The end of May

Date: May 30 and 31
Mileage: 8.4 and 41.2
May mileage: 1,188.4
Temperature: 61

"You've certainly done a lot of biking this month," my mom said to me on the phone today. "Is it because Geoff's gone?"

"I think I've ridden about 990 in May," Geoff told me as he was driving from Moab to Salt Lake to start his long bike trip north. "I'm training for the longest mountain bike race in the world, and you're still riding more than me."

So now I have a just-shy-of-1,200-miles month. The majority of the miles were spent on a mountain bike on pavement, usually either touring, commuting or traveling to and from trails. If I break down the factors that led to all the miles, they're really more complex than just a good, old-fashioned bike binge. For starters, I took up bike commuting in earnest this month. That's only cut very minimally - if at all - into my regular riding, and adds an average of 60 miles per week - 240 miles over the month. I started out May sincerely dedicated to endurance training, which has devolved into a looser commitment to weekly mini bike vacations. Either way, both endeavours stack up mileage. One demands hours in the saddle and the other awards hours in the saddle.

My ride on Thursday definitely landed on my "top five best Juneau rides ever" list. I didn't write about it afterward because I had "Oh, the Places You'll Go" stuck in my head for most of the day. Like any poem or song in which you don't know all of the words, I started to invent my own. And after nine hours of pedaling I had a whole new version looping through my head, so I had to go home and type it out. But, in the interim, I had an amazing bike ride. The weather of course was perfect (how long can this last? It's been 10 days at least. I feel like I've landed in the Southeast Alaska twilight zone.) I rode Herbert Glacier Trail for the first time this year (finally clear!) and went on to Eagle River, riding much farther than I have before (Eagle River is a nasty trail and more often than not a hike-a-bike, but if you put up with the walking, there are some fun stretches.) I did take a rough fall over one of the epic root piles along the Eagle River, but I'm such a timid technical rider that I consider mountain bike falls - as long as I come out relatively unscathed - to be a good thing. I had planned on returning home after the Eagle River ride, but spontaneously decided to go north instead. I went to the end of Glacier Highway, where a large gate blocks the entrance to a gravel road that I assume is the pioneer construction of the proposed (and currently in limbo) Juneau Access Road. I've never been brave enough to venture out that way, because I fear large restrictive gates and their warning signs. But on Thursday I threw caution to the wind and ducked under the gate. The gravel was really rough (like "I wish I had full suspension" rough) and blocked in two places by landslides large enough to prevent any vehicle from going through - even ATVs. I was disappointed to discover the road only extends about five more miles before it literally drops right off into Berner's Bay. But after skirting around a big bad gate and two landslides, it was exciting to stand on the edge of the water and know I was truly "out there."

Then I felt fresh and energetic the whole way home. My GPS was registering triple-digit miles and the wind was blasting in my face. It didn't even seem real to feel as good as I did, but I felt great. I arrived at home after 9 p.m. - having had waited until noon to leave the house. Then I busted out a quick and rather eclectic dinner with the meager, meager food I had left in the fridge, and raved about my bike ride to my roommate until he got tired and went to bed. After that, I didn't sleep for most of the night. I was pumping all kinds of endorphins and adrenaline and it was nearly impossible to come down. I'll never understand people who say "I'll sleep well tonight" after a good, long ride. The exact opposite happens to me. The better (and longer) the ride, the worse I sleep. But it's worth it.

Of course I was a zombie on Friday after waking up at the crack of 7 a.m. to go fishing (didn't catch anything). Friday had just a short ride to commute to a friend's BBQ. Today was half-hearted hill intervals up to the ski resort and the commute to work. This is the way May ends. Lots of bike riding. The way it all came about is still a little vague. Like I said, I've kind of given up on the presumption that I'm "training," more than I'm just "having fun because I really do enjoy biking and it is especially rewarding when the weather is nice like it has been most of this month." And I don't feel like I've spent more time than usual on a bike - but there is a project I started in earnest toward the end of April that's been stalled out for four weeks. I haven't been back to the library in at least that long. I still have Netflix movies that Geoff rented before he left that I should really just send back and cancel the subscription because it's stupid to pay $9.99 a month to keep red envelopes on a desk. The TV remains unplugged since we pulled the cord when the energy crisis began in mid-April. And I do have a problem with continually running out of fresh food. (People think gas is expensive. Bike fuel is expensive.) So maybe there have been small lifestyle shifts toward higher mileage. But I like to think I'm just getting faster.

Oh, the places we'll ride

Date: May 29
Mileage: 117.3
May mileage: 1,138.8
Temperature: 60

(With apologies to Dr. Seuss.)

Congratulations!
Today is your day!
There's no work to do.
There's more time to play.
You have food in your pack.
And legs in your shorts.
And you can propel yourself.
On an adventure of sorts.
You have a bike. And you are what you are.
But as a cyclist only you can decide how far.
You think over your options, but it doesn't seem fair
You'll think, "But I always, always go there."
With your pack full of food and your shorts full of legs
You don't want to risk pedaling around in the dregs.
But this is not the day
To wallow in your abode.
The sun is out; it's time
To head out the road.

It's opener there,
Beyond the city we share.
Out the road, there are trails
That are seldomly used
Even by people as hungry
And leggy as you.
So when you find yourself alone,
In a place that's all new,
Just keep pedaling along.
Because that's what you do.

Oh! The places we'll ride!
Where the glaciers loom large!
Where the rivers run deep!
Where deer leap along roadsides,
And the mountains climb steep.
You won't turn around because you have the strength.
To go anywhere you want to - any height, any length.
Wherever you ride, you'll see beauty and awe,
Until you can't even believe all the things that you saw.

Except when you're marred,
Because sometimes, it's hard.
Those beautiful things,
Sometimes come with a cost,
And sometimes you're tired,
And sometimes you're lost.
And sometimes you're fighting
An unending wind,
Or jaw-jarring roots
That flip you end over end.
And when you're on the ground,
You're not in for much fun.
Getting back on the bike.
Is not always easily done.
The trail will keep going,
And you'll wonder what for.
There's beauty here,
But also violence and gore.
A place where you could break a collarbone or thumb.
Do you dare move forward? Do you dare say you're done?
And if you say you're done, where do you draw the line?
Go home? Take up knitting? Drink a gallon of wine?
Or stand up and keep pedaling down the trail?
Simple it's not, and you still could fail.

You can get so frustrated.
That you'll stare at the ground.
Zoned out to all of the color and sound.
Grinding on for miles without looking around.
Headed, I fear, to a place you'll feel bound.
The quitting place.
For people just hoping that the pain will end.
So they can go home, call their friends.
Sit on the couch and maybe pretend
That there is no need to ever bike again.
People just want to quit.
Quit dodging the trees,
Quit pushing until they wheeze,
Quit hurting their knees.
Everyone is just quitting.

No! That's not for you!
Somehow you'll pull through.
All the thoughts of quitting and fear.
You'll hop those bad roots.
You'll learn how to steer.
With your hair flip-flapping,
Once more you'll ride true!
With everywhere to go and everything to do!
Oh the places we'll ride!
Narrow trails riverside.
With the flow and the feel that there's no reason to hide.
All of the magical things you can do with your bike.
Will make you wonder what's not to like.
Fast! You'll go as fast as you want to go.
With the whole world willing you to never be slow.

Except when they don't.
Because sometimes, they won't.
There will be times.
That you hit a wall.
Slowness that feels even worse than the fall.
Just slow! Whether you like it or not,
Slow is something you will be quite a lot.
And when you're slow, it's a very good bet,
That you will believe your match has been met.
And you're done, forever, with nowhere to go now but down,
And you'll want to turn and head right back to town.
But on you will go,
Though the miles run long.
On you will go,
Though you feel you don't belong,
On you will go,
Quietly humming a song,
Onward beyond,
The end of the road.
Where gravel you've never ridden,
Stretches beyond Echo Cove.
The sign says "restricted,"
Which you decide means "no cars."
And you'll take this path
To places farther than far.

You'll get tired, yes,
you'll get tired yet again.
And jolted and tossed
And stopped by dead ends.
So be sure when you pedal,
Pedal with passion and grit,
And remember that cycling's
More than just a way to stay fit.
Just never forget to be flexible and strong,
And always mix up a good list of songs,
And will you succeed?
Yes you will indeed!
Joy is one thing cycling can guarantee.
Kid, you'll ride miles!
So be your name Raleigh or Surly or Trek,
Roadie or Pugsley or Kim or Shrek,
You're off to go riding!
To go anywhere you like!
Your trail is just waiting.
So get on your bike!

(For Susan)

Time to go grocery shopping

Date: May 28
Mileage: 31.2
May mileage: 1,021.5
Temperature: 64

My quads are killing me. Yes, they're sore from snowshoeing yesterday. Well, not really sore from snowshoeing - more like sore from that flailing, loping run thing I did most of the five miles down the mountain because I was running late for work. It's strange, because the muscles all but throb when I'm just sitting at my desk, but they feel OK when I'm pedaling. Maybe I'll be able to squeeze in a long ride tomorrow after all.

I sent Geoff a package today with his mail and various bike parts. Because it was one of those USPS flat rate boxes, I started looking for other things to fill the empty space. I added a pair of bike socks and a few New Yorker magazines that I already read. I thought about sending him some bike food, but I don't have any left in my own stash. I rifled deeper in the cupboards and rediscovered my box of Iditarod food. This is the food I actually dragged, stuffed as it was in a frame bag, for many grueling miles during the February race. Some of it went the entire distance. Actually, a lot of it did - because I didn't really eat much of anything during the actual event. Then the food came home with me - crushed, mangled, deep frozen and defrosted. I couldn't bear the thought of eating it, ever, or even looking at it again, really. But it was food, technically edible food, and I couldn't bring myself to throw it away. So today I sent it to Geoff. I'm not sure what he will think when he opens his package to find three-month-old baggies of mixed nuts and crushed-to-crumbs Trio bars. I do know that as the post office worker whisked the package away, I felt a tinge of sentimental attachment that I harbor for just about everything associated with that race. Even my gross old food.

After I sent the package, I realized the barely salvageable Iditarod stash was my only real option for having any food for a bike ride tomorrow. My fridge contains exactly three cartons of yogurt, half a loaf of bread, a jar of jam and a bunch of condiments that are probably expired and belong to my roommate anyway. Geoff used to do most (all) of the grocery shopping and I think Shannon and I are going through withdrawals. Literal food withdrawals. I cobbled together some frozen vegetables and chicken for lunch today, but that's not going to pack well on a bike ride. I may have to make a bunch of jam sandwiches. Life is harder without Geoff. In more ways than one.

Video blog: Summer stroll

Date: May 27
Mileage: 9.2
May mileage: 990.3
Temperature: 56

I'm pushing my highest-mileage month ever on a bicycle (I mean, besides my long bike tour.) Only about 25 more miles and I shouldn't have any problem surpassing it, although I try to tell myself it doesn't matter. I've long been converted to the idea of quality over quantity, and yet I still keep track of every mile I pedal, and get excited about distance. I thought about shooting for a month-end surge if for no other reason than to bump up the record to something harder to beat (and because all the saddle time is good training for the 24 Hours of Light, which is still on the docket.) But it's hard not to take advantage of a cloudless day to hike to elevation for some stunning views.

I have been thinking more about hiking lately, silently willing the snow to just melt already so there's more user-friendly access to high points. I feel like this is the summer to hit the mountains hard - I have a GPS now, a few maps, better emergency gear, and a better idea of accessible ridgelines and possible places to explore. I probably won't delve into any seriously deep exploration this year - these roadless areas demand multi-day time commitments, and I generally have about four hours in the morning, tops. Plus, I am just a walker in a maze of technical barriers. Maybe this is the year that I learn how to climb. As if one expensive, all-consuming hobby wasn't enough.

But, yes! Hiking. I'm so excited. I take little tastes on the rapidly deteriorating snowmobile and boot pack trails. I took some video footage today while I was walking on the Dan Moller Trail because I was excited about the color and light of the day - forgetting that pretty scenery doesn't really translate to heavily compressed, pixelated Web video. And walking doesn't make for exciting footage. Every time I make one of these video blogs, afterward I think they're really stupid and I shouldn't post them. But, then I go ahead and post them anyway.




Enjoy!

Summertime, and the livin's easy

Date: May 25-26
Mileage: 26.7 and 45.1
May mileage: 981.1
Temperature: 66 and 59

My housemate and I received our long-dreaded electricity bill this week. I actually shuddered a little when he asked me if I wanted to see it. But all of our energy conservation efforts have paid off. We came in well under $100 when we were bracing for $200-$250. I'm sure we're not alone in being pleasantly surprised by our bill. Since the April 16 avalanches wiped out the city's hydro power, Juneau has cut its electricity use by more than 35 percent. The utility sends me the stats every day so I can post them in the newspaper, and they're downright amazing. Scott at AEL&P even made a nice graph. On April 16, Juneau used 972 MW-hours of energy and burned 84,417 gallons of diesel. On May 25, we used 551 MW-hours of energy and burned 33,388 gallons of diesel. A new record low. There are a lot of factors that go into energy and fuel use, but I think Juneau serves as proof that large-scale energy conservation within entire communities actually is a viable dream - as long as the incentive is good enough. People are being hit hard in the pocketbook, and so they're riding their bikes more often, walking more places, watching less TV, and generally experiencing a different quality of life. I'm not in support of natural disasters ruining valuable infrastructure, but I have to admit I view this "energy crisis" as an interesting experiment in positive change.

It does help that the weather hit 60 for the first time all year and climbed right up into the 70s this week. That's about as warm as it gets in this part of the world, and I've been venturing outside in short sleeves and shorts, soaking my pasty, hasn't-seen-daylight-since-August pale skin in UV rays until I'm dehydrated, sun drunk and covered in patchy burns where I missed a layer or two of SPF 50. I promised myself I wouldn't complain about sun as long as I lived in Juneau, but I have to admit that I did complain, a little, today as I explained to my co-worker that I couldn't eat anything hot - spicy or temperature-wise - because of the sun blister spread across my bottom lip.


But life in Alaska is pretty lax when it's summer and warm and the weather is beautiful. The sun sets so late now that I almost don't need to bring my bike lights to work any more, and it's wonderful to just walk out the door in whatever I feel like wearing and ride to the office without the burden of piles of soaking wet clothing. I like to tack on a few extra miles in the evening so I can roll alongside the water where deep orange streaks of sunlight brush across the horizon, painting over any remnants of the blues.

Beyond the dead ends

Date: May 24
Mileage: 147.4
May mileage: 909.3

I’d been feeling a serious need to leave town, even if only for a day. With the crunch of work and travel time, one day was about all I’d have. But where to spend a day? A flight to Anchorage seemed excessive. I thought about Sitka with its logging roads and trails, but then I realized what I really needed was a long road ... a road that doesn’t dead-end ... a road that, at least in the deepest recesses of potential, is limitless.

The Haines Highway is one of two roads that link Southeast Alaska with the outside world. That and the Klondike Highway are two of the most beautiful routes I’ve ever had to privilege to ride a bicycle along, which I’ve done only once, during a whirlwind tour last August. Back then I put a lot of pressure on myself to complete this post-injury, pseudo-fast-tour, which, looking back, did cut away from the experience. This time I was going out solely for the joyride, as far or as little as I felt like moving.

I booked a round-trip ferry ticket with less than 36 hours layover. The Marine Highway System is still running the slow ferries out that way, which amounts to a 4.5-hour trip to move about 75 miles. People who have lived in Juneau a long time always seem to groan sympathetically at the necessity of ferry travel, the same way others might when told about plans for airline or bus travel. I don’t really understand the objection. The ferry is like a mini-Alaska cruise. Unlike air travel, which really is tedious, the ferry allows free movement, unparalleled wildlife viewing, hot food and showers. I like to catch up on my New Yorker reading and take naps. If I were to do this stuff at home, after a few hours I’d feel guilty about my idleness. But on a boat, you have no choice. So I soak it in.

I arrived in Haines at 9:30 p.m. and went to grab my bike from the car deck only to discover that the front tube had blown up. I mean, it literally blew up - it blasted the tire right of the rim and hung there in shreds. I have no idea how that happened. I pumped the tires up to 60 psi, which is still 5 psi below the posted maximum, and took the bike for an 18-mile ride before I loaded it onto the ferry. And it’s not like there are cabin pressure changes at sea level. A mystery.

I swapped out the tube with my only spare and cursed my stupidity at only bringing one spare. The Haines Highway is nothing if not remote - 150 miles of not even a cell-phone signal. It seemed reckless to head out without even one spare tube, especially since I had already had one spontaneously explode on me. I felt a little discouraged as I hoisted my backpack and labored the five miles into town. When I am “base-camp” camping I like comfort, and a lot of it. I had books, a pillow, clothing, food, to the tune of about 60 pounds of gear that hung over my head. The large pack pressed into my shoulders, kinked my neck and dug deep into my hips. Still, the soft pink light of sunset hung over the Chilkat Mountains, and I was happy to be there.

I had hoped to get an early start the next morning, but I thought it better to wait until Sockeye Cycles opened so I could buy a tube before hitting the open road. I toured around town to kill some time and set out for real around 9:30 a.m. The morning was nearly perfect - low 60s, mostly sunny, almost no wind (I tried not to get too attached to that last condition because I knew it was bound to switch to a mean headwind when the prevailing breeze picked up in the afternoon.) The road hugged the wide Chilkat River, with chiseled and whitewashed spires of the mountains as its background. “People in Haines live in paradise,” I thought. “I could ride this road every day” ... momentarily forgetting that if I lived in Haines, where the Haines Highway dead-ends, I wouldn’t have much choice.

(August ........................ May)

But you forget how freeing the simple idea of the open road can be. I didn’t know how far I was going to ride that day and liked that I didn’t know that. I put my GPS in my backpack and let it tick off the miles where I couldn’t watch them. I had tons of food, iodine tablets, lights, a bivy sack, extra clothing, and enough confidence in my abilities to know that I truly could go as long as I wanted - as long as I made it back it time to catch my 9 a.m. ferry the next day. That, to me, is one of the best benefits of fitness - the unhindered freedom to explore.

(Haines Highway Summit, one of the great 1,000-meter summits of the world, near km 104.)

The unwatched miles passed surprising quickly and before I knew it, I was crossing into Canada and beginning the happy crawl into the heart of the mountains. Old snowpack lingered well below the treeline, and above the treeline the snow was streaked and stark against the gravel and granite. I veered onto a pullout at Haines Highway Summit just as a tourist in a giant Cruise America rental RV pointed his camera right at me. “Bicycle with snow,” he shouted in a heavy, possibly German accent. I shot him my best expert grin.

(Here's what the Haines Highway Summit looks like without my hammy mug in the way.)

Beyond the pass, the breeze picked up at my back and I became painfully aware of all of those miles of soon-to-be-headwind behind me. 65, maybe 70 miles? The tundra was so stark and beautiful that the thought of turning around hurt, but I had to think hard about how far I really wanted to push beyond the pass, how late into the evening I was willing to ride, how excited I’d be about arriving back in Haines after all of the restaurants closed to eat a dinner of the same Power Bars and dried cranberries I had been stuffing down all day. I decided to end my pursuit of the open road about a half hour beyond the pass. I checked my GPS before I turned around. 68.7 miles.

Dropping off the Haines Highway pass on a bluebird day in May is an experience to be lived again and again, if only in my head. It's 18 km of my-big-ring-is-too-little free coasting, with a beautiful span of distant mountains blasting toward me at tear-inducing speeds. It is a feeling as close to flying as any I can imagine, and I have been skydiving. In fact, I was just talking about my skydiving experience with my dad, who, at 55 years old and not yet retired, has decided he’s going to go full-steam ahead with his life list of “someday” experiences. Last week he went skydiving, and afterward we talked about the float and fall. On Friday, as I descended the pass with the wind ripping at my cheeks and cool air pumping through my lungs, I wondered about my own "someday" list and what I’d put on it.

The river miles into the wind were predictably tiresome, and for the first time all day I had to remind myself that my legs felt great and the tiredness was just perception, my mind too focused on the understanding that this was a return trip and at the end there would be French fries. This shift in perception is another benefit of endurance training. Two or three years ago, if I was already a century into a ride with 40 more miles to go into wind and flagging, I would have been so frustrated. Now I've learned to take the ebbs with the flow and understand that while my mind is my strength in the battle to keep on keeping on, my body's still stronger than I know.

I was still back in time for dinner, a lingering stroll around town at sunset and a few minutes with acquaintances who had just arrived in Haines for the actual weekend - Memorial Day Weekend. I readied my gear to prepare for my return to my own dead-end roads, with the Haines Highway still stretched out limitless behind me, promising me it would always be there.

Worth 1,000 words

Date: May 22
Mileage: 18.7
May mileage: 761.9
Temperature: 47

I am hopping a ferry to Haines for a couple of days. But I will be back when I get back.

Green-up

Date: May 21
Mileage: 31.3
May mileage: 743.2
Temperature: 49

Finally caught one

Date: May 20
Mileage: 16.2
May mileage: 711.9
Temperature: 58

Snowline climbing higher

Date: May 19
Mileage: 9.8
May mileage: 695.7
Temperature: 52

The commute home

Date: May 18
Mileage: 51.4
May mileage: 684.9
Temperature: 45

For anyone who was wondering

Date: May 17
Mileage: 12.1
May mileage: 633.5
Temperature: 43

Geoff finished this year's super-low-key version of the Kokopelli Trail Race, 143 trail miles from Moab, Utah, to Fruita, Colorado. He said he came in sometime after 5 p.m. today, which I think equals 17 hours and change. He said he rode most of the day with Dave Chenault and Fred (Wilkinson?), and the three of them finished pretty close together about 45 minutes behind Pete Basinger and Chris Plesko. Not sure about the other finishers. It sounds like a pretty brutal race. I just thought I'd post the report here since it's uncertain when he'll be blogging again.

I spent the morning fishing with Brian. We came up empty, again, which I guess is pretty typical for this time of year. I don't mind at all. I'm not much of a cook and don't even know what I'd do with a king salmon if I caught one. I just like to be out on the water, breathing in sea air, laughing at Brian's "old days of Juneau" stories and looking for wildlife. A humpback whale rolled up beside us, mere feet from the boat. It blew a spout of water and we could look right down into its blowhole, it was so close. It dove and came up once more about 50 yards away, kicking its tail up for the deep dive. I tried to snap a photo but the camera's delay netted not much - a bit of a tail fin. I posted it anyway.

Also, I received a copy of "Zinn and The Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance" in the mail courtesy of Dave Trendler at VeloGear.com. It came just in the nick of time, as the brakes on my road bike went out today. Both of them, at the same time. I nearly rolled right into traffic off the Juneau-Douglas bridge, just about the busiest intersection in town. I had to coast home from work, keeping my speed under 10 mph and using the rubber on the bottom of my shoes to stop. I wiped the brake dust off my rims and adjusted the lever tension as much as I could to no avail. I know how to replace brake pads but there's still rubber left on the current pads. It doesn't make sense that they wouldn't work at all. There must be something else wrong. I hope Zinn will show me the way. And if Zinn can teach me how to fix my mountain bikes (and my road bike, which is really just a mountain bike with skinny tires), then Zinn can teach anyone how to fix a bike. When I take the time to try, I'll let you know how it goes.

Needs

Date: May 16
Mileage: 78.6
May mileage: 621.4
Temperature: 42

This past January, I went hiking with a friend who has one of those uber-stressful, all-consuming types of jobs. He claims to love it and earns his share of fulfillment from it, but this job leeches just about all the energy he has to give, emotional and physical. It was all he could do that day to motivate for our one-hour stroll in the snow. My friend, the same guy who used to leap up mountains and scale canyon walls, requested that we turn around after a mile and a half. As we returned to my house, he admitted that his job had changed him. "Sometimes I come home from work and watch TV for five hours," he said. "I used to feel guilty about it, but now I know that sometimes I just need to watch TV for five hours."

I nodded and tried to be a supportive friend, but the little voice in my head was screaming Why? Why? Why? Why?! I wanted to grab his shoulders and shake out whatever oppressive worldview was convincing him he needed this job and tell him to get back to the mountains, get out of Alaska if you have to, go back to the desert and quit your job!

But then he said, "It's sort of like your biking."

The phrase caught me off guard, because it resonated with unsettling truth. I work a relatively lax job and then come home and pour my creative energy into a blog, and then I wake up the next day and pound out the rest on two wheels. I have excess energy to spend and he has a deficit he feels compelled to conserve, but both of us have a need to approach equilibrium.

"Really," I asked myself, "what makes his five hours of TV any worse than my five hours of biking?" I mean, after you carve out the obvious health discrepancies. Whittle it down to pure emotional benefit, on a strictly psychological level. I bring this up now because I have been a little bummed out in general since Geoff moved south for the summer, and I am turning into a heavy bike user - I mean, more than usual.

Geoff mentioned on the phone today that my May mileage was a bit off the charts for not actually training for much. "Here I am, down here training for the Great Divide Race, and I look at your blog and you're still riding more than I am." (Full disclosure: My cycling miles are much easier.) He said this before I told him that I had ridden for about five hours today.

"Oh, it must have been a nice day," he said.

"No," I said. "It was awful."

"How awful?"

"Well, in five full hours it never stopped raining. Not even for a minute. Not even a sprinkly lull. Driving rain. My hands and feet went numb even though I was wearing all of the neoprene I own, and when I pulled my camera out of my coat about halfway through the ride, there was several inches of water built up inside my pocket."

"Oh." That was all he said about it, but I could tell what he was thinking: "Why? Why? Why? Why?!"

But what I wasn't able to explain to him is how much better I felt at the time than I did this morning. I was uber-moody when I woke up today. For whatever reason - the weather, the fun fishing trip that had to be cancelled - I was just sick of the world. I had already absolved myself of any real need to do a long ride this weekend, and my plan was to get more work done today - work that I've been putting off, because I'm always biking or blogging or doing other stuff I don't need to do.

But by 1 p.m., still unproductive and even grumpier, I finally just gave up. "Whatever, I'm just going to go out for a long ride." I set out in the pissing rain with a change of base layer in a ziplock bag - just in case - and thought, "I'll just go until I feel like stopping." I was feeling pretty awful heading out and moving slow to boot - which I was bummed about, because through all this bike abuse, I am trying to increase my fitness. I'm so used to southeast winds that I thought I was riding a tailwind and feeling awful and moving slow. I decided to turn around at 33 Mile (the mile marker on the highway, just about 40 miles into my ride) because I was picking up a pretty serious chill and I doubted the dry base layer would stay dry long enough to ward it off. When I turned around, I felt a rush of air at my back and realized that I had, in fact, been fighting a headwind the whole way out. After that, just like last week, the ride just got better and better.

During the last 10 miles, I rode by a lot of bike commuters - more than I have ever seen - moving with the 5 p.m. traffic. It brought joy to my heart, because the weather was as bad as it gets and still people were out riding. One guy going my direction passed me. He was wearing heavy-duty rubber gloves. "How's it going?" I asked. "How do you think it's going?" he answered. (He didn't say this maliciously, just truthfully - it was awful out.)

And then of course I chased him but lost him in the construction area. The rain drove down and the feeling in my hands and feet faded and still I felt amazing, riding with that wind, feeling that I could just keep going. But I had already turned my thoughts to dinner and maybe still making this party I had earlier resolved not to go to, grumpy as I had been. But when I arrived at home, I felt perkier, decompressed - equalized.

I do believe it's possible to be a substance abuser of your body's own chemical stimulants, just like it's possible to become dependent on the tranquilizing effects of television. Whether or not this is a bad or good thing, I don't yet know.

Two for the road

Date: May 15
Mileage: 42.1
May mileage: 542.8
Temperature: 51

Today was a productive day ... productive in that I didn't get a long ride in, but at least my cats won't starve. The consolation prize is that my fishing trip for tomorrow was cancelled due to terrible weather on the forecast, so there may be a cycling window in there. A wet, cold window.

The two hours I spent riding the Dredge Lake trails was full of strange weather windows. Cloudbursts moved through, almost perfectly synchronized, every 20 minutes. For five minutes the rain would come down in unbroken straight lines, and then start to taper off just as a clear patch rolled in behind the storm. For about one minute it would be sunny and raining, and then the sun would take over and suck back the moisture from the ground in billowing puffs of steam. It couldn't have even been that warm, but buried as I was in rain layers, the aftermath made the glacier moraine feel like a tropical rainforest. Then the cold would come back, then the rain. Repeat.

I finally took my road bike back into Glacier Cycles to be fixed. True to my avoidance tendencies, I never even looked at it again after I vowed not to. The same guy who sold me the shifter cable two weeks ago was there when I walked in. So not only did I have to own up to the shame of not being able to fix a shifter cable, but I had to admit that I had deliberately held onto the bike and didn't use it for as long as it would have taken to move up through their repair backlog. The owner, Dennis, was there and took a few minutes to assess the damage. I braced myself for a grim diagnosis. Many would expect a bike shop proprietor to point out every little flaw in a machine in hopes of making a big sale. But Dennis is a really nice guy, and he only recommended replacing the stuff that was truly terminal. He prescribed a new chain, new cables, new derailleur pulley wheels and a new cassette. The chain and cassette were so bad that I likely wouldn't have been able to adjust the cable to shift smoothly even if I had all the patience in the world (which, obviously, I don't.) Dennis congratulated me on finishing the Iditarod Invitational and complimented me on an article I wrote for the Juneau Empire about it. Then the mechanic rushed my bike to the front of the line and finished it up today ... even though their sign out front still puts the backlog at a week and a half. Who'd have known? ... there really are perks to being an Iditaveteran.

So I took Roadie out for an evening spin after I picked it up. I've become so accustomed to my mountain biking habits that I momentarily forgot which bike I was on and jumped up on a gravel embankment. The resulting spinout startled me so much that I nearly endoed the thing. But it's nice to have my bike back and working.

Homesick

Mexican Mountain, December 2004

Date: May 14
Mileage: 33.4
May mileage: 500.7
Temperature: 39

My computer's hard drive is all full up again. I'm tired of deleting my music, so last night seemed a good time to go through the old photo archive and cull. Bad idea. Instead of throwing away 1,268 of the 1,269 shots I have of my bike in front of the Mendenhall Glacier, I spent all my time browsing the really old photo archive just so I could feel wistful and, well, homesick.

Cataract Canyon, July 2002

Every May, my old college friends converge from our respective far-flung paths for a spring vacation in Utah. Recent upheavals at work, compounded by the two weeks of '08 vacation I already spent just to do the Ultrasport in February, prevented me from joining them this year. I was disappointed about my situation at first, until I learned their plan was a river trip. I generally dislike river trips. Sitting all day in the hot sun, doing nothing, baking, burning, unable to do anything about it because you're stuck on a raft, with the monotony broken only by completely terrifying whitewater rapids, is actually not my idea of a good time. "No thanks," I told them. That was two months ago. Today, I would give just about anything to be sunburned and bored and minutes away from churning over keeper holes.

Outside St. George, Spring 2004

I doesn't help that Geoff is currently having an amazing time on his Utah adventure, bikepacking on all the four-wheel-drive roads and trails that we used to always talk about but never attempted because we were so inexperienced and those places were remote, so remote. Now I have a little Alaska experience behind me, and suddenly those deep desert spaces don't seem so far away - even though they're more inaccessible now than ever.

Dirty Devil sidecanyon, May 2005

I am angry at myself for throwing away the Utah vacation. There is the fact that May time off wasn't really an option this year - but the truth is I didn't try too hard. I feel like there was something I could have worked out with my co-workers, with my savings, with unpaid leave. Did I need a new mountain bike? No. Do I need a week to run my bare toes through warm sand, laugh with the friends of my youth and roast in the desert sun? Yes.

Pelican Lake, March 2004 (Ice fishing is fun)

Sometimes I feel torn between Alaska and Utah, unsure which one is really my home. Even though Utah is the place where I'm from, there are a lot of ways in which it's wrong for me. I wither in any kind of heat, I'm disinclined to return to the freeway and suburban lifestyle I grew up in, and, the truth is, I've fallen in love with Alaska. I like that I can leave my house, walk two blocks, and hike up a mountain. I like taking 1,269 pictures of my bike in front of the Mendenhall Glacier because I like that I can ride my bike to a glacier that often. I like that it's winter six months out of the year. I like the Xtratufs-in-church Alaska culture and the small-town bohemian feel of Juneau. But Geoff, who grew up in upstate New York, typed something yesterday that really resonates with me ... "When you spend time outside in southern Utah, the red dirt just gets onto your body, and then into your body, and eventually into your mind and heart."

Buckskin Gulch, May 2001

Homesickness is exactly that, I guess.

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?

Yeah dirt

Date: May 5
Mileage: 35.5
May mileage: 168.2
Temperature: 45

I wasn’t expecting the trail to be clear. But there it was, no slush in sight, cutting up a steep embankment and into the woods. I slowed mid-interval and veered off the road.

I was immediately thrown into a minefield of rocks and wet roots. The front wheel jolted like a jackhammer and nearly bounced me off my bike. I stopped at the side of the trail, my heart still racing from my road sprint. As I waited for the woods to stop spinning, my clearing vision rested on a narrow strip of dirt - still clear, still dry as it disappeared into the trees. This was not the time or place for road intervals. I unlocked the shock, took a deep breath, and rolled forward.

And just like that I was mountain biking, for real this time - no snow, no slush, no wide gravel roads. It was time for my Karate Monkey - which I have already ridden a few hundred miles - and I to finally get acquainted.

The singletrack weaved erratically through a jungle of wet roots and spiderwebs, and I was rusty, rusty, rusty. I shoulder-checked a couple of trees. I slid sideways off a root or two. My last mountain bike was a full suspension, and I realized that I actually do miss the bouncy on back. That rear shock sure took the edge off the downhills. There also is something dubious about 29” wheels on a small frame. I get some toe overlap with my Pugsley, but it is one thing to occasionally scrape the front tire when you are puttering through snow. It is another thing to have that happen when you are banking a sharp right on rocks at high speed. Gotta learn to pull those feet in.

The moss-lined thread of a trail cut out of the woods and onto the glacial moraine, snaking through a series of rolling gravel hills. I amped up my speed and crested the high banks of every curve. I had found my flow, my perfect flow, and in those moments I remembered what it felt like to be 8 years old and clutching the handlebars of my dad’s motorcycle as we rode the waves of sandhills just beyond our house. The area was little more than an undeveloped suburban tract, the earth moved by bulldozers and front-end loaders, the trails carved by dirtbikers out for a quick thrill. But that didn’t matter to me then, with the wind whipping through my hair and my dad’s powerful arms guiding the motorcycle over a rollercoaster of sand. It was the epitome of adventure, and to experience again what that was like, what that actually felt like, is exactly why I ride a mountain bike.

The soft blue light on the Mendenhall Glacier, the reflection of Thunder Mountain in a rippling beaver pond, the soft moss carpeting the forest floor ... these are my suburbs. They were beautiful then, and they’re beautiful now.

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.