More avalanche photos

Sorry. I came across some photos of the recent avalanche in action, and I just had to post them for posterity. I'm actually not sure who took these photos or where they came from. They are one of those things that have been circulating in mass e-mails around town. And we identify with them and pass them on to our friends because we *almost* share a common experience.

Tonight I went with friends to see The Who's "Tommy" at the Perseverance Theatre. We were under the impression that we were going to see a local production in a small-town theater in Douglas, so we showed up thinking we'd just be able to buy tickets. They looked at us like we had twirled in wearing bed sheets and begging for free seats, but they did offer to herd us into a corner and sell us a seat if something opened up. It seemed unlikely that they'd have five extra tickets, but we persevered and they managed to wedge us into the last five seats available, even vaguely within sight of each other.

The play gave me an idea to create a rock opera about ice biking in the Arctic. In order to sell it to the masses, there would have to be at least one contrived love story about a cyclist who loses his way in a roiling storm, only be rescued by a beautiful Inuit girl who he then loses track of in another roiling storm. Then there'd be an encounter with a wayward polar bear, a harrowing ascent of some gnarly pass, a self-revealing moment of clarity beneath the northern lights, yet another roiling storm, and then a happy reunion. I can't decide what kind of rock would narrate the story best. I was thinking maybe Pearl Jam. Or Jimmy Eat World.

Um ... yeah. Anyway, hope you enjoyed the avalanche photos.

Laps

I don't start physical therapy until April 2, which means I'm on my own for another week. That hasn't proved the best place for me to be - I'm reminded of that fact each night when shots of sharp pain wake me up and some unlikely hour. Still, I'm dying to get this ball rolling. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

That's how ended up at the edge of the public pool today, blinking in a bewildered haze at the rush of swimmers crawling up and down every single lane. I arrived there a full 45 minutes later than I intended to. (That's about how long it took me to find my swimming suit, which I'm fairly certain I haven't worn once in nearly two years.) Finally, a teenage lifeguard walked up to me and explained that I could swim in a lane with someone else, as long as we kept a circular pattern. That sounded insurmountably complicated, so I pretended I forgot something in the locker room and waited in the shadows until someone get out. Appropriately, the free section was marked "Slow Lane."

I slipped into the water and it was cold. Freezing! I contemplated for a second jumping right back out, but I remembered that I was here to exercise and I'd probably warm up. So I took my first tentative strokes through the icy water. The feeling was vaguely nostalgic. When I was a kid, I was a natural in water. Never much of a swimmer - I never learned the technique and never really tried to. But I could maintain buoyancy for pretty much as long as I wanted. I used to spend the better part of a day crawling along the Bear Lake shoreline, looking for adventure. Adulthood has instilled in me a healthy (read: manic) fear of drowning and water in general, so swimming and I had parted ways.

But as I sliced through the water today, I felt a soothing release of bad energy that has been building up like plaque on my soul. The minor pain that accompanies pretty much everything I do - even walking across parking lots - had all but sloughed off, and I felt that now was the time - if there ever was a time to do so again - to go hard.

So I started ticking off laps, kicking gently with my legs and pulling hard with my arms. The echoing noise of the pool building roared and faded as my head bobbed in an out of the water. Every once in a while I would zone out and catch myself regressing into a lopsided sort of dog paddle. Then I would shake off the laziness and focus on raring back. I told myself I would keep swimming until it hurt or until my open-swim hour was up - whichever came first.

I was on lap 58, feeling dazed and a little sleepy, when I decided fatigue was probably going to come first. That's when a man with only one leg approached the pool on crutches and jumped in the lane next to mine. Watching him launch past me was the quick shot of inspiration I needed. He and I swam several laps pretty much side by side, with me pushing my best effort to keep up with a one-legged man. Then he got out and I thought - I have this hour in me yet.

I finished up lap 86 at 2 p.m. Time to get out of the pool. I wondered how many more I could do. I know it's not a good idea to push too hard in something you're not remotely in shape for ... but the idea of endurance swimming seemed so appealing at that moment.

I felt great and the buzz lasted almost 45 minutes - long enough for me to take a shower, drive over to Sandy Beach, and walk about a half mile along the shoreline. I was hoping for a photo safari of sorts, but the lighting was really flat, and it was raining. I was thinking about turning around for those reasons when I first realized that I was really feeling tired - tired enough that curling up in the sand for a little nap seemed appealing. Not only that, I was seriously dehydrated - dehydrated enough to have little bit of head swim going on, complete with a sore throat. Apparently, I had better workout than I was trying for.

When I got home, I did the math - 86 laps in a 75-foot pool equals 6,450 feet, which equals 1,965 meters, which equals 1.2 miles. It's funny to think that all of that effort will only net a mile and change in the water. An hour at that heart rate on a bike would probably put me at least 20 miles down the road. But I do know I wore myself out, pain-free. I think I'll go back tomorrow.

A good day to not be riding

(Photo by Brian Wallace/Juneau Empire)

So somewhere beneath this mountain of snow is Thane Road, a favorite route of mine. The road was of course closed for avalanche control when this one came tumbling down. But I think the gunners shot off a little more than they could handle. Road crews said it would be at least 10 hours before they could clear away the 20-foot-high powder wall, and there's a whole town's worth of people who live on the wrong side of this thing. Rough.

It's crazy weather day here in Juneau. We hit the all-time seasonal snowfall record early this morning - 195 inches (the official number is measured at the airport. Where I live, on Douglas Island, we have received closer to 240 inches.) Then it switched over to rain - heavy, heavy rain. Heavy in the way that waterlogged snow sitting atop a fresh powder slab is heavy. Avalanche danger right now is an understated "extreme." Flood advisories are rampant. They even threw in a wind advisory for good measure. Officials are telling people to drive at their own risk. If you don't get buried by a snow slide, you'll probably be swept away by a torrent from a flooded-out stream, or blown away by 50 mph gusts. Welcome to spring in Southeast Alaska - where winter doesn't just melt away. It implodes.

Either way, it's a good day to sit inside the office, ice my knee into dull-ache oblivion, and dream up ways to make a great gimp adventure out of it all tomorrow. Any ideas?

Patellar tendonitis

So my diagnosis has been upgraded from "angry knee" to "jumper's knee." At least this diagnosis makes a little more sense - even if it is a malady usually reserved for basketball players (and, apparently, people who can't pedal a bicycle as well as they think they can.) The bad news is my condition is at least "grade 3," which means I need to:

* Rest completely from the aggravating activity. Replace it with swimming/running in water (if pain allows).
* See a sports injury specialist/therapist who can apply sports massage techniques and advice on rehabilitation.

* Accept the fact that I've basically wasted an entire month.

The doc recommended physical therapy. That sounds expensive. But I'm willing now to accept that this is a problem worth throwing money at. The fact that I've been so stingy and stubborn is one of the reasons I've lost an entire month.

Because I acquired the injury in an interesting way - riding a 100-mile snow bike race - the doctor always ends up spending more time chatting with me about my bicycling than he does talking about my knee. He was asking me another string of questions about the Susitna 100 today when I finally dropped my most pressing question.

"So I want to be able to ride another 100-miler by early May. Think that's possible?" I asked.

"Yes, that's possible," he said.

I paused to wait for the qualifier, but it never came. So I said, "But ... um ... will I have time to get back into shape before then?"

"The idea is to not fall out of shape," he said.

I waited for more doctorly advice, but he just looked at me with a straight face. I was confused. This is the guy, after all, who recommended active recovery all along. But he wasn't gushing with specific suggestions. And because I'm pretty sure that I had it all wrong before, I went for something I've never tried."So, should I try swimming?"

"Swimming is good," he said. "Your physical therapist will be able to help you develop some recovery-specific exercises."

I felt a bit bewildered. There I was, fishing for an authoritative lecture about all of the things I shouldn't be doing, and I was only getting closer to having an actual MD tell me I should start riding my bike again. He chose that awkward pause to pick up our chat where we left off, in which I told him about my desire to ride the 24 Hours of Light.

"I'd like to ride the 24 Hours of Light," he said, "but I'm going to be in Coeur d'Alene that weekend."

I knew the doc was a cyclist, so I said, "Oh, are you going to do some riding down there?"

"I'm going to race the Ironman triathlon," he said.

"Ironman? Um. Wow. That's great." It's just my luck that I'd get a crazy enduro-nut for a doctor. He probably considers patellar tendonitis to be a perfectly normal condition, like blisters. He's probably tough enough to go out and run 100 miles through such a niggling injury, but that PhD degree forces him to recommend physical therapy to lesser animals like me.

This is all hugely speculative on my part, of course. But the diagnosis seemed to be good news either way. I had plans to go out after my doctor visit to consul myself with sushi. But instead, I decided to celebrate ... with sushi.

Now it's time to call those PT people and get to work. White Rim, here I come.

Into the daylight

I believe today is the Vernal Equinox.

In the northern hemisphere, that means springtime. In Alaska, it means cold daylight.

Twelve hours now. And very soon, much more.

I've lived through exactly two Alaska winters and one Alaska summer. I may be one of the deranged few who actually enjoy winter more. Don't get me wrong. Summer holds its own joy, and its own trials. I basically stumbled through last summer. Making a major move and enduring a period of homelessness in the middle of it all didn't help. I found myself pinned between obligation and the constant crush of activity. Winter is very liberating to me. The landscape freezes over. The world slows down. And I can move freely among it.

Summer is going to be very difficult for me if I can't ride my bike. I don't say this to fish for sympathy or diminish the trials of people who are truly suffering. I'm just making a statement that I suspect is true. It's not about my life one, 10 or 20 years from now. It's just about this summer, and how I watch the sunset creep further into the evening and resent that retreat. Longer days have a way of feeling much more empty. I've always believed my life to have a well-rounded array of meaningful elements, but some holes can be difficult to fill.

Like I said, though, I'm really not digging for sympathy. And I promised myself I wouldn't subject anyone who stumbles across this blog to my whiny rants anymore ... but ... It's been on my mind a lot. Probably because it's spring now, and I have a doctor's appointment this morning. There's not a lot he'll be able to say that will make much of a difference - beyond "major reconstructive surgery" (unlikely since he's already established minor injury, but you never know.) However, I am now sufficiently humbled and will take any advice more to heart. And I do think this month has been valuable in learning much more about my weaknesses ... both physical and spiritual.

Top o' Douglas Island

I hiked too long and too high today, and now I regret it. It was clear and calm and I was down to short sleeves in the 32-degree sunlight. Now ... swollen. I can't detect my tipping point, and I can't define my boundaries. Heaven knows I'd push them, though, even if I knew what they were.

I learned that a window of three hours will take me deep into the heart of the Douglas Island mountains. It's much further than I've ever been on my bike, because the canyon's grade increases significantly and the trail fades out into dozens of "high mark" lines. I always thought that "high marking" was the term for snowmobilers' testosterone-fueled efforts to kill themselves and all of their buddies in massive avalanches. But today I watched several snowmobiles roar up the slope before carving a graceful arc and descending in a cloud of powder. It looked wicked fun. I was jealous of them, and wishing that I had brought my snowboard with me, and at the same time, grateful that I didn't (Heaven knows I don't need to add that to my list of infractions.) That didn't stop me from traversing several of the less-steep high-mark lines in an effort to climb to the top of the ridge. I came pretty close a couple of times. But eventually, the slope would reach a grade in which my wimpy snowshoe crampons became useless. I'd take one last hopeful step before sliding backward about 30 feet. Clearly, I was inviting my own avalanche. So I turned around, bounded down the mountain as powder swirled around me, and went to try a high-mark line that *definitely* looked less steep. Repeat.

Not the best of physical activities, but good for the soul. Somewhere in here, I'll find a happy medium.

Snow walk

March snowfall in West Juneau as of 3/17: 82.2"
Season to date: 234.9"

I may have left the impression that the impact of not riding my bike and the recent deluge of mid-March snow has left me miserable. That's really not the case. I'm actually thrilled about the snow. Geoff predicts that this past storm was winter's last big gasp. With the 12 hours of daylight and temperatures threatening to creep toward 40, that may be true. Once the freeze breaks, the rain will return. Then I really will be depressed. So I'm trying to enjoy it while I can. I take a lot of snow walks. Maybe you'd like to join me today.

The above picture is my backyard. My patio table is buried in there somewhere.

This is my neighbor's house. He religiously snowblows and sands his driveway every day, methodically shooting all of that snow into neat piles that are now more than 10 feet high. Since the street itself is rarely plowed after storms, I can only deduce that all of that effort is the foundation of what will someday be the world's largest residential snow cave.

I only have to hike up two unplowed blocks to have a pretty good view of downtown across the channel.

The Dan Moller access trail itself is carved by skiers, and is thus only about .35 cm wide. A duck-waddling snowshoer could really twist a knee in this narrow shoot, so I have to walk carefully.

The view disappears behind the white-weighted canopy of spruce trees.

Soon, there's nothing to see but a black and white world splashed in shades of gray.

I nearly always turn around at an arbitrary point where elevation prevails and the forest begins to fade under the cloud cover. It's not that I mind hiking in the fog. But usually I have a time schedule to keep, so I go for say 45 minutes, turn around to take in the latest blank-slate meadow view, then start back. I'm now nearly as fast going down the mountain as I am hiking up it, which means I'm healing. And pretty soon, when this snow finally settles and hardens beneath the spring thaw/rain/refreeze cycle, I'll bring Snaux bike up here for a giddy downhill celebration.