Friday, June 08, 2007

Greenness

Date: June 7
Mileage: 52.8
June mileage: 124.4
Temperature upon departure: 47

I was finally able to surpass my longest post-injury ride - by mileage at least. Did 53 in just over three hours; it was pretty mellow with the exception of erratic but strong crosswinds over the entire distance and of course scattered bursts of rain. I didn't intend to ride that much today, but I woke up a little earlier than usual and had some time to kill before an anniversary lunch for my favorite co-worker. Twenty-five years at the Juneau Empire. Those kind of numbers boggle my mind.

Strange to spend three hours on a bicycle. After four empty months, three hours should seem like an eternity, but it's just the opposite. The minutes roll by like noon traffic on an expressway; the miles move forward even faster. I showed up at El Sombrero dripping rainwater from every square inch of clothing and feeling like I had just bike commuted in from my house, not from an out-and-back point some 25 miles north. And of course I shouldn't feel that way. But there is intrinsic virtue - even more than experience and fitness - in being new at something again. Before it becomes habit, before it becomes work, before it becomes life, it - whatever it may be - is simply an adventure. And time always gobbles up the adventures.

Not even the rain could bother me today. I often complain on my blog about rain (but not nearly as much as I could, believe me.) But this morning I found myself completely enamoured by the rich shades of green that have engulfed Juneau. Green crawls up the mountainsides all the way to snowline; it drips from the trees with neon intensity and saturates the ground like endless gallons of spilled paint. I spent most of my life in the drought-parched Mountain West, where the green season lasts all of two weeks. We learned to find beauty in the browns and yellows, saturation in the dust clouds and neon intensity in the glow of wildfire flames and lightning. So I am caught off guard by all the green, green everywhere, nearly suffocating the valley despite its infancy. The rainy season, after all, hasn't even begun.

It is spring, I suppose, the wave of newness, and I am happy to be in a position to ride its crest. It's still early to say whether or not my knee cartilage infection - or whatever I have - has finally let go. I bend the joint awkwardly out of habit, but am having a harder time finding the pain these days. Time will tell. I will continue to take it slow. And maybe, somehow, keep things new.
Thursday, June 07, 2007

My new summer dream

Haines to Skagway

I'd like to do this as a minimalist "fast tour," about 350 miles in two days. Carry the smallest amount of gear possible (bear and bug spray included).

The climbing profile will likely be killer. The roads will be gravel-strewn and terrible. I expect two 16-20 hour days, with a "night" of restless bivying between them.

It's so remote that there are really only two real towns on the whole route in which to resupply, Haines Junction and Whitehorse. But I may decide to carry everything I need because I want to see if I have the stamina for multi-day endurance rides.

It could be deliciously brutal, and brutally beautiful. A dream ride.

I think if I continue to improve physically at the rate I have been this month, I could be ready to attempt it by early fall. Maybe last week of August/first week of September. Sometime before I head down to Arizona to hike the Grand Canyon with my dad.

I would need to buy a bivy sack, but I have access to a good 15-degree bag and all of the other gear I think I'd need. I'd plan for temps 20 degrees to 60 degrees, rain to fog to snow.

The best part? Depending on the ferry schedule, I may be able to ride this entire section of Alaska/Yukon/British Columbia without even taking a vacation day from work.

Yes, I miss the fast-paced life.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Stacks of bikes

Date: June 5
Mileage: 21.4
June mileage: 71.6
Temperature upon departure: 51

Today I returned home from a bike ride to find every other bicycle in the house strewn all over the yard. It turns out there was an unfortunate sewage incident in the storage room. The plumber had dispatched many of the contents of the room wherever they fell in the back yard, which made for a scene right out of Kentucky Homes and Gardens. (I later learned he cleared out the room before the pipe burst all over the place, which made me feel both relieved that my bikes weren't covered in sewage, and also irked that they would be treated like that in the first place.) But my first thought, upon seeing a yard full of overturned bikes is, "Wow. I own way too many bikes."

I just happened to be returning from a ride on Geoff's road bike, the closest thing we have to a "real" road bike. Before my whole knee debacle really settled in, I was seriously considering purchasing my own roadie this year. And when I found the rear tire on my bike flat - again - I thought it was about time to see how I felt about drop bars, rail-skinny tires any any other seemingly frivolous feature that supposedly eats up pavement.

The first thing I noticed was that Geoff has his clipless pedals set much tighter than mine.

The second thing I noticed was that I couldn't steer to save my life with my hands down in the drops.

The third thing I noticed was that the brakes were nowhere in reach while I was hunched in that position.

The fourth thing I noticed was an oncoming curb, in just enough time to narrowly advert tragedy.

The fifth thing I noticed, after finally coming to terms with my precarious situation, is that I couldn't get a single good stroke out of my legs. I felt like I was pedaling in water, going slower than I typically do riding pavement on my 2.7" treaded tire snow bike, and I just couldn't manage the speed. I did 20 miles like I was riding into wind, although there was none. It was a truly disappointing first encounter with a true "road" bike.

It makes me wonder if I've never developed the specific leg muscles for that position. Maybe in all of the mountain/touring bike riding I've done, sitting high and happy on flat handlebars, I've progressed in such a way that all of my power relies on high and happy muscles. This theory would hold more water if I'd actually done enough high and happy riding in the past few months to develop any of my muscles. But still ... why would a bike built specifically for speed specifically make me slower?

Geoff's theory is that he owns a slow bike.

Maybe I just had a bad day.

Either way, after coming home to mountains of mountain bikes and adding Geoff's roadie to the pile, I was able to voice what I already knew. I won't be buying a road bike this year.

These glass-coated roads are way to harsh for those wimpy tires.

And I just (finally) replaced my 7,000-mile chain/cassette on my touring bike. Might as well aim for 7,000 more.

And I already have way too many bicycles.

And, anyway, I need to save up for a real snow bike.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Good day for winning

I was slumped over the conference table at the monthly employee meeting, mulling the hierarchy of the day's headlines, when my boss announced to the entire newsroom that I had been chosen for the monthly $50 employee appreciation award. This is like winning employee of the month, but instead of a plaque (and the inevitable magic-marker mustache), I get $50. Huzzah!

Back at my desk and checking my e-mails, I discovered that my Anchorage friends, Eric and Brij, both won the Anchorage Daily News video contest. Eric won the grand prize of a 50" plasma-screen TV, and Brij gets the first-prize video camera. Brij will probably use it to make more movies about slobbering grizzly bears. Eric plans to sell that monster TV to fund a monster mountaineering trip at the end of the month. Thank you to all who took the time to vote. Huzzah!

Somewhere in the midst of all that prize-snatching madness - 3:02 p.m. Mountain Daylight Time, to be more exact - Dave Harris rolled into Grand Junction, Colo., a little less than three days after he left. In those three days, he rode a mountain bike 350 miles over a remote and dusty trail, climbing a total of nearly 50,000 feet in the midst of desert heat and soul-crushing loneliness. The few who attempt the course call it the Grand Loop, and Dave rode it faster than anyone ever has. I'm not clear on how extensive his obliteration of the old record was. It's at least five hours.

"Dave was in the zone feeling no pain," his friend and teammate, Lynda, wrote upon serendipitously running into him on the river at a 3 a.m. bridge crossing. "Steve described him as giddy and jubilant. He only stopped for about 5 minutes and spent most of it stuffing his face. Looks like all systems were working. He was giving off incredible energy!

"... and then he was gone. As we watched him ride off into the moonlight goose bumps stood up on my arms and I was flooded with a mix of awe and envy. I told Steve I had goose bumps and he said he did too. He said we just witnessed something special."

(photo by Mike C.)

Congratulations, Dave. We have a winner.
Monday, June 04, 2007

The Fat Cyclist phenomenon

(and other reasons why I love blogging)

Date: June 3
Mileage: 28.8
June mileage: 50.2
Temperature upon departure: 65

Yesterday my new Fat Cyclist jersey showed up in the mail. Then today, like a stroke of good luck, the sky opened into some oh-so-rare short-sleeves weather. So I donned my stylish new jersey - for good luck - then proceeded to run over a chunk of glass the size of a molar, break one of my brake arms while changing the flat, and forget to release my foot from my clipless pedals at the Glacier Visitor Center - slamming my knee (my bad knee) into the pavement in front of God and a whole lot of tourists. Yes, I did Team Fatty proud.

How this jersey found its way to my doorstep is an interesting story - at least, it’s interesting to me. When I started keeping a blog in November 2005, I was not really a cyclist. I was an occasional recreational rider with a few touring miles behind me, but I was not a cyclist in the pure sense of the word. But as a new resident of Alaska, I had some growing interest in a strange thing called snow biking. Snow biking events don’t start small in Alaska. The entry-level event crosses into a realm most would consider endurance - 100 miles. And I was a lot of things in November 2005, but I was not an enduro-nut.

It was around that time that I first came across Fatty’s blog. His self-depreciating humor and amusingly spot-on dieting misadventures snagged me. Pretty soon I was reading all about his one-day trips around the White Rim and Leadville 100 races. And I got to thinking ... here is a self-proclaimed fat guy who scarfs pounds of mashed potatoes and spends his time writing open letters to the Internet, and he can handle these long rides. Why not me?

Of course it’s not as simple as that. But there are so many ways in which random intersections across the paths of strangers can change our own course. The way my entry into endurance cycling parallels my change in Internet habits is not a coincidence. I didn’t see these possibilities in myself until I watched others stretch their wings.

Now I'm one of hundreds of anonymous cyclists pedaling the world's roads and trails in an orange and black jersey, connected only by one man's blog. It may seem like an arbitrary connection, but if I ever saw another one of those shirts making its way up the road, you can bet I'd stop the person it's attached to. We're on the same team after all.

Fatty has since moved the focus of his blog from cycling/diet guru to avenger of cancer. After his wife, Susan, was diagnosed a couple of months ago, Team Fatty reached out in inspiring ways. Cards, letters and tokens of appreciation rolled in from all over the world, and now Fatty is rolling out a new jersey - pink, to fight Susan's breast cancer. And we who accidentally stumbled across Fatty's small corner of the Internet - the wannabe endurance riders, the mashed-potato lovers, the fat cyclists - have united in support of a stranger.

"People who say the Internet is an ugly place have been hanging around the wrong parts of the Internet," he wrote.

I completely agree.
Sunday, June 03, 2007

I could get used to this

Date: June 1
Mileage: 21.4
June mileage: 21.4
Temperature upon departure: 63

You know, there is definite appeal to the lifestyle of a recreational rider ... heading out once in a while - when the weather's nice - bent on taking it easy, soaking up some sun and splattering a little mud on the cycling clothes that hardly see the outside of the drawer.

Deep down, part of me still wants to play the part of the hammerhead: pounding up mud-slicked slopes in the driving rain in an effort to convince myself - and my reluctant muscles - that somewhere inside this soft body is a person that still has a little grit in her teeth.

But there's another part of me that's glad to just enjoy mountain biking for the luxury it is, in the role of a person who can spend all morning chipping away at 21 miles, touring the entire Mendenhall Valley and guiltlessly embarking on trails that are little more than a mile long.

There are other roles I missed out on when I was a trainin' fool:

The role of a mediocre technical rider who would really, really like to be able to hit hairpin turns. Even though I realized that making this turn would require completely lifting the back wheel off the ground and pivoting it 90 degrees, I still tried it a couple of times - hoping that somehow the laws of physics would change.

The role of a caution-to-the-wind summer rider who can't believe how much &#@$ snow there still is below 1,000 feet, but took a couple of slushy spills trying to bomb through it on the downhill coast.

The role of a sightseer who spends a lot more time on break than is really necessary, and a trail guide who was stopped by and gave lengthy directions to no less than seven tourists.

These recent weekend rides have been vastly different from the ones I left behind - centuries that hugged the darkness on both ends, plowing through five inches of fresh snow and loneliness in a world that knows enough to go inside when it's cold.

And I'm not complaining.
Friday, June 01, 2007

Felt really strong today

Date: May 31
Mileage: 25.3
May mileage: 194.2
Temperature upon departure: 53

Ever had one of those weekend mornings in which you wake up from something approaching nine hours of sleep and think "Holy cow ... I feel like I could re-tile the entire bathroom using only my fingernails and modeling clay, then go for a 100-mile bike ride, and then reupholster my hideous couch, and then have breakfast"?

Today was one of those mornings ... except for, instead of doing all that, I went for a simple 90-minute cruise on my touring bike. I wasn't supposed to ride at all today, so I think it was a fair compromise. Still, 25 miles passed like I was the one standing still. Even in low-impact spin mode, I still managed to average nearly 19 mph in the first nine miles. Slowed down finally when I rounded the island and turned to face the wind. But I never even broke a sweat. Just propped myself up on my Ergon grips (which I love, by the way) and tilted my head toward the sky, soaking up the salt breeze and the twisting tips of spruce trees as they whipped effortlessly by.

It's funny because I'm so out of shape - at least, out of biking shape. I have atrophied quad muscles and a knee that hates to turn circles. But on days like today, everything else dials in so nicely that my body can overlook such simple deficiencies as a near inability to ride a bicycle. And when that happens, I just ride. I ride until something makes me stop riding. And yes, I think I showed notable restraint in cutting myself off at 25 miles.

Still went to the gym and did my stretches and weight-lifting, because today was the day for that.

The night was filled with good friends and the amazing view from the deck and their new home and soaking up the clear evening air and the end of May with grilled portabella mushrooms because, for whatever reason, most of my friends think I'm a vegetarian (I'm not, but I don't complain when the result of this misconception is grilled portabella mushrooms). All in all, a pretty good day.