Anxiety

Date: Jan. 8
Mileage: 12.1
January mileage: 142.0
Temperature upon departure: 30
Precipitation: 0"

I was worried this feeling would begin to set in, after the New Year came and went and February crept ever closer - a fluttering anxiety punctuated by increasingly more frequent shots of dread. My once-abstract fears are developing a voice. And that voice says, “Dang ... you’re really going through with this, aren’t you?”

As Geoff and I work out more of the little details associated with the Iditarod Trail Invitational, our focus is beginning to zoom out on the big picture. And the big picture is, well, very, very big. I miss the days when I could just think solely about the physical prospect of riding 350 miles on snow. Or the psychological prospect of pushing a bike through fresh powder, in the darkness, in a blizzard. Or the physiological prospect of staying warm over a whole lot of subzero hours. Or the educational prospect of route-finding in a wilderness I’ve never before set foot in. Or the intellectual prospect of planning the exact food I’ll need to eat and the exact clothing I’ll need to wear without missing a beat. Now I’m beginning to think about all these things, all the time. I believe Geoff is beginning to feel overwhelmed as well. After we came home from camping on Saturday, he plopped down on the couch and said, “You know, when you really think about it, the Ultrasport is really scary, and basically impossible.”

I get the feeling that during the next six weeks, my mind is going to be all over the place - I mean more so than usual - as I meander through the remaining details while trying not to drown in the big picture. This anxiety seems to be both a good and bad thing. Yesterday, while I was down with a cold, I became consumed with fears about getting lost. So I spent my free time learning what I could about my GPS, looking at maps, mulling electronic maps, and finally ordering one. It became a productive "rest" day. Today I felt better, so I set out for a Dan Moller Trail hike-a-bike. The point of this workout is to build up my “pushing” muscles on the 2,000-foot climb and improve my “handling” skills on the screaming descent. The downhill is usually a reward after what is essentially a tedious hike. But I somehow failed to leech much enjoyment in today’s bumpy ride, lost as I was in the landscape of my mind. Even now, I try to remember this morning and only see images of Rainy Pass the way I envision it: ice-hardened, windswept and devoid of any discernable trail.

I keep telling myself that I’d probably be crazy if I wasn’t afraid, and that I’m going to conquer this race by doing the same thing I’ve been doing all along: Taking it mile by mile by mile, one baby step at a time. But I'm beginning to realize that the first step may be the hardest.

Living outside

Date: Jan. 4
Mileage: 54.2
January mileage: 129.9
Temperature upon departure: 24
Precipitation: 0"

I was burrowed deep in my billowing down cocoon when I awoke, again, in a fit of gasping. I groped among piles of discarded clothing layers for my soggy snot rag and blew my nose until the pressure in my sinuses diffused to a low boil. I shook my head violently, hoping in vain the gunk could somehow exit through my ears. Frost flakes rained from the top of the bivy and stung my cheeks. I knew this head cold had been idling for two days, but it had to pick tonight to steamroll through. I gasped some more and tore open the bivy, gulping for oxygen in the cold air.

Above me, Mars still burned orange among a splattering of stars, but a hazy white gauze had stretched over the sky. "Oh man, it's clouding up," I thought. It was the third time that night I had woken up unable to breathe. I decided it was probably worth it to leave my toasty burrow on a faint hope that Dayquil pills had made it into my rapidly expanding portable pharmacy.

As I slithered out of the sleeping bag, I noticed the white lines across the sky were flexing and retreating with considerable velocity. "Strange thing for clouds to do," I thought. But as I stood up and looked around, I saw waves of bright green light flowing over the snowcapped peaks to the north. The white clouds weren't clouds at all, but south-reaching streaks of the Northern Lights. Having momentarily forgotten about the explosion building in my head, I stood in my sock feet and booties in the snow and watched the white flares streak across the sky. Even the frigid wind needling my naked fingers couldn't tear me away from my slack-jawed stance beneath those horizon-caressing fingers of light.

I had set out with my loaded bicycle at 2:30 p.m. Friday, just before sunset, knowing that I would probably not set foot indoors again for nearly 24 hours. The street shoulders were coated in a terrifying layer of glare ice, and I kept the tire pressure low just to regain some sense of control. My momentum slowed to a crawl, but I didn't care. It's strange how speed stops mattering once time has no meaning.

A few near wipeouts had me grateful to hit snow, even crusty snow, and I spent as much time on trails as I could before heading out the road to meet Geoff at our predesignated camping destination. The trail to Herbert Glacier was rideable in a bad way ... a deep ski track barely wider than my tires that had been punched out by footprints. I took a few arm-smashing falls before I decided those four miles to camp would be a good time to test the walking comfort of my boots. I slogged through knee-deep snow as my bike rolled happily on the trail alongside.

I still beat Geoff to camp and set to gathering wood for the great fire I was planning to build, knowing that all the exposed dead wood had soaked up several days of rain before refreezing. I then exhausted all the newspaper I brought for firebuilding purposes, plus all the notepaper I had planned to write on, plus the French and German sections of the directions to my stove, and never even coaxed a tiny twig to catch fire. Geoff arrived shortly after I had given up and exhausted his own paper supply in the effort. In the end, we resorted to pouring liquid fuel all over a bunch of spruce bows. Even that didn't work, but I did enjoy a split second of warmth when I lit the fuel-soaked needles and jumped away from the resulting fireball.

We finally gave up on the whole campfire idea and fired up the stove to melt snow for water and hot chocolate. I have yet to receive my new Camelback in the mail, and my old leaky one had long since frozen. I didn't realize how thirsty I had become until I gulped down the still-slushy water from my cooking pot like a famished refugee. A chill was starting to set in as Geoff and I stood by our non-flammable stack of twigs swigging hot chocolate. His thermometer read 10 degrees.

By the time we went to bed, I had been mostly idle at camp for more than three hours. I was pleased by how warm I stayed, given that I was dressed to ride a bicycle in temperatures that started out in the mid-2os. It wasn't until I laid down that I realized how much my cold had progressed. I whittled away most of the restless night consoling myself by chanting "At least I'm still warm. At least I'm still warm." But seeing the Northern Lights was a nice treat.

I spent 45 minutes this morning cuddling with my Camelbak bladder until I finally was able to coax some of the water through the ice-glazed hose. Even then, it froze on me again less than five minutes after I crawled out of bed, so I resorted to pouring its slushy contents into my cooking pot so I'd have something to drink. I had planned to ride all the way home, but my throat was on fire and I was feeling more than a little thrashed. Geoff and I stumbled back to the trailhead and I caught a ride home with him. Geoff told me he felt surprisingly tired after a mild 4.5-mile run. "That's the thing about winter camping," I said. "Keeping warm when you're inactive almost feels like more work than staying active." Even though we didn't struggle with the effort, we never really felt like we could just kick back and relax, either. And the fact is 10 degrees above 0 would be a warm night on the Iditarod Trail.

"All the better reason to keep moving," Geoff said.

Packing

Date: Jan. 3
Mileage: 25.1
Hours: 2:00 (plus two hours at the gym)
January mileage: 75.7
Temperature upon departure: 35
Precipitation: .33"

I've been packing up for another daylong cycling/camping adventure. Before I started having knee pain, my plan was to spend these first few days of January pressing into the Yukon for two nights of "out in the weather" living. But injury worries prompted me to postpone the trip. So instead I decided to head out locally for one night, and still managed to put that task off until Friday. Tomorrow should be a good day for it. Colder and dry. Weather in the 20s around here is actually warmer than most weather in the 30s, because the potential to get wet and stay wet is much lower. So I am looking forward to traveling in comfort.

Sometime soon I will have to write a gear post about the stuff I am planning (at that point, at least) to use in the Ultrasport. I got a big box of stuff earlier this week and today ordered what I hope will be my last box of stuff. Just a few odds and ends ... a Thermarest, to match the one that Geoff owns that I always use; a fuel bottle; a 6-liter MSR bladder to fill as I see fit; a Camelbak "stowaway" bladder that I hope will actually stow away water rather than leak it all over me; and goggles, because the $25 pair that I bought at Solitude ski resort in 1998 just aren't cutting it anymore.

My last big box came while my friends Craig and Amity were in town for the New Year holiday. They watched bemused as I ripped through the heavily taped cardboard like a 6-year-old on Christmas morning. I squealed over my new winter boots ("Waterproof! Coldproof!") and modeled my baby-blue polyester long underwear complete with baby blue balaclava and my old crappy goggles ("You look like a scuba diver.") Craig especially thought the whole scene was funny because he has known me since 1998 and remembers when my entire outdoor gear repertoire amounted to a pair of crappy ski goggles and a few cotton hoodies.

"You've come a long way since we hiked Upper Black Box," he said. "Ice water up to our chins, and you were wearing blue jeans and a pair of Vans."

"Sketchers," I corrected him. "But that was back when they made them with 3-inch soles. Also, the only pack I carried was the top of my overnight backpack, cinched around my waist. And the only food I had was a jar of peanut butter and a baggie of crackers, both of which were filled to the brim with San Rafael River water before mile 3."

"Yeah," he said, eyeing my Arctic expedition boots warily. "What in the world happened to you?"

I shrugged. "Oh, to be young and completely underprepared again," I said, and caressed my new down coat with the genuine appreciation of someone who knows what it means to slog through a 12-hour river hike with a pair of Sketchers and giardia-laced peanut butter.

Today's ride was fairly uneventful, but I saw my friends the sea lions again. I was disappointed to see that they probably didn't remember me as they bobbed and flapped and swam away.