Date: July 2008
... Priceless.
The call from my co-worker came at 10:09 a.m. "Do you think you'd have time for four extra pages today?" he asked.
Time: 10:30 a.m.
Time: 10:37 a.m.
Time: 10:43 a.m.
Time: 11:09 a.m.
Time: 11:28 a.m.
Time: 11:31 a.m.
Time: 11:47 a.m.
Time: 12:02 p.m.
Time: 12:12 p.m.
Date: July 28
Date: July 27
Date: July 26
(At the start of the race, staring up in wonder at the sky. That patch of blue is what people in Juneau call a "sucker hole," because if you believe it means the weather's clearing up, you're a sucker.)
Date: July 24
I didn't get out of the house until a half hour before low tide, which I knew wouldn't leave me much time to explore. Ideally, beach travel should straddle the low tide. High tide swallows up the rideable sand and gravel and forces land travelers up on the rocks ... slippery bouldering in areas almost impossible to climb around while hoisting a big bicycle on your shoulders. I decided I was limited to a short trip. And, in my own bad tradition of trying to hold myself to short trips, I didn't take any food.
Early riding at low tide was a lot of fun. It's been a while since I've ridden out toward South Douglas. There are always interesting things washed up on the shore. This one was new. I couldn't figure out what it was. Some kind of barge? A Tom Sawyer raft? It had a couple of bald tires stapled to the side. You're not far from civilization out Douglas Island, but the mysterious shipwrecks do add to the adventure.
Of course, after about three miles the riding starts to get pretty rough, and continues to deteriorate with only patchy spurts of gravel to break up the barnacle boulders and slippery shell minefields. Once you pass the last reaches of Sandy Beach, it seems for every half mile of riding, there's a mile of really rough, 4 mph technical riding and a mile of walking. That's the nature of off-trail though, and I was making good time despite all the hoofing. The afternoon was really peaceful - a light drizzle with no wind, and rich silence peppered with occasional chirps from seabirds or the hum of a float plane. I was always itching to see what was around the next bend, so I kept going.
I rounded the southern point of the island, cutting across a field to skip a small peninsula that I always thought was an island, and turning the final corner to meet the western side. What I found was tight, steep, almost unnavigable terrain. I left the bike behind and tried to pick my way along the cliff, curious how long it continued like this. Even without the bike, the climbing was a little treacherous - so narrow in points that I had to place my feet on slippery rocks that dipped directly into the deep water. If I slid at all, I'd have no choice but to swim backward through the cold water until I reached a point that I could climb back out. Could it be done before the hypothermia set in? That was the burning question, and not one I longed to have answered, so I was very slow and deliberate with every step. I knew someone like me would never get a bike around there. But I still wanted to see where the shoreline widened again. I continued that way for a half hour. Through the clouds, I could see the long profile of Admiralty Island that told me I was essentially on the other side of Douglas, and could still see no end to the rocky shoreline.
By then nearly three hours had gone by, and the tide was well on its way back up. I tried to pick up my pace, but I was starting to feel the tedium of bike pushing, and pretty hungry, too, and as I moved north, I discovered that all of the gravel bars and sandy beaches I had ridden earlier had disappeared beneath the rising water. So I weaved through the grass and plodded over seemingly endless stretches of big rocks, moving slower by the minute.
Nearly back to town, just minutes before the high tide mark, the water met the cliffside. I had no choice but to hoist Pugsley, in all of his nearly forgotten obesity, onto my shoulders as I waded through knee-deep and sometimes hip-deep tidewater. At one point, I had to wade for more than 150 yards with nowhere to put the bike down and rest. Feel those biceps burn! I was more than ready to have my little adventure over by then, and I still had to cross the big creek, which was so swollen with tidewater that I had to cross up high with the fast-flowing whitewater, pick my way through the rocks and grass of the last narrow beach, and stumble home. It took me less than three hours to ride out and four and a half hours to limp back. Not an epic day by any means - but definitely a longer one than I had bargained for. Although once you add in the "no food" aspect, it was nearly Epic-Eric-esque ... in a small, wimpy way. 
Today I had to drive out to the Valley to pick up my bike wheels and pay my rent, so I thought I'd hit up the Nugget Creek trail while I was out there. In all of my two years living here, Nugget Creek is one of the few established trails I've never ventured down. It's strange, actually, that I've never seen Nugget Creek before. It's an easy, quick morning hike ... about nine miles round trip, fairly flat, skirting the sideslopes above a stunning (and incredibly hard to photograph) gorge. But I never did it because it was just one of those "eh" hikes. It reminds me of the vacation my family took in Disneyland. We bought three-day passes and my sister and I vowed to go on every *every* ride in the park. We had a whirlwind first two days, but by the third day we were slogging our way through Dumbo and Toon Town. By the time we got to Small World, we stood in line with a sour feeling in our stomachs. Were we really waiting in line for Small World when the Matterhorn was right over there? Just so we could say we'd been everywhere? I guess this is the way I've felt about trails like Nugget Creek.
liquid air of the rainforest, if I lose myself too much in my memories, I'll start half-expecting a naked mannequin streaked in red paint to jump out at me. Especially when the trail's destination is this place:
Date: July 22
Is this a great bike or what?
Date: July 21
But then I started to feel a strange sensation on the back of my neck - still like driving rain, but with an edge. A sharp, icy edge. I looked up from the slippery trail to see thick, spear-like drops shooting through the air, mostly gray but with flecks of white. They hit my skin like needles, like daggers, like ... could it be? ... that icy mixture of snow and rain that plagues this place for much of the winter? Snain? Snain in July? Even at 3,000 feet, I could hardly believe it. But my reaction was swift and decisive. Peak was out of the question. I will now forever call my arbitrary turnaround spot "Snain Summit."
Date: July 20
Date: July 19
Date: July 17
Geoff asked me how my ride went, and I told him the Perseverance Trail was fun as always, but the ride was really more of a commute to a hike than anything. "How did that go?" he asked.
I had to laugh at myself, because the summary made it sound so awful. It was true that all of that happened. The stubborn, lingering-into-late-July snow fields did make the route particularly hard to navigate. I could see where I wanted to go, but never knew if I was going to end up at the bottom of an unclimbable cliff or beside a raging stream hidden beneath the rotten snow. I did lots of turning around. When I finally did find my way to (well, near) the top, I couldn't tell the ground from sky. Everything was gray snow and gray fog, interrupted by streaks of black that were either rocks or drops into a deadly void. And when I did finally drop below the cloud level, I stepped on a frozen-solid patch of snow and went hurtling down the mountain on my butt at an uncontrollable speed, frantically digging my bare fingers into the hard, ice-shard-studded snow until I finally stopped. Then I wiped the slush off my clothes with my bleeding hands, and from that point on took every step very tentatively. It took me forever to baby-step back to the basin, where I would wander around lost looking for the trail until the bitter end.
And yet I was feeling great when I finally reached Rainbow Foods, muddy and soaked just in time for dinner. A day's hard effort was behind me, and that felt good, despite the truncation of my original plans. I thought about the break I took, crouching down on a snow slope just above the Granite Creek Basin. I ate my Power Bar and listened to the roaring streams and wind echo through the valley. Clouds crept up from the lower canyon and closed in around me while little gray birds hopped around on the snow near my feet. Everything about that moment felt right, and earned, and I don't think I would have traded it for a sunny day on perfectly dry trails.
I basically just shot this silly photo to illustrate that, despite my retro-grouch pretensions, I am capable of wearing full-body spandex and clipless pedal shoes.
Date: July 14
But it's summer, short summer, and its briefness nags at me. I have so much I want to do and such a short time to do it, I might as well work on getting in shape so I can take full advantage should a good weather window ever open. The hike to Gold Ridge seemed good because it's short and well-defined and nearly impossible to get lost, even in the thickest, soupiest fog. As I rode my bike across the bridge, I saw four cruise ships moored at the dock. Not as bad as seven - but four ships definitely promised a traffic jam near mid-mountain, where the Mount Roberts Tram releases hundreds of tourists who tend to straddle the trail with cameras and generally block forward motion. Still not deterred, I pedaled up to the trailhead and set my watch. I wanted to reach the tram in a half hour.
After two miles of seeing nobody, the trail above the tram, as expected, was packed. I try to be as courteous as possible but I often feel like I'm swimming upstream amid a swarm of lethargic salmon. So I weaved and expressed my apologies for cutting through and sometimes heard the funniest questions. One woman who did not seem to want to cross a snow field asked me if her feet would get wet. Another man said, probably to himself, that the wildflowers here weren't nearly as good as the flowers in Montana. Then, as the trail wound higher and the clouds really started to settle in, another man asked me if I thought the view would be any better at the top. "I really doubt it," I said. He seemed to waver in that spot, uncertain whether he should turn around. The view-seeking tourists thinned out. I charged higher.
In my memory I knew there was a real view out there, sweeping along the ridgelines, touching the ice field and Admiralty and Douglas Islands, dropping into the city and along the Channel some 3,200 feet down. And I knew that just on the other side of this curtain there were stark snowfields and spiny little tundra plants and stacked boulders. But today at the top there was only the white silence, and I can't believe I nearly missed it.
Date: July 13
Date: July 9-12
But the fact was, Geoff wasn't about to swim or bike anywhere. He still feels tired most of the time, sleeps whenever he can and is becoming increasingly frustrated by his physical fatigue. He says the feeling is similar to having huge masses of dead muscle in his legs - an excess of tissue with no power. He did not want to go biking with me. Anywhere. And although I was itching to head up to the pass, I didn't want to be gone all day on a bike ride if he was just going to nap around camp. So I motored out to the border instead, trying to hurry but not pushing too hard against my own vicarious tiredness.
I was still surprised how fast the ride went, even with me failing to take full hammering advantage of the tailwind that became a monstrous headwind on the way back. I was able to knock off the 80 miles in 4:45, including snack and photo breaks, and beat my deadline back to camp even though I rode nearly twice as far as I said I was going to. I know that's not fast by roadie standards, but even the minimal speed advantage of my own rickety, flat-bar road bike surprised me after a couple of months almost exclusively riding 29-inch knobbies. I almost feel like getting a real road bike would make cycling too easy. Where would the fun be? Certainly not in taking the edge off 40 miles of harsh headwind (oh, wait...)
But it was nice for the cycling to only take a five-hour chunk out of the weekend, and sleep and food to consume the other 31. Geoff and I toured the town and found a lot of interesting hidden nooks. We ate at a few typically overpriced, underwhelming Alaska restaurants, including a little Mexican place that seduced us with unique atmosphere but proved to be unspectacular after all. All in all, kind of a lazy, lolling weekend - which I guess is what summer is all about.
For Geoff to want to get out of town.
Go Jenn, go!
Date: July 8
Date: July 6 and 7
"It was really easy, until it wasn't," Geoff told me. "It was beautiful and enjoyable riding and great people, until my body gave up. And when my body gave up, my mind quickly followed."