Day 30 of rain

Date: Oct. 12
Mileage: 35.4
October mileage: 238.4
Temperature upon departure: 45
Rainfall: .22"

Well, it's official. The last day that Juneau received no precipitation was Sept. 12, making today the anniversary of a solid month of rain, and counting. Thirty days of rain. Straight. Thirty. Days.

In those 30 days, 15.4 inches of rain has fallen on West Juneau. For October, the average monthly precipitation in Seattle is 3.2 inches. It's also 3.2 in Syracuse, New York. Atlanta sees 3.0 inches. In Anchorage, it's 2.0 inches. In Minneapolis, it's 1.5 inches. Salt Lake City has 1.4 inches. Lincoln, Nebraska, has 1.2. San Fransisco only sees 1.1. Denver gets 1.0 inches. Phoenix gets 0.6 and Las Vegas enjoys the light drizzle of 0.2 inches of monthly rain. In Juneau, we get more than 15 inches in a month. Fifteen! Just trying to help keep everything in perspective.

All this rain means the Dredge Lake trails could use a good dredging, but that didn't stop me from heading out that way to weave through the moraine jungle and test my new GPS. I had promised Geoff (the person who cleans out my hubs) that I wouldn't attempt any more BikeSwims. But it's so much fun to launch into swamps that were once trails and frantically spin my way out before my back tire bogs down in the mud. Puddles are pretty much impossible to avoid this time of year anyway. (Well, those quarter-mile-long puddles in the middle of nowhere are probably avoidable. But why must the nagging conscience of bike repairs always hover over my shoulder and try to wreck my fun?)

I spent so much time gazing at the GPS screen that I narrowly avoided more than one head-on collision with a tree. I've never used GPS before - what a cool gadget. Not only can it tell exactly where I am in this big world, but it can draw a perfect line of the path I've followed and show it to me on a map of Southeast Alaska. Then it will tell me how much I've climbed, how fast I've been going, and how far I've come - all pretty close to accurate, based on comparisons with my odometer. All that information from free-falling satellites hundreds of miles over my head. It scares me just a little, and intrigues me at the same time.

Is it just me, or are these Dredge Lake beavers a bit too ambitious?

I was going to ride the Perseverance Trail this afternoon with Geoff, but I came home from the first ride chilled and ravenous and a little more wiped out than 35 miles on the mountain bike used to make me. I definitely have less endurance now than I had in August. At the same time, I noticed that I've become a little stronger. Today I was able to power up some of the rooty technical sections of Dredge Lake that I've never cleared before. Maybe it's true, the classic training mantra: You can have power, or you can have endurance, but you can't have both.

But after a day of trying to make sense of my new Garmin, I think I like Honorio's mantra the best ... "Sometimes is too hard to meet with yourself, even with the best GPS, (a mí me sucede muchas veces)."

South Douglas attempt 2

Date: Oct. 11
Mileage: 14.8
October mileage: 203
Temperature upon departure: 44
Rainfall: .50"

I seem to always pick the absolute wettest times (otherwise known as my weekend mornings) to go out for Pugsley rides. These rides are a barrage of wet from all points in space. The simple fact that it's raining doesn't even register after I've spent a couple of miles on a saturated trail, being bombarded by wet clumps of mud (those 4" tires can kick up some impressively large clumps of mud.) Thoroughly mud-soaked, I then hit the slippery wet rocks of the wet beach and mash my wet pedals up to creek crossing after creek crossing, pedaling up to my ankles, wading up to my knees, sloshing my way through the rising tide. Sometimes I think I should just buy one of those balloon-wheel pedal boats and get it over with.

A pedal boat would have come in handy during today's ride. I'm wise enough now to actually check the tide charts before I go out, but not wise enough to wake up early enough to ride with the 7:30 a.m. low tide. Out the door at 11 a.m., I knew I would probably end up skirting the high tide, scheduled for 1:50. So I decided to go to South Douglas - it's a large beach, I reasoned. Surly it won't be completely inundated, even at high tide.

I'm beginning to learn just how serious these Juneau tides are. They can make the difference between a smooth traverse across a 200-yard-wide gravel beach, or a tight bushwhack through a tangle of alders inches from the water. Today I watched waves gobble up my trail with stunning speed, pushing me closer to the precipitous rock gardens and thick forests that were quickly becoming my only exit route.

But the precariousness of traveling away from civilization as the tide came up didn't become clear until I came to a cliff perched over the channel. The beach below it had become so narrow that my knee brushed against the cold, wet wall as I piloted Pugsley along the lip of the surf. I cycled another half mile down the beach before I finally began to tune into the sarcastic voice of reason ... "You do realize you're going to strand yourself on the wrong side of the island, right? You do remember that the next low tide happens well after dark, don't you?"

By the time I returned to that spot, the thin gravel bar had completely filled in with water. I hoisted Pugsley on my shoulder and stepped into the ocean. I could feel the force of the tide tugging at my ankles as I placed my careful steps, 36-pounds of obese bike cutting into my shoulder blade. The deepest point was up to my shins ... it all happened so amazingly fast ... and I wondered just how high the water was going to rise.

I had to push my bike most of the way back, through a high-line tangle of driftwood and brush and boulders that wasn't rideable even in my wildest Pugsley aspirations. Back to the safety of the trail, I pedaled to Douglas proper and popped out on Sandy Beach. No one was out walking in the driving rain, so I proceeded to ride weaving laps along the half-mile-long strip of sand, back and forth, swerving, tumbling, splashing though the surf and drawing big fat tracks in the sand. I felt like a little kid in a go-cart; at one point I even burst out laughing. I was going absolutely nowhere, and having the best time I'd had all day.

Before I started building up this bike, other Pugsley owners promised me that just riding it would put a smile on my face. Of course I didn't believe them. A bike is a bike, I reasoned. It's not the equipment that makes the ride; it's the places you go with it, the things you see with it. But I'm beginning to change my mind about that. Sometimes it's most fun to just play in the sand.

Anticipating winter

Date: Oct. 10
Mileage: 23.1
October mileage: 188.2
Temperature upon departure: 42
Rainfall: .51"

Before my lung-busting climb and nose-freezing descent of the Eaglecrest road this morning, I noticed several heating oil trucks parked along the North Douglas highway. Homeowners stood outside with gray looks on their faces, watching hundreds of their dollars being pumped away into rusty holding tanks.

This afternoon at work, my boss - who happens to sit in the desk next to mine - decided to set up his full-spectrum therapy light. We’ll both be happily clicking away at our computers until he turns to answer the phone, and suddenly I’m blinded by hundreds of watts of Seasonal-Affective-Disorder-blasting brightness.

Winter is coming. Am I the only one who’s happy about this?

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy the unlimited daylight and marginally warmer temperatures of summer as much as the next person. But winter! Winter with its promise of snow-swept skylines and crisp air and trails frozen to smooth perfection. Winter with its boundaryless bike rides and powder-carving snowboard descents and trail-blazing snowshoe tracks. Winter is coming! How could you be anything be excited?

Of course, winter also is the season of 2 p.m. sunsets and sleet storms and endless days of 35-degrees-and-raining. But summer has mosquitoes and sunburns and seemingly endless days of daylight-induced insomnia. If I had to weigh all of the good and the bad, and was completely honest with myself, there’s a good chance I’d still choose Alaska winters over summers.

I’m beginning to think there might be something wrong with me.

Some people go to sleep at night thinking about tropical shorelines and warm sand and the calm rhythm of the ocean. When I dream, I see frozen expanses of muskeg lined with black spruce that bend and twist like great Gothic sculptures ... an environment just as foreign to me as as a palm tree paradise, and just as quieting. Interior Alaska in the winter.

I look forward to winter. Winter is a time of peace and solitude, of retreat and reflection. At the same time, winter demands constant attention and vigilance. There are times of unexpected hardship that rattle my emotions to their core. Winter forces me to toss introspection aside and focus solely on the necessities of survival. A return to instinct ... something pure.

I crave these cold landscapes and I’m not entirely sure why. Sometimes I wake up from another muskeg dream and I wonder where this obsession comes from. Maybe it’s because there’s meditation in the emptiness. There’s challenge in the extreme. But mostly, there’s beauty in the environment ... places so lonely, you’re certain you must be the first person to ever set foot there; places so quiet, you begin to wonder if maybe the world finally ended, and nobody let you know.

I want this winter to be the best winter yet. I want to travel the Yukon; I want to travel the Tetons; I want to travel the Alaska Range. And if I have to suffer a bunch to make any of it so, all the better ...