Hope, Resurrection, Turn ... again

Date: June 17 & 18
Total mileage: 72.8
June mileage: 413.3

Geoff and I spent mountain on Sunday. We managed to find two of the more interesting established campsites on the Kenai Peninsula - the first night, high high on a ridge above Hope, where six sites are crammed into a spot only reasonably large enough for two or three; the second night, we found the only place below 2,000 feet elevation where it is still winter: a frigid wind pocket beside Portage Glacier. After an active night of being continuously woken up by 60 mph gales, we had to rise to another soggy morning so Geoff could run three miles up a mountain and I could fight similar gales for 16 miles of a rather lopsided 32-mile bicycle ride.

Saturday was much more pleasant. We spent the morning lounging at Tito's Diner in Hope. Then, full of breakfast and a well-sold piece of chocolate raspberry cheesecake pie, I headed up the Resurrection Pass trail while my friends waited patiently at a campsite for me to complete what turned out to be a five-hour ride. Geoff followed me for an hour, then turned around so as to not wear himself out the day before his race. I spent the rest of the time alone, mashing miles of mud and yelling out occasionally to the unseen bears whose tracks peppered the trail. Near treeline, I was singing a verse of "Third Planet" by Modest Mouse when I rounded a corner and saw two bikers trying to negotiate around a series of downed trees.

"You alone?" one guy asked me. I was terribly embarrassed, and started to explain that I was singing to warn the bears of my silent, speedy approach. Somehow, they interpreted my explanation to mean that I thought I was going really fast, which wasn't actually the case.

"Well, you better go by us," the other guy said.

I started to protest because I knew there was a big drop into a stream just ahead, but finally just went in front of them after it became apparent that these guys wanted to see for themselves what I bad ass I was. Of course these guys were on my tail, I mean right on my back tire, the entire drop. I felt like a total poser. So as soon as we crossed the bridge, I started pumping hard to gain some ground uphill. Pretty soon, the guys dropped off my tire. Then they were several hundred feet behind me. Then I couldn't see them at all. I didn't see them again until nearly an hour later, after I had arrived at the pass, eaten a Power Bar, and turned around to descend for 15 minutes. They were laying down on the side of the trail.

"Beat you to Cooper Landing?" one guy called out as I buzzed by (Cooper Landing is on the other side of the pass.)

"See you there!" I yelled, and continued in the wrong direction. I love how guys make everything into a race.

The next day, Geoff had his Spur Hill Climb on Bird Ridge, a lung-bursting mountain race that claws its way 3,400 vertical feet up cliff bands and loose gravel on its way to a short-lived summit. Geoff finished eighth or ninth among a group of a couple hundred runners. I would kill for that kind of front-of-the-pack status, but Geoff was disappointed. Guys. Go figure.

I spent those couple of hours working toward Anchorage in what I figured was a decent tailwind. I felt a little concerned when I reached the end of Potter Marsh and realized that I had covered 16 miles in about 40 minutes. But I had no idea what I was in for until I turned around into something that can only be described as a relentless wind tunnel. Every pedal stroke seemed to only propel me backward. I worked as hard as I could, but some of the larger gusts had me down to 7 mph, slower than I even ride the long hills around my house these days.

With just a few more notches in the wind force factor, I could have perfected the outdoor stationary bicycle ride. I think I know now how the Turnagain Arm got its name. Just a few more miles of that demoralizing headwind, and I would have turned around, again, to make my new home in Anchorage.

Go Rob Go!

Date: June 15
Total mileage: 37.3
June mileage: 340.5
Temperature upon departure: 49

I just wanted to give a quick shout-out to UltraRob, who is currently more than four days and a staggering 1,200 miles into the Race Across America. As of about 10 p.m. AST, they listed him in fifth place in the Men's Enduro category. He's probably rolling toward Kansas right now, quietly spinning away the dark, featureless night. Three thousand miles in 12 days or less. I've spent more time driving a car across the country. The Race Across America is a rare sort of event, reserved for those with the rare combination of both ultra-human strength and a respectable level of physical self loathing. How else could anyone opt for a week and a half without any measurable sleep - eating, breathing, peeing, dreaming, everything on the bike. Only the bike. And the country, the vast and beautiful country, broken down by legs and lungs and heart until all that's left is a tiny island of headlamp light drifting over bare pavement, and the endless sea of grasslands fading into sleepless oblivion.

Catching up

Date: June 13 and 14
Total mileage: 60.1
June mileage: 303.2

Yesterday I put in what I thought was a pretty good ride - rode the "hill loop" thrice, for a total of 36 miles with about 3,500 feet of climbing, a 10 mph west wind and an average speed of almost 14 mph. It was a good ride because I felt like I could put in several more of those loops. How many more ... I don't know.

I'm basically just tricking myself into believing I could possibly train for what I'm about to put myself through in the 10 days I have left. Really, I have what I have. And you know ... that's gonna be good enough. Because it has to be.

I've spent the past week showing my Utah-bound family the strange and beautiful side of this state that I love. They got the weeklong deluge that was our first wet weather in a month, but their rain luck was counterbalanced by unbelievable wildlife luck. If you squint hard enough at this picture, you can see the dorsal fin of a whale that rose and dipped alongside our little glacier cruise in Resurrection Bay. It's either an orca or a humpback. I don't remember, because we saw about a half dozen of each. Later that day, we hiked up to Exit Glacier and crossed paths with a mother black bear towing three tiny cubs (no larger than 20 pounds). Less than 50 feet in front of us, they ambled across the trail and each stopped to climb up a little interpretive nature sign that marked the path and drool all over the post about spruce trees. Of course, the only picture I took of that moment turned out like crap. Even worse than the whale picture, I'm afraid. This is what I get for throwing all of my faith into a 3-year-old digital camera with at least a 3-second lapse from button push to shutter click.

Besides that, they also saw a mother moose with a new calf trot through my back yard, a huge flock of sandhill cranes, sea otters on their halibut charter boat, stellar sea lions, puffins and mountain goats on the glacier cruise, more shorebirds, salmon, unidentifiable tide-pool critters, bald eagles, and another black bear on the bluff above the Cook Inlet. In short, in a week, we saw more wildlife than I've seen in my previous nine months up here. Go figure.

You know what's the best part about having your family visit you (I mean, ahem, besides the joys of family togetherness)? They show you all the ways in which your everyday life can be a vacation. Not that I didn't already feel that way. But I convinced my entire family to go on a 9-mile bike ride on the Spit; I convinced my mom to go hiking in the mud; I convinced my youngest sister that catching a big, bloody, and - in her mind - disgusting halibut would be ever so much fun. By the end of the trip, my dad was taking 30-mile bike rides on his own time; my mom was proposing muddy hikes that started at 10 p.m., and my sister was sampling grilled fish and telling me that Homer, with its fashion-challenged rubber boot fetish and shopping options limited to Safeway, hardware stores and useless tourist junk, was "pretty cool." It's funny ... all of my friends up here seem to dread the inevitable Outside family visit to Alaska. But I thought it was fun. (And I'm not saying that, ahem, because my family reads my blog. Ahem, ahem.)

Neglect

Date: Hmmmmmm
Total mileage: 51
June mileage: 243.1

Still around, still breathing, not so much pedaling. My family's been in town, and you know how that goes - days that once sported 24 hours each suddenly seem to only have four. Busy busy busy, not that I have good exuse.

I left my camera at work. But here's some of the photos I've taken in the past five days:
*The blurry dorsal fin of a humpback whale
*An even blurrier photo of a black bear cub hugging an interpretive nature sign (I promise, that black blob is really one of three cubs that crossed my path behind an intimidating but indifferent mama bear.)
*A big glacier
*Another big glacier, blurred by a cloud
*Famous Alaska poet John Haines
*Baby moose
*My mom actually riding her own bicycle
*Poor, poor seasick Anthony (at least, I think that red blur slumped over the railing is poor, poor seasick Anthony.)
*Puffins and sea lions
*The great cat standoff

There stories are good, too, but maybe only to me.

I will come back eventually. Promise.

Ride too much

Date: June 7
Mileage: 22
June mileage: 192.2
Temperature upon departure: 48

First a confession, than an admission.

I'm not an athlete. So maybe I have a problem.

Commuted today and even then couldn't go straight home. Almost 200 miles in the first week? Seems a little high for a rec rider. A little low for a wannabe endurance bicycle racer. Where do I fit in?

Can't figure out if I'm addicted or dedicated. Chasing experience or escaping growth. A healthy hobbyist or a well-covered procrastinator. A driven beginner or a flailing expert.

In the end, they're all just euphemisms for the same thing.

Cyclist.

North Fork

Date: 6-6-6
Combined mileage: 65.4 (inc. June 5)
June mileage: 170.2
Temperature upon departure: 57

A loop ride is always a bigger commitment to make than an out-and-back ... Especially when you don't quite remember the mileage, and it's a Tuesday evening, and you think you're embarking on a sort-of "before dinner" ride. As it turned out, 40 miles on the mountain bike was a little more than I bargained for.

But, really, what's the harm in a 10 p.m. dinner and a few quiet grumblings about the four long months in which I lazily neglected to re-install Sugar's pedal cages and water-bottle holder? Small price to pay for three hours of free-rolling by fireweed blooms, coasting an uphill tailwind and cresting near the point where a local man was mauled by a grizzly last weekend. That's the kind of eyes-wide-open excitement that money can't buy and ski lift-served downhill rides can't replace. Never mind that downhill was almost slower, what with the headwind and my lamentable habit of white-knuckling the brakes on the narrower trails.

I've been thinking more about downhill since summer threw me back into this technical groove. What I thought was a great winter of skill-building snow riding turns out to not be sufficient experience for mud, streams and root-studded trails. What's the secret to downhill? (I mean, besides "Better Off Dead" sage advice of "Go that way ... Really fast ... If something gets in your way ... Turn.") Do I practice my bunny hops? Hold my butt over the back wheel and hope for the best? Buy a BMX helmet? Honestly, I'm new enough to this that I still get a big kick out of surmounting a crazy steep climb without putting my foot down. But often I dread the descent. I think it started with the endo I did on a tiny 20-foot-high roller that left me essentially crippled with blood clotting for six weeks. Gravity and I have never gotten along all that great, and adding wheels just seems to aggravate the tension. Has anyone else dealt with downhill-phobia? What did you do about it?

Snow, Hope, Powerline

Date: June 2, 3
Mileage: 76.2
June mileage: 104.8
Temperature upon departure: 60s

Had something of a whirlwind weekend on the road. At three weeks to Kincaid, it really should have been a power-training weekend for me. But there are ways to bypass obligation without regret: enjoy a mud bath on wheels down an avalanche-torn section of the Johnson Pass trail; take a half-century joy ride to Hope, Alaska - still America's "most scenic" byway to nowhere; and read a couple of New Yorker magazines cover-to-cover by a roaring campfire as the midnight sun rests - momentarily - over the Kenai Mountains.

Geoff is working toward this "Alaska Mountain Runners Grand Prix," and today was his first race of the season - The Powerline Pass. We drove up a day early to camp nearby and do the aforementioned mountain bike ride - on a muddy, debris-clogged trail that became entirely unrideable after only four miles (thanks to long fields of soft, punchy snow.) We hiked up another mile and a half before we crossed paths with a runner who warned us of "hordes of bears" at the lake. She was followed by a lone backpacker with a rather large rifle slung over his shoulder and a pasty, wide-eyed expression. I don't know what's more scary - the bears, or the guy with the rifle. Either way, we were ready to turn around.

Later that afternoon, I saddled up my road bike and headed toward the Hope Road junction. If you start from the bike path at the Granite Creek Campground, you have what turns out to be almost exactly 50 miles of scenic, smooth, nearly traffic-free road riding. I must have looked pretty funny out there with my mud-splattered face and legs - as well as and a rather prominent chainring bruise I sustained in an unsuccessful stream crossing - but I felt like a real roadie out there, tucked against my flat handlebars and surging up to 30 mph on a cruise to the coast. The yin and yang of bicycling.

Today was Geoff's race. He was due to start at 10 a.m., so at 9 I took off up the trail with the hope that I'd beat him to the finish line (I did ... barely.) I had a brisk pace going at first ... the whole time thinking, "I could bike this." But then those powerlines just kept on climbing. And climbing. And pretty soon, I was stumbling up snowfields and clawing at loose gravel, on grades approaching 60 or even 70 percent at times. In all, the trail gains about 3,500 feet in 4 miles ... most of it in the last two. And I'm thinking "how could people possible run up this thing?" But somehow, they do. Geoff ended up placing fifth in the race with a time of 42 minutes. It took me an hour and that much, arriving just in time to turn around and snap a few quick pictures of the leaders before the jogging descent commenced.

Watching those guys come up the mountain, hunched over and gasping for more of that rich 3,500-feet-elevation air, made me so glad that I'm not a trail runner. Give me a face full of mud and a chain-ring bruise any day. I'll walk what I can't ride, thank you much.