Jumbo-vision

The weather holds me hostage. With fresh snow already coating the high mountain ridges and winter barrelling down, I can no longer justify spending a nice day - even if it's "sunny" only in the meteorological sense - lingering at sea level. So when that little yellow circle shows up on the forecast, I have to somehow carve out four solid hours to climb yet another mountain.

Today was Mount Jumbo. The trail begins virtually in somebody's front yard, in a neighborhood that today was enveloped in thick morning fog. I arrived early enough to meet a group of children waiting for the school bus. As I was packing up my gear, soft headlights pushed through the haze. "There it is! There it is!" one girl squealed. "It's appearing out of noooowhere."

The trail itself had a spooky woods feel, with semi-solid air and ground saturated in the 4 inches of rain that fell during the last storm. It's late season now and the presence of other hikers is scarce if not nonexistent on a Tuesday morning. It's also close enough to October that nostalgia dictates the expectation of some chainsaw-wielding hockey-mask guy or a face-paint zombie to jump out from the shadows at any second. When that didn't happen, I was admittedly disappointed.

Finally emerging from the cloud into the bright morning felt strange, like waking up from a long afternoon nap. But it didn't last. Thick clouds kept rolling through; one minute I'd be squinting in sunlight, and the next, groping through fog. Changes in elevation revealed themselves in startling windows. When they closed, I focused on the ground, only to be startled again.

I am always so excited to discover my first fresh snow of winter.

In this landscape of hemlock and spruce, the best fall colors happen at ground level.

At the peak, I had nearly reached to top of the highest cloud. The window was large enough to open up the expanse of blue sky.

Staring out into infinity felt like snow blindness. I couldn't look for very long.

About 30 minutes from the peak, back in the midst of the rolling clouds, I met the only other person on the trail, a solo woman with a mean-looking dog. I told her it was at least another 30 minutes to the top. "I can't believe I hiked all the way up here and I can't even see a thing," she said. "I guess I'll probably just turn around now."

"You should keep going," I said. "I'm sure this cloud will move through before you get to the top."

"It's not worth the chance," she said. As I continued down the mountain I could hear her footsteps squishing behind me, until I couldn't hear them any more.

Monster truck'n

Date: Sept. 17
Mileage: ~20
September mileage: 387.3
Temperature upon departure: 49
Rainfall: .75"

Pugsley and I had quite the adventure on Douglas Island today.

We bounded over barnacle-coated boulders, skimmed beaches of soft sand, crushed through mussel shells, squished across fields of seaweed, crossed shin-deep creeks, teetered on rickety bridges, passed crumbling Gold Rush structures, thrashed through the ghosts of old trails, spun up impossibly steep hillsides, and then turned around to do it all again.

I felt like I could go anywhere, climb anything, see everything. Pugsley pressed forward like an army tank with no scruples. I love my Pugsley. It is (sniff, sniff) the perfect bike.

Well, I did notice a few things that make it just a tiny bit less than perfect. It is heavy - quite the beast to hoist on my shoulders, an action rough terrain calls for often. It's also slow (but really, who cares?) And it corners like a bus with a flat tire (but as long as I'm going slow, who cares?)

My shoreline ride was a morning-long expedition that carried me - maybe - four miles from the end of Sandy Beach. But what it lacked in distance, it made up for in pure adventure, the wide-eyed awe of discovering surprising details in a new place.

My initial joy with the effortlessness of plowing over big rocks and floating atop sand quickly tapered when I came to the first big creek. The smoothest crossing looked to be at least waist deep, and could have just as easily been over my head. As I scouted upstream, the water roiled and churned and seemed to create an insurmountable obstacle. But eventually, I came to a waterfall, and above it, something that looked and awful lot like a bridge.

I had to hoist Pugsley up a cliff to reach it. The bridge looked like it hadn't been maintained since the Treadwell area was a bustling gold mining operation. It was too narrow for Pugsley's pedals to slide directly through. As I began to thread the bike through the swaying structure, I wondered if the creek swim wouldn't have been the safer option. But it was too late to turn back now.

Beyond the bridge was something that looked marginally like a trail. I learned the hard way - by falling sideways into a tree - that Pugsley doesn't tackle wet roots any better than any of my other bikes. I started to think about the possibilities with studded 4" tires. That would truly be a bike without barriers.

On the way back to Sandy Beach, I came across some newer infrastructure that didn't seem to lead anywhere. As I stood contemplating this bridge, I heard a loud whoosh and looked up to see a helmet-clad person flying almost directly overhead. I was so startled that it took me a few seconds to realize there was a zip line up there, and these strange bridges were the access trail.

I only skimmed the tip of what there is to explore around here, even in the limited area of south Douglas Island. Pugsley opens up so many possibilities (granted, these are all places I could access on foot, but that's just boring.) I will be back soon; and maybe I can find some lesser bikes to run over and crush while I'm at it.

Gimme a P!

Date: Sept. 16
Mileage: 25.1
September mileage: 367.3
Temperature upon departure: 48
Rainfall: .97"

The wait was nearly unbearable.

The pieces trickled in - an eBay item here, a remnant of an old bike there, all placed in a dark corner of the house as I waited for the big picture to emerge from the black hole of Parcel Post. The weeks passed. The big wheels began to gather dust. The sheen on the steel frame became dull in the waning light of late summer. Over two long months, the elephant in the room started to fade into the wall decorations. Two long months, and I nearly forgot I was harboring the disjointed fragments of the coolest bike ever to grace the shoreline of Southeast Alaska.

Now, the wait is over. The brand new handlebar finally arrived in the mail last week, as did the extra rear disc brake for the front wheel. Geoff finally came home from vacation and added the finishing touches. And suddenly, all those pieces - those obese wheels, those tangled cables, that dusty frame, those rusty old Snaux Bike parts - merged into the beautiful black-and-gray beast you see pictured above.

I will call him Pugsley, and he will be mine, and he will be my Pugsley.

Now all I have left to do is go for a ride.