It's official. I can't fix bikes.

Date: May 4
Mileage: 29.2
May mileage: 132.7
Temperature: 39

How much time have I wasted on a shifter cable? Enough that I really should have left my bike at the bike shop for three weeks, and given them a few hundred dollars just to keep it away from me for that long. Because if I spend any more time tightening and loosening cables and screws and staring intently at the nubbin pulley wheels on my rusted-out derailleur, I am going to throw my entire bike off my balcony and hope the devil's club grows thick enough to prevent me from ever trying to retrieve it.

I know, I know, I know. I need to learn this stuff. But people like me shouldn't be teaching themselves the procedures. That's like telling a dyslexic person they should teach themselves how to read. I have a genuine mechanical learning disability. Only because someone held my hands and guided me through every excruciating step did I learn to change a tire or put a quick link on a chain. Simple stuff baffles me. I thought the cable replacement would be easier than simple. So I browsed Sheldon Brown's and Park Tool's Web sites for a while until I got sick of trying to decipher Sanskrit. Then I propped up my bike, oiled the cable, and threaded it through the only possible places for it to go. Then I spent hours adjusting the tension and tweaking the derailleur screws just to get the thing to shift smoothly. I came close a couple of times. But then I'd try to execute a hairline tension change, only to end up with the chain skipping all over the place. In the end, I stripped the threading for one of the screws and mangled the cable, and gave up with an adjustment that is about as choppy as it would have been if I had never bothered with it all. I didn't replace the old housing, and maybe that's my problem. But it doesn't matter. I am done. Done. Done. Done.

So my new plan is to wait out this bike shop backlog by ordering a new derailleur online, and then taking the whole setup into the bike shop to have it replaced properly after things slow down. In the meantime, I think I will just slash the cable and accept my bike as a clunky three-speed.

Or put it in the basement. I thought about that. I really like riding my new mountain bike. It rides so comfortable, so smooth, and I've been making a genuine effort to keep up with the cleaning and maintenance to keep it that way. My only problem is the mud-specific tires I bought for it, which put up more rolling resistance than studs on pavement. This time of year and this location require a lot of pavement riding, so I'd be subjecting myself to much frustrating slowness if I use the Karate Monkey for every ride. At the same time, putting slicks on a mountain bike limits my trail riding options; plus, slicks on a mountain bike is just sad. And I'm not going to switch tires back and forth. I am the world's slowest tire changer. Did I mention my mechanical disability?

Too bad Ibex Bikes is sold out of all of their Corridas. Despite Roadie's problems (and they're mostly my fault after years of lax maintenance), I really like this bike. For the price, I think it's a great touring/training/commuting bike. It just needs a little TLC. And an entire set of new components.

The world at large

Date: May 2
Mileage: 19.2
May mileage: 113.5
Temperature: 41

Geoff called me from California today with some great news - he had a tough race at the Miwok 100K, couldn't sleep at all the night before, was battered by the "super hardpacked" trail, faded during the last 20 miles of the race ... and landed third place.

I thought I heard him wrong. "Thirtieth?" No. He said third. As in third place! In a field of 250 ultrarunners, completely stacked with many of the top names in the sport. Basically, Geoff had what he views as a bad race - well, maybe not bad, but not exactly at the top of his game - and still came out ahead of at least a few superstars. Scott Jurek I think came in just behind Geoff. I haven't been able to track down the results online yet, but it's pretty impressive.

Geoff's placement automatically qualifies him for Western States, which I understand to be the elite A race in this game. Unfortunately, the race falls one week after the first day of the Great Divide Race, so Geoff isn't even thinking about registering. He has his heart set on this GDR thing. Meanwhile, I'm trying to think of how I can talk him out of his dream bike tour. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see him tackle the GDR ... but I think he can do that any year. He has this opportunity now to steamroll into the national ultrarunning scene (and yes, in my biased view, he could steamroll into it.) And he's just letting the opportunity pass by. But, he never listens to me anyway, so ... eh.

Today I had lunch with a woman who tracked me down through my blog. Kate is a Minnesotan, in town for a few weeks as an Americorps volunteer, landed on my blog while she was researching the area and wanted to meet me. I felt really weird about an Internet stranger date, but we had a great lunch. We don't even have that much in common - she's not really all that into hiking and camping, although she's being subjected to it in a rather brutal fashion here in cold and rainy Southeast Alaska. But we talked and laughed and connected for a few hours before I had to be at work. She would be a fun friend if she had any permanent plans for Juneau - which she doesn't. But the experience of that brief connection made me realize that the Internet reaches deeper into my life than I even know.

I say this because I have been feeling heartbroken about Elden (aka Fat Cyclist) Nelson's recent news about his wife's surprising turn for the worse in her battle with cancer. I've never met Elden or his wife, but he has been very supportive of me in my comparatively trivial cycling challenges, and this news has hit me hard. Like many in Elden's legions of fans, I'm unsure how to react. How do you tell a man you've never met and a woman who doesn't even know you exist that you care about them and are thinking about them? The gesture is simple, but the emotions behind it are harder to qualify. I've never been the strong link in my interpersonal relationships, but I do know real love and support can connect across places as vast and vague as the Internet. So I guess the best thing to do is reach out.

Six hours of May Day

Date: May 1
Mileage: 94.3
May mileage: 94.3
Temperature: 43

Today was an amazing day. The first time I've felt strong on a bike in more than a month.

I've been fighting off a slump since late March. I haven't blathered about it too much on my bike blog, because, frankly, it had me a little bit worried. I wasn't injured or sick. I had just lost all of my edge. Everything that made me feel good and strong at the end of a day rather than trashed had faded. I was worried the edge was gone for good. It all started the day I rode an unintentional but effortless century on March 20. I felt so great that I set out the next day with Geoff and rode a 50-miler on the Pugsley. That was the day I blew up. Limped home from that ride, confused about why I felt so terrible. I didn't feel even close to 100 percent a week later, and about week after that I took a forced break from the bike, several days at least. But each day away, I just felt tired and irritated. When I started biking again, I was as bad as ever. I kept up my mileage because of habit, hope, and because it was a way to spend time with Geoff when he was amping up his own bike training. Luckily I wasn't training for anything because most of those rides I was just striving to survive them, rarely pushing very hard, although I was giving all I had to give.

Why the big slump? I never knew for sure. It definitely wasn't that century, although that may have been the proverbial straw. Geoff thinks it was a belated reaction to the Ultrasport and all of the preparation that led up to it, of which I never gave myself much recovery time, mentally or physically. It seemed unlikely to me that I was experiencing a physical blowup that long after the fact. I thought it was entirely mental. But that didn't explain why I was so grumpy when I took my self-imposed bike break, or why, even on the days I was excited about a ride and determined to push a certain limit, I couldn't coax my body to go anywhere near it.

In the past two weeks I had become more accustomed to the somewhat weakened version of myself. I got more excited about bike commuting and other bike-related goals that weren't necessarily competitive. But I did want to do this 24-hour race at the end of June. I wanted to do it as well as I could. So I planned this eight-week loose training regimen that was to begin Monday. I wheedled my way out of the first two days, and today was to be my first weekly long ride (I like to start at six hours, work my way incrementally to 10 or 11, and then pull back.)

The trails are still slush-covered. It was going to have to be a road ride. But I don't currently have a working road bike (well, I guess I have a three-speed. But none of them are speeds I like.) Anyway, I took the Karate Monkey. I figured it would be slow, but six hours is six hours. I headed north with a light east wind at my side. I noticed that, like yesterday morning, I felt pretty strong out of the gate. I didn't think it would last long. The day wasn't particularly enthralling - mostly overcast and drab. But, surprisingly, it was one of those days in which I felt better and better as I went. I didn't stop much so I didn't take many pictures. I just rode at my comfortable pace, and hit the end of the road before the three-hour mark had passed, took my short snack break (had to hurry because the recently thawed fall mosquitoes were out in full force), and turned around.

It would have totally come in under six hours - I probably could have even done a spur to make it a century - except for the wind turned south and kicked up a harsh 20 mph headwind for the last 10 miles home. I think I ended at about 6:05. About a 15.5 mph overall average, including two short breaks. I know it's not impressive for pavement, but for me, riding the big bike and its fat knobby tires, after a monthlong slump ... I'll take it.

Maybe I'm back? I'm keeping my fingers crossed.