Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Lost in the woods

Date: Sept. 12
Mileage: 18.1
September mileage: 292.6
Temperature upon departure: 48
Rainfall: 0"

My attempt to climb Heinzelman Ridge this morning was thwarted in one of the worst ways ... I became hopelessly lost in a bog.

These things always start out with the best intentions - setting out with an ambitious pace aimed at finishing the hike by noon; picking a new trail because it seems more adventurous; and, OK, maybe paying a bit too much attention to my iPod.

Either way, I was not as bewildered as I should have been when the trail I was following, the one that had gradually become more overgrown and congested with deadfall logs, finally petered out. "No big deal," I thought. "I couldn't have lost the real trail too far back." So I retraced my steps until I came to something that looked marginally like a spur trail, and began to move back up the mountain. When that trail petered out, I looked for another, and then another.

I forget that this whole mountain range is crawling with bears. They create plenty of their own trails, huge networks of really convincing trails. But their destination isn't Heinzelman Ridge. Pretty soon, neither was mine.

By the time I decided to hit the abort button, I hadn't seen anything resembling a foot trail in 20 minutes. I was basically just bushwhacking through devil's club and trammeling skunk cabbage at that point, with only a vague idea of which way was north and which was was south. My only real option was to point straight down the mountain, and hope gravity would lead me to the highway. Bushwhacking laterally is one thing, but bushwhacking downward was treacherous. I was falling headlong over roots I couldn't even see and picking up thorns from an assortment of strange plants. The alders became thick in spots and it was all I could do to thrash through, with my jacket pulled on just to keep my arms from being slashed to bits.

By the time I intersected anything I recognized, I was only a few minutes from the highway. I stumbled back to the trailhead, frustrated and determined never to try Heinzelman again without adequate companionship. Even as time-consuming as that mess was, my hike still came up an hour short. I decided to use the window to squeeze in a short bike ride.

Everything at sea level was shrouded in haze, but at least I knew where I was going.

The sun came out, and I felt like a rockstar

Date: Sept. 11
Mileage: 30.5
September mileage: 274.5
Temperature upon departure: 65
Rainfall: .04"

You know what may just be the easiest workout in the world? Anything when it's 65 degrees and sunny.

When there are days on end of solid rain, I never seem to notice the way they add up. The grayness slowly creeps into my head, settles in my lungs and sloshes around in my limbs. Before long, I'm so weighted down in weather that I can scarcely turn pedals without teetering on the edge of unconsciousness; every frustrating attempt at effort only makes me go slower. It occurred to me yesterday that I should probably just give up on this whole fitness dream, as I was obviously becoming more and more of a slug by the mile.

Then the sun comes out, and it's like someone has tipped over the heavy bucket on my back. I can almost feel the weight draining out as I spin into the bright, mundane morning, lungs and limbs renewed. It's not often that my flat-barred, platform-pedalled, fender-adorned, waterbottle-cages-hanging-off-the-fork road bike sees 20 mph on the flat highway. It's even less often that the unlikely pace continues for 15 miles.

If I ever moved to Southern California, I would probably become such a skinny-tire road geek; it feels so amazing to believe I'm moving fast.

But for now I will live in Southeast Alaska; I will count the sunny fall days on one hand, and I will dream of the season when I can finally set out on sluggish slogs through an endless expanse of snow.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Finally ate all of my Susitna food

Date: Sept. 10
Mileage: 34.4
September mileage: 244.0
Temperature upon departure: 58
Rainfall: .43"

Geoff has been out of town for 10 days now, and it shows. The cats, which are used to taking advantage of Geoff's and my opposite schedules to come and go as they please, are no longer on speaking terms with me - their current jailer. Instead of meows, I get cold glares when I come home, even after I pull out the Whisker Lickins.

There also is nobody around to do the grocery shopping. One could argue that I am not incapable of buying my own groceries, but I figure, why should I spend a perfectly bikeable hour pushing a wobbly-wheeled cart around a store when there are perfectly edible calories still sitting around the house? That Costco-sized jar of olives, that bag of lil' hotties chili peppers, that freezer-burned loaf of bread. Are these things not food? The shopping can wait.

I used to make myself big salads for lunch, with fresh tomatoes, mixed greens, red peppers, feta cheese, pecans, bagel chips and ripe plums. I have been reduced to eating peanut butter and jam sandwiches for the past three days, and even now I am down to the dredges of peanut butter. Today I came home from that hardest ride I've done all month ... full speed out to North Douglas, red zone climb to Eaglecrest, into the wind home ... and gobbled up my lunch. That dredge sandwich on stale bread just didn't hold the way I hoped it would.

So I mined the cupboards. I pushed aside Geoff's Power Gel packets, that ancient bag of trail mix and stale corn chips to discover a Hershey's Special Dark chocolate bar stuffed in the darkest corner of the shelf. The wrapper looked like it had been taken for a swim at some point, worn white in the corners and crinkled beyond legibility, but it was chocolate! I tore in.

The thick, waxy block crumbled as I chewed it but didn't dissolve. I choked a little on the chocolate dust and held the bar up to the light. It too had white lines across the surface and was cracked and crumbly. "How old is this thing?" I thought. "Where did it come from?"

I mined my memory for its origins. Shortly before we moved to Juneau, I urged Geoff to stop buying candy on account of my extreme sugar addiction that can't be controlled. He complied, and since then I've been sneaking fruit leathers and spoonfuls of jam to get my sugar fix. I initially assumed this chocolate bar moved up from Homer. But how did it escape me all this time?

Wherever it came from, it was pretty disgusting now. I moved to toss the whole thing in the trash when I suddenly recalled an image of a stack of chocolate bars stuffed deep in the pouch of my bicycle frame bag. All around them I stashed the things that would be consumed shortly ... the peanut butter and jam sandwiches, the fruit leather, the trail mix. But the chocolate was my safety food, only to be eaten in a dire emergency, a life-or-death situation. That's the way it stayed, pressed into the deep freezer of the Susitna Valley in February, slowly crystallizing and hardening as we travelled together around the lollipop loop of the Susitna 100.

That was the time my inner furnace flickered; I remembered the way my teeth chattered as I chewed, putting every ounce of faith I had in fuel, cherishing every precious calorie I was carrying. I thought about the value this chocolate once held and couldn't bring myself to toss it. I took another bite.
Monday, September 10, 2007

Becoming an Alaskan


Date: Sept. 9
Mileage: 15.4
September mileage: 209.6
Temperature upon departure: 56
Rainfall: .23"

I'm coming up on the second anniversary of the day I moved to Alaska. In most states, two years is probably ample time to establish residency. However, Alaska seems to hold its citizens to a much higher standard. It takes time and effort for Outsiders such as myself to wedge into this culture. Bureaucratically speaking, I belong to this state - I have the driver's license, the license plates, the rental lease. But culturally, I still have work to do.

Top 10 reasons why I'm not yet an Alaskan:

10. I don't own a pair of XtraTuf boots or anything made by Carhartt.
9. I don't have a dog named Kenai.
8. I have yet to go "polar bear swimming."
7. I think pink salmon is delicious.
6. I've never received free money from the state, although that Surly Pugsley I bought on "PFD credit" would beg to differ.
5. I've never eaten anything made of ground-up moose or reindeer, and probably never will.
4. I still think a "snowmachine" is a mechanism that ski resorts use to manufacture artificial snow. Those recreational vehicles that blaze nice trails through the powder are called "snowmobiles."
3. I have yet to buy a boat.
2. I don't believe the federal government "owes me."
1. I live in Juneau.
Sunday, September 09, 2007

Always learning

Date: Sept. 8
Mileage: 25.1
September mileage: 194.2
Temperature upon departure: 50
Rainfall: 1.01"

Heavy rain today. I am not complaining about it again. I even went out in it. Nearly every piece of rain gear I own was in the dryer after Sitka, so I wore several layers of cotton. I survived. Biking outside is easy. Living outside is hard.

My last post probably made it sound like I had an overall terrible time in Sitka. I did not. It's always more fun to write about the bad stuff, and I definitely had my fair share of mishaps. I didn't even write about the disproportionate number of traffic run-ins I had. I had heard somewhere that Sitka is trying to receive a "Bicycle Friendly Community" designation. Apparently, nobody has told the good citizens of Sitka that news, because in my short time there I heard more people lay on their horns, experienced more near-sideswipes, and had more things thrown at me in two days than I have in a year in Juneau. But, I concur. Sitka also has cold-water surfers, and big waves, and a cool cathedral, and harbor seals, and so many places where, after many minutes of pedaling with my head down and squinting against the rain, I could look up to tiny islands silhouetted against a sun spot and think, "wow, is that real?" Would I go back? I would most definitely go back. Maybe next time I will reserve a room at the Super 8.

My hardship this weekend was the fact that I was wet, and everything I had with me was wet, and with temperatures hovering around 50, my only options for staying warm was to stay on the move or stay huddled in my sleeping bag. I logged over 100 mountain bike miles in a 48-hour period. I also read an entire book. I really didn't do much else, although I would have liked to. But I felt a bit trapped by my situation ... always lingering on the edge of being too cold, sometimes I could only stop long enough to unwrap a Clif Bar before shivers set in. So I'd pedal harder, and fly past an overlook, and fly through town, and think "I'd like to stop there" ... but believed it wasn't an option.

I felt demoralized, but I broke through. In the end, it turned out to be a good experience. Although I didn't intend it to be a "training" weekend, those are the kind of situations I need to prepare for if I'm going to attempt to ride on the Iditarod Trail next February ... staying on the move when I don't want to, heading out into unpleasantness when I don't have to, improvising, and doing whatever it takes to stay hydrated and well-fed (I didn't do enough of either in Sitka, and definitely suffered psychologically for it.)

In the end, I think Sitka turned out even better for my early training than the 371-mile weekend was. I'm realizing more that when cycling reaches the level I'm hoping to take it to, the pedaling is the easiest part. Surviving ... that's the challenge.
Saturday, September 08, 2007

Sitka, all silver and gray

Date: Sept. 5-7
Mileage: 104.9
September mileage: 169.1

Wow. What a miserable weekend. I can't believe I signed up for that.

Ok. Ok. It wasn't that bad. It was really only miserable in a comedy-of-errors type of way, and I'm already laughing about it. Sitka is a beautiful place ... beautiful in many of the ways Juneau is beautiful: lined with towering, tree-choked mountains; draped in billowing curtains of satin clouds; glimmers of sunlight perpetually trying to break through. Sitka, like Juneau, is probably the kind of place you need to spend a month or a year exploring to truly appreciate, let it all soak in, all of the moss and mold and endless rainfall, until it becomes a part of you. But in two days, when you are just getting your feet wet and still remember what it's like to be dry, all it does is grow grumpy resentment.

Perhaps, though, Sitka is just not the place to go camping in September. I don't do much camping these days; it is not as pleasent as I remember it being. I walked off the boat with as many belongings as I could carry on my back - likely more than 60 pounds of stuff ... much, much more than I carried for my three-day exursion around the Golden Circle. It teetered and threw off my balance so drastically that it was hard to stay upright on the bike. I knew I wasn't going to lug that pack far, so I set up the tent at a campground about a mile from the ferry terminal ... about eight miles outside of town. I figured it was as good a base camp as any.

The first night, I set out to exploring the roads and town. I found a few nice jeep trails at the other end of the paved road, some cut off from public motorized use, and visited a few lakes with original names ... Blue Lake, Green Lake, Heart Lake, Thimbleberry Lake (Ok, that last one isn't bad.) All the while, the rain came down in bursts and mists, but never truly stopped. I rolled through town right around dinner time. Unfortunantly, I had taken my sweet time on the last few miles, stopping to look for whales and explore a historic area. My body temperature was way down, so stopping in town and sitting for an hour in my wet clothes was not an option. It'll be OK, I thought, I brought food with me. I'll just go back to camp and change into something dry and have a sandwich for dinner.

(The black dots in this photo are all surfers, waiting for the next big wave. I really envied these guys. They looked so warm in their Neoprene wetsuits.)

Upon return to camp, I learned (the hard way) that "bearproof" does not mean "waterproof." The cylindrical canister that I had stored all my food in was filled with three inches of water, a sticky soup of bagel remnants, turkey jerky juice, disintegrated Special K cereal and globs of cream cheese. The only thing I could salvage was a ziplock bag that had not been punctured - six Clif bars and a few fruit snacks. I was after dark, and even through I had my lights with me, I opted not to ride the seven miles back to a grocery store. Since I had no way of keeping my food free from bears and also dry enough to be edible, I didn't see much point. Plus, I had pretty much lost my appetite.

After I tossed all of my food in the bearproof (and probably waterproof) trash can, I opened the rainfly to my tent and learned (the hard way) that it, too, was not waterproof. Four years ago, it was a really good tent. It once stood up to Juneau at its worse, but now it is old and weatherworn, and hardly up to the job. My one mercy was the bivy I had been smart enough to bring, keeping my sleeping gear warm and dry. But all of the changes of clothes I had so painstakingly packed and lugged along with me because I knew I was going to come home wet every night were sitting in puddles of water. As was my backpack, and two of my New Yorker magazines, now all but ruined. I burst out laughing, which I sometimes do when I want to cry about something caused by my own stupidity.

I crawled into my last refuge, my sleeping bag, and listened to rain pound the roof of the tent and drip onto my bivy all night long. I had grand plans for Thursday, but when I woke to more puddles and more pounding on the roof, I could not bring myself to crawl out of my sack. For priding myself as much as I do about being a survivor in the rain, I let it break me pretty quickly. I read and napped until about noon, when I started having a craving for some Clif Bars. I slithered out of my sack, pulled on some wet clothes, sloshed into my wet shoes, and stumbled out into the rain.

Just getting up, getting out and getting a few calories in me did a world of good. I felt ready to conquer Sitka again. So I packed up a delicious assortment of Clif Bars for a late lunch and headed to check out some nearby logging roads that I had seen on a map. They were pretty heavily potholed with deep puddles, rocky and rooty and wicked slippery in spots, but made for pretty good mountain biking. I finally headed into town around dinner time thinking that tonight I really wasn't going to have much of a choice. I took some time to bike slowly through town and check out all the sights, letting my body temperature drop, and finally stopped at a sushi place where I really wanted to eat. But as I was walking my bike along the storefronts, I caught sight of myself in the glass - completely covered in specks of mud from head to toe, with a face that looked like I had just spent the afternoon behind the spinning wheels of a bogged-down truck. I imagined draping my sopping coat across those clean chairs and letting it drip dirty water all over the floor. I couldn't bring myself to it. When I'm by myself, I'm far too self conscious.

But I had to eat. So I stopped at McDonalds. I hate McDonalds. But for some reason, I felt like it was the only place where I wouldn't be scrutinized for looking like I did (although I'm sure I was.) I choked down the grilled chicken sandwich and fries, thinking, "I hate this stuff. I should be eating sushi. I should be doing something more productive than sitting in a McDonalds in the middle of nowhere Alaska and dripping rainwater everywhere." But I was starting to get cold, so I ate faster.

Overnight, the tent really hit a breaking point - but on the bright side, I now have a lot of faith in my bivy sack. I rode a few quick, short spurs around camp this morning before packing up for good and showing up at the ferry terminal nearly two hours early. The boat was already in port and I was hoping they would let me on, which they did. The first thing I did was take a long, hot shower. Then I went down to the cafeteria and ate some really crappy soup, but it was warm. Then I sat back in the lounge and set to finishing that Harry Potter book. My friend Chris once told me that the second best thing about Juneau was the ferry ride there, and the best thing about Juneau was the ferry ride out. And I couldn't help but laugh, and wonder if I'd always feel the same way about Sitka.
Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Sugar and I are going to Sitka

Date: Sept. 4
Mileage: 23.5
September mileage: 64.2
Temperature upon departure: 47
Rainfall: .62"

The weather took a dramatic swing toward crappy today. So dramatic, in fact, that it took a while to really sink in. I climbed to road to Eaglecrest. The climbing was the easy part. The rest of the ride was spent either squinting in the driving rain, being tossed around by crosswinds on a perilously soggy descent, or plowing into headwinds gusting to 40 mph. Listening to all of my coworkers comment about the "crazy" weather later affirmed by fears that the season of crappy riding is about to take hold.

Tomorrow begins my three-day "Labor Day weekend." I wish I had the real weekend. The weather forecast calls for more horrors; Geoff is out of town; my friends are all busy with their traditional jobs. I had no idea what to do with myself. I was feeling lost, drifting. So what did I do? I randomly bought a ticket to ride on the Alaska Marine Highway ... just now ... like 20 minutes ago ... completely compulsive. My ferry heads south tomorrow morning, bound for Sitka. I have never been to Sitka before (well, OK, a plane I was riding on stopped there once.) But I thought, for about $100, I could go see this piece of Alaska that I have never seen before. Why not?

I secured a berth on the boat for myself and my mountain bike. I am packing all of the cold weather rain gear and camping supplies I can stuff into my backpack, and I am going to just go. The weather will not be any better there. If anything, it will be worse. But it will be OK. I'll be in Sitka! No one there knows me, so it won't matter if I stumble into coffee shops dripping stale rain water and reeking of Southeast mud and moss. I will check out all the waterlogged trails I can find, and when the chill finally sets in, I will hole up in my tent and finally get around to reading that new Harry Potter book. It's gonna be sweeeeet.

Have a great weekend ... er ... Wednesday.