Pugsley's first taste of snow

Date: Oct. 31
Mileage: 13.2
October mileage: 648.1
Temperature upon departure: 37
Rainfall: .98"
October rainfall: 15.65"

This morning, I dressed to go to the gym. Lower-body weight-lifting day. Ug. I thought I should be grateful for the diversion because the weather outside looked monstrous, as usual. But as I walked outside I noticed, stripped ever so lightly below the low-lying clouds, hints of powder white. That meant the snowline was low! Low enough to cover the Perseverance Trail! I had to go to it, to see it, to remember that there is life beyond relentless rain. But I didn't have much time. I ran inside and threw on a fleece hoodie, my helmet, some neoprene booties over my gym shoes, and my snowboarding gloves. With a cotton gym outfit as a base layer, I knew I wouldn't last long out there. But I didn't need long. I needed fast. And I needed snow.

Pugsley and I set out in light, sprinkling rain, but the lack of fenders had me soaked in about 55 seconds. We burned quickly through the late-morning traffic and up the canyon road, hitting the deserted trail in a splash of puddles and scattered leaves, the snowline now mere feet above us. And then, within minutes, it was below us.

I can't call it Puglsey's first snow ride because an inch of warm slush that melts on contact doesn't quite fit the description. But snow was there, coating the canyon like a thin confection glaze, oozing from the treetops and infusing the air with a sweet, metallic taste. I was filled with anticipation I could hardly mitigate. And like a kid who knows the free reign of her Halloween candy is all too temporary, I just had to go for broke.

I launched into a pedalling frenzy, fueled by a sugar snow rush and propelled by the never-say-die burliness of my monster bike. Despite the slush and ice, I was climbing the canyon better than I ever had, clearing a lot of rocky stretches that I usually don't. It's a strange working relationship that I have with Pugsley - it weighs as much as a downhill bike, and doesn't have the suspension that I'm used to, but the big wheels make me feel like I can do no wrong. They instill a confidence that suspension never could. And we burned, really burned. I was sweating bullets and feeling bulletproof.

I stopped at the top of the canyon to take a picture and finally put on the rain shell I had stuffed in my hoodie pocket. I realized there had been a light breeze at my back the whole way up, and it stabbed through my fleece-and-cotton ensemble as though the clothes were made of water, which, for all practical properties of absorption, they were. I knew I could make it home in 20 minutes at a good clip, which is a short period of time regardless of how poorly dressed one is. But I knew it was going to hurt. And I knew how it was going to hurt. And in the novelty of the tiny, sharp flakes of wet snow swirling around me, I took a sick sort of satisfaction in that knowledge.

The descent was short, wet, muddy, and felt like I was on the verge of being sliced to pieces by a chainsaw made of ice. It was everything I needed. For the first morning in a while, I did not miss the sun.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Choices

Sometimes I wonder about the fundamentals of life. There is food, water, air, shelter; these things are absolute. Then there is human contact, required by all but a few. After that, in deciding what I, as a human, "need," there is a lot of gray area. I have my job, my source of income, which my lifestyle demands I make an effort to keep. But my lifestyle goes way beyond food, water, air and shelter. I have my family, who provides love and support when I need it. But at the same time, I don't feel a strong drive to start a family of my own. What I have left are the optional things I "do:" socializing, reading, writing, studying, and of course, somewhere near the top is the cycling. These things consume enormous amounts of time and I wonder to what end. Certainly they are the choices I've made, but how much do they reflect my needs?

Of course the complexities of human emotions obscure any simple explanation about our needs. If everything a human needed was food, water, air, shelter and human companionship, we would all conduct our lives very differently, and would probably not have evolved into the intelligent but befuddled creatures we are. Some philosophers have hypothesized the humans are motivated by a need for meaning; those who fail to find satisfactory meaning are driven to further extremes. There is a lot of room for religion in this theory. But it also includes the drive of the explorer, who in modern times has few places to go but within.

A couple of autobiographies I have been reading both draw interesting conclusions about the need for exploration in their prologues. As both men prepare to launch into their own amazing tales of misery and triumph, they make simple statements that in essence express a belief that they are not crazy, and they are not brave. They simply did what they had to do. It's not unlike the Buddhist monk who, when asked why he made a walking journey of 3,000 miles by dropping to his knees, hands and face with every step, simply looked away in silence, completely serene.

In "Minus 148," Art Davidson's enthralling account of the first winter ascent of Denali, Davidson writes: "During that summer expedition, Shiro and I caught only a few glimpses of what the McKinley winter would be like, but they were enough to infect us with what many explorers have described as a fever to go back to a region or landscape that has a grip on you. Not really understanding why they go, men have returned to the sea or to deserts, to jungles or to frozen wastes in the Arctic, knowing they will be miserable and frequently in danger."

Gary Paulsen closes his prologue in "Winterdance," his account of the Iditarod Sled Dog Race, by concluding, "I thought any sane man who was in his forties and had a good career going would quit now, would leave the dogs, end it now and go back to the world and sanity. I knew what scared me wasn't the canyon and wasn't the hook hanging by one prong, but the knowledge, the absolute fundamental knowledge that I could not stop, would not stop, would never be able to stop running dogs of my own free will."

It makes one wonder where the line between need and choice truly begins and ends.