Sustained climb

Date: June 1
Mileage: 28.6
June mileage: 28.6
Temperature upon departure: 45

I stumbled across an article today about a woman who rode her bike from the Dead Sea to Everest Base Camp and then climbed to the top. The world's longest climb. Pretty cool. Sometimes I wonder how my life would be different if I had it in me to dream big ... crazy big. Given my predisposition to clumsiness and a paralyzing vertigo that I have yet to overcome completely, I'd probably no longer be alive. But if you could pick one crazy big accomplishment to be the first person ever to succeed in, what would it be? I wouldn't mind being the first person to ride my bike across the Bering Sea in the winter - thereby enabling me to literally ride my bike around the world. Of course, I'd have to convert my bike into some kind of paddle boat to cross the Panama Canal. And I'd have to skip Australia altogether. And I'd have to parlay my admittedly terrible sense of direction on ice floes that move faster than I do. But why nitpick? It's a fun dream.

All I have now is my own personal Everest, which is not so much an Everest as a daily bike commute - 1,150 feet elevation gain stretched across four miles (plus two miles of flats) - but it gets easier every time. When I started riding the hill on a regular basis last winter, I was lucky to keep my speedometer above 5 mph. Now I rarely dip below 6 and probably average closer to 7.5 mph - which, despite how slow this still might be, is (I think) a great improvement. I hope to use this hill in the near future to practice sustained climbing - you know, go up, then right back down, then up again. There's potential there to ride some real "elevation" over relatively short distances. I think the hardest battle will actually turning tail at the top of that gut-busting climb: licking the crusted salt from my lips and wiping streams sweat from my eyelids, knowing that my only reward will be the screaming 5-minute descent I use to tear away all that effort before I turn around to face it again.

There's dirt on that trail

Date: May 31
Mileage: 15
May Mileage: 487.1
Temperature upon departure: 47

Today I hit the gym for the first time in weeks to test my endurance near my aerobic threshold (I know. I could just buy a heart-rate monitor. But I kind of enjoy working out while reading trashy magazines such as "People" or "Bicycling" once in a while.) I ran for an hour on the elliptical trainer. I kept my heart rate between 160 and 175 beats per minute, and ended up coveringmore than 10 "miles" (I've always been curious what an elliptical trainer "mile" equals. It's easier than running, but definitely more work than cycling.)

Anyway, I thought I'd come home from the gym completely worked, but I felt surprisingly refreshed. So I talked Geoff into an evening mountain bike ride, which we didn't end up leaving for until it was nearly 9 p.m.

We headed up the Homestead Trail toward our old winter haunts - now stripped of snow and layered in an interesting mix of deep ATV ruts, moose-trampled mud and sinkhole sand. The result is a double-track that's decidedly more technical than it was in December - but it's still low-level technical, and definitely a lot of fun. We spent the last three miles on nearby single-track, with a strange and difficult detour on what used to be a ski trail (and is now a pillowy, effort-absorbing cushion of matted grass). It was, for all practical purposes, my first trail ride of the year. I think, given the 9-month hiatus (based on the fact that snow riding's so different on nearly every level), I didn't do so bad. Of course, there are some that will argue that if you don't have a spectacular crash at least once during the first ride of the year, you didn't do so good, either. But after my hard run, just feeling up to a two-hour mountain bike ride is a good sign for me.

Forgot camera again ...

Date: May 30
Mileage: 43.4
May Mileage: 472.1
Temperature upon departure: 58

... so I'm posting yet another Utah shot, with the Twin Peaks dominating the Wasatch Skyline. I travel so light now that the point-n-click regrettably must be left behind so I can make room in my seatpost bag for lesser things ... spare tube, patch kit, tire levers. These days, even the Power Bars stay home. To tell you the truth, I kinda miss wearing a winter coat.

While dodging the endless parade of RVs and the kite-wielding, roller-blading traffic around town, I thought there are a lot of reasons why I miss winter altogether. The white silence. The solitude. The sunsets. Of course, there's a rich beauty in all of this drenching green and a pleasant camaraderie in the sudden surge of energy - not to mention the fact that it's warm, and that should make any breathing human being happy. But as I pass the bleached tent city now sprawled across a mile of beach, foggy with campfire smoke and commotion, there's a part of me that feels strangely out of place. Strange because I'm a former hot-climate desert dweller and tourist from the 'burbs. But out of place because the Alaskan in me was baptized by lonliness and winter.

A few days ago, I had the interesting experience of watching twilight turn to dawn without any transition into night. I kept waiting for stars to come out as the clock clicked away the wee hours. But after a while, I realized that it was no longer becoming darker - it was becoming lighter. Within a few minutes of that observation, the orange glow of sunrise crept over the north-eastern horizon.

And as I marveled to myself about the earth's skewed axis and the way it creates an amazing juxtaposition of time and place, a larger voice in my head told me I really need to start getting more sleep.