Feels hot out

Date: Dec. 1
Mileage: 20.5
Hours: 1:45
December mileage: 20.5
Temperature upon departure: 22

This seems to happen every time an Arctic blast moves through Juneau. The clouds completely fizzle from the sky. The temperatures drop 20 to 30 degrees. I don't change a thing about the way I dress to go cycling, and I yet feel like I'm frying.

There's just no real substitute for damp chill, try as the dry cold might. As far as layering goes, I'd have to say the amount of clothing I need for for 20 degrees and sunny is more similar to what I'd wear if it were 45 and raining. Who knows what kind of cold 35 degrees and raining mimics? I think it's fair to say it's down in the brrr zone. I've had to strip off layers while I'm riding just to avoid overheating in this cold snap. Then again, during normal weather I always dress as though I'm planning to get drenched, because I always do. But there's just no substitute for the dry cold. I'm loving it.

Today's ride was a little rough around the edges, though. For the first time in a while, I never found my groove. I actually cut the ride five miles short, because I began to feel those familiar sharp knee pangs. This time, the pain was in my left knee, which is my good knee and has never given me problems before (those sharp pangs still flare up in my right knee from time to time.) It's probably nothing, but I've been uber-paranoid about both my knees, since they are my weakest link and the most likely obstacle between me and the starting line of the Ultrasport. There's a chance that this paranoia has me babying my bad knee to the detriment of the good one, and now it's showing symptoms of what my doctor expertly refers to as "angry knee." Whatever the problem, it's a good reason to take a day or two off the bike and wrestle my snowshoes out of the closet. Cross-training: Good. Repetitive motion disorder: Bad.

The weather forecast for Sunday and Monday has me excited in a way only those crazies training for winter survival races can be excited. As the Arctic front moves through, forecasters predict increasing winds in the 30-40 mph range, possibly gusting to 60. Couple this with lows between -2 and 5 degrees, and we're facing 30-below-0 windchills. I'm trying to talk Geoff into camping with me tomorrow night. Because of our equipment and travel disparities, the only way for us to go together is to both walk and carry backpacks. We both agree that camping out in the yard doesn't make much sense, since: 1.) We live in an almost entirely wind-protected area. 2.) Going from a warm house straight to bed doesn't really simulate trail conditions, and 3.) It makes it too easy to give up at the first sign of any discomfort. Plus, it's just not as much fun. We're thinking about climbing up to elevation just above our house, a place where we can face the full brunt of that madness but retreat quickly enough if things start to go badly. I don't come home from work until 10:30 p.m., so we see how well we make that a reality.

Two beautiful days

Date: Nov. 29 and 30
Mileage: 21.2 and 80.4
Hours: 2:15 and 6:15
November mileage: 793
Temperature upon departure: 28 and 25
November rainfall: 3.94"

This is one of those posts in which I tried to decide on a favorite picture, but couldn't do it, so I'm just going to post seven. It was two days of regular rides with spectacular scenery.

On Thursday, I rode the trails out in the Mendenhall Valley. It was a bit of a "recovery" ride. That is, recovery from my failed camping attempt. Despite being really glad to have met Rebecca (who is amazingly nice, I agree, and who has invited me to come visit her again in the near future), I am a little bummed about missing out on the camping experience. The next time I try, (hopefully this weekend) there are likely to be windchills near 25 below, so I will not be able to venture too far from my house (can't pass up a chance to experience temperatures that low when they happen, although it will probably be rather brutal for a first-time try, and I don't want to take any big risks.)

So my trail ride was a recovery ride in the psychological sense. It was everything I needed. The weather was perfect, just perfect, and the trails, though still devoid of snow, were frozen to a hard sheen. Mountain biking does not get better than this in the place where I live. It really doesn't.

I stopped for 20 minutes to just sit on the beach and watch the alpenglow move across the Mendenhall Glacier as the sun set.

Today I had hoped to do a longer ride, but I slept and slept the morning away, and it was 11 a.m. before I got out the door. In a place where darkness descends just after 3 p.m., it was a terrible waste of sunlight. All my good training intentions had me hoping to increase my long rides by 30 minutes to an hour each weekend. But between the temptation to sleep in and my evening plans, I've had a hard time carving out cycling windows longer than six hours. I'm still making encouraging progress, though. The six-hour rides feel easier each week.

Herbert Glacier. This is view I was hoping to wake up to Thursday morning. Instead I was out there near sunset today, making frosty figure-8s on the frozen mudflats. The mountains were bathed in yellow light. So much beauty.

How can I ride my bicycle so much and continue to be so awestruck by the experience? It's a mystery to me, and one I don't plan to solve anytime soon. Sometimes, when I am having a good day, I remember a thought that occurred to me way back in 2001, as I was swimming across a lake in eastern Texas. Geoff and I were criss-crossing the country in my Geo Prism, held by necessity to a budget of less than $100 per week. He was in the woods cooking green beans and cream of mushroom soup for dinner. I hadn't bathed in days and was sitting on the shoreline when a random flash of inspiration convinced me to strip to my skivvies and jump in. The cold water chewed at my capillaries until my skin went numb. But there was something very real in the feeling, and when I looked to the other shoreline, I knew I could make it there. I just knew it, like it had already happened. I swam toward the open water without fear, nearly blind against bright hues of red and gold shimmering on the lake's surface. At one point I rolled over on my back and gasped at the nuclear sunset stretched across the horizon, like a ceiling splattered violently with a million cans of paint. I didn't even have enough money to see a movie, but in that moment, the entire sky belonged only to me. And I thought, right there, that I would never find another moment in my adult life that would make me feel so free.

But I keep re-discovering that moment, everywhere.

I've been really lucky to be a witness to a lot of beauty and goodness in this world, and for that I am grateful, every day.

Flat disaster

Date: Nov. 28
Mileage: 29.1
Hours: 2:30
November mileage: 691.4
Temperature upon departure: 30
Rainfall: 0

Well, I'm back from my camping experience, sans camping experience. I was feeling a bit despondent last night about the way in which I failed, failed before the cold settled in, failed before the darkness tightened its grip, failed before the lonliness gnawed at my sanity, failed before I had to gather water or eat food or even pull my sleeping bag out of its stuff sack. I failed. But it's a pretty funny story. Here's what happened.

I set out into the darkness with the evening rush hour traffic, swaddled in my best cold-weather clothing and hoisting what I estimate to be about 55 pounds of obese bicycle, food, water and winter camping gear. I was styling. A commuter passed me as I was climbing a short hill on the bike path, and then looked back as if to inquire whether I was going to give him chase. Excuse me? You try commuting with the necessities of life.

But the night settled in clear and cold, quickly dropping into the 20s, and I felt amazingly good. Better than good. I felt fresh and strong, like I had to hold myself back just because I didn't know what hardships lay ahead. All that energy conservation left me as relaxed as if I was at home sitting on the couch, and I was toasty and happy, a bit overdressed as I was. It seemed like no time at all had gone by, though it had in reality been about two and a half hours, when I felt that mood-plunging bouncing in my rear tire. Flat.

I pulled off to the side of the road and began to undo my set-up, pulling out the repair gear that I really didn't think I'd have to use. I had never bothered to practice changing a tire on the Pugsley (I know, not smart.) After wrestling with the wheel for about 10 minutes I finally just unbolted the caliper of the rear disc brake. I learned later that I have no choice but to do this anyway (curse you, Surly, and your horizontal dropouts!)

Tire off, I realized that the tube had snapped at the valve, a circular, unfixable hole (probably caused because I inflated the tires to full pressure before I left, after running them 15-20 psi for the past several rides, they were then up to the maximum 30.) So my Surly tube was history. I went to work installing my spare, which is a regular mountain bike tube, rated for tires 2.1"-2.5" (Endomorph tires are size 3.7") But I'd heard this works fine from credible sources. So I set it in place, took out my tiny hand pump, and pumped. And pumped and pumped and pumped and pumped and pumped. Fifteen minutes went by like this. I took breaks to rest my arms. I felt my fingers slowly losing circulation, estimating it was about 20 degrees out by now, and I had been trying to fix a flat with my bare hands for 45 minutes. One car went by in that entire time. They stopped to ask if I needed help. I said no.

So I pumped and pumped and pumped. And progress was being made. I was beginning to feel much more positive. Then everything deflated very quickly, literally. As the gush of air poured out of the valve, I screamed. No! No! No! No! All my hard work, torn asunder. I tore off the tire and squinted at the tube in the low light of my headlamp. A circular tear at the valve. I had managed to do the exact same thing. Two unfixable flats. No more spare tubes. (Geoff and I have probed the valve area extensively. We are still unable to figure out what made that happen twice.)

I began to assess my situation. I had a flat tire I could not fix, which meant I could not ride. But I was only two or three miles from my camping destination, and I could walk there if I needed to. But then I would only be stranding myself into the next day, when Geoff would be at work. I was out in the boonies. I had been out there one hour. I had seen one car go by.

As I mourned my bad luck and stupidity and everything else that left me in the bind I was in, another car went by, and kept going. Not a huge surprise. I don't expect everyone to stop. I got up and began to put my bike back together. I had seen a spattering of cabins along this road, and figured if I walked toward town, I would not have to walk more than five miles before finding someone who would let me use their phone. Just as I was doing this, a car approached me. It was the one that had passed me five minutes earlier. A woman stopped. "Do you need help?" she said. I asked her if she had a cell phone. "There's no reception out here," she said. "But I live a half mile down the road. You can come use my phone. I'll make you some tea."

By the time I arrived at her house, she had already brewed up some wicked good Chai, called Geoff, who was not home, and left a message explaining my predicament and whereabouts. We talked for a while. Her name was Rebecca and she once lived in Fairbanks, and now lived in a cabin with her husband on the outskirts of the Juneau Borough. Her husband was in Anchorage. She had rented a movie to pass the cold night away, "Hairspray," and asked if I wanted to watch it with her. I did.

We laughed and giggled at the silly movie like girlfriends, sipping our tea and making jokes. I found out she once toured cross-country on a bicycle, and she did a fair amount of skiing in Fairbanks, and she told me, before I set out on the Iditarod trail, that I really need to read "To Build A Fire." I also need to learn how to change a flat, I remarked.

Geoff arrived shortly after the movie ended. His timing was perfect. I thanked Rebecca for her unconditional generosity and we set out into the cold night. The night was still not without its casualties. I had torn two tubes, broken the mount to my headlight, lost one of the bolts to my brake caliper, accidentally left my sleeping bag at Rebecca's house, and managed to completely wreck my first winter camping bicycle experience before it even started. But when all was said and done, it wasn't a bad night. I walked out of it laughing. And I will try again. Oh yes, I will try again. And when I do, I will be one flat experience wiser.