I love this clear, cold weather

Date: Dec. 14 and 15
Mileage: 42.2 and 17.3
December mileage: 418.9

It occurred to me today that I am in the midst of a full-on outdoor binge. I noticed the to-do list from my "other" life stacking up, so I crunched the numbers. 5.5 hours Thursday, 7.5 Friday, 4 Saturday, 3.5 Sunday and 3 today, for total of a 23.5 hours of moderate to strenuous physical activity in a week that still has two days left in it. I mostly feel it in my throat, which has become raw and scratchy after 23.5 hours of heavy breathing in cold, dry air. But beyond that, I feel great - so much better than I have the past couple weeks, when I had admittedly succumbed to a mild bout of Seasonal Affective Disorder and the general gloom and doom of the times. A little Vitamin D and a lot of exercise has recharged my outlook, and I don't want to stop, and don't plan to, quite yet, because I think the occasional binge is good for me - especially in context of training for the days-long continuous effort of the Iditarod race.

The temperature's hovered in the low teens since Friday — often with hard gusting winds that drive the windchill well below zero. I tested out some potential race gear but still wore essentially the same thing that I had been for riding when it's 38 degrees and raining ... just substitute the soft shell outer layer for Gortex and nylon, a vapor barrier for neoprene socks, and a balaclava instead of a fleece headband. I still wore the same kind of polypro base layer and fleece pullover. I was dying of heat pedaling up the Dan Moller trail today. I was overdressed for sure. And my thermometer still couldn't decide if it was 9 or 10. I made a mental note that if it's actually dry outside, I can add at least 30 degrees to the temperature.

I also made a mental note to write a letter to Surly bicycles and ask them if they've ever considered designing an alternative Endomorph tire for hilly terrain. The current version has virtually no tread, so even on well-packed snow trails, it slips out too easily going up steep hills. My ideal tire for snowbiking in Juneau would still be 4" wide, but have aggressive tread and studs. Each tire would weigh about 70 pounds and would be incapable of rolling faster than 8 mph on pavement. But on narrow singletrack and steep snowmobile trails, it would be a dream wheel.

I'm also thinking about modifying a pair of leggings by adding extra insulation in the butt area. Not the sit-bone area, where the chamois goes, but up high, where all of the surface area is. My butt cheeks are always cold when the temperature drops below 15 degrees, even when the rest of my body is sweating bullets. I mentioned this to Geoff and he said it must be a female thing, because he's never experienced the "cold butt" phenomenon. Then I mentioned it to an avid snow cyclist in Anchorage, and he suggested that my body's, um, "insulation" is probably the culprit. It makes sense. Unlike muscle, body fat doesn't produce its own heat, so it's more susceptible to the cold. Because Geoff has close to zero percent body fat, he wouldn't understand. I guess until I can find a way to alter my genetic makeup or drop my own body fat percentage near zero, I'll have to come up with a creative way to keep the, um, "insulation" warm. Kind of gives new meaning to "junk in the trunk." :-)

I'm hoping to get out for a good trail ride tomorrow before I finally take Pugsley in for the repairs he badly needs. I'm hoping for continuing high energy and (relatively) low temperatures.

Product testing

Date: Dec. 13
Mileage: 10.1
December mileage: 359.4

I bought this coat, oh, maybe two months ago on super clearance from, hmm, probably Backcountry.com. It's an Outdoor Research soft shell coat, and it's ultra light for a winter coat. They only had large. I thought, "eh, I'm not all that small of a person." I really wanted to try it out. It arrived in the mail, and it's pretty much a tent. It's huge.

Still, for a coat that was only about $50, I still wanted to give soft shell a try. Problem is I really haven't seen the right conditions for testing. It's either been too warm or too wet. So when I woke up today to a temperature of 20 degrees at sea level and a wind advisory - 30 mph gusting to 50 mph, I thought, "Oh good, coat weather!"

I also wanted to give my new Arc'teryx soft shell pants a test run, which I've been reluctant to wear while riding my bike for fear of tearing the cuffs. So I set out today for a short ride and long hike in the Hard North Wind.

Pugsley's out sick with a number of problems that I really need to attend to but haven't had time, which is why I've been riding my Karate Monkey so much as of late. My plan was just to commute to the Dan Moller trailhead and hike from there, but I found the snowmobile trail in near perfect condition for snow biking. In fact, the somewhat unique condition of the trail - hard-packed ice with an inch or so of sugar on top - was actually better suited to the Monkey than my Pugsley. The Monkey has deep treaded tires that can dig into the sugar, and studs that grip the ice underneath. The Endomorphs on Puglsey would just wash out on top of the sugar. So I was able to ride a long way up the trail on my 29'er, which was, in its old-school way, quite thrilling.

The sugar became deeper and eventually I had to ditch the bike and switch to snowshoes. After I strapped my pack back on, I inadvertently buckled the waist strap around my Camelbak valve and didn't notice until the front of my fleece shirt was pretty well soaked. My thermometer was already giving me readings in the mid-teens, and I could see snow tearing off the ridge in what appeared to be an intense wind. But since there's always the option of turning around, I thought, "Well, might as well see what this coat can really do."

So up I marched with my soaked shirt and super clearance coat, warmed by the hard effort but admittedly nervous about the arctic blast that surely awaited me at the top. I crested the ridgeline at a moment of relative calm - I didn't know then, but the Hard North Wind was actually an ebb and flow of calm moments followed by intense gusts - and took a minute to pull on my balaclava. While I had my mittens off, I checked my thermometer - 8 or 9 degrees flat - and snapped some pictures. Even in the calm window, my fingers went stiff and began to ache within seconds. Just as the mittens went back on, the gust hit. "Wow" is all I really have to say about that. A blast of white powder came tearing toward me like a fireball in a bad action movie. I saw it coming, and all I could do was hold my mitten over my eyes, look down, and brace myself. It wasn't hard enough to blow me over - so perhaps only in the 50 or 60 mph range. But the wind chill. Wow. I could feel it seeping through my cupped mitten and stinging my face. It whipped around my ankles and needled through two pairs of thick wool socks. But my torso, wet shirt and all, felt surprisingly warm. The legs weren't too cold either.

I stood there about five minutes longer, completely still, just to gain even a small grasp on how I might deal with such a windchill wearing such a coat for a much longer period of time. About three more big gusts came through before I turned around and headed back down. My gloves - lined with down, which I wore all day yesterday and again today - had frozen almost solid where they had been soaked with sweat. Once I was out of the wind, I pulled one off to beat some of the ice away, then reached inside my coat to feel my shirt. It was relatively dry. I mean, for having been soaked with at least a cup of water, not to mention all of my sweat, it felt pretty much dry. Which meant not only was that coat impressively windproof, but it was breathing, and releasing all of my inner moisture back into the cold dry air. Which is all I needed to know. I already have plenty of waterproof clothing. This seems to be a great coat for winter - real winter. If only I could find it in medium.

As far as the raffle for LIVESTRONG contributions, Daniel R. won the Olympus camera. Dan said he lost his father to cancer three years ago, and was really happy about the effort to raise money for cancer research. Alex O., Lisa B. and Richard B. all won books. Two of the winners had one already, but they were still gracious about being the runners up. I'm going to hold a raffle for another book as soon as I figure out Elden's random raffle process. I'll post the winner on Monday. I'm going to continue to hold a raffle for one book every Friday, so keep donating! Your chances of winning will be much better this week. Thanks again to everybody who gave. Donate here.

Also, I had a stack of book orders come in recently and I want you guys to know that I'm going to get those out Monday, so if you ordered in the past few days, you should see your book(s) by Wednesday or Thursday. For everyone else, I wanted to announce that I'm expecting a good-sized shipment on Tuesday, and feel pretty confident that I can get any books ordered before Thursday sent out in time for Christmas (I even grilled a postal worker about this. He insisted that three business days is still the norm.) You know, books make great gifts. (More about the book here.) I always give books to people for whom I otherwise couldn't think of anything to buy. Even if the person on your gift list doesn't like biking, if they enjoy adventure stories or maybe just want a reason to feel better about their own hobbies, they'll probably like it. You can buy signed copies directly from me by clicking on this button. I can ship one, two or three books for $4.80 flat. $9.60 if the shipment is international. I can personalize the signature and ship to any address. Just indicate where you'd like it to go in the message box!

12 hours in photos, part 2

Date: Dec. 12
Mileage: 85.1
December mileage: 349.3

So I rode my bike for seven hours today. The time was actually on the long side, about 7.5 hours, but I felt great. So much better than I felt all day yesterday, when I was fresh. Riding back-to-back long days is something I plan to continue to do this winter whenever I can make the time for it, and the plan is that they're only going to get longer. But today's ride was helped by the fact that it was one of the most beautiful days, well, ever. A brilliantly sunny day followed by a full-moon night. One of those days where I was out for seven hours and hardly felt the effort, because I was so busy looking around and saying things out loud like, "Wow" and "Fer reals? Reals." I also stopped to take a few photos. Today just happened to be the latest installment of this other blog I contribute to, "12 Hours in Photos." The idea was that on Friday, Dec. 12, all of us would document 12 hours of our day, one photo for each hour. This was my day. It was a good one:

9 a.m. The view at breakfast. Yawn.

10 a.m. The trip to the post office is becoming a daily chore for me. I don't mind at all. :-)

11 a.m. Riding into the Mendenhall Valley on the Dredge Lake trails, mouth agape.

12 p.m., heading back toward the highway on some nondescript road. Mouth still agape.

1 p.m.: Life's good between Reeses Peanut Butter Cups.

2 p.m.: An interpretive photo of the Hard North Wind. It brought in a blast of frigid air from Canada, gusting right in my face. The temperature was probably about 25 degrees. The windchill couldn't have been warmer than 5.

3 p.m.: Alpenglow on the distant mountains.

4 p.m.: The last bit of daylight and a really bright planet over Auke Rec. I'm not sure which planet it was - a bright one.

5 p.m.: The self-portrait I took after my sad attempts to take a photo of the moon. I don't have a proper camera for night shots, so you'll just have to take my word that it was the most amazing full moon I have ever seen. The Hard North Wind was tearing clouds of snow off the mountains. As the moon rose, it illuminated the ridgelines with this soft, intense glow, almost as bright as daylight. I couldn't take my eyes off the moon, which was rough because I was back in the traffic of Juneau proper and it was rush hour.

6 p.m.: Having dinner with Geoff, our friend Christina and a couple of our parasitic cats.

7 p.m.: Trying to figure out what's going on in my friends' children's play. At this point, my head was nearly as fuzzy as this picture.

8 p.m.: For seven-hour rides in the freezer, there's no better recovery food than a huge spread of Christmas cookies.

Solid investment

Date: Dec. 11
Mileage: 64.4
December mileage: 264.2

I rode hard for five and a half hours today. Started in the late morning, finished after dark, got rained on, slushed on, fought a cold wind and finally some real snow. All in all, a good training ride. The plan is to ride at least seven hours tomorrow, also at a motivated pace.

I'm excited for tomorrow's longish ride, but wow, I feel pretty wiped out for having only put in five hours and change and a measly 64 miles. Every winter when I really start investing in these long rides, I always come away disappointed in my mileage. I can't help it. I worked really hard and rode mostly pavement and, huh, can't even average 12 mph? It was easy to maintain 17 with the mountain bike in the summer. But it's amazing - slap some aggressive studded tires on a bike, ride in the road shoulders where the surface is mostly covered in soft snow and slush, and fight the wind and slush shower just to keep your body temperature near normal, and suddenly cycling becomes a lot more work for less payoff. So I have to remind myself to stop looking at the raw numbers and focus on how I feel immediately afterward: Pleasantly tired, a little hazy, and completely content. Perfect.

And if I spend enough time out on a bike, even on a marginal day like today, I always see some intriguing things:

I was pushing my bike into the Dredge Lake area in a fruitless search for hard-packed trails when I came across two state troopers who had been lurking in the woods. One was wearing a bullet-proof vest and carrying a huge rifle. The other didn't have a weapon in his hand, and eyed me suspiciously. My immediate thought was that they were hunting a rogue bear. But then I remembered that state troopers don't hunt bears. Wildlife officers hunt bears. State troopers hunt people. I lingered several seconds, worried or maybe hopeful that some "Cops"-type perp was going to burst out of the forest shadows, clad only in socks and briefs, and lunge at me before the troopers tackled him. But that never happened. The troopers just slunk back into the woods and I was left wondering what they could have possibly been looking for. I even checked the police report and didn't see anything related, so I may never know.

The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful. I started to notice the sky clearing as I moved north, which always perks me up.

One of my favorite benefits of winter (and, oh yes, winter has many benefits) is the extended sunsets. For more than 10 miles I watched the sky cast varying shades of pink and orange light on the snow-covered trees, the sea water and the glistening, icy road. Gorgeous.

I raced the last few miles before twilight in an effort to reach an opening in the trees in time to witness the moment the blazing orange light of the sun finally slipped below the horizon. I just missed it, and I only made it as far as the obstructed view. Still, the sight of blue sky made me happy. I think it bodes well for tomorrow's seven hours.

Wow!

$2,975.00.

That's how much we've raised for the LIVESTRONG Challenge. In a week. If someone told me last Wednesday, the day that I signed up for Team Fatty, that my personal page would bring in nearly $3,000 in one week, I would have just laughed. But I guess that's the power of Fighting For Susan. I shouldn't be surprised. But I do feel inspired.

I look at the list of contributors and I see a few names that I recognize, so I know I did coax in a few of my friends and family. But many of you are strangers - friends of Fatty, generous cyclists, people who have been touched by cancer and want to strike back. I had always been the type who took a cynical view of fundraisers. "What could I really even do?" was my overwhelming sentiment. But I understand now that every little bit helps. I understand now that every little bit adds up very quickly. $3,000 is a lot of money. And if $3,000 can help even one person - offer them comfort, or ease their pain - then it's a fortune beyond any dollar amount.

My records show 105 people donated since Dec. 4. We're the top fundraisers in Seattle, right up there with my good friend Chris Wightman, who has raised $950 so far on his own without any help from a plug on fatcyclist.com or a giveaway of a sweet camera. It's going to be a fun reunion in Seattle. I can't wait to meet some of you and help drag Chris to the finish of his first century. :-)

As to the raffle, Elden is coordinating that so I expect to see the winners of the camera and books posted on his Web site Thursday or Friday. I am holding my own raffle on Friday for another book, and will continue to hold a weekly raffle for the contributors that week, so don't stop donating! I wanted to send a huge thank you to everyone who pitched in so far. I have a big training weekend planned, and a lot to think about regarding my non-bike life, but I know I'll be able to ride easier knowing there's still so much good in the world.

Thanks again.

The ride after

Date: Dec. 8
Mileage: 37.6
December mileage: 199.8

To start, I wanted to send out a huge thank you to everyone who has donated to the LIVESTRONG Challenge. Together we've raised $2,205 so far, which is simply amazing! There's still one more day in the raffle for a chance to win a sweet Olympus Stylus camera (just like the one used to take all the pictures in this blog.) Five bucks is all it takes. $50 nets you 10 times the chance of winning. And everything goes to the fight against cancer, so everyone wins! (Except cancer.) Donate here!

That's the very good news. The rest of this post is kind of a downer. You can stop reading here if you want to. It's just that sometimes it's cathartic for me to write it all out. I mean, that's why I keep this blog.

So I took my bike to work today. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want to. I already knew the roads were covered in 11 inches of slop and the bike paths weren’t plowed, because I had already gone for a 25-mile snow ride earlier in the day. During that ride, I took to the beach when the roads became too slippery and sloppy to navigate. The smooth sand felt nice but the streets were covered in goo, and to top it all off, the falling snow had switched over to hard, cold rain. I certainly didn’t want to go back out in the gunk. But when I couldn’t coax my car out of the slop-coated parking lot, I didn’t have a choice. I rushed around to gear up yet again and commence the ride/push to the office.

I had to jog with my bike through deep snow the last half mile on the bike path. I finally arrived at work late, soaked and coated in grit, sans any kind of brown-bag dinner (It was going to have to be old Power Bars again.) I thought I was having a bad day. Realtive to others, I really wasn't.

I was fresh from the restroom, still holding a wad of dripping clothing in my outstretched arms, when the message reached me. Mandatory meeting. Those two words, when said together, set heavy in the throat and only sink deeper, becoming thicker and more nauseating as the syllables resonate. A “mandatory” meeting is anything but. These days, in these times, everyone knows what gets said at mandatory meetings, and no one wants to hear it. I pulled my wet hair back into a ponytail and shuffled into the conference room.

In mandatory meetings, the hardest words are always blurted out first, followed by an eternity of condescending rationalizations. I often wonder why anyone bothers with the rationalizations. Nobody’s listening. Nobody. The hard words are out there. The white lights of shock have streaked through and blinded everybody with private, searing thoughts. As the rationalizations droned on, I fought the urge to get up and walk out of the room in anger, or solidarity, or frustration. I scanned the faces of my co-workers in a plea for levity. But there was no out-of-place humor in their expressions; only guilty relief. Some among the group had not been invited to the mandatory meeting. Those of us who had were grateful.

“This is reality,” I kept telling myself. “This is the real world.” I continued to grope for levity. It’s one thing to laugh at "Office Space" and “The Bobs” and corporate downsizing in your favorite movie from the late ‘90s. It’s quite another to watch your coworkers, people you know and like and respect, stiffly carrying armfuls of their personal belongings to the door.

“It should have been me,” I kept thinking. “Why not me?”

The hits keep coming and they’re not going to stop. I’m beginning to think it’s no longer a question of how long I’m going to try to hold on to the dream career I've wanted since I was a little girl — the life of a newspaperwoman. It’s becoming a question of how far into the North Pacific I want to ride the Titanic.

The air was steeped in silence when I left work, well after 11 p.m. Dim moonlight flickered through mottled breaks in the clouds, and the night looked bright, almost like dawn, as the light reflected off a blanket of new snow. Soft rain fell as I unlocked my bike and I breathed deeply, grateful for the solitude. I didn’t want to ride to work, but when the day was done, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more than to ride home. The quiet allowed for meditation, the winter twilight for clarity. My legs felt warm and close, but my thoughts were muffled, as though they were coming to me from a unknown distance. I focused but couldn't hear them. The whir of studded tires and the splash of snow-dammed puddles were lost to an all-encompassing silence. I focused harder. I whispered rationalizations. Still I heard nothing. There was nothing to hear. Even when you have already given serious consideration to changing your life, the approach of the tipping point is deafening.

“This is reality,” I kept telling myself. “This is the real world.” The miles passed, and the snow just kept melting, and melting.

Like spring, summer, fall

Date: Dec. 7
Mileage: 35.7
December mileage: 162.2

I've been in a bit of a weather funk again. Sometimes I just can't help it. Sometimes I feel like Juneau's been between seasons since, oh, March or so. Summer was always peeking just over the horizon but never really came. Since then, we've had a few quick gasps of winter, but the rain always returns. Always the rain. The 12-month season. It doesn't matter whether it's March, July, October or December, I struggle to slink out the door when it's 42 degrees and raining (and I have ridden in this exact weather in all of these months.)

And yet, for all the times I remember reluctantly gearing up and wheeling my bike out into the blah weather, I don't recall a single ride when I came home and thought "I wish that never happened." Sometimes I push hard and feel strong. Sometimes I learn something new about my gear. Sometimes I listen to good music. Sometimes I see something exciting or beautiful. And I always end up being glad I went.

Take today for example:

I don't know whether it was the warm weather or if there was some kind of salmon run, but False Outer Point had a huge gathering of marine mammals today. I saw a small pod of humpbacks (two or three, it was hard to tell) and several large groups of sea lions and harbor seals. I was working on some intervals, but ended up stopping for a while just to watch them. The humpbacks were too far away to see much beyond the occasional spout, but the sea lions and seals were especially entertaining. A few caught giant fish and lunged out of the water, violently whipping the fish around like a dog playing tug-of-war with a sock. Then they'd dive back in and disappear, probably enjoying the spoils of the meal they just shook to death.

Eventually I became a little bit chilled from watching the animal show and headed out to the Rainforest Trail to ride a few fast loops on the twisting, tight singletrack. (Ah, dirt.) The Rainforest Trail looks rainforesty even in December.

On the coast I came across the remains of a startlingly pink sea creature strewn over a piece of driftwood. Maybe a jellyfish? Then it was back for more sea lion entertainment and some hard intervals home in the rain.

Really, not so bad. Maybe, in the future, I'll remember today as a pleasant respite from the snow.

*****

Also, I'm working on organizing the info about my book (brief description, first chapter, ordering details and reviews) into its own blog site. It's still very much a work in progress, but you can find it here.

*****

Finally, don't forget to enter the raffle for an Olympus Stylus 1030 SW camera today, tomorrow or Wednesday! For every $5 you donate to the LIVESTRONG CHALLENGE through my donation page, you'll receive a raffle ticket from Fat Cyclist for a chance to win this great camera! (And I'm going to throw in a few books as consolation prizes.) Donate here!