Zen and the art of ...

Date: Oct. 16
Total mileage: 40.2
October mileage: 208.5
Temperature upon departure: 48

Geoff informed me today that I'd have to be a very cold-hearted person, or, in better words, an idiot, to even think about riding my mountain bike before it gets a complete overhall, which includes new parts that have to be shipped to Juneau on a barge. Somehow, over a few months of tender, loving abuse, I managed to almost completely wear down all of the teeth on the middle ring. Then I rode it long enough in that decrepit state so it now also requires a new chain. And pedals. And shifter levers. And I think that in one or more of my many crashes, I may have slightly bent the rear derailleur. Other than that, it's golden! Why can't I ride it?

On the bright side, Geoff has been working almost nonstop for a week on our five bikes, and roadie has never been in better shape. Geoff even installed fenders. So the theory is now that I can go for a ride and not be sprayed continuously with road grit. I'll believe it when I see it. I have perfected my rain-riding ensemble, however: waterproof jacket over a thin fleece liner, rain pants over nylon longjohns, earwarmer and neoprene socks, booties and gloves. You'd think with all this armor I could manage to stay dry, but you would be mistaken. I don't know why I didn't just give up early and buy a wet suit. If you can swim in them, I bet you can bike in them. And they're so aerodynamic!

I found a couple hours to ride in beautiful weather today, so I'm not in a position to complain. It always amazes me how much less physical effort the same distance requires when there are no elements to fight. A 40-mile rain ride is downright epic, and yet the same ride, just one week later, in sunlight, feels like a boardwalk cruise. It's always faster, too, even though there's typically more wind when skies are clear.

I haven't really had very many chances to observe the bicycle maintenance routine during the past week - although the truth is I have little patience for it. I'd like to become a better steward of my stuff, but how do I overcome a severe personality flaw that makes me want to scream and start throwing things every time I wrap my fingers around a screwdriver? The theory is in the next month or two I'm supposedly going to start building a snowbike, and I hate the thought of recruiting Geoff to do all of the grunt work for me. I need to set some goals.

I will watch Geoff rebuild the crank.

I will help clean out the hubs.

I will read Web sites on bicycle building, even if the my chances of understanding them are about as good as Sugar's future chances of selling on eBay as anything but a hurricane bike.

I will try meditation.

I will practice the power of positive thinking.

I will stay dry.

Glaciers melting

My co-worker likes to tell stories about his childhood in Juneau - in the late 70s, I believe - when he and his friends could play touch football directly in the shadow of Mendenhall Glacier's tilting skyscrapers of ice. Back then, the calving terminus stretched almost a mile beyond where it ends today. My co-worker predicts that in another decade, the glacier will climb away from Mendenhall Lake and recede up the canyon it carved during many millennia of slow, steady grinding.

It's sad, he tells me, to see something that held so much permanence for him as a child, and to watch it so quickly and effortlessly fade away. But when I look at Mendenhall Glacier, I don't feel his same sadness. My emotions are closer to the sadness one would feel watching a snowman grow emanciated in the March sun - a nostalgic sadness, dulled by the inevitability of it.

A poll published October 4 in the Anchorage Daily News said that four out of five Alaskans believe global warming is behind the physical transformation of their homeland - not only the melting glaciers, but also big coastal storms, summer lightening strikes, shifting salmon runs, disappearing polar bears and forest fires. Eighty percent is a robust number for agreement in what many of the higher ups in the United States call "a theory, at best." I think it points to a trend as obvious as glaciers shrinking a quarter mile a decade. It's the trend of acceptance, the third step in the 12-step program to recovery.

I was an environmentalist kid with progressive science teachers, so even in the early 90s, I watched satellites map the hole in the ozone over Australia and accepted global warming as fact. I believe that this current generation of children will be the last to have the option of understanding climate change as a theory or a vague idea. Future students will know the temperature change of this era only as cold fact, like entropy, or gravity. Whether the world will ever agree on whether global warming is human-caused or a force of nature, history has yet to decide. Although it seems most likely that history will determine the root cause of climate change to be a complicated combination of both.

The fourth step of recovery is to make "a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves." This is the part where we begin to experiment with the things we know we can control, such as alternative sources of power (especially human power), energy conservation and reduced consumption. We'll never know how much it can help unless we're all willing to try. Otherwise, we're no better off than the alcoholic who says, "Well, God made me this way, and all this booze I buy really helps the economy, so why should I stop drinking?"

Why? Because your future depends on it. No one denies that truth to someone in AA. It won't be long before the world sees global warming in the same way.

iHeart iPod

Date: Oct. 12&13
Total mileage: 45.3
October mileage: 168.3
Temperature upon departure: 41

I had a decent Friday the 13th with some unlucky twists. On the bright side, I got out for a road bike ride and a separate mountain bike ride. On the unlucky side, I skidded out on a metal-lined bridge on my mountain bike and slammed into a railing at about 15 mph. I also bonked pretty hard on the way home (I've been out of milk for three days and apparently am not eating enough for breakfast.) And it rained the whole day. And the Mets lost. Other than that, it was a good day.

I was thinking about the controversial issue of iPod use and bicycles after Tim posted an anti-bikePod article the other day. I am an unrepentant iPod user, and while I respect the arguments against it, I don't think it's fair to make blanket judgments that all bikePod is bad all the time.

I own a little iPod shuffle. I bought it solely for use in bicycling. I bought it with gratitude after a little FM radio literally saved my sanity during the late night hours of the Susitna 100 race. I've used it on roads and trails, in training and in a couple of races I've done. I don't feel it's adversely affected my safety in all this time, and am skeptical that it would ever make a real difference as long as it's used responsibly (i.e. at a reasonable volume.)

Case in point: I do understand why commuters in busy urban areas would not want to use iPod. In cities, you have all sorts of things that require uber-alertness - things that don't make a lot of noise, such as pedestrians and dogs and little old ladies on Rascals. But I live in what is for these practical purposes a rural area. I do most of my riding on long, unbroken roadways with wide shoulders and cars that go by at an average rate of about one every two or three minutes. And say what you will about cars, but they make a lot of noise. Even with iPod, I have never failed to hear one go by, and usually first hear it when it's still two or three seconds behind me. At 18 mph, iPod mostly becomes soft, ambient sound anyway. This doesn't bother me. I'm not inclined to turn it up because I don't like loud noises blasting through my head. I think it's safe to say that most iPod users older than 25 feel this way.

I also use iPod trail riding. My iPod use mountain biking is a lot less frequent, because usually mountain biking is exciting enough on its own, or I'm on a short ride, or I'm mountain biking with another person, and tuning them out would be rude. But I have used iPod on longer trail rides, an I have used it in races. I have never had a run-in because of iPod. I hear riders coming up behind me. I hear them say "On your left." And I move to the right. I have never been surprised, nor have I had an angry rider swerve around me because I didn't hear them coming. Alaska also has the wildlife issue. But if you're moving along at trail at 8-15 mph, chances are pretty good that you're going to see a bear before you ever hear it - or you're going to neither see nor hear it - regardless of what's stuffed in your ears.

As to the argument that cyclists shouldn't need iPod to enjoy themselves, I completely agree. I don't need iPod. I was perfectly happy for all those years before I became an iPod user. But I do like the way iPod breaks up the inevitable routine of riding the same routes week after week. It livens up frustrating experiences and also enhances already enjoyable experiences. Because I have an iPod shuffle, which switches songs at random, I'm sometimes pleasantly surprised with the way music completely beyond my control can match the mood of the moment. When I'm rounding a heavily wooded corner of Douglas Island road into the liquid gray infinity of an open ocean view, and suddenly Modest Mouse starts chanting with increasing intensity "The universe is shaped exactly like the earth, if you go in a straight line you'll finally end up where you were" ... well, the non-iPod experience just can't beat that. Sorry.

In closing, I'm sorry if those little white earbuds offend you. If you feel the need to rip them out of my head as you're passing me on the road so you can tell me that I'd be going a heckuva lot faster if I wasn't so self-absorbed, I wouldn't disagree with you. And then, I'd probably stick them right back in.