Still the one

Date: May 13
Mileage:27.1
May mileage: 467.3
Temperature: 45

When I left work at 11:07 p.m., there was still a strip of soft blue light stretched over the horizon. Sometimes I think I don't care much for summer, even Alaska summers, what with the bugs and the bear spray. But little things like this make me happy.

I am starting to really enjoy my bike commute. It's like free miles. I crank hard into work because I never give myself enough time. By the time I leave, there's almost no traffic. So I just turn on my headlamp, crank up the volume on my iPod, and stream through the cool night air until suddenly, I'm home. I'm hoping to make it one whole week without driving my car. Then, I plan to celebrate with a big trip to Costco. I'm out of cat food, cat litter, Pepsi, coffee and basically all forms of food. I plan to leave that store with at least 200 pounds in goods. I hope my neglected Geo can handle the load.

I did my "workout" today by going hard up the Perseverance Trail. The trail is littered in all forms of landslide and avalanche debris, and the recent blasting has created some strange new pitches. A few times had me breaching Zone 4 and going right to "Near Vomit Zone" ... not a place I enter voluntarily, although I do need to work harder to get in shape for real climbing.

I pulled out my Pugsley for the ride - not because any of the snowy patches on the trail are rideable (they're not) - but because Pugsley makes all the rest of the going a breeze. I was plowing through one landslide-wrecked stretch - alder branches, boulders and petrified chunks of snow all over the muddy trail - when I passed another mountain biker who was walking his bike. "Wow," he said. "You go." I laughed because I am never, never the strong one on technical trail. But with Pugsley, I feel like I can do anything.

Is it possible Pugsley is the best bike in the world? I think so.

Smells like spring

Date: May 12
Mileage: 31.2
May mileage: 440.2
Temperature: 41

I first set foot in Alaska on May 30, 2003. We rolled across the state line at a point much further north than the city where I live now, crossing the Yukon River on a ferry and entering the state on the “Top of the World” highway. The first Alaska town I visited was Chicken, followed by a few days in Fairbanks before we set out to drive our crumbling Ford Econoline van “all the way to Prudhoe Bay” on the Dalton Highway.

My first memories of Alaska are set in the drab background of early spring - barren birch trees, twisting black spruce and skeletal devil’s club stalks. Fairbanks was just starting to green up when we rolled through. But then we just kept moving further north, to places where the rivers were still clogged with ice and clumps of matted yellow grass carpeted the tundra. We crossed the snow-patched plain of the North Slope and took an oil company-owned tour bus the last nine miles to the edge of the Arctic Ocean. I remember walking onto the frozen surface of the sea as a 35-degree chill gripped the June air and thinking that weren’t driving “North to the Future.” We were running away from spring.

I didn’t know then that the life cycle moves very quickly in the Arctic, and that spring had already arrived. We had scarcely reached the northern edge of the Brooks Range on the return trip when green began to burst from the ground. Blades of grass poked up from the dry tussocks and white and pink flowers opened overnight. We set up camp near the Bettles River, and my three friends went to bed after a small thunderstorm rolled in. I took shelter in the van and read in the gray evening light until the rain moved through. From behind fading strips of storm clouds, the 1 a.m. sun emerged low on the horizon. The Bettles River, which seemed so quiet and peaceful just hours before, was roaring with murky storm runoff and floating chunks of ice. I put my book down and pulled open the van door. The sudden rush of aroma was so intense that I stepped outside just to make sure there wasn’t something wrong. There was an otherworldly sweetness to the air, almost chemical, like saccharin, infused with musty hints of mulch and cedar. It was a smell that had stagnated for months and months, frozen and flavorless in winter. With the accelerating thaw, all of the subtle odors that lingered through the seasons - the fermented berries of fall, the wilted flowers of summer, the wet grass and dirty ice and millions upon millions of newborn seedlings - broke free all at once in a blast of fragrance. It was almost like being sprayed in the face with strong perfume - revolting and exhilarating at the same time. It was the smell of the slow rotting of the dead and the rapid rush to new life. The smell of Alaska in the springtime.

The air smelled a little like that outside today.

Balance

Date: May 10 and 11
Mileage: 25.1 and 53.3
May mileage: 409
Temperature: 48 and 45

I've come to the conclusion that using a mountain bike for every ride is good for strength training. Whenever I'm riding on pavement, I always have this perception of how fast I should be going, not really considering the fact I need to push the mountain bike harder to get there. If I drop below 15 mph, I amp up the output. Plus, the mountain bike has coaxed me to seek out gravel and spur trails, no matter how short or rough, wherever I can find them. After two weeks of this, I've noticed a difference. I feel acute muscle soreness at the end of the day. And today, when I finally got around to shaving my legs (for being a girl and a cyclist, I don't do this nearly as often as I should) ... anyway, I noticed definite new muscle definition, especially in the lower quad region. Good things.

Tougher for me has been balancing my idea of a good morning ride with my bicycle commute. On Sundays I always have a little more time to spare, so I like to put in a longer midweek ride. Today I did a hard hill climb with a burn back into the wind, about three hours of riding that used up just about everything I had. I like it when I really push my limits like that, but the immediate hour following is always tough. I stumble down the stairs with legs that feel like a lightly charred piece of toast, about to crumble underneath me. I try to make lunch with hands that are still numb and shaking. I step into the shower and let all the effort soak in, blissfully tired and warm, and then I remember ... "Oh crap, I still have to ride my bike to work today."

I really, really didn't want to walk back upstairs and get back on my bike. But it's Bike to Work Week, and I couldn't let myself wuss out of a six-mile commute during Bike to Work Week. So I soft-pedalled toward the office until I crossed the bridge. That's when I was passed by a road cyclist.

What is it about being passed by another cyclist that so involuntarily ignites the primitive chase reflex within us all? I was like a border collie watching a sheep break away from the herd. I wanted - nay, I needed - to reel him in. Never mind that I was wearing jeans, riding a platform-pedal mountain bike and hoisting an overstuffed backpack that contained, among many other things, a frozen bag of ravioli and a jar of spaghetti sauce. All the better to crush the Lycra dude.

Anyway, the race was on, with my toasted quads and only partially recovered energy level, mashing and sweating for no reason whatsoever. When I finally did catch the guy, I just hung near his wheel and drafted off him until we reached my intersection. I don't even think he noticed.

And once I got to work, I had to go through the whole shaky hands and sweaty clothes routine, again. Luckily, I have a pretty good stash of extra clothing built up there now. But still, I'm tired, and not yet deep enough into my new routine to know how to keep the commute from becoming a few miles too many.

12 hours in photos

Date: May 9
Mileage: 10.1
May mileage: 330.6
Temperature: 52

Jerome recently asked me to contribute to his "12 Hours in Photos" blog, in which people document a 12-hour stretch of a day, using one photo to represent each hour. I've copied this format before to blog about bike rides, but this time around I decided to do the whole 12 hours, breakfast, lunch and all. Today was a good day for a 12-hour photo blog. Packed full and didn't end at 12 hours, but 12 hours is what I shot. So here is my contribution, "12 Hours of Friday, May 9."

7 a.m.: Breakfast on the porch. Still waiting for softball season to start to provide better morning entertainment.

8 a.m.: Heading out on my friend Brian's boat with a Spring King Salmon Derby ticket in my pocket.

9 a.m.: Lots of people on the rocks, hoping to hit the jackpot.

10 a.m.: What a great way to fish - a buoyant bicycle (tandem no less!)

11 a.m.: Brian gets a few hard hits but no bites. It's a slow day for salmon fishing.

12 p.m.: Driving back, denied. I have to let go of my dream of fresh grilled King for lunch, not to mention the $50,000 big'un. "Well, it was a beautiful day to be on the water," Brian said. Too true.

1 p.m.: Alternative lunch - big tuna salad and all the strawberries I can eat.

2 p.m.: Going for a walk with my friend Geoff K. and his baby girl Paige.

3 p.m. Paige starts to fuss and it's time for Dad to turn around. Time for me to strap on the snowshoes and head high.

4 p.m.: Cresting the Douglas Island ridge. As the snowpack rots it gets tougher to climb up here every time, but it's always worth it.

5 p.m.: Walking/slipping/sinking down the Dan Moller trail.

6 p.m. Riding home.

Seven hours of escaping the blahs

Date: May 8
Mileage: 84.2
May mileage: 320.5
Temperature: 48

Today was one of those days. You know the days. A stupid cat paws your face at some unspeakable hour of the morning. You roll around groggily in the gray morning light, unsure of who you are, where you are, and what day this is. And even as painful consciousness slowly wrestles you through your haze tunnel, you still can't remember what's on the schedule for today. What was it again? What were you going to do?

Oh yeah. Seven-hour bike ride.

Blah.

Cyclists often use the phrase "Any day I ride my bike is a good day." I appreciate the sentiment, and respect anyone for whom it's true, but I've never thought that phrase applied to me. I spend most every day on a bike. They can't all be good days. They just can't. Some days you just wake up to good vibes, and even though you don't have anything planned, you go ride two hours on the beach, and afterward you feel like you could leap off buildings and use the sheer force of your energy to hold back gravity. And some days you wake up to blahs, and you have a seven-hour ride planned, and you think, "I should just go do it. I planned it." But, but, but ... blah.

Then there are usually a bunch of wasted hours in the morning until your conscience finally absolves you of the necessity of biking only to remind you of all the other things you could be doing today - you know, like grocery shopping and laundry. That's about the time you just get on the bike just to get the thing over with, and if enough time passes, at least you won't have to do your chores.

The sky is the same color as the mountains which is the same color as the pavement which is the same color as your mood. You're thinking, "I can't face seven hours of out the road and back and then some. What can I do to break this up? What can I do?"

Oh yeah. Dredge Lake.

Trails are dry. Hard-packed. Fast. Ice-patched. Jolty. Narrow. So I weave. Shoulder a tree. Jump. Roll. Coast. Climb. An hour passes in the maze. Now two hours are up. Where is there to go from here?

Oh yeah. West Glacier Trail and Montana Creek.

More snow up here. No matter, good smooth descent. Climb back up. Down, back through Dredge Lake. Another hour passes - one on pavement, two on trail. Not bad. The day feels lighter. Purposeful, even. Where to now? How 'bout out the road, not to ride out the road, but to see how much progress the melt is making on the spur trails?

Herbert Glacier is all snow from mile one. Eagle River is snow and old-growth devil's club stalks. Ouch. I ride along Eagle Beach for a while, scanning the shoreline for some of those tasty clams that people often find here, but it's not really low tide, and anyway, you have to dig for those.

So it's back south, into the wind, and I'm surprised to find it doesn't even faze me. Underneath all of my grump and grumble, I actually have good energy today. I can feel the burn in my quads from pushing around sand and dirt, and even the pavement seems to be rolling faster than normal, and I didn't notice earlier, but my random shuffle iTunes mix is really good today. Really good. I'm singing along, Modest Mouse, "A nice heart and a white suit and a baby blue sedan. And I am doing the best that I can ..."

Fast back to Dredge Lake and the Mendenhall River, hit the trails hard and strong, ride the jackhammer root sections that I always walked last year, ride the twisty wooden plank for the first time ever. Wish Geoff were here to see that. Feeling tired, feeling good and tired, leave the trail 15 minutes before hour six, one hour fifteen to get home. Push harder and harder, thinking about ravioli, thinking a lot about ravioli, reaching up to scan the shuffle and find that Modest Mouse song again, and sing, "And it's hard to be a human being. And it's harder as anything else ..."

Back with fifteen minutes to spare. In reality, a 6:45 day. I could've sandbagged it home, but I didn't.

One of those days. A good day to be on a bike.

Filling

Date: May 7
Mileage: 26.1
May mileage: 236.3
Temperature: 47

I’m hoping to crank out seven-hour bike ride tomorrow, so today was supposed to be a “rest” day. Rest day doesn’t mean I spend a partly sunny, mostly dry morning sitting around the house, which I don’t find all that enjoyable. Rest day also doesn’t mean catching up on my chores, which I find even less enjoyable. Rest days are for something frivolous and fun, like riding on the beach.

But if you’ve ever pedaled any distance through boulders and sand, you know it’s not all that restful. It’s quad-burning work, probably moreso than any hill climbs I do, and so intensely focused that an hour can pass in what seems like an instant. Sweat through 13 miles of that, then tack on the commute to work and a trip to the bank, and I have quite the full day behind me. It doesn’t feel that way.

Sometimes I try to envision what my routine was like before I became such a frantic cyclist, but it’s hard. I just can’t remember how I used to fill my days back then. There were probably a few less dishes in the sink, a few more minutes of quality time with my friends and my cat. But mostly, I just draw blanks. Today, the beach ride chewed up more than two hours and the commuting consumed a little more than one. That’s three and a half hours of cycling on a “rest” day. There were times in my recent past when three and a half hours of even relaxed cycling would have knocked me out. Now it’s just my life, my routine, like eating and sleeping. Without it, I would be hungry and tired. With it, I’m content. I’m full.

Today I talked for a while with Geoff about cycling as he zeroes in on the sport, once and for all, ahead of the Great Divide Race. I think he holds this fleeting idea that I am going to show up unannounced at the Canadian border on June 20, straddling my Karate Monkey and ready to go. That’s not going to happen. I play with the logistics in my daydreams, but I am committed to things back home; anyway, my current fitness is hardly ready for even my comparatively light summer ahead.

But most people closest to me can’t understand what I’m doing right now. They know Geoff is away pursuing some great endurance racing odyssey. They know I spent two years almost single-mindedly pursuing the Ultrasport, giving nearly every day to my training, giving nearly all of my disposable cash to bikes and gear. And then I did it, and then it was finished, and then I kept training ... for?

There are friends who think it’s time for me to go big. Cross-country tour was big. Susitna was big. Ultrasport was big. Now, they say, go BIG. Climb that ladder.

Then there are friends who think Ultrasport should be the culmination of all this madness. Time to settle in, devote my life to more realistic - or at least more productive - pursuits. I’ll be 30 next year. I’ve had my fun. Time to grow up.

And here I am, somewhere in the middle. I’ve spent much of my life near the extremes. Level ground is not the place for me, and my good friends know it. So they’re watching, and wondering what I’m up to. They don’t believe me when I tell them that I don’t even know what I’m up to. I’m just living my life, the life I’ve built for myself, the life I’m comfortable with. As for the future, I’m preparing.

It reminds me of a book I read earlier this year, by a man who attempted to illegally climb Mount Everest with his friends in 1962, basically on a lark. Woodrow Wilson Sayre made it most the way, nearly died (a couple times) trying, and came home to similar questions from his friends. He wrote: “One can't take a breath large enough to last a lifetime; one can't eat a meal big enough so that one never needs to eat again. Similarly, there are such values as warm friendship tested and strengthened through shared danger, the excitement of obstacles overcome by one’s own efforts, or the beauty of the high, quiet places of the world. But these values can’t be stored like canned goods. They may need to be experienced, lived — many times.”

And so I dream.

No country for new trails

Date: May 6
Mileage: 42.0
May mileage: 210.2
Temperature: 47

One of the perks of using my mountain bike for the regular tempo ride out North Douglas is hitting the Rainforest Trail near the end of the road. It's not your typical mountain bike trail. The loop in its entirety is about 1.5 miles, and not exactly technical, per say. But it's fun to try to hit a flow down the narrow, smooth gravel. It descends and then quickly climbs a steep hill with some crazy tight hairpin turns, and the raised nature of the gravel doesn't allow for mistakes - if you drop off the trail, you launch off the bike. It's a good early season ride for me because it allows me to become more comfortable with my bike handling without a lot of obstacles. Plus, the destination is kinda pretty ...

So I put in three good laps on the Rainforest Trail, but the entire ride out there plus my eventual commute to work meant I barely had time for even that, less than five miles of trail riding, in 3+ hours of cycling. In this town, there's almost always a heavy pavement price to pay for a little trail time - emphasis on little.

Juneau has a lot of amazing trails near town, but none of them were built with cyclists in mind. Any mountain trails go straight up the mountain - emphasis on straight, with 60 percent+ grades that utilize tree roots as handholds. As for our coastal trails, they're either so primitive or in such advanced disrepair that they make for tough and technical trail runs ... or they're so overbuilt that a skilled rider on a road bike could coast large stretches of them. Since I moved to Juneau, our local trail advocacy group, Trail Mix, has completed a number of projects geared toward hikers - the kind of hikers who show up fresh from the cruise ships wearing Crocs and twirling umbrellas. Last fall, Trail Mix spent about $900,000 to blast a few wider sections and repair bridges on the Perserverence Trail. Their latest endeavour is a $1.2 million project to build a 1.1-mile trail along Auke Lake.

I'm not about to criticize Trail Mix ... they do a lot of good work. But when these projects budget hundreds of thousands of dollars to build short highways of trails, I can't help but wonder: What could mountain bikers do with $1.2 million? We could improve the 20-mile-long Treadwell Ditch Trail so it's actually rideable with something other than a Pugsley for the first four miles and a good pair of rubber boots for the rest. We could improve and expand the Dupont Trail way up the Taku Inlet. Heck, for $1.2 million, we could build a Lemon Creek trail to the icefield! Snow biking year round! But we don't have the money. We probably don't even have the interest. I would volunteer a lot of time to improving the Ditch, but I'm not about to initiate such a project. So I guess I'm part of the problem.

I'm not sure if any Juneau mountain bikers will read this. Actually, I'm not really sure there are any other mountain bikers in Juneau (Just kidding! I know you're out there. I see your tracks.) But, if you are out there, what do you think? Do we have the numbers? Can we build our very own trail?