Top 10 reasons for insanity

Date: April 25
Mileage: 41
April mileage: 405
Temperature upon departure: 40

Now that I'm planning on riding the Soggy Bottom 100, I should probably make a full disclosure about another summer race that is pretty close to making it on my "must do" list - the 24 Hours of Kincaid.

I know what you're thinking. Why put myself through that ... again? After all, there is a definite point where a mountain bike event stops being a race and starts to become, well, something else entirely. An exercise in insanity. Insomniac theater for athletes. There are only so many times you can ride around a loop before everything turns loopy.

There are so many reasons why riding the 24 Hours of Kincaid would be a bad idea. So I compiled a list of the relative few that make it a good idea:

1. I've already ridden/walked with/stared at with bitter resentment/and ridden a bike for a 24-hour period, so I know it's not outside the realm of possibility.
2. Not many women enter this race solo. Last year, I think the race only had one or two, so I'd have a great chance of finishing in the top 3.
3. I'm not sure what trails the 11.5-mile course covers, but I have ridden Kincaid Park before. Once. Three years ago. Therefore, I have experience.
4. The race is four days after summer solstice, so "night" riding will be almost nonexistent. There will only be about a two-hour period that I'd even need to use a light.
5. If my bike breaks or I bonk along the trail, the worst penalty I'd endure is a 5.75-mile walk to the starting line, not a painful death by hypothermia.
6. I'm not sure how many laps I could do in 24 hours, but last year's last place finisher did one. I'm fairly certain I could top that.
7. Sugar would finally have a chance to do what he does best: hop roots and negotiate hairpin turns. Now, if only I could catch up.
8. Training for this race will give me an excuse to do fun things like go on midnight trail rides or try to ride my road bike to Anchorage.
9. I've already learned the secret to surviving a 24-hour endurance event: Eat. Eat. And try to ignore the purple bunnies dancing across the trail.
10. I'm pretty sure that crazy races make me a better person.

What more reason do I need?

It's soggy out

Woke up this morning to more snow. I thought it was just as well because I was running behind and wasn't going to bike to work anyway, but the slush got its sweet revenge when it took me 10 minutes to back my car out the driveway. (When you drive a Geo in Alaska, it's all about patience.)

I thought more about yeserday's harassment incident. At the time, I was not really frightened. I just assumed they were bored idiots out for a joyride, who passed me once and thought it would be fun to go back and rile me up. It was enraging, sure, but I never felt in danger to the point where I actually would have pulled a can of bear mace on them (especially considering the high percentage of concealed weapon permits in this area.)However, it did think it strange that they were so old - they looked to be in their late-20s or early-30s, definitely old enough to know about the legal implications of terrorizing an unarmed cyclist. Also, as a strange coincidence, earlier that morning Geoff saw a white minivan with three people rumble down the driveway. He said the driver, a male, waved at him as he tried to turn the van around, apparently indicating that he mistook the driveway for a road. That happened at 11:30. About 40 minutes later, I was buzzed by a white minivan with three or more adults as it passed me 31 miles up the road. Coincidence? Or strange intersection of fate?

On a happier note, I received an e-mail the other day from Carlos, Alaska's own mountain-bike-race extraordinare, inviting me to participate in the Soggy Bottom 100. The Soggy Bottom is a 106-mile mountain bike race up an over the Resurrection Pass trail on July 22. "You have a sponsorship for the ride," he wrote, "so no moola is required." Can you believe it. Me? Sponsorship? A personal invitation to a race? How cool is that? I feel like I'm moving up in the world.

I think the Soggy Bottom is going to be a great ride, and will happen at a point in the summer when I hope to be at my strongest. It bills itself as the longest summer backcountry bicycle ride in Alaska (as opposed to winter, where the Iditarod Invitational has it beat by about 1,000 miles.) But the wheels are turning, plans are materializing, and it's definitely time to get my summer training started. Although, if it keeps snowing like it has, I may not actually get to practice riding on actual trails (the ones made out of rocks and roots and dirt) much before July. At least I have the local yokuls to keep me on my toes.

Harassed

Date: April 23
Mileage: 63
April mileage: 364
Temperature upon departure: 36

I'm not a big fan of biking on the Sterling Highway anytime, but I've noticed that the further north I ride, the deeper the twilight-zone factor is. It's a strange land of driven unemployment; of rows of single-wide trailers that serve simultaneously as day-care centers/ kennels/ charter offices/ tourist lodging and summer coffee shops; of inexplicable architecture and fake flowers planted in the snow.

So when a white minivan blew by me today blaring its horn, I wasn't surprised. This highway has a wide shoulder with a rumble-strip buffer, so traffic isn't usually very threatening. I nearly had it out of my mind when several minutes later, a startlingly similar van approached from the oncoming lane and swerved toward me, blaring its horn and swerving back into its own lane. My heart was racing against the surge of adrenaline and rage, but I stayed the course on the highway. I just couldn't believe that this van would turn around and come at me again.

No sooner had I thought it when I heard that high-pitched horn blast from behind. Everything around me turned red. I mashed into the pedals and began sprinting as I heard wheels hit the rumble strip, slowing down, no more than a few dozen yards behind me. I pulled further right until I was practically bouncing through the weeds, now 10 feet from the lane itself, just as this van pulled up beside me. A woman who at quick glance looked to be about my age rolled down the passenger-side window and screamed at me. No words, just screamed - "Ahhhhhh." The van was straddling the rumble strip, rolling at my pace only a few feet away. I could have reached out and punched the woman in her ugly face, and I'd be lying if I said there isn't a part of me that savors the thought. But I knew for my own safety that all I could do was look ahead as if no part of me noticed, and pedal against the tide of boiling blood. Finally, after an eternal second, the white minivan pulled away and headed down the road.

That is the exact point where I turned around and pedaled the way I came. I had not quite reached my destination. I was 31.5 miles from home.

The minivan did not come back, but it took quite a while before I calmed down and started thinking other thoughts besides a vengeance-tainted resolve to hunt that minivan down and cut the brake line. Why is that if someone pulls a gun on you, you can call the police? But if someone harasses you with a two-ton minivan filled with adults who are probably driving drunk at noon, your only recourse is the pull off the road and hide in a bush, or put up with it. Next time I ride the Sterling north of Anchor Point, I'm bringing my bear mace. And not because I'm afraid of bears.