Moving on up

Date: May 20
Mileage: 14.4
May Mileage: 75.6
Temperature upon departure: 58

I going to start keeping track of my cycling mileage again. Why would I bother? Well, after three months of flailing defiance, mistake after mistake after mistake interrupted by short periods of indifference, I think I may finally be poised for a comeback.

My recent numbers tell most of the story themselves:
December, 476.1 miles
January, 893.4 miles
February, 361.1 miles
March, 14 miles
April, 25.3 miles
May, 75.6 miles

Somewhere in there, I went very, very wrong. Maybe now I have finally learned my lesson about the perils of overuse, and the virtues of steady increments. But probably not.

I managed to whittle myself back to the bottom; now there's nowhere to go but up. Because I'm facing the slow climb as an alternative to the depths of inactivity, I feel like I have nothing to lose. And so I amble.

I tried out my clipless pedals for the first time today. I was a ball of nervous energy; suddenly thrown back into traffic with a loose rear hub and a sagging chain and a touring bike I definitely did not like being attached to. Even worse than the cars were the tourists, who treat downtown Juneau like it’s Main Street Disneyland; every move they make is unpredictable, and every pedestrian law goes out the window. Today Geoff yelled out, "Hey, did you know that this is a road, not a sidewalk?" But it's true. Maneuvering around tourists takes more skillz than singletrack, and I am not known for my roadie skillz.

Geoff and I rode out to Thane. He lectured me on the decrepitness of my road bike and my unwillingness to master the clipless, but we had a good ride. At the turnaround, he took off for a run on the coastal trail and I ambled some more, covering about three more miles on foot (For which I had to bring an extra pair of shoes. How annoying is that?). Someday I will appreciate clipless pedals. And someday I will be able to ride more than I would ever want to. Someday.

But for now, I wanted to say congrats to all who rode the Kokopelli Trail this weekend. I've been thinking about you and your 142-mile desert epic as I chart my next planned ride. Tuesday, 18 miles. We all have our thresholds, and my goal is to not find mine anytime soon.

I pretend I'm a tourist

I figured out a way to hike up a mountain without actually having to walk back down. The Mount Roberts trail wends through the rainforst, switchbacks up a steep slope and, in the last half mile, disappears beneath neck-high layer of crusty snow. Then, right at treeline, and just when you think you can climb no further lest you risk being swept away in an avalanche, you reach the Mount Roberts Tramway. You can purchase some useless trinkets, gawk at caged bald eagle with a bullet hole through its beak, buy a $5 cup of coffee and coast effortlessly back to sea level via the Mount Roberts Tram.

I arrived at the platform just in time to catch the 5:45. A rush of tourists, nearly every single one clutching a red bag from the $5 T-shirt shop, wedged me in next to the driver. He rattled off the safety spiel and we shot downward.

“How are you liking Juneau?" the driver asked me.

I paused for a second, considering the part of a tourist. “It’s pretty cool,” I said. I couldn’t think of what to add to that, so I said, “I saw your bald eagle.”

“Pretty sad, huh?” he said. “But it’s OK. Eagles are like rats here. They’re more of a pest than anything.”

“Sad about that one, though,” I said.

“So have you checked out the glacier yet?” he asked me. I realized he must be feeding me the standard tourist questions. It’s probably part of his job, part of a quota he has charted somewhere on his employee mission statement.

“Yeah ... you guys should wash that thing once in a while,” I said and flashed him my most earnest smile. He didn’t even flinch.

“At least you got a nice day today,” he said. “Usually I have to explain to people why it’s raining all the time.”

“Oh really? You have an explanation for that?”

Again, he didn’t even flinch. I considered my next dumb tourist question, but before I could say anything, someone from the back of the tram shouted, “Look! A bear!” I turned my head to look out the window. Sure enough, a yearling black bear was ambling up the hillside no more than 100 feet above town.

“We’ve spotted him a couple of times,” the tram driver said, more loudly so everyone could hear him. “His mom’s around here somewhere. She’s a much bigger bear.”

As my fellow tourists murmured and cooed, I said to the driver, “Wow. That’s really cool that you can see bears from here.”

“There are bears everywhere,” he said. “We see them all the time. They’re like dogs here.”

“Really,” I said as the tram lurched to a stop. “I would have never guessed.”

Making 10 miles count

Today I got to ride 10 miles. I like my new incremental cycling plan, because it keeps me happy without feeling too reckless. I self-impose mileage maximums, and as long as I force myself to stick to them, I can convince myself that no harm has been done (whether or not actual harm has been done is, I think, secondary to perceived success.)

This morning, however, I looked outside and knew that keeping to my maximum was going to prove a huge challenge ... not a cloud in the sky, sunlight pouring down and a thermometer that had climbed above 60 degrees. These warm, sunny days are so rare that I can't say I've seen a second one in all of the nine months I've lived in Juneau. It was not the kind of day to spend spinning on a road bike for a half hour. So I thought ... how can I turn eight miles into an excursion that would fill up an entire morning? I came up with a four-part plan:

1. Pick a technical trail that I know will keep me slow and honest, like Dredge Lake.

2. Stick to the tightly-wound singletrack. While squeezing between tree trunks, I almost crushed my fingers more than once. I am so out of practice.

3. Take a lot of extended sightseeing breaks. I rode this trail system often in December and January, but everything looks completely different now. It was like discovering a new place.

4. Actively seek out anything that will make me slower. The trails traverse a swampy glacial moraine, so I hit a lot of stretches that looked like this.

I love this kind of stuff. My bike's drivetrain does not love me.

I had planned to ride only eight miles, and technically I did ride only eight miles on my bad knee. I bailed off the trail at mile 8.2 and took the road back to the trailhead. For good measure, I unipedalled the entire last two miles. I pushed hard with one leg and kept my speed above 13 mph. It was the best lung workout I've had in months.

I bought a new camera yesterday, so more than anything, the ride was an excuse to try out my new toy. I went to Costco and drooled for a while over the 10 megapixel Canons with 10X zoom and detachable lenses. I wanted to get something nice that would take great pictures. In the end, I bought the bombproof compact model. It's an Olympus Stylus 725 SW, waterproof to 15 feet under and shockproof up to a 5-foot freefall. Today, after spontaneously whipping it out of my pocket while swiveling my handlebars through knee-deep swamp water, I knew I had made the right decision.

Depending on how this ride goes over, I think I will bicycle 12-15 miles on Sunday. It's arguable that eight miles of singletrack and two miles of unipedalling does not exactly equal a chill 10-mile ride, and I was not exhibiting as much self-control as I'd like to think ... but I'll leave that verdict up to the jury of perceived success.

Now ... off to enjoy a picnic, a short walk and the rest of this beautiful day.