I'm not here right now

The sick is starting to loosen its grip, but it still has me grounded just as the weather took a turn for the warm (hit 40 degrees for the first time since ... December!). Three days off the saddle may be the longest I've gone without a ride since ... December. Sugar looks so dejected right now - tires deflated to 20 psi, the front wheel still detached after being carted home from Caribou Lake, and coated with the trail grime of the ages because I haven't mustered up enough respect to drag him out on top of my feet-deep snowpack with a garden hose. At least he's not wired to the life support of a magnetic trainer like Roadie is (which I haven't ridden any actual distance since ... December.)

Today was a day full of monotonous tasks and the inevitable zoning out that these tasks cause. Do you ever experience this? One minute I'll be copying and pasting articles into html, washing the dishes or - heaven forbid - driving. Then, suddenly I'll find myself slipping into a lucid daydream. These daydreams are always anchored in very real but rarely extraordinary moments buried deep in my memory - swimming across the glass waters of an Eastern Texas lake, or pedaling a rolling plateau beside the San Rafael Swell. These wisps of past moments float through so convincingly that I get entirely caught up in reliving - to the point where falling back into reality is more than a little disconcerting (and often followed by the realization that I just held the space key down for several column inches.)

Maybe this means I'm crazy. I don't know. I do know that it probably means data entry is not the job for me. But I must say, I really enjoy these boredom-inspired visits back to places long buried in the illusion of the past. Today I revisited this sunrise, the distant glow that stripped away an unending night, and it felt as warm and as welcoming this morning as it did when it was more than just a photograph, an involuntary firing of synapses and a distant sigh.

First day of sick

I am officially annoyed. It's bad enough to get sick at the beginning of the week, when I can't take any time off from work, so I have to spend the day listening to others complain about my infectious nature while a vice grip slowly tightens around my chest and head. But yesterday, while rummaging around my medicine cabinet, I discovered the leftover antibiotics from last year's bout with bronchitis - dated March 23, 2005. Kinda eerie to think that my germs keep a schedule almost as reliable as Christmas.

And it's annoying because every year I manage to skirt through cold and flu season without so much as a sniffle, only to pick up some utterly derailing - and often undiagnosable - bout of gunk at the end of March. This seems to happen to a lot of people, who mostly blame the change of seasons as a culprit for the massive failure of otherwise iron-clad immune systems. I used to accept this theory as fact, but now I have my suspicions. Last year, I lived in Idaho, where late March means night temperatures still drop below freezing. Now I live in Alaska, where late March means I still have five feet of snow piled up in my front yard. It's hard to believe that any part of my physiology could be fooled into thinking the seasons are changing, let alone be affected enough by it to give up the good fight.

I may never know the cause of my illness. But I do know that I feel crappy, and that's just annoying.

The only bright spot today may be that - regardless of any actual semblence of spring I may be experiencing - the Vernal Equinox has passed. Which means (to my friends in the lower 48), that we have surpassed 12 hours of direct sun and are now gaining daylight at a much faster clip than you. You are now officially on the darker side of the planet. So ... cough cough ... there.

You learn something new

Date: March 19
Mileage: 8.0
March mileage: 200.5
Temperature upon departure: 26

At the end of the first of many long, empty straightaways that traverse the frozen bog to Caribou Lake, I accidentally swerved off the trail and spun around just in time to see Geoff throw his bike - quite literally - down on the snow and begin walking toward me. It was four miles and a little over an hour into our ride, and he had "had it." "This is ridiculous," he said. "I'm putting in five times the effort of walking to go walking speed."

He makes a good point. Plenty of new snow and warming temps made for soft, punchy riding - on the precipice of rideable, but in my opinion - not too fargone yet. Still, there could be no laboring under any delusion today that cycling was the most efficient form of travel for the conditions. As Geoff pointed out, there's walking. There's skiing. Heck, one of those low-riding "big wheel" tricycles would probably fare better. His point was inarguable. We turned around.

As we rode back, he noticed that his bike had sliced much deeper trenches in the trail than mine. It didn't seem possible. We both ride the practically the same model of bike (Gary Fisher Sugar.) We both have the exact same tire setup. We were both running our pressure at 20 psi. We even weigh close to the same (he has 10 pounds on me.) But I tried out his bike, and sure enough, it was like riding a hot knife across a stick of butter. Every pedal stroke was literally a hard mash to get out of a hole.

Given all things equal, we couldn't figure out the discrepancy. It wasn't until about a mile later that he said - "You know, you're riding really low."

See, I have a rear shock with a slow leak. I filled it up right before my Susitna race, but not since. It's leaked down to almost no pressure - slowly enough that I didn't notice. But now when I ride, the shock is bottomed out, which pushes the entire frame down so the majority of my weight hovers over the space between the pedals. Geoff, on the other hand, has a fully functioning rear shock, which leaves most of his weight is on his rear tire - hence the knifing. Who knew?

We let most of the air out of his shock, but by then had already made new plans to go on a snowshoe hike closer to home - which we did, though I think that took more wind out of me than the two hours of sweating-as-hard-as-I-could-just-to-break-5 mph riding. Maybe it's because that 8-mile ride was all I really had in me today.

Every time I go trail riding, I learn something new about the ways in which gear really does make or break a cyclist on snow.

Geoff said, "You know what's the worst thing about snow biking? No matter how much effort I put in, I still go the same pace. Pretty soon I'm killing myself just to keep going 4 mph."

Then he said, "That's probably why you like it so much."