Facing the fear

No amount of laughter from the back of the boat could muffle the screams in my heart. They burst from my chest, 190 howling beats per minute, pressing every cell in my body against the relentless rush of the Colorado River at flood stage. My ears, however, could only hear the primal roar of an explosion of rapids. The canyon was closing in like a funnel. Water as black as the sheer cliffs burst into torrents as white as the sun-blinded sky. They crashed against the rocks, building mountains of whitewater surrounded by a vortex of whirlpools. "That's it," said Hansel, the oarsman. "That's Skull." I glanced back at him. His face betrayed no emotion. I gripped a strap with icy fingers and held my other hand against my chest, grabbing for breaths as hyperventilation set in. My body stiffened and I felt helpless to turn away from the roiling mass in front of me. I faced it with a conviction that, despite everything I do with my life, remains a rare one - the honest conviction that I was about to die.

Everybody who knows me - or who has read my book - knows that I am deeply afraid of moving water. Large waves ... the ocean ... fast-flowing rivers. But right at the top of my list is whitewater rapids. It started in childhood and culminated with a couple bad whitewater rafting experiences in my early 20s. Since then, I have either completely avoided or reluctantly embarked on - with much stress - any kind of rafting, canoeing or boating experience. It's been hard, too, because rafting is something most of my friends in Utah love to do. They had planned a Westwater Canyon trip for our annual spring gathering of college friends. I have been telling them since March that I wasn't going to go. But then everything started to change. Geoff went back to Juneau. I decided I wanted to be with my friends. And, after all, a little fear training could probably do me some good.

I forget that most people see whitewater rafting trips as fun. 13 of us launched on Saturday morning, and it grew into quite the party trip. We camped at a spot just above the big rapids. We hiked to a small waterfall, and the brave among us (not me) slid down it like a waterslide. I tried to relax but had a difficult time. Despite everything that had happened to me in the past week ... big solo bike trip, serious dehydration at 90 degrees in the shadeless desert, making the final split with Geoff ... I couldn't shake the feeling that the chocolate-milk-colored water rushing down the canyon was the ultimate doom.

The group was fun though, even if my "fear training" did bring more jokes than sympathy. These are friends I only see once a year. I guess it doesn't have to be that way since I'm technically living in Utah right now. But the spring trip still has the flavor of a reunion.

We continued downriver late Sunday morning, and hit the heart of the rapids very, very fast. The river was flowing near peak levles, which means big water in some spots but washed-out rapids in most. So in the view of the oarsmen, the Colorado River was flowing at an easy stage. But Skull Rapid was enormous. The last time I floated through Skull - in 2002, at a flow 15 times lower than what it was at on Sunday - I was under water. During that trip, Geoff flipped his boat at the top of the rapid and those of us on his boat - four people and a pit bull puppy - had to ride it out alone. I still remember popping out of the water just as my helpless body was heading full-bore at a sheer wall that rafters call the "Rock of Shock." Right next to me was that little puppy, shrieking. The sound remains embedded in my memory as the voice of primal fear. I was convinced I could still hear it seven years later as we barreled through Skull - despite the high water, with hardly a splash. By the time the waves finally calmed down and reality set in - that it was a perfectly smooth run and the danger was minimal - tears were streaming down my face. I wasn't crying because I was happy to be alive. I was crying because I was angry about my fear. And that made me angry about all the misplaced joys in life that, no matter how hard I try, I may never be able to reclaim.

Westwater was a good trip for me - but not in the ways that I had hoped. I am still terrified of moving water, terrified to the point of panic. That was a disappointing discovery because after everything that's happened to me since 2002, I had hoped the anxiety would be lessened. That maybe I could become like my friends in the back of the boat, cheering and having fun. But Westwater did remind me that everything I am most afraid of can still be done - if I just learn to embrace my fear.

Trial by fire

I placed the water valve between my blistered lips, coated in salt and sand. I bit down hard and licked at the tip with my swollen tongue, trying to extract the last drops of water from the shriveled bladder. Nothing. Even the air inside was gone. I stopped pedaling and looked out over the shadeless expanse of desert. There wasn’t even a rock large enough to crawl behind. Chiseled sandstone peaks marked the rims of two great rivers - so inaccessible to me that they might as well have been in Alaska. I knelt in the hot sand to rest, the stop my head from spinning, to work to rationalize away my growing fear. I hadn’t seen another person since I passed a vehicle-supported group at least seven miles back. I had no idea who if anybody was in front of me. I knew I had at least 10 bone-dry miles before the trail dropped off the plateau toward the Green River. All I had to work with was a narrow line cut into the sand, stretching toward the sun. How I hated the sun.

“Bring lots of water with you,” was the advice of everyone I consulted about my plans. I packed a six-liter bladder and filled it to the brim. I bought a water filter and iodine tablets, promising myself that I’d fill up at every water source I came across on the route, even if it was gross cow water. It weighed at least 11 pounds by itself but it was worth it. I had never planned such a daunting solo bike tour - 140 miles of trail and rough dirt roads with no services on route and only a handful of road and river crossings, followed by 100 more miles of a dirt road loop with absolutely no bailout points. And here I was, practically fresh from coastal Alaska, skin still ghost-white and glistening with rainforest moisture, and sweating bullets anytime the temperature climbed above 70.

The trip was daunting for other reasons that had nothing to do with water. I knew I had to plan something physically challenging in order to make a decision how to proceed with the next few months, but my head just wasn’t in it. I drove five hours from Salt Lake City to Fruita, Colorado, and almost let a loose front spoke coax me out of the entire trip. I finally decided that I didn’t need a super early start and could always cut the trip short or extend it if I had to, and headed to a bike shop first thing in the morning. I called Geoff at the trailhead to work out the logistics of permanently splitting our trip. It was the first time we had talked at all in more than a week. There was a peace to the conversation, apologies on both sides, but it left me feeling even more empty. The whole trip was only looking more directionless. Riding a bicycle alone in the desert. What would be the point?

But, lucky for me, I have a hard time backing out on the decisions I make unless I have a really good reason. It was nearly noon by the time I set out. The Kokopelli Trail left Fruita on rocky singletrack. Back when I lived in Salt Lake City, I hadn't yet started mountain biking. I didn't really start until after I moved to Alaska. For all the time I've spent attempting to ride on snow, I'm a rank beginner on rocks and sand. I felt like a little kid trying to pilot a three-wheeler over a minefield of toys. I was all over the place. And off to a slow start, feeling foolish for thinking I could ride a bike through the desert. An intense hike-a-bike at about mile 14 nearly did me in. I was feeling lonely, overheated and sick to my stomach. I could look down the valley and see trucks wheeling effortlessly down I-70. It would have been so easy for me to hike down the railroad tracks and follow the freeway back. But I remembered that every time I start a long ride, I always feel like quitting early, and that usually wears off. And sure enough, I started to settle into my groove.

For as little riding as I've done in the desert, some of it felt very familiar.

A hard headwind blew from the southwest, infuriatingly in the direction I was heading. Miles 30 through 70 or so are probably the flattest of the whole route, but it didn't feel that way to me as I ground down the pedals at 8 mph. It wasn't that hot but the 40 mph gusts seemed to suck the moisture right out of my skin. I didn't realize it at the time, but a severe deficit was just beginning.

One positive aspect of the wind is the silver shimmer of spring grass, like waves in an ocean. I didn't realize it at the time, but an extreme preoccupation with water was just beginning. Still, the beauty of the landscape helped keep my mind off all my uncertainties. The simplicity of my goals - eat, drink, ride - convinced me that sometimes life can be that simple.

And desert sunsets never disappoint. I was feeling downright blissful by 8 p.m.

Unfortunately, I didn't realize how light my pack had become. I started out the day with six liters of water and hadn't gone by a stream that I noticed since mile 14. I had been taking what felt like conservative sips and hadn't peed once since early that morning, but just past Westwater (where I could have cut off route to find water, but didn't realize I needed to) I heard that awful slurping sound that told me my water was all gone. I had somehow managed to burn through a gallon and half - all I had the ability to carry with the gear I brought - in nine hours. It didn't seem like a good sign. I reached Highway 128 and agonized about cutting the route to find water quickly. I had 10 miles of slow, sandy trail ahead of me that I would have to ride in the dark without any water. My tongue was already beginning to swell. But I finally decided that I wasn't racing the thing - I was on a bike tour. Suffering wasn't a requisite of my plan. I turned down the highway and cranked it in high gear to Dewey Bridge, thinking only about the promise of the muddy Colorado River.

I spent 20 minutes pumping six more liters of river water through my filter after pumping at least one liter directly into my mouth. I headed a little way up the road, unrolled my bivy, and tested my theory about the need for simplicity in bike food - by eating half a jar of peanut butter for dinner. The moon washed my meager campsite in cool blue light. I realized that I truly felt content. Life was good when I had water.

I woke up feeling slightly hung over. I had already ridden a few miles away from the river, so gulping down a liter of water with my breakfast of two Clif Bars cut into my supply. The trail up from the Colorado River started steep and ended unforgivingly rocky. I wasn't willing to try anything to strenuous or risky when the route was so long, and I was alone and so far from help. I ended up walking a fair amount of the next 20 miles. Most of my hike-a-bikes were downhill. I started to seriously question why a person like me even bothered to bring a bike when a backpack and a good pair of boots seemed faster. I noticed the skin on my arms was starting to blister, even though it didn't look burnt. I had been slathering on SPF 50 ever two hours during the daytime since the trip began, but I just couldn't wear enough to hold back the UV rays. I stopped in the thin shade of a juniper tree after five hours of solid effort, 20 miles into the day, and checked my water supply. I was already down to less than two liters. I knew Onion Creek was close but I had no idea if there was actually water there. I felt dehydrated and sun-shocked. Bailing from the route at that point seemed almost inevitable.

I heard a truck roll up and soon heard someone say "Jill?" It was my friends Jen and Mike - who had no idea I was on that particular trail and who just happened to be in the area looking for a place to hike. They were the first actual people I had seen since I left the Fruita trail system. I refilled my bladder with their supply. They told me Geoff had picked up my car in Fruita and was somewhere near by. I dropped into the valley just before the long, long climb into the mountains. Sure enough, I saw my car parked at the base and a few miles up the road I saw Geoff running.

It was strange to see him after spending a week half believing I'd never talk to him again. But my anger had settled and I was genuinely glad he was there. I told him how much I had been struggling, how thirsty I always was, how I started late and was moving slower than I had hoped, so the White Rim was pretty much out of the question. He agreed to meet me in Moab with real dinner, a tent, and a car ride to the White Rim trailhead in the morning. It messed up my original goal of doing the entire thing self-supported, but making my peace with Geoff seemed more important than any bike goal.

After we parted, I set into the long climb slow but comfortable. In all of my suffering in the heat and sun, my body felt great with the exception of soreness in my frostbitten toes. I had to laugh at the appropriateness of frostbite-caused pain in the Utah desert. I would have killed for a slab of snow to roll around in.

As it was, the climb brought me pretty close. I reached 8,600 feet, lightheaded but alive in the cooler air. According to my GPS, the route has nearly 12,000 feet of climbing in the short 70 miles between Dewey and Moab, and the time it took me to complete the ride testified to the steepness, but the day didn't feel too physically difficult. I still wasn't drinking enough water - easy to tell because nothing was moving through me. Still, Moab seemed like a safe haven, and the big sips of water were making me feel slightly nauseated, so I didn't worry too much about it.

The descent from 8,000 feet to 4,000 feet down the Sand Flats Road was amazing - my favorite part of the entire trip. I was blasted by so much cool air that I was actually chilled, and the sunset painted the alpine in intense colors.

Desert sunsets never disappoint.

I know I've used this blog to gripe about my constant lack of sun in Juneau, but when it comes down to it, Juneau is a better extreme for a person like me. I had soaked up so much UV light that my skin, though not sunburned, was radiating heat. Watching the sun leave was my favorite part of the day.

Geoff and I had a good, although long, talk in Moab. It was after 2 a.m. by the time I went to sleep and I had a hard time dragging myself out of bed at anything resembling an early hour. Geoff drove me to Island in the Sky, thereby cutting about 25 miles of road off my original planned route. Still, White Rim in one day isn't technically easy. It's 100 miles by itself, with about 8,000 feet of climbing, there's no shade and once you drop in and commit, there's no escape.

I was in love with the White Rim for the first half of the day. I rode it once before, in 2003, with a $250 Trek 6500 that I had only ridden a handful of times before the trip. We took three days and it was vehicle-supported, with gallons of water and Dutch oven dinners. I still remember it as a hard, daunting ride. But on Thursday the miles passed easily, at least compared to the Kokopelli Route, and I was amazed how great I felt despite everything.

Things started to go south right around a climb called Murphy's Hogback, about halfway into the ride. It's steep but not all that long. I wasn't setting out to test my limits and walked a good portion of it. I reached the top and saw one of the few touring groups on the trail - the White Rim route was surprisingly not crowded. It was downright deserted, at least relative to what I expected. I hadn't seen that many people, but I didn't know at the time that they were going to be the last people I saw for the rest of the day.

The White Rim has no water and no services, but it does have many, many opportunities to end things quickly if it comes to that.

A few miles beyond the bottom of Murphy's, I started to feel intensly dizzy. I swerved for a few seconds before I was forced to stop my bike and sit next to the trail. The hot sun pounded my body and there was no way to hide from it. I had no idea what was wrong - hydration, electrolytes, or a serious bonk - so I tried everything. I took large sips of seriously warm water and gulped down a couple of electrolyte pills. I choked down a Power Bar and a couple handfuls of pumpkin seeds. I tried to pee but couldn't - there was nothing there. I checked my bladder and saw with dismay that I was down to less than two liters again. Just over 50 miles into a 100-mile ride. I had ditched my filter with Geoff and only had iodine tablets. And I had no idea when the trail even met the Green River. I couldn't remember and only had a National Park map to go by. For all I could tell from that map, it may have been the very end. I might run into another group, but I had no way of knowing. I was scared. I was genuinely scared. The desert is an intense environment that in my experience is deeply similar to frozen tundra - hauntingly beautiful and deadly. My whole body system was freaking out and I was far from help. Still, I was able to put rationality to work. The Green River was at most 30 miles away. People don't die of thirst in a matter of hours, although heat stroke was a real possibility. My body's reaction was probably more a lack of calories and electrolytes than lack of water, and after 20 minutes of a good rest and a few more pumpkin, I already felt better. I mounted my bike and moved with single-minded purpose toward water.

So close but so far away.

Still, my bladder did run out before I reached the river. I had been rationing but running out completely was another big blow. My lips and tongue were swollen. When I licked my lips, I tasted only salt, so I knew that I really was severely dehydrated. Then, stupidly, I reached the river but decided to continue further to a campground that was on the map, knowing I was close to the river but hoping I would find someone that would give me real water (I know I have to get over it, but I still struggle with the prospect of drinking directly from silty rivers, even with iodine.) I didn't know that another huge climb awaited at a placed called Hardscrabble, and pretty soon I was 500 feet above the rive again, truly frustrated.

I finally dropped down to the river and stopped to fill my bladder with thick brown water and drop my tablets in. I didn't want to start the steep climb out of Mineral Bottom in as bad of shape as I was, so I decided I would take a break for a half hour while the iodine kicked in, relax in the shade and take a bath in the river. I was coated in three days of dust, sweat and sunscreen, and a swim sounded awesome. But when I tried to get in, I sank to my knees in quicksand. Everwhere I walked down the bank was the same situation. At one point, I had to grab a bush to pull myself out. There was nowhere to get in the river, and at that point I was not only coated in dirt, but my legs were covered in stinky sludge. To top it all off, mosquitoes were attacking me in force. That did it. Water or none, I was not going to hang around the White Rim any longer. I had had it.

After the iodine kicked in, I drank a whole lot of silty water and wondered where all that moisture was going. Apparently out of my skin and directly into the air, because it didn't seem to stick around in my body at all. I felt like a sun-dried tomato, shriveled and spent. But as the sun went down, I climbed out of Horsethief with renewed power, and with water back in my system, finally feeling strong again. I remain amazed at the sheer pleasure I extract from the seemingly pointless act of pedaling all day. Life is hard on a bike - but at the same time so simple.

Moab express

I'm planning to leave Tuesday morning for my first bikepacking trip of the year. I'm going to leave Loma, Colorado, and take the Kokopelli Trail to Moab, ride up Potash Road, ride around the White Rim up Mineral Bottom and then back to Moab. I'm giving myself three days to do this. I'm guessing that it will be close to 300 miles riding mostly dirt in the hot, hot desert. It's a fairly ambitious plan for the state I'm in right now, but it needs to be done. You can follow me on my SPOT shared page. This map above also should register the last point sent. The SPOT page is here:

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0W25MJOgjh2SRim8h06QMXNaRFSXFYFhk

Wish me luck. I'm really nervous so I'm gonna need it.

LATE EDIT: I was setting up my gear at the trailhead when I discovered a loose spoke in my front wheel. I'm bummed I didn't catch it earlier, but it seems like a bad idea to start ~140 miles of remote dirt road and trail with something like that. I detoured to Fruita and plan to show up at one of the bike shops in town Tuesday morning and hope they can fix a wheel fast. But I probably won't be on the trail until late Tuesday morning or early afternoon. This may limit my window to ride the White Rim, but I'll have to play it by ear.

The drive down here was amazingly beautiful, with dramatic lighting on the Book Cliffs and an apricot sunset. But it also gave me five hours to think about just how lonely I really feel right now. In the past, I've really enjoyed the solitude of solo bike tours, but I have a feeling that solitude is going to be a real challenge for me in this trip - maybe even more so than the heat, the scarcity of water, and the 50 mph wind gusts that have been ripping through this part of the world. I'm still optimistic that I'm going to go through with this trip; but, man, I don't think I've ever had such a hard time coaxing myself to go on a bike ride. And I include the Iditarod in this list.

Salt Lake City

Spending time with my family and a few old friends has been a great stabilizer for my state of mind. My family especially has been so supportive, even though I haven't always been as emotionally open with them as I should be. My mom has been feeding me great homemade meals and doesn't even blink when I leave a huge mess of gear in their spare bedroom and head out for six hours of biking. I'm always amazed by how quickly I can settle back into life in Salt Lake, as if the years haven't even passed since I moved away. Most people can't go home again, but I can.

Biking, which often felt depressing and burdensome when I was traveling with Geoff and we were in the early stages of our breakup, has become mostly enjoyable again. It's only mostly enjoyable because biking is really hard here. I've spent most my time climbing canyons and seeking out singletrack. On Thursday I did Little and Big Cottonwood Canyons. Little felt refreshing enough so I picked up the pace up Big, forgetting that the canyon is something like 16 miles long. Just climbing. For 16 miles. It's enough to put a person in that fuzzy place where life almost makes sense.

I've really been sucking wind on the climbs. But my legs feel great, so I'm going to go ahead and blame the elevation. The sun has been kicking my butt as well. Everyone has been telling me that Salt Lake had a cool, wet spring, but oddly it didn't save any of that for me. 70 and sunny every day. I know. Awesome riding weather. But it's amazingly oppressive when you're adapted to 45 degrees and damp cloudy skies. I slather on SPF 50 until my pasty Alaskan skin shimmers and yet still fry, and I can't seem to drink enough water. It goes in and comes right back out, but I'm always thirsty.

The Millcreek Pipeline trail is such a sweet piece of singletrack. I rode it twice. Mountain biking has been battering me, too. I forget that I'm kinda bad at it. I have bruises and scratches up and down my legs, although my left arm is mostly healed from my Marin crash a week ago. The swelling has gone down and the road rash is scabbing over, and it doesn't throb when I hit bumps any more. I've started to go at singletrack more aggressively, with mixed results. Sometimes I clean something and amaze myself. But the other day, I came up on a surprise tight turn and too high of a speed and dipped my wheel in a small ravine. I ended up tangled in a bush 10 feet down a near-vertical slope with the bar-end permanently imprinted in my thigh. I was lucky another cyclist stopped to help pull me out, because it may have taken me a while to get myself and my bike out of that one.

I've done a little hiking as well. Most of the higher Wasatch trails are still snow-covered, so walking is the best way to get good elevation exposure. I climbed Grandeur Peak with my dad and his friend, Tom, on Saturday morning.

My dad surprised me at the peak with a cold can of Diet Pepsi. At least my dad loves me. :-)

The Corner Canyon trails begin less than three miles from where my parents live. Lots of fun potential here, although I'm learning that I prefer to net real distance rather than loop around a mountain bike park. That's probably why my singletrack skills are so dismal.

American Fork Canyon. That makes five canyons I've climbed to the top of this week. All within a short afternoon's ride from Draper. And I didn't even hit Emigration or City Creek yet.

Mount Timpanogos. My plan now is to head south to the desert on Monday afternoon for a three-day solo bikepacking trip. The purpose of the trip is to determine whether I have the physical, mental and, most importantly, emotional fitness to continue with my original summer plan - to ride all or at least part of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route starting in mid-June. The logistics are going to be more difficult without Geoff to help me gear up for the long trip, and I have to admit I'm not loving the company of myself right now. But there's something too important about this trip to give up on it just yet. I hope to know more by the end of this week.

I wanted to say thanks to everyone who shared their stories and offered words of support in my last post. That's helped a lot, too. Life goes on, and it's always good to be reminded of that.

Reality

I took this picture on Saturday morning in the Marin Headlands. I took it shortly after I had a little meltdown. Actually, it wasn't as much a little meltdown as it was a big meltdown. I came to after about a half hour, stood up from where I had been huddling beneath a bush, set the self timer on my camera, and took this photo. I took it because I wanted to remember what I went through. I took it because I chronicle my life. It's just what I do. Good and bad.

I've been trying to figure out how to approach this subject on my blog, or whether I'd mention it at all, or if I'd just go ahead and kill the blog altogether as part of a resolve to start anew. But I finally decided that in everything I've dealt with in the past three years, being open about my feelings and experiences on my blog has in the end been helpful.

Geoff broke up with me two and a half weeks ago. It happened 52 hours before we were supposed to board a ferry south for a summer trip we had been planning for several months. It happened for many reasons. It happened just when I thought things were going really well for us. And as the ferry departure inched closer, it became more obvious that it really happened. I probably shouldn't have gotten on that boat, but I did, because I wanted to at least try to salvage eight years of friendship and partnership. And I wanted to salvage a summer adventure I had really been looking forward to. I wanted things to be the same.

But of course, they haven't been. We did a lot of talking on the drive, and most of what was said was hurtful and discouraging; but I kept my head above the water and kept the wheels moving south. I visited my friends and did my bike rides and at times had a lot of fun. I didn't talk with anyone else besides my family about what was going on between me and Geoff. At times, when I was alone on my bike rides, I'd feel a rush of intense loneliness. But I'd push those feelings back. I'd tell myself it was for the best. I'd remind myself that in many ways, I'm better off alone.

Last Saturday, Geoff ran the Miwok 100K race. He had placed a lot of our summer trips' capital on finishing well in this race. Months ago, I had promised to help him with checkpoint-to-checkpoint race support. We left our friends' house Friday night and drove to Marin in a windy rainstorm. We set up camp and went to bed early. I woke up at 5 a.m. and drove him to the race start, carried his cold-weather layers as he shed them on the way to the starting line, and raced back to camp to take down the tent in time to reach the first checkpoint before he came through. Then I drove to the checkpoint, waited in the cold rain with an armful of stuff until he ran by, and then drove to the next checkpoint to do the same. After that chore was complete, I had four hours to kill before he came through again, so I set out for a bike ride.

The weather was damp and cold, with fog so thick that everything appeared blurry and washed in dirty gray. I climbed up a fire road and bombed down the other side, my head filled with resentment and anger, coasting faster and faster in a spray of gravel and mud, my heart pumping gray cold blood and my eyes so blinded by the fog that I failed to notice a metal pipe sticking out of the gravel road. I launched over it at 25 or 30 mph; the rear wheel slid sideways along the wet surface and the bike slapped me on the ground like a hooked fish. I never even had time to hit the brakes. My left arm hit hard, followed by my head, and I could hear the dull crunch of my helmet followed by grinding rumble of my body sliding over loose gravel.

As soon as I came to a stop, I quickly stood up and nudged my overturned bike to the side, terrified that someone else would come bombing down the hill and run me over. My arm throbbed with intense pain and I held it tightly to my side. At least a couple long-sleeve layers were torn and I was too scared to look at my skin. I was partly convinced that I had broken a bone. As the pain coursed through my arm, a much deeper and darker feeling bubbled up from my core. It was as though the rush of pain from the bike crash ignited an explosive release of everything I had been feeling over the past two weeks, but had bottled up for reasons of fun, peace and a sense of normalcy. As those feelings rushed to the surface, I was surrounded by a darkness so complete that it blocked out all the rain, the fog, and the warm blood trickling down my arm. The darkness needled through my pores, filling my body with hopelessness, anger, fear and unfocused physical pain that was worse than the worst moment of rewarming frostbite. I felt helpless to even move. There was nothing I could do but curl up beneath a nearby bush and let it filter through. I was finally ready to accept the depth of my emotions. I was finally willing to admit my heart was broken.

When I finally pulled myself together, I still felt horrible. I had decided my arm wasn't broken, but it still hurt enough to prevent me from putting any pressure on it, which meant I couldn't ride my bike. I held the stem with my right hand and trudged six miles back to the race checkpoint. The moment I reached my car was the exact moment Geoff walked up after dropping out of the race. He had been sick and looked weak and disappointed. He was shivering in the damp cold. For me, that was the final painful moment of truth, because both of us needed comfort so badly, and neither of us could provide it to the other.

It's hard to write about this in general - especially on a blog that so many people see. To my friends, I'm sorry if this is the way you found out. I've considered making individual phone calls to our many mutual friends to break the news, but this is still hard to deal with in the open. The blog feels less personal and less open, so it seems a good first step. Geoff and I are working to make the break as friendly as possible. We want to make sure our friends feel they don't have to take sides. And I recognize that relationships end. It happens. It's part of life. And I'm still a full person on my own. But it hurts to be rejected and it's scary to be alone, and right now that's the lens I'm looking through to take my next steps.

Where those next steps will take me, I'm still not sure. I wanted to rush back to Juneau and my cat and the safe monotony of my job, but I'm still down here because I feel strongly that this sabbatical is an important part of the journey, even if it doesn't go the direction I had planned. I'm not even sure where the sabbatical will take me, but I remain open to new things and willing to accept that the paths of life are mostly unknown.

San Fransisco

I spent the past four days in San Fransisco with good friends. It was quite the reunion. At one point, six of us who once lived together in a house in Salt Lake City gathered from all corners of the West to scarf down sourdough bread and soak in lots of San Fransisco dampness (my friend Paul, who lives there now with his wife, Monika, said "Honestly, it's hardly ever this crappy here. It must be you."

Our friend Jen flew out from Utah just to visit everyone. She and I wanted to do "touristy" things. We convinced the others to ride the ferry to Alcatraz Island.

The audio tour guide told us that 1,500 prisoners were housed there during all of its days as a notorious prison. As a tourist destination, that island must see about that many visitors in a handful of hours. Honestly, after visiting there, I don't see what was so bad about it. It's kind of a cozy little spot. :-)

The fog started to clear on the ride home.

It brought the most sunshine I had seen in days, and for a couple beautiful hours I could see San Fransisco.

Jen and Monika are on a boat; it's as real as it gets. (There guys, I said it.)

Fishermen's Wharf was certainly good for laughs, and much more palatable than the Juneau docks.

The Mission neighborhood also is good for laughs, and has much better food.

In between soaking up city life, there was still a little time to soak in some mist and miles. I'm not a huge fan of biking in cities. If I knew the city well, I'm sure I could find some great routes to ride in San Fransisco, but most of the time in city limits I felt like I was inching through traffic - green light, sprint; red light, stop. I did some hard interval climbs in the hills of Noe Valley. But when I finally had time for a longer ride, I dodged morning rush hour traffic and cable cars down Market Street, coasted beside the shore and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. The fog was so thick I could barely see the cars on the street next to me, let alone the bridge or any of the famous views. But once I was back in Marin County, I felt more at home.

After looping over the ridge a couple of times, I crossed back over to the city and found some great trails in the Golden Gate park. Later, I became hopelessly lost in the northwestern corner of the city and somehow landed on Haight Street. My San Fransisco experience was nearly complete.

Later on Monday, Monika, Jen and I "climbed" the San Fransisco Twin Peaks, a couple of bald spots on top of a 900-foot hill in the center of the bustling city. Of course there was nothing to see, but with wind gales blowing the misty rain sideways, it almost felt like the top of a real mountain.

Jen and I drove to Salt Lake City today. Geoff flew to New York to visit his family. I've been working on a post about his Miwok race and my future plans. There is much to tell.