Routine route

(Yes, I am still posting Grand Canyon pictures. I've been carrying my camera since I returned from the canyon Saturday night, but ... nothing. Yet.)

Date: Sept. 26
Mileage: 25.1
September mileage: 430.6
Temperature upon departure: 46
Rainfall: .31"

"This is how it works ... You're young until you're not ... You love until you don't ... You try until you can't ... You laugh until you cry ... You cry until you laugh ... And everyone must breathe ... Until their dying breath."

- Regina Spektor, "On The Radio"

Today I rode out to North Douglas. Again. My bike computer was not working. It did not matter. I circled the roundabout at mile .5, sucked air up the hill at mile 2.1, passed the now-broken JEBE sign at mile 3.5, coasted by the Eaglecrest cutoff at mile 6.2, rounded the Douglas boat launch at mile 8.9, labored up the last hill at mile 11, and throttled my wet brakes to a squeaky stop at the end of the road, mile 12.55.

After I blew my nose on a devil's club leaf and rubbed the road grit from my eyes, I wondered exactly how many dozens of times I've put that ride together. Many dozens. Dozens and dozens. All the way down to the details ... the tarp teepee that shelters stacks of logs, the fence built 30-feet high completely out of old skis, the apartment building parking lot that is constantly hosting junky garage sales, the boats still trolling the channel, the porcupines still lumbering across the street. There is nothing new, nothing left to explore. I am officially bored.

I have been wondering when this would begin to happen. Wondering when I would begin to lose interest in weaving together the 80 miles of pavement and 25 miles of bikeable trail that is everything I have to work with. Could this be that moment? The last day of my yearlong Juneau honeymoon? Had I hit the dead end - both literally and figuratively? What would life be like from here on out? Cycling without adventure? The existential equivalent of eating tuna noodle casserole for dinner and fruitcake at Christmas? Again?

Bicycling for me is much more than a way to stay fit. It is a way to stay sane. Bicycling helps satiate my often overwhelming wanderlust. It keeps me happy with the desk job and the chore routine and the life cemented in a place where traveling more than 40 miles from home means taking to the air or sea. If I lose interest in North Douglas, the next step is losing interest in Thane. And then the Mendenhall Valley. And then Berners Bay. And then I'll have nowhere left to go.

I turned around to face the headwind and horizontal rain. I passed the waterfall at mile 14.5, crossed Fish Creek at mile 17, skirted the pothole minefield at mile 22, watched one of the last tour buses of the season roll by at mile 24, and made my way home. As I pulled into the driveway, the beads of condensation beneath my jacket had already begun to seep through my shirt, inviting the chill of the morning through my last layer. The heat of hard breathing beat against my nose and cheeks until it broke through the numbness, warming my skin. I could feel the release from hard effort. I let the sensation wash over me, like ice water, calming and exhilarating at the same time.

And I remembered, again, why I keep doing these rides. Nothing is certain; therefore, everything is a surprise.

After the equinox

I am back in Alaska. We are building toward inch 13 of our September rainfall. Temperatures no longer seem to climb above 49. The nights are officially longer than the days, and that can only mean one thing - winter training season!

I have been trying to formulate a plan about how I can get into "the best shape of my life" by February, all while maintaining my income and spotty social life, and hopefully avoid burning out on cycling. I am thinking about treating the next six weeks as a sort of pre-season base builder. I hope to focus on speed workouts - maybe see if I have it in me to go fast on a bike - and weight lifting. Late September and October are good months to do this because they are essentially the worst months to spend out in the weather. So I renewed my gym membership today. I wrestled with the decision to do so for most of the month. It seems like a horrible waste of money given my obvious preference for training outside - even out in the weather. At the same time, I spent all of last winter out in the weather, and paid for it with a long-term overuse injury. This winter, I am going to do some squats.

In November, I'll launch into endurance training ... slowly increase the hours I burn each week until I'm only marginally holding onto my income source and no longer have even a spotty social life. Hopefully by then there will be enough snow on the ground that I can spend more of that time building my spotty snow-riding skills ... even if it means hiking my bike up steep hills and white-knuckling the handlebars all the way down. There aren't a lot of maintained winter trails around here, but there are plenty of slopes. I have a hunch that Pugsley can plow through a lot when gravity is on his side.

I am really looking forward to winter training. It has been a while since I have had a goal, a real goal, to work toward. Goals always seem to make all the random adventures and myriad mishaps and glassy-eyed gym sessions swirl together toward some sort of greater meaning. What that meaning is ... I'm not yet sure. In the beginning, maybe a way to pass the time. In the end, survival.

Soggy Grand Canyon

You know how there are people who, no matter where they go, always seem to bring sunshine with them? Well, I am just like that, except for with rain.

It would seem that every day, a person, not unlike myself, travels to the Arizona desert in September with a tank top, SPF 50, a camelbak full of ice and a fear of heat that only someone who never sees temperatures above 70 can understand. But it is not every day that this person, not unlike myself, is blasted with nearly a half inch of rain (.47" according to weather.com), temperatures in the high 40s and the deep chill that only a person who hikes in a half inch of rain on a regular basis can understand.

This is the story of my trip into the Grand Canyon ... epic by some standards, normal by others. But any way you project it, it is a 24-mile walk through a small slice of some of the most intense country carved into this big Earth. It is life laid bare, a glimpse of blood-red waterfalls cascading down cliffs and a realization that to battle the elements outside is a simple task when compared to the battle with demons within.

I made the Grand walk with my dad and my aunt Jan. It was walk number four for my dad, number three for me, and Jan's first. She had trained all summer, but she was fearful of the scope of it all. And I'll be honest ... I was feeling a little overconfident. I assumed that I could skip across this trail in my sleep, unless the heat took me down. I was not going to let the heat take me down. I packed my arsenal ... my sunscreen, sun glasses, hat, ice, electrolyte tablets, a bag of easily digestible Power Bars. The rain jacket went in almost as an afterthought.

We started on the South Rim and worked our way north. The cloud-streaked sunrise gave way to quick morning heat. By 8 a.m. it had climbed past 80; in the direct sun, it felt like 450. I clinched my fists and geared up mentally, chanting my mantra: "It's only heat. Only heat. Drink, drink and be free."

Ominous storm clouds built over the northern horizon. Dad and Jan were worried about thunderstorms, but rain was not even in my thoughts. I could not imagine a situation of rain in the desert that would be bad enough to bother me. And, anyway, rain in the desert is a few drops and some thunderbooms. Maybe a downpour if you're really unlucky. Either way ... eh.

We hit the Colorado River at 9 a.m. Looking up from the bottom, the Grand Canyon does not seem like the gaping chasm that we gawked at from the top. The Grand Canyon becomes a small place at its heart, swallowing the echoes of the roaring river and pulling inward until I find myself wandering through my own tiny world.

It was shortly after the river crossing that Jan started to struggle. She became nauseated and stopped eating or drinking. After a few miles of this, she felt bad enough to complain. Dad and I plied her with any solution we could think of, but in the end, everyone feels differently about battling the vicious cycle of the bonk. She looked up at the distant rim many thousands of vertical feet above our heads, that unmistakable look of bewilderment splashed across her face. And I felt awful about it, because I remember what it's like the feel that way; the fear is even worse than the pain.

We convinced her to drink some Gatorade, and then stopped for a lingering lunch. After our long rest, she said she felt much better. Still, she didn't eat much. She was digging deep into her energy reserve and we had a long climb ahead. That's about the time the rains came.

A swift wind down the canyon foretold of something ominous, but I really had no idea. We stopped to pull on rain gear just in time to be blasted with the kind of thick, pelting downpour that can only hit the desert. It was like we were blasted with a fire hose, continuously, for about 10 minutes. The dry desert floor rejected the moisture immediately; it came cascading over the cliffs in ketchup-colored waterfalls and covered the trails in deep puddles and wet clay.

I was frightened of the downpour, but when it tapered into a gentle, steady rain, I really perked up. I realized that I was just given my final free pass out of the canyon. This was exactly everything I had trained for ... walking up steep, muddy slopes in the cold rain. Without meaning to, Juneau had prepared me perfectly for the Grand Canyon. I felt like I had nothing left to fear.

Jan continued to struggle, but she soldiered on without muttering a single complaint about the weather, the walk or the rain. I made a couple of stops along the climb to make sure we all stayed together. I paid for it with a chill. Then it became a deep chill, and I knew then my only choice was to keep walking or let my body temperature keep dropping. But I wanted to stay with my group; I had come all this way to spend time with my family.

Watching Jan quietly marvel at the waterfalls, even after she had fallen deep into her hurt phase, was inspiring. It made me want to look inside myself for the reasons I felt joyful: for the yellow aspen trees fluttering in the wind; the patter of rain on the flooded trail; the sudden intensity of the red on wet sandstone; the elevation that turned the canyon into a deep chasm again; my dad and aunt marching up the trail beside me; my mom, aunt and uncle sprinting down the trail to greet us.

And I looked over the edge of the north rim to the fog-shrouded Grand Canyon as though I was seeing it for the first time.