast is for temperatures in the teens and a chance of heavy snow. I can't really tell whether I'm excited or not, but at least I'm not dreading it. Wish me luck. Pray for *no* snow :-)

Real headwind

Date: Jan. 19
Mileage: 15.6
January mileage: 274.3
Temperature upon departure: 12

No picture today. Geoff's computer is currently in 179.5 pieces, and the browser on my archaic laptop (connected by 28.8 dial-up) won't let me upload anything. Oh well. You can't win 'em all.

I left for my two-hour ride today at about 5:30. The thermometer read 12 degrees, but a stiff wind and swift circulation of floating ice particles made it feel much colder. I can't really account for the "feels like" temperature, but tonight's was definitely the chilliest ride I have done to date. So I tried a piece of gear today that I hadn't tried before, my neoprene face mask. Onward I churned up the first hill as twilight slipped below the jagged treeline, sucking down the moist backflow of my own breath. As I crested the hill, my vision suddenly darkened several notches, and everything else felt airy and light. I squinted and swallowed, for the first time noticing the subtle noose gripping my neck. The combination of the neoprene mask and my helmet strap were somehow blocking my airflow. I tugged at it for a while to no avail. Finally I tore the whole thing off. I'll mess with the logistics tomorrow. But the temporary oxygen shortage gave me a nice rush to start off the ride.

The first two or three miles are always the hardest. No matter how much you "warm up" before the ride, your legs turn to licorice the minute you step outside. As you work to get your heart rate up, streaks of wind find their way through any imperfection in your layers. Nostrils and eyelashes freeze shut, and cold air tears at your throat. You begin to wonder what traumatic childhood experience drove you to such unmitigated masochism. But then ... your legs begin to warm up. Your body settles in. You pry your eyelashes open, and the stark beauty of the frozen landscape opens up before you. You move freely with winter and there's nothing about it that can stop you, and you come to the calm realization that you will, in fact, survive, and you feel entirely alive.

My proud moment

Geoff and I went to see "Wal-mart: The High Cost of Low Price" tonight. It's left me sullen and ponderous about economic downfall and corpocracy, but it doesn't benefit me much to write about things I know little about and for which shallow research will only succeed in further incensing me, so I'll write about something positive - bicycle accomplishments.

Fat Cyclist solicited cycling-related triumphs from his loyal readers today. I read through the list of impressive accomplishments but already had mine in mind. I mean, there was this one time, at band camp, that I rode my bike from Salt Lake City to Syracuse, New York. It's not the Race Across America or the Tour de France, but there are people out there that might be impressed by that. And, in my career, it's a given.

I went to the gym between work and the movie. Just as I was leaving, a woman on the recumbent bike complimented me for the hour I put in on the elliptical. I'm one of those shy people, so being complimented by strangers always catches me off guard. Especially when the compliment is directed at something so mundane. I smiled and said "thanks" but I felt as if she had just congratulated me for finishing all of my milk. Following our short exchange, there was an awkward silence and I sort of just slunk away. But, later, I began to wonder which one of us was actually being condescending.

We take our triumphs in degrees. My cycling accomplishments have slowly rended their way up from the first time I rode all the way from Salt Lake City to Draper (20 miles!) to rolling over Lizard Head Pass on my first bicycle tour to crossing the New York state line. Since I took up cycling in 2002, each triumph has had an escalating scope, but I can't say that the last was any more rewarding than the first. Now I'm planning to cross into what many tell me is irreversible territory - racing - in what is, for lack of a better term, an insane race. If I finish the Susitna 100, will it really make me feel any better than that first time I rolled up to my parent's house on the rigid, rusty mountain bike I borrowed from a friend? Or am I just locked in a punishing arc of diminishing returns, like a heroin addict hunting for the next fix? Too tell you the truth, I wouldn't entirely mind going back to a time when I would have felt great for spending an hour on a stationary elliptical machine. Is it too late for me? Am I lost?

Ash cloud

Date: Jan. 17
Mileage: 16.4
January mileage: 258.7
Temperature upon departure: 22

So the sluggish but persistent Mt. Augustine has rended its way into the national news. Today was eruption number nine - could be 10. Who's counting? Well, certainly a couple of my especially jittery co-workers are. They rushed home the second the weather service issued an ash advisory for Homer (really, people, it's not like liquid hepatitis is going to rain down from the sky.)But we picked up their slack and still got our newspaper out by deadline, complete with more volcano information than any community newspaper reader could ever possibly digest.

After work, I went for a bicycle ride on low fuel (should have had more than Ritz crackers and half of a six-inch sandwich for lunch). It was more of a struggle than it should have been, but I was already well into my loop by the time I realized it. Still, a couple of descents off the ridge afforded some great views of Augustine's ash cloud drifting to the south and shedding its liquid hepatitis over the unpopulated waters of Kachemak Bay. After dinner I put in 75 minutes on the trainer and watched "Scrubs." Um, yeah. Good day.