Forgot camera again ...

Date: May 30
Mileage: 43.4
May Mileage: 472.1
Temperature upon departure: 58

... so I'm posting yet another Utah shot, with the Twin Peaks dominating the Wasatch Skyline. I travel so light now that the point-n-click regrettably must be left behind so I can make room in my seatpost bag for lesser things ... spare tube, patch kit, tire levers. These days, even the Power Bars stay home. To tell you the truth, I kinda miss wearing a winter coat.

While dodging the endless parade of RVs and the kite-wielding, roller-blading traffic around town, I thought there are a lot of reasons why I miss winter altogether. The white silence. The solitude. The sunsets. Of course, there's a rich beauty in all of this drenching green and a pleasant camaraderie in the sudden surge of energy - not to mention the fact that it's warm, and that should make any breathing human being happy. But as I pass the bleached tent city now sprawled across a mile of beach, foggy with campfire smoke and commotion, there's a part of me that feels strangely out of place. Strange because I'm a former hot-climate desert dweller and tourist from the 'burbs. But out of place because the Alaskan in me was baptized by lonliness and winter.

A few days ago, I had the interesting experience of watching twilight turn to dawn without any transition into night. I kept waiting for stars to come out as the clock clicked away the wee hours. But after a while, I realized that it was no longer becoming darker - it was becoming lighter. Within a few minutes of that observation, the orange glow of sunrise crept over the north-eastern horizon.

And as I marveled to myself about the earth's skewed axis and the way it creates an amazing juxtaposition of time and place, a larger voice in my head told me I really need to start getting more sleep.

I ain't scared

Date: May 29
Mileage: 21.1
May Mileage: 428.7
Temperature upon departure: 61

This isn't shaping up to be so bad a month, mileage wise, even though it feels like I haven't invested near the bike time that I have in previous months.

Still ... I haven't been training at any kind of a level even close to to what I had originally hoped for. That's OK. After all, I really only have two distant hell-days to face in a summer full of hiking and barbecuing and halibut fishing and scenic tours. In one month, I have the 24 hours - and, well, 24 hours is 24 hours no matter how you slice it up, right? In two months, the Soggy Bottom 100 - 10,000 vertical feet. If you break that down, that's about two vertical miles in 100. On one hand, I could obsess about the gut-wrenching switchbacks and tear-inducing drops of the Resurrection Pass trail. Or I could instead - through the magic of statistics - iron it all out for a gentle average grade of 2 percent. I feel better already.

I'm OK with my ride. Really.

I did it for the views

Date: May 29
Mileage: 30.8
May Mileage: 407.6 (inc. 19.4 on May 24)
Temperature upon departure: 67

My dad likes to participate in the well-tread ritual of calling home from the top of a prominent peak. Like drink 'n' dial - this is hike 'n' dial. He usually lands an exasperated comment from my baby sister ("You calling from some peak again?") or a utilitarian conversation with my mom. Still ... there is something cathartic about sharing that triumphant moment (or covering up failure with a little white lie, as we overheard from a group in retreat just shy of the peak: "We're at top. It's beeeee-autiful.") So, as we stood atop Mount Olympus on Friday afternoon, he dialed a quick call home.

That's something I love about my dad. Even though no one else in my family is remotely interested in clawing their way up a 65-degree slope strewn with loose scree, he still tries to include them in the reward. Of course, it's impossible to understand unless you're standing there, on top of the mountain, looking out over the colorful sprawl of the Salt Lake valley. Some hikers like to spout off the numbers: One-way distance: 3.75 miles; Elevation gain: 4,060 feet; Elevation at peak: 9,026 feet (Low, but still surprisingly free of snow.) For them, the reward is in the journey. But I like to take a picture of what matters: the view.

There are varying degrees of effort one has to expend for a good view. This second shot, an overview of Chugach State Park, only took a dead-sprint from Gate B62 to gate B28 in the Denver Airport to catch a connecting flight to Anchorage. Then there's the other extreme - the weeks of hard mountaineering one as to go through just to see the top of the highest point in North America - Mt. Denali - as Geoff's friend "Ed the Head" did on Thursday. But there are perspectives that you work and claw and fight for, and then there are perspectives that matter.

Ed was set to visit us upon his return from the peak; we haven't heard from him since his accident, and it's hard to say now if he will come to see us. But there are the views that life saves only for the luckiest and most humbled - perspectives hidden even from those who stand atop the highest peaks or within the deepest wilderness. I have a feeling that Ed's seen the full 360-degree panorama.

Utah, again

Quick trip this time around. Just enough time to see my little sis get hitched, then it's back to Alaska tomorrow. The wedding activities were actually a lot of fun. I always thought I'd be much happier getting married on a mountain top or even the Luv Chapel in Vegas, but Lisa's wedding actually made me rethink the whole traditional reception thing. I don't think my mom feels the same way. She actually sewed every dress in the above picture (my dad called them the most expensive bridesmaid dresses ever made. It makes sense. How can you put a price on four weeks of nonstop sewing? You can't.) In fact, watching my Mom try to decompress after the gifts were packed up and the cake was stuffed in movable containers was frighteningly reminiscent of my emotional state after my first 24-hour mountain bike race. When I think about it, weddings and endurance races are actually somewhat similar - you plan, you organize, you work and sweat through months of build-up. Then, when the event actually arrives, you lose control early on and have to spend the rest of the time groping your way through the darkness, running on little more than adrenaline fumes. I really admire my mom.

And I'm happy for my sis, who was really a great bride (how can brides continue to look stunning after 12 hours of nonstop social hurricane? I don't know. But they always do). Before the wedding breakfast, Lisa was idling her car in a parking garage when an old woman whipped around the corner and smacked her head-on, putting a huge gouge in the bumper and causing my baby sister to spill an entire vase of water all over her dress. A lot of brides would let something like that ruin their entire wedding day, but Lisa took it really well. I admire that.

And me, well, while I was pedaling around Alaska, I missed out on all of the months of planning and agony that actually went into the wedding. All I did was show up on the red-eyed flight, dizzy and dazed from two Dramamine and exactly zero hours of sleep, and march through the motions. I am a total wedding slacker. But I did get a lot of comments for the fact that I was wearing a dress and stumbling around in high heels. I didn't think I was too fargone to pull off those kinds of formalities, but I guess in many of my relatives' eyes, I am.

And you know what? That's OK. Maybe someday I'll get that mountain top wedding after all.

Spring, for real this time

Date: May 23
Mileage: 39.6
May Mileage: 357.4
Temperature upon departure: 57

A couple of weeks ago, when we still had several feet of snow in the yard, Geoff said the sure sign of spring would be the day we could see the tops of the backyard fire pit benches poking out from the crust. In less than 14 days, spring did even better - stripping away an entire winter's worth of snowpack and leaving behind only dry grass, wet firewood and the recently exposed debris of a long, stagnant winter. The yard looks awful. But is sure is warm.

I've felt surprisingly strong during my past several rides. I suddenly have all this extra pep and push, and the only reason I could think of is that the rise in temperature has allowed my body to put more energy into the actual pedaling and less into the whole staying warm effort. Just like my car's gas mileage goes up a few miles per gallon every summer, warm air seems to have a similar effect on my riding.

I love the smell of willow in the air, buds on branches and blazing streaks of green creeping out from the dry, yellow groundcover. The emerging colors and smells give new life to old routes, and now the miles are just flying by. I only get three months of this. Believe me, I'm going to cherish every minute.

Time to ride

Date: 22
Mileage: 30.4
May Mileage: 317.8
Temperature upon departure: 53

Just the other day, I was complaining to a friend about the difficulties of training for a bicycle endurance race - mainly, finding the time to put in any significant mileage.

"Most weekdays I have about two hours, tops," I said.

She stopped me there. "Wait - exactly how much time do you spend riding each week?"

I thought about it, "Taking into account the weekends, probably 12 to 15 hours. I wish it was closer to twenty."

"Twenty hours?" she said and rolled her eyes. "You might as well get a part-time job." Then she said something about her family that implied that she was too busy having a life do something as frivolous as ride a bike for 20 hours a week.

I do understand that I'm blessed with a lifestyle more frivolous than others. I'm single, no kids, unhindered by debt. Regardless, I'm still not rolling in unmitigated free time. I do have a full-time job that can reach 50 hours a week. I have my part-time, freelance projects that I tend to push on the backburner. I have to change the cat litter box once in a while.

So, even for me, it can challenge to carve out time for a bike ride. So - how to make the time? The best thing I ever did for my free time was move to an apartment that didn't get TV reception of any kind. I have nothing against TV. I actually like it. But not having the option to watch forced me to give it up cold turkey. I've been virtually TV-free for a year and a half. I even have to option to watch network channels now, but I don't. Truth is, I don't even miss it. I highly recommend this lifestyle change.

Minor changes help, too. Another thing I don't do is cook ... much. Granted, I do have someone hanging around that is more than happy to cook up a fresh halibut dinner for me. But when I lived alone, I ate a lot of salads and sandwiches and cold cereal. I survived. And I didn't have to spend as much time doing dishes or grocery shopping.

Ask yourself small questions: Do I really need to make the bed every day? Am I really the type of person that needs eight hours of sleep every night? Can't I just feed the cat twice as much every other day? If I sold my car and bought a faster bike, wouldn't that actually save me time? Maybe I can get one of those automated voice activation systems to answer the phone.

All it takes is small changes. Soon you, too, can carve out 20 hours a week to ride without people even noticing or thinking you have a deeply embedded problem. What's that? You think that these suggestions are sign of a deeply embedded problem? Well ... hmmmm ... I guess I should probably get some sleep now.

Across the Bay

Date: May 19 and 21
Mileage: 26.9 and 65.3
May Mileage: 287.4
Temperature upon departure: 39 and 48

Good weekend - went on my first bicycle ride where the temperature passed 50 degrees, and took my first trip across the Bay. Granted, in order to get across the Bay I had to join 12 teenagers on an eighth grade geology class field trip - but it was still a good weekend.

A teacher at Homer Middle School (who seems to have taken a shine to me after I wrote a series of newspaper articles about education programs at his school) invited me to join a trip to Grenwingk Glacier. How could I say no? It was basically a guided tour of the violent geology still ripping across Kachemak Bay State Park - the gravel-strewn moraines and retreating glaciers. The trip also included a float-by of what has to be the most beautiful coastal community in America: Halibut Cove. And it wasn't exactly a sedentary sit-and-wonder kind of a trip. The teacher even dragged everyone an extra two miles just to play on the hand-pulled tram that crosses the glacial creek.

All told, we probably hiked seven or eight miles. I was really impressed with the kids' stamina. I was braced for the worse, hiking with twelve 13- and 14-year-olds. But for most of the trip, we old folks had to practically jog to keep up with the kids. One kid even shared his dried mangos with me after I made the very juvenile mistake of forgetting to bring a lunch.

But the most interesting part of the trip was the actual field-trip aspect. You know. Education and stuff. It's amazing, really, how dramatically the area's ecology changes across just four miles of open water. The Homer side of the Bay is relatively new, with stair-step hillsides, spruce forests and mud bogs. On the south side of the Bay, the steep Kenai Mountains jut straight up from sea level. The face of the landscape changes in equally dramatic succession - beach grass climbs into old-growth cottonwood groves which change to ponderosa and spruce forests and finally to alpine tundra. Above that is the Harding Ice Field, which spits out several glaciers that are currently in dramatic retreat. The point where I stood to take this photo was buried beneath hundreds of feet of ice as recently as 50 years ago. Believe what you will about global warming, but Alaska is melting.

I couldn't complain too much about global warming today, however, with the sun out and temperatures rising comfortably into the mid-50s. Today was the first day all year that I rode with just one layer of clothing. Maybe someday I'll even be able to ride with actual skin exposed, maybe even pull out my bike shorts from the dusty cardboard box they've been stuffed in since I moved here. I can dream.