Riding corduroy

Date: Jan. 8
Mileage: 30.8
January mileage: 172.8
Hours: 3:00
Temperature upon departure: 33
Precipitation: 0"

We make our own gravity to give weight to things.
Then things fall and they break and gravity sings.
We can only hold so much is what I figure.
Try and keep our eye on the big picture,
Picture just keeps getting bigger.
- Ani Difranco, "Hour Follows Hour"

Juneau has a city-owned ski area that shuts down early in the week. Monday morning is a good time to chug up the mostly deserted access road, look for fresh snowmobile tracks and exhale some anxiety into the cold mountain air. All the snowmobile trails I tried today were a bust, with light use and even lighter snow. I paused by the Nordic ski area for a minute to look wistfully at the freshly groomed paths. I wouldn’t dream of touching that area with my bicycle, not even on an off day, lest I reap the wrath of the Nordics and their exclusive rights. (Never mind that I would have a much lighter trail impact on my bicycle than I would on skis, what with my flailing falls and notch-digging side steps down the tiniest of hills. I’m a terrible skier.)

I was just about to turn around when I noticed a pair of snowboarders crawling (yes, literally crawling) up the mountain using their boards as ice axes. Finding my own way up the mountain seemed like a fun challenge. I pedaled past the resort building and began to work my way up the cat track. I followed the signs marked with green circles as my best hope for a shallow incline, and spun with fury until my back wheel refused to move. (I will continue to hope that someday Surly decides to make an Endomorph tire with more aggressive tread. Although knobby tires don’t improve - and may actually hurt - traction in cross-country snow biking, I’m convinced they would make all the difference in mountain snow biking.) The ski runs rippled with corduroy, a fresh grooming job disturbed only by a single set of wheels and feet. I spun madly where I could ride and trudged where I couldn’t, slowly picking my way up the slopes.

Somewhere near the top of the mountain, where all the runs were labeled “more difficult,” I hit a slope I could no longer negotiate and began to slide backward. I whirled around and dug my heels into the snow, grasping the frame of my overturned bike that threatened to keep sliding. Beneath my feet, I had a great view of several tributary runs snaking down the mountain, the confluence ending in a lift now hundreds of feet below. I shivered with the realization about how steep it all looked, how I had somehow stranded myself up here with only wheels to get down, and how this somehow looked very familiar. And then I remembered why.

I actually remember it very well: The first time I went snowboarding at a resort. I even remember the date: Oct. 28, 1996. Some friends and I ditched school to catch the opening day of Park City Ski Resort, the first day of first season the resort had ever allowed snowboarding. We felt like we were ushering in history. Never mind that I didn’t actually know how to snowboard. My friends did. They promised to teach me. They directed me toward a lift that carried us up to the highest point on the mountain. They shouted at me to follow them as they coasted down the ramp. I took a face plant right off the lift, and when I stood up again, I was alone.

I slid and tumbled and scooted my way to what appeared to be the edge of a cliff. Only a single black diamond sign on a nearby tree indicated that it was intended to be any sort of human path at all. I peered over the edge, where more than a thousand vertical feet disappeared below me. I remember feeling a piercing dread, so intense that it made me feel faint with heat even as snowflakes swirled around. I didn’t think it was possible to survive such an descent, but I had to try. So I stood up, dug my back edge into the snow, and scooted, hopped and scooted down the cliffside. As I became more comfortable with that action, I began to zigzag from side to side, slowly picking up speed and a sense of exhilaration as I pressed toward the safety of low elevation. It certainly didn’t work out perfectly. I fell. A lot. And it hurt. A lot. I couldn’t sit down for three solid days after that fateful first time. But I made it. And in the end, I decided, I had always known that things would turn out OK.

My bicycle broke into a dead run before I had even swung my leg over the top tube. The wheels swerved wildly and I thought I’d never pull out of it, but somehow the tires gripped into the snow and began to roll in a (mostly) straight line toward the green-circle haven. From there, it was just me and my wheels, cutting a thick line in the windswept corduroy as a cloud of fine powder kicked up behind. Plummeting toward the lift, I felt a familiar sense of fear-stoked peace that reminded me that there are many routes, but only one destination, when it comes to bliss.

And I still believe that somehow, things are going to turn out OK.

Anxiety

Date: Jan. 8
Mileage: 12.1
January mileage: 142.0
Temperature upon departure: 30
Precipitation: 0"

I was worried this feeling would begin to set in, after the New Year came and went and February crept ever closer - a fluttering anxiety punctuated by increasingly more frequent shots of dread. My once-abstract fears are developing a voice. And that voice says, “Dang ... you’re really going through with this, aren’t you?”

As Geoff and I work out more of the little details associated with the Iditarod Trail Invitational, our focus is beginning to zoom out on the big picture. And the big picture is, well, very, very big. I miss the days when I could just think solely about the physical prospect of riding 350 miles on snow. Or the psychological prospect of pushing a bike through fresh powder, in the darkness, in a blizzard. Or the physiological prospect of staying warm over a whole lot of subzero hours. Or the educational prospect of route-finding in a wilderness I’ve never before set foot in. Or the intellectual prospect of planning the exact food I’ll need to eat and the exact clothing I’ll need to wear without missing a beat. Now I’m beginning to think about all these things, all the time. I believe Geoff is beginning to feel overwhelmed as well. After we came home from camping on Saturday, he plopped down on the couch and said, “You know, when you really think about it, the Ultrasport is really scary, and basically impossible.”

I get the feeling that during the next six weeks, my mind is going to be all over the place - I mean more so than usual - as I meander through the remaining details while trying not to drown in the big picture. This anxiety seems to be both a good and bad thing. Yesterday, while I was down with a cold, I became consumed with fears about getting lost. So I spent my free time learning what I could about my GPS, looking at maps, mulling electronic maps, and finally ordering one. It became a productive "rest" day. Today I felt better, so I set out for a Dan Moller Trail hike-a-bike. The point of this workout is to build up my “pushing” muscles on the 2,000-foot climb and improve my “handling” skills on the screaming descent. The downhill is usually a reward after what is essentially a tedious hike. But I somehow failed to leech much enjoyment in today’s bumpy ride, lost as I was in the landscape of my mind. Even now, I try to remember this morning and only see images of Rainy Pass the way I envision it: ice-hardened, windswept and devoid of any discernable trail.

I keep telling myself that I’d probably be crazy if I wasn’t afraid, and that I’m going to conquer this race by doing the same thing I’ve been doing all along: Taking it mile by mile by mile, one baby step at a time. But I'm beginning to realize that the first step may be the hardest.

Living outside

Date: Jan. 4
Mileage: 54.2
January mileage: 129.9
Temperature upon departure: 24
Precipitation: 0"

I was burrowed deep in my billowing down cocoon when I awoke, again, in a fit of gasping. I groped among piles of discarded clothing layers for my soggy snot rag and blew my nose until the pressure in my sinuses diffused to a low boil. I shook my head violently, hoping in vain the gunk could somehow exit through my ears. Frost flakes rained from the top of the bivy and stung my cheeks. I knew this head cold had been idling for two days, but it had to pick tonight to steamroll through. I gasped some more and tore open the bivy, gulping for oxygen in the cold air.

Above me, Mars still burned orange among a splattering of stars, but a hazy white gauze had stretched over the sky. "Oh man, it's clouding up," I thought. It was the third time that night I had woken up unable to breathe. I decided it was probably worth it to leave my toasty burrow on a faint hope that Dayquil pills had made it into my rapidly expanding portable pharmacy.

As I slithered out of the sleeping bag, I noticed the white lines across the sky were flexing and retreating with considerable velocity. "Strange thing for clouds to do," I thought. But as I stood up and looked around, I saw waves of bright green light flowing over the snowcapped peaks to the north. The white clouds weren't clouds at all, but south-reaching streaks of the Northern Lights. Having momentarily forgotten about the explosion building in my head, I stood in my sock feet and booties in the snow and watched the white flares streak across the sky. Even the frigid wind needling my naked fingers couldn't tear me away from my slack-jawed stance beneath those horizon-caressing fingers of light.

I had set out with my loaded bicycle at 2:30 p.m. Friday, just before sunset, knowing that I would probably not set foot indoors again for nearly 24 hours. The street shoulders were coated in a terrifying layer of glare ice, and I kept the tire pressure low just to regain some sense of control. My momentum slowed to a crawl, but I didn't care. It's strange how speed stops mattering once time has no meaning.

A few near wipeouts had me grateful to hit snow, even crusty snow, and I spent as much time on trails as I could before heading out the road to meet Geoff at our predesignated camping destination. The trail to Herbert Glacier was rideable in a bad way ... a deep ski track barely wider than my tires that had been punched out by footprints. I took a few arm-smashing falls before I decided those four miles to camp would be a good time to test the walking comfort of my boots. I slogged through knee-deep snow as my bike rolled happily on the trail alongside.

I still beat Geoff to camp and set to gathering wood for the great fire I was planning to build, knowing that all the exposed dead wood had soaked up several days of rain before refreezing. I then exhausted all the newspaper I brought for firebuilding purposes, plus all the notepaper I had planned to write on, plus the French and German sections of the directions to my stove, and never even coaxed a tiny twig to catch fire. Geoff arrived shortly after I had given up and exhausted his own paper supply in the effort. In the end, we resorted to pouring liquid fuel all over a bunch of spruce bows. Even that didn't work, but I did enjoy a split second of warmth when I lit the fuel-soaked needles and jumped away from the resulting fireball.

We finally gave up on the whole campfire idea and fired up the stove to melt snow for water and hot chocolate. I have yet to receive my new Camelback in the mail, and my old leaky one had long since frozen. I didn't realize how thirsty I had become until I gulped down the still-slushy water from my cooking pot like a famished refugee. A chill was starting to set in as Geoff and I stood by our non-flammable stack of twigs swigging hot chocolate. His thermometer read 10 degrees.

By the time we went to bed, I had been mostly idle at camp for more than three hours. I was pleased by how warm I stayed, given that I was dressed to ride a bicycle in temperatures that started out in the mid-2os. It wasn't until I laid down that I realized how much my cold had progressed. I whittled away most of the restless night consoling myself by chanting "At least I'm still warm. At least I'm still warm." But seeing the Northern Lights was a nice treat.

I spent 45 minutes this morning cuddling with my Camelbak bladder until I finally was able to coax some of the water through the ice-glazed hose. Even then, it froze on me again less than five minutes after I crawled out of bed, so I resorted to pouring its slushy contents into my cooking pot so I'd have something to drink. I had planned to ride all the way home, but my throat was on fire and I was feeling more than a little thrashed. Geoff and I stumbled back to the trailhead and I caught a ride home with him. Geoff told me he felt surprisingly tired after a mild 4.5-mile run. "That's the thing about winter camping," I said. "Keeping warm when you're inactive almost feels like more work than staying active." Even though we didn't struggle with the effort, we never really felt like we could just kick back and relax, either. And the fact is 10 degrees above 0 would be a warm night on the Iditarod Trail.

"All the better reason to keep moving," Geoff said.

Packing

Date: Jan. 3
Mileage: 25.1
Hours: 2:00 (plus two hours at the gym)
January mileage: 75.7
Temperature upon departure: 35
Precipitation: .33"

I've been packing up for another daylong cycling/camping adventure. Before I started having knee pain, my plan was to spend these first few days of January pressing into the Yukon for two nights of "out in the weather" living. But injury worries prompted me to postpone the trip. So instead I decided to head out locally for one night, and still managed to put that task off until Friday. Tomorrow should be a good day for it. Colder and dry. Weather in the 20s around here is actually warmer than most weather in the 30s, because the potential to get wet and stay wet is much lower. So I am looking forward to traveling in comfort.

Sometime soon I will have to write a gear post about the stuff I am planning (at that point, at least) to use in the Ultrasport. I got a big box of stuff earlier this week and today ordered what I hope will be my last box of stuff. Just a few odds and ends ... a Thermarest, to match the one that Geoff owns that I always use; a fuel bottle; a 6-liter MSR bladder to fill as I see fit; a Camelbak "stowaway" bladder that I hope will actually stow away water rather than leak it all over me; and goggles, because the $25 pair that I bought at Solitude ski resort in 1998 just aren't cutting it anymore.

My last big box came while my friends Craig and Amity were in town for the New Year holiday. They watched bemused as I ripped through the heavily taped cardboard like a 6-year-old on Christmas morning. I squealed over my new winter boots ("Waterproof! Coldproof!") and modeled my baby-blue polyester long underwear complete with baby blue balaclava and my old crappy goggles ("You look like a scuba diver.") Craig especially thought the whole scene was funny because he has known me since 1998 and remembers when my entire outdoor gear repertoire amounted to a pair of crappy ski goggles and a few cotton hoodies.

"You've come a long way since we hiked Upper Black Box," he said. "Ice water up to our chins, and you were wearing blue jeans and a pair of Vans."

"Sketchers," I corrected him. "But that was back when they made them with 3-inch soles. Also, the only pack I carried was the top of my overnight backpack, cinched around my waist. And the only food I had was a jar of peanut butter and a baggie of crackers, both of which were filled to the brim with San Rafael River water before mile 3."

"Yeah," he said, eyeing my Arctic expedition boots warily. "What in the world happened to you?"

I shrugged. "Oh, to be young and completely underprepared again," I said, and caressed my new down coat with the genuine appreciation of someone who knows what it means to slog through a 12-hour river hike with a pair of Sketchers and giardia-laced peanut butter.

Today's ride was fairly uneventful, but I saw my friends the sea lions again. I was disappointed to see that they probably didn't remember me as they bobbed and flapped and swam away.

First rides

Date: Jan. 1 and 2
Mileage: 14.5 and 36.1
Hours: 2:00 and 4:30
January mileage: 50.6
Temperature upon departure: 30 and 34
Precipitation: 1.03"

As I roll over the frozen Mendenhall Lake in a sleetstorm, the surface and the sky blur together in a wash of light gray. The lake blends into hillsides, which blend into mountains, which blend into air without borders or distinction. The world is a blank canvas broken only by brilliant blue brushstrokes at the center of the monotony. The color draws me forward like a distant light on a dark night, even as my conscience nags me to heed wise warnings and turn back. The warnings tell me not to go near the glacier, with its electric blue spires threatening to peel off the mountain of ice and tumble into the water below ... the threat of a spectacular death by ice-shard tsunami. The unlikeliness that such an event would happen keeps me rolling forward, but my heart rate shoots up and sweat beads form on my face in anticipation of that enjoyable fear - the fear of something that probably won't happen, but it could.

But in the true form of someone who's always willing to assume the worst-case scenario, I stopped about 200 feet shy of the last solid ice before the glacier's face, took a few quick photos, and high-tailed back to terra firma. But it's so irresistible, sidling up next to a glacier. It's hard to appreciate the scale until the glacier's right there, towering over me like the skyline of a city, with alleyways so deeply blue, I'm convinced they stretch beyond the bowels of the glacier into another dimension.

I was actually going to take a full week off the bike, but I became a little bored on New Year's morning while waiting for my friends to roll out of bed (we had a couple of friends visiting us from Palmer over the weekend. We love them, but they are in their own way unapologetically lazy when they're on vacation. I've never see anyone sleep so much in three days.) Anyway, I took out the Pugsley and was encouraged to find it didn't hurt to pedal. And after two hours, it still didn't hurt. Nor was there any residual pain after that. It seems I was taking a bit of an alarmist stance with my knee. Better to be safe and overcareful than reckless and injured, but I decided it wouldn't hurt to go out for a little bit longer today.

Because of my "injury watch," I allowed myself to do something I never do - I put my bike in my car and drove it to a trailhead. It was wonderful to spend the afternoon almost entirely on trails, but the lack of pavement commute to the Valley actually made for a much harder ride overall. The weather today was a fluctuating mixture of snow and rain that people around here call "snain." Trails started out wet and soft and gradually deteriorated to saturated and soupy. I've had a light week and brought a lot of energy to spend on the effort, but still I felt like I was slogging through quicksand. Only because I have a fat-bottomed Pugsley that I can run at <10 psi was I able to ride much of that trail at all. I have this theory that once I finally find my way to the cold snow of Southcentral Alaska, my Southeast-forged quads of steel will be so strong that I'll just be able to fly over the snowy trail as though it were pavement. Either that, or the cold will drive me into the ground. But if there just happens to be an extreme, snain-soaked warm spell during this year's race, I'll be ready.

This is turning into a longish post, but I wanted to thank Andrea Recht for nominating my site as a VeloNews "Site of the Day." That is really too cool! I couldn't believe the number on my hits counter. I think this blog received more hits today than it did in all of 2005. It won't be the Site of the Day anymore by the time this post goes out, but if you dropped in from VeloNews, hello. There are probably a lot of things in the cycling world that are more interesting than a soggy snowbiker in Southeast Alaska, but I appreciate you stopping by.

Also thanks to Laura Conaway for the mention in the Bryant Park Project blog's "Best of the Blog 2007." I came in a little late in the year, and only post about once a week, but it's nice to feel appreciated.

And, I wasn't going to mention this, but ... Oh, who am I kidding? Of course I was going to mention this. Nominations have started for the 2008 Bloggies. Last year, this blog actually was nominated for a Weblog award in what I thought was the unlikely category of "Best Sports Blog." But it was cool nonetheless, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't secretly hope it would happen again. Ok, I guess it's not much of a secret. But, if you feel like wasting a few more seconds, you should drop by the site and nominate someone for something. It doesn't have to me. We bloggers, all of us, pour a lot of time into our pastimes and relish in feedback. It's true. Even though most bloggers fling their heart and souls into cyberspace for entirely selfish reasons (the same reasons others watch TV), we still like to tell ourselves we're doing something worthwhile.

So thanks to everyone who reads and stops by this blog. I don't have a good exuse to quit writing as long as you're around.

Happy New Year

This is one of my favorite photos I took in 2007 ... serendipitously captured while I was wandering lost in the woods below Heinzleman Ridge in September. I like the way the beams of light slice through some shadows and slip behind others. I like the intense illumination on that single bush in the center. And I like the context ... the first streaks of sunlight to cut through the fog. Everything below here was shrouded in a thick cloud. Everything above was glaring and clear. But for these few steps in my meandering search for a trail, the two worlds collided, perfectly.

New Year's is a good time to write a reflective year-in-review blog post. Here's mine.

January: The holidays. January became consumed by my training for the Susitna 100. It was a fun month because nearly everything I did had some connection to cycling. I spent my mornings plowing through snow drifts and skirting icy roads. I wandered into work with wind-burnt skin and more times than not, a huge smile spread across my face. Then I would spend the rest of the day stealing moments to research gear and plot different rides and type up reports. It's amazing I managed to keep my job.

February: The race. Everything about February centered around the Susitna 100, which took place on Feb. 18. The first half of the month involved more preparations than training as Geoff and I tried to gather up required gear, tweak my bicycle and his sled, and somehow pack it all in boxes that we could take on a plane with us to Anchorage. But all that stress seemed to melt away when I set my bicycle on the frozen ground and began to pedal into an expanse of snow. I love that place, that Susitna valley. Even after those 100 miles left me with little more than an injury that stole three months of the year, I wouldn't take it back.

March: The knee debacle. That knee injury I sustained during the Susitna 100 followed me into the next month, when it became apparent that I was probably in for a long recovery. I remained defiant during the first few weeks, and continued trying to ride my bicycle through sometimes blinding pain and Juneau's snowiest month on record. Nearly 100 inches dumped in my backyard over the course of the month, a beautiful barrage that I hardly took the time to appreciate. But I remember it now.

April: The waiting. April was a quiet month; I might even say the cruelest month. By then I was fairly entrenched in a routine of physical therapy, doctor visits and mundane gym workouts. Meanwhile, I didn't feel like I was making any progress. Instead, I felt like I was cycling through an loop that offered neither hope nor relief. I remember traveling to Anchorage for work and visiting old friends from Homer. As we sat around a table at the Glacier Brewhouse, I began to wonder if my whole Juneau existence had perhaps just been a bad dream.

May: The desert. It was an ideal reunion - friends who went to college together and dispersed to far-away lands such as Alaska, Ann Arbor and northern Idaho, reunited in the remote Utah desert for a week of biking, backpacking and general debauchery. While setting up camp in a dry wash deep in a canyon on the southern edge of the state, we came across black bear tracks. So we followed them up a side canyon, tracing the path of the unlikely desert dweller until the walls of the canyon cut us off. At the end, I think we all had a better sense of the way life's mysteries interconnect.

June: The comeback. At the first hint of feeling stronger, I went on a bit of a cycling bender. And after a substantial stretch without it, I felt like a recently-reformed crack addict who suddenly discovered heroin. Even as toned down as my fitness was at that point, every mile I pedalled seemed effortless, from my first summer century to riding 12 hours of the 24 Hours of Light in Whitehorse, Yukon. Unless I'm forced to abstain from cycling for three months, I'll probably never again experience that inexhaustible feeling.

July: The summer. A friend came to visit us from Washington, D.C., and had the amazing fortune to experience a four-day stretch of consecutively sunny weather in Juneau. One Friday night, we were sitting on the beach in our T-shirts, roasting salmon and watching a brilliant sunset linger over the horizon. "Is it always like this here?" she asked. "Not even remotely," I replied, "but when it is, it could make you forget a month of grayness."

August: The distance. I set out to test my endurance by touring the "Golden Circle," a series of roads that connects the sister communities of Haines and Skagway in the most roundabout way possible - by stretching across a mountain range and meandering through interior Yukon for 371 miles before returning to Southeast Alaska. I experienced a startling range of highs and lows in that often brutally hot, aggressively hilly 48-hour whirlwind tour. I also gained more confidence that I can handle the distance when I need to.

September: The mountains. I took another subtle hiatus from cycling to prepare to walk across the Grand Canyon in late September. I spent the month stomping up and down all the major trails around Juneau, bulking up my quads and gaining a better sense of the sweeping geography that towers over the place where I live. The Southeast Alaska tundra above 2,500 feet has become one of my favorite places to visit ... windswept and barren and nothing like the light-smothering rainforest below it.

October: The rain. Nearly 16 inches of steady rainfall, drenching all but one of October's 31 days, pretty much defined this month. Fall in Juneau can be downright dreary, and I burned it up by embarking on a month of "speed work." I emerged with prune-like fingers, a runny nose, and a better understanding that as long as I live in this waterlogged place, I will probably never be "fast," but I will always be "tough."

November: The decision. I actually struggled for a while with the question about whether I really wanted to spend the winter training for a race like the Iditarod Trail Invitational. Although I have been eyeing this event since 2006, I had no idea if I was actually ready, and still don't. But in deciding to enter the race, I gave myself a free pass for a near-daily adventure.

December: The beginning. Back to the holidays, the training, the uncertainty. I don't know where I'm going. But at least I know where I've been.

Walkin

There's something underrated, and yet subtly satisfying, about putting on a pair of shoes, stepping out the front door, and going for a walk. There seems to be an cultural perception that it is difficult to have a good time outdoors without strapping oneself to some sort of toy. I definitely buy into this idea, what with my penchant for dragging and hoisting my bicycle over every near-unrideable trail I can find. The temptation to bring a toy on my walk today was nearly overwhelming. "I can bring my bicycle," I thought, "and only ride it downhill." But even downhill snowbiking involves a fair amount of pedaling, and I am trying to cut back on the deep bending of my left knee for the time being. Then, I thought about carrying my snowboard. But if cycling is bad for my knee right now, then snowboarding most definitely is. So, almost grudgingly, I strapped on my snowshoes (which could be considered a toy, but I like to think of them as a "walking aid"). I walked out the door and marched up the unplowed surface of Fairbanks Street, waving at children as their plastic sleds whisked past me.

The reason I can walk through my various knee injuries is because my pain is caused not by impact, but by bending the joint further than 90 degrees - achieving that ever-elusive acute angle that pedaling demands. The impact of running can be too much to bear, but walking I can do forever. I make it an honest workout by pushing as hard as I can uphill. Today I had stripped down to my base layer and snowboarding pants - no hat or gloves - by the time I reached the Douglas Ski Bowl. From there, I commenced my ongoing quest to find a walkable route to the ridge - and by walkable I mean a route where I can keep my snowshoes on my feet rather than removing them to kick steps up the steep slope. I follow snowmobile high-marking tracks because I feel that if they can make it up a mountain, so can I ... but that's really not the case. During my final attempt - while I was still sans hat and gloves - I lost my footing and began to slide, on my belly, backward down the slope. I decided mid-slide that this was probably a good time to "head down," so I flipped over on my butt and continued to careen downward, dragging my naked fingers through the snow and trying futilely to use my snowshoes as brakes. My coat ripped from my waist, and several dozen feet went by before I finally rolled to a stop and crawled back up to retrieve it. No more high-marking for me.

The knee's already making progress. My pain-free range of motion is increasing at a fairly encouraging clip, and I spend my day wearing these arthritis patches that smell like an old lady's medicine cabinet and make my skin feel like it's pressed against a hot oven - but they seem to be working. Optimism will prevail.