I suck at tapering

So the Soggy Bottom 100 is in less than 48 hours. When it comes to tapering for a bicycle race, I tend to be a bit unorthodox. Some people rest, fill their glycogen stores and hydrate. Others do easy spins to loosen up their muscles. I like to get up early after five hours of sleep and go for long, hard hikes. It may be a questionable taper strategy, but it sure does fire up the synapses.

I wanted to go real big today, but I had to be at the office in the afternoon, so I dialed it back to the longest Juneau hike that I have completed before - the Juneau Ridge to Granite Creek Basin.

From the top of Mount Juneau, there's a good view of the airport runway that will be the launching point of my doom early Friday morning.

It was ultra-hot today ... meaning it was in the low 80s. But the sunlight reflecting off the snowfields made it feel much warmer. Stranged to feel so scorched while walking on snow.

I tried for the Juneau Ridge five times last year, and every single time I was shut down by bad weather. I was so frustrated last season that I never got to do anything "big." I love that this is now officially a hike I can knock out before work, as long as I motivate early.

The view northeast: I can see Canada from my house.

The Juneau Ridge is a good connecting point to the real backcountry - the Juneau Icefield. Someday (hopefully soon) I'm going to plan a multiday trip out that way. I will need to find a partner that is good at reading maps first.

Mount Olds. Someday I will bag that as well.

Five hours. 12.5 miles. 5,430 feet of vertical. Just like resting, only better.

Silver city

My friend Brian and I had a great morning fishing for coho salmon off South Shelter Island. Calm waters, sunny skies, temperatures in the high-70s, kicking back on the boat and crazy arm-busting action for 45 minutes. We caught four silvers and lost two, and spent the rest of the time listening to jazz and working on our farmer tans. This fish is my first of 2009, a big ol' coho. Delicious.

On the way back, we pulled up next to a humpback whale that was just bobbing motionless in the blue water. We decided it was sleeping. Later, Brian wrote to inform me that "they don't really sleep like humans, but they doze with half of their brian sleeping while the other pays attention to breathing and danger." I wish I had the ability to do this. It would make for killer ultraendurance cycling times.

Master fisherman Brian with the four silvers we caught.

I arrived at home to find this letter from State Representative Cathy Muñoz. Not only am I a registered D, I don't even live in her district. How sweet is she?

OK, I'm torn between finishing up my Tour Divide report and going to sleep so I can get up early and aim for a big peak. Hmmm. Weather report calls for more heat and sunshine. Looks like an early bedtime for me. 'Night!

OK, NOW it's summer in Juneau

For the past three months, my friends in Juneau have been updating me about everything I've been missing during the "best summer ever." Why, they asked me, was I wasting all of my vacation days in a wet and cold place like New Mexico when I could be somewhere sunny and warm, like Southeast Alaska? Well, I arrived July 16 beneath a drizzly wash of gray that hasn't cleared up for more than a couple hours until, well, until today.

My reintegration into society has also been a little on the drizzly and gray side. I had a rough go of my first week back at work - difficulty focusing, productivity down, more mistakes than usual. It's hard to transition from 12 hours a day on a bike to 10-12 hours a day in a cubical. It occurred to me that I was actually lucky the weather was gray, because it helped me keep my head turned away from the window.

I'm also still homeless. I've had a tough time finding an apartment that will allow me to have a cat, and where I can afford to live alone. Juneau rent is ridiculous. I supposedly have a good job and I'm looking at places that would cost me nearly 50 percent of my take-home income. I'm still holding out hope for a place around 30 percent. And in the back of my mind, I'm remembering how easy it was to just throw down a bivy sack and fall asleep wherever I decided to stop at the end of the day.

And then, just this morning, I woke up to sunlight on my face. I had three hours to kill before my work meeting so, with a pile of dirty laundry next to my suitcase, a stack of old medical and credit card bills on the desk, a list of landlords to call, and a fridge empty of food, I used those hours in the most productive way I could think of - I climbed Mount Jumbo.

3,337 feet for hundreds of square miles of perspective. Soaked in sweat and sunlight. That's when you know you're having a good morning.

First week back

I still need to write up the last chapter of my Tour Divide trip report. I'll be bummed when I'm finished. I've had a lot of fun writing it - like reliving it, in a way. My goal for the summer is to really dig in to my whole summer experience and flesh it out even more - which, for those who already think my blog is too wordy, probably sounds impossible. Believe me, it is possible. Writing about my life is how I process things, and right now it feels like there's a lot to process.

In the meantime, I'm trying to make the most of being back in Juneau while hammering out my 60-hour work weeks (my boss went out of town this week. Hopefully it gets better.) I've had a few chances to head up into the mountains. Last Sunday, I walked up Mount Juneau with two guys who were both named Dan. I just happened to meet the Dans at the trailhead. They were impressed with the pace I kept, so I think I may have just scored some new hiking partners for the ridge traverses that I really want to complete this summer (but, really, only the weather can decide that.)

Tuesday was Mount Jumbo in the rain. The workout was great but the scenery wasn't very good.

On Friday, I finally took Pugsley out for a ride. In the interim between the Tour Divide and now, my mountain bike has pretty much fallen apart. The tires don't seem to want to hold air anymore; the shock also seems to be leaking; the chain is stretched out; the cables are really tight; the grips have almost worn through and large chunks of foam are breaking off the seat. It's literally falling apart. I sent her off to Gustavus for some TLC, but without a swath of new parts, I'm not sure how well she'll fare. I've actually thought about converting the mountain bike back into a touring/commuting bike with a rigid fork and skinny tires, and using Pugsley as my trail-riding bike for the rest of the year. I'd love to get a new mountain bike, but there are a lot of necessities I need to nail down first - a place to live being at the top of the list.

On Saturday, I entered the Tram Run with my friend Abby. The race follows the lower Mount Roberts trail, gaining about 2,000 feet in four miles. I rode my bike to the race start, and was about halfway there when I realized I forgot my bike lock. I looked at my watch and calculated what it would take to swing it, then turned around in full-on sprint mode back to the place where I've been staying, adding five miles to a 10-mile ride. I grabbed the lock and made it to the start with 90 seconds to spare, dripping sweat, heart rate in full-on red zone, head spinning, trying to remember how to spell my name on the sign-up sheet as someone stabbed at me with safety pins to attach a race number to my shirt. I locked up the bike just as they yelled 'go.' Abby shot off ahead. I started the race in recovery mode just to get over my bike sprint, but I picked it up a little. Not much. Running is just ... well ... it's hard. Abby ended up winning the race in 37 minutes, chicking every single one of the guys by more than three minutes. I finished in 50 minutes ... third place woman. I'm not sure about my standing overall. It was fun, though. Just like hiking (in fact, for a lot of it I actually was hiking. Mount Roberts is steep.) I just figured out that my time last year was just 30 seconds faster - 49:36. I'm happy that I'm not in worse running shape than I was a year ago, when I actually did at least some running prior to the race.

My biking fitness, on the other hand, is a little on the dismal side. I have minor tendinitis in my Achilles tendons, although it seems to be aggravated more by running than biking. I still feel weak on climbs. My enthusiasm on the bike is on the low side. Although I didn't feel like the Tour Divide wore me down much directly after the ride, it definitely feels that way now. Which is why I'm feeling quite a bit of buyer's remorse for something I did last week amid a particularly tough day at work - I used air miles to buy a plane ticket to Anchorage so I could ride the Soggy Bottom 100. The ride is this Saturday. I'm still going to go because air-mile tickets aren't transferable. But right now I have that fear-in-my-heart feeling and I don't really want to talk about it.

I can just ignore that fear by staying on my feet. I hiked Blackerby Ridge today. That is a mean, mean trail. It forces you up 2,500 feet in a mile and a half on a narrow staircase of roots covered in slimy mud and lined with Devils Club. I'm still pulling thorns out of my hands. But once you get up into the rolling alpine, it's all worth it. Even on a dull day, the views are spectacular. I watched a bald eagle stalk, pounce and carry off a baby ptarmigan (sad but fascinating nonetheless.) The marmots were singing. The lupine was blooming. It's summer in Juneau.

Central New Mexico

I awoke to the sting of raindrops hitting my face. I groaned loudly and fumbled with the nylon of my bivy sack until I succeeded in closing the zipper. A headache pounded in my skull and my stomach gurgled and lurched. My first thought was, "Damn, I'm even more sick than I was yesterday. I totally have giardia. I'm going to die out here." But as I began to emerge from my sleepy haze, I realized that the crappiness I was feeling wasn't nausea. I was really, really hungry.

The rain picked up intensity as I thrashed out of my sleeping bag and stuffed it in its drybag as quickly as possible. I had somehow kicked off my shorts during the night, but before I even bothered to pull them back on, I walked over to my bike in my rain jacket and underwear and tore into my food stash like a half-starved raven. I pulled out a mashed package of Grandma's Cookies and shoved the whole mass into my mouth. The I opened a package of almonds and inhaled those, followed by infuriatingly well-wrapped cheese snacks and handfuls of Sour Patch Kids. I can't remember ever feeling so hungry in all my life. It was almost an out-of-body experience, with the repressed civilized side of myself standing aside, somewhat bemused and somewhat horrified as she watched my hands involuntarily tear through mass quantities of junk food. A full-on feeding frenzy.
When it ended, with my stash half depleted, I pulled on my shorts and rainpants and darted around camp, picking up random loose objects that I had strewn about during my sickly apathy the night before. With a sugar rush coursing through my blood, my energy went into overdrive, and I marveled at the turnaround even as I braced myself for another wave of nausea. It didn't come. My body was retaining the food. But my elation about that could only last so long. The rain was starting to come down hard, which probably meant more bad roads, which meant I had to start riding 30 miles into Cuba as fast as my tired, can't-climb, severely undernourished legs could carry me.

I had only traveled about eight miles from what felt like an extraordinarily remote campsite when I began to see car after car parked along the road. At first I thought, "Makes sense; it's the fourth of July weekend." But the cars went on for miles. Bumper to bumper. No campers. No campsites. Just cars. Many had made poor parallel parking maneuvers and ended up 10 or 20 feet down the embankment. Then I started to see the painted school buses. And the crowds of people huddled in cotton quilts, sleeping in the grass as the rain pelted down, and the half-collapsed Wal-mart tents, and the piles of garbage bags, and the extracted car seats, and the shelters made out of bed sheets and the red-eyed, dreadlocked 20-somethings walking their mangy dogs at 7:30 a.m. I stopped one of the dog-walkers and, pretty much expecting the answer, asked him what in the world was going on.

"Duuuude," he droned in a half-stoned, half-excited whisper. "Don't you know? It's the Rainbow Gathering, man. Like 10,000 people are all here together. It's amazing."

The guy's demeanor was right out of a bad movie about the '60s. I just smiled. There was trash everywhere. Unconscious people were sprawled in the mud. Rotten garbage cars had been driven off cliffs. The entire thing was horrifying. How could this guy not see that? But he didn't appear to see much of anything. He just looked at me with his glazed-over eyes and grinned.

I have a bit of a hippy-dippy background myself. I used to hang out in drum circles, listen to the Grateful Dead ... when I was 15. Now I wanted nothing more than to be far, far away from a culture that seemed to be about little more than driving a bunch of obnoxiously decorated vehicles to places where they literally didn't fit, getting really baked, trashing the forest and passing out. They were standing on the wet roadside thumbing rides, yelling at me to "Get high on life," and they couldn't see the hypocrisy of it all? Very rarely do I feel like a bike snob, but I wanted to yell back and tell these people to get a bike, and try going somewhere - somewhere real, not somewhere cooked up by the hippy bureaucracy as a magical Mecca and artificially enhanced by chemicals.

Anyway, I was happy to put the Rainbow Gathering behind me and begin the long descent into the fog-shrouded valley that encircled Cuba. Clumps of clouds draped the pine-covered hillsides in a way that made me feel homesick for Juneau. Of all the places on the route that could resemble my rainforest home, I never expected to find one in New Mexico.

I dropped into Cuba on a long pavement descent as I squinted into the pouring rain, opening my eyes just long enough to see the numbers on my speedometer surpassing 40 mph. I replenished my food supply in town, and bought a little extra in case I had to spend another night out. It was 125 miles to the next real town, Grants, and although it was all pavement, I was skeptical I'd make it there in a day knowing I was possibly still sick and already had 30 miles behind me.

Despite my obnoxious breakfast and equally huge second breakfast at the Cuba Subway, I tapped into the food supply right away. My appetite was out of control. I considered that a good thing. I had obviously ridden the previous day on a serious calorie deficit, and was trying to recover from illness, but I was still confounded by where all that food might even be going. I calculated a rough calorie estimate and came up with 3,800, which seemed unreal as it was only 10 a.m. But I wasn't trying to follow any kind of weight loss plan at the time, so I didn't really care.

The Cuba-to-Grants route traverses a sparsely populated Navajo reservation, where open space is abundant and buildings are few. It was another stretch where I started out with an obnoxious amount of water - six liters - and still decided to stop halfway for more, despite the fact that temperatures were very mild - high 70s at worst - and drizzling rain was still falling from the sky. Such is my paranoia about the desert. My maps indicated there was a store at mile 45, but when I reached it, I discovered it was a laundromat. That was a little unsettling - I had heard plenty of stories about unfriendliness on the reservation - but decided to go inside anyway.

The laundromat was packed on a Friday afternoon, with crowds of children weaving through the halls as their parents folded clothing and leaned against rumbling machines. All faces looked up as the white girl in bike tights walked inside, holding a red water bladder. A Native American man in his 70s who had no teeth and was at least six inches shorter than me approached. "I'm wondering if there's a place in here where I can fill up my water?" I asked.

"Sure," the man said through a big, gaping grin. He pointed to a bathroom in the corner. "You can get water in there. But we have pop machine, too. You can get a cold Coke; it's much better." He directed me over to the Coke machine and started fishing around in his pocket, pulling out a handful of coins.

"Oh no," I said. "I can buy my own soda."

"It's no problem!" he said, and made a move to put his own coins in the slot as I whipped out my wallet and showed him a dollar.

"No, I have cash. I want to buy a soda," I said.

He nodded and smiled. "Where you coming from today?"

"Cuba," I said. "I'm going to Grants."

He shook his head. "No, that's too far. You go to (I forget the name of the town). I have a son there. You stay with him."

"It's really OK," I said. "I know I can make it to Grants."

He laughed. "So you're Super Bike Woman! Fine, OK, that's good."

Other people put down their folding and walked up to ask me more questions about my trip. The children giggled and one girl handed me a piece of paper she had been coloring. So much for unfriendliness on the reservation.

In fact, even after I left the laundromat, three more people stopped on the side of the road to ask me if I needed water or directions. One woman even offered me a swig of her Gatorade. The overreaching friendliness and the cool, moist air put me in an incredible mood. It was everything I did not expect from "The Rez," and the surprise was refreshing and invigorating. I felt like I could pedal fast and strong enough to launch the bike airborne. And the stronger I pedaled, the more I ate. The headwind picked up, and I just pedaled faster and consumed with gusto. At one point, I reached into my framebag, and all I had left were the three waterlogged Clif Bars that I had been carrying as emergency food since Canada. I had managed to eat everything else. I guestimated at least 8,000 calories - Michael Phelps territory. That made me feel almost as proud as the incredible time I was making.

I reached Grants by sunset, just as spectacular thunderstorms raged to the south. 155 miles in 13 hours with a leisurely breakfast stop, one day after feeling as sick as I've ever felt on a bike. Grants felt like a huge victory, and I celebrated with Pizza Hut, full-on laundry at the laundromat, and a full hour of doing nothing but watching CNN. (On the Divide, any time that's not spent biking, eating or sleeping feels like a waste. But that was the day after Sarah Palin resigned as governor of Alaska, and I had been seriously deprived of current events and political gossip.)

Life was good again.

The next morning, I studied my maps and realized that the next stretch comprised of nearly 300 miles of mostly dirt with only one fuel stop available - a tiny little town with just two cafes called Pie Town. Many veterans of the route warned me that Pie Town was always closed, and it was the Fourth of July, so I called the Pie-O-Neer cafe from Grants. I got a message saying they would be open until 4 p.m. It was 8:30 a.m. Pie Town was 80 miles away. It had rained a ton the night before, and I expected to find plenty of mud. It was impossible. I left a pleading message: "Hi, my name's Jill. I'm riding through town on a bike with the Tour Divide. I'm sure you've seen others come through. Anyway, I'm calling from Grants. I'm going to try, but I don't think I'll make it there by 4. I was wondering if I could ask you to leave a lunch on the doorstep, maybe a hamburger or sandwich and pie, and a gallon of water, and a check. I can just pick in up on the doorstep, and I'll leave cash. I don't really care what the food is. At this point, I just need calories and water. Please. I'm good for it, I swear. I have lots of cash. My name is Jill Homer."

I pedaled out of Grants in an unexpected bubble of strong emotion. I'm not even sure where it came from. Many people have asked me at what point of the race did I realize that I could finish it, and the exact moment has been hard for me to pinpoint. Sometimes I think Montana. Sometimes I think 65 miles from the end. But, after further reflection, I think that was the moment. Pedaling along Route 66 out of Grants, New Mexico. I realized that I had only 400 miles left to pedal. Just three more days if things went well. And that realization filled me with everything from elation to strong doubt. Tears streamed down my face as I pleaded to God, the Universe, the Powers that Be, my own inner strength, anyone and anything that might be listening: "Please be with me. Please stay with me. Please help me get through this."

I left the pavement and pedaled up the Pie Town road, a long, rolling traverse of seriously washboarded clay. My teeth rattled and my butt clenched with the worst kind of saddle sore agony, but I didn't really mind because anything was preferable to mud, and I had been expecting mud. The road did start to become softer as it climbed. I concentrated hard to tap into my snowbiking Zen and imagine myself as light as a feather: "Let me float on top of this. Just let me stay on top of this." The tires skimmed the sloppy surface, tossing mud but rolling true, and I pedaled with everything I had in my tired legs, with the Pie Town carrot dangling over the horizon.

I rolled into town at 2 p.m. and strolled triumphantly into the Pie-O-Neer cafe. A guitarist and base player strummed mellow country songs in one corner as a handful of people listened from tables and snacked on burly pieces of scrumptious-looking pie. Before I could announce myself and ask if they got my message, a woman rushed up to me and wrapped her arms around me in a gigantic hug. "You made it!" she exclaimed. "I can't believe you made it!"

"I made it," I smiled.

The guitarist in the country band was just finishing up a song. "We did not think you were going to get here in time," he said. "After all the rain last night, I thought that road would be soup."

"Actually, it wasn't so bad," I said.

He smiled and shook his head. "Well, congratulations. That's some amazing riding."

The woman nodded. "And, I have to say, you're the cleanest and best-dressed person in this race."

I laughed. "Really?" I looked down at my outfit. I had a big chainring grease stain on the front of my jersey, and my baggy shorts were rumpled and dusty.

"When Matt Lee got here, he was covered in mud, red eyes - he looked half-dead," the woman said. "He just fell in the door, mumbling, 'I need food.' He really looked like death. I thought, 'That can't be healthy.'"

I laughed again. I was about to give her my "Here in mid-pack we have more fun" speech when she pulled me over to a table and sat me down. "What do you want?" she said. "We don't have a lot on the menu, but I can see what I can cook up."

The first thing that came into my head was salad, so I asked for it. She told me they didn't have salad, but she had a bunch of veggies in the fridge and she could whip one up. She offered me a spinach quesadilla and tomato vegetable soup, and I enthusiastically ordered it all. Fresh food! Real, fresh food! I was so giddy that I completely forgot about the pie.

I devoured the healthiest and tastiest meal I had consumed in three weeks as the country band played an impressive set of original music. The woman brought me new Pepsis as fast as I could knock them back. She directed me into the kitchen so I could fill up my water and choose from a spread of pies. I chose coconut cream. "Good choice," she told me. "That one won an award from a big food magazine last month."
I left Pie Town feeling like I was pedaling my first mile of the day even though I had 80 behind me - another example of why human kindness is the most valuable resource on the Divide. I made a couple of short stops to explore some super-intriguing old adobe buildings and began climbing into the Gila National Forest. The desert soon turned back into pine and hemlock-studded hillsides, with the distinct feature of an almost barren forest floor beneath the tree canopy.

As evening approached, the thunderstorms that had been encircling the mountains all day began to close in. I hadn't yet decided how far I was going to ride that evening, but I knew it wasn't going to be to real shelter. The route would soon dip away from the forest and back into the open desert. After that, I knew there would be at least 20 miles in which I would be completely exposed before I re-entered the national forest, and there were no camping options before then. I lingered for a few minutes near the top of a long descent and tried to decide whether I should stay or go. I decided to go.

I crossed onto a gravel road that cut through a wide-open ranchland with a few scattered houses. The clouds in front of me sunk in and became dark to the point of near-complete opacity, which told me that just a couple miles away it was raining, hard. The wind picked up velocity to my side, and as I glanced behind I could see another opague storm advancing quickly toward me. A glimmering curtain of lightning flashed through the crescent of the two storms, and I knew that if I didn't catch the one in front of me, the one behind me surely would. My heart rate shot to primal speeds, and I pedaled as steadily fast as I could manage through the eye of the storms, wondering when they were going to join forces.

It's hard for me to describe just how frightened I am of lightning storms. To me, they are the scariest, most unpredictable aspect of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route. At least with grizzly bears, you know 99 times out of 100, they're going to run away. Lightning has no such guarantee. Incredible streaks of electricity tore through the sky as I traversed a region that didn't even have a stop sign to cower beneath. I was the tallest thing in a one-mile radius, whether I was on my bike or crouched on the ground. And if I stopped moving, the back storm would surely catch me. As long as I kept pedaling, I could at least hold out hope that the gap held.

And that's where I was at, stress-pedaling right into the heart of an electric storm as another one approached, when I heard the loud zip of my rear tire spitting out mass quantities of air. I stopped and inspected the damage. I was running slime tubes, and my frame was coated in green goo. The slime was bubbling out of a hole in the tire, but whatever I ran over seemed to be gone. I picked up the frame and spun the wheel around until it stopped gurgling. Then I pulled out my air pump and started pumping frantically, hoping the slime would hold.

I inflated the tire to about 25 psi and decided that was good enough, but when I started riding, air started to spit out again. I swore out loud. I did not want to have to change the tube, which on my bike involves undoing the brake caliper and generally takes me long enough that I would undoubtedly end up underneath the back storm. The air stream stopped quickly and I decided to stop and pump one more time. As I kneeled in a puddle atop a road had been innundated with rain only minutes before, I looked up and noticed a full rainbow draped over the heart of the storm, and all around it was an incredible ceiling of phosphorescent red light, a reflection of the sunset that burned through a thin clearning to the west. Streaks of lightning continued their violent dance beneath the rainbow stage. It was so breathtaking that I even through the dark fog of the stress I was feeling, I knew I was witnessing a moment of powerful beauty. Beauty more powerful than fear. I pumped a few shots of air into the tube, and it seemed to hold. I got back on the bike and continued approaching a vibrant curtain of color and lightning that filled the entire sky. "Be brave," I chanted. "Be strong."

Before I reached the front storm, the road turned mercifully to the west while the storms continued their swift march east. I began to climb back into the forest, but stopped before I entered the canyon to look back on the now-fading sunset one last time. In a corner of the valley many miles behind, I saw tiny bursts of bottle rockets exploding in the shadows. "That's right," I remembered. "It's the Fourth of July." I watched the fireworks for a few minutes, listening to their tiny pops and smiling at their miniscule streams of blue light that were pitifully dwarfed by the booming thunder and blazing red sky. "Why don't those people just save their money and look around?" I wondered out loud. Couldn't they see that their efforts were so, so small; and nature was so, so immense?

I pedaled a few more miles until the road seemed dry again - a small patch of land that hadn't been pummeled by storms - and began setting up my camp. After weathering that horrific storm, and having found the courage to power through it without breaking down and cowering in a ditch, I felt a surge of confidence that can't be duplicated by any other kind of success. And as I laid down beneath a near-full moon revealed by a new clearing in the clouds, I realized that this was the answer to that ever-present question: "Why do you do this?" Why does someone like me - who doesn't possess any remarkable athletic talent, and who isn't all that competitive, and who still harbors plenty of fears about things remote and lonely and wild - why do I participate in incredibly difficult, expensive, time-consuming, admittedly dangerous ultraendurance races when I might find more success and fewer challenges in more reasonable endeavors? And that moment, in the Gila forest, perfectly framed the reason:

Physical fitness is fleeting. Strength is forever.

Northern New Mexico

I stood outside the Skyline Lodge for nearly 10 minutes, wracked with internal conflict. I held my icy hands against my mouth and listened to the echo of my breath, like an expanse of empty space. My shoulders quaked because I was still cold, but that hardly mattered anymore. I longed for the comfort of civilization, but I wasn't yet ready to face the happy indifference of everyday life - the vacationing people at the lodge, drinking beer, laughing and talking loudly about things that didn't mean anything to me. And they would want to talk to me, rolling in on a bike and caked in mud as I was, and I would have to describe a race that in that moment felt trite and meaningless. I craved deep solitude and escape even as my body begged for warmth and food. The little voice in my head demanded I march onward. "If you walk in that building, you're going to quit," it said. "But I have to go inside," I reasoned. "Dark's coming and it's not getting any warmer. And I have to find out what happened. I can't just leave with all these uncertainties."

Flames raged in the fireplace as I walked inside the lodge, and before I said a word, a woman walked up to me and escorted me in front of it.

"You can take off your stuff to dry here if you want," she said. "That big group in front of you had a clothing canopy going on." She walked over to a sheet of paper that was hanging on the wall and looked at her watch. "What time is it? See, um, 5:45, June 30. You must be Jill?" I nodded. "Ok. Jill ... Homer?" I nodded again. "Jill in. 5:45. OK, now when you leave, come over here and sign out. I assume you'll be spending the night?"

I nodded. At that point, it didn't seem like a choice. The employees at the Skyline Lodge in Platoro had obviously heard of the Tour Divide, since they seemed to be closely tracking it, so if anyone in all of southern Colorado could help me, and I wasn't even sure in what ways I really needed help, but if anyone could help me, it was them. "I'll go grab you a menu," she said. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine," I said. "But ..." and it all came out right there, coming upon the ambulances, learning about the accident, talking to Pete, not knowing his condition, concerned that he was badly injured.

"We heard about a biker hit up there," the woman said. "Pete, you say?" She looked at her sheet of paper again.

"Oh, he's not in the Tour Divide," I said. "He's doing his own thing."

She scrunched up her nose in a way that told me she didn't quite understand, but said, "I'll tell you what. I'll call around to the hospitals and see what I can find out."

"Thanks," I said. "Thanks so much."

I settled in with a plate of chicken fingers and fries as the woman made a series of calls from her business phone. The kindness I stumbled upon in Platoro was an incredible relief - I had been expecting typical wilderness lodge skepticism about the dirty person on a bike. I had expected to be snubbed and even turned away, or at the very least asked to mop up the puddles of rainwater under my chair. Still, the interest at the Skyline Lodge swung a little too far in the other direction. Everyone there was Tour Divide savvy and couldn't stop talking about it. Matthew Lee had just won the race earlier that day, and several other frontrunners were closing in on the finish. The employees and a couple of guests sat around the fireplace with their laptops and updated me continuously on the standings. I was happy for Matthew and the others on the lonely highway, but at the time I genuinely did not care much about the race, and despite the unconditional kindness of the employees at the lodge, I couldn't help but be annoyed that they were so wrapped up in it. I was upset and wracked with uncertainties. My friend had just been in a terrible accident. Why did they think I cared that I was in 15th place?

The woman got off the phone after about five minutes and said she couldn't find any info about Pete. I asked her if she had a pay phone and she shook her head. "We have a courtesy phone, but it hasn't been working great with calling cards," she said. She paused and said, "If you need to make a personal call, you can use this phone. Please make it quick, though." I called my mom. She listened with sympathy and promised to do as much digging as she could and relay the information as quickly as possible. But I knew that in Platoro, I was pretty much out of touch with the world. I was going to have to accept uncertainty as my condition for at least the night. I took an Ambien and prayed the drug would cut through the empty space in my heart.

The problem with my uncertainty is that it went beyond not knowing Pete's medical condition. It went beyond my doubts about the importance of the race. It spread out into my entire life, and a truth I had been unwilling to admit to myself until that moment. I had been playing around on my bicycle all summer while I let of swath of unknowns about my future stagnate - my job, my newly single status, my lack of a home and dread about returning to Juneau. I was able to ignore all of these things as long as I was riding my bicycle, but the truth was I had a whole life to get on with. As long as I was riding my bicycle, I was avoiding the hard but necessary task of moving forward.

The next morning came and went with no new info. Quitting the race was still on my mind, but it wasn't very feasible from Platoro. And, even as upset as I was, I couldn't help but laugh at the thought of my final call-in should I quit there: "Hi. This is Jill. I'm in Platoro. Yeah, I'm bagging it. I just realized I have a life to move on with. Wow, what a waste of time these past two and a half weeks were." Of course I didn't believe it. My time on the Divide had been treacherous and invigorating and amazing, and I wasn't actually ready to give it up just yet. I was still in good health. I was excited to see New Mexico. And of course I still wanted to finish the race. Jeez, I had dedicated an entire summer to that race.

A Skyline Lodge guide approached me as I was packing up my bike outside the building. "Where you headed today?" he asked.

"New Mexico," I said. "Gonna hit up the Brazos Ridge today."

"The Brazos?" he said. "Have you checked the weather?"

"Afternoon thunderstorms," I said. "30 percent chance, which means I'll get pummelled. What's new?"

"No, no, no," he said. "Don't go up there. I fought fires in the Brazos for five years. You'll be up to your knees in mud. I'm not kidding. Knee deep."

"I have to go," I said. "I really don't have a choice." And as I looked up at the perfectly blue sky that I knew was as fleeting as good moments on the Divide, I realized that was true. I didn't have a choice.

I pedaled 20 miles down Platoro's dirt access road before I reached the highway junction at a town called Horca. I had hoped to use a pay phone and stock up on food, but the store was closed at 10:30 a.m. on a Wednesday and the pay phone didn't work. I wanted to scream because this whole place was so remote, and so out of touch with the outside world. And the Brazos, the Brazos was one of the most remote regions of the entire route. It wrapped around a designated wilderness area, high above the desert and well away from towns. It seemed so cruel of the GDMBR to carry travelers out here, so far from anywhere, so we could be alone and scared and knee deep in mud. But I guess that was the point. Lonely and wild. That was the point. I tried to remind myself of that, but all I could think about was Abiquiu, still more than a day away. Screw remote and wild adventure. I just wanted to find a phone that worked.

I climbed La Manga Pass and dropped down to the border at Carson National Forest. The clay road was still soft from thunderstorms the day before, and a couple of ranchers in trucks stopped to warn me about impending rain. "It's OK," I told one of the ranchers. "I get rained on every day. I'm used to it." I climbed to a wide plateau where my GPS indicated I was above 11,000 feet. It seemed so high and open that I thought maybe, just maybe ... and pulled out my cell phone. Cell phone use is controversial in Divide racing - it's outright illegal in the Great Divide Race, and legal but mostly discouraged in the Tour Divide, to avoid use as a means of soliciting outside support. I had my cell phone with me but had rarely used it - only a couple of times to make call-ins as I stood in front of pay phones that didn't work (most don't these days), and to call my family from towns because it was cheaper than using my calling card. But in that moment, high on the Brazos Ridge, I needed that cell phone to help settle the storms raging in my mind. It seemed so unlikely that it would actually work, riding along the Cruces Basin Wilderness that was close to exactly nowhere. But as I pedaled higher on the plateau with my phone turned on, I heard that familiar ring that told me I had voice messages.

No fewer than six different people had called to update me on Pete's status. He was actually OK, they all told me. He had a broken collarbone, possibly broken arms, lots of cuts and bruises, probably terribly sore, but he was going to be fine. Amazing, they all said, after being hit head-on by a truck. I listened to the messages and then called my dad, who confirmed the good news. "And how are you doing?" he asked.

"I feel much better now," I said. "Relieved." But as I looked toward the dark clouds building over the plateau, I realized that my relief only extended to my emotional trauma. I was about to head out into the wilderness amid what was almost certain to become another violent thunderstorm, with no known shelter on the horizon, and I felt a very raw, primal sort of fright. I wondered if I should tell my dad this, but decided against it. "Be brave," I chanted as I turned off my last connection to the outside world and approached the black horizon. "Be strong."

Within the hour, the rain was pelting down and the road was breaking loose. I mashed through the mud, drivetrain slipping, chain bouncing, wheels serving, pedaling as hard as I could just to slough off the goo that was clinging to my frame and trying to keep myself afloat. It wasn't enough. The gooey road dipped and climbed out of stream drainages. The drops were slow. The climbs were unrideable. As I pushed my bike uphill, the wheels jammed up. I lifted the bike to carry it and my feet slipped. I fell to my knees, still sliding backward, clinging to the overturned bike for traction. The Skyline Lodge guide and the south-to-north GDMBR tourist were both right. Northern New Mexico was bringing me to my knees. I felt like sobbing, but I had already spent my emotional capital for the day. And, anyway, I had to keep moving forward. It's not like I had a choice.

By the time I reached the merciful pavement of Highway 64, I was coated in mud and half frozen, in New Mexico in July. I shivered up the highway climb until I reached a campground at Hopewell Lake. The campground had a day-use shelter and I huddled inside to get out of the rain. The moisture seemed to be letting up a little. There was even a sunset forming to the west, and I had hoped to ride further in order to make Abiquiu by early morning. But the day-use shelter, "No Camping" signs and all, was just too inviting. I unrolled my sleeping bag and drugged myself into a mercifully dreamless sleep.

The next morning I awoke to bright sunlight and considerably less malaise. I started my usual morning chores of eating a candy-based breakfast, brushing my teeth and using sticks and rocks to chip cemented mud out of my drivetrain, and started pedaling up Burned Mountain. I dropped into a town called Cañon Plaza, a cluster of adobe buildings and wooden fencecs, where New Mexico was finally starting to look like New Mexico. I crossed through Vallecitos, where the infamous "Dog Alley" welcome wagon greeted me viciously. Every single house had a mean loose dog or four, and every single one of them chased me, growling, barking and nipping at my ankles. Frazzled and frightened, I pulled out my bear spray and uncorked the safety, pointing the business end straight at a vicious yellow mutt. He backed up at just the right second, when my fear of dogs was just about to trump my fear of macing myself. Despite multiple grizzly and black bear encounters in Canada and Montana, that was as close as I came to using the 11 ounces of bear mace that I carried the entire distance of the Great Divide.

I rolled into Abiquiu at about noon and ate a big chicken burger, fries, yogurt and six random pieces of fruit at the one convenience store in town. I walked out into what felt like real, unwavering heat - the first I had felt on the Divide. It felt like it was 100 degrees, although in reality is was probably just in the mid- to high-80s. I stocked up on water, despite having a filter, because I didn't know how much water I'd find up high. I started up another 4,000-foot monster climb.

I was finally in full-on, Southwestern desert, which was both exciting and intimidating. New Mexico is notoriously the most dangerous state on the Divide. A combination of heat, bad roads, scarce water, fewer supply stops, and race fatigue can quickly turn a bad situation into a deadly one. I was aware of the hazards, and being a cold-adapted person from a wet northern climate, took them very seriously. The heat out of Abiquiu felt powerful and I reacted by sucking down water. I didn't know if I needed all that water. I certainly had enough water. It weighed heavily on my back up the steep climb. But as I reached the Polvadera Mesa, my thirst for water turned into a deep, unsettling nausea. I didn't know if I had been hydrating too aggressively, or if I ate something bad in Abiquiu, or I was simply worn out and my body was rebelling, but I suddenly felt very sick. I dropped my bike and darted into the woods to vomit up all of my lunch. My immediate reaction was regret, because there were a lot of lost calories in there, and I didn't have that many on hand if the road to Cuba turned into a long one.

However, lost calories were the least of my worries. I drank a little more water and ate a seriously melted Mounds bar shortly after I threw up, only to lose everything again a few miles later. It wasn't an isolated incident. I was really sick. I rested on the side of the road until my head stopped spinning, then tried to get up and keep going. The road was really bad, probably the gnarliest surface I had encountered yet. Large slabs of stone formed a staircase up the mesa, and loose sand inbetween made the whole thing hard to negotiate at full attention, let alone through the haze of nausea. I felt light-headed and woozy, and my energy levels plummetted the longer I went without new calories. But at that point I was so nauseated that I couldn't even stomach the thought of forcing something down. Near the summit, I crossed an open meadow that was populated with cows. I walked my bike up the road, chatting with every single one of them through an almost feverish delerium. "Can you tell me where the water is?" I would ask them. "I think I'm running out of water." (I still had plenty, but my mind was somewhat addled and seemed to fixate on my overall fears about the region. Plus, I was only slightly aware that I was talking to cows, so I obviously had problems.)

I reached a junction where the road seemed to finally turn downhill from the seemingly endless climb. My stomach felt raw and empty, my head light and my legs wobbly. I was so weak that I was having a hard time even walking my bike, and the junction felt like a point of no return. Cuba was still 50 miles away. On the other hand, going back to Abiquiu would be downhill the entire way. The voice of reason told me I should go back. I was obviously sick. I might have giardia or some other kind of bug that was only going to get worse. But the voice of reason could only speak quietly through the faint fumes that my body was now running on. I wasn't thinking completely clearly, but in that moment, moving forward seemed like the best solution.

Beyond the pass, the road continued to roll along the 10,000-foot ridge, with steep climbs and drops that offered absolutely no relief. The evening sun filtered through the trees and burned in my eyes. I slumped over my handlebars and labored through every step. I coasted down one short hill only to meet another steep climb, and then another. I oozed off my bike and dropped to the ground - on my knees in northern New Mexico, again. I was spent, completely bonked, and still too sick to eat. I looked at the shadows stretching across the road and sobbed. "I don't want to climb any more," I pleaded out loud. "Please don't make me climb any more."

But the road, of course, didn't care. I stumbled up a few more rollers before finally reaching a long downhill, on a rough, rocky and rutted track that was very difficult to negotiate in my addled state. My body begged me to lay down and sleep, but I reasoned that as long as daylight lingered, I needed to get myself as close to Cuba as possible. I had been completely alone and had not seen a single other person or vehicle since I left Abiquiu, so I was surprised when I came across a string of what I call "grubber cars" - crappy old sedans that had been driven well beyond the point of sensibility on four-wheel-drive roads, where they subsequently became stuck and abandoned. I had no idea why all of these cars were suddenly here (I would learn that the next day.) But some reason that no longer makes sense to me now that I am no longer in a flu stupor, I decided to break into this car and open up the cooler in the front seat. I think my sick-addled mind was still fixated on running out of water, because I remember I was hoping to find water bottles. What I did find was the most disgusting soup of sun-heated, rotton food that I have ever come across. It was beyond foul. I slammed the cooler shut, absolutely horrified. If I had anything in my stomach to purge, I would have vomitted for sure. Leason learned.

When dark finally descended, I found a nice grassy meadow beneath a wash of stars. I laid down my sleeping bag, and without eating, brushing my teeth, or even taking off my jacket to use as a pillow, I laid down to sleep the guiltless sleep of the dead, completely drug-free.

Southern Colorado

I felt strangely unrushed when I woke up in Salida to a beautiful bluebird morning. I flipped on the Weather Channel and warmed my gigantic 7-Eleven sweet roll in the microwave. I savored it with an extensive breakfast of coffee, smoothie, yogurt, peach, banana and orange juice, then chased it with a round of peanut butter cups. I had no planned destination for the day, and therefore no required distance to stress about. And I was feeling so fresh and strong that I had no doubt in my ability to go far. I stopped in Poncha Springs to buy a new pair of sunglasses (I had a way of obliterating old pairs and went through a total of five cheapie gas station shades over the course of the trip.) I spent a half hour there talking with a GDMBR tourist who was traveling south to north (I've since forgotten his name.) He handed me $5 and asked if I'd give it to a couple he stayed with in Del Norte. "The big climbs in Colorado aren't too bad," he said of the passes south of there. "But watch out for northern New Mexico. It doesn't look like much on the maps but it will bring you to your knees."

The first climb out of the gate - Marshall Pass - was a monster: 4,000 feet of elevation gain along a canopy of 14'ers. The route followed an old railroad grade. I motored up the gravel feeling grateful that locomotives were notoriously weak climbers. They forced engineers to cut long, snaking paths up these huge mountains. Now, 100 years later, cyclists could enjoy maximum coverage of this beautiful terrain for minimal pain. The knee agony of northern Colorado was only a distance memory, the potential meanness of northern New Mexico only a vague promise. The entire Tour Divide seemed wrapped up in that one morning, and that morning was perfect.

I was likely humming happy Sunday School songs to myself when a Honda Element pulled up beside me. I quickly recognized the driver and he smiled back - I'm pretty sure just as surprised to see me as I was to see him. Mike Curiak and I had only met once before in person, on March 1, 2008. I had just woken up in McGrath, Alaska, race-addled and bewildered by the transition from the deep-frozen Iditarod Trail to a hot, crowded house, when I noticed him standing in the front room in his longjohns. He was supposed to be on an entirely self-supported tour of the entire Iditarod Trail and reportedly wasn't stopping in any buildings, so I asked him whether he was planning to beyond McGrath. "The future is uncertain," was all he said before I was whisked away to catch my plane home. Now, the future was here and we were both basking in Colorado sun. Life is strange like that. "What are you doing in this part of the world?" I asked him.

Mike told me Pete Basinger was going to be coming through the region that day and he wanted to surprise him with cold Pepsi and other sugar treats. "Really?" I said. "Pete's just behind me?" Pete is a quiet but gifted endurance cyclist from Anchorage. He was riding the route as an individual time trial, meaning he didn't start with any race but was out there gunning for the overall record. Pete and Mike Curiak had battled for that record during the Great Divide Race in 2004. In the end, Pete finished only 20 minutes behind Mike, who established the GDR record at 16 days and change. Pete had been working toward the elusive record every other year since. He was shut down by "total body breakdown" just 600 miles from the finish in 2005, and contracted food poisoning in 2007. "How's Pete doing?" I asked Mike.

"Good," Mike said. "He's still on record pace. But he's had a lot of issues with his bike. I sent him a big box of parts a week ago. Then he taco'd a wheel outside of Silverthorne and had to hitchhike back into town. He called me because he was debating whether to buy the one set they had at the bike shop. I said, 'Do you have a choice?'"

"Man," I said. "That guy can not catch a break."

Mike offered to ride with me up to Marshall Pass. He pulled out a bike complete with an Epic Designs frame bag that had a custom-built pocket specifically designed to hold Mike-and-Ikes. He offered me a handful of the colorful candies along with a Pepsi. "It's Pete's favorite," Mike told me.

"I'm not going to drink Pete's Pepsi!" I said.

"Don't worry," Mike said. "I have another one for him."

We pedaled leisurely up the road, both stopping to shoot photos of flowers and landscapes. Mike commended me for being a fellow camera geek and an unhurried participant in an endurance race. Above is a photo taken by master photographer Curiak himself. I love how I can hand him a point-and-shoot camera to snap a posed shot in front of a Continental Divide sign, and he can turn it into a dramatic retrospective of the sweeping Colorado skies.

Mike and I parted ways at Marshall Pass and I sped down to Sargents, where I ran into the same huge group of bicycle tourists that I had snacked with in Hartsel the day before. They had gone up over some road pass while I climbed and dropped and climbed and dropped in the Salida area, and we had somehow both ended up at the same point. My maps indicated that I was going to be on Highway 50 for 12 miles, so I asked if I could ride with them. We motored down the road, chatting about their house building cause while I further explained the Tour Divide. As we talked, my heart began to race toward levels I hadn't felt since I was actually able to climb strong back in Montana. I looked down at my odometer and we were doing more than 19 mph, on level pavement. The problem was they were on unloaded road bikes and I was riding 50 pounds of mountain bike beast. I mashed into the pedals harder, determined to keep up, sucking down big gulps of air between conversations so they wouldn't know I was maxing out. It seemed almost silly to waste so much energy on pavement, but I seemed to have energy to spare, and I was ecstatic about all of my unexpected company that day.

Highway 50 was choked with traffic. More than once, we were buzzed closely by RVs and honked at by truckers. "Man, I don't know how you guys do this - touring on pavement," I said. "It kind of sucks." They just laughed. "It's really not that bad," one guy said. "Tell me you don't have moments where you wish you were on pavement instead." (How true this would turn out to be.) Still, I was grateful to finally turn onto a nondescript dirt road and begin the lonely climbing anew.

I call this photo "Waiting for Pete." After Mike informed me that Pete was not far behind, me, I spent the entire day looking over my shoulder. I wanted to watch him power up from behind and mumble short but sincere words of encouragement as he flew ahead.

You could say I'm a big fan of Pete's. He's my friend, too. Alaska is a small state in a people sense, and we often end up at the same events. The first time I met him was at the 2006 Soggy Bottom 100. He was way out in front, but the race had enough out-and-back that we passed each other three times. He always said, "You're doing awesome," or "good job," which was a huge self-esteem boost to a totally new, very insecure endurance mountain biker who only knew him as an Alaska cycling powerhouse.

Since then, we became more acquainted through the Iditarod Trail Invitational. I went to him for winter survival advice, which he always freely gave. I brought him my poor dilapidated Pugsley for total overhauls mere days before that race, both years, and he'd blast through the repairs without even doling out the maintenance lectures I sorely deserved. I made a feeble effort to repay him by taking over the blogging duties for the 2008 Great Divide Race, and he still wrote me afterward and said he owed me his first-born child. "She's probably 7 by now," he joked. Yeah, Pete's awesome. Good-looking, too. ;-)

Anyway, I let myself get really excited about the fact that he was going to catch me that day. In fact, as the day wore on, I made less stops and rode later than I would have otherwise, for fear I was going to miss him. It seems pretty silly, and it was, but out there on the Divide, where you're running the high gears all the time, your mind seems to regress, almost becoming childlike in the process, and it's difficult not to fixate on simple things.

Meanwhile, the big picture was swirling all around me. I surpassed the century mark for the day and kept riding, cycling between daydreams about Alaska and an awestruck awareness of my newfound place in a big, big world. I was Jill Homer, Alaskan, pedaling myself toward the Mexican border. And I was Jill Homer, former recipient of multiple F's in seventh-grade gym class, riding in one of the hardest mountain bike races in the world. But the beauty of the Tour Divide is that it's only as hard as you want it to be. It can be tough, sure, agonizing even. But more often than that, it's fun, pleasurable, relaxing, and dare I say, at some perfect moments, even easy. I smiled because it was fun to know that secret.

Still, the fatigue of a 120-mile day with tons of climbing (someday I'll actually go back and quantify it so I know the real number), was beginning to wear, and by 10 p.m., I just had to camp. I was disappointed that Pete hadn't caught up to me yet, but there was a chill in the air and an inky thickness to the night, and I was tired and hungry. I pulled off the road into the Storm King Campground and grabbed a site next to the creek so I could filter water the next morning. I munched on a brownie, jerky and packaged tuna, and gazed at the golden moon, lonely but satisfied.

I'm not sure how long I had been asleep when I awoke to rustling just a few feet away. My automatic bear-alert mode caused me to jolt upright, but everything after that became hazy and dreamlike. I had been using sleeping aids the entire trip to help me pass out amid the adrenaline and high heart rate left behind from hours on end of riding. I always felt normal in the morning, but this was the first time I had woken up within hours of taking the drug. I gazed around the campground through a thick Ambien fog. I could see a silhouetted figure unpacking things from a bicycle. He looked up and a dull headlamp shined in my face. I mustered a smile, though even my face muscles felt sluggish. I fumbled for my own headlamp and couldn't figure out how to turn it on. I pressed the light on my watch, but that wasn't working either. Finally, I just laid back down because this was obviously all a strange dream. Within seconds, I was unconscious again.

Sometime during an ungodly hour of the next morning, noises woke me up again. I peeked out of my bag toward a shimmering glaze of stars, and right beside me was a dark figure packing things into a bicycle. The Ambien had finally worn off and I was alert enough to acknowledge that he was really there. And, based on the timing, I was certain it was Pete. The thought made me giddy. "I should get up," I thought. "Maybe we can start out the day together, ride for a while, maybe even all the way to Del Norte." But another voice said, "Ha! You wouldn't be able to keep up with him for a mile." I stuck my face further out to get a better view, only to be hit with a startling blast of cold air. The temperature was close to freezing, probably 35 degrees, and the dark was powerful. It was well before my awake time. Guilty as I felt about not even saying hi, I laid back down and closed my eyes, quietly wishing him good luck as we both hoped for a quick sunrise.

The morning ride into Del Norte was one of the most fun trails of the entire route, a bumpy doubletrack that rolled down red sand hills toward the Rio Grande. I still felt empowered by all the good days behind me, and I rode hard and confident, even catching sweet air on some of the larger bumps.

I rolled into Del Norte at about 9 a.m. and started winding my way through town, looking for the home of Gary and Patti Blakely so I could repay them the $5 that someone somewhere owed them for something. Patti, who was riding through town on her own bike, managed to find me first, and she brought me home and started reheating homemade pizza and peach pie. I gulped down several cups of sweet tea as Gary and I discussed the more nontraditional aspects of my bike set-up. He was especially interested in my platform pedals, which I suspect he never expected to see on any serious Divide racer's bike. I explained that my frostbitten toes never took kindly to any of the clipless pedal shoes that I tried, and in order to avoid needless toe agony, I finally just bought a pair of too-large running shoes and some $20 commuter pedals with cages and it was one of the best decisions I made.

Patti rode with me several miles out of Del Norte before wishing me well. I started up Indiana Pass, the biggest climb of the entire route. It gains more than 4,000 feet in 26 miles, topping out at nearly 12,000 feet elevation. The summit is certainly not the end - several smaller passes complete with steep climbs awaited me on the other side. I was mentally prepared for that one task to take me the rest of the day.

The road was steeper and looser than most other Colorado climbs, and I had to engage the high gear to get up it without walking. My mind was still amped up and I thought I had high gear to spare; little did I know that it was already slipping. I reached the top feeling thoroughly cooked. I looked out over Summitville, the mining ghost town that is now a Superfund site, toward an expanse of mountains that seemed to last forever. There was no relief in sight. Only more climbing road, and ruins of old buildings, and ominous-looking stormclouds.

The thunderstorm hit with maximum force just as I was starting down the rolling descent. Black clouds sunk in with little warning and rapidly disintigrated into sheets of rain before I even slowed down to put my rain gear on. Deafening bolts of lightning streaked through every corner of the sky, all around me, and I had nowhere to hide. I was at 12,000 feet, where even the trees were too small to cower behind. I finally decided that my best course of action would be to just drop down the route as quickly as possible. But the descent into thin tree cover continued to throw more climbs at me, and I was already shivering from the cold but too frightened to stop and put on more layers. My fingers felt frozen to my grips; my legs were stiff and quaking. The lightning wouldn't leave me alone, and the pouring rain was pooling in potholes and streaming dark mud down the soft road.

I pedaled as hard as I could, and the storm calmed a bit just as I entered a long, steep downhill. By this point, my teeth were chattering audibly. I was as cold as I have ever been on a bike, even all the times I rode in driving sleet in Juneau were just similar, not worse. Still, I thought I wasn' t that far from Platoro., and I could weather the wet cold a little longer. I pedaled a few frigid miles before I passed the first vehicle I had seen since Summitville - a police car. An officer was standing outside. He asked me if I was alone. "Yes," I said. Beside him, the road was shredded with swerving tire tracks. I assumed a four-wheeler accident. I continued down.

About a mile later, I came upon two ambulances inching down the road. I pulled up behind them and watched my odometer drop to 6 mph, and then 5. They were wide enough that they took up the whole rough road, and it would have been difficult to pass them, and I decided I shouldn't anyway. I rode my brakes and coasted behind them, shivering violently, becoming more uncomfortable with each maddeningly slow minute. After what seemed like an eternity, we finally reached an open clearing, and both ambulances stopped. The drivers got out with radios in their hands and started talking to each other. I was just about to make my way around them when one of the drivers saw me and waved me over.

"Are you with this biker?" he asked.

"Wait, that's a biker in the ambulance?" I said. The driver nodded slowly. "A cyclist?" He nodded again. "Who is it?"

He shook his head. "I can't tell you."

I felt a thick lump of bile gurgling up from my stomach. "Is it Pete Basinger?" The driver nodded. All the blood left my head, and I said in a broken squeek, "Is he OK?"

"He's responsive," the driver said. "He's talking to us."

"What happened?"

"He was hit by a truck pulling a horse trailer. Head-on."

"A head-on collision?" I sqeeked. "With a truck? Do you know what's wrong?"

The ambulance driver shook his head. "We have him stabalized and we're trying to call in to see if we can land a helicopter in here."

"Where are you taking him?" I said. "Can you tell me where you're taking him?"

"Not sure," the driver said. He leaned over to the other driver and mumbled a few things I didn't hear. Then he turned back to me. "Do you want to talk to him?"

"Um, I probably should just let you guys go," I said.

"We're not in a hurry right now," the driver said. "Either way we have to wait to see whether we can get him out of here."

I stepped into the ambulance and nodded at the two EMTs sitting inside. I was still shivering wildly, a combination of the cold and fear, and I braced to restrain myself as much as physically possible. Pete was strapped to a bed and his head was completely stabalized so he couldn't turn his neck. His long eyelashes pointed where his eyes were fixed on the ceiling. Based on the severity of the accident, the way he was strapped in and the fact that the EMTs were calling in life-flight, I was convinced I was looking at a man who was badly injured, possibly even paralyzed.

"Hey Pete," I said, startled by the shakiness in my own voice.

"Um, Jill?" he said.

"Yeah, Jill," I said.

"Heh. This is pretty crazy, isn't it?" he said.

"It's intense," I said. "How long ago did this happen?"

"It's been about a three hour process getting here," he said. "But I don't even know ... where are we now?"

"Stunner," I said at the exact same time he did.

"Stunner Campground," he said. "That's what I thought. Did you hit any rain?"

I smiled. He couldn't see me, but I was coated in mud and my hat and coat were still dripping rain water. "A huge amount of rain," I said.

"Yeah, that's why I left Del Norte right away," he said. "I wanted to beat the rain."

"Smart man," I said.

He laughed. "I'd say you had better timing than me."

"Are you in much pain?" I asked.

"It's not too bad," he said. "Now. Those rednecks who hit me were walking around me, talking about what they were going to do with me. That was the scariest part."

We paused and the silence echoed. I looked down, muddling for anything to say. "So did you see me at the campground last night?" he asked.

"Storm King? Yeah, I heard you come in. I was going to get up and talk to you. Sorry I didn't."

"That's OK," Pete said. "I didn't want to wake you up."

"I'm still sorry," I said. "I'm really sorry this had to happen."

"Yeah," Pete said. "Shit happens. Just sucks right now, three days from the end."

"Three days," I mustered a laugh. "I was thinking more like seven."

"It won't take you seven days," Pete said. "Where are you staying tonight?"

"I think Platoro," I said. "I'm thinking about just going to Platoro."

"Platoro's good," Pete said. "The cabins there are expensive, but they have good food."

Another pause lingered in the thick air. "Well, I should let you guys go," I said. "You're in an emergency and stuff."

"Yeah," he said. "Good luck."

"You too."


Outside, the sun was beginning to break through the clouds and a bright rainbow formed over the ambulences as they inched away in the opposite direction I was headed. I guessed the helicopter wasn't coming. I watched them until they drove out of sight, then turned to face the last climb into Platoro, Stunner Pass. Where the storm clouds cleared, a dark cloud of grief descended over my body. Here was a friend, a fellow Alaskan, a man I admired looked to for inspiration - mangled on the Great Divide. His life might be changed forever. I didn't really know, but in not knowing I let my imagination serve up the worst possible scenerio. I felt sick with regret and doubt. Pete had been out there, battling the same harsh elements, riding the same hard roads, pushing through the same physical and mental fatigue that I had been experiencing. We were out doing the same thing, this totally unique thing, riding the spine of the continent as fast as we were physically able. And to what end? To what end? What purpose could it possible have to net this kind of consequence? I couldn't get the image of Pete strapped down in the ambulance out of my mind. And out of that, the little voice in my head dug from my memory a haunting loop of "What Sarah Said" by Death Cab For Cutie ... "And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time ..."

I crested Stunner Pass in a depth of sadness. I could no longer muster the energy to ride my bike so I just walked it, even as the road dipped downhill. I stopped every few steps and just stared into the distance, hating the vile forest, the remoteness of it, the way it just swallowed space with its massive mountains and dark shadows. I thought about the things in life that were important, truly important - my friends, my family, my career. None of them were near here, not even anywhere close. I was riding my stupid bike through a strange land, and that definitely didn't seem important. I was angry with it all and I couldn't think of anything that would take that anger away, except to go home. I wanted Platoro to be a place that could take me home. I didn't really care how. I remounted my bike and dropped down a steep hill, finally emerging through the trees to a little cluster of cabins. And beyond that was more forest, just forest. Platoro was nothing more than a lodge. A remote wilderness lodge. There wasn't a bus station there. There probably wasn't even a phone. My anger bubbled to the surface until it erupted in a stream of tears because there was nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

P.S. You can listen to my call-in from Platoro at this link.

Central Colorado

Steamboat Springs was shrouded in thick fog when I limped outside at 5:58 a.m. The thought of sitting on my bike and turning pedals still made me cringe, so I walked my bike over to the bagel shop two blocks away. I had scouted out its hours the night before, so I was bewildered to find it was still closed. Closer inspection of the sign revealed it opened at 6 on weekdays, but not until 6:3o on Saturdays. It was Saturday. I stared longingly inside the dark window, contemplating just waiting a half hour for warm carbohydrates and coffee. But the little voice of guilt inside my head told me that if I didn't leave Steamboat right then, I was never going to.

The first miles out of the sleepy city left me in tears. I was gnawing on a Snickers bar - an unsatisfying sugar breakfast to supplement my dangerously undercaffinated blood - and my left knee hurt, it just hurt. Warm droplets streamed down my face but it didn't matter because the fog covered my whole body in dew. At least the commuters wouldn't be able to tell I was crying. But I had resolved to at least try to make it out of Steamboat. I couldn't help but draw parallels to Geoff, my now-ex-boyfriend, who really struggled as he was leaving Steamboat Springs last year in the Great Divide Race. He went back to Steamboat that day, tried to leave again the next day, and then quit the next town over, in Kremmling. I did not want to quit in Kremmling. But I wondered if I would even make it there.

The first climb of the day, Lynx Pass, was gradual with a good road, but I had to soft-pedal or walk up the first couple of miles. Every time I tried to push hard, sharp streaks of pain would push back. But as I gained elevation, my stiff knee began to loosen. It felt like the bad blood, the fluid, or whatever was causing it to swell was beginning to flush away. And as I began the descent, the joint was still sore but not unworkably stiff. The chains had been removed.

With my body happy, and my bike finally happy, I felt a new rush of excitement as I descended to the highway crossing and set out for the next rolling climb. A half mile down the dirt road, I come upon Dave Nice, who was waiting for me with a camera and a can of Pepsi. He had been traveling the Great Divide south to north from New Mexico, and I thought he was still on the route. He told me he ended his ride several days before, but he was convalescing at his parents' house, who just happened to live a few miles away, right on the route. He said he had been meeting nearly everyone as they passed through. He offered to ride with me and we forded a deep creek. Dave actually knew about a nice shallow sandbar across it, but didn't tell me about it because that would constitute outside navigational help, which is against the race rules. So after I flailed around with my bike over my shoulder in the thigh-deep water, he crossed ankle deep, laughing the whole time. We slogged through multiple patches of unrideable mud and finally ended up at his parents' house, a little oasis of kindness, where his grandma gave me Spanish rice and brownies. I rubbed ointment on my knee and pronounced myself healed.

Shortly after leaving Dave's house, I dropped down an incredibly steep, scenic road to a remote crossing of the Colorado River. I lingered at the bridge for a few minutes, watching rafts float by and thinking that if I had a raft, I could just float all the way to Mexico. The thought made me laugh at loud. That would be way too easy. I began the next steep climb with surprisingly fresh knees, strengthened by my new perspective on pain.

I gained a couple thousand feet out of the valley and then dropped right back down to the river at the Kremmling cutoff. I had been listening to my iPod since I left Radium, random shuffle, and "Wake Up" by Arcade Fire was playing when I crossed the highway. That intersection is the point where racers must decide whether to continue straight, to Kremmling, or turn right and follow the Colorado River to points unknown. Without even hesitating, I hung a hard right just as Arcade Fire was belting out the lyrics, "We’re just a million little gods causing rainstorms, turning every good thing to rust. I guess we’ll just have to adjust." My adrenaline surged and my muscles swelled. Even if it was just by yards, I had surpassed the point where Geoff ended his race last year. And we've stayed on good terms since the breakup, but I couldn't help myself. With the exception of the final pedal strokes into the border, it was the most satisfying moment of my entire trip.


I pushed late into Silverthorne and left relatively late the next morning. I was caught off guard by the sheer human traffic of the area - solid I-70 mountain town territory - and tried to temper my culture shock among throngs of Sunday walkers, hikers and recreational cyclists on their way to quaint little coffee shops and book stores. The route all the way to Breckenridge follows mostly bike paths, and also appears to intersect a heavily used road-touring route. A German couple on bicycles bulging with four loaded panniers and a BOB trailer flagged me down and grilled me in broken English about the road into Silverthorne. I couldn't understand their barrage of questions and mumbled "bike path" before slipping away.

I fought may way through wildlife-viewing crowds in Frisco only to meet the backside of a large group of walkers. As I wove through the first several dozen, I noticed many of them were wearing pink and carrying signs in support of survivors. It was a breast cancer walk. "You guys rock," I shouted as I slipped by one group. "Way to go," I said to another. I was wearing a pink breast cancer jersey myself and felt like I fit right in. But then a mile went by. Then two. And the path-blocking crowds didn't abate, they got thicker. My "you rocks" turned into guiltily terse "on your lefts," which was a pointless thing to say because nobody ever actually moved. I bounced off curbs and over grassy patches as slowly as I could handle the bike, but usually I had to stop and jog around the walkers. I felt so frustrated but I couldn't let myself be grumpy about it because it was a breast cancer walk, and these people were doing good, and I was just a non-local riding a dumb bike and I didn't deserve to be there.

The breast cancer walk ended up stretching all the way to Breckenridge, more than eight miles clogged with people. It felt so strange to be locked in a population center, which, I guess if you're going to cross an entire country, you're probably eventually going to have to go through at least one. But it was such a different feeling from the quiet solitude of the rest of the route.

The crowds continued up Boreas Pass, but they were mountain bikers, most of whom were faster than me, so at least they weren't slowing me down. The climb was the perfect combination of long and gradual; I motored along the cliffside views of Breckenridge and alpine meadows, my mood lightening with the air. It was my first time in the race over 11,000 feet - 11,400 feet to be exact - and that felt huge, coming from a cycling background that usually sticks close to sea level.

The descent off Boreas was gravelly and rough and I stayed right behind two guys on souped-up full-suspension bikes. The strong climb and swift descent were fueling almost unprecedented energy levels. I was approaching that fleeting but ideal state of being that I like to call "untouchable."

Right on schedule, thunderstorms moved in during the afternoon. I did not care. I smiled, put on my rain jacket and pants, and pedaled along the open high country as hail pelted down.

Climbs couldn't slow me. Descents couldn't faze me. I stopped in Hartsel for "rocket fuel" (ice cream sandwich and Pepsi) that I didn't even need, almost out of habit. As I was cramming the calories through a sled-dog-like excitement to just go, go, go, a couple of cyclists approached me. They said they were with a vehicle-supported group that was touring cross country to raise money for affordable housing. As we talked about our respective trips, one told me, "I can understand the mileage you're doing, but what I can't understand is not taking any rest days. How can you survive on no rest?"

I just shrugged, because I didn't know how to answer that question. But the thing I had learned since leaving Rawlins is that rest demands more rest, and movement demands more movement, and balancing the two is how we mere mortals can conquer the Divide.

Since I left Silverthorne somewhat late in the morning, I had just assumed that I wouldn't reach Salida, 115 miles away, until well after dark. But by the final climb, my body was firing so efficiently that I motored up with time to spare. I crested 10,000 feet elevation, and proceeded to lose 3,000 feet on the most jaw-dropping descent of the entire trip. The narrow road wrapped around sandstone outcroppings and cut through red-sand slopes. Without even warning, Colorado had dropped me in the Southwest, but it was a Southwest I had never before experienced - with 14,000-foot monsters surrounding hills peppered with juniper and pinion. And above all that, streams of sunlight filtered through the rain, casting heavenly beams over the foothills. As for me, I was in near-freefall, letting sheer gravity pull me toward the glistening valley below. I was so glad I had pedaled fast enough to experience it at that moment, in that light.

I rolled into Salida, grabbed a super-cheap motel room (I love the Southwest), did my most efficient stock-up ever at the 7-11, and settled into a comfy booth at a Mexican restaurant, where the waiter brought me at least 2,500 calories worth of fajitas, chips, beans, rice and root beer. I perused my maps as I wolfed it down, marveling at how great I felt, how revved up I was to keep moving, how perfectly the whole day - despite minor people traffic setbacks - had come together. I had biked 115 miles and three passes and I didn't even feel tired. I was a Divide racer at last.

P.S. The Juneau Empire did a story on my Tour Divide ride (I didn't write it). You can read it here.

Northern Colorado

The first real heat of the trip soaked into my skin as I rolled out of Rawlins at 12:30 p.m. The late hour felt like a huge setback, and I was grumpy about the fact that Steamboat Springs - 130 miles away - was now at an impossible distance to reach in a day. I was going to have to spend a night out with my bandaged freewheel and jerry-rigged brakes before I could hit up a "real" bike shop for the extensive repairs I needed. The last climbs out of Wyoming were huge and the hours moved too quickly. I resolved to ride late into the night to put myself as close to Steamboat as possible, but my heart wasn't in it. The 18-hour stop in Rawlins had initiated some kind of shutdown.

Divide racing is a fascinating example of humans turning themselves into machines by separating themselves from their own humanity. We ignore biological pleadings and powerful emotions for the simple, almost inhumane act of forward motion. Turning pedals becomes a mindless act and our bodies shift into automatic mode. I could out my head down and power up climbs without even making a decision to do so, all day long, but at the end of the night, faced with the chores of eating dinner, choosing my calories for the next day, washing my clothes and brushing my teeth, I'd be completely bewildered by the complexity of it all. Shifting back into "normal person" mode was becoming harder every day. But after 18 hours in Rawlins, with three big meals, 10 hours of sleep and several hours of intellectual collaboration with other humans, I had already started to adjust back to life on the other side. And, leaving Rawlins, I didn't want to be a Divide racer any more. I wanted to be a normal human.

The instant consequence of this desire was a powerful loneliness. I crossed the border into Slater, Colorado, and began climbing up the impossibly loose gravel of a ranch road right at sunset. My back wheel spun out every time I stood up from the saddle. The steeper pitches forced me to walk, and as I walked, the silence was maddening. I could see clouds building in the dusky sky, and sprinkles of rain were starting to fall. "Man, screw getting close to Steamboat," I thought. "I'm just going to camp."But all of the trees surrounding me were peppered with "No trespassing" signs. A sign at a cattle guard warned that private property continued for at least six miles. I looked out across the canyon, almost desperate just to see a porch light, just some evidence of humanity in the distance, but all I could see were the silhouettes of tree tops and the dim glow of my headlamp fading into a black expanse.

I churned up the hill for several more miles when I finally did see the warm glow of artificial light. I rounded a bend and saw a several log buildings; it looked like a lodge. Lights were on inside the largest building, intensely warm and inviting against the rainy, lonely night. I stopped pedaling and lingered for a few minutes, debating whether I wanted to bother whoever was inside for shelter I didn't really need. It was 10:30 at night. I shook my head and started up the road. I had pedaled about 50 yards when I head a voice say, "Jill?"

I turned my bike around and approached a woman standing at the door. "You hungry?" she asked.

"Excuse me?" I said.

"Are you hungry?" she repeated, but before I had a chance to answer, said, "Of course you're hungry. What kind of question is that? Come in!"

Wide-eyed and confused, I parked my bike and stumbled in the door as the woman beckoned me toward the kitchen. She placed a huge bowl of fruit in front of me - grapes, cherries, watermelon and mango. "I just cut that for you," she said of the mango. "It's a little soft, but they're better that way."

"How do you know who I am?" I finally asked.

The woman looked at me with a smirk as though she were both surprised at my ignorance and happy about her surprise. "Tour Divide!" she said. "I've been watching you all day. I thought you were never going to leave Rawlins."

"Neither did I," I said.

"I almost missed you, too," she said. "I just updated the site and saw your dot right on top of here, and I looked out the window and saw your headlight."

"Wow," I said. "I'm glad you did."

The woman told me her name was Kirsten. She ran the Brush Mountain Lodge and she was a huge fan of the race. She had helped out other racers in front of me, providing them with fresh fruit, meals and a bed if they needed it. She whipped up a quesedilla and chips to go with the fruit, a big glass of water and hot tea. We sat down to check out the Tour Divide standings.

"Did you know Michael Jackson died?" she asked.

I smiled. "No. No I did not."

She shook her head. "That must be so cool, really being out there like that."

She set me up in a room and asked me what time I wanted breakfast. "Um, maybe 7 a.m.?" I said.

"That sounds great to me. Those other guys all wanted breakfast at 4," she said.

I laughed. "Welcome to mid-pack! It only gets better from here."

Kirsten, just as promised, greeted me at 7 a.m. with a huge veggie omelet, toast, and coffee to my heart's desire. I was never in the mood to make morning stops, so that was actually the only hot breakfast I ate in my entire trip. It was amazing. I set out in light rain for the first pass of the day and my first foray over 10,000 feet, the Watershed Divide.

The fog thickened and the rain grew heavier as I climbed. I crested the pass in a near gray-out and started down the steep descent, where rivers of mud flowed between basketball-sized boulders. It was a hard descent to pick a good line, made even harder by the wheel-sucking mud that would have stopped my bike altogether if I wasn't plummeting down a 15-percent grade. The mud scared me more than gravity and I took it fast, pressing my butt deep into my seatpost bag, bouncing my tires of rocks and generally hanging on faith to get me down. I applied the brakes hard on a regular basis, until, at a pivotal moment as I was bouncing over a particularly gnarly rock garden, I pulled the brake levers all the way down and absolutely nothing happened.

In a split second I pulled one more time and then panicked, leaning hard to the left and bashing my left knee against a sharp rock as I skidded through a geyser of mud to a painful stop. My shoulder burned and my knee was screaming, so forcefully I was sure I could hear it, and I had to spend several minutes lying head down in the mud until I could hear something besides audible pain. When I finally stood up, the rain had resumed echoing loudly in my helmet and my knee had calmed down a bit. I tried bending it and realized it felt stiff but not broken. My rainpants had torn and I could see blood seeping through my leg warmers, but I didn't quite yet dare pull them up to inspect the damage.

I checked my brake pads. The brand new front pads that I had just barely installed the day before had worn to medal. The brake rotor and even hub were coated in a sticky black goo that I can only assume used to be the pads. They had completely disintegrated. The rear pads were worn to almost nothing, but there was a little life left in those. I adjusted the dials to their maximum setting and was able to get the back brakes to catch again, but the situation was precarious at best. I had at least six more miles of that nasty rocky descent followed by a dozen or so more miles of graded gravel descent before I finally hit pavement. I thought about walking. But the rain fell harder, the mud became stickier, my knee throbbed painfully, and I just wanted to be somewhere else. I decided to ride, said a little prayer, and held on.

By the time I reached the paved sanctuary of Clark, Colorado, I could add mild hypothermia to my list of ailments. I had been riding the back brake and inching down the route for nearly two hours, exerting almost no heat as driving rain soaked me to the bone. I stopped outside the Clark store and held a garden hose over my body like a showerhead, trying to wash away a thick, full-body layer of mud just so I could walk in the door. Inside, I ordered a big burrito and a bottomless cup of coffee, and huddled in the corner until I felt warm and brave enough to pull up my leg warmers. My knee cap was covered in road rash and fairly swollen, but not yet black and blue. It seemed like a goose egg of some sort - not horrible - but it still ached and seemed to stiffen even further as my body warmed. I could barely walk into the bathroom. "I'm totally toast," I thought. "I'll be lucky to make it to Steamboat."

Steamboat was only 20 miles away, mostly paved and mostly downhill. I couldn't face it. I just couldn't face it. It's hard to really describe how shattered I felt as I sat in the Clark store. I wasn't yet contemplating the logistics of quitting, but I couldn't fathom how I was going to ride into Steamboat. Finally, a woman came up to me with a towel and asked me if I wouldn't mind mopping up the puddles beneath me. I was terribly embarrassed, and - amusing to me now - couldn't face spending any more time in that store. Where courage fails, humiliation triumphs. I was finally back on the road, soft-pedaling into Steamboat.

By the time I reached town, it was 4 p.m. I hadn't realized how late it had gotten. I rushed to Orange Peel bike shop and asked them if they could help me. The mechanic asked if he could pencil me in for the following Wednesday. "Um," I said, my voice breaking, "I'm just passing through."

"Oh," he said. "Are you with the Tour Divide?" I nodded forlornly. He beckoned another mechanic over and they immediately lifted my bike onto a stand. Within minutes they were pulling off my bags as I filled out a form of the myriad of things I wanted done, in order of importance, knowing they only had until 6 p.m. to work on my bike: new brake caliper, rotor and pads, new freewheel, new cassette and chain, new chain rings, new cables and housing, and a new bike computer (my old one broke in the crash). I limped over to a natural foods store to stock up and assess whether I could continue on. I had only covered about 50 miles that day, but my bike was held up until at least 6 and my knee was throbbing. I finally decided it would be best just to call the day a loss and hope things improved in the morning.

I'm back and it's summer in Juneau

I'd be lying if I said my ferry ride into Juneau wasn't filled with a dull sense of dread. There's just a lot I'm going to miss about my all bike, all the time lifestyle, and there were a lot of unknowns waiting for me in Juneau. I know I shouldn't treat my real life like a credit card payment, but that's how it seemed as the familiar profile of the Chilkat Mountains faded over the northern horizon. I had my fun and now it's time to pay up. I really am looking forward to working at the newspaper again and excited to see my friends here, but it's hard to give up a life of adventure, even when you know it's not sustainable.

I spent as much time in Whitehorse as I could justify on Wednesday. Sierra and I swam sans wetsuits in a Yukon lake until my blood was nearly the same temperature as the water, and then I shivered away the rest of the rainy day eating falafel, bumming around the bike shop and watching the Tour de France. I drove the final leg to Skagway in the evening, planning to sleep in my car at the ferry terminal and catch the boat early in the morning.

As I neared White Pass, I noticed a faint double track climbing away from the highway. The swim and subsequent rewarming had left me feeling wiped out and the clouds were still dripping rain; still, I couldn't help but unload my bike from the roof and set out to see where it went. The road faded to loose singletrack and continued to deteroriate until it was little more than spongy tundra and sinkholes. Eventually I was just slogging through the muskeg on foot, splattering mud all over my jeans and swatting at mosquitoes, but it was so difficult for me to turn around. I knew the minute I returned, my adventure would officially be over. There would be no more new trails to explore, no more miles left to traverse. I was going home.

The ferry arrived in Juneau at 2 p.m., and I was back to work by 5. My co-workers all gathered around my desk to welcome me home. They made a banner to commemorate my trip - all 86 days I was away since I clocked out on April 22. I'm not entirely clear on the math they used to come up with 6,121 miles - I think that was roughly the mileage I covered to make it back to them since I left Banff on June 12. But it was a fun surprise. Everyone signed it, of course. I got a big laugh out of "Welcome back to the daily miracle!" and "Welcome home I missed you ... Pugsley." Our legislative reporter, Pat, even referenced my blog, writing, "Welcome back to the 'vague void,' as you call it." (For the record, Pat, the 'vague void' was a reference to all of the unknowns I'm facing right now. My job is one of the few tangible things I have.)

I'm super glad I still have a job. I wasn't going to believe it until I was actually back at the office and greeted with open arms. Not only was I greeted with open arms, my coworkers sprung for a 36-pack of Diet Pepsi, peanut butter cups, goldfish, and gummy worms. I was feeling the love. Thanks, guys.

And I'm just about ready to be done being lazy. But pretty much everything I do feels lazy these days. Even when I was worn out from the long drive, exhausted by hours of mountain biking and staying up late to visit friends, I would fall asleep feeling guilty for putting in such a lazy day. My body is tired but my mind is used to 12 hours a day of riding compounded by the constant work it took just keeping the engine running. I'm starting to wonder if my life will ever seem anything but lazy again. But I did enjoy a four-hour hike with my co-worker, Abby, to Gastineau Peak. It was technically an interview since she is working on a sports story about the Tour Divide. The wildflowers were out in full-color force and I'm amazed how far along summer is. The fireweed is in bloom, the mountain snow has nearly faded, and cruise ships are clogging the harbor. It's a different world than the one I left in April.

I unfortunately brought the rain back with me. While I was gone, all my friends here could talk about was how amazing Juneau's summer has been, how sunny the skies were, how many times the temperatures reached the 80s, and how little it's rained. Now it's mid-July and the rainy season is just a few short weeks away, unless it decides to hit early. I can't believe I missed one of Juneau's most spectacular summers on record to experience one of the wettest summers on record in the Rockies, but that's the price we pay for adventure. I wouldn't give it back, even if it rains every day in Juneau from now until November.

It's hard but good to be home, just the way I like it.

Wyoming

Writer's note: This one is really long because I had lots of time to kill on the ferry ride from Skagway to Juneau this morning:

John and I were both in a good mood as we started grinding up the Ashton-Flagg Ranch Road. I was happy to have company for one more day and John seemed excited to be drawing closer to real civilization. I had been promoting Idaho Falls as a good bailout city, but he was set on Jackson. We crossed into the Tetons just as our daily dose of afternoon storm clouds began to settle and darken. John said something about Flagg Ranch and turned on the turbo. Within a minute he was out of sight. John tended to be more of a fair-weather riding partner - which is great. Not a criticism about him at all. If I had the raw strength to sprint away from the rain, I would have used it. John had power. I had good rain gear.

Jeremy Noble passed me on the last climb into Flagg, turning slow circles on a big gear. I made a mental note to try and keep up with Jeremy on the hills in the future, which would allow us to ride more together rather than just leap-frog each other. I wasn’t sure if Jeremy even wanted me shadowing him, but I figured we were getting to a time and mileage of the race where any human contact was at a premium. I wasn’t quite ready to face the entire rest of the race alone.

John and Jeremy both escaped the storm, for the most part. I descended in a cold downpour amid the splatter of slick mud and crescendoing thunder. For its encore, the storm belched out a blast of pea-sized hail, which pounded my back and stung my scalp through the vents in my helmet. I sloshed into the Flagg Ranch lodge to find John and Jeremy warm and comfy by the fire. I went to the gift shop and bought a snack combination that I was beginning the think of as “rocket fuel:” a chocolate chip cookie/ice cream sandwich and a large coffee. John made a reservation at a lodge near our cut-off junction and we took off down Highway 89.

Riding down the highway struck me in the same way eastern Idaho did - familiar places, startlingly difference perspective. John and I ended up at a semi-posh horse riding ranch just before Togwotee Pass. Freshly showered and reclined in bed, I sipped hot herbal tea with my nightly brownie and remarked how surprised I was that the Tour Divide felt so much more like a vacation than an epic race. I was staying within my goals, and there were certainly challenges, but I had expected near-constant struggle and strain. “Don’t worry,” John said. “The suffering will come.”


The next morning, John bid me goodbye and I started up Togwotee beneath a bluebird morning. I felt fresh and strong and even pushed my usual pace up the pavement, taking big gulps of cooled oxygen as I drew closer to alpine elevation. Sweeping snowfields wrapped around cathedral-like mountains. Creeks roared in the still air. The cut-off to Brooks Lake greeted me with a deep snow drift that I knew could be covering the road for as many as five miles of unmaintained dirt.

The kicker to Brooks Lake is that you can stay on the paved highway and bypass the whole thing. Not only that, the highway is downhill the entire way. I knew this - everyone knows this. In fact, this stretch is probably the most common place for cheating in the race. And, of course, I had no intention of cheating in the race. But even if I hadn’t been racing, even if I had just been touring, I probably still would have taken the snowy road. That’s how excited I was to be up there - the amazingly nice morning, the spectacular surroundings.

The snow was fairly packed and probably would have even been rideable if I had hit it up early in the morning, but it was noon and turning mushy. I started walking. I expected this and was even excited about it - snow hiking was a fun diversion from the constant pedaling, and I knew everyone had to deal with it so I didn’t care about the fact that I was going slow. But as I started to lose elevation, the snow fields started to disappear. And what they left behind was mud. The worst kind of mud. The mud that grabs and pulls entire shoes off feet, sticks to every corner of the bike, and forces a hapless smallish cyclist with low clearance on her 29-inch wheels to literally hoist her 50-pound bike as she struggles to free her feet from the sticky goo. And within feet, just like that, I went from on top of the world to mired in frustration and mounting depression.

The problem with mud like that is that you just don’t know how long it will last. It could be 20 yards, or it could be several miles. I was still looking at the possibility of several miles. The road was not even passable on foot, and it was cut into a steep mountainside that made it nearly impossible to go around. I undid the straps on my frame bag and lifted the bike, gear and all, on my shoulder in order to step down the steep slope and try to pick my way along the rocks. Calling a situation like that sketchy is an understatement. It was so hard to balance with the bike that I slipped a couple of times, rolling my ankle once but luckily doing no further damage. I could have easily tipped over and fallen 6 feet or so. But such was the impossibility of the mud.

After a long stretch of time with little ground covered, I would reach another snow drift, which would lift my heart out of the depths and give me hope that the struggle was over. But the snow would end, the mud would begin, and I would continue the slog. After three hours in which I covered less than three miles, I finally made it to the Brooks Lake Lodge, where I was relieved to discover a plowed gravel road that was mostly dry. I coasted back to the pavement, greatly humbled.

My mood improved again as I pedaled beside the Wind River Mountains. The day was beautiful, despite a strengthening headwind. I began the climb up Union Pass on a wide gravel road, munching on Sour Patch Kids and cheese crackers. Although I was somewhat low on food, I opted not to stop at the little store at the highway junction because I was under the impression there was a lodge at the top (this was a case of misunderstanding something John had told me and not bothering to double-check my maps.) But I started up thinking I was going to find the crowds and commerce of the Tetons. I crested the 9,210-foot pass to a starkly different world. The high alpine plain was streaked with snow and devoid of any human structures. Unhindered by trees or mountainsides, the headwind that I had been fighting all day hit fever pitch. Riding into it, I could hardly make my legs move. Any time the road curved, the crosswind was strong enough to nearly knock me off my bike. It was discouraging, but my capacity for frustration had been so drained by Brooks Lake that I accepted it without complaint, put my head down, and plowed forward. And I began to accept that there was no lodge up there. There was no food. There was nothing but the rolling alpine meadows, the wind, and the fact that I had no choice but to pedal.

The route began to descend into hillsides heavily populated by cows, and finally the Green River Valley. Like the Snake River the day before, the crossing of a major river made me feel proud. Part of that feeling is a tangible sign of progress; another is a fact that these rivers define the regions they travel through. “So you’re the Green River,” I said out loud to the rushing water. “You don’t look so big up here.”

The road to Pinedale was lined with wide-open sagebrush fields. Dark descended long before I made it to town, but I was pretty much running near empty with only a couple of Power Bars in my emergency food rations, so I had to put in the miles. I didn’t mind at that point. I was happy to see such different terrain. It was the first time I could really recognize just how far I had come. I stopped at what looked like the nicest hotel in town pretty much solely because it was next door to a gas station - likely the only food source that was open after 11 p.m. For anyone considering entering this race in the future, this is my biggest piece of advice: Get a good credit card. Pretend that you have a million dollars. Pretend money has no value. Buy yourself exactly what you think you need. Take care of yourself first and worry about your financial situation later. This race is hard enough without trying to do it on a tight budget.

The next morning, rested and well fed, I set out toward the high desert of central Wyoming. My body felt great but my bike was a different story. The mud and miles had taken their toll and it was making weird clanking noises. The brake pads were nearly worn out. Even after adjusting them several times, they still barely caught the rotor unless I throttled them. The cables were gummed up and the shifters weren’t working properly. I couldn’t shift into my small ring unless I stopped and physically moved the chain with my hands.

The rough gravel road climbed and dropped steeply over the drainages of the Wind River Range. Because I didn’t have a low gear and was feeling good, I mashed up the steep grades before flying down the next hill. By the time I reached South Pass City, my knees were on fire. I stopped for a while at a rest stop near a highway crossing, and by the time I tried to ride again, my knees were stiff to the point of sharp pain. The climb into Atlantic City was the steepest of the day, and I had to walk up most of it. A couple in an SUV passed as I was hiking. They honked and waved.

Atlantic City is another example of a place where I misunderstood John’s recommendation about it and failed to double-check its services on my map (this would be the last time I would be so nonchalant about preparedness. I ended up finishing the race with more than two days worth of food.) My heart dropped to my knees when I saw the sign that said “Atlantic City, population 57.” I had no idea the town would be so small. It was after 6 p.m. I had been expecting to load up with everything I needed to cross the Great Divide Basin, over 140 miles of no services, before I continued on that night. I’d be lucky to find a cattle tank in this town. I rode by a touristy-looking mercantile with a sign on the door that said, simply, “Closed Tuesdays.” It was Tuesday. But I could see signs of life in a building next door. And when I walked inside, I realized it was a bar.

The bar turned out to have a full menu of dinners and a little shelf with provisions. They weren’t good provisions. In fact, everything on that shelf was food that I would never eat in real life, and would probably even spurn on a hungry trail unless I was desperate. But I was desperate. I loaded up with single-serving packets of Spam, expired Oreos and heavily processed pastries that I would later learn had deteriorated beyond the point of stale to near dust. But I was grateful for them. I ordered two Pepsis, fried chicken strips and soup, and sat down, happy.

My knees were still throbbing and I debated how far I’d be able to ride that night without significant rest. While I was stewing about my knees and my backpack full of Spam, a couple eating dinner next to the window waved me over. “Were you the biker we saw out of South Pass City?” she asked.

“You mean the one walking my bike?” I said. “Yeah, that was me.” She asked me to join them. She said her name was Maryjane, and she and her husband, Terry, were retired and lived in an old gold mill that had been converted to a house. She asked me if I wanted to spend the night at her house. I smiled. I had been hoping to ride further into the Great Divide Basin, but how could I refuse? As I said earlier, money is worth little on the Great Divide, and even miles can only amount to so much. Kindness is worth everything.

The comfy hide-a-bed amid the stone walls of the old mill turned out to be one of my big blessings of the trip. I woke up at 4 a.m. and made myself a huge breakfast and liters of coffee to fuel up for the long, thirsty, Spam-subsidized ride across the Basin. I massaged my knees for a bit but noticed the were feeling significantly better after a long sleep. I wrote a sincerely grateful note to Terry and Maryjane and walked out to find my bike covered in frost. The first hints of sun pierced the salmon-colored sky just as I was passing what my map promised would be the last tree until Rawlins, and I smiled, because I decided that day was going to be a good day.

The ride through Great Divide Basin was significant for me because it paralleled both the Pony Express and Oregon Trails. My family has lived in Utah for generations, and I have great-great-etc. grandparents who crossed the plains with the Mormon pioneers. My great-great-etc. grandfather crossed the Rockies with an early company and helped settle the town of Hyrum, Utah. They went through the Great Divide Basin at a time when there was truly nothing out there, and they had little more to go on than faith. I like to think that the adventurous pioneer spirit of my ancestors lives on in me, and I was excited to see the desolate regions they had traversed, to see the desert landscape that had not changed much since the 1850s, and see it in a manner that was not so different than theirs.

The day before, I had asked Maryjane about Willie’s Handcart, a historical site that the route goes right by. She told me that Willie’s Handcart Company had been bogged down further east because the wheels on their wagons were breaking and they didn’t have the tools to repair them. By the time they got their wagon issues sorted out, they lost several oxen and ended up reaching the Great Divide Basin perilously close to winter. The were slammed with an early storm near the crossing of the Sweetwater River, and many people in the company perished. Historical tragedy was fixed in my mind just before my own freewheel started to slip.

I was about 30 miles beyond Atlantic City, coasting near the bottom of a long hill when the hub first refused to engage. I spun the pedals wildly as the bike slowed to a near stop. I hopped off, lifted the rear wheel off the ground and turned the crank by hand, frantically willing the wheel to start turning again while imagining my 30-mile walk back to Atlantic City. When it finally engaged, I dropped the wheel and jumped back on the bike quickly. I pumped hard up the next hill and tried to coast again, only to have my freewheel slip on me again. I spun the pedals as quickly as I could, finally creating enough friction to get the freewheel the catch, but I was quickly beginning to realize that coasting or stopping was going to be risky from there on out.

I pedaled hard and mulled my options. I thought about the possibility of zip-tying the cassette to the spokes and riding the bike as a fixed gear, but I still had at least 110 miles to ride to Rawlins, and I seriously doubted a repair like that would last the distance without tearing apart the wheel. I thought about turning around right there, because 30 miles of uncertainty was better than 110, but it also meant going backward to a town that had no services to help me. If I continued forward, I had exactly two bailout points where there was a 14 to 20-mile spur to the nearest town off route. I finally decided my best option was to continue forward as long as I could, and only stop near these bailout points. From there, I could try the zip tie thing, or I could simply walk out.

This turned out to be more difficult than I thought. I could eat my Spam and disgusting pastries from the bike, but I needed to stop to change over my maps or switch my water. I had to rely on my GPS for directions and ration my fluid. Then there was the issue of emptying my own bladder. On top of all that, I was 12 days into the trip and hadn’t noticed how dependent my legs had become on short breaks. After about 20 miles they ached with the thick fire of lactic acid. I tried standing to relieve them, but mostly they just wanted to stop. And I couldn’t even rest on the downhills - if anything, my legs had to work harder to keep me from coasting (huge props to Deanna on her fixed gear, by the way. I never thought descending could be harder than climbing.) Before my first stop, my water was empty, my bladder was so full I was seeing yellow, my legs were on fire and I had no idea whether GPS was really taking me in the right direction. But seeing that intersection on the horizon made me ecstatically happy. And after a 10-minute break, I spun my loose freewheel until it caught again, which made me even happier.

I repeated the process to the Jeffery City cutoff, where I had to make the final decision whether to bail or continue toward Rawlins. It was at least 60 more miles to town, and I would be fully committed to making it there knowing I would see little to no traffic for several dozen miles. I pressed forward, repeating my mantra of no coast, no stop, and letting the stress of becoming stranded and the burn in my muscles take my mind off my now only slightly achy knees. The sagebrush-dotted landscape rolled out behind me, baked in afternoon sun and starkly beautiful in its desolation, and I unfortunately thought little about appreciating it. I just wanted to get to Rawlins - Mecca to me, funny as it is now to think of that grim little Interstate town in that way. I just pedaled and pedaled as if my life depended on it, which, in my mind, it did.

From there, the trip to Rawlins went by really fast. I made it to town just after 5 p.m. - 140 miles in 12 hours, one of my fastest average speeds of the entire trip. I was able to squeeze into the bike shop before they closed. The owner said she didn’t think she had the parts to help me - disc brake pads, a freewheel, a new hub, or even a new 29” wheel of any sort. She said her mechanic would be in the shop at 10 a.m. the next day and he could possibly help me. I hemmed and hawed and called around for advice. I didn’t want another day of freewheel-induced stress, and I certainly didn’t want to become stranded, but I also didn’t want to burn up as many as 18 perfectly good hours sitting around Rawlins for a solution that may not even be a solution. But I finally decided to wait. I knew I would never forgive myself if I really did become stranded on the Colorado border and quit the race because I was too impatient to wait for a bike mechanic. I told myself the rest would do me some good and lots of fresh grocery store food would help my system flush out the Spam and dust pastries.

The next morning, 10 a.m. came and went. The bike shop owner let me in the back of the shop, where I deep-cleaned my drive train and cables and went to work on the front brake. The caliper had been sticking and I had pretty much stopped using my brake because one side of the pads had worn to metal. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get the new brake pads - my only spare set - inside. Finally, near 11 a.m., the bike mechanic showed up. He turned out to be an 18-year-old kid with sleep still crusted to his eyes. He fiddled around with my brake caliper and admitted he rarely dealt with disc brakes. We worked on it together until he finally just announced he was going to break a piece off one of the arms. I clenched my teeth as he snapped a piece of metal clean off and jammed the brake pads in. After that, they seemed to catch. It seemed sketchy, but I hadn’t had front brakes before, either, so anything would be an improvement.

Next he went to work on the freewheel - sure enough, no parts. He said he could take apart the hub, clean and grease it up in about 25 minutes. I went to Subway, stuffed a chicken sandwich through my stress and prayed. By noon I had a mostly complete if still unreliable bike, bags stuffed to the brim with food and a burning desire to get out of Rawlins.

Jill+Canada=Luv

I was dreading making the solo drive from Salt Lake City to Alaska, but I have to admit that for the most part I have really been enjoying it. There have been times when I have "bonked" and had to stop and walk around for a while to gear back into driver mode. I've had to make quite a few of these stops. I've been overly cautious because I am terrified of falling asleep at the wheel, and the constant pressure on the gas pedal just sears my already tender Achilles tendon (that's right, 2,700 miles with no cruise control, no air conditioning and no power steering. No stereo either! Ha! Thank goodness for iPod.) But the little old beater of a car and this battered body made it all the way to Whitehorse! Just 108 more driving miles left! Hooray!

The drive turned out to be a positive thing because it meant I made two great stops in Banff and Whitehorse, two of my favorite places in the world. I've enjoyed relaxing meals and rides with friends, and I think these activities will help me bridge the gap between the single-minded focus of the Great Divide and the vague void that is my real life ahead.

And even though it's not the same from the seat of a car, the highway is incredibly scenic. My memories of the AlCan were filled wide pavement cutting through rolling black spruce forests. I forgot that after you meander along the high prairie, you still have to cut through the northern Rockies. That part of the drive is winding, slow and mired in summer construction, but spectacular nonetheless. And I hate having to rush through it, but life doesn't always move as slow as you'd like it to.

And Canada has been good to me. I pulled my Karate Monkey off my car rack this morning, brushed the flattened mosquitoes off her fork, chipped large chunks of New Mexico mud off her frame, pumped up her cigarette-paper-thin tires, adjusted the creaky brakes, lubed the dusty chain, and went out for my first ride(s) since I left the Mexican border. Whitehorse singletrack, like the Banff mountains, is good for the soul. My friends and I did two rides - one before lunch and one before dinner - for about three and a half hours of mountain biking. I struggled more than I thought I would - I couldn't power up the steep stuff, and I felt pretty wiped out by hour three despite a week off the bike. But when I finally hit my downhill stride, I could almost feel myself physically connecting with the flow of past to future. Part of me thought I would leave the Divide and hate my bike forever, or at least for more than a week. Churning up northern dust again proved that this relationship is consuming and difficult, but I might as well enjoy it because it's definitely long-term.

Now if I could only figure out a way to make my relationship with Canada last. Are there any rich, single Canadian men out there looking for a prospective partner? Must like cats and winter. Please inquire within. :-)

P.S. I will start posting more Tour Divide pictures soon.

The drive so far

Wow. Alaska is far away. And endurance driving is hard. But Canada is kinda pretty. Thus the urge to come on my blog and post pictures.

I'm actually online right now because both my debit and credit cards were put on hold today. Impeccable timing. I love the way credit card companies freeze your accounts only at the times it's most inconvenient for you. I guess purchases in Silver City, New Mexico, one day and Jasper, Alberta, just a few short days later may look a little suspicious. I don't know. I do know I was throwing around the last of my cash today on $4/gallon gas while stressing that I was going to be completely broke before I made it to the Yukon. Yeah, driving is way harder than biking. At least cyclists can beg for food.

I drove 800 miles today in 16 nearly nonstop hours (narrow, winding roads and a gutless car make a 50 mph average the best I can do). I did take the time to do a tiny little hike near the icecap this morning. This is near the crux of the Continental Divide, where droplets of water bound for the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic oceans go their separate ways. The Continental Triangle.

Thunderstorms moved in during the afternoon as I made my way into northern British Columbia, where gray daylight lingered until 11 p.m. I drove right through to dark. I was completely stressed about the storms all afternoon, even as I tried to remind myself that I was inside a car on pavement and they weren't going to hurt me. I'm having a hard time removing myself from "Divide" mode. I still pretty much only think about road conditions and weather, and I respond to fatigue with junk food. I was nearly wiped out in Dawson Creek, so I ate a huge bag of M&Ms and washed it down with coffee. I felt better until Fort Saint John, and then I started craving giant brownie. Luckily, I was mired in credit card problems at that point, so I missed out on the 600 sugar calories that I no longer need.

I listened to every single Tour Divide call-in via old MTBcast episodes today and Friday to pass the long drive. That's probably not helping me reintegrate back into civilization, but many of them were good for laughs (and groans of painful understanding.) Those many hours of variations of "I hurt my (fill in crucial body part)" and "it rained all day" (to which I contributed fully) is probably the reason why my brain isn't working. I forgot my social security number when I was on the phone with my bank today, and had to call my parents to get it. The misadventures in driving continue. I'm hoping to reach Whitehorse tomorrow. After that, it's just a quick jog and a ferry ride south to a place I haven't seen in three months - my home town.

Victory tour

Life has been hectic since I left the Divide. I'm currently in the middle of making the long commute between Salt Lake City and Juneau, Alaska. I had hoped to take the ferry, but I couldn't really plan my trip before I finished the ride, and the next boat was booked. I don't have the time to wait another week. So I have to make the 2,700-mile trip by myself in a 1996 Geo Prism. There's something about it that's very Divide-esque. It's even the same distance. Endurance driving.

I'm even visiting many of the same places I passed through on the Great Divide. So far, this trip hasn't flowed nearly as well as a typical day on the bike. I left my grandparents' house in Roy, Utah, on Friday just before noon and did a bit of a killer day to Lethbridge, Alberta, to give myself time to visit my friends and enjoy one semi-day of rest in Banff. I stopped in Idaho Falls to visit former coworkers, but no one was around at the office. Then I made my first gas stop in Lima, Montana, and the little store where I once bought cheese curds (those were such a rare find on the Divide and so delicious) was all out of fountain Diet Pepsi. I took a wrong turn in Butte and ended up driving 10 miles on I-90, which is actually quite funny because the Great Divide route comes right down I-15. You think I would have wondered why nothing looked familiar. I blew through Basin and Helena. The sun was still up when I passed through Great Falls, so I decided to continue north, only to discover that the only hotel before the border (a casino) was all booked up. My car was searched at the border - the first time I've been searched in several dozen Canadian border crossings. I arrived in Lethbridge after midnight, completely hammered, only to see huge crowds of people lining the street like they were waiting for some kind of parade, and every hotel in town had their "No Vacancy" signs lit. It was so foreign to me. I never had trouble finding beds on the Divide. I continued to the next town - I think it was Macleod - and crashed out in my car in the parking lot of a gas station. I slept only a couple hours before continuing on to Banff, wondering why life off the bike was so hard.

It's been good, too. On Thursday I was able to get in one last hike with my dad to Lake Blanche - about 2,700 feet of elevation gain and seven miles - not bad for three days off the Divide. I'm still noticing that I have no high throttle when I need to power up something steep, even on foot. I compare it to my Geo, who on every hill just doesn't have enough oomph to keep the speed steady and begins slowing to a put-put-put. The Divide has turned me into an old car, but I still feel healthy and seem to have all the ability I need to power myself where I need to go. I hope my Geo can do the same.

I'm sad to be leaving Utah. It's such a beautiful state and most of my friends and family live there. But Alaska beckons, as does my need to start bringing in income after three months of hemorrhaging my savings.

One nice thing about my failure to find a hotel room last night is that I made it to Banff really early today. I enjoyed a leisurely walk and an ice cream cone among the throngs of tourists that visit Banff on a Saturday in July. I went to see the Spray River trailhead (beginning of the GDMBR). It's strange to be back here. It feels like no time at all has passed since I rolled out on June 12, but in many ways it feels like eons have passed.

Keith and Leslie, who declared their place my "home" for the time being since I am currently homeless, led me on my victory tour through Banff - on a tandem cruiser, of course, through a current of tourists.

We rolled by the Ski Stop, a bike shop in Banff that threw a barbecue for the Tour Divide the night before the race. I guess as a TD finisher, I get to enjoy partial celebrity status. The owner, Jason, gave me a jersey, and supposedly this picture is going to end up hanging somewhere in the store.

I'm heading out tomorrow for more endurance driving. Keith is going to accompany for about 60 miles before I drop him off for a road bike ride, and then it's back to listening to every single Tour Divide call-in on my iPod. North to the future!

Idaho

The state of Idaho is short and sweet on the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route - 72 miles and no major climbs. The fast guys probably pound it out before breakfast. The first stop I made in the state was at an RV park just below Red Rock Pass. A photographer flagged me down and offered me a root beer. I asked him if I could borrow the hose at the little camp store. The mud of southern Montana had become so caked on my derailleurs and cables that my shifters had become useless. My "singlespeed" gear that I was stuck with was pretty low and I was spun out on the downhill stretch. The 20 minutes I spent cleaning my bike at the RV park revealed how heinous that mud really was. Even a high-pressure hose wouldn't remove it. I had to use rocks to chip away at the adobe bricks coating my drivetrain.

We spent the night at the Sawtell Mountain Resort, and the next day I headed out in steady rain alone to hit the rail trail. John, who was in full-on tour mode, didn't feel like greeting the cold, wet morning with a slow grind on a soft railbed. He hinted that he'd probably meet up with me later, but maybe not. I thought that was it - I was on my own again, the way I had been in Canada. But a week later, the solitude felt different. This time, I had enough experience behind me to understand the magnitude of the remote, lengthy time alone that I faced.

John had warned me that the railbed was was a mixture of sand and soft volcanic ash, and that it would be washboarded and *really* slow. He told me to prepare for 30 miles of grinding away at 4-5 mph. So I approached the trail in "snowbike" mode, mentally bracing myself for the kind of deep slog that only snow and sand can deliver. It's a Zen place where life moves in slow motion and the mind slips into a white state of nothingness to cope with what otherwise can be infuriating monotony. Because I approached the rail trail with this mindset, I was startled to discover that this section of the route even looked like the Susitna Valley of Alaska - with a narrow trail cutting a perfectly straight line across swamps and through stands of evergreens beneath a slate gray sky. A fatigued imagination sparks faster than a fresh one, and it wasn't long before I was deep into an Iditarod fantasy, crunching my way over a vast expanse of white wilderness.

The reality of the rail trail, however, was that the buckets of rain that had fallen over the past few days had actually nicely packed down the ash and sand, and I was able to move as fast over the railbed as I could any gravel road, but with less effort, because it was perfectly flat. I finally woke up enough to snap myself out of my slog mindset and start pushing the big gears toward the Warm River. Pretty soon I was winding down a beautiful canyon in a setting that was definitely Idaho.

Above the Warm River Campground, I reached the familiar territory of eastern Idaho - rolling farmland set against the snow-capped Tetons. It made me smile because this part of the route was my closest point to home. I lived in Idaho Falls for a year, and still consider Salt Lake City my "home," even if I do live in Alaska for the long term. But being this close to "home" also triggered the thought that this spot would be the best place to quit the race - a mere four-hour drive for my parents to come rescue me from a strenuous life of solitude under the harsh elements. I shook that thought off quickly. I was having a good day, and decisions are always easier to make on good days.

John caught up to me near the Ashton-Flagg Ranch Road. He had decided to hammer the rail trail and put in one more day of Tour Divide fun. We were greeted by a sign that read "Impassable to Vehicles." The deepening fear of mud pumped cold blood through my veins.

Montana

Montana is a big state on the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route - 695 miles. Very few of those miles are flat. Montana is one climb after the other, and it quickly feeds you a salty dose of reality. Gunning for an average of 100 miles a day really is going to mean 10-16 hours of solid riding, day after day after day. And what that means for your body and mind, you're still very unsure.

I was chowing down a huge sandwich and several cookies at the Eureka Subway when John Nobile walked up to me looking rather dejected. I didn't recognize him at first because I had only met him briefly at the race start, and, knowing he was aiming to break his own course record, really didn't expect to ever see him again. Plus, cyclists put on their helmets and shorts and they pretty much all look the same. Anyway, after several minutes of awkward questions that revealed that I didn't know who he was when I really should have, he told me he was feeling sick and had blown his knee in Canada and his race was over.

As I finished my lunch, we talked about the route and he decided to put in one more day. I told him I was aiming for Whitefish and he said I could at least make it to Columbia Falls. We decided to ride together to town, and over the course of the day he discovered that the world of the mid-pack Tour Divider, with its leisurely lunch stops, friendly chats with locals and remote blogging over coffee, was actually pretty enjoyable. He decided to stick around a little longer at "tour" pace (i.e. my race pace) and see if he could recover his knee enough to start hammering toward the front.

It worked out pretty well for me - like having a Great Divide coach, along with the added benefit of company during the hard times and friendship during the good. We made a somewhat strange team - him with his "go go go into the night" mentality, me with my "let's stop and stare at this pretty waterfall even if the rain is bearing down on us" mentality. But it worked oddly well. Balance and flow.

We hit our first stretch of snow at Red Meadow Lake. Snow and bears are fairly prevalent in Montana and widely feared by Divide racers, but in my opinion the mud and dogs of New Mexico are much more scary.

And, anyway, those snowy passes take you to misty clear lakes high in the mountains. How could you be grumpy about that?

But I had the advantage of having a great wardrobe for what turned out to be a cold and rainy year throughout. I had my vapor barrier socks to keep my feet warm and dry, two extra pairs of wool socks, full rain gear, a fleece jacket, hat and gloves. I managed to stay warm and relatively happy through the cold rain, while John, who in typical fast-guy fashion traveled light, had to rely on his fast-twitch muscles to get him out of some of the race's chillier situations. (Then I'd stumble into a town two hours later, dripping muddy water, to find him already showered and sipping tea.)

It was handy to have John around for Montana bear country. I think our total count was five bears - two grizzlies and three black bears. Whenever I saw one, I'd slam on the brakes while my heart raced. His reaction was to charge toward them while yelling. Lucky for him, they always ran away.

My favorite climb in Montana turned out to be Richmond Peak - steep gravel up, snowy slog down.

Actually, the real reason it was my favorite climb is because it was peppered by a gorgeous sunset. Moments like these, quiet moments of euphoria amid the labored breaths and sweat-soaked haze of a hard day's effort, are what make ultraendurance rides all worth it.

Then the next day, you wake up and do it all again. And suddenly you find yourself over the next pass, across the next valley, 100 miles down the route, breathing in new climates and soaking in new sunsets.

But there are always more clouds on the horizon.

Looking out from one pass to our next - the much-feared Lava Mountain trail where crazy hillbillies roam and Divide racers get hopelessly lost.

This was a particularly cool pass - Fleecer Ridge. You start up on your choice of eight steep singletrack cuts ...

Grind toward the summit of a high plateau ...

Roll over a faint track lined with wildflowers ...

And then nosedive off the boulder-studded face of a veritable cliff.

People with my technical skills call this "downhill hike-a-bike."

Montana is an easy state in some ways - there are a fair number of service stops at useful intervals, and lots of water. John and I tended to eat almost exclusively from gas stations during this stretch, and my diet soon consisted of four food groups: Snickers Bars, Sour Patch Kids, M&Ms and cheese. I was putting down 4,000-5,000 calories a day of mostly this stuff. You'd think I'd just drop dead of toxic shock, but for some reason I didn't.

Climbing the paved pass out of Wise River. I'll never claim to be a mountain bike snob. I'm really more of a bicycle tourist, and I always enjoyed the paved stretches of the route for their easy speed, smooth rolling and scenery that I actually had the handling freedom to stare at.

But I like touring dirt because of the places it can take me. Plus, the climbs are usually more challenging, the descents more fun, and the days more rewarding.

So many times when I was mired in mud, I'd promise myself I would never ride anything but pavement ever again. But I never actually believed it, even as I stood ankle deep in peanut butter sludge.

Cabin Creek Road. Many of these places in Montana felt so wild and remote, although even more extreme wildness and remoteness had yet to come.

The drop into Lima was a really fun descent. I accidentally riled up a group of four cows and continued to coast behind them as they sprinted wildly down the road for a quarter mile before finally veering off. I felt like I was driving a stampede.

The next day out of Lima was gray skies and solid rain. Our maps said "roads may be mucky when wet."

Mucky seems an unforgivably tame term. Impassable is a better one. There was one half-mile stretch of that horrible road where I couldn't even push my bike through the shallow canal off to the side. I simply had to hoist it as I trampled through the brush - because my feet stuck to the road as badly as my mud-cemented wheels did. Meanwhile, mosquitoes swarmed me as I pumped through the last remaining droplets of bug spray. Miserable, frustrating, temper-tantrum-inducing - these, also, are too-tame terms for such a situation.

The mud can quickly remind us that we have friends in high places.

This last day out of Montana was also the day I was pummeled by a violent thunderstorm. It caught me completely by surprise - ink-black clouds rolled over the mountain and showered me with lightning. One bolt hit so close that I heard no delay between the light and thunder - just a blinding flash of white in my peripheral vision surrounded by a deafening boom. I convinced myself I was within feet of being hit by lightning in this open valley with no shelter. My only solution was to lay into the pedals and sprint with everything I had, mud and all. With hot adrenaline coursing through my veins, I believe I hit some of my high speeds for the trip on that flat, muddy stretch of road.

We crossed into Idaho with nearly 1,000 miles of Great Divide riding behind us - wet, cold, muddy, sore and tired - but for some strange reason, still raring to go.

Canada

I'm not really sure how I can begin to write about such a long and sweeping experience like the Tour Divide. The fact is, right now, I can't. I'm fresh off the route and dealing with the swift realities of the expensive brake work my car needs, how to get myself and that silly car back to Juneau as quickly as possible, the fact that I'm returning to Alaska homeless, single and back to a job that will be much different and likely even harder and more all-encompassing than it was when I left it. And I have to do all of this having been "Great-Divided." I don't think it matters who you are, or why or how you rode this route - it changes you. And in the short term, quite drastically. I've lost about 10 pounds - even my skinny jeans slip down my backside. I still greedily eye the gummy candy sections at gas stations. I can't think beyond eat, sleep, ride, and I have a whole life to move on with. Right now, I admit I feel a little amused when people tell me they're impressed with what I've accomplished. I want to tell them that life on a bike is so much easier than real life.

In the coming weeks, I do plan to write in depth about my experiences on the Tour Divide, because that's what I do, and that's how I process things. But in this short term, with so much else going on, I might just have to settle for posting my favorite pictures and a few short captions. Eventually, I'll upload all my hundreds of pictures to a site like Picassa and probably unload thousands of words of Tour Divide blabbage on this computer. But for now, I'll start with my two days in Canada.

John Nobile and I at the race start in Banff, the Spray River trailhead. So innocent, so full of hope ... so clean. :-)

I was talking with my friends Keith and Leslie with the race suddenly "started," and the whole field just launched forward before I knew what happened. I quickly fired up the Spot unit and turned on my GPS, but I began the race at the very back of the pack. That was probably a good thing. I missed the crazy hammering of the first few miles, and just hung back and enjoyed the scenery with the other Tour Divide tourists.

Even still, with 42 racers still relatively close together, there was lots of company that first day. It's almost strange to look back on. It was one of my most relaxed days, and the only day that to me had any appearance of a race. But then again, I was never up front. ;-)

I'll admit that at first I was a little irked about having to ride the Canadian "prologue." It wasn't part of my plan until very close to the actual race, but I did make the decision to ride the Tour Divide and Canada is part of the Tour Divide. Even though I came very close to the Great Divide Race (border-to-border) female record and, despite all, in the end could have broken it with a little determination and an all-night ride across the desert - I don't regret my decision. I had great company both before and during the race, and the Canada stretch really is as beautiful as they say it is. But they're all beautiful. Even the Great Divide Basin is beautiful.

But Banff National Park is stunning.

And the first day - long before trail weariness sets in - is the perfect time to enjoy scenery. I took lots of pictures on day one.

Even the powerline access trails are stunning.

The first day brought hours of scattered rain showers, which turned out to be a constant for most of the trip. I didn't keep solid track of my "Days of Rain" on the Tour Divide, but it was at least 20 out of 24. Of course, I'm from Juneau, and the rain didn't really bother me at all until the mud caught up with me.

Some kind of industrial plant outside of Elkford, where I spent my first night about 100 miles from the start. I became pretty lost finding my way out of Elkford, and burned up about 45 minutes to an hour looking for the right road out of town. That was actually the most lost I ever was in the course of the entire trip. And for that, I'd like to thank my Garmin Vista HCX GPS unit, and Scott Morris for creating a most excellent track of the border-to-border route. Seriously. With my sense of direction and attention span, it was a godsend. My GPS became my most valued possession - almost more so than my bike. I practically slept with it at night.

Those first two days were mostly smiles, gratitude and curiosity about how much longer it was going to last. At that point, I had no concept of really riding my bike all the way to Mexico and didn't really believe I could do it in the time frame I had set for myself. I thought my body would shut down, or my mind would, or both. The task I had set to, in all honesty, looked impossible.

Maybe those thoughts were my own way of taking the pressure off myself. The race already took so much time, money, planning and preparation that I don't think I was ready to deal with the disappointment of failure. So I told myself that just in being out there, it was already a success.

But by the afternoon of day two, the race was starting to look ridiculous. The night before the race, the organizers threw in the curve ball of a new "test" section that added something like 45 miles, three big passes, a lot of rough roads and a nearly nonexistent animal trail that was supposed to pass for "singletrack." Plus, we had to follow it all with only a rather vague and sometimes outright wrong cue sheet - no maps, no elevation profiles, no GPS. Luckily, I had the bike tracks of the many people in front of me to follow. I ended up going through the singletrack stretch in the dark. The end quarter mile gained nearly 300 feet on a very slippery, muddy trail that cut straight up the steep slope. The cue sheet called it a pusher but it wasn't even that. A couple of times I had my bike practically over my head, slipping backward down the slimy trail as I struggled to find my balance. I didn't think I was going to muster the strength from my puny arms to push the bike up that slope. I thought I was going to have to break my bike down to several pieces and literally shuttle it up. But after lots of grunting and sweating, I did make it up only to reach a clear-cut area with lots of downed trees and no distinct trail across it. I groped around in the dark for a half hour, knowing the road was mere yards away but unable to find it. By the time I stumbled onto the gravel, I was so tired and frustrated that I only rode another mile before just plopping down to camp in some pretty serious bearitory. I didn't care. It's funny now to look back and think about how frustrated I was about the whole thing. That was nothing. :-)

The next day, I woke up to more fun obstacles.

I crossed the border at 9:45 a.m. Sunday, June 14. I was feeling pretty tired, and the race had only just begun.

Made it

I rolled as close to the Mexican border as the gate would let me at 5:24 p.m. Monday, July 6, to finish the 2,700-ish miles of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route in 24 days, 7 hours and 24 minutes. My parents drove down from Salt Lake City to meet me at the border, so even though the guard station was closed, I didn't have to finish alone. What an incredible experience. Feels strange to not have to pedal any more. Feels even stranger to be wearing clothes that I didn't just wash in the shower. I'm happy, healthy and still feeling strong. Despite a few mechanicals, minor injury and weather setbacks, I still kept my goal of finishing within 25 days, and still feel like I could go out again tomorrow if I needed to. Glad I don't have to, though. I took 731 pictures. More to come soon, I'm sure.