The precedent

I read in a recent issue of Backpacker (yes, while goose-stepping on an elliptical trainer) an article exploring the argument that adventure is dead. Obese accountants can eat filet mignon while rafting through the Grand Canyon. Weekend warriors with low-grade GPS units can trek the furthest reaches of the Brooks Range. The summit of Mount Everest can be bought. This article made a lot of points, but the basic idea I came away with was that the age of information has rendered the death of discovery.

It didn't leave me with any lasting disappointment. My opinion about exploration has always been that if I've never been there, it's new to me. I'll probably never vie to be the first person atop random peak #37 in the Alaska Range or to ride my bicycle across the frozen Bering Sea (not that I wouldn't love to ride from here to Russia.) But as long as I can wrap my adventure around dodging porcupines on a leaf-littered trail or carving tracks through thick, crunchy snow, I stay satisfied.

This human need to explore one's own surroundings is trumped by the even more primal need to do so before anyone else beats us to it. But we have satellite technology that can peer into every window on earth. Scrutinizing the detailed topography of Sibera is a simple matter of having $9.95 and an active eBay account. We know this, and so we're inclined to settle into life, taking comfort in the fact that everything's been mapped out for us. We sometimes feel a tinge of pity for people who whittle their time and savings away to become the first 37-year-old grocery store clerk with a bum knee to paraglide across XY glacier.

"That's, like, so been done."

I guess this is how we compensate for doing what's been done - we claw our way to the fringes, the furthest extremes, the only places left on earth where we feel like we can distinguish ourselves. In Alaska, I always hear about stomach-dropping new adventures, like the cyclists who ride the frozen Iditarod trail for 1,000 unbroken miles. But it never takes long to discover stories like those of Ed Jesson, a Dawson City caribou hunter who rode his bicycle over 1,000 miles over the frozen Yukon River to Nome. After spending one night at 48 below, Ed wrote in his diary:

"The oil in the bearings was frozen. I could scarcely ride it and my nose was freezing and I had to hold the handlebars with both hands, not being able to ride yet with one hand and rub my nose with the other."

He sounds so edgy yet vulnerable, so tied to the postmodern notion of exploration on the extreme fringes. Except for Ed wrote this particular entry in the year 1900. Ed was a gold rusher.

Adventure is more a way of being than an actual path, exploration more a state of mind than an actual game. I try to remember this with I head out to face a road route I've ridden dozens of times, or a fitness jog down a well-worn path.

I never fail to find something new.

Heartbreak

Date: Oct. 19
Total mileage: 36.0
October mileage: 269.7
Temperature upon departure: 49

I'm really not a sports fan.

I'm fair-weather to the very extreme. Meaning: I have no clue about backstories or statistics or strategies or, sometimes, even the basic rules. I carry all of this eye-rolling apathy into random games where everything is on the line and everything matters and everything comes down to one heart-stopping moment.

I always get sucked into the drama.

I always have my heart broken.

It happened in 1996 when the Alta High School basketball dynasty dropped right out of the bottom.

It happened in 1997 when the Utah Jazz lost the last two games in the championship series, both of which came down to three or four points right at the very end, to the Chicago Bulls.

It happened to me in 1998 when the University of Utah clawed their way into the NCAA championship series only to lose to Kentucky.

After the late '90s, my interest in basketball mostly dried up. I was happy again, as apathetic as ever. Then I had to go and meet a person who talks continuously about baseball, even in January, and somehow dragged me into the forlorn world of the modern Mets fan.

So the Mets lost to the Cardinals in Game 7 of the NLCS. How does that affect my life? How does it change anything for me?

Exactly. So why did I sit there for three hours, fresh off a fairly hard bike ride and coping with a stress-induced 90-beats-per-minute heart rate?

Why did a literally, involuntarily, jump off the ground when Chavez leapt like 14 feet beyond the back wall to steal that home run away? Why did I sneer and become so incensed by that Cardinal guy with the stupid red soul patch hanging off his chin like a dead caterpillar? Why do I feel so sick inside? I could barely eat dinner.

I'm so confused. I don't even like baseball.

I think that's it for me. Destiny has given me the rare (or maybe not so rare) ability to be driven to emotional extremes by distant events but the wherewithal to choose apathy.

Sweet, stagnant apathy.

On again, off again

Date: Oct. 17
Total mileage: 25.2
October mileage: 233.7
Temperature upon departure: 42

Many cyclists I know, especially those who race their bicycles on a regular basis, have begun to talk about the "off season." As in most sports, cycling has found its drastic ebb and flow, which means from March to September all I hear about is trainingracingridingracingtraining. Then, October hits ... a couple of leaves drop ... and suddenly ... nothing.

Up in Alaska, far away from the velodromes and crits and Cat-4's and what have you, this "off season" is still very much a mystery to me. For what little racing I do - and for how liberally I'd have to use the term "athlete" to call myself one - I tend to have events spread fairly evenly throughout the year. I've been in a bit of a slump - I'll call it an "off-season" - since July. But pretty soon, at about the beginning of November, I'll have to think about upping the training and scheduling focused workouts if I want to be in shape come February. It's the depths of cold, dark winter. It's when I like to be "on."

So now that I have to gear up, and watch my fellow cyclists wind down, I can't help but speculate on the mystery of it all. Where do cyclists go during the "off season" to give it such a defeated, fatalistic name? I have some theories:

"Beer and television:" I think the smart athletes would give themselves some real time off, and do as Lance Armstrong does. You know: go for easy spins with President Bush and party all night with celebrities. And if, unlike Lance, they were willing to give all that up to go back to the lonely, relentless life of a racing cyclist, I would think that beer gut would give them all that much more motivation in the spring.

"Trainer hell:" These cyclists I know, they're so preoccupied with going fast that they forget they can just put on a big poofy snow suit and mount some flood lights to their Bianchis so they can keep riding outside during cold, dark winter days. Instead, they put their poor bicycles on rollers and spend two to three hours a day dripping sweat all over the carpet of their cold, dark basements. As a former gym rat, I actually have no problem with the concept, especially if you have access to a good iPod lineup and all three seasons of Arrested Development on DVD. But every day? All winter long? Eee.

"Cross-training:" I don't how many cyclists also Nordic ski. But I definitely think more should. Not only do you work all the important leg muscles, you also have an excuse to continue wearing spandex all winter long. Mountain bike racers should snowboard ... good practice for dodging trees and grabbing that sweet, sweet air. I'd also suggest snowshoes, but I don't know many cyclists who also run (except for those crazy triathletes). The rest of us, I believe, are opposed to unaided human power on principle.

"Real jobs:" Some people who race all summer long take so much time off that they have to buckle down and work day and night throughout the winter just to support the habit. I admire that, but I don't really have any good advice for such a person.

"Hibernation:" This is different from beer and television, because to actually be in hibernation, I don't think you can be doing what 95 percent of everyone else is doing. No, you actually have to be fast asleep. Dreaming of green trails and dry roads. I also don't have any good advice for you.

"IceBike:" It's everyone's favorite novelty Web site, but so few seem to actually do it. Trust me, once you experiment with the wonders of snowbiking, you'll understand why I consider late summer the "off season."

But seriously, "real cyclists," where do you go during the winter? I used to pass you on the road all the time. Now your numbers are diminishing. Soon you'll all be gone, and I feel lonely just thinking about it.