Flirting with hypothermia

Date: March 16
Mileage: 20.5
March mileage: 173.9
Temperature upon departure: 13
On the iPod: "Landed" ~ Ben Folds

I left work today wearing a kind of hybrid setup I use for commuting - jeans and long johns, cotton T-shirt, two fleece layers and my waterproof shell. The temperature in town was probably in the high teens. It was 5:15 p.m. I started up the long East Hill climb and overheated almost immediately. It wasn't just extra sweat - it was a serious concern for me. Enough so that I stopped at the first turnout I saw, stripped down to only my T-shirt and shell, removed my outer mittens, ripped off my balaclava and continued up the hill.

I was feeling good at the top, so I continued east to the summit of Skyline and hit the snowmobile trails. I tried some less-traveled trails today, so I was working hard - doing a lot of postholing, occasionally falling over, just like old times. Pretty soon it was 6:30, with the sun drifting low on the horizon. The entire hill fell into shadow. I sweated my way to the main trail and began to pedal downhill.

The snow was set up even nicer today than yesterday, and pretty soon I was flying - bouncing off hardened drifts, knifing through softer snow with crafty maneuvering, coasting over patches of glare ice. I noticed my unmittened hands were starting to hurt a little, but I didn't think much of it. I'd put my mittens on when I got to the bottom of the hill.

About five minutes later, I stopped at the reservoir and moved to take off my pack, but my entire body was stiff and reluctant to turn. That's when I realized that I was cold. Not just cold. Really cold. Probably colder than I've been yet this winter. Shivers were starting to set in. I pulled my mittens and fleece layers out of my pack and hurried to put them on. But the numbness already had its icy grip around me.

I had three more miles to ride home, most of it climbing, and I thought I'd recover pretty quickly. My body did warm up enough to return my reflexes to normal, but the shivering became more pronounced, more violent, and pretty soon my jaw was chattering involuntarily. My head was swimming, probably because I was really rushing through the last big climb. But the lactic acid and lung burn didn't matter much to me at the time. I needed to get inside, and I needed to fast.

By the time I got home I was starting to feel a little better - probably thanks to the sprinting, but I was still immersed in the kind of chill that feels like it will never go away. I shook my hands and jumped up and down for a while to bring the blood circulation back the the extremities it had long since given up on. Have you ever experienced that itchy, painful sensation that comes of warming up frozen fingers? Have you ever experienced that in your entire body?

And all I could think was - wow - I really should know better than this by now. I should have put my layers back on the moment I crested East Hill. And I should wear my normal winter clothes, and just bring a change of clothes to wear at work rather than combining the two. But this it what comes of letting your guard down. I have to remember that even though the sun is riding high, and even though the date's on the downhill side of March, the winter is still very much alive, and the cold is still very real.

Back to the trail

Date: March 15
Mileage: 15.2
March mileage: 153.4
Temperature upon departure: 19
On the iPod: "Cry Freedom" ~ Dave Matthews

The trails are finally setting up again enough to be rideable. It's not warmth that's causing this, but sunlight, so there's still plenty of powder. The skiers have monopolized almost all of the established trails near my house, so I still have to keep my distance. But I'm starting to learn that there's just about nowhere in Alaska a snowmobile won't go. And I'm right behind them, knifing over the glistening trails and dreaming of a time - not too far away now - when massive snow dumps will no longer be a concern. What snowpack we have will melt slowly in the increasing glare of daylight sun, then settle and harden during the freeze of night. Do you know what that means? The wilderness I call home will soon be blanketed - blanketed! - by rideable snow. Hardpacked, glistening, absolutely boundless snow. No trails needed. I'm so excited. And here these Alaskans are telling me that April is the worst month of the year for outdoor fun. How could that even be true?

Floppy mining

I remember reading a survey a while back that said more than 50 percent of Americans view themselves as writers in some capacity. I'm sure now, in the era of blogging, that number is probably closer to 98 percent, or equal to the literacy rate - whichever is higher. I, too, went through a period when I fancied becoming the kind of writer who has a near-constant harried expression and pencils in my hair. I call this period college. That phase is usually one of those things most people grow away from, like 2 a.m. pizza runs and long dialogs consisting entirely of Nietzsche quotes. So I didn't give much thought to fiction writing after I sloughed off that pre-graduate glow. Until tonight.

I have a laptop on the verge of meltdown, so I spent the better part of the evening moving files onto another computer. This laptop is so old that I have to use floppies to complete the task. Remember floppies? They have enough storage to hold about one fifth of a Green Day mp3? Yeah. It was a tiresome task. But while cleaning out my old floppies to make room for new files, I discovered the Word Perfect remnants of my long-lost novel.

That's right. I, too, am among the 98 percent of Americans who have one of those things stashed away. What it actually is - for the most part - is a remnant of my post-college state of confusion, otherwise known as the year 2000. I worked part-time in a frame shop. I studied for the LSAT. I dabbled in short fiction.

I guess I shouldn't say short. I ran the ancient document through a word processor and discovered it's actually more than 65,000 words. Wow. No wonder I didn't get better LSAT scores. (Then again, how long would this blog be if I measured it in words? I guess I'll always find ways to waste time.) But that's my point. There's a fair amount of time in my "book," a respectable number of words, and it's all just rotting away on a disk so beyond obsolete it might as well by papyrus. Seems a shame - letting all that go to waste. I was just thinking about compiling the thing, pdf-ing it eBook-style and posting it online. What do you think? Could there possibly be any interest? ...

(If so, maybe I'll post a plot breakdown as soon as I can read some of it and jog my memory. But - here's the disclaimer - I wrote it in my pre-cycling days, so there's probably not much two-wheeled adventure anywhere in the text. Oh well.)