South Douglas attempt 2

Date: Oct. 11
Mileage: 14.8
October mileage: 203
Temperature upon departure: 44
Rainfall: .50"

I seem to always pick the absolute wettest times (otherwise known as my weekend mornings) to go out for Pugsley rides. These rides are a barrage of wet from all points in space. The simple fact that it's raining doesn't even register after I've spent a couple of miles on a saturated trail, being bombarded by wet clumps of mud (those 4" tires can kick up some impressively large clumps of mud.) Thoroughly mud-soaked, I then hit the slippery wet rocks of the wet beach and mash my wet pedals up to creek crossing after creek crossing, pedaling up to my ankles, wading up to my knees, sloshing my way through the rising tide. Sometimes I think I should just buy one of those balloon-wheel pedal boats and get it over with.

A pedal boat would have come in handy during today's ride. I'm wise enough now to actually check the tide charts before I go out, but not wise enough to wake up early enough to ride with the 7:30 a.m. low tide. Out the door at 11 a.m., I knew I would probably end up skirting the high tide, scheduled for 1:50. So I decided to go to South Douglas - it's a large beach, I reasoned. Surly it won't be completely inundated, even at high tide.

I'm beginning to learn just how serious these Juneau tides are. They can make the difference between a smooth traverse across a 200-yard-wide gravel beach, or a tight bushwhack through a tangle of alders inches from the water. Today I watched waves gobble up my trail with stunning speed, pushing me closer to the precipitous rock gardens and thick forests that were quickly becoming my only exit route.

But the precariousness of traveling away from civilization as the tide came up didn't become clear until I came to a cliff perched over the channel. The beach below it had become so narrow that my knee brushed against the cold, wet wall as I piloted Pugsley along the lip of the surf. I cycled another half mile down the beach before I finally began to tune into the sarcastic voice of reason ... "You do realize you're going to strand yourself on the wrong side of the island, right? You do remember that the next low tide happens well after dark, don't you?"

By the time I returned to that spot, the thin gravel bar had completely filled in with water. I hoisted Pugsley on my shoulder and stepped into the ocean. I could feel the force of the tide tugging at my ankles as I placed my careful steps, 36-pounds of obese bike cutting into my shoulder blade. The deepest point was up to my shins ... it all happened so amazingly fast ... and I wondered just how high the water was going to rise.

I had to push my bike most of the way back, through a high-line tangle of driftwood and brush and boulders that wasn't rideable even in my wildest Pugsley aspirations. Back to the safety of the trail, I pedaled to Douglas proper and popped out on Sandy Beach. No one was out walking in the driving rain, so I proceeded to ride weaving laps along the half-mile-long strip of sand, back and forth, swerving, tumbling, splashing though the surf and drawing big fat tracks in the sand. I felt like a little kid in a go-cart; at one point I even burst out laughing. I was going absolutely nowhere, and having the best time I'd had all day.

Before I started building up this bike, other Pugsley owners promised me that just riding it would put a smile on my face. Of course I didn't believe them. A bike is a bike, I reasoned. It's not the equipment that makes the ride; it's the places you go with it, the things you see with it. But I'm beginning to change my mind about that. Sometimes it's most fun to just play in the sand.

Anticipating winter

Date: Oct. 10
Mileage: 23.1
October mileage: 188.2
Temperature upon departure: 42
Rainfall: .51"

Before my lung-busting climb and nose-freezing descent of the Eaglecrest road this morning, I noticed several heating oil trucks parked along the North Douglas highway. Homeowners stood outside with gray looks on their faces, watching hundreds of their dollars being pumped away into rusty holding tanks.

This afternoon at work, my boss - who happens to sit in the desk next to mine - decided to set up his full-spectrum therapy light. We’ll both be happily clicking away at our computers until he turns to answer the phone, and suddenly I’m blinded by hundreds of watts of Seasonal-Affective-Disorder-blasting brightness.

Winter is coming. Am I the only one who’s happy about this?

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy the unlimited daylight and marginally warmer temperatures of summer as much as the next person. But winter! Winter with its promise of snow-swept skylines and crisp air and trails frozen to smooth perfection. Winter with its boundaryless bike rides and powder-carving snowboard descents and trail-blazing snowshoe tracks. Winter is coming! How could you be anything be excited?

Of course, winter also is the season of 2 p.m. sunsets and sleet storms and endless days of 35-degrees-and-raining. But summer has mosquitoes and sunburns and seemingly endless days of daylight-induced insomnia. If I had to weigh all of the good and the bad, and was completely honest with myself, there’s a good chance I’d still choose Alaska winters over summers.

I’m beginning to think there might be something wrong with me.

Some people go to sleep at night thinking about tropical shorelines and warm sand and the calm rhythm of the ocean. When I dream, I see frozen expanses of muskeg lined with black spruce that bend and twist like great Gothic sculptures ... an environment just as foreign to me as as a palm tree paradise, and just as quieting. Interior Alaska in the winter.

I look forward to winter. Winter is a time of peace and solitude, of retreat and reflection. At the same time, winter demands constant attention and vigilance. There are times of unexpected hardship that rattle my emotions to their core. Winter forces me to toss introspection aside and focus solely on the necessities of survival. A return to instinct ... something pure.

I crave these cold landscapes and I’m not entirely sure why. Sometimes I wake up from another muskeg dream and I wonder where this obsession comes from. Maybe it’s because there’s meditation in the emptiness. There’s challenge in the extreme. But mostly, there’s beauty in the environment ... places so lonely, you’re certain you must be the first person to ever set foot there; places so quiet, you begin to wonder if maybe the world finally ended, and nobody let you know.

I want this winter to be the best winter yet. I want to travel the Yukon; I want to travel the Tetons; I want to travel the Alaska Range. And if I have to suffer a bunch to make any of it so, all the better ...

Snowline creeping down

Date: Oct. 8
Mileage: 31
October mileage: 155.1
Temperature upon departure: 44
Rainfall: .11"

Today I had a regular session of weight lifting on my schedule. That did not sound appealing when I woke up to the usual view of slate gray stretched across the sky. I gathered up my gym clothes and fired up the coffee maker. As it gurgled, I stood by the window and admired the new snow, accumulating below treeline and creeping a little lower every day. The snowline is almost like a time marker, counting down the days until winter. Juneau weather is nothing if not predictable. Probably one of the few places in the world where the forecast is right 90 percent of the time.

But today, behind a horizon of freshly-fallen snow, I saw something altogether unexpected - a patch of blue sky. As I ate my breakfast, it continued to expand until the sun emerged, casting strips of golden light across the grass. By the time I stood up to change into my gym clothes, the solid slate of gray in the sky had disintegrated into white wisps. I knew it was only a window in the storm, but I didn't want to waste what could almost qualify as a sunny morning staring out of a window. I put on my bike clothes instead.

This is the kind of morning I have to pencil in as an unscheduled "fun day" ... mornings that don't really fit anywhere into my plan; mornings in which I toss away my agenda; mornings in which I exhale with lungs that have breathed too hard, loosen my legs that have pushed too hard, stretch my limbs that have lifted too hard, and just ride.

Isn't this the way it should always be?