Time for a vacation

Date: Nov. 21
Total mileage: 15.0
November mileage: 212.9
Temperature upon departure: 18

This seems to happen every year. The onslaught of winter arrives hard and fast. I have a minor freak-out and do something nutty like buy tire chains or decry the beautiful barrage of snow. There’s a short period of confusion when I wonder how in the world I ever learned to steer in powder or spend less than 30 minutes dressing to go out. And then suddenly, without even focusing, everything becomes clear. Images of green leaves and flowing water fade into the recesses of my memory, and the monochrome world in which I move becomes a place of beauty and ease. I throw the tire chains in the trunk, slap on random pieces of clothing, and go for a bike ride.

I’m finally completely comfortable with winter. So it’s a bit funny that I’d pick this time of year to take a vacation home. No self-respecting Alaskan heads south at the beginning of winter. But it is Thanksgiving, which is at least a semi-legitimate holiday, and since my employer has decreed that I will work Christmas, it’s now or never.

So I’m headed to tropical, sunny Salt Lake City for the next week. My plan is to eat without remorse all the turkey, cranberry sauce and homemade coconut cream pie I can stuff down (and skip all the other crap.) Then I will try to burn off all the T-day guilt with an ill-conceived run. Then I will spend the better part of a day trying to overhaul my little sis's old 10-speed. I will use it for most of the week to get around town, until a massive failure of the bottom bracket will force me to abandon the bike near the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon, where I will then hitchhike up to Brighton and finally get around to doing some real snowboarding. Yup. That's probably what'll happen. I can't wait.

I'll let you know how the 10-speed tune-up goes. Until then, Happy Thanksgiving all.

I stop being such a wimp

Date: Nov. 20
Total mileage: 36.0
November mileage: 197.9
Temperature upon departure: 19

The first rays of the 8 a.m. sunrise nearly filter through a mass of featureless gray that has become the sky; it's nearly cold enough to ensure hardpack and it hasn't snowed in nearly four hours, so it seems like a good morning to ride.

I swerve across the unplowed street as my gray-faced neighbors dig through mountains of snow. Some are looking for their newspapers, some for their cars, some for their kids. Most regard me with surly grimaces, but the few smiles I see are like a shot of Red Bull. It is early, and Monday at that. I head north beyond the idling garbage trucks, the hulking snow plows, chained-up tow trucks and the cars they're pulling out of ditches. After eight miles, I'm far enough north to be almost completely alone.

Blocks of ice and chunky snow keep me on my toes, but I ride as hard and as fast as the drifts will let me because the cold sweat against my skin feels good. Thick clumps of snow drip off tree branches like gooey cake frosting; across the flat muskeg, powder mounds remind me of air-puffed marshmallows. It doesn't surprise me that I'm thinking about sugar, but I do wish I remembered about they way water bottles can freeze shut in a nanosecond. So instead of dwelling on thirst, I think about the way the landscape reminds of my childhood, walking through a Christmas tree lot with row after row of white evergreens, the kind coated with spray-on permafrost. I laugh about the way the real thing makes me nostalgic for the imitation.

A man in a big truck stops just to ask me how I can ride through the snowy shoulder. I show him the studs on my tires and explain that with one-wheel drive, the thin powder actually adds traction over the glare ice on the road. "Yeah, but you can't do any hills, can you?" he asks, and I tell him that I just came down a 1,300-foot drop from the ski resort, and I still have the gravel in my teeth to prove it. He doesn't seem to believe me; he probably still thinks I'm crazy, but I think our short conversation will leave him with a different understanding about the ease of winter travel.

On the way home I still see people digging out their cars, and I start to think that I'm not the crazy one after all.

Uncle! Uncle!

Sunday: Snow...Heavy at Times...Windy. Snow accumulation of 12 to 19 inches. Highs around 32. East wind to 25 mph with gusts to 45 mph. Decreasing to 20 mph in the afternoon. Chance of snow 90 percent. (courtesy of National Weather Service)

OK, winter. Good joke. We're all laughing. 45 inches of snow? In a week? In Juneau? We thought it was pretty funny. We broke out the moldy snow shovels and rusted-out plows and all had a hearty chuckle about how you got us pretty good. So why are you still here, lingering, threatening a seemingly unending barrage of snow? I say, winter, there's no need to be a bully. Enough is enough.

Don't get me wrong. I'm on your side. A "winter" person through and through. I can do snow anyway you send it - love the powder for snowboarding; love the wet stuff for snowshoing; love the crusty, icy stuff for snowbiking. But in all things, moderation. Sinking up to my thighs and becoming stuck in wet concrete snow, spinning out on newly plowed roads, and scaling snow berms taller than me is not moderation, winter. Oh, and biking? That hobby I have that keeps me (mostly) sane? Playing Chicken with SUVs in the ice-coated bobsled run between neck-high snowbanks is not moderation, winter. I believe in Russia they called that Roulette.

At least the ski-area season-pass holders are happy. Keep it up, and they'll be able to slip down the slopes until July. In the meantime, I'm learning one of those life lessons about a little too much of a good thing.

I miss the rain.

But don't ever, ever tell anyone I said that. I'll vehemently deny it forever.

In the meantime, winter, can't you lay off a little? Just a little cold sunlight, a little settling, a little freeze-over, just to get me back on the trails, on my bike, where I belong?

Thanks again.

- Jill