Transformation

Date: Dec. 5
Mileage: 11.7
Hours: 1:15
December mileage: 89.9
Temperature upon departure: 13

I just read Mike Curiak’s blog post about how he got his start in endurance winter cycling. I began to wonder just how I found my way into this sport. I still have a hard time pinpointing the exact moment when I decided, “Hey, riding a bike through the snow for a long time in extreme cold ... that sounds fun!” It shouldn’t be a hard time to remember. It was only two years ago. I blogged the entire thing; I have a record of the whole process right here in the sidebar. But I still can’t make sense of it. It all happened so quickly, and quietly, sometime in November 2005. One day, I was a former Utahn recently transplanted in Alaska with a seldom-used mountain bike, a passing interest in winter sports and absolutely zero racing experience ... endurance, cross-country, Thanksgiving Turkey Trot or otherwise. Then something happened ... maybe a bolt of lightning, or a lucid dream, or maybe just a hiccup in life’s slow creep. But something happened, and I changed. The next day, I was an aspiring ultra-endurance cyclist with little talent but a lot of enthusiasm. Life is strange like that.

Choosing to enter the 2006 Susitna 100 was a huge leap of faith for me. It’s almost comical to think back on my inexperience heading into that race. I had never ridden a bicycle for more than six straight hours, and had no idea if I could last longer than that. I had never spent more than a few hours outside in the winter, and had no idea if I could survive longer than that. I showed up on the worst kind of newb bike for a snow race ... a full-suspension 26’er with studded tires (heavy and nearly useless on packed snow.) Then, when the race finally started, I struggled and dawdled just long enough to become caught in the worst kind of snowbiking weather ... 40 degrees with wind and rain.

I remember stopping at the last checkpoint, 75 miles into the race. I settled in to eat some food and wring out my clothing. I peeled off my top layer, which was soaked, to find my next layer soaked, and my base layer soaked, and, in fact, everything I had with me was soaked ... as soaked as if I had jumped directly into a cold lake. The melting, rain-pocked snow had rendered the trail into an unrideable slop for the likes of my newb bike, and I had to walk beside it for most of the last seven miles into the checkpoint. I had 25 more to go, and no idea if I’d be able to ride any of it. I remember thinking that I’d pay $100, $1,000 to get myself out of that situation. I spent an hour considering it, quite seriously. But then something happened ... a bolt of determination, or a lucid daydream, or maybe just a hiccup in the race’s slow creep. Something happened, and I changed my mind. I slithered back into my sopping wet clothing and set out into the dark and stormy night, on foot. Racing is strange like that.

It took me the better part of nine hours to finish the last 25 miles of that race, almost entirely by hoofing through a deteriorating trail of heavy slush. I walked just fast enough to stave off the creeping wet chill that was scarier than any sensation of cold I have felt before or since. When I finished the race on the slow side of 25 hours, I was supremely disappointed. It took me another year of endurance racing and dedicated cycling to realize that I couldn’t have asked for a greater challenge. I have technically won a race or two since then, but just finishing the 2006 Susitna 100 remains the best performance of my short “career.”

The 2008 Iditarod Invitational is no less of a leap of faith than the Susitna 100 was in 2006. The intense challenge, along with the fear, anxiety and hard lessons it brings, are much of what draws me to the event. Time will tell how it will play out, but I know this: I will take my comically inexperienced body and latest newb bike, and I will wring out everything they have to give. If I slog into McGrath several days after I expected to finish, coughing up the last fumes of my energy and more willing to kill myself than pedal another stroke, I’ll know - eventually - that I couldn’t have asked for a more valuable experience.

This frozen world

Date: Dec. 4
Mileage: 32.6
Hours: 2:45
December mileage: 78.2
Temperature upon departure: 7

"It hurts, it literally hurts me, to go outside," one of my co-workers announced. Journalists are known for hyperbole, but I couldn't help voicing my skepticism. "It's not really that cold," I said. "I mean, when it's 5 degrees in Fairbanks, little kids go out to recess in their T-shirts" (As I said, journalists are known for their hyperbole.)

"Well, it's cold here in Juneau," he said. "Sure," I relpied. " I guess." And with that, I nestled further into my down vest and knit gloves that I was wearing to type at my computer, because, contrary to the "winter junkie" image I try to project, I am one of those employees who is always too cold at the office.

But the reason why I feel I can't go to work wearing less than two layers is probably the same reason why my co-worker can't go outside right now without feeling pain. It's all a matter of perception vs. reality. I perceive the state of being chained to a desk as involuntary down time, and tend to slip into a sort of sleep mode in which I feel compelled to cozy up. And outside, snowless and sunny as it is, there's a perception of warmth and summer when in reality, everything is deeply frozen.

I'm deeply fascinated by all the new ice formations. Anxious as I am for some kind of snowfall, it's fun to see the creases and colors of elaborate ice sculptures in their unmasked state. It's like seeing Juneau locked in suspended animation - a world without winter, frozen. Today I rode out to the Mendenhall Lake area. The wind was mostly gone, which made the air feel leaps and bounds warmer than yesterday, even though it never climbed out of single digits. I can understand how those Fairbanks kids become conditioned to go outside in T-shirts.

Anyone who has ever visited Juneau on a cruise ship will probably get a kick out of this photo: Nugget Falls, frozen solid. With its suspended streams of white ice, the waterfall looks very much like it does in the summer. Only now, it's much more quiet.

My co-worker Brain took this photo of me as I was riding along the Mendenhall Lake shoreline. He often catches me out riding while he trolls the streets and trails for his latest masterpiece of photojournalism, but they never make it to print, so I hope he doesn't mind if I post this picture on my blog. I heard him screaming at me, but I didn't know it was him and couldn't tell what he was saying. I thought he was some jerk telling me to stay off the lake; meanwhile, the shifting icebergs and calving glacier moaned and roared like a deafening pod of humpback whales. "Does that guy think I'm some kind of idiot?" I thought. Instead, he took a picture. I usually don't manage to snap a photo that captures the thrill of riding the lake shoreline, but I think this one comes pretty close.

To the wind chill

Date: Dec. 3
Mileage: 25.1
Hours: 2:15
December mileage: 45.6
Temperature upon departure: 4

Geoff and I set out to sleep in the back yard last night as a way to test out gear neither of us had used before, and bridge the wide gap between normal camping and winter survival. It was 6 degrees outside with 30 mph winds gusting to 50 when we rolled out our bivy sacks on the sharp, frozen grass. I lingered outside in my long johns and sock feet just to soak up some of the wind chill and carefully prep my gear. It seemed like cheating to go straight from the warm house to camping, but it was definitely the smart way to start out.

As I slipped inside my sleeping bag, the effect was instantaneous. Warm air swirled around me as I slithered deeper into the down oven, wrestling with zippers and finally coaxing the bivy shut. The wind ranged and howled and violently jolted my bag, but I couldn’t feel the gusts. It was so comfortable that it wasn’t long before I slipped out of my meager clothing so I could use it as a pillow. After about an hour, Geoff announced that he was sweaty and clausterphobic and didn’t feel like accepting a crappy night of no sleep just so he could confirm that his bag could probably handle temperatures 30 degrees colder. I stayed outside and eventually fell asleep, but not for long. The howls and bangs of the gusting wind woke me up with regularity, shaking my bivy and blasting my face with the sharp, frozen flakes of my own respiration. At one point, I woke up because I was actually sliding sideways across the grass, pushed by a hurricane-force blast like a helpless burrito. At about 4 a.m., I decided that I agreed with Geoff. I didn’t really need to spend any more time awake out there to gain confidence in the toastiness of my sleeping bag, which, at least in temperatures above 0, is absolute. And now I know that if I ever need to hunker down in the wind, the bivy will protect me well, but I might as well not count on getting any sleep.

The wind didn’t let up at all this morning, which I decided was all the better for an extreme biking experience. After yesterday’s hike, completely exposed to the full brunt of windchill at higher elevation, I took a lot of liberties with my layering. I headed out with the strong gusts at my back. I knew there was tailwind back there, but I didn’t feel like it was helping me. I just wasn’t going very fast. I probably just needed to work a little harder to warm up, but I was already working hard enough just to keep gulping down that frigid air and pry my eyelashes open as they continued to freeze shut. After a while, I just tried to minimize blinking.

But with the wind at my back, the ride out North Douglas was eerily calm. The temperature felt much colder at the end of the road. It was 4 degrees when I left the house; it was easily 5 or 10 degrees colder out there. When I turned to face the full force of the wind, which was still blowing at 30 mph and gusting to 50, wind chill temperatures easily reached 25 to 30 degrees below 0. At least, that’s what the NWS wind chill chart would put the "feels like" temperature at. As I gasped my way to a blistering 8 mph into the howling wind tunnel, I believed it. I was happy for the opportunity to work hard.

I was amazed how quickly the normally swift-flowing creeks and waterfalls of Douglas Island had frozen to quiet solidity. White steam poured off the open water of the Lynn Canal. It was fascinating to see my rainforest home transformed into a barren Arctic landscape. It helped put my struggle in perspective. I was moving slower because the world was moving slower. There was congruity in it all, and peace.

I hear a lot of comments about my sanity in regard to the conditions I chose to bike in. But it’s moments like these that make all of the pedaling worth it to me. When I can plunge into the 30-below windchill with a smile on my face, I feel like I can do anything.

Sorry for all of the head shot pictures. You probably can't tell, but in this one, I'm smiling.

On the Arctic blast

This is the point in the hike where I began to feel underdressed, and just a little bit frightened. Several minutes before, I had been standing in the Douglas Ski Bowl, just below treeline at an elevation of about 2,500 feet. I watched in stark wonder as the wind coursing at my back ripped streams of snow off the ridge and carried them hundreds of feet into the deep blue sky.

Just an hour earlier, a weather station at Sheep Mountain - a 4,000-foot peak less than five miles as the crow flies from where I stood - recorded 100 mph winds and a temperature of -8F. Standing among the last protective strand of trees in the Douglas Ski Bowl, I could almost understand what that kind of weather looked and felt like. An eerie howl echoed down the bare slopes and blasted the tops of trees until I was certain a few would tumble. Clouds of gritty, sand-like snow swirled over the top of the ice sheet I was standing on, old snowpack that had frozen to a solid sheen. The obscured sun cast a chocolate-colored glow on the mountainside, and I thought I should take a photograph. But as I removed my mittens to rifle around in my inside pockets for my camera, I could feel my fingers instantly stiffen, as though I had stuck them inside a flash freezer. I quickly pulled the mittens back on. I could not believe the windchill. The scene was more evocative of the moon than a place on Earth, and in that moment you really couldn't have paid me enough money to climb above treeline. Luckily, today I had the luxury of making that choice. So I took one last breath to end my hard climb, pulled my face mask on, and turned around to face the gushing wind.

When I left the house earlier, the thermometer read 12 degrees - down from the 17 it had been first thing in the morning and steadily dropping. But 12 degrees didn't seem too bad, and I dressed to hike hard uphill ... a single leg layer (snowboarding pants), liner socks, wool socks, winter boots, gaters, long-sleeved shirt, midweight polar fleece jacket, Gortex shell, mittens and a hat. The clothing served me well on the climb, but it became apparent fairly quickly that it wasn't enough to block the wind blast on the descent. Needles of icy air punctured my layers and scraped at my skin. I tried to bundle up as much as I could ... closing all my vents and maneuvering clothing around exposed patches of skin. Common sense told me I had a short walk home and I was plenty covered enough to avoid hypothermia, but as soon as the body's comfort level deteriorates, a fear factor sets in. I couldn't help but be afraid. So despite the frosty glare-ice condition of the trail, and despite the impact downhill running has on my knees, I began to jog at a fast clip. Gusts of wind stole the breath right out of my throat, but the jogging worked. I pretty quickly jolted by body temperature back up to a toasty 98.6, and I only slipped and fell once.

That seven-mile hike netted lots of valuable learning experiences. I had to stop and pee three times in two hours because I drank so much water, mostly for fear that my Camelbak hose was going to freeze up. Then, after I pulled on my face mask and ceased the endless sipping, the nozzle froze anyway, despite being wrapped in Neoprene and a plastic cover and stuffed inside my coat. I am still not good at doing things with mittens on, and the temptation to remove them was too strong. It is easy enough to bring fingers back to life after short freezing exposure, but definitely best to avoid it if I can, so I need to look for better ways to layer up my hands. And above all, I need to take windchill very seriously. It is not an arbitrary number on a weather report. Windchill is a very real temperature situation.

As far as camping in this weather ... I am now officially, genuinely frightened. I no longer have that self-assured swagger I carried with me during my ill-fated flat fest last week. I will have to talk to Geoff and see what he thinks about heading out tonight. Maybe there is a certain dignity to starting out in the backyard. Baby steps. And when I do set out into the wilderness to camp in this crap, I will be one humbling hiking experience wiser.

Feels hot out

Date: Dec. 1
Mileage: 20.5
Hours: 1:45
December mileage: 20.5
Temperature upon departure: 22

This seems to happen every time an Arctic blast moves through Juneau. The clouds completely fizzle from the sky. The temperatures drop 20 to 30 degrees. I don't change a thing about the way I dress to go cycling, and I yet feel like I'm frying.

There's just no real substitute for damp chill, try as the dry cold might. As far as layering goes, I'd have to say the amount of clothing I need for for 20 degrees and sunny is more similar to what I'd wear if it were 45 and raining. Who knows what kind of cold 35 degrees and raining mimics? I think it's fair to say it's down in the brrr zone. I've had to strip off layers while I'm riding just to avoid overheating in this cold snap. Then again, during normal weather I always dress as though I'm planning to get drenched, because I always do. But there's just no substitute for the dry cold. I'm loving it.

Today's ride was a little rough around the edges, though. For the first time in a while, I never found my groove. I actually cut the ride five miles short, because I began to feel those familiar sharp knee pangs. This time, the pain was in my left knee, which is my good knee and has never given me problems before (those sharp pangs still flare up in my right knee from time to time.) It's probably nothing, but I've been uber-paranoid about both my knees, since they are my weakest link and the most likely obstacle between me and the starting line of the Ultrasport. There's a chance that this paranoia has me babying my bad knee to the detriment of the good one, and now it's showing symptoms of what my doctor expertly refers to as "angry knee." Whatever the problem, it's a good reason to take a day or two off the bike and wrestle my snowshoes out of the closet. Cross-training: Good. Repetitive motion disorder: Bad.

The weather forecast for Sunday and Monday has me excited in a way only those crazies training for winter survival races can be excited. As the Arctic front moves through, forecasters predict increasing winds in the 30-40 mph range, possibly gusting to 60. Couple this with lows between -2 and 5 degrees, and we're facing 30-below-0 windchills. I'm trying to talk Geoff into camping with me tomorrow night. Because of our equipment and travel disparities, the only way for us to go together is to both walk and carry backpacks. We both agree that camping out in the yard doesn't make much sense, since: 1.) We live in an almost entirely wind-protected area. 2.) Going from a warm house straight to bed doesn't really simulate trail conditions, and 3.) It makes it too easy to give up at the first sign of any discomfort. Plus, it's just not as much fun. We're thinking about climbing up to elevation just above our house, a place where we can face the full brunt of that madness but retreat quickly enough if things start to go badly. I don't come home from work until 10:30 p.m., so we see how well we make that a reality.

Two beautiful days

Date: Nov. 29 and 30
Mileage: 21.2 and 80.4
Hours: 2:15 and 6:15
November mileage: 793
Temperature upon departure: 28 and 25
November rainfall: 3.94"

This is one of those posts in which I tried to decide on a favorite picture, but couldn't do it, so I'm just going to post seven. It was two days of regular rides with spectacular scenery.

On Thursday, I rode the trails out in the Mendenhall Valley. It was a bit of a "recovery" ride. That is, recovery from my failed camping attempt. Despite being really glad to have met Rebecca (who is amazingly nice, I agree, and who has invited me to come visit her again in the near future), I am a little bummed about missing out on the camping experience. The next time I try, (hopefully this weekend) there are likely to be windchills near 25 below, so I will not be able to venture too far from my house (can't pass up a chance to experience temperatures that low when they happen, although it will probably be rather brutal for a first-time try, and I don't want to take any big risks.)

So my trail ride was a recovery ride in the psychological sense. It was everything I needed. The weather was perfect, just perfect, and the trails, though still devoid of snow, were frozen to a hard sheen. Mountain biking does not get better than this in the place where I live. It really doesn't.

I stopped for 20 minutes to just sit on the beach and watch the alpenglow move across the Mendenhall Glacier as the sun set.

Today I had hoped to do a longer ride, but I slept and slept the morning away, and it was 11 a.m. before I got out the door. In a place where darkness descends just after 3 p.m., it was a terrible waste of sunlight. All my good training intentions had me hoping to increase my long rides by 30 minutes to an hour each weekend. But between the temptation to sleep in and my evening plans, I've had a hard time carving out cycling windows longer than six hours. I'm still making encouraging progress, though. The six-hour rides feel easier each week.

Herbert Glacier. This is view I was hoping to wake up to Thursday morning. Instead I was out there near sunset today, making frosty figure-8s on the frozen mudflats. The mountains were bathed in yellow light. So much beauty.

How can I ride my bicycle so much and continue to be so awestruck by the experience? It's a mystery to me, and one I don't plan to solve anytime soon. Sometimes, when I am having a good day, I remember a thought that occurred to me way back in 2001, as I was swimming across a lake in eastern Texas. Geoff and I were criss-crossing the country in my Geo Prism, held by necessity to a budget of less than $100 per week. He was in the woods cooking green beans and cream of mushroom soup for dinner. I hadn't bathed in days and was sitting on the shoreline when a random flash of inspiration convinced me to strip to my skivvies and jump in. The cold water chewed at my capillaries until my skin went numb. But there was something very real in the feeling, and when I looked to the other shoreline, I knew I could make it there. I just knew it, like it had already happened. I swam toward the open water without fear, nearly blind against bright hues of red and gold shimmering on the lake's surface. At one point I rolled over on my back and gasped at the nuclear sunset stretched across the horizon, like a ceiling splattered violently with a million cans of paint. I didn't even have enough money to see a movie, but in that moment, the entire sky belonged only to me. And I thought, right there, that I would never find another moment in my adult life that would make me feel so free.

But I keep re-discovering that moment, everywhere.

I've been really lucky to be a witness to a lot of beauty and goodness in this world, and for that I am grateful, every day.

Flat disaster

Date: Nov. 28
Mileage: 29.1
Hours: 2:30
November mileage: 691.4
Temperature upon departure: 30
Rainfall: 0

Well, I'm back from my camping experience, sans camping experience. I was feeling a bit despondent last night about the way in which I failed, failed before the cold settled in, failed before the darkness tightened its grip, failed before the lonliness gnawed at my sanity, failed before I had to gather water or eat food or even pull my sleeping bag out of its stuff sack. I failed. But it's a pretty funny story. Here's what happened.

I set out into the darkness with the evening rush hour traffic, swaddled in my best cold-weather clothing and hoisting what I estimate to be about 55 pounds of obese bicycle, food, water and winter camping gear. I was styling. A commuter passed me as I was climbing a short hill on the bike path, and then looked back as if to inquire whether I was going to give him chase. Excuse me? You try commuting with the necessities of life.

But the night settled in clear and cold, quickly dropping into the 20s, and I felt amazingly good. Better than good. I felt fresh and strong, like I had to hold myself back just because I didn't know what hardships lay ahead. All that energy conservation left me as relaxed as if I was at home sitting on the couch, and I was toasty and happy, a bit overdressed as I was. It seemed like no time at all had gone by, though it had in reality been about two and a half hours, when I felt that mood-plunging bouncing in my rear tire. Flat.

I pulled off to the side of the road and began to undo my set-up, pulling out the repair gear that I really didn't think I'd have to use. I had never bothered to practice changing a tire on the Pugsley (I know, not smart.) After wrestling with the wheel for about 10 minutes I finally just unbolted the caliper of the rear disc brake. I learned later that I have no choice but to do this anyway (curse you, Surly, and your horizontal dropouts!)

Tire off, I realized that the tube had snapped at the valve, a circular, unfixable hole (probably caused because I inflated the tires to full pressure before I left, after running them 15-20 psi for the past several rides, they were then up to the maximum 30.) So my Surly tube was history. I went to work installing my spare, which is a regular mountain bike tube, rated for tires 2.1"-2.5" (Endomorph tires are size 3.7") But I'd heard this works fine from credible sources. So I set it in place, took out my tiny hand pump, and pumped. And pumped and pumped and pumped and pumped and pumped. Fifteen minutes went by like this. I took breaks to rest my arms. I felt my fingers slowly losing circulation, estimating it was about 20 degrees out by now, and I had been trying to fix a flat with my bare hands for 45 minutes. One car went by in that entire time. They stopped to ask if I needed help. I said no.

So I pumped and pumped and pumped. And progress was being made. I was beginning to feel much more positive. Then everything deflated very quickly, literally. As the gush of air poured out of the valve, I screamed. No! No! No! No! All my hard work, torn asunder. I tore off the tire and squinted at the tube in the low light of my headlamp. A circular tear at the valve. I had managed to do the exact same thing. Two unfixable flats. No more spare tubes. (Geoff and I have probed the valve area extensively. We are still unable to figure out what made that happen twice.)

I began to assess my situation. I had a flat tire I could not fix, which meant I could not ride. But I was only two or three miles from my camping destination, and I could walk there if I needed to. But then I would only be stranding myself into the next day, when Geoff would be at work. I was out in the boonies. I had been out there one hour. I had seen one car go by.

As I mourned my bad luck and stupidity and everything else that left me in the bind I was in, another car went by, and kept going. Not a huge surprise. I don't expect everyone to stop. I got up and began to put my bike back together. I had seen a spattering of cabins along this road, and figured if I walked toward town, I would not have to walk more than five miles before finding someone who would let me use their phone. Just as I was doing this, a car approached me. It was the one that had passed me five minutes earlier. A woman stopped. "Do you need help?" she said. I asked her if she had a cell phone. "There's no reception out here," she said. "But I live a half mile down the road. You can come use my phone. I'll make you some tea."

By the time I arrived at her house, she had already brewed up some wicked good Chai, called Geoff, who was not home, and left a message explaining my predicament and whereabouts. We talked for a while. Her name was Rebecca and she once lived in Fairbanks, and now lived in a cabin with her husband on the outskirts of the Juneau Borough. Her husband was in Anchorage. She had rented a movie to pass the cold night away, "Hairspray," and asked if I wanted to watch it with her. I did.

We laughed and giggled at the silly movie like girlfriends, sipping our tea and making jokes. I found out she once toured cross-country on a bicycle, and she did a fair amount of skiing in Fairbanks, and she told me, before I set out on the Iditarod trail, that I really need to read "To Build A Fire." I also need to learn how to change a flat, I remarked.

Geoff arrived shortly after the movie ended. His timing was perfect. I thanked Rebecca for her unconditional generosity and we set out into the cold night. The night was still not without its casualties. I had torn two tubes, broken the mount to my headlight, lost one of the bolts to my brake caliper, accidentally left my sleeping bag at Rebecca's house, and managed to completely wreck my first winter camping bicycle experience before it even started. But when all was said and done, it wasn't a bad night. I walked out of it laughing. And I will try again. Oh yes, I will try again. And when I do, I will be one flat experience wiser.