Golden days on the Golden Circle, Day 3

Date: Sept. 27
Mileage: 105
September mileage: 893.0

I woke up to the horrifying noise of something chewing on what sounded like bones, directly below me. The wooden platform I had set up my bivy on was propped several feet above the ground, and something was down there, shuffling around and gnawing away. My first reaction was to freeze with fear, but I knew I couldn't live like that all night, and figured whatever it was already knew I was up there. It didn't sound too huge and grizzly bear-like, so I decided I would have to scare it away. I unzipped the layers of my bivy sack, turned on my headlamp and started to yell. A streak of gray fur darted through the light's beam and scampered away. I never got a good lock on it with my headlamp, but I figured it was a fox or possibly a coyote.

The animal continued to terrorize me throughout the night, creeping back under the deck multiple times and crunching away until I stirred from my restless sleep, wrestled out of my bivy and jumped up and down on the deck in my socks until it ran away. Toward morning I was more irritated than scared, and sick of watching its gray butt disappear into the darkness as a cloud of condensed breath swirled in my spotlight. Thick frost was forming on everything and the night had become deeply clear. I could see stars behind stars behind stars. I was glad I had packed Geoff's -20 degree winter bag, even if it was overkill. After the fox/coyote/baby-wolf-from-hell ran away, I could slip back into my cocoon of total warmth and slowly drift into oblivion.

After the animal's 7 a.m. breakfast call, I decided it was time to finally get out of there. As I packed up, I checked the thermometer inside my Camelbak pocket. The red line hovered right around 20 degrees. Which meant, yup, my water was frozen. Should have slept with it. I also decided the night officially counted as my first winter camping trip of the season.

In the low light of morning, I could see another long descent into what turned out to be the Million Dollar Falls campground, so I bundled up accordingly. The road had, luckily, mostly dried overnight, but there were still patches of ice dotting the shoulder, so sometimes I veered into the rough gravel to dodge it. The sky also was beginning to cloud up again. I caught a few pink rays of sunrise before the gray hues closed in.

I never heard a car go by in the night, and didn't see my first one in the morning until nearly an hour after I hit the road. I would later learn the driver, a local rancher, mistook me in my baby blue down coat and balaclava for "an old Russian guy" who seemed to be in need of help (not sure what I had been doing to make it appear that way, besides riding a bicycle.) I guess the rancher didn't try to stop and help me himself because he thought I was a scary old Russian guy. Those Yukoners aren't like us Alaskans. We keep an eye on those Russians. Just ask Sarah Palin.

The landscape was beautifully frosty, with hints of Wyoming in early winter. There was even a ranch up there in the high plains below the pass, with horses dressed in green felt coats. I didn't like to imagine what their life must be like in January.

About 20 miles down the road I ran into another bicycle tourist, which completely shocked me. His name is Ed and he had originally planned to ride his bike from Anchorage to Denver. I knew this about him because I had randomly stumbled across his wife's blog just a week earlier during my regular Web surfing. My first reaction was that Ed was way off the Alaska Highway, and I wondered if he had intended to take a 70-mile detour. Turns out he ran into snowstorms at a couple of passes out of Alaska and decided to hop the ferry south from Haines to Bellingham, Wash., and ride from there. He told me the story about the rancher, who had stopped to talk to Ed after ignoring me. Ed said I did look a little extremely bundled up. But the temperature was still in the 20s! Ed was wearing the kind of get-up I put on when it's 55 degrees and raining in Juneau. But whatever. I get it. I'm a cold wimp.

Ed and I rode together for a while, talking about his trip and our bike set-ups. I don't think he was too impressed with my bivy bundle. I explained to him how I could just roll it out and crawl inside without any set-up, and how nice it was to tour rack-free. He told me he'd probably stick with rear panniers. Bicycle tourists. Such purists. ;-)

Ed decided he wanted to stop for a while and I told him I wait up for him later so we could pull each other through the always infuriating afternoon headwinds along the Chilkat River. Alone again in the highlands, I was riding strong and relaxed, my legs hardly noticing the 300 miles behind them, aware that I was probably riding what would turn out to be my favorite section of the entire trip. Throughout my life, my memories and experiences have been strongly influenced by the landscapes that frame them. I am a connoisseur of space. In the same way that some people cultivate gardening and cooking until they can't separate their hobbies from their more abstract values of growth and creation, I have come to view human-powered travel as the only way to read the language of the landscape. And what I understand, I fall in love with, unconditionally.

Although I live and love my life in the rainforest lowlands of Juneau, I find the landscapes I am most in love with are often high and barren. I sometimes wonder why this is. Maybe it's because they're more difficult to reach. Or because they're largely untouched by human interference ... places almost primordial in their wildness and wholly indifferent to my presence ... places I can move through freely and that move freely through me.

Just beyond the pass is the best 20 miles of road biking I have had the privilege to ride - the screaming descent from Haines Highway Summit to the U.S. border. I rode this stretch once before, in May, and was was completely enthralled by the way the mountains hurtled toward me like I was a spaceship about to crash into a snow-dusted planet. This time around, I was tearing through a blur of gold and green with tears streaming down my face in the cold wind. All of the weight on my bike gave me that extra bit of oomph to really push the limits of speed. The last 11 miles passed in a couple of blinks ... a few beautiful minutes of weightlessness. As I approached U.S. customs, I had this fleeting desire to ride back up to the pass and do it all again. But I am not crazy. OK, not that crazy.

I stopped along the Chilkat River and ate my lunch - which turned out to be what little I had left of my food: a few crushed rice chips, almonds, and my last Clif Bar. Since my horribly under-fueled first day, I had been eating well and a lot, and actually underestimated the food I'd need for the last leg of the trip when I left Haines Junction. I saved my last peanut butter cups as a special reward - a carrot to ride toward in case the Chilkat winds tried to break me. I waited for a little while for Ed, but eventually set out alone.

The afternoon headwind, which is a near constant in this region, was extremely kind. It was strong, but mostly moved through in gusts. For long stretches, the air would be almost still. I was beginning to feel the physical effects of my ride - hints of saddle sores, tight shoulders, a kink in my back where the Camelback rested, mushy quad muscles. But for the most part, I felt good, and happy to be on my bike. When hunger pangs started to kick up, and when light sprinkles started to hit my face (the first rain I had felt the entire trip), I just told myself that cycling is fun and everyone should be so lucky to ride along the Chilkat on a beautiful Saturday afternoon in autumn. I was almost disappointed when the mile markers entered single digits and I realized I had less than 10 miles to ride to Haines. It's hard to really describe how much stronger, more relaxed and content I felt during the last 10 miles of my trip compared to the first. It was like day and night.

I rolled into Haines a little before 4 p.m. and got a hotel room downtown. I walked to the grocery store to pick up a bunch of snacks and breakfast. Not much more than an hour after I arrived, the wind picked up considerable speed and rain began to fall in force. The near-hurricane continued for the rest of the night. I just stood by the window, eating a bowl of cereal, listening to cable TV in my warm hotel room, watching daggers of rain tear sideways through the darkness and thinking, "wow, what would that be like to be caught out in that?" But that horrible storm just missed me, and I had overall great fall weather for the three days I was on the road. What did I tell you about me and the Golden Circle? Lucky, lucky, lucky.

Still, I thought about how I wouldn't mind another day or seven out on the road, with nothing to do but ride my bike and take in enormous amounts of beautiful space. I love bike touring. Adding the endurance factor, the distance and the long days, seems to make the experience even more rewarding. Last year after riding the Golden Circle, I had this huge sense of accomplishment. My feelings this year were more subdued - that I didn't overcome any great adversity. That I was already over the learning curve before I started. Still, I did learn new things about myself out there, and about cycling - especially the power and liabilities of riding alone. I'm sure I'll be back out there again someday, hopefully someday soon. But right now, I have visions of longer fast tours edging into my dreams.

Golden days on the Golden Circle, Day 2

Date: Sept. 26
Mileage: 154
September mileage: 788.0

"I guess I lied about it being light at 7:30," Sierra told me as we pedaled groggily toward downtown Whitehorse in the pre-dawn cold. "I swear it was two weeks ago."

"I'm sure it was two weeks ago," I said. Daylight fades fast this time of year; an entire hour can be taken away in two weeks time, and we were already facing more darkness and light. I could tell by the gray pall over the sky that it was significantly more cloudy than it had been the day before. I had planned for rain but really, really wanted it to elude me. This was, after all, my vacation. Not some endurance training death march.

We parked outside a small convention center and lined up at crowded buffet tables, piling paper plates high with pancakes, hash browns and eggs. I suckled caffeinated beverages and juicy oranges and all of the warm fuel I could stuff down. I was randomly visiting Whitehorse on a Friday morning, and managed to line up my trip with a huge United Way fundraising all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast. What did I say about me and the Golden Circle? Lucky, lucky, lucky. It was a great way to start day two.

And I really was feeling much better as I climbed away from the Yukon River and began the trek up the Alaska Highway. I had a tough day one, but I'm really not in all that terrible of shape for fast touring. I wasn't sore and my stomach was feeling much more calm despite the fact I had just eaten a large amount of greasy, sugary food (I usually try to keep my meals small and frequent when I am riding.) The rising sun filtered through breaks in the clouds and cast streaks of light over the valley. All around me were dark patches of scattered showers, but the road seemed to skirt all of them. I began to shed my layers as the temperature climbed comfortably into the mid-40s. Lucky, lucky, lucky.

Most of the trees along the river valley were barren, the grass dry and the road covered in brittle, brown leaves. I smiled at the idea that in a single 24-hour period, I had managed to ride my bike from a region where fall was still in its half-green infancy - Skagway - to a place where fall was pretty much over.

There still were patches of color among the grays and browns - holdout trees. Muted sunlight continued to find its way through an overcast sky. Traffic along the Alaska Highway was light, which surprised me. It is, after all, the main corridor between the Lower 48 and Alaska. But not that many tourists care to be up here this time of year. I can't figure out why.

One aspect that really stood apart for me on day two was how much strength I derived from the effort of cycling. Rather than feel weakened by the passing miles, I felt empowered. GPS indicated a respectable speed average, and I could feel the pleasant burn of my quad muscles firing with every pedal stroke. It helps that the climbing was much more easy-going than it had been along the Klondike Highway. The air remained almost completely calm, and the breeze was a tailwind when it was anything at all. My pace continued strong, relaxed but determined, as I paralleled the snow-capped mountains that I would eventually have to cross again. But with no definite plans about where to stop for the night and everything I needed strapped to by heavy-but-burly bike, I could sit up high, drink in the subtle colors, and enjoy life in the moment.

I stopped in Haines Junction for a late lunch, 100 miles already behind me and a mere 150 more to go. The comfortable routine of distance touring was sinking in, and 100 miles was already starting to seem like a short distance. I found a general store and walked around in a bike-addled haze, completely confused by the Canadian choices before me. Not only is everything wrapped in half-French labels, it's also weighed in grams, not ounces, and always seems to be just a little bit different than versions of the same food in the U.S. I wanted peanut butter chocolate chip chewy granola bars, but could only find raspberry ones in a box of six, not ten. I sought out more peanut butter cups, but they were horribly expensive given the equal exchange rate, so I settled on these strange giant Kit Kat bars, which offered more calories on the dollar. I couldn't find Clif Bars, so I bought almonds, then loaded up with fruit, vegetables, bread and Gatorade that I planned to devour at a picnic table out front before I headed into the remote, serviceless, "no fuel" wastelands of the Haines Highway.

As I climbed away from town, I decided I would keep riding until dark and then find a good spot to bivy. Even though I was carrying a magazine, I didn't think sitting around camp as temperatures dropped below freezing would be all that fun, even if I did motivate to build a fire. No, I was going to ride to nightfall and then sleep good and long - after all, the darkness still consumed more than 12 hours of the day. Fall color began to return to the trees as I pedaled south. It was almost like moving back in time.

By dusk, I was well beyond the spot where I camped last year - Kathleen Lake - and aware that I was somewhat close to a campground called Million Dollar Falls. The idea of trying to reach a campground was appealing. Yukon campgrounds are sometimes equipped with covered picnic areas, and I was still dodging rainstorms that soaked the highways and were starting to hit me peripherally as snow flurries. I decided to push for it. Darkness descended and the already extremely light traffic stopped altogether. My headlights cast an eerie white glow on the rough, wet pavement, which was glittering with flecks of ice. I began to develop an unsettling awareness of how alone I was. The old familiar feeling was frightening, almost debilitating, and to top it all off, the sleep monster had started to creep in. Ditches and small notches in cliffsides started to look like appealing places to take a nap. Still, I thought, the campground couldn't be far.

My pace slowed considerably because I couldn't tell wet pavement from black ice. The road started to dip into some long descents, and I realized a crash out there could be especially dangerous, since another car was not likely to drive by until morning. I listened to the creepy squeal of my wet brakes as I death-gripped the levers, actually praying for the downhill to end. When I finally bottomed out, I pounded at full, red-zone throttle up the next long hill, sucking air just to burn off the residual fear. I ended up at a scenic overlook, with a wooden deck built over a hillside. "This is perfect!" I thought. "It will get me off the ground and there's even a bench I can roll under if it starts to rain or snow heavily." You might think it's strange that with all of that beautiful forest surrounding me, I would choose to camp on a deck. But it's vastly lonely out there, and like I child who can't give up her security blanket, I find myself clinging to any outposts of human civilization.

I didn't know at the time that I was less than three kilometers from Million Dollar Falls. If I had ridden about 300 yards further, I would have seen a sign indicating the campground was two kilometers away. But the overlook wasn't a bad spot to bivy down. The time was just before 9 p.m. I looked up to the sky and noticed large patches of clear sky that were nearly whitewashed with millions of glittering stars. My GPS indicated I had stopped at about 2,900 feet - an elevation nearly as high as some of the alpine peaks around Juneau. None of this boded well for how low the temperature might dip overnight, so I bundled up in my sleeping bag and shivered nervously, hoping my heart rate would slow down for just a few minutes so I could fall asleep.

Golden days on the Golden Circle, Day 1

Date: Sept. 25
Mileage: 108
September mileage: 634.0

I stepped off the ferry at 8 a.m. Thursday in a mental fog, vaguely aware of only two things - the morning could not have been more beautiful, and I could not have felt more awful. As the warm light of the sun rose into a bright blue sky, I regarded it with something that was almost like irritation. If it had been pouring rain, I might have been able justify slinking back onto the ferry and hitching a return trip to Juneau. I had slept restlessly Wednesday night on the floor of the ferry's top level, at one point waking up half out of my sleeping bag and completely drenched in sweat. It was as though my body had tried to expel a week's worth of sickness in one spectacular flash fever. It didn't know if it was nerves or if I really was getting sick. It felt like a little of both.

I pedaled through Skagway, stopping at the grocery store to try to cram down some yogurt and granola. I was only able to eat a few bites and had to throw the rest away. It's not the way to start a beautiful day and certainly not the way to start a three-day fast-tour around the Golden Circle.

It doesn't help that the way I was riding the route, backwards by almost all accounts, allows almost no time to warm up. I had three miles of fairly flat pedaling along a river before the climb began in earnest. The road rises from sea level to 3,200 feet in 14 measly miles - 11, really, if you don't count the flat "warm up." I took my first break at mile five, trying to calm all of my apprehension and bile with a little bit of big-picture perspective. But perspective was hard to find. Beautiful weather the day before had coaxed me into a five-hour hard hike, which not only ate up precious energy reserves but also precious time. I had little of that left to finish preparations, and had to cram so much between work that I didn't even take the time to eat dinner. Then I slept poorly while trying to overnight on a ferry. In short, I felt completely physically unprepared for the trip.

The only way in which I did feel prepared was my gear. I had packed up the supplies I would need for cold rain and hard frosts and remote repairs and a big handful of spare batteries for my lights. I was admittedly way overpacked for a three-day trip, but I don't regret any of it. I was traveling alone in late fall in remote areas where eight-hour spans of silence can pass between the cars that go by in the middle of the night. I would rather be prepared for the worst than live on the edge of comfort and hope for the best. But I also, unfortunately, never trained with any kind of weight on my bike. So to suddenly load it up with a lot was a big shock. I don't know if it was all the weight or the crappy way I was feeling, but I had no power climbing up White Pass. I was still in the single digits of miles and already formulating a plan should I feel the need to turn around.

A man I had talked to on the ferry, a Haines candidate for the state Legislature (can't remember his name), told me "the ride from Skagway must be great. It's a quick trip up to the pass and all downhill from there." No, I told him, there's a lot more climbing after the pass. My GPS later confirmed what I suspected. It's 3,292 to the pass, and more than 4,000 feet of elevation gain beyond it to Whitehorse, mostly on steep rolling hills along a seemingly endless string of lakes.

Still, that first glance into the northern edge of British Columbia, with all of its breathtaking open space, will soothe any physical maladies, even if only for a moment. I tried to take in some more calories, relying on an old stand-by that always seems to go down easy no matter what: Peanut butter cups. The air was calm and stunningly clear. If I couldn't find a way to enjoy myself on a day like that, there really was no hope for me. The big picture perspective was starting to sink in.

I dropped a few hundred feet to Canadian customs, where the border guard recognized me from the 24 Hours of Light. After I answered the string of seemingly ridiculous questions (I mean, really, what bicycle tourist carries alcohol, firearms and $10,000 in cash?), I told him where I was headed and how long I planned to be in Canada. "Wow, you sure like to ride a lot!" he said. "I hope so," I answered.

The afternoon was largely a struggle with the haze of low-level nausea, punctuated by startling beauty. The region was enveloped in the peak of fall colors, with winter creeping in from above. The views really were enough to keep me on task, namely, turning the pedals away from Skagway. I always wanted to see what was up over the next hill or around the next bend. The thrilling descents also always seemed to come along just in time to lift my spirits when I needed it most. If there's any one thing I've never failed to be on the Golden Circle, it's lucky.

Lucky, lucky, lucky.

The hills around the endless lakes did threaten to break me; the bike I was pedaling felt like it weighed half a ton. But if there's anything I've learned about distance cycling, it's that eating will almost always make me feel better. Physical stress puts my emotions at such extremes that I could be on the edge of despair, and a simple peanut butter cup would quickly lift me back to normal, where I can continue pedaling to the brink of elation. So I used the miles to slowly recover, knowing I had a lot more ahead of me.

And there were plenty of calm, quiet moments, when I stopped thinking about my sour stomach and my blood sugar and my heavy legs, stopped worrying about elevation and destinations and miles, and simply let the landscape carry me, sometimes deep into the past, sometimes into my hopes for the future.

I was near a low point again when I reached the town of Carcross, still only 65 miles into my 370-mile trip. I chugged some Gatorade at a gas station and limped up to the "Carcross Desert," which is actually not a desert at all but a large deposit of silt left behind by a long-faded glacier. Still, I take a lot of strange comfort in these dunes. They remind me of a far-away past, of my home. Much like I did a year before, I stopped in the desert, set down my bike, and laid all the way down in the cool sand. I breathed deep as grains of sand crept around my arms and neck until I felt like I was dissolving into it. I also was locked in physical distress when I stopped here one year before. Only then, I was facing the last 65 miles of my trip, not looking back on the first. But just like last year, the softness of the sand was rejuvenating. I could look around at the big picture again. I also realized that if I did not pick up my pace, I was going to be pedaling to Whitehorse well after dark.

After 45 miles of subdued but determined pedal-mashing, I finally arrived in town right at dusk - about 7:30 p.m. Alaska time. It was 8:30 in Whitehorse, and my friends Sierra and Anthony had waited up for me, holding out on dinner the entire time I dawdled into town (I had told them, very optimistically, that I would be there by 6.) Sierra cooked up a delicious northern delicacy, moose stew. "Everything was grown and shot right here in the Yukon," Sierra told me. She made it with potatoes and greens from her garden, and moose meat from a co-worker. Sierra and Anthony are really great. I always manage to stop by when I'm completely wrecked, and they make everything better with amazing homemade food and a warm bed and real understanding, because they do all this crazy bicycle stuff themselves.

I went to bed telling myself I would feel much better in the morning, and believing it.

Adventures in solitude

"So you just sort of go it alone?" my friend asked when I explained to her why I wouldn't be able to attend her gathering this weekend.

"Yeah, that's kinda the idea," I said.

"Why is that the idea?" my friend said.

"Well," I said. "For starters, it's pretty hard to convince other people that riding a loaded bicycle 110-150 hilly miles a day in the cold is a good time. And, anyway, I'll be visiting friends along the way and maybe even talking them into riding some of the route with me. For the rest of the trip, I'll just have all sorts of time to really think about things."

"What do you think about?"

"My life, my goals, stuff," I said. "These tough trips really help me separate what's important from the general fluff. Although, I have to admit, I usually end up spending a bulk of my riding time thinking about food and sleep."

"So are you scared?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm scared. But mostly of bears and weather and scary people. The loneliness isn't so bad."

Geoff woke me up this morning with a quick call to inform me he was no longer planning to run the Bear 100 on Friday.

"That sounds like the smart plan," I said. "What made you change your mind?"

"I'm still fighting off a cold," he said. "Plus, Dane and Jess invited me to go backpacking with them in Boulder (Utah) this week, and that sounded more fun. That's where we're headed right now. Reception is pretty spotty. I wanted to call before I was out of range completely."

"But you already registered for the race, right?" I asked. "Didn't you spend like $200 on it?"

"Yeah, but ..." The call cut out. I wondered what really made Geoff decide to dump his plans for the Bear 100. Dropping out because he had a cold on Wednesday didn't really sound like him. Was he scared? Less certain about his physical recovery than he let on a few days earlier? Or is it possible that he's making peace with the idea of moving back to Alaska?

After I got off the phone with Geoff, I noticed what an amazing bright blue day Wednesday was shaping out to be. I had promised myself I would take the day off. I have 370 miles to ride in the next three days, and none of those miles are likely to be easy. But, as I looked outside, I thought that some days, resting the body is not as important as stimulating the soul. Most days are like that.

Luckily for me, in my nervousness about preparing for my bike trip, I had finished packing on Tuesday night. So I had little else to do Wednesday but eat and work and wait for my ferry to pull into port. I headed over to Mount Roberts for the second time this week, in favor of "easy" trail and lax hiking.

However, I tend to forget how energizing a clear day can be, when heart-stopping beauty stretches out beyond the farthest reaches of my vision. I'm gripped with a desire to push and push and push toward the horizon until it ends, knowing it never will. That's how I ended up on top of Gastineau Peak again, feet almost floating atop a couple inches of new snow, facing east toward a snow-capped skyline that continues into Canada.

I looked down the ridge at a healthy coat of termination dust that may be here to stay and thought, "It's still early. If I don't bag Mount Roberts today, I'll likely not have another chance this season." So down the ridge I went, the joint-jarring consequences of a long hike unacknowledged.

And I was so glad I went to the top of Mount Roberts. To just stop and turn off my iPod and listen to the frigid wind and the absolute silence of solitude. These are the moments I wish I had more opportunities to share with my friends. But there is also he sense that the reality of listening to someone rip into a PowerBar or complain about the cold might just crush these fleeting, perfect moments. And then there's Geoff, who on a gorgeous day like Wednesday, would probably just do all the things I can only dream about doing while I stand on peaks. I could picture him running the crest of the entire ridgeline until he looped back into town. It's too bad he doesn't really like Juneau so much any more.

In the time I've spent alone this fall, I've worked on formulating a concrete reason why I can't leave Alaska. And what I've come up with is, over the past three years, I've never known a period in my life in which I was so consistently inspired. I started writing again, a hobby I had all but given up on, and developed a passion for something I never even used to think was all that interesting - photography. I've honed my physical fitness to levels I never imagined and forged my new skills into something even better ... inner strength. I think often about my life before Alaska, a life Geoff actually had to drag me away from, kicking and screaming. I was once scared of nearly everything, but I was especially scared of being alone. My life revolved around late mornings at the Apple Fitness club, afternoons and evenings at work, and late nights with my friends, sometimes out until sunrise. I thought I was happy. Then I moved away from it all, and learned I hadn't been happy. Now I am afraid to go back. How can I leave Alaska? Alaska is my muse.

When Geoff told me he registered to run the Bear 100 this weekend, he said he mostly just wanted a good, hard effort with the alone time he needed to think about his future. I told him that's the same reason I wanted to ride around the Golden Circle again. Now he's backpacking in the desert and I'm still planning to pedal into the Yukon, a vast amount of space in which to think, and a vast number of miles to ride on less rest than I should have given myself. But I look forward to all of it. I leave soon to catch the 12:15 ferry. Wish me luck.

Not that heavy

Date: Sept. 22
Mileage: 25.1
September mileage: 526.0

I loaded my bike today with food and gear and set out to see how she handled. I quickly noticed the extra weight on climbs, but, as usual, started to forget about it as I coasted along the road in the crisp fall wind. I love packing up my bike with everything I need to live. There’s freedom and joy in the knowledge that I could ride to the end of the day and just keep going.

So my preparations are nearly complete for my spontaneous fall Yukon tour. I am starting to feel pretty nervous about it, which is a good thing. To me, being scared is a sign of a worthwhile adventure. The weather forecast for the area is calling for highs in the 40s and lows in the 20s with a moderate chance of precipitation on Saturday. I am hoping any precip falls as dry snow flurries if it falls at all. If I run into freezing rain, I may have to turn back or hole up for a bit.

This trip is the same route I rode in 48 hours in August 2007. During that trip, I clocked the distance at 371 miles. This time, I will have 72 hours between ferries to complete the tour. I also will be riding the route backwards, due to the only ferry schedule that worked out for me. It will be fun to see the Golden Circle from a whole new perspective, but I do have reservations about riding from Skagway to Haines. For starters, the climb out of Skagway gains 3,000 feet in 11 miles, as opposed to the same elevation in about 60 miles out of Haines. With all of my extra bike weight, that probably amounts to two hours of climbing in the red zone right out of the gate. Then I still have nearly 100 miles to ride into Whitehorse over the rolling hills that follow the headwaters of the Yukon River.

Day two will be the Alaska Highway, with mild rollers, more traffic, and, as I learned last year, very little water. When I rode this stretch in August 2007, I encountered temperatures in the 90s, oppressive sun and a steady headwind. What a difference a year and a month can make. This time, I will be happy if temperatures are in the 40s; happier if it’s dry; and even happier if the stiff wind is blowing in that same general direction.

Day three will likely be the longest and most remote stretch of the trip. I’d honestly rather get this leg out of the way on the first day rather than the last, when I haven’t seen a weather report in three days and have less options if I need to turn back. I will be watching the sky closely as I distance myself from Haines Junction, because I don’t want to be caught out there in a blizzard. Once I round the summit of Haines Highway, I’m nearly home free. It’s a quick drop back to the U.S., followed by a nice, flat meander along the Chilkat River that I’ve ridden several times before.

So that’s my tour. I have to overnight on the ferry on Wednesday, and I set out first thing Thursday for the hideous climb into Canada. I’m nervous! I know from experience that once I settle in, I’ll likely feel happy and content, with nothing to do but sleep, eat and ride my bike. But the days leading up to a big ride are always hard.

Last day of summer

I headed up to Gastineau Peak and Gold Ridge today. I did a little meandering and a little dawdling, and ended up burning nearly five hours of daylight on the mountain in the morning/afternoon. I have been consuming a lot of my free time lately in "long" outdoor activities and evenings with friends. I am really starting to feel the fatigue of never being at home, which is interesting, because I have been battling a raging wanderlust that also seems to be burning holes in my contentedness.

But it was a nice day on the Mount Roberts trail, with rolling clouds and flecks of sunlight. There were no cruise ships in port this morning, which meant the tram terminal was closed, which meant I didn't see another soul on the mountain until I passed two fellow "through" hikers (both solo) on the way down.

I did see a coyote, which shadowed me at a safe distance for quite a while. I'd stop and the coyote would stop, and we'd just stare at each other for a few seconds until finally, I got bored first and started walking again. And sure enough, the coyote walked along with me, although much higher up the ridge. It was interesting to see an animal so curious about a human in the area just above the tram. Mount Roberts has to be the most heavily human-populated trail in Juneau, at least in general. But not today - it was just me and the coyote, and a whole bunch of ptarmigans mottled with new white winter feathers. This picture is about as far as my little camera can zoom, so you may have to take my word that there's a coyote in there.

Requisite picture at the peak, just as the low-lying clouds were finally starting to clear up. I brought mittens and a hat today, which is good, because light snow flurries brushed the ridge for most of the morning.

It was a good way to spend the last "long" day of the year. Monday is the autumn equinox, and with it equal hours for both day and night across the globe. Then in the northern hemisphere, we begin to slip into darkness. And here in the far northern hemisphere, we slip into a lot of darkness. I don't consider that a bad thing, just different, a new way of seeing things, a new adventure. So by the grace of Gastineau Peak go I into autumn, into the first long night.

Everyday beauty

Date: Sept. 20
Mileage: 30.0
September mileage: 500.9

My habit of taking a camera on every bike ride has evolved into a habit of taking a camera essentially everywhere I go. Dentist appointment ... grocery store ... going to pick up a friend at the airport ... no matter where I am, there's a good chance I have my little bombproof point-and-shoot in one of my pockets. And although I generally only take pictures when I'm hiking or biking, every once in a while I stumble across a Kodak moment during my day-to-day life. Like this morning, while I was sitting at my kitchen table downing yet another meal of chocolate-flavored Honey Bunches of Oats (they were on sale), I just happened to glance out the window and see a rainbow stretched over Douglas. So I carried my cereal out to the deck and snapped a photo. (And really, how many cheap basement apartments do you know of that have a view like that? Another benefit of living in a city etched into a mountain.)

Then there was the morning ride with Terry up to Eaglecrest. I was trying to break in Pugsley, who has had a pretty lax summer, for the everyday grind with nice, steady climb. Sunlight filtered through the clouds all morning long, and the sky was just clear enough that I could see the mainland from the ski hill for the first time in ... I don't know ... weeks at least.

At about 3 p.m., I was typing away at my office computer when I saw more hints of sunlight streaming through the window. I walked out on the balcony and watched people fish for chum salmon in a heavy downpour while sunlight flared through a clearing just to the north. The fishermen were all far away from where I was standing ...

So I walked downstairs to buy a Diet Coke from the vending machine and snapped a few more photos.

I left work for my lunch break right around sunset. Before I drove home to make myself dinner (I promise it wasn't Honey Bunches of Oats), I stopped at the Salmon Creek inlet and stood by the highway bridge, just drinking it in.

All the while, right behind me, Observation Peak loomed with a healthy coat of new snow. I thought about how much I would love to be up there at that exact moment, feeling my heart pound and lungs burn in the alpine air while the sun cast an orange glow over snow-dusted boulders. Why, I thought, why couldn't the summer of 2008 just have given me a single 10-hour weather window while I wasn't at work to climb that peak before winter set in? And yet, as I stood next to the highway and my office building and an industrial-zoned section of Juneau all bathed in golden light, I didn't feel too bad about it.

I can't climb mountains every day, but sometimes everyday life is just enough.

Monkey makeover

Date: Sept. 19
Mileage: 61.3
September mileage: 470.9

So my dream of riding the Golden Circle next weekend is really starting to take shape. The weather is so far looking like it will be fairly nice (you know, for early winter.) I contacted my friends Anthony and Sierra in Whitehorse and they're willing to put be up on Thursday night and possibly even ride part of the tour with me. (I owe those two enough favors at this point that I'll probably just have to promise them my first born.) Then I started to seriously consider which bike to use. I no longer trust my clankity, creaky touring bike, at least out on my own in a fairly remote part of the world. But it also seemed a little silly to take a mountain bike on a 370-mile road tour. But then I wondered ... what if I turned my mountain bike into a touring bike? I spent the evening in my friend Terry's garage last night wrenching the bike and discussing the logistics. Then, today I dropped by Glacier Cycles to make it reality. The result is my new-and-improved Karate Monkey, KiM ... the lean, mean, remote-Alaska-road-eating machine:

I've had this rigid fork since I got the bike - it was the fork that came with the frame. I stuffed it under my bed in favor of a Reba suspension fork, but kept it around so I could switch it out for winter riding. Since winter is all but here, I figured I could get a jump on it and switch the forks now. It'll mean riding rigid on trails for the rest of the fall (likely on my Pugsley). But it should also be a better fit for my Yukon tour.

I also bought these "skinny" touring tires to roll better on pavement but also chew up the potential gravel and mud without too many problems. If there's a lot of ice and snow out there, that's another thing. But if there's a lot of ice and snow out there, well, that's another thing.

But that's also why I started to think more seriously about bringing all of the camping gear I'd actually need to spend a night out, and not just relying on Sierra and Anthony and Yukon motels. I was also thinking more that as long as it's not raining, a campout along the Haines Highway may even be fun. So, basically, I outfitted KiM with svelte new tires and a sleek new fork and then packed her up like a pig. On the handlebars I have a North Face sleeping bag rated to -20, a 3/4" Thermarest and a Black Diamond winter bivy sack. The seat post bag has a spare tube, my rain pants, an extra base layer, a down coat, mittens, extra socks, a balaclava and some thermal pants (did I mention I'm expecting winter weather?) All I have in the frame bag right now is my water filtration bottle (I'm planning to carry the rest of my water on my back.) There's obviously a lot more room in there than what I'll need to carry a day's worth of food and the miscellaneous other things I'll need, so I may rethink the packing up front or in back. Or I may just carry more stuff than I need. Nothing wrong with that.

The front bag may look like it would really mess up the handling, hanging off the handlebars as it does. I rode it around my block a couple of times and didn't notice any problems. I'll probably take it out for a longer ride when it's drier just to make sure. I think everything put together in that bundle weighs only about five or six pounds, so it's more bulk than weight. There's also the consideration that I will be riding exclusively on roads, so the handling can be more sluggish without problems. Although it does seem a shame to blast right by the mountain biking capital of the north and not even hit up any singletrack, I simply won't have time.

All of my bike bags are the same Epic Designs bike bags I used on my Pugsley in Iditarod Trail Invitational last February. The front bundle was specifically designed for my pig of a minus 40 degree sleeping bag, so it doesn't cinch up as tight as it could over the "small" minus 20 degree bag, which is why I'm getting some bulging (the clearance is still fine.) The frame bag is also too big for the Karate Monkey. But beyond that, all of the gear transferred really well between bikes and different uses. I should mention that Geoff used that exact frame bag and seat post bag during the Great Divide Race. Epic Designs: It's the gift that keeps on giving.

I feel really excited about the prospect of this trip. I should feel more nervous. I did the exact same bike tour a year ago and spent two months preparing and training for it. But what a difference a year can make ... I know a lot can go wrong and it will be hard either way, but I feel a lot more confidence in my abilities, in dealing both with the physical challenge of the mileage and the psychological challenge of the remoteness. I rode my touring bike out to the end of the road today as the mechanics at Glacier Cycles were working on KiM. It was one of those days where I rolled into Echo Cove and despite steady rain and cold wind gusts, I really wished I could just keep going. Sometimes, you just need those open miles. Sometimes they just call to you.

Photographs of fall

I set out to traverse the Juneau Ridge today but got shut down, again, by cold and clouds. I can't believe that summer is over and I haven't even hiked the full Juneau Ridge yet, let alone Observation Peak or a Blackerby-Juneau and/or Juneau-Roberts epic. It's definitely been a dud of a season as far as my mountain ambitions go. At least there were good colors today, despite the flat lighting. Autumn is actually past its peak at higher elevations. It won't be long now until snow settles in to stay.

Ebner falls, with autumn just starting to emerge at lower elevations. I mostly took this picture as an excuse to take a break during the lung-busting climb.

Ah, the city of Juneau. Next week will be the last for cruise ship visits. The first day the cruise ships stop coming is always a strange one, because the population suddenly drops sharply, the downtown shops close up all at once, and I no longer ride by tour buses full of people all staring out the window (the people on city buses never look out the window). It's a nice, quiet time of year, but there's a sadness to it, too.

The always photogenic first pitch after Mount Juneau.

As I crested the peak and started to descend the ridge, I had to fight this wild, frigid crosswind. It pushed with enough force that I felt like I was about to blow off the mountain. Based on past experiences with strong winds, I'm guessing the wind was gusting 50 to 60 mph. The temperature at 3,500 feet was maybe 40, likely high 30s, which would put the windchill at about 20-25 degrees. It felt like it! I wore only a fleece pullover, a rain jacket and no gloves, so every gust blasted me with wintry cold. I knew there was no way I was going to spend two hours traversing the ridge in that kind of wind, but I had hiked all the way up there and thought I should at least enjoy as much of the scenery as I could bear. That turned out to be 45 minutes out, and a fairly uncomfortable 45 minutes back.

I was really, really cold in this picture ...

But that was mostly because I stopped long enough to set up my camera's self timer twice. I just wanted a portrait picture with the crimson-colored tundra. This is the failed shot, because I didn't turn around in time. But now that I look at it, it turned out to be the better picture.

As expected, the clouds finally sunk below the ridge line, so it was a good thing I aborted my mission. After my Blackerby Ridge experience last month, I'm terrified of getting lost on ridges in the fog. It would be even worse to be lost when I'm already uncomfortably cold and wearing every piece of clothing I have with me. Fall is here and winter is coming, so I have to remember to prepare better every time I go outside. It's a harsh, hard time of year, but it never fails to be interesting.

Sucker hole

Date: Sept. 17
Mileage: 28.7
September mileage: 409.6

Thank you to those who wrote encouraging and helpful comments in my post yesterday. I was feeling frustrated and needed to vent a bit. I did wake up feeling better this morning. A hard rain was falling outside and I watched it for a while before deciding, "eh, what does it matter if I ride my bike or don't?" I settled in with a cup of coffee and the usual rotation of cats on my lap and worked on some editing for most of the morning.

I live in a dark basement of a bedroom and have to keep a light on regardless of the time of day, so I was a little shocked when I walked into the kitchen to replenish my coffee right before noon and looked out over the Channel (I should explain here that my building is built into a hill, so while my bedroom is underground, my front room is nearly 100 feet above a great, unobstructed view of the beach and Douglas Boat Harbor.) Anyway, there were streaks of sunlight, actual sunlight, brushed across the water. I put my coffee down, changed into my bike clothes, and rushed outside.

In my two years in Juneau, I've determined that my mood is based on three separate-but-equal factors. First, my environmental factor (such as the struggles with my job or the fact that my boyfriend no longer wants to live in the same time zone as the one I live in.) Then there's the biological factor (such as hormone levels, my extreme dislike of cooking that drives me to perpetuate rather poor nutrition habits, and my irritating cats that insist on waking me up at sunrise every morning.) And finally, the weather. It's kind of sad, actually, that one third of my mood is based on something I have absolutely no control over, but such is life in Juneau.

So even the faintest hints of sun on a September day were enough to drive me out into the afternoon, with just enough time to sprint up to Eaglecrest and back. As I powered past actual shadows and soaked in real UV rays, I hummed to myself that Polyphonic Spree song - "It's the Sun," the anthem of improved moods - and thought about singing out loud every time I blasted through another patch of light where the sun broke through swirling clouds ...

SUUU-UUUUUU-UUUN (Take some time, get away)
SUUU-UUUUUU-UUUN (Suicide is a shame)
SUUU-UUUUUU-UUUN (Soon, you'll find your own way)
SUUU-UUUUUU-UUUN (Hope has come, you are safe)
And it makes me smile ...

I have a new promise from my boss to take next Saturday off. I have told him it's important to me and I also told him I was going to buy a ferry ticket for a possible bike tour. I have not bought a ferry ticket yet, because I still have some apprehensions that have nothing to do with work. For starters, just a single week can make a big difference in how close it is to winter at the U.S.-Canadian border and all the other areas above 1,000 meters elevation. I can only carry so much clothing and gear on my Karate Monkey, which is the bike I have to use because my touring bike is in such a state of disrepair right now. I'd have to plan for the possibility of snow and ice, carry my minimalist camping gear for emergencies but bank on staying in hotels each night. But I think I can still do it. Ride the Golden Circle in the last weekend of September, starting at 8 a.m. Thursday in Skagway and arriving in Haines in time for the 10 a.m. ferry on Sunday. I will continue to watch the weather and make sure I have nightly accommodations secured (It's likely to drop into the low 20s at night, possibly lower.) But after the fuss and fight I put up about it, I think I have to. :-)

Shot down again

Date: Sept. 16
Mileage: 20.3
September mileage: 380.9

I had the perfect scheme worked out to ride the Golden Circle again this weekend, starting in Skagway with three solid days to reach Haines by Sunday morning. I didn't announce my plans on my blog because I knew my employer was going to pull back, again, and sure enough, I got the bad news today.

I was supposed to receive Saturday off as a belated Labor Day. But my replacement pulled out without much notice. Everyone else gets to celebrate Labor Day, the day to honor working citizens' contribution to society, on Labor Day. I can't celebrate Labor Day until my employers decide I'm not needed. I feel like I am the punchline of a real-life Dilbert cartoon, or maybe that Winnie the Pooh character that has a rain cloud follow him everywhere he goes.

I even had the weather report checked out and a fall-back motel called in Haines Junction and a plan to pack up my Karate Monkey with gear enough for rain and a camp out in temps down to 30. The worst part is, my employers don't even understand what they're taking away from me by withdrawing a promised day off. And it's hard to make them understand because in real life I am a terrible communicator. They probably think I spend my Saturdays the way everyone else in the office does, going to Home Depot and checking out the latest opening of whatever five-week-old movie came to Juneau this week. I wish I could show them that by first saying no to Trans Utah and then to the Golden Circle, they have effectively punched a big hole in my livelihood, and I don't have much left besides my job.

Pugsley's first birthday

Date: Sept. 15
Mileage: 25.7
September mileage: 360.6

My bike Pugsley turned one year old today. Although he was conceived sometime in July of last year, he wasn’t fully built up until Sept. 15, 2007. I asked him how he wanted to celebrate his birthday, and, predictably, he blurted out “Week in Hawaii!” I said my PFD check wasn’t that big, and offered him the next best thing - North Douglas beach party!

Unfortunately, we arrived at the wetlands right around the high tide mark, so there wasn’t much beach left to ride. We skimmed the shoreline and bounced over some boulders. Late-morning fog hung low over the water, but across the channel I could see a small window in the clouds around Mount McGinnis, with an unmistakable new coat of termination dust near the peak. “Look, Pugsley, snow!” I said, but he just grumbled. “This is boring. I’m tired. I hate the beach.”

“Ok, then,” I said. “It’s your birthday. What do you want to do?”

“I wanna go tear up some trails,” he said. “You’re always taking that skinny brat on trail rides. I wanna go sometimes, too.”

“Don’t call your little sister a skinny brat,” I said. “Fine. There’s the Fish Creek trail over there. It’s just a mud bog with lots of big roots and stinky fish guts. Your sister hates that trail. It always turns into a hike-a-bike.”

Pugsley’s spokes lit up. “Fish guts?” he said. “Does that mean there’s bears there, too?”

“Probably lots of big scary bears,” I said.

His rear fender started to wag a little. “I wanna go there!”

“Ok,” I said. We followed the delta shoreline beneath the highway bridge and started climbing along the creek. Pugsley enthusiastically took on his role as trail crusher and we cleared a nice long line of roots and puddles before a log grabbed his pedal and threw me sideways. I swore quietly as I crawled out of the blueberry bushes and started guiding Pugsley back down the trail.

“What are you doing?” Pugsley protested, “I can handle this!”

“Sorry, Pugs,” I said, “it’s just a little too much for me. I never said it was your sister’s fault she and I always ended up hike-a-biking this trail.”

“Man, this sucks,” Pugsley said. “What a crappy birthday.”

“Sorry, Pugs. I know it was hard to be born in these inbetween times,” I said. “But you remember last winter, right?”

Puglsey sniffed. “Yeah.”

“Well,” I said, “winter’s coming back. In just a couple more months, the snow will start to fall, and it will be just you and me again. We’ll go play on new trails and have new adventures and we can even come back here to Fish Creek. If the hikers don’t stamp down a trail for us, we’ll stamp down our own trail. What do you say?”

Droplets of rain dripped off Pugsley's frame but his head tube seemed to brighten. “Cool!” he shouted. “But this year, I’m driving.”

Sniff ... My baby’s all growed up.

Quiet days of fall

Date: Sept. 12 and 13
Mileage: 31.8 and 32.0
September mileage: 334.9

There's a sameness to the air again as the sky sinks down and the clouds settle in for the long season. For many, fall is a season of color and change. In Juneau, our colors are subtle and often washed in gray. Change here is subtle as well; as autumn rain takes over, temperatures drop in undetectable increments until one day, you walk out the door and it's winter. When I lived farther south, fall was always my favorite time of year. I loved the vibrancy and crisp air and promise of new passion. But since I moved to Juneau, my experience with fall has been muted at best - as though the entire season passed in one drawn-out, gray day. If I was given the choice of two months to do away with here in Juneau, I would pick September and October, without regret.

That's why it's vital that I kick myself out the door once in a while, but I admit, my motivation has been flagging. My cycling has continued since I stopped training for Trans Utah, though on a less focused level. Because I recognize that I will lapse into a bad cycle if I don't do something I feel is productive, I have been working hard on my writing project again. Basically, what I am doing is drawing up some of my past experiences into literary essays of sorts. I wasn't always a blogger, so a lot of my experiences are being increasingly diluted in an ocean of memories. I wanted to get them down on paper (well, computer). Dredging my memory bank has been fun, but surprisingly exhausting. I am remembering all kinds of nearly forgotten details that really make the moments come alive for me again. At the same time, I'm not a tape recorder. I find myself taking some creative license with conversations in order to avoid being completely vague. So it's not journalism in its pure form, but there's no intentional fiction, either.

The project was unfocused at first, but has started to develop around the theme of "how did a scared little suburban girl from Salt Lake City end up on the Iditarod Trail." It's really not nearly as hokey as it sounds. Anyway, since it is September 2008, it just made sense to center the essays on the Iditarod race because that is my most recent and dramatic life experience. It's been really interesting to revisit that week through the lens of six months later, now that I have had more time to process different events and decide what it meant to me as a whole. Plus, I have a really great record of it already, so it hasn't been hard to fill in the gaps.

So that's what I've been up to this weekend: boring riding, but interesting writing - even if only to me. Last year, my grandmother published her memoirs and distributed them to her whole family. It's been a fun document to have - not only to learn more about my grandma's life, but to see how she views her own life. Writing about past experiences, good or bad, is a project I would recommend to anyone - it's a great way to learn a lot about yourself, and much cheaper than therapy.

Pre-season explorations

Date: Sept. 11
Mileage: 37.8
September mileage: 271.1

It's starting to be that time of year when snow and cold creep into my consciousness. Long before the ice forms and the snow actually flies, I find myself thinking often about winter ... about the transformation of the landscape, the blank slate surfaces and all of the possibilities for new adventures. I want to try harder this winter to access more terrain (and yes, a lot of that will have to be on foot.) But I'm also starting to think about new options for my bike.

So I set out today on a recon trip around the Eaglecrest road. I actually found a few sections of new-to-me singletrack. With endless gloppy mud and big, slippery roots, I have to say these trails don't do much for me in their summer state. But if I were to get ambitious this winter with a pair of snowshoes, the clearings they twist through could provide a fun spur where I could stamp down a snowbike trail.

The singletrack explorations were slow-going, and I became cold enough that I finally just had to get off the bike and jog. For most of the afternoon, it rained really hard. (Camera flash used for emphasis.)

But this was pretty ... (Devil's club: Beautiful to look at, deadly to brush up against.)

I continued up the gravel road, stopping often to survey the sidehills. I think this new road is likely to be mostly rideable uphill during the winter, as long as it's groomed at all (Although I fear the ski resort may just let the snowpack cover it. I'm hoping they decide to groom it as a fun, easy "green" run.) If it is groomed, it will open up a ton of new terrain for Pugsley (Only when the ski area is closed, of course. I don't want to annoy and/or be killed by skiers and snowboarders.) I'm excited!

The construction guys who are building the road tried to shoo me out of the area because they're still blasting. They were really nice about it - too nice, actually - and agreed I could hike around some more as long as I was off the mountain by 3:30. I really pushed my timetable by taking a meandering route up the bowl and starting the climb toward the ridge. By the time I looked at my watch, I realized I only had about 20 minutes to get down what took me 40 minutes to climb up. The terrain was so slippery with mud, runoff and wet groundcover that I could hardly stay on my feet walking down. Finally, I just sat on my butt, pushed off a rock, and slid. You know how mountaineers sometimes glissade down snowfields? Yeah, imagine doing that during the summer. I hit a small rock and it didn't even slow me down. Now I have a bruise in the area where I sit on my bike saddle - but I did make it back to the road by 3:30. There was a construction guy parked at my bike, waiting for me. I felt horrible - and apologized profusely for wasting his time. I was never anywhere near the blast zone. You'd think they were about to blow up the whole mountain ... but I can understand why they have to be careful. (And they should probably just close the whole area off. I won't go back up there again while they're working.)

It was a good day exploring. But, yeah ... I'm about ready for winter.

Three years

... that’s how long I’ve lived in Alaska.

Geoff and I moved up here the way many people do, driving up the Al-Can with little more than a job offer and a small car packed to the roof with worldly possessions. Geoff had already technically “moved” to Alaska three months before. He flew back down to the States to coax me away from my comfortable life in Idaho Falls. I did not want to make the move north, and convinced myself over the summer that it wasn’t going to happen. But then a rather casual job interview I had conducted over e-mail, mainly, yielded a real offer. “How do you feel about Homer?” I asked Geoff. The last time we had been through Homer was July 4, 2003, when we were crammed with about 50,000 other tourists on the Homer Spit. Geoff was not thrilled about Homer, but he saw it as a reasonable compromise.

We first crossed the border on Sept. 9, 2005. We spent my first night as an Alaska resident camped at a state park. I can’t remember the name of the park, but I do remember it was the same place we camped as tourists right before we left the state (not including an ill-fated jaunt to the Southeast, which is another story all together) in 2003. It was the first time Geoff and I had stopped driving before dark in four days. I lingered on the dock and watched the sun set behind craggy silhouettes of black spruce. The was a deja vu sort of comfort to the scene, and something in it made me feel like I had come full circle, like I had made the right decision - even though, outwardly, I was less than convinced.

We spent our second night in Alaska with old friends who had moved to Palmer a year earlier. They also happened to be hosting a group of fellow Outside expats who were on their way out of the state after finishing up seasonal jobs in Denali National Park. That was an ongoing theme during our trip - lines of RVs were streaming south. We seemed to be the only ones heading north.

We drove down the Kenai Peninsula on Sept. 11. It was this beautiful sunny morning and autumn leaves lit up the landscape with yellows and golds. The mountains climbed straight out of the Turnagain Arm; their peaks were already brushed white with snow. It was one of those jaw-dropping drives that anyone would feel privileged to experience as a tourist, and I couldn't get over the thought - I live here.

That quiet sort of awe continued until we crested the last hill of the Sterling Highway. I think anyone who has ever moved to Homer must have the experience of rounding that bay view corner for the first time forever burned in their memories. We were suddenly hit with a panoramic vista of Kachemak Bay, hugged by the jagged, snow-capped peaks of the Kenai Mountains, and the Homer Spit stretched out like a ribbon across the bright blue water. I was in the passenger's seat, eyes wide open, bottom lip hanging out, voicing what I could scarcely believe - I live here?

The rain moved in that evening and we spent our first night in Homer wet and homeless. I started my job at the Homer Tribune the next morning, and that afternoon we looked at apartments. Everything we saw was cramped and expensive and kitschy until, almost as an afterthought, we checked out this place on Diamond Ridge. The "one bedroom loft" turned out to be a 2,000-square-foot cabin on two acres of land. The landlord was out of town, so we had to peer through the windows. The spacious interior was all wood. The view through tiered glass carried for miles. We called up the landlord and, sight unseen on both ends, asked her when we could move in. In true Alaska fashion, she said, "You can move in tonight if you want."

Her friend couldn't bring us a key until the next day, so we knocked on a neighbor's door and asked him if we could borrow a ladder. He took one look at these two people he had never met, who were driving a car with Idaho plates, and in true Alaska fashion, grabbed a ladder from his yard and helped us break in through the kitchen window. He proceeded to spend most of the evening with us, helping unload my car and talking our ears off about oyster farming and the ten feet of snow we could expect in the winter, and before he left, offered Geoff a job. (The job didn't pan out; the ten feet of snow did.) I remember staring out the window that night at the pink light of yet another incredible sunset, just as a cow moose and her adolescent calf sauntered through our back yard. I couldn't get over the satisfaction - I live here.

Sometimes I think I gave up on Homer too quickly, and sometimes I know I did. But there is one thing I know for sure - I wouldn't trade my experiences from these past three years for anything.

Those Lost boys are back

"Perfect beach near Cape Yakataga;" Photo by Eric Parsons.

Date: Sept. 9
Mileage: 20.1
September mileage: 233.3

So Dylan and Eric of the Lost Coast Bike Expedition have successfully completed their coastal ride to Cordova and are back in Anchorage. They must be two of the baddest, saltiest guys with two of the baddest, saltiest Pugsleys in all the land. They have some epic stories that simultaneously fill me with jealousy for what they experienced and relief that I wasn’t there - a mark of any good adventure, in my opinion. This morning, Eric told me about their crossing of the Hubbard (aka “Terror”) Gap in packrafts. The narrow gap was raging with tidal currents and clogged with glacial ice. Just they were trying to paddle around all of those obstacles, a massive chunk of ice calved off the Hubbard Glacier and crashed into the bay, sending a breaking tsunami their way. Eric said the wave bounced off nearby cliffs and ricocheted back to them, and all they could do was grip their paddles and hope it didn’t flip their boats. Harrowing stuff. Good stuff. And great photos are already up on their trip blog.

So of course I had to ask Eric the question that I’m sure he hears from everyone - was taking the bike worth it? He said he had to give it some thought, but in the end, decided it was. “We did a lot of pushing and carrying our bikes,” he said. “But there were also a lot of really good beaches and we could cover ground a lot faster than if we were walking. We’d look back after a really fun couple hours and think, wow, that would have taken us all day.”

And on his blog, he wrote, “A simple joy comes from mountain biking in places they have never been before. The untangibles that come with traveling through and experiencing these raw, wild, awe-inspiring landscapes is what motivates us and will keep us coming back again and again.”

I have to say, this recent string of good news - Geoff’s win in the Wasatch 100 and Dylan and Eric’s success on the Lost Coast - have really boosted me through this new rut I’ve been tossed into. After I found out I can’t secure extra time off work in October, I took three entire days off the bike - cleaning my house, plodding through a number of chores I’ve been neglecting, and generally feeling sad about being shut out of Trans Utah. I set out today and felt super strong - no huge surprise there, after three pretty mellow days. Despite being stranded in a “no train” zone, I still felt compelled to push hard. I ascended the Perseverance Trail in a gray cloud and descended cold and soaked in sweat and mist and mud and the satisfaction of a good hard effort. But as soon as I rolled back to my apartment and hopped in the shower, the emptiness started to return.

Of course there will be future events and future goals. There always will be. I think what I am mostly feeling sad about is this new realization that even though I have no children, no debt, no health problems, and no definite obligations, I have shaped this life that is not my own. There’s this sense that being chained to a desk is as good as a prison sentence, and yet, I feel a strong reluctance to give up the shackles.

Geoff crushed Wasatch 100!

"I really pushed myself to break 20 hours and came up a minute short," Geoff told me over my mom's cell phone at 11:04 p.m. Alaska time, mere minutes after he cruised in to Midway, Utah, to win the Wasatch 100. He was ahead of 260-odd runners, and a stacked field at that.

I left the house at 10 a.m. in a thick, low-lying fog, knowing the weather report called for partly clear and hoping to find the sun somewhere. I planned to hike up Mount Juneau, but at the last minute veered north for Heinzelman Ridge, my mountain nemesis. I have tried a few times to climb to this ridge and every time become lost, once hopelessly lost. Heinzelman was one of my selling points when I was trying to convince myself to buy a GPS. The approach is a maze of multiplying trails. Too many times I have pushed through thick devil's club and knee-deep swamps and wished I could just relocate my original path. I just wanted to find my way back. But finding my way to the top - that would be the ultimate reward.

If two paths diverged in a wood, I would always choose the wrong one. That is just who I am. And so it was today, following the path I chose until it petered to nothing. And in my usual elevation-hording stubbornness, I continued to press upward through the thick brush and thorns, hoping to find another trail. When that didn't pan out, I moved to turn back in defeat, but thought better of it. This time, I had GPS. I pulled it out and visualized a direct path to the tongue of Thunder Mountain. I bushwhacked deeper into the devils club swamps and blueberry bushes bulging with purple berries, calling out to the lurking bears: "Hey Bears! Sorry to trespass in your territory. I'm just looking for the human trail, and I'll be on my way."

I first checked Geoff's Wasatch 100 standings at 9 a.m. Alaska time. He had just left a place called Sessions Lift Off, at mile 28 of his run. "I should go hiking today," I thought. "Even if this fog doesn't lift." I thought Geoff's struggle called for at least a little solidarity.

Streams of sunlight started to push through the fog, and I knew I had hit the upper reaches of the clouds. I was coated to my knees in slime and mud; luckily my shoes had stayed attached to my feet in several of the deeper bogs. I assumed I'd just try to reach sunlight and turn back the way I came, following my GPS line home. I never expected to find the real trail. What were the chances that in all of this big mountain, we'd ever meet again? But as I crossed an open meadow, I saw a strip of blue plastic tied around a tree. When I approached it, I saw footprints.

My parents drove all the way from Sandy to Brighton to see Geoff off at his 75-mile checkpoint. "How many chances do you get to see this?" my mom said as she called me at work. Geoff had already come and gone, "But he had some soup and he talked for a few minutes to the checkers," she said. "They thought that was so funny that he was chatting with them. They kept telling him to hurry up because he's in first place!"

Tree line is where the fog finally let go, and for the first time I had a perfect view of the sweeping space above me and the white bright world below. The mountain tundra was splashed in fall color amid the lingering greens of summer - an intense, almost iridescent mixture of color and light surrounding the spine of Heinzelman Ridge, and I couldn't believe I found it.

My mom and I talked excitedly as though Geoff had his race in the bag at mile 75, but I couldn't shake my concern. I remember seeing him elated and strong at mile 75 of the 2007 Susitna 100. Then I passed him, several hours later, on my bike at mile 88. It was well after 2 a.m. I shined my headlamp in his face, which was strained and gray. His hat was coated in frost. His eyes had that clouded-over look of a corpse, and he didn't even say hello, as if he didn't know I was there. "How are you feeling?" I asked him. "I'm hurting," was all he said. I pedaled with him for a while, but he gestured like he wanted me to move on. "Do you need anything?" I asked. "No," he said. There wasn't anything I could do to help him, and even as my right knee popped and screamed, I had this sense that I didn't understand the first thing about hurting. That was Geoff's first 100-mile run. He fell to the snow when he reached the finish line.

"There were no low points in this run," Geoff told me at the Wasatch 100 finish line. "Even in my Resurrection Pass training run, I had low points. So this was really nice." He was audibly glowing, and I wished I was there to see it. My mom took the phone back and informed me that he was dripping sweat at it was 1 a.m. and cold and he was going to go change his clothes. Geoff's official finishing was just 30 minutes shy of the official course record. As of the time I published this blog post, an hour and 10 minutes after Geoff won the race, the second-place finisher had not come it yet.

Geoff's final stats for the day: 100 miles; 26,131 feet elevation; 20:07 finishing time. My final stats for the day: 7 miles; 3,254 feet elevation; 3:45 duration. Obviously, there's no way to make a comparison, but still ...

You can't beat those few moments in the sun.

Dead end

Date: Sept. 5
Mileage: 127.4
September mileage: 213.2

Today I set out to ride what I called the "Dead End Tour" - pedaling to the end of every major road in Juneau and back: Douglas Highway, Thane, Mendenhall Glacier, Echo Cove. The weather was on the nice side of mostly cloudy, so it was not hard to get revved up about heading out for a long ride. I purposely set the start time at 10:30 so I would have a time crunch on top of the distance goal. I had eight hours before I needed to be home and in the shower in time to make it to my friends' house for dinner. That meant I was going to have to keep a solid pace of 16 mph and not take more than a couple short breaks.

The pace started out hard at first; I was not feeling fantastic for most of the Douglas Island leg. But by the time I hit the mainland, my energy level started to improve. After two hours, I ate my first Power Bar, even though I didn't feel like eating it, in keeping with my vowed fuel regimen of at least one Power Bar every two hours. By the time I returned from Thane and moved into the long leg at mile 43, I felt like my day was just getting started.

The next leg, all 80 miles of it, was about as ideal as a road bike ride can be for me. It was painless without being too slow, and fun without being too easy. I was lost in thought for much of the ride, looping through an onslaught of memories and considerations and daydreams, only to snap back to reality in a rush of endorphins and realize I was climbing a hill at full bore. Without even thinking too much about it, I was keeping my odometer consistent, using the solitude time to think about my life, quietly observing the first changing colors of autumn and the elaborate cloud formations, and devouring the glut of happy chemicals that stack up whenever I turn pedals for long spans of time. It was a perfect ride ... the kind of ride in which I feel both elated and relaxed ... the kind of ride that makes me wonder why anyone would use illicit drugs when it's possible to feel this way naturally. It really didn't feel like 127 miles and it certainly didn't feel like eight hours. I had to shoot the picture just to be sure.

I walked in the door thinking, "Wow, I'm not it too bad of shape right now. Eight hours consistent and not feeling wasted, not even really feeling all that off ... I could certainly go much longer." That happy realization and the good mood it created might have lasted all evening if I just neglected to check my e-mail before heading to dinner, but no, I had to check my e-mail. I got the final word from my boss. I can't take that first full week in October off. The answer was no.

Which means no Trans Utah for me.

Talk about an enormous buzz kill. Beyond the excitement about the event itself, it's the thing that's gotten me out there in the rain and wind and eight-hour road extravaganzas, much of which I've been reluctant to do and which I've struggled through parts, but most of which has been ultimately rewarding and a huge motivator to keep me happy through the long work days, especially now that I'm living alone with four cats again. It's easy to say that I could endurance train anyway, without Trans Utah on the horizon, but it's harder in practice without that carrot on a stick. Plus, this is just another one of those things that cause me to ask myself ... why am I living alone with four cats and working so hard just to have my only reward be to work harder? Not that I'm about to join Geoff in the alternate lifestyle of living out of my car and running ultras, but the question does linger.

Maybe something to think about on my next long ride.

By the way: Geoff is out running the Wasatch 100 as of 5 a.m. MDT Saturday! I think the race is posting live results here.

My Sarah Palin experiences

I'm not about to use my bike blog to air my political views about the 2008 election or the speeches in the Republican National Convention, although I have to admit, I'm always disappointed by the weight given to the delivery of political speeches when what matters is the content, and the convictions behind the content. But no! That's not why I'm writing this quick post. I have an hour to burn before I head out for my day-long bike ride, and it seems all the cool Alaska bloggers are blogging about Sarah Palin these days, so I thought I'd take my turn, and share my own Palin anecdotes. Especially now that I'm receiving e-mails from strangers about it.

How well I know Sarah: I've never actually met the woman or spoken to her, although I did pass up several Juneau meet-and-greets. I've only seen her twice walking down the street, always with young aide-type people, never with a huge body-guard contingent. A good friend of mine works right above Sarah's office in the building opposite the Capitol. She told me she can look out her window and see our governor typing away at her computer. She said if she were a sniper, she'd have a direct shot. I wonder now if she sort of wishes she took it. (Kidding, kidding.)

The eBay jet: Now we have another popular talking point, the unpopular jet purchased by the people of Alaska for one greedy former Gov. Frank Murkowski, which our hero Sarah Palin put up for sale on eBay to protest big bad self-centered government. Geoff and I actually bid on this jet last fall, pledging our eBay accounts to purchase the plane for a cool $1.4 million. Unfortunately, we did not meet the state's reserve price. Nor did anyone else. The jet never sold on eBay. I'm not sure how the state got rid of it - probably through a licensed broker.

The Bridge to Nowhere: Sarah Palin's flip-flop on this issue is inarguable. She undoubtedly told residents of Ketchikan that she supported building the Gravina Bridge before the 2006 election, then took all the federal money, said Alaska wasn't ready to build the Gravina Bridge, and distributed it to other state highway projects. One topic I'm surprised hasn't come up more is Juneau's "Road to Nowhere," a road that would do little more than carry our ferry terminal 70 miles north and cost several hundred million dollars to build. Palin also supported this project during the election, then immediately squashed all of Murkowski's hard-fought recon work and abandoned the road project as soon as she took office.

Juno from Juneau: Yup, I've even been receiving e-mails about Bristol. I'm surprised more evil liberal blogger attention isn't being paid to how strange all of the Palin kids' names are. My friend has this theory that each Palin child was named after the place where he or she was conceived. Track is a place Sarah Palin used to run around when she was a high school athlete. Bristol is a popular place to be a commercial fisherman. Willow is the Mat-Su Valley town that almost became our state's capital during the last big capital-move push. Piper is an airplane. And Trig ... he's still trying to figure that one out. Levi is a popular name in Utah, with Mormon origins. But my friend found the baby daddy's MySpace page, and he can say with confidence that Levi is definitely a product of Wasilla. Not sure what that means ...

Well, it's about time for me to go for my ride. Sorry for this random post. I couldn't resist.

Tasty Thursday

Date: Sept. 3
Mileage: 32.5
September mileage: 85.8

Brian and I had a successful day out at South Island - three silvers and a baby halibut, and enough failed action to keep us rushing around the small boat for the better part of the day. Part of the draw for me was a chance to motor all the way out to a point 20 miles south of Juneau, down Stephens Passage and along the Glass Peninsula - places I have never seen, as close as they are to my home. New space is always appealing, whether I get there on a bike or in a fishing boat, and if I can venture outside the all-inclusive border of the City and Borough of Juneau, all the better.

On the way back to town, the prop on Brian's motor spun out and broke. Brian was pretty bummed about it as we limped back into port at trolling speed. "This probably ends my season," he said. Special-order part that could take a couple weeks to come ... then the fix ... and by then the big storms of fall will have settled in. Just as I started to say something sympathetic, Brian said, "This would be like someone running over Pugsley." The quieted me down, because I finally understood what he was losing with his broken boat. It's interesting how much happiness stock we put in our toys - not that I think that's a bad thing. Just interesting.

But even Brian agreed today wasn't a bad way to end the fishing season - drifting through the mist to a point in the world that you can still have all to yourself for an entire day. That we caught a healthy number of fish during a time when no one's been catching much was a bonus. I grilled up a halibut fillet for dinner. Since Geoff left town in mid-August, I'd have to say that halibut was the first real meal I cooked for myself, and one of only about three home-cooked dinners I've eaten. There are few things more satisfying than coming home wet and cold from a long day of fishing, changing into something soft and dry (with thick wool socks), tossing up a big veggie salad with a fruit salad on the side for dessert, and pan-frying a two-hour-old halibut slab to perfection. I use safflower oil and a little lemon, salt and pepper. That's all you need. Then purposely undercook it, just a little. It's like eating a moist, warm cloud ... a cloud that's tart, rich and satisfying. Fresh halibut is hard to wreck, so for someone like me who doesn't cook, preparing something that's so delicately delicious is especially enjoyable.

I renewed my gym pass tonight and spent 80 minutes after dinner running intervals to try to burn off the pound of halibut I inhaled. I had hoped to save my money and do all of my fall training outside, but I had a change of heart and decided not to be a hero about it. I'm recognizing that training 100 percent outside during the fall is probably just a quick road to burn-out, so I'm going to take indoor breaks from time to time.

Then and now

Top of Mount Juneau, looking toward the Treadwell Gold Mine and the Gastineau Channel; U.S. Geological Survey Photographic Library, circa 1906.

Top of Mount Juneau, looking toward Douglas and the Gastineau Channel; Aug. 5, 2008.

Sometimes, we I feel like I'm approaching a threshold of change, I like to step back and think about the things that don't change.

Transitions

Date: Sept. 1 and 2
Mileage: 25.0 and 28.3
September mileage: 53.3

I blogged last week about my goal of trying to put in a heavy-duty week of harder training to see how my fitness is holding up. The training didn't go quite as planned - I had a little mental burnout in the rain on Thursday and being called in to work prevented me from completing a long ride on Friday. But overall, it has been going well. I have been seeking out hills and riding them harder, heading out earlier and riding longer, and recovering well after long hikes, which is where I get my real climbing in (and build those oh-so-under appreciated hike-a-bike muscles.)

Why am I doing all this? Well, I mentioned a month or so ago about my interest in heading down to my home state in October to ride Trans Utah. I still want to do it. My big obstacle is still acquiring the time I need off work, which I am working on (gently) with my boss, but that's still a huge 'if.' If I can get the time off work, though, I've decided I want to do it. There are a lot of reasons why I shouldn't do it, and a few more reasons why I probably won't be able to, but still the desire lingers. I have yet to get my redrock fix this year, and imagining the warm glow of evening light sweeping across sandstone vistas as I roll along a rim on my mountain bike makes me more than wistful - it makes me jittery. Until the desert isn't just something I want. It's something I need.

But since Trans Utah is hard and will kill me if I don't get the best gauge I can on my base fitness level, I have to train a little right now on the off chance I can go.

These past two days have been relatively mellow, but I am going to try to ramp it up again for the rest of the week. Dave H. posted the ride stats today, so I have a lot to motivate me:

Elevation. The low elevation is 2,500 feet. Low elevation. Where I live, if you're at 2,500 feet, you're above treeline. I do almost all of my bike training below 1,000 feet. Which means the high elevation of 10,200 feet is going to hurt. Probably a lot. Not much I can do about that now; just hoping my formerly-mountain-dwelling cells have some kind of biological memory.

44,700 feet of climbing. That's just crazy talk. But I actually think I'm in pretty good shape for climbing. Not that I've put in any 10,000-foot days lately, but I'm recovering well from my harder climbs, and I am also pretty good at maintaining a steady (read: slow) pace through varying grades. If I can somehow put up with the heat, hydration and altitude, I think I'll be OK for the climbing.

320 miles. I'd like to do it in six days or less. If I go into it and this doesn't seem at all possible, I'll go as far as I can reasonably go in six days and take the most convenient bail-out. I can honestly say that I am not headed to Utah for any kind of supreme personal challenge or race. I am headed to Utah to go to Utah. The fact that Dave H. spent the past year drawing up a specialized mountain bike tour through some of the most beautiful country in the world is the big draw.

Gear. Lots of fun stuff to acquire. There is still the question of whether or not Geoff is going to do this ride. If he doesn't, I have nearly everything I need. But I am still hoping he has a change of heart and decides to ride with me. He's worried because he's not in any kind of cycling shape; he's had a pretty tough fall training season for the Wasatch 100 and a tough one ahead for the Iditarod Invitational 350. I keep trying to convince him that even my ambitious cycling pace is still supremely mellow compared to what he does. But if he doesn't go, I'll be able to use his sleeping bag, SPOT tracker, water filtration system and my own Epic Designs bags. All I'll need to figure out is food.

Bike. I have to figure out how to get my Karate Monkey in prime shape and in Utah. Given how much I despise Fed Ex, this is not going to be easy.

I have prepared much less for much longer bike tours and made it through OK. I think this could be a humbling and exhilarating experience, whether I do it alone or with Geoff. So I really hope it can work out.