Hints of Christmas

Date: Dec. 23 and 24
Mileage: 30.2 and 25.1
Hours: 2:30 and 1:40
December mileage: 553.0
Temperature upon departure: 39 and 34
Rainfall: .11"

This is the third year in a row that I haven't been home for the holidays. Instead, I work right through them ... Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Years Eve, New Years Day, all that time lingering among the ghost crew at the office while the people with priorities, the people with families, disappear into warm-looking homes. Geoff and I don't make a big deal out of Christmas (we don't even exchange gifts), and the rest of my Alaska family is comprised of two cats who only understand that this is a dark and foreboding time of year. Our good friends, who are Jewish, took pity on us and organized a potluck tonight. We will be joining a few other holiday orphans for a Christmas Eve dinner of mac 'n cheese, salad, and if I am lucky, some kind of fudge.

My lifestyle has evolved such that Christmas sneaks up very quietly, hiccups quickly, and flutters away. So it wasn't surprising when nothing felt very "Christmassy" when I headed out into the gray predawn or my morning ride. Even the decorative icicle lights, which my landlords last year left glowing until June, hung dark against the house. The weather has warmed up again, and has otherwise been very windy and fairly dry. It makes for less than exciting biking, definitely not the kind that feels like Christmas biking, and I had to push hard to log a few decent miles before I had to be at work.

As my studded tires clacked on the wet pavement and my quads began to burn, I thought about Dec. 24. Right about now, I thought, my entire immediate family is probably gathering at an overcrowded movie theater for a holiday matinee, probably a feel-good PG film, or maybe that Fred Claus debacle. If I were there with them, I would be able to wrap up the Marmot rain jacket I bought for my dad rather than hoping the U.S. Postal Service actually delivers it in time. "Next time we go hiking in the Grand Canyon," I'd say, "you won't get soaked." Then there would be dinner - probably a half dozen of those baby chickens my mom likes to call Cornish Game Hens, and ribbon jello, and sweet spinach salad. We would watch "A Christmas Story" and eat peanut butter balls until our eyes started rolling toward the back of our heads, and then we would move on to hot-fudge sundaes. There would be a suburban tour of Christmas lights in there somewhere, and new pajamas, and the quiet hustle of parents with three grown children and no grandchildren, perpetuating the ritual of Santa Claus.

As I tilt my head back and imagine Christmas Eve, I can hear the roar of a truck barrelling through the slush behind me. I'm way over in the shoulder but I pull over even further, and I can tell this guy's still right on top of me. I turn to him just the truck passes me. It's all but straddling the white line, and in the face-soaking spray of sludge coming off the wheels I hear the driver yell out his open passenger-side window, "Merry Christmas!"

Merry Christmas to you too, buddy.

Toward the light

Well, the winter solstice has come and gone. The days are growing longer now. For the first time in months, we have physical evidence that summer will in fact return again, someday. Alaskans always seem a bit more reflective this time of year. It may have to do with the calendar turning over yet another notch, or the stress-fueled holiday season nearing its climax, but I think a lot of this reflection has to do with the irresistible pull of darkness that draws us inward. I even uploaded the music mix I made specifically for the 2007 Susitna 100 to my iPod, filled with several songs I haven't listened to since. Music never fails to evoke vivid images, and today I found myself so swept up in a mindscape of spindly spruce and snowy expanses that I actually startled myself when I snapped back to the image of my reflection clutching a 15-pound barbell in the gym's mirror. These "race" memories are so valuable to me. I feel like no matter how I perceive my accomplishments of the past, or what I hope to achieve in the future, nothing can rob me of the beauty I've seen. And in my own contrived sense of cause and effect, the promise of beauty is the reason I spend time counting biceps curls in a stuffy gym.

I spent the past two days off the bike. On Friday, I took the day completely off, and today I put in two hours at the gym. I hadn't planned on a full rest day Friday, but I managed to jackhammer myself into a porous mush during my ride on Thursday. I woke up the next morning zapped of energy, sore in all sorts of new places, with a throbbing left knee. The pain in my "good" knee was the major reason for taking the day off, but I can't deny that I felt almost entirely spent. The jump from single-day to multiday endurance events is a big one, and I haven't completely spanned it even now, two months before the Ultrasport. But I feel confident that my slow build will pay off, hopefully just in time to burn the dim lamp for as many days as it takes. The rest day paid off, too, with a full recovery that had me feeling great today, almost excited to slog off to the gym to read decade-old magazines and pump some iron.

I thought I'd show my parents what they gave me for Christmas: An pair of "All Degree" Raichle mountaineering boots. I excavated these from the bargain basement of Sierra Trading Post and levied a coupon I had in my inbox to snag them for dimes on the dollar. I realize they may be overkill, but it was hard to let them float by when I was in the market for a new pair of boots anyway, and these happened to be the perfect size I was looking for (about two sizes too large). Now not only do I have a new pair of winter boots for not a whole lot more money than I had budgeted, but I won't have to buy a new pair of overboots, because I think my old, noninsulated ones will hold up fine with these monsters beneath them. All Degree! Thanks Mom and Dad!

I think after I finish riding the Iditarod I should learn how to climb big mountains. I nearly have the right gear to try mountaineering. All I'd need are crampons, and an ice ax, and a four-season tent, and rope, and beeners, and a harness, and a helmet, and one of those lightning rods that keep a person from falling in crevasses and ... hmm ... come to think of it, maybe I'll just stick with cycling.

Nine hours in photos

Date: Dec. 20
Mileage: 68.4
Hours: 9:00
December mileage: 507.7
Temperature upon departure: 19
Snowfall: 2"

So I hijacked the one-hour-one-photo idea again, because it can be difficult to come out of a nine-hour ride and write anything intelligent about it. Especially a ride like today's. It was relentless. Lots of trail riding on foot-packed (or unpacked) singletrack, lots of climbing and technical descents, lots of fighting loose powder and tweaking all the muscles I've failed to build. The kind of ride that makes you earn every single inch. Snow fell for most of the day. They recorded two inches near my house, but six or more fell out in the Valley, where I spent most of the day. This was probably the toughest single "non-race" ride I've done this year, and I include in that assessment any segment of my 48-hour, 370-mile trek around the Golden Circle. 68 miles in nine hours. This is my reality.

8 a.m., West Juneau. Hitting the road before dawn. Today was the day before the shortest day of the year.

9 a.m., Sandy Beach. I did a few laps around the trails to warm up for all the snow I hoped to plow over today. Sunrise's failure to make an appearance was a disappointment. I realized the day would end up toward the stormy side of the forecast.

10 a.m., Perseverance Trail. Climbing 20-degree pitches over peoples' footprints really helped this trail live up to its name. I hoped to go all the way to the end, but about halfway up I hit this massive landslide that completely blocks the trail. I scouted for a bit out of curiosity and could find no way around it, and it doesn't look like anyone has tried. Seems like a small disaster for the most popular trail in town.

11 a.m., Salmon Creek. Another tough climb. I'm already beginning to feel it, and the day isn't even half over.

Noon, Mendenhall Lake. I sought refuge beneath an iceberg to eat my lunch. Snow was coming down hard. The lake was a fun place to ride ... about eight inches of unpacked powder over a smooth-as-glass surface. It put up a lot of resistance without being too technical. I did a few laps but didn't make any tight turns. No studs. Oh yeah.

1 p.m., West Glacier Trail. I only saw a single set of footprints in the snow that weren't mine. There were a lot of low-lying branches that kept whipping the top of my helmet, and one actually pulled me off my bike. It was crash one of three today.

2 p.m., Dredge Lake. Lots of fun riding through here. It looks like a different place beneath snow ... more closed in and tighter, like an ice maze. I began to feel like the clueless mouse trying to escape. Crash two of three came when I failed to properly negotiate a minefield of clumpy ice hidden beneath the snow.

3 p.m., Montana Creek. My fatigue really started to set in and I was maneuvering terribly at this point. The trail is as wide as a road - in fact, it is a road that's closed to full-sized vehicles. And I was all over it, fishtailing and swerving and jumping the faint canyons created by snowmobile skis. It was a mess. After crash number three, washing out my rear tire, I decided I should probably spend the rest of the ride on roads and bike paths. As it was, with six inches of new snow and a bit of sand in the shoulders, even the pavement riding was strenuous and slippery.

4 p.m., somewhere in the Mendenhall Valley with my genius water system. So I mentioned yesterday that I wasn't going to carry a Camelbak. I got a new nozzle to replace the one I lost. Unlike the old one, this nozzle doesn't freeze too quickly ... but only because it leaks so much water, which then freezes like armor across any clothing it soaks. So today I filled up three water bottles and stuck one inside my coat and two in my handlebar poggies (the warmest places I could think of), figuring that if my water froze, I'd never be that far from a source (given that I was spending the whole day covering the meager winter trail system of Juneau proper.) The handlebar water stayed as toasty as my fingers ... I swear it was almost warm when I went to drink it after eight hours. The water inside my coat froze to slurpee-like consistency and the nozzle froze shut. I realize that while poggie water works wonderfully at 20 degrees, it's probably less wonderful at minus 20. I do still plan to get this Camelbak thing figured out.

6 p.m., El Sombraro. I forgot to take a 5 p.m. picture, so instead I'm ending with my friend Brian's 47th birthday bash at a Mexican restaurant. I gorged on beans, rice and a huge burrito and as well as most of Brian's birthday dessert. It pays to sit next to the birthday boy. Happy Birthday, Brian!