Looks like November

Date: Nov. 3
Mileage: 12.1
November mileage: 79.5
Temperature upon departure: 38
Rainfall: .10"

Perseverance Trail, again. I could ride this trail every day of the week, and nearly have this week. I usually avoided this trail in the summer because of the crowds. Hikers on Perseverance tend to be out to lunch - some literally were out to lunch, as in state workers on their midday break; and others simply could not or would not acknowledge me when I screamed "On your left! On your left!" as they staggered up the wide trail.

But as summer disappears, so do the crowds. I do not know where they go. This has always been a great mystery to me. Where do people go in the winter? The town's population doesn't change much. I still see garbage trucks picking up trash and baristas serving oceans of coffee. But everything else - the trails, the bike paths, the beaches, the back roads - seem to go into some kind of stasis. I wonder in passing where the people go. But frankly, I do not care. It means more room for me, and I am greedy greedy greedy when it comes to space. A trail doesn't have to be great for it to be my favorite trail - it just has to be scenic and deserted.

As I become more and more anxious for winter conditions, I wonder if it's really winter I like so much, or just the fleeting luxury of solitude? It must be a little of both, because there's something about following a light dusting of snow up the most popular trail in Juneau to its quiet and peaceful conclusion that's just so ... satisfying.

Good faith effort

Date: Nov. 2
Mileage: 54.2
November mileage: 67.4
Temperature upon departure: 39
Rainfall: .64"

I got a flat tire about six miles from home today. No huge surprise there - Juneau roads are after all approximately 19.76 percent glass. I've had so many flats, in fact, that I started carrying this huge but supposedly efficient bike pump that I never bother to carry, because it weighs approximately 19.76 pounds. Problem is, I never actually tested this pump, nor had I tried to use it. Today was the test run, and I failed miserably.

After about 20 minutes of fidgeting and taking the thing apart, when my fingers became sufficiently numb, I decided that even if this was a working pump, I was not going to figure out how to use it. Across the street were a gas station and the Western Auto Marine store. But I had no Schrader conversion piece for my Presta valves. And no money. Not a cent. I had somehow managed to leave the house with 19.76 articles of spare clothing and no cash.

I clopped in my bikes shoes over to the store, a treacherous journey with those silly LOOK bindings sliding all over the wet pavement, on the off chance that a store called Western Auto Marine sold bike pumps, and that some sympathetic employee might agree to barter my MP3 player for a $15 floor pump. They did sell pumps. Well .. the did sell "a" pump. It looked like it had been sitting there since 1976, seemed to be made of cast iron, and only fit Schrader valves. I felt so lost. There I was, standing in the middle of a store in the middle of town, completely stranded.

I didn't have the courage to ask anyone for so much as a quarter to make a phone call, because I found my situation to be sufficiently humiliating. I could hardly walk even a few steps in my bike shoes, so I grabbed a couple of real estate guides and stuffed them in the bottom of my neoprene booties. Then I put on my extra pair of socks, wedged my feet in, and resigned myself to a six-mile walk home in my sock feet.

Luckily, I live in a small city in Alaska. I hadn't even walked a full block when a crab fisherman named James stopped his truck and asked me if I needed a ride. He took me all the way home. Even though I had wasted more than an hour in the ordeal, I still had enough daylight to (mostly) salvage the ride.

Sufficiently humbled, I grabbed my old pump, an extra spare tube for good measure, and stuffed my pockets full of cash and a credit card (even though I had already decided to ride on North Douglas Island, which has no stores.)

The one blessing of that whole disaster is that it pushed my ride all the way back to sunset. I rode past the glacier beneath the heavily filtered waning light of the afternoon, cast in electric blue hues and framed in gray. I made a U-turn at the dead end and rode up to Eaglecrest, which was absolutely inundated by a downpour of sleet and snow that hadn't quite reached the point of accumulation yet. I felt like I had landed in the midst of an Arctic blast, with sleet so heavy that it actually stung my skin through my coat and stabbed my eyes. I turned around, descended through the rush of Arctic wind and rain that can only be described as cold shock, and returned to the relative calm of sea level. A yawn of blue sky had opened up over the channel, and streams of light from setting sun peeked through just long enough to cast a small rainbow beside the glacier. A fitting end to a strange afternoon.

Warming up to the gym

Date: Nov. 1
Mileage: 13.2
November mileage: 13.2
Temperature upon departure: 42
Rainfall: .58"

I had some time to burn this morning before I had to pick Geoff up from the airport, so I headed up the Perseverance Trail again. The snow was mostly gone, which was not surprising. Driving rain today, and wind, charging north at a steady 25 mph. More of the same tomorrow.

As I'm working on forming a plan for my winter training schedule, I feel like I have to make concessions for the paradox of this common weather: Juneau is just warm enough to be unbearably cold. When the temperature drops below freezing, and precipitation turns to snow, it's much easier to stay warm. When I was a completely uninformed winter cycling novice, I used to pedal around Homer in single-digit temperatures wearing fleece pajama bottoms and three pairs of cotton socks. Totally happy. Now I have a tough time staying warm when the temperature dips below 40, knowing that as long as it stays above 30, I probably never will have a chance to feel warm.

Having tested every piece of gear I own, I know I can stay comfortable while soaking wet in 35-degree weather for about two hours, maybe three if the wind is light. When it comes time to make longer, slower training rides - and I've already blown off a couple - I'm at a bit of a loss. I can't afford expensive new gear that might actually keep me dry (and I have too many doubts to take the gamble). I've actually been scanning the classified ads for used wetsuits. My jokes about riding a bicycle in a single piece of neoprene have crossed over into serious consideration. Then there's my other idea - carrying a complete change of clothes in a dry bag. Or at least some extra layers that I can bulk up with when the barriers start breaking down.

It's an interesting conundrum that I didn't run into much last winter, partially because I lucked out with the weather, and partially because I didn't do many daylong rides. I have more aspirations for longer rides this winter. After stalling last weekend, I was hoping to start the series tomorrow with a simple, four-hour ride. Right now, I can all too easily picture myself blowing it off again, but hopefully I'll make a good-faith effort. Maybe I'll give that dry-bag thing a try.

Sorry to blog yet another weather rant. It truly is, as my co-worker describes it, homicide-inspiring. Geoff came back from Utah today, and I don't think I'll be able to talk him into staying in Alaska if this weather lasts much longer than another week. On the plus side, I am really pleased with the progress I have been making at the gym. I slog through this stuff twice a week, thrice on good weeks, in the back of my mind skeptical that it's working at all. But today I made a bunch of additions to my lower-body weights, with encouraging results. My leg extensions have been by far the most promising. My physical therapist last spring recommended I do these lifts to improve my VMO quad and other knee-supporting muscles. Throughout the summer, I couldn't even lift my legs from a sitting position, once, with no weights, and not feel pain. In late September, I resolved just to wince through the uncomfortable knee crackling and start with a set of 3-5 reps, at 5 pounds. In six weeks, I'm up to three sets of 12 reps with 20 pounds, and no pain. That probably still sounds pretty lightweight, but this is an area of my body that, at least according to my doctor, had atrophied down to nothing as recently as late April. So as far as I'm concerned, I am now Superwoman. Bring on the rain!