Finally ate all of my Susitna food

Date: Sept. 10
Mileage: 34.4
September mileage: 244.0
Temperature upon departure: 58
Rainfall: .43"

Geoff has been out of town for 10 days now, and it shows. The cats, which are used to taking advantage of Geoff's and my opposite schedules to come and go as they please, are no longer on speaking terms with me - their current jailer. Instead of meows, I get cold glares when I come home, even after I pull out the Whisker Lickins.

There also is nobody around to do the grocery shopping. One could argue that I am not incapable of buying my own groceries, but I figure, why should I spend a perfectly bikeable hour pushing a wobbly-wheeled cart around a store when there are perfectly edible calories still sitting around the house? That Costco-sized jar of olives, that bag of lil' hotties chili peppers, that freezer-burned loaf of bread. Are these things not food? The shopping can wait.

I used to make myself big salads for lunch, with fresh tomatoes, mixed greens, red peppers, feta cheese, pecans, bagel chips and ripe plums. I have been reduced to eating peanut butter and jam sandwiches for the past three days, and even now I am down to the dredges of peanut butter. Today I came home from that hardest ride I've done all month ... full speed out to North Douglas, red zone climb to Eaglecrest, into the wind home ... and gobbled up my lunch. That dredge sandwich on stale bread just didn't hold the way I hoped it would.

So I mined the cupboards. I pushed aside Geoff's Power Gel packets, that ancient bag of trail mix and stale corn chips to discover a Hershey's Special Dark chocolate bar stuffed in the darkest corner of the shelf. The wrapper looked like it had been taken for a swim at some point, worn white in the corners and crinkled beyond legibility, but it was chocolate! I tore in.

The thick, waxy block crumbled as I chewed it but didn't dissolve. I choked a little on the chocolate dust and held the bar up to the light. It too had white lines across the surface and was cracked and crumbly. "How old is this thing?" I thought. "Where did it come from?"

I mined my memory for its origins. Shortly before we moved to Juneau, I urged Geoff to stop buying candy on account of my extreme sugar addiction that can't be controlled. He complied, and since then I've been sneaking fruit leathers and spoonfuls of jam to get my sugar fix. I initially assumed this chocolate bar moved up from Homer. But how did it escape me all this time?

Wherever it came from, it was pretty disgusting now. I moved to toss the whole thing in the trash when I suddenly recalled an image of a stack of chocolate bars stuffed deep in the pouch of my bicycle frame bag. All around them I stashed the things that would be consumed shortly ... the peanut butter and jam sandwiches, the fruit leather, the trail mix. But the chocolate was my safety food, only to be eaten in a dire emergency, a life-or-death situation. That's the way it stayed, pressed into the deep freezer of the Susitna Valley in February, slowly crystallizing and hardening as we travelled together around the lollipop loop of the Susitna 100.

That was the time my inner furnace flickered; I remembered the way my teeth chattered as I chewed, putting every ounce of faith I had in fuel, cherishing every precious calorie I was carrying. I thought about the value this chocolate once held and couldn't bring myself to toss it. I took another bite.

Becoming an Alaskan

Date: Sept. 9
Mileage: 15.4
September mileage: 209.6
Temperature upon departure: 56
Rainfall: .23"

I'm coming up on the second anniversary of the day I moved to Alaska. In most states, two years is probably ample time to establish residency. However, Alaska seems to hold its citizens to a much higher standard. It takes time and effort for Outsiders such as myself to wedge into this culture. Bureaucratically speaking, I belong to this state - I have the driver's license, the license plates, the rental lease. But culturally, I still have work to do.

Top 10 reasons why I'm not yet an Alaskan:

10. I don't own a pair of XtraTuf boots or anything made by Carhartt.
9. I don't have a dog named Kenai.
8. I have yet to go "polar bear swimming."
7. I think pink salmon is delicious.
6. I've never received free money from the state, although that Surly Pugsley I bought on "PFD credit" would beg to differ.
5. I've never eaten anything made of ground-up moose or reindeer, and probably never will.
4. I still think a "snowmachine" is a mechanism that ski resorts use to manufacture artificial snow. Those recreational vehicles that blaze nice trails through the powder are called "snowmobiles."
3. I have yet to buy a boat.
2. I don't believe the federal government "owes me."
1. I live in Juneau.

Always learning

Date: Sept. 8
Mileage: 25.1
September mileage: 194.2
Temperature upon departure: 50
Rainfall: 1.01"

Heavy rain today. I am not complaining about it again. I even went out in it. Nearly every piece of rain gear I own was in the dryer after Sitka, so I wore several layers of cotton. I survived. Biking outside is easy. Living outside is hard.

My last post probably made it sound like I had an overall terrible time in Sitka. I did not. It's always more fun to write about the bad stuff, and I definitely had my fair share of mishaps. I didn't even write about the disproportionate number of traffic run-ins I had. I had heard somewhere that Sitka is trying to receive a "Bicycle Friendly Community" designation. Apparently, nobody has told the good citizens of Sitka that news, because in my short time there I heard more people lay on their horns, experienced more near-sideswipes, and had more things thrown at me in two days than I have in a year in Juneau. But, I concur. Sitka also has cold-water surfers, and big waves, and a cool cathedral, and harbor seals, and so many places where, after many minutes of pedaling with my head down and squinting against the rain, I could look up to tiny islands silhouetted against a sun spot and think, "wow, is that real?" Would I go back? I would most definitely go back. Maybe next time I will reserve a room at the Super 8.

My hardship this weekend was the fact that I was wet, and everything I had with me was wet, and with temperatures hovering around 50, my only options for staying warm was to stay on the move or stay huddled in my sleeping bag. I logged over 100 mountain bike miles in a 48-hour period. I also read an entire book. I really didn't do much else, although I would have liked to. But I felt a bit trapped by my situation ... always lingering on the edge of being too cold, sometimes I could only stop long enough to unwrap a Clif Bar before shivers set in. So I'd pedal harder, and fly past an overlook, and fly through town, and think "I'd like to stop there" ... but believed it wasn't an option.

I felt demoralized, but I broke through. In the end, it turned out to be a good experience. Although I didn't intend it to be a "training" weekend, those are the kind of situations I need to prepare for if I'm going to attempt to ride on the Iditarod Trail next February ... staying on the move when I don't want to, heading out into unpleasantness when I don't have to, improvising, and doing whatever it takes to stay hydrated and well-fed (I didn't do enough of either in Sitka, and definitely suffered psychologically for it.)

In the end, I think Sitka turned out even better for my early training than the 371-mile weekend was. I'm realizing more that when cycling reaches the level I'm hoping to take it to, the pedaling is the easiest part. Surviving ... that's the challenge.