Equinox

Date: September 21
Mileage: 56.0
September mileage: 268.6

Last long day.

And a window of daylight opens between rain and more rain ... not sun, not dry, but at least the pavement is visible.

We start riding where the city ends and head out the road to nowhere. With a dead end as a destination, there's really nothing to look forward to but simple miles of forest, peppered yellow and steeping in salt-encrusted salmon stink.

Beyond the streams the air smells sweeter than spring, as it often does when leaves start to die and sag on their branches. As most life does when it has better things to do than survive.

Nothing to lose.

We discover these new places ... a totem pole, a Catholic shrine, all sacred in their own ways, in their own place, hidden in the woods where their only chance for worship is knowledge.

Or serendipity.

The road is cut off without fanfare by a single sign with a single word ... END ... but there's a boat ramp and it's already obvious that everyone else out here has gone further. We're stopped by geography and the limitations of our equipment, and that's OK. Until I make the disheartening discovery that here, 28 miles from anywhere ... except encompassing swarms of gnats ... my rear tire has grown a tumor, an ominous deformity that has very few miles to live.

I grit my teeth because I know it's my fault. I never take good care of my things. I ride and ride and ride my bicycle, grinding the rubber into thousands of miles of road. I knew these tires were near the end of their life, but I never let it get to me until ... I'm stranded.

Only, I'm not. Not until it's really gone. Not until the final, fatal pop. I have faith. I have no choice. So we turn around. We turn our backs on the END sign to face uninterrupted miles of pale yellow and paler green.

They go smooth and they go fast. I doesn't take much time or thought before I'm home. Free. Saved.

Lesson learned? I reflect on it. Somewhere, above this curtain of clouds, the sun is beginning to sink beneath the sky. It's time again to move forward.

Into the first long night.

Here I keep my dreams

Date: September 18
Mileage: 28.7
September mileage: 212.6

If you ever have an hour or 37 to kill, I strongly recommend reading through the bicycle tour blog "Cycling Silk." It chronicles the adventures of several college students crossing western China's Silk Road and Tibet on bicycles ... one of them, Kate, is my friend's cousin or cousin's friend. I don't remember. The connection is distant and I've never met her, but I read what she writes and I feel like I know her:

"On a bike trip, you are exposed to the world around you in a way and to a degree that few other modes of transportation afford. That kind of raw vulnerability has its drawbacks - like choking on the fumes of transport trucks that roar past, or feeling every little bump in the road translate itself into a saddle sore. But in the end the perks take the prize: the freedom to explore a landscape at your own pace, under your own power, and the exhilaration that comes with traveling with all you need strapped to your wheels. This is nomadism at its best, with every day bringing some new adventure, be it grim or glorious, soul-stirring or soul-shaking. Whatever happens, on a bike you are rarely bored."

I won't spoil any of Kate's adventures, but it's definitely worth it to click on the archives and start from the beginning. It's my dream to one day visit this part of the world - cross the Gobi Desert and roll over the 17,000-foot passes that separate China from Tibet. So I'm guilty of armchair adventuring with only a stranger's blog and vague notions to guide me.

I dislike using the term "someday" as much as I dislike using "never" when I talk about my goals. I'm of the opinion that if you want to do something with your life, you should be working toward it right now. Even if it's financially or physically impossible, if you're not taking any type of action - stashing away savings, teaching your kids Chinese - then it's nothing more than a dream. It's no different than the confounding images that haunt my groggy morning snooze sessions ... they're not real, they're not satisfying, and, inevitably, they're bound to be forgotten before the Cocoa Puffs hit the bowl.

In a way, I keep hitting the snooze button on bicycle touring. I love it. I dream about it. It's a big part of who I've become. But I never do anything about it. Three years ago, I rode a bicycle from Salt Lake City to New York, and I don't think I've since found a simpler, purer way of living. Bicycle touring isn't practical as something to do forever, but I also don't like to use the term forever. I like to think about what I want or need to do right now. And right now, I'd like to work toward taking another bicycle tour.

Someday.

Le (yet another) Tour

Date: September 16&17
Combined mileage: 43.6
September mileage: 183.9

I have an idea for a decent endurance biking event in Juneau. It came to me today as Geoff and I, while tooling around on a short ride, decided to cross downtown to look at a particular house for sale. The city is carved into a mountainside, not unlike San Francisco, in a way that each city block becomes progressively steeper. I flew across the first five blocks (about 5-7 percent grade) ... began to labor at the next two (10 percent) ... started wheezing at blocks 8 and 9 (15 percent) and wavered alarmingly up the last two blocks (judging by hikes that I've done in the past, I'd say these streets easily push 25 percent grades). About 30 feet from the summit stop sign, I glanced over at a cement barrier and became terrified at the thought of putting my foot down - for fear I would slip backward back down the street and over the edge. But I also wasn't sure I was going to make it - I was feeling light-headed enough that I feared for my consciousness. This happened on the tail end of a casual, 15-mile ride. Now, I'm not in the best shape I've been in all year. But I'm not exactly in the worst shape of my life, either.

So here's my idea for the endurance cycling event - it's a road ride, because the four-mile-long mountain bike trails around town aren't exactly distance-friendly. The cyclists start in downtown and ride out to the end of the road the turn around and return to town, covering the Mendenhall Loop on their way home (~80 miles). Then they cross the Channel bridge, ride to Douglas, out the end of the road, and back (~30 miles). Then they ride out to the southern end of the road, at Thane, and back (~14 miles). So, by covering every bike-legal mile of highway in the whole area, I have a 124-mile ride. I thought I could flesh it out to 150 by then weaving the course through every side street in downtown Juneau, so at the end of their century-plus, all the riders would have to climb and then descend, climb again and then descend again - every heartbreaking, breathtaking road in town. It's the Tour of Juneau. A 150-mile road ride isn't exactly a groundbreaking endurance event, but I thought all those short, steep late-ride climbs could really make it interesting.

Now, if only I could get the city to go along with me. I wouldn't even know how to begin to put together an mass-participant event, but it sure would be fun to try. I already have a T-shirt design idea. Because you can't drive to Juneau, it often carries the reputation in the Lower 48 that it has no roads. So I was thinking the slogan for my road bike Tour would play off that line at the end of the movie 'Back to the Future:' "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads."

Um, yeah. I should probably try to get some sleep now.