Video blog: Blue Sky Gazing

Date: April 18 and 19
Mileage: 48 and 13.7
April mileage: 437.6
Temperature: 34 and 29

So instead of typing about my weekend, I thought I'd make another video blog. This one also didn't turn out the way I imagined it. I strapped my "helmet cam" way too high, so all of the cycling shots are basically blue sky and treetops. But I sprinkled some clips in because they help break up the blathering (don't worry. It's only six or seven minutes long.) I looked for a song that goes well with skygazing ... The Goldfinger cover of Nena's "99 Red Balloons." Someday I will get this video thing right. In the meantime ...

Juneau multisport

Date: April 17
Mileage: 21.1
April mileage: 376.9
Temperature: 30

When I woke up this morning, a swirling blizzard was raging outside. Of course I was thrilled about this development on a Thursday morning. "What should I do today?" I asked myself as I hurried to gulp down my Special K so I could get outside before it melted. "Should I go for a bike ride? A hike? Maybe try to do a snowboard run?" Then it hit me. Why not do all three?

I don't really have the gear to just ride my bike with a snowboard on my back. I tried to stuff the board in one of my larger daypacks, but its angle and height made my shoulders ache something fierce - not to mention the way it caught the 15 mph headwind like a giant sail. My original destination was Eaglecrest. I made it about eight miles past my house, just shy of the cutoff, before I decided that there was no way my screaming shoulders could survive the climb. I turned around with a new destination - the Douglas Ski Bowl.

I parked my bike on the snowmobile trail just as the powder started to become soft and deep, and strapped on my snowshoes. The storm had moved on and the clouds were starting the clear out. I could see strips of blue sky above my head, and something strange, something bright ... could it be the sun? I could hardly believe it.

In the walk up, the presence of that alien orb made everything feel superheated. Sweat poured from my scalp. I only had about 30 oz. of water with me, no sunscreen, no sunglasses ... but I was all but bounding up that trail, just happy to be awake and alive and bathed in sunshine.

I reached the ridge and looked out over Admiralty Island for the first time since January. I miss that view. I live my life in the shadow of the Douglas Island ridge, when all that time this horizon stretches just beyond my grasp.

As I traversed the ridgeline, a wicked north wind tore off the slopes. I put all the clothes I had brought with me back on, and still the chill cut through. As the frigid wind gnawed at my cheeks, I wished for a face mask I didn't have. I went to drink the last of my precious water out of my Camelbak. The valve had frozen completely solid. The fact that had happened made me smile. It was April 17. But being amused by frozen water didn't change the fact that my body was headed that same direction if I didn't get out of the wind. I hated to leave the ridgeline and the view, but then I remembered: My fun was only just beginning ....

I dropped into the canyon, paralleling someone's high-line snowmobile trail in a soft cloud of powder. The whole world disappeared behind silence and weightlessness, falling and flying at the same time. When you spend all of your time on a bicycle, you forget what that feels like. I was completely in awe. I stopped in the bowl and climbed up for more. I couldn't figure out why I hadn't just spent my whole winter powder boarding. It took me a couple more runs to remember ... I'm really much better at cycling than I am at snowboarding. Everything's beautiful until you take a nosedive, then it's just bounce, bounce, followed by a lot of exhausting swimming.

On the way down, I swerved to miss a big knoll only to realize I had nearly run over the Dan Moller Cabin ... normally a two-story structure that sits at about 2,000 feet elevation, still completely buried in snow. It was a somewhat painful reminder that hiking season is still a long, long time away.

But that's OK. Winter can stay.

Running on diesel

Date: April 16
Mileage: 29.2
April mileage: 355.8
Temperature: 40

My co-worker Brian shot this photo just as we were returning from our respective dinner breaks, about 7 p.m. We had about three inches by the time the sun set, and more slated for tonight. It was a little surreal to watch fluffy piles of new snow shimmer in the 9 p.m. twilight. A collision of seasons. I love it. Anything to lift the landscape out of the monotony of rain, which will surely return tomorrow.

The snow has everyone freaked out right now, and not because there's a few soon-to-melt inches accumulated on the ground. A massive avalanche cut down a series of transmitter towers to Juneau's hydro-power station, and the local utility announced they will be switching to diesel power until they can enter the unstable area and fix the transmitters, likely months. In the meantime, our power rates will be jumping 500 percent. 500 percent! When you look at your monthly power bill for $46.48 and do some simple math, the prospect is downright horrifying.

Meanwhile, I think about those generators pumping out hundreds of thousands of gallons of diesel fuel to feed Juneau's electricity appetite. That forms its own surreal image. The idea of water flowing from the mountains and giving us power is vague enough to be beautiful. But to think about Juneau being hooked to a massive, fuel-sucking generator is disheartening enough to make the smallest power uses seem so wasteful ... the things I like and depend on ... my reading lamps, my refrigerator, my computer. I walk around turning off lights and appliances but I feel like I'm throwing water balloons at a forest fire. A raging forest fire. The kind that sets ablaze everything in its path.

In its path like my housemate (and landlord), who is already on the ledge about selling his condo and will probably take the leap. In its path like my employer, who is already on the ledge about expenses, the largest and most easily expendable of which is its workforce. In its path like the local housing market, which will likely go even further to raise already astronomical rents and tighten already insurmountable no-pet policies to coax any of us who might lose the meager roof over our heads back into living at the Mendenhall Lake Campground. These things have a way of changing lives.

But what can I do besides cut tiny threads of my connections to the grid, maybe go to bed early tonight, maybe turn off my computer?

Tired of hypothermia

Date: April 15
Mileage: 40
April mileage: 326.6
Temperature: 38

In everything I’ve tried in my two winters in Juneau, I just haven’t found a way to stay warm during a long ride when the weather is in the 30s and raining. "Waterproof" clothing is anything but. Wet neoprene lets too much wind through. For a while I thought overdressing was a good strategy, but sweating out the inner layers before the outer ones soak through seems to nix any warmth benefit. I’ve been thinking about a seal-skin parka or a rubber suit, but one is probably pretty unobtainable and the other is very uncomfortable to exercise in. “Basically,” I’ve been trying to tell Geoff, “it’s impossible.”

Even so, I can usually achieve at least three hours of quality cycling before the deep chill slices through my meager barrier (at which point it just keeps cutting.) But that hasn ’t been the case lately. I don’t know if it’s a breakdown in every piece of clothing I own, or if my body is tired, simply tired, of being put through this crap. But I feel like every ride I embark on these days leaves me stiff and shivering, trying to remove soaked clothing with numb fingers as my rewarming skin flares with pain. I’ve had more brushes with uncomfortable cold in April than I ever did in December, January ... even February, when I did my fair share of riding in near-0-degree conditions and saw temperatures of 20 and 30 below. I hate 38 and raining. There, I’ve said it. Hate it.

It’s tough because not only has this recent weather derailed my resolve to amp up my training and keep a strong base through summer, but it’s also causing me to waver on one of my main summer goals - giving up use of my car. I was planning to wean myself slowly. By July I hope to commute every day to work, to the grocery store, to visit my friends, to see movies and plays ... everywhere (with the exception of twice-monthly trips to Costco for much-needed cases of Diet Pepsi and orange juice). I don't really expect to save much money (my car is worth too little to bother selling and I already spend more on bike food than gas). No, I just want to try cycling as a lifestyle - like touring, but with income.

It’s a beautiful dream, but right now I’m having a hard time even getting my summer-of-commuting off the ground. I think about being wet and cold not only once per day, but three times (maybe more). I’ll have to return from my training rides to take a shower, then commute to work, then completely change my clothes, then work for four hours, then eat dinner out of a microwave in the company break room, then work four more hours, then put all my wet and muddy bike clothes back on, then commute home. It’s a hugely daunting prospect to think about doing this every day. It may very well be my greatest challenge yet.

Anyone have a rubber suit they could sell to me?

Awful weather

Here in Juneau, we have to set the "awful" bar on our weather gauge a bit higher than most places. Raining? Windy? Snowing? Cold? Some combination thereof? That's just weather. Torrential downpours? Hurricane-force blasts? Blizzards? That's just interesting weather. The top level on the terrible weather scale is reserved for deep-set grayness that smothers multiple days and even weeks, grayness so thick it seeps down the mountains and into the moods of everyone you meet, and rain that falls continuously for 48, 72, 96 hours. I am not talking about wimpy storms that drizzle for a bit and then retreat behind overcast skies. No, I am talking about water and slush and snain pounding the ground without pause for three days straight.

You know the scale has tipped when people start talking about the weather. People in Juneau don't talk about wet weather for the same reason people in Fairbanks don't say "sure is cold out" and people in Las Vegas don't say "how 'bout that sun today." You don't bother to mention the things that happen most of the time. But when a week goes by without even a break in the clouds, wet weather begins to nervously trickle into conversation. You also know awful has come when you start to see umbrellas around town and it isn't even tourist season. Locals in Juneau don't use umbrellas. It's a symbol of Southeast Alaskan pride, a mark of non-sissiness and grizzled acclimation. Umbrellas are a sure sign of distress, our last act of desperation before we fall to our knees and pray for forgiveness before the apocalypse annihilates us.

Today I went snowshoeing up the Mount Jumbo trail. I wasn't even all the excited about getting out of bed. But even though I am dialing back my bike time, I still recognize the importance of going outside on a regular basis - lest I start to grow mold. At about 1,000 feet the sleet turned to snow, and by 1,800 feet I had entered a canyon in the crush of a full-on, white-out, 50-mph-wind-gusting blizzard. I glanced nervously in the direction of the steep surrounding slopes I couldn't even see and reminded myself that blizzards weren't so bad, but avalanches were really scary. I turned around. As I stumbled away from the storm, I began to rethink my resolve to take it easy this month. "I probably don't even need a break from the bike," I thought. "I probably just need a break from Juneau." Unfortunately, the former is much easier to implement.

Tomorrow's (and Tuesday's, and Wednesday's) forecast calls for a high of 40 and rain. I don't care. I'm going to buy an umbrella.

Fiddlin

I just returned from checking out my friend Kim's set at Folk Fest. Kim is a Type-A lawyer who lives in Anchorage. She's carved out this idyllic Alaska lifestyle for herself, though, residing on the outskirts of the city in a sod-roof cabin that has two big spruce trees growing out of the roof. Her nearest neighbors are sled dogs. She ice climbs. And she's an avid old-time fiddler.

As I watched her saw frantically at her violin tonight, I was flooded with the memories of the last time I saw her, on Feb. 23, the night before the Iditarod Invitational. The top picture is from that night. I realized that I never told my story of the night before the race. It was a bewildering tornado of a Saturday that couldn't have been a more perfect setup for the sensory overload of the next six days. The night of the 1,000 dumplings.

We stayed in Kim's cabin, all 500 square feet of it, during the nights leading up to the race. On Saturday night, she had planned a huge Vietnamese New Year party, and had coaxed (conned?) three of her friends into making 1,000 pork dumplings for the celebration. "It has to be 1,000!" she barked. "Bad luck for a whole year otherwise!" They crammed into her tiny kitchen and set to work first thing in the morning. Geoff packed his sled. I wrenched my bike. Kim pounded cocktails before 10 a.m. One friend drove to every grocery store in a 10-mile radius and cleaned all of south Anchorage out of leeks. Geoff and I went to our pre-race meeting. When we returned around 5 p.m., starchy steam clung to the windows. Dirty bowls and plastic grocery bags were strewn everywhere. Delirious laughter peeled out from the slave-driven team. They were up to about 500 dumplings.

"Don't you dare try to tell me why I'm driven to plan these huge parties," Kim told her psychologist friend. I looked up from my bike packing. "It's probably the same reason why Geoff and I doing this race tomorrow," I said. The psychologist friend nodded without a hint of irony.

I think there were about 700 or 800 dumplings by the time people started showing up. I was already eating them right off the platters, forcing the only available means of precious calories down my throat as the stink of leeks and sesame oil gurgled in my gut. By the time I remembered I needed to change my bike tubes, the tiny cabin was shoulder-to-shoulder with people: 60, 70, 80 people devouring dumplings, guzzling flower-garnished cocktails, playing fiddles, asking me why I was in Anchorage (and peppering me with the ensuing thousand questions.) My pre-race anxiety coursed through my blood like magma. The chaos rattled me to the core. I slipped outside to a dark corner near the sled dog cages. The temperature was about 10 degrees. The rims burned my skin and my headlamp flickered. As I ran my stiff fingers through the motions, I tried to tell myself this was good practice for the trail. But all I really wanted to do was scream, and smash my bike, and sprint all the way home to Utah.

The worst part was I couldn't leave. We had made plans to spend the night at the house of another friend in Palmer, but first we had to pick him up at the airport at 10:30 p.m. So I had to burn away the evening as the crowd became louder, and drunker, and larger, pumping old-time music into the cold air through a haze of dumpling steam and cigarette smoke. I wedged back into the crush of people to warm my frozen hands. Kim's psychologist friend was still steaming dumplings in the kitchen, 12 full hours after she started chopping cabbage. I asked her if she had reached 1,000. She shook her head and laughed faintly. Her eyes were hollow, with flecks of tears on the outer edges. Her cheeks were sunken and she pressed her lips as she smiled. I recognized that look, those eyes - the face of a broken-down endurance racer. "It's OK to cry," I said, sincerely. I could feel my own eyes misting up. "It's OK to cry."

Kim was deeply immersed in her music when we whisked away to Palmer and the cold dawn of the first day of the Iditarod Invitational. I never had a chance then to thank her for letting us stay at her house, or for unintentionally helping me put my own life in perspective when I needed it most.

Folk Fest

Date: April 10 and 11
Mileage: 19.1 and 38.5
April mileage: 286.6
Temperature: 44 and 38

It's a bit late to be blogging, but I feel like I need to unwind a little after a crazy "weekend" of Folk Fest. The Alaska Folk Festival happens once a year and the whole town shows up. Even a lot of people who don't live in this town show up. It's pretty much the only time of year that Juneau is visited by other Alaskans who have nothing to do with the Legislature or cruise ships. It's also the only time of year I "go out" every night for several nights in a row. Tonight was old-time Creole followed by Salsa and Fusion Celtic. I don't think I've danced like that since I was 17. Seriously. I was about to pass out and my friends still wanted to hit up the Rendezvous and The Alaskan afterward. Sometimes the endurance of people amazes me.

It's been a bad weekend for bike riding. The Folk Festing for all hours of the night doesn't help, but it goes beyond that. Geoff and I huddled beneath of canopy of rain-drenched trees this afternoon as I tried to talk him out of completing a planned 80-mile ride. Finally, I just announced, "Either way, I'm turning around. I feel like I'm on the burn-out track and I don't want to push it too far." That's the first time it hit me. I haven't given my off-season much time to actually be that. If anything, I was pushing even harder before the weather took a seasonal turn for the worse. I think I need to dial it back a bit. It will be hard, because there's not much else to do right now besides road cycling. But I think if I take the rest of April and spend more time hiking (i.e. snow/mud slogging), going to the gym (i.e. reading adventure nonfiction on an elliptical machine), and "fun" biking (i.e., beach and snow biking where and when the opportunities arise), then I'll be a happier person come summer. Once May begins, I hope to restart a fast-track endurance training program ahead of the 24 Hours of Light. I rode this race last year on a barely-healed knee injury and almost no training, and had a lot of fun. This year, I look forward to going hard. That is, if I don't burn out first.