Cause and effect

Date: September 29
Mileage: 31.1
September mileage: 361.7

Thursday: Ride in rain.

Friday: Ride in rain.

Saturday: Sore throat, fever, headache.

Forecast for Sunday: Intervals of clouds and sunshine.

Sigh.

"It's not artistic"

Date: September 28
Mileage: 36.4
September mileage: 330.6

The camera's just wet.

Does that mean I can't love this photo just the same?

According to the West Juneau weather station, today's rainfall so far is 1.34". Not that bad, really. We did a moderate ride in the afternoon that Geoff was not a big fan of. (The backstory behind that is that it took us nearly three hours to get out the door after a long morning, and we were running on little more than a 9 a.m. bowl of cereal until 4 p.m.) Anyway, during the last five miles he complained of lightheadedness and blurring vision, and then dropped me anyway. As for me, I pretty much forgot it was raining after a while. 25 mph headwinds and a 1,200-foot climb will do that. But to be honest, I enjoyed the ride. It wasn't bad. I really should just, as I said earlier this week, suck it up and ride more often.

As for rain gear - it's pointless. Who in their right mind would suit up in a bunch of breathable Gortex and then go jump in a lake, expecting to stay dry? You wouldn't. And you don't go biking in Juneau in the fall with any such delusions. This is why I'm such a huge fan of neoprene. I used it a lot last year to stay warm in the -30 degree windchills of January's deep freeze (hands, face and feet.) But it's also the ideal gear for 35 to 50 degrees and raining. If it had better range of motion, I'd go biking in a wetsuit. As it is, several layers of synthetics work pretty well. The most valuable riding-in-rain lesson I've learned: it's all about warm, not dry.

Another valuable riding-in-rain lesson: wet brakes have all the stopping power of a determined thumb. All I can say is that, at 35 mph, I'm pretty lucky I discovered this at a long straightaway while Geoff was several hundred feet in front of me.

This rain riding thing is still hard for me to volunteer for, but I'll get used to it. Otherwise, I won't be able to keep up much of a bike blog.

Bike building

It looks like I may be buying a snow bike! And not just any snow bike - a snow bike in pieces. Pieces that I have to track down, then order, then assemble. It's a terrifying endeavor for someone as technologically challenged as I am. Therefore, I find the prospect very exciting.

The other day Carlos, the proprietor of the Soggy Bottom 100, contacted me about a frame and wheel set being sold by a friend of his in Anchorage. The friend is currently working on the North Slope for two weeks, but if all goes well, I could soon be the owner of a Raleigh M50 DX hardtail frame, a snowcat wheel set with fatty tires and Shimano XT disk hubs, and a Surly fork that "is probably as good looking as (my) couch."

Nice! Frankenbike!

A frame and wheel set does not a bicycle make, but it's definitely a start - and it gives me a chance to customize all the components, right down to burly little parts that will hopefully be up to the continuous freeze and thaw of my southeastern Alaska home. And if the thing actually moves forward when I'm done with it - all the better.

The best part about this potential bike is that it will also work well in the thick, muddy stew that passes for trails around here. It's not a Pugsley - so I won't be carving fresh powder anytime soon - but it should hold up better on snowmobile trails than my Sugar. And - in theory - be a little less like a hot knife in butter on the Susitna 100.

I haven't definitely decided whether or not I'm going to ride the Susitna 100 in February. There's always the issue of expenses, which also now include a fair chunk of change just for travel, along with gear, vacation time, blah blah blah.

Beyond the blahs, there's a larger picture, a worldview that somehow shifted the day I stepped off that windblown trail and staggered toward my new life in Alaska. Racing the Susitna 100 is a rewarding memory, now that seven months have passed and time has mercifully glossed over long stretches of suffering and some initial feelings of failure. What I have left over are ghostly images the seem out of place in any world, especially my world. Sometimes, when I'm stressed and feel a need to go to my "happy place," I find myself reflecting back to the final quarter of the race, after a freak rainstorm turned the trail to soft mush and I had resigned myself to trudging the last 25 miles on foot. I should remember a miserable place - dripping icy water from every layer of clothing, plodding through the wet snow into slow, endless darkness - but I don't. All I remember are the ghost trees, still-life shadows on the snow, the way the air was so quiet even my footsteps seemed far away ... and the finality of it all forced me to slip so deep inside myself that now, just seven months later, I can't remember nine hours passing. I only remember one drawn-out moment of peace.

When that moment comes back to me, I begin to think I would be crazy not to ride the Susitna 100 again. To revisit old experiences. To create new ones. To wield a new snowbike and a season's worth of skills to possibly even competitive level. When I think about it that way - it feels like skipping Christmas (which, unfortunantly, I skipped last year and probably will have to again this year.) All the better reason to sign up.

Just suck it up and ride

The last cruise ship of the season came to town today, and just like that, the whole of downtown's tourist district is shuttering up and moving out. And I wondered, am I ready for the ghost town? And I ready for winter in Juneau?

Gone too are the salmon, the swarms of splashing fish that piled up beneath the dock outside my office window. At least the fishermen still come, snagging the last spawned-out chums (and bless their tenacity). But they, too, will soon be gone.

And gone are my excuses for not riding my bike in the rain, though I've lined them up like soldiers to knock down every morning I wake up to a drench of gray. Yesterday, a record 2.7 inches fell in a typhoon of horizontal drops. It doesn't sound that impressive until I compare it to Salt Lake City's numbers - where 2.7 inches just happens to be the precipitation average for the months of July, August and September combined.

I wore those numbers like a badge as I suited up this morning to go riding, only to change my mind at the last minute and get in my car to drive to the gym. I let the drizzle hitting my windshield justify my decision, until I crossed the bridge and looked groggily out toward the season's last cruise ship. Behind it, where V-shaped mountains plunge into the channel, streams of sunlight tore through breaks in the clouds, peppering the gray water with splotches of turquoise. It was surreal and beautiful and fleeting in every way, especially when I pulled into the gym parking lot and slipped into the mundane world of fluorescent lights and daytime TV.

"You have chosen poorly."

I'm not saying it's not going to happen again ... and again and again. I enjoy going to the gym and I'm a sucker for instant access to a warm shower. But I will try to remember that the worst day on a bicycle is still better than ... well ... just about anything else.

Soda fiend

I have a soda problem.

I know it. I admit it. And still, I'm bugged by the people who call me on it.

I was swilling my latest bucket'o'Diet Pepsi when someone (who I prefer to remain anonymous) waddled up to me and said, "Could you find a faster way to get diabetes?"

I had just seen him chow down about a pound of sweet and sour chicken with white rice, but I couldn't work up a snappy yet marginally polite comeback in time so I just mumbled, "um ... it's diet soda."

"So?" he asked.

"So it doesn't have any sugar."

He looked at me incredulously, so I added, "So it's a good way to get cancer, but not really diabetes."

Then he laughed and patted his stomach and said, "Yeah, I have to cut down myself."

I'm not sure we actually communicated at all during the exchange, but he did leave me feeling dull pangs of shame. I couldn't even enjoy the rest of my soda bucket, with those crisp flashes of ultra-sweetness followed by throat-tingling carbonation in every gulp. No, I actually dumped it out. But two hours later, I was back to craving soda all over again.

Sometimes I try to analyze why I've become such a soda fiend. I used to drink regular Pepsi and Dr. Pepper like they were the elixor of life until I realized they were probably the main reason I was carrying 20 extra pounds. So I switched to diet, and now I'm like an ex-smoker addicted to nicotine patches. In fact, I prefer diet now. I don't think it's the caffeine - I get giddy about Fresca (I mean, who wouldn't?) And I've proven to myself that it's not the sugar. So what is it? Why do I get happiness triggers firing in my synapses every time I think about stopping at a convenience store?

And what, really, do I have to gain by quitting it all? Until I figure that out, I'll probably just keep hoping they one-up that wimpy 64-ounce Super Mega Gulp.

Bluegrass 101

Date: September 22
Mileage: 25.6
September mileage: 294.2

If there's one thing Alaska will never have a shortage of, it's live bluegrass music. You can't wheel a cart down the frozen food aisle without bumping into someone who plays in some kind of bluegrass band. I personally work with more than a handful of such musicians. Tonight we went to the Island Pub for thin-crust pizza and ended up spending a couple of hours watching the stylings of a decent Juneau bluegrass band, "Bluegrass 101." Most of the musicians were inexplicably dressed like mod hipsters, dancing around the stage as they shared a single microphone. But in the back, almost lost in shadows, was the female bass player. Decked out like an extra in "Annie, Get Your Gun," she stood with quiet dignity and plucked at the strings as the whirlwind swirled around her. It made me wish I never gave up the bass.

It happened in the seventh grade - a terrible time to take up any instrument, really, let alone such a social monstrosity. But that's how things happen with me. I showed up at Orchestra 101 on the first day of school and sat in quiet confusion as they doled out all the string instruments. After a while, my bespeckled string-bean of a teacher held up a bass. Nobody volunteered. He looked pleadingly at the class, in such a way that without even saying a word, he somehow convinced me that I would be adored and showered with As if I accepted the strange challenge. I remember the decision being motivated by a misguided attempt to be a teacher's pet. But I think there were early sparks of an inherent desire to be unique. Either way, my reluctant hand crept into the air.

I didn't quite realize the gravity of my mistake until the teacher assigned everyone an hour of practice per night. He said this as I stood next to my instrument, towering a full two feet above my 5-foot, 90-pound frame. But it didn't sink in until he handed me the body-bag-sized carrying case.

In middle school, I lived literally behind my school building. It was a two-minute walk if I dawdled. But the prospect of hoisting that thing across the soccer field, past the fence and into my house filled me with the kind of terror that only 12-year-olds can appreciate. I've been trapped beneath an overturned raft in churning whitewater. I've ridden out a swirling storm at 13,000 feet in a turboprop plane. Those later experiences don't even come close to the kind of scary I was facing as I stood in the empty orchestra room and contemplated my walk home from school.

So there I was, the end of my first day in middle school, waiting and waiting and waiting in the dark room until I was certain that either the building had cleared out or the apocalypse had come. I crept into the empty hall, first dragging the bass behind me, then bear-hugging it as a waddled slowly foward. When I reached the door, I lifted it over my head with all the strength my tiny arms could muster and broke into a full-out, no-holds-barred sprint. I truly believed that by running fast enough, I would somehow become invisible. My lungs burned and biceps ached, but they were no match for the searing humiliation, the indignity of it all. I don't know that I've since run so hard, or experienced a 200-yard commute that took so long. But I made it home, wheezing, panting, sinking into the numb realization that this was what my life was going to be like every day from now on.

Well, the next day my mom put in a call to the school and came to an agreement that they would give me two basses, one to keep at home and one to play at school. That first-day bass run was the only one I ever did, but the damage was done. Any chance I ever had for musical passion had burned out in a flash of embarrassment. I was, from that day forward, the surly, scowling adolescent slumped over a string bass in the back row.

Do you ever wonder how your life would be different if one single day, one simple humiliation had somehow worked out differently? That's what I wonder sometimes about the upright bass. Maybe I wouldn't have become one of those people that obsessively rides a bicycle every day. Maybe I'd be in a band called Bluegrass 101.

It almost seems strange that I'll never know.

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.