Skeek

I meant to take a full rest day today, but eight inches of fresh powder was just too much to resist. So I went cross-country skiing.

My timing this weekend has been absolutely impeccable. I managed more than eight hours of biking yesterday just before the big storm hit, and found a 90-minute window between blowing blizzard and more blowing blizzard to skim the smooth ski trails. (Look at that fresh track, groomed only for me. Our local Nordic ski club really stays on top of things.) That didn't change the fact that it was 5 degrees out, but for the most part, it was ideal.

Sometimes I think it's strange, given the area I grew up in, the friends I keep and the lifestyle I've adopted, that I never became more of a ski geek (or, in the lingo of the knuckle draggers I rode with in high school, a "skeek.")I just took up the sticks this year, and I dropped the hobby pretty quickly when my ice biking efforts amped up. My downhill experience is almost nonexistent. Sometimes I wonder why I don't care more about skiing.

When I started snowboarding, I think there was a general consensus among the lot that skiers were snobs who thought everyone else was too late for the party (the theory was vocalized by a very popular bumper sticker at my high school. The sticker read "Alta Sucks," a reference to a Utah ski resort that refuses entry to snowboarders. Incidently, Alta was also the name of my high school.)Maybe there was some disdain developed early. But now I'm over the hill, and all my friends ski, so there's all kinds of questions about why I don't switch ... or at least try both.

The truth is, I'm an adequate snowboarder, but I'm a flailing mess when I combine skis with any kind of downward slope. It's funny because today, on my skinny cross-country skis, I did fine - even on the steep stuff. I probably forgot that I wasn't pedaling (After all, I've circled the same trail many times on my bike.) So maybe I'm not a bad skier. Maybe I just have a little too much of that "skeek" attitude ingrained.

Five miles went by pretty fast, and I made it home with a growing blizzard riding my tail. Now there's a good 14-16 inches outside, still coming down hard. Don't think Geo will be able to clear Shelton Drive (my street, rarely plowed). I wonder how the biking will be.

Long ride

Date: Jan. 21
Mileage: ~50
January mileage: 351.1
Temperature upon departure: 19
Total riding time: 8 hours, 33 minutes
Total full-tilt falls: 2

I have a little of that serene, drugged-out drowsiness going on right now ... long ride, big dinner, warm house, storm raging outside.

Today I set out just before sunrise with the intention of putting in an 8 to 10-hour ride that would mimic my attack of the Susitna 100. To do that, I had to ride on a lot of soft, rutted trails that are just punchy and slow and there's no way around it (winter riders call this stuff "mashed potatoes" ... in my case, very lumpy mashed potatoes). I rode the ice roads, open snow (about 5 inches of powder)and Caribou Lake itself. I also did a fair amont of pushing. Any food I ate, I ate while pushing. I kept my full stops to an absolute minimum, to keep my core temperature higher, and also because it's the way I deal with the muscle strain of long rides ... just keep moving, moving, moving, and there's less time for hurt.

My odometer crapped out right at the beginning of the ride, so I have no idea how far I actually went. But taking into account trail conditions, pushing hard and fast when I could on the ice roads, and overall time walking with the bike, I think guestimating my average speed at 6 mph is more than fair. Since my stopping time was almost nonexsistent, with 8.5 hours of riding, 50 miles is probably pretty close.

That's half my race distance-wise, and probably about a third of the effort required if conditions are similar or a little worse than what they were today. So I feel pretty good about the day, because I feel pretty good right now.

For all of the calculated logistics involved, today's ride was actually very enjoyable. The distance allowed me to ride out to some of the far reaches of the established snowmachine trails in the area ... windswept, frostbitten swaths of land peppered with mongrel hemlock trees and scrub brush. The snowmachiners I met out there regarded me with varied expressions ranging from subtle amusement to outright indignation. After all, a little mountain bike rolling across the open tundra is an affront to common sense. I don't deny it. My funniest encounter came as I was bombing down a steep and narrow trail. Two snowmachines stopped on the pond below to wait for me to pass. As they waited and watched, I felt compelled to let off the brakes and tear over the trail's mogels like a drunken downhill racer. It's amazing I didn't plant myself, as I did (and did quite well) a couple of times today. As I finally rolled to the safety of the pond and passed by with a hapless wave of my mitten, a little girl sitting in front of her older brother on one of the snowmachines screamed "I told you! I knew it was a girl!"

Several snowmachiners felt compelled to stop and warn me about the storm of the century headed my way. Though a light, misty snow fell most of the day (with about a 30-minute window of sunlight), the weather couldn't have been much better. I did end my ride about an hour early because the snow started to come down hard, and I was a little concerned about my Geo making the 45-minute drive home. Still ... 50 miles ain't bad. I guess I don't know that it was 50 miles. But, as Geoff said to me yesterday, "Eight hours on a bike is eight hours on a bike."

Still no pictures

Date: Jan. 20
Mileage: 26.9
January mileage: 301.1
Temperature upon departure: 15

I don't have much time to post tonight because my computer is still choking on me, and I am in the midst of packing for my big full-day bike excursion tomorrow. Weather forcast is for temperatures in the teens and a chance of heavy snow. I can't really tell whether I'm excited or not, but at least I'm not dreading it. Wish me luck. Pray for *no* snow :-)