Recovering junkaholic

Date: Nov. 7
Mileage: 15.2
November mileage: 157.4
Temperature upon departure: 34
Rainfall: 0.01"

I went to the dentist this morning, a few days after I became convinced that I had a massive cavity threatening to abscess into my jaw. Turns out I have nothing of the sort, but at least now there are a dozen really expensive digital photographs of the insides of my teeth stored in a computer somewhere in the purgatory of Airport Row.

I’m of course relieved by my no-cavity status, but there’s a thin layer of disappointment on the periphery. As the season of giving in approaches, I’ve been harboring this crazy scheme to reduce sugar in my diet. So far, I have struggled to find the motivation to even begin. I was beginning to believe a massive cavity may be just the kick-start I need to motivate toward ultra-clean living. But I need to be honest with myself. I’ve set a lot of goals in the past two years, and none of them have touched my diet. The sugar that remains is going to have to be surgically removed.

Not that I haven’t made an honest effort to cut back. For as much junk food as I eat these days, there was a time when I was absolutely devoted to it, defended it, and would have starved without it. When my friends and I ate dinner on our backpacking trips, I’d smirk as they toiled over their little camp stoves while I munched effortlessly on Snickers bars. Food is food, and energy is energy, I reasoned. I believed I was free. But I’ve changed since then. In my blog description, I define myself as someone who “likes to eat goldfish crackers and Pepsi for breakfast.” This isn’t untrue, but it is, and is becoming more so, a remnant of a past life. For as much as sugar calls to me, the lingering benefits of “healthy” food shout louder.

Geoff and I buy our fresh produce in bulk, Costco style, and even with the lag time of Juneau shipping that cuts longevity in half, we never fail to finish it. Geoff's a vegetarian, so there's not much meat. When I buy cereal, I try to stick to the whole-grain, low sugar types, and Geoff’s job as a cook at a natural foods deli has infused a lot of organic flax-seed hippy food into the mix. I’m a lot happier now than I was when I was a junk food junky, and my energy levels are off the chart compared to then. I attribute much of this to “better diet.”

And yet, my devotion to junk food remains. If sugar cereals show up in the house, I devour them enthusiastically and without regret. There’s a cupboard in the house I can’t go near - stocked full of store-bought cookies and six different kinds of chips and and Pop Tarts and Wheat Thins and granola bars and fruit leathers and trail mix and hot chocolate and ... the list goes on. Every time I open this cupboard, large amounts of simple carbohydrates disappear just like that. The reason this cupboard exists is because a former version of myself converted the once sugar-free Geoff to the church of high fructose corn syrup. Now his grocery choices (and mine) threaten to lure me back to the flock.

It seems a noble but impossible battle. Just tonight, I polished off a dinner of veggie burger on whole-wheat bread, green salad with sliced apples, baby carrots and balsamic vinegar, and a huge bowl of Rocky Road ice cream. I can’t help but wonder if my dentist had the decency to chew me out, if I would have eschewed the ice cream and munched on a banana instead. Probably not.

On the bright side, the dentist appointment got me out of bed in the pre-dawn darkness of 6:45 a.m. That gave me time to ride Pugsley up Perseverance canyon, eat lunch, and complete my lower-body weight routine at the gym. I should make a habit of waking up early. I wonder if that would convince me to go to bed before 1 a.m. Probably not.

Pugsley's first sun ride

Date: Nov. 6
Mileage: 21.9
November mileage: 142.2
Temperature upon departure: 33
Rainfall: 0.0"

A perfect bike ride is a lot like a well-crafted chocolate chip cookie. Alone, the ingredients range from bland to intolerable: Tuesday morning, clear skies, light breeze, several inches of new snow, 33 degrees, early season inexperience, untested iPod mix and some tempered enthusiasm. But throw them all together, mix vigorously and bake in the rare November sun, and you have a bike ride that’s so rich, so sweet and so satisfying that you swear you could consume 100 of the same and never tire.

These rides are so delicious, in fact, that they inevitably stir up guilt from depths of pleasure. You question the wisdom of your line through the buttery snow; you wonder if its seemingly weightless airiness may suddenly turn on you, kick you sideways, send you sliding uncontrollably into a tree. You look up to a stream of snow tearing off mountain peaks in distant wind that hardly touches you; you feel the chill of ice water running down your neck. You ponder the tingling in your toes, and you think, “This can’t possibly be healthy.” And yet you crave more.

Three to four inches of new snow made the climb up Perseverance Trail extra tricky today - it was just enough snow to cover the rocks and roots to the point I couldn’t see them, but not enough to cushion the force of a direct hit. Luckily, Pugsley was more up to the monster trucking task than I ever anticipated, as I was completely consumed with staying ahead of the back wheel as it spun out atop the slippery surface.

Coming down the canyon was a passionate dance with terror and empowerment. My snow-riding skills are rusty, but my enthusiasm is as fresh as the day I first put a wheel to powder. Both are magnified by the sheer unpredictability of powder snow - I can lose control, quickly, sometimes for no discernable reason. My victories today gave way to horror, which in turn fed further victories. But after carving frantic cursive in the singletrack, skirting the steep edge of oblivion and swerving back to safety, my lingering impression told me I could do no wrong.

The final mile of descent, atop frozen gravel infused with soft patches of snow, was the most otherworldly experience of all. Sharp fragments of sunlight filtered through the trees; their bare branches were coated in snow, completely black and white except for yellow slashes of light. My iPod that had been playing really mellow Neko Case for the past half hour switched over the Jimmy Eat World’s latest. In a bombardment of amped-up rock, my speed increased to 25, 30 mph. The cold air tore at my face and tears filled my eyes as the wintry world blurred by. It reminded me of the time I rode the Slingshot - an amusement park ride that straps people in a large circular cage, pulls back on a fixed line and catapults them into the air. In the G-force rush, there is no up and down, no ground and sky, no real and imagined. There is only shadow and light, spinning and spinning to the end of the universe.

I rode to Salmon Creek afterward just to extend the fun, but by then my ride had consumed more than three hours, and it was time to go to work. These perfect rides are hard to come down from, and like a person sinking into the aftermath of a cookie binge, I feel a tinge of regret. Not because I overindulged, but because I was forced to stop.

My new frame bag

This just arrived in the mail today, a new frame bag custom-made by my friend Eric in Anchorage. The picture's not great because I just slapped the bag on the bike during my dinner break, pump mount and all. But it seems to form-fit Pugsley like a fine glove, matching gray colors to boot, and it's so sleek and shiny. It's my first-ever custom-made piece of outdoor gear. I feel like I'm moving up in the world.

Eric's an engineer by occupation, and he's created these frame bag designs that have a lot of clever and innovative features - an internal mesh pocket, removable dividers that allow different compartments and also reinforce the already-obvious bombproofness of the bag. The top edge tapers out to allow maximum space without compromising your leg clearance. There's reflective strips on the webbing, heavy-duty zippers ... I keep discovering new stuff. It's a baffling concept to me ... to tell somebody, long-distance, "Uh, yeah, I'd like a frame bag for my, um, let's see, it's a 16-inch Pugsley," and have them return with something so idealistically perfect. What those engineers can't do.

Frame bags themselves are a cool concept ... it's all part of the dream of carrying all of your survival gear on your bike, but keeping it off your back and off the back rack. They're very popular in Alaska winter endurance races, where equal weight distribution is crucial to maximizing your snow floatation, and a lot of time hopping on and off the bike means any bulk on the back is going to demand a fair amount of wasted energy while constantly swinging one's legs over it. I estimate my frame bag can hold somewhere between 350 and 400 cubic inches of heavy gear, all in the bike's triangle. Seems a whole lot more efficient than a water-bottle holder and a bike pump mount.

Eric is currently making these for anybody who's interested ... "Handmade bombproof in Alaska, Full suspension bikes, cruisers, funky geometry, whatever you want!" Here's his MTBR Classified ad. Or e-mail him at stampeeding_wilderbeast at yahoo dot com.