The trouble with commuting

Date: Oct. 5
Total mileage: 45.3
October mileage: 111.5
Temperature upon departure: 47

I made a decision a couple of weeks ago that I was going to work toward reforming my habits to minimalize if not eliminate the use of my car. It makes sense on paper because I'm already accustomed to cold-weather cycling, I already own a nice headlight and set of bike panniers, and I live in an area where I couldn't travel more than 40 miles from my house if I wanted to. Of course, what's easy on paper is definitely not always easy in practice. Gas-guzzling habits run deep, and I'm beginning to realize just how tough continuous bike commuting would actually be.

For starters, I can't figure out how people in wet climates would get around the whole social stigma of showing up at their destination wet and covered in road grit. And I don't mean walking into a store wearing a damp waterproof shell. I mean showing up in a public place looking like a jeep that spent the past hour spinning donuts in a wet gravel pit. I stopped at a grocery store on the way home from a three-hour ride today just to buy a newspaper, and I spent five minutes outside brushing my dirt-covered clothing in a failed attempt to look"inside" presentable.

This also is a huge problem for biking to work. At three miles one way, I can coast there without breaking a sweat, but I can't stay dry. Sure, I can carry dry clothing with me to change into, but this doesn't remove the aforementioned grit-stuck-to-skin problem, not to mention the whole wet hair thing. How do bike commuters keep their hair dry? I know I can lift up my hood before putting on my helmet, but this in the past has not exactly preserved "dry" hair. My only idea was to begin storing a hair dryer at work. I'm not crazy about doing this, though, and I'd love to hear better ideas.

Being wet and/or sweaty in the fall/winter also ups the chance of mild hypothermia. What's comfortable for me to wear while pounding out 20 mph on pavement is definitely not good for stopping for any length of time in a marginally heated grocery store, bank or library. Stop for more than five minutes and my core temperature plummets to noticeably uncomfortable levels. Like today, my wet feet and hands felt fine before my newspaper run, but afterward became numb and stiff. It's fine when I can go straight home and take a warm shower. But what about all the times I can't?

Then there's groceries. Luckily, Geoff does most of the grocery shopping, because I hate it something fierce. So much so that I usually suck it up and spend an hour shopping for two weeks worth of food in one large load. A bicycle necessitates frequent small trips to stores that aren't Costco (A new favorite of mine.) And how will I haul home my 24-packs of Diet Coke? I need these.

Look at me, making pathetic excuses. I'd love to hear some suggestions, especially on the issue of staying as socially acceptably dry as possible. I really don't think those skinny little road fenders are going to do much. I already have fenders on my mountain bike, which I'll begin using exclusively as soon as it gets much colder, and I already know they're pretty close to useless in that regard. But I do have an honest desire to become a dedicated bicycle commuter. I was doing really well before I left Homer, but it was easy in Homer. I Homer, I had a.) an awesome commute route (as opposed to the current one, which in three miles covers all of the only truly awful stretch of bicycling in town.) b.) an employer that didn't mind if I showed up to work looking like a lumberjack who had been out on the job for six weeks. c.) less than a quarter of the rainfall. Bike commuting in Juneau takes true dedication. But I'm working at it. I really am.

Also, I wanted to thank Bone, The Blasphemous Bicycler, for archiving my orphaned Web site on his server. I had no idea it was so easy. I now feel embarrassed to think about all of the money I've thrown down over the past few years just to keep this thing from fading into cyberoblivion because it felt like trashing a cherished photo album. Oh well. In the same respect, I should probably feel the same way about all of the money I'm tossing to Big Oil.

But I need my car.

Well, actually, I don't.

Simplifying

In an effort to whittle down my expenses, I'm dissolving some old bills that are automatically charged to my credit card every month. In doing so, I just learned that at the end of this month, my old Web site will no longer exsist.

It's a sad day for me - not because I maintain this Web site anymore. In fact, there's a whole lot about it that annoys me. But it's a record of my past. It's my journal, my scrapbook, my photo album, my pre-blog blog, all in one. But because it's electronic, and because I was young and naive enough to register it with a fee-charging site, it's being ripped from exsistence without a tear or a prayer.

Maybe this will teach me to start using an old-fashioned pen and paper. But, for now, if you don't mind, I'm going to post a few of my entires - for nostalgia's sake, for posterity, etc. ... otherwise, I'll lose them forever. This one is titled "definition of bike touring," dated Sept. 14, 2002.

That annoying little voice inside my head tells me to crank it. My wheels are spinning, barely. Sweat drips through my helmet and streaks of red dust stick to my arms.You never realize it when you're driving, but the only way out of Moab, Utah is up, a nearly-continuous climb. As Geoff and I lumber up theshoulder of Highway 91, I fix my gaze on distant buildings scattered near towering vermillion cliffs. They take forever to reach me.

Before this trip, it's hard to remember what exactly I thought bike touring was. Lingering views, sprawling vistas, maybe a little work. Isure didn't imagine burnout on the first day. When daylight will allow us to go no further, we pull over and park a mere 50 yards from the road.

And thus ends the first day of my very first bike tour, Moab to Moab via the San Juan mountain range and 600 miles of the most remote highway the lower 48 has to offer. It was supposed to be a simple day - 30 miles from the Colorado River valley to the base of the La Salle mountains. In front of me now is an expanse of sagebrush-dotted range cut off only by the horizon, deep orange and shimmering in the September sunset.We kick cowpies from a small clearing and set up our tent just as the landscape descends deeper into shades of purple. As a lay in the spiny grass watching erratic bats chase bugs visible only to them, I regret not getting in shape before the trip. Every muscle, every bone in my body is melting into the warm soil and I doubt my ability to get up, even to go to bed.

The camp site, hidden behind a barb wire fence in a cluster of pinion pines, feels stark and uninviting private property, a grazing range. We should have made it at least 10 miles furthertonight, but night snuck up on us. The next 500 miles feel like an eternity away.Geoff, most likely just as worn out and tired, musters up the energy to lean toward me. "Isn't it amazing?" he says. "We just biked here."

While working as a reporter during the 2002 Winter Olympics, I only heard mirror responses from everyone I talked to - "the experience of a lifetime," "a once-in-a-lifetime experience," "a lifetime of experiences in one." The Olympics were a splash of snow and whirl of color.The world blinked, and they were gone.

Bicycle touring is anything and everything but a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It is tamarisk swaying on the layered shores of the San Juan river. It is a flapping tent standing against a lightning storm on an open plateau. It is a tiny roadside grocery store in a town that by car would be nothing more than a blur. It is wildlife in the form of flattened fur on a roadside and literature in the form of faded billboards. It is slow and lumbering, discarded bolts rusting on the highway. It is adrenaline-inducing at 35 mph and agony-inducing at 5. It is hills that will stop your heart and views that will quiet your soul. It is pinnacles and peaks and houses and streams and desert and forest and road, open road, endless road, but it is not, I am convinced, not a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

It, simply, is life.

One that I should keep on living.

Soak up the partial sun

Date: Oct. 2 and 3
Total mileage: 66.2
October mileage: 66.2

City election night means I had to work late. Not late like "better order in dinner" late. Late like "wow when did it become 2 a.m.?" late. Elections always pump a little suspense and excitement into the newspaper business, but they always leave me with nagging guilt. I consider myself a fairly civic-minded person, but I carry the deep and secret shame of not having voted in a public election since 2002. The last presidential candidate I voted for was Ralph Nader (in 2000, not '04). I have a lot of excuses. I moved around a lot. I was out of the state at all the right times. But the truth is really much more superficial.

My name is Jill, and I am incapable of dealing with bureaucracy.

I know, it sounds completely silly. But it's true. I dread and put off simple things like registering a vehicle or filling out a change of address form at the post office. I've neglected to get an Alaska driver's license because that requires waiting in line for a new social security card. I wait until midnight on April 15 to do my taxes even when the IRS owes me money. I had the option to apply for public housing while I was homeless my first weeks in Juneau, but couldn't face filling out the stack of required forms. I carried Idaho plates on my car until a couple weeks ago, and only changed them because a cop said I had to. I'm afraid of cops. But nobody with a gun is telling me to register to vote in the state of Alaska.

I know it's unforgivably simple. But it's like that with everything government-related in my life. I can't deal with it. It's a sickness.

That said, I had a beautiful couple of days to ride some 30-milers before work. I go with Geoff, who likes to ride comfortable and site-see. I haven't been working my legs very hard, but I did get a chance to explore all sorts of new corners of town: narrow roads wrapped around cliffs, rainforest paths, footbridges. Say what you will about life in Juneau (and dreary is one I hear often), but I never imagined that the simple appearance of sunlight would have the ability to snap me into a instant, almost involuntary good mood, with a shot of free energy to top it off. What can I say? Deprivation breeds gratitude.

Deprivation breeds gratitude ... hmmm. Maybe that's why Afghan citizens waited all day in the hot sun just for a chance to cast a ballot in their first democratic election. Maybe therein is a lesson for me to learn. Their example tells me to get out and vote. And yet, all I wanted to do this morning was get out and bike. I blame the sun.