Leaving Juneau

Date: Feb. 21
Mileage: 30.1
February mileage: 297.7
Hours: 2:00
Temperature: 40

Head finally (nearly) clear, preparations finally (nearly) complete, I went for one last ride in Juneau. I began to question the wisdom of my (nearly) complete taper, with my legs pumping endless fire into the (nearly) spring air. I wondered if maybe I am too rested, too complacent, too fat and lazy for the daunting day that now is just below the horizon. But today I felt like I had a hundred million miles in my legs, and I rode that feeling effortlessly to the end of the North Douglas Highway.

I stopped on the Mendenhall Lake wetlands to take one last look across the Channel. The valley stretched toward the city, the thin strip of familiarity through a crush of wilderness. I let my eyes drift up to the ice cap and linger on the great unknown beyond. I felt like this would be the last time I would ever see this view of Juneau - not because I am really overdramatic like that, but because I feel like, no matter what, I will return from Anchorage in two weeks as a different version of myself. It seemed like I should say goodbye.

I hope I will be able to post from Anchorage before the race, but just in case I don't have a chance, I wanted to leave the Web sites where information about the race will be posted. It begins at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 24. The best source is here: The Iditarod Trail Invitational Latest News. Someone will post the time and date each racer comes through each checkpoint. There also are sometimes comments about racers' and trail conditions. There will also be a daily report from MTBCast about the race leaders. As I understand it, there will also be updates at Sleepmonsters.com

Thanks again to all who are following along.

Good news!

I just spoke with a truck driver in Anchorage who told me he had my bicycle and was five minutes from Speedway Cycles, the bike shop that was going to give Pugsley a "cold-weather" lube and tuneup. I don't think I'll feel completely at ease until I have the bike in my hands, but knowing it has been found and is on its way to its destination is a big weight off my head.

I want to thank everyone who made some noise and helped mobilize FedEx in my plight. My status as just another person in a crush of delayed packages didn't entitle me to any special treatment, but I really think the response to my desperate situation convinced the company to take some action, and almost definitely made the difference between my package arriving today instead of sometime next week. So thanks to Angela at NPR, my bull-dog mother who spent more than an hour on the phone with a range of different people, my dad who wrote e-mails to the higher ups, and anyone else who weighed in. Also, I wanted to thank Manny in Anchorage and others who commented and offered to help me find alternatives. Understanding I still had options was hugely pacifying when I still felt like I was facing a big unknown.

Also, I forgot the link to this when I was one-track-minding through my Pugsley dilemma, but Jared Eborn with the Deseret News wrote a great piece for my hometown paper in Utah. You can read it here.

Also, my final pre-race interview with NPR, which is mostly devoted to talking about my missing bike. It, too, has a happy ending.

Finding Pugsley

Well, the saga continues. Today I had both my mom (who is much better at wading through the murk of corporate America than I am) and NPR's Bryant Park Project lobbying FedEx on my behalf. They both received a version of the same runaround I was getting yesterday, except for today the customer service people added bad weather as a reason packages didn’t go out earlier. I wanted to tell them that I live in Juneau - if the weather was too bad this week for flying, that must be the case 348 days out of the year. When the radio host told them she was from NPR, the customer service agent reacted by saying, “We don’t respond to threats.”

I dropped back into the Juneau office again later this morning to play their own weather argument against them - if the bike’s still in Juneau, I said, I want it back. The woman at the desk made a call, chatted for a bit and then said to the person she was speaking with, “Yeah, that’s probably her. I probably have her right here.” Then she cupped her hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Are you the woman with the bicycle?” I nodded. I already had my tirade mapped out. I was ready to unleash when she got off the phone and said, “There’s really nothing we can do. We don’t know exactly where your package is. But if it went out Monday as you said, it really should be scanned into the Anchorage system by Friday.” Maybe FedEx is a good shipping company. I don’t know. Their customer service is sure terrible.

I’d like to believe Pugsley will be in Anchorage by Friday, but I have no real reason to optimistic about that. The package is literally off the radar, and probably has been since the moment I dropped it off. I am not without options, however. There is a bike shop in Anchorage that actually offers race-ready Pugsley rentals, at a special Ultrasport price that is nearly half what I spent on my own Pugsley in the first place (and these bikes may or may not be available this close to the event.) There also appears to be some benevolent souls in the core Anchorage winter cycling group that may be willing to lend me a bicycle. I don’t have a definite replacement lined up yet, but I am at least a few steps on the optimistic side of just going out and buying a pair of snowshoes and a sled. Either way, I’m showing up at this race. I am not going to let FedEx be the challenge that beats me.

I spent a lot of emotional currency on this problem yesterday, and felt a bit guilty about indulging my stress to such an extreme. After all, unexpected and even potentially catastrophic hiccups are just part of running the Iditarod. At the same time, if I have no bicycle, I have no race. So why should I conserve my emotional state? But working through all that negativity and panic and outright despondence has actually been cathartic. It has helped me clear my head of other building stresses and look more clearly into the big picture. This morning, I was trying on a new pair of socks that finally arrived yesterday, two weeks late (via UPS), which I let sit in their unopened package all day because, “If I don’t even have a race, why do I need socks?” But as I pulled on the warm wool socks this morning, I felt this rush of confidence. “Finally,” I thought, “My armor is complete.” I’m ready to go to battle. Steed or no steed. Firm trail or soft trail. Come what may.