On again, off again

Date: Oct. 17
Total mileage: 25.2
October mileage: 233.7
Temperature upon departure: 42

Many cyclists I know, especially those who race their bicycles on a regular basis, have begun to talk about the "off season." As in most sports, cycling has found its drastic ebb and flow, which means from March to September all I hear about is trainingracingridingracingtraining. Then, October hits ... a couple of leaves drop ... and suddenly ... nothing.

Up in Alaska, far away from the velodromes and crits and Cat-4's and what have you, this "off season" is still very much a mystery to me. For what little racing I do - and for how liberally I'd have to use the term "athlete" to call myself one - I tend to have events spread fairly evenly throughout the year. I've been in a bit of a slump - I'll call it an "off-season" - since July. But pretty soon, at about the beginning of November, I'll have to think about upping the training and scheduling focused workouts if I want to be in shape come February. It's the depths of cold, dark winter. It's when I like to be "on."

So now that I have to gear up, and watch my fellow cyclists wind down, I can't help but speculate on the mystery of it all. Where do cyclists go during the "off season" to give it such a defeated, fatalistic name? I have some theories:

"Beer and television:" I think the smart athletes would give themselves some real time off, and do as Lance Armstrong does. You know: go for easy spins with President Bush and party all night with celebrities. And if, unlike Lance, they were willing to give all that up to go back to the lonely, relentless life of a racing cyclist, I would think that beer gut would give them all that much more motivation in the spring.

"Trainer hell:" These cyclists I know, they're so preoccupied with going fast that they forget they can just put on a big poofy snow suit and mount some flood lights to their Bianchis so they can keep riding outside during cold, dark winter days. Instead, they put their poor bicycles on rollers and spend two to three hours a day dripping sweat all over the carpet of their cold, dark basements. As a former gym rat, I actually have no problem with the concept, especially if you have access to a good iPod lineup and all three seasons of Arrested Development on DVD. But every day? All winter long? Eee.

"Cross-training:" I don't how many cyclists also Nordic ski. But I definitely think more should. Not only do you work all the important leg muscles, you also have an excuse to continue wearing spandex all winter long. Mountain bike racers should snowboard ... good practice for dodging trees and grabbing that sweet, sweet air. I'd also suggest snowshoes, but I don't know many cyclists who also run (except for those crazy triathletes). The rest of us, I believe, are opposed to unaided human power on principle.

"Real jobs:" Some people who race all summer long take so much time off that they have to buckle down and work day and night throughout the winter just to support the habit. I admire that, but I don't really have any good advice for such a person.

"Hibernation:" This is different from beer and television, because to actually be in hibernation, I don't think you can be doing what 95 percent of everyone else is doing. No, you actually have to be fast asleep. Dreaming of green trails and dry roads. I also don't have any good advice for you.

"IceBike:" It's everyone's favorite novelty Web site, but so few seem to actually do it. Trust me, once you experiment with the wonders of snowbiking, you'll understand why I consider late summer the "off season."

But seriously, "real cyclists," where do you go during the winter? I used to pass you on the road all the time. Now your numbers are diminishing. Soon you'll all be gone, and I feel lonely just thinking about it.

Zen and the art of ...

Date: Oct. 16
Total mileage: 40.2
October mileage: 208.5
Temperature upon departure: 48

Geoff informed me today that I'd have to be a very cold-hearted person, or, in better words, an idiot, to even think about riding my mountain bike before it gets a complete overhall, which includes new parts that have to be shipped to Juneau on a barge. Somehow, over a few months of tender, loving abuse, I managed to almost completely wear down all of the teeth on the middle ring. Then I rode it long enough in that decrepit state so it now also requires a new chain. And pedals. And shifter levers. And I think that in one or more of my many crashes, I may have slightly bent the rear derailleur. Other than that, it's golden! Why can't I ride it?

On the bright side, Geoff has been working almost nonstop for a week on our five bikes, and roadie has never been in better shape. Geoff even installed fenders. So the theory is now that I can go for a ride and not be sprayed continuously with road grit. I'll believe it when I see it. I have perfected my rain-riding ensemble, however: waterproof jacket over a thin fleece liner, rain pants over nylon longjohns, earwarmer and neoprene socks, booties and gloves. You'd think with all this armor I could manage to stay dry, but you would be mistaken. I don't know why I didn't just give up early and buy a wet suit. If you can swim in them, I bet you can bike in them. And they're so aerodynamic!

I found a couple hours to ride in beautiful weather today, so I'm not in a position to complain. It always amazes me how much less physical effort the same distance requires when there are no elements to fight. A 40-mile rain ride is downright epic, and yet the same ride, just one week later, in sunlight, feels like a boardwalk cruise. It's always faster, too, even though there's typically more wind when skies are clear.

I haven't really had very many chances to observe the bicycle maintenance routine during the past week - although the truth is I have little patience for it. I'd like to become a better steward of my stuff, but how do I overcome a severe personality flaw that makes me want to scream and start throwing things every time I wrap my fingers around a screwdriver? The theory is in the next month or two I'm supposedly going to start building a snowbike, and I hate the thought of recruiting Geoff to do all of the grunt work for me. I need to set some goals.

I will watch Geoff rebuild the crank.

I will help clean out the hubs.

I will read Web sites on bicycle building, even if the my chances of understanding them are about as good as Sugar's future chances of selling on eBay as anything but a hurricane bike.

I will try meditation.

I will practice the power of positive thinking.

I will stay dry.

Glaciers melting

My co-worker likes to tell stories about his childhood in Juneau - in the late 70s, I believe - when he and his friends could play touch football directly in the shadow of Mendenhall Glacier's tilting skyscrapers of ice. Back then, the calving terminus stretched almost a mile beyond where it ends today. My co-worker predicts that in another decade, the glacier will climb away from Mendenhall Lake and recede up the canyon it carved during many millennia of slow, steady grinding.

It's sad, he tells me, to see something that held so much permanence for him as a child, and to watch it so quickly and effortlessly fade away. But when I look at Mendenhall Glacier, I don't feel his same sadness. My emotions are closer to the sadness one would feel watching a snowman grow emanciated in the March sun - a nostalgic sadness, dulled by the inevitability of it.

A poll published October 4 in the Anchorage Daily News said that four out of five Alaskans believe global warming is behind the physical transformation of their homeland - not only the melting glaciers, but also big coastal storms, summer lightening strikes, shifting salmon runs, disappearing polar bears and forest fires. Eighty percent is a robust number for agreement in what many of the higher ups in the United States call "a theory, at best." I think it points to a trend as obvious as glaciers shrinking a quarter mile a decade. It's the trend of acceptance, the third step in the 12-step program to recovery.

I was an environmentalist kid with progressive science teachers, so even in the early 90s, I watched satellites map the hole in the ozone over Australia and accepted global warming as fact. I believe that this current generation of children will be the last to have the option of understanding climate change as a theory or a vague idea. Future students will know the temperature change of this era only as cold fact, like entropy, or gravity. Whether the world will ever agree on whether global warming is human-caused or a force of nature, history has yet to decide. Although it seems most likely that history will determine the root cause of climate change to be a complicated combination of both.

The fourth step of recovery is to make "a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves." This is the part where we begin to experiment with the things we know we can control, such as alternative sources of power (especially human power), energy conservation and reduced consumption. We'll never know how much it can help unless we're all willing to try. Otherwise, we're no better off than the alcoholic who says, "Well, God made me this way, and all this booze I buy really helps the economy, so why should I stop drinking?"

Why? Because your future depends on it. No one denies that truth to someone in AA. It won't be long before the world sees global warming in the same way.

iHeart iPod

Date: Oct. 12&13
Total mileage: 45.3
October mileage: 168.3
Temperature upon departure: 41

I had a decent Friday the 13th with some unlucky twists. On the bright side, I got out for a road bike ride and a separate mountain bike ride. On the unlucky side, I skidded out on a metal-lined bridge on my mountain bike and slammed into a railing at about 15 mph. I also bonked pretty hard on the way home (I've been out of milk for three days and apparently am not eating enough for breakfast.) And it rained the whole day. And the Mets lost. Other than that, it was a good day.

I was thinking about the controversial issue of iPod use and bicycles after Tim posted an anti-bikePod article the other day. I am an unrepentant iPod user, and while I respect the arguments against it, I don't think it's fair to make blanket judgments that all bikePod is bad all the time.

I own a little iPod shuffle. I bought it solely for use in bicycling. I bought it with gratitude after a little FM radio literally saved my sanity during the late night hours of the Susitna 100 race. I've used it on roads and trails, in training and in a couple of races I've done. I don't feel it's adversely affected my safety in all this time, and am skeptical that it would ever make a real difference as long as it's used responsibly (i.e. at a reasonable volume.)

Case in point: I do understand why commuters in busy urban areas would not want to use iPod. In cities, you have all sorts of things that require uber-alertness - things that don't make a lot of noise, such as pedestrians and dogs and little old ladies on Rascals. But I live in what is for these practical purposes a rural area. I do most of my riding on long, unbroken roadways with wide shoulders and cars that go by at an average rate of about one every two or three minutes. And say what you will about cars, but they make a lot of noise. Even with iPod, I have never failed to hear one go by, and usually first hear it when it's still two or three seconds behind me. At 18 mph, iPod mostly becomes soft, ambient sound anyway. This doesn't bother me. I'm not inclined to turn it up because I don't like loud noises blasting through my head. I think it's safe to say that most iPod users older than 25 feel this way.

I also use iPod trail riding. My iPod use mountain biking is a lot less frequent, because usually mountain biking is exciting enough on its own, or I'm on a short ride, or I'm mountain biking with another person, and tuning them out would be rude. But I have used iPod on longer trail rides, an I have used it in races. I have never had a run-in because of iPod. I hear riders coming up behind me. I hear them say "On your left." And I move to the right. I have never been surprised, nor have I had an angry rider swerve around me because I didn't hear them coming. Alaska also has the wildlife issue. But if you're moving along at trail at 8-15 mph, chances are pretty good that you're going to see a bear before you ever hear it - or you're going to neither see nor hear it - regardless of what's stuffed in your ears.

As to the argument that cyclists shouldn't need iPod to enjoy themselves, I completely agree. I don't need iPod. I was perfectly happy for all those years before I became an iPod user. But I do like the way iPod breaks up the inevitable routine of riding the same routes week after week. It livens up frustrating experiences and also enhances already enjoyable experiences. Because I have an iPod shuffle, which switches songs at random, I'm sometimes pleasantly surprised with the way music completely beyond my control can match the mood of the moment. When I'm rounding a heavily wooded corner of Douglas Island road into the liquid gray infinity of an open ocean view, and suddenly Modest Mouse starts chanting with increasing intensity "The universe is shaped exactly like the earth, if you go in a straight line you'll finally end up where you were" ... well, the non-iPod experience just can't beat that. Sorry.

In closing, I'm sorry if those little white earbuds offend you. If you feel the need to rip them out of my head as you're passing me on the road so you can tell me that I'd be going a heckuva lot faster if I wasn't so self-absorbed, I wouldn't disagree with you. And then, I'd probably stick them right back in.

Elevation's good

Ever since I learned the reality of fog in this area, I can't wake up to a view of blurry cloud cover and not feel the instant urge to head up. The fog here starts thick, and with temperatures in the 40s, could stick around all day. But I'm greedy and when I know the sun is up there, somewhere, I can't just let it hang out alone. So Geoff and I headed up Mount Jumbo, right here on Douglas Island and towering over our house every day. We rode to the trailhead and pounded out a quick "Pre-Mets-Game" hike. This is my Juneau-peak-bagging photo essay #2.

We finally started to see sunlight emerge from the fog at about 1,000 feet ... just about the time I was starting to get worried.

First view

I think this shot is interesting because I'm accustomed to hiking peaks in Utah, where everything is 11,000 feet high. So today, after we began to emerge from treeline, I saw this exact view and told Geoff it was going to take me all day to get up there. But this became a good example of how much my perspective has changed to accommodate the smaller open spaces of southeast Alaska. From here, it was less than 35 lumbering minutes to the top.

Mount Jumbo is still 3,500 feet high. For starting at sea level ... and walking up a trail only 2.5 miles long ... that's not too shabby.

Coming down was much harder and actually took longer than going up. I fell five times. Steep and slippery are not my allies.

This is the view looking across the channel to downtown Juneau just as the fog finally began to move on. The mountain directly behind it is Mount Juneau, which I climbed to the top of just Sunday.

It's funny to talk about all this sunny madness because, as far as I can tell, Juneau is about the only place in the country where the weather is nice right now. Southcentral Alaska is swimming in floodwater. The Northeastern United States is being deluged by rain. A major cold snap in the Lower 48 has been sending snow to the Midwest. It's all relative, really. I'm writing about a "perfect weather" day that featured temperatures in the low 40s and thick gray fog below 1,000 feet. But I've learned to appreciate it for what it's not.

When the sun comes out in Juneau

I have 25 minutes left to burn off before work, ticking away on an elliptical trainer display. Streams of sunlight seep in from a narrow windows of my gym. Strange new shadows on the floor tell their own story, not of frumpy people engaged in pointless frenzy, but of kinetic energy breaking through illuminated dust. The woman who shows up every day at noon sharp, who has lost 10 pounds and made a point to record it for the "Juneau's Biggest Loser" registry, sighs loudly from the machine next to mine. "Ever feel like you're wasting your time in here?" she asks, not taking her eyes off the three ceiling-level TVs that have blasted plane crash news nonstop for the past 30 minutes. "Every time," I say.

I leave the gym at the height of lunch period, with high schoolers packed in the parking lot like spawning salmon. They dart in and out of the street and throw unidentifiable objects toward the sky, enjoying rare freedom from their narrow awnings and dripping huddles. I notice for the first time in weeks I can see teenage faces sans hoodies.

I pass the hatchery where a little girl runs barefoot in the grass. A man, her father, puts his fishing pole down and chases her down the thin corridor. They kick up swirls of leaves that seem to vaporize midair. Their smiles are so contagious that I start laughing.

Across the wetlands, the sunlight burns streaks of orange in the tide. There are more people walking out on the mudflats, and I wonder how they got there and whether they'll sink. And I wonder if they're looking at those mountains, way, way out in the distance - mountains so buried by the distance that they're almost never there. But when they emerge from the clouds, they remind us that we don't live in boxes. We live in a world that stretches toward eternity, a world with contours built for a million lifetimes. And we want to strive to live them all.

Sorry, Sugar

Open letter to my battle-scarred mountain bike:

Dear Old and Busted Sugar,

It seems you haven't been very happy with me lately. Seems like you're mad at the world. I guess I would be too, hunched against a damp corner with swamp water seeping out of my frame. We've been together, oh, about 18 months now - maybe you expected something better of your life. I just wanted you to know that this hasn't been easy for me, either.

I remember the day the UPS guy dropped you off. They called you a used bike, recently dumped by an anonymous eBay stranger, but you looked brand new to me. I still remember the first time we went out, joyriding the foothills outside Idaho Falls. We were both so young then, and inexperienced, and you seemed so fragile. I was terrified to get too close for fear you (we) would break.

Maybe that's how this all started. The early neglect. I had commitment issues. You were an inanimate object. Everything changed the day we up and moved to Alaska, with the winter setting in, I suddenly began to realize how much I needed you. I've had other bicycles, but they no longer mattered the day the snow started to fly. I only had studs for you.

But weren't those great times, Sugar? We were like a couple of newlyweds - spending every day together, rolling the frozen roads and trails, just you and me and the stunning quiet of those long winter nights. You weren't accustomed to the lifestyle, but everything was so bright and new that it didn't seem to matter. I didn't even notice the shadows beginning to creep in beneath your hubs, the resentment that started to build as ice caked your moving parts. I guess that's my fault. I was so excited about us, I never stopped to think about what you needed.

But it all started to come down when summer arrived, and our world changed from silence and snow to motion and mud. You could hardly comprehend the transition, and I wasn't much help - still so new to mountain biking, bouncing off rocks and somersaulting down hillsides. Those daylong races didn't help, and the strain started to show - broken spokes, bent fenders, chipped frame, and endless coats of grime, so thick that it no longer washes off. I thought you could take it. After all, you were my Sugar. But then came the rain rides ... then the slimy root roller derbies ... then, finally, swamp biking. I can see now the rust covering your once-bright bolts. I can hear the slight creak in your pedals. Your crank is so worn that the middle ring no longer holds tight to the chain, and I worry that I may have cut you down before your time, that you may not be long for this world. And yes, it's my fault.

There must be a way I can make it up to you. I know our relationship hasn't been a conventional one, but I wish there was a way I could make you understand that I always have, and still do, care about you. You may feel scarred by life, like the world has beaten down on you, but you have to know that. Can't you see? I hurt you because I love you. And love does hurt. It can be almost be no other way between a novice rider and her mountain bike. I know promising to take better care of you won't make up for 18 months of neglect and abuse. But I still need you, Sugar, and I'd really like to try.

Will you ever forgive me?

Sincerely,
Jill