My bicycle history

Date: March 13 and 14
Mileage: 22.5 and 31.5
March mileage: 102.5
Temperature: 37 and 35

I dragged out my road bike today - first ride of the year. With an inch of new snow on the ground and temperatures in the mid-30s, it was a risky move. But after taking Pugsley to a few nearby trails yesterday and finding nothing but slush and mud, even a potentially icy road seemed more appealing.

As I hoisted the bicycle out of the basement and up two flights of stairs, I couldn't believe how light it felt. The reality of my road bike is it weighs about 25 or 26 pounds; it is unforgivably heavy for a road bike. But after five months on my fat bikes, it felt like a featherweight. I clipped into my pedals - so strange to feel so trapped. I coasted down the road, hitting 10 mph without even pedaling. When I finally fired my war-worn muscles into the effort, I shot up to 16 mph, 17, 18 ... By the time I crested the hill out of Douglas, spinning hard but well below a dead sprint, I moved beyond 20 mph - speeds my Pugsley rarely sees even on a solid downhill. I can understand why people get so fired up about road biking. It's a good workout, and it's so darn easy.

But today as I pedaled along and thought about the reality of trying to use my road bike for anything serious - say, a 400-mile highway race - it became more and more apparent that I'm not completely happy with my set-up. I'm not surprised. I've had this bike since 2004, and it's been amazingly versatile and reliable for what it is. But it is what it is - a four-year-old, $599 retail, flat-bar "light touring" Ibex Corrida. And I fear I may have outgrown it.

Yesterday an anonymous commenter, probably one of my former roommates in Salt Lake City (Curt?) pointed out how far I've come since my bicycle beginnings, in 2002, when my cycling outings consisted of "tenuously pedaling along through the Avenues, periodically falling over for lack of any sustained biking ability." It's completely true. Six years ago this spring, Geoff and I decided we wanted to prepare for a two-week bicycle tour of Southern Utah. I had only ridden a bicycle a handful of times in the past decade. I borrowed Geoff's rigid mountain bike, which he admitted was probably worth about $20. I had to have him show me how to shift the gears and work the brakes. I had to have him expain to me what the gear shifting accomplished. I felt so wobbly and uncertain on his bike that I would occasionally tip over, on city streets, for no reason. If one of the tires went flat, I would walk to the nearest phone for a rescue call or appeal to passing cyclists to bail me out. Every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday throughout the summer of 2002, I would head out after work to try and gain more cycling experience ahead of our fall bike tour. I refused to let my roommates call it training. I called it "practicing."

As we neared our planned tour, I decided it was time to buy my own bicycle. I purchased from eBay a 2002 Ibex Corrida and paid $300. I considered that a fortune. After the bike came in the mail, I somehow managed to put it together myself, with the exception of somehow getting the derailleur caught in the spokes. Ibex sent me a new derailleur. I went on to put nearly 8,000 miles on that bike, including a 3,200-mile tour across America, before I traded up for a newer model of the same bike in 2004. I realized that since 2002, I have purchased a new bicycle every year. The progression fits in nicely with my growth as a cyclist:

2003: Geoff talks me into purchasing a mountain bike, so I grudgingly peruse eBay and pay $250 for a Trek 6500. The first ride we do is a winter ride on the singletrack of Stansbury Island - steep, exposed and covered in patches of ice. The ride hardens my convictions that I do, in fact, hate mountain biking. This bike would have remained mostly unused throughout my ownership of it had I not dragged it up to Alaska during my road trip in summer 2003, where I rode it to transport myself around towns and train for my upcoming cross-country bicycle tour.

2004: Through my first blog, Ibex catches wind of my big bike trip and my potential to write semi-decent ad copy. The company offers to upgrade my now-well-worn Corrida in exchange for updating their Web site. I spend 60 to 70 hours on the project, and in the end have to revise and rewrite most of it. But a 2004 Ibex Corrida shows up at my door as promised. My friends tease me for getting a "free" bike. The first ride I take it on is the Salt Lake Century.

2005: My $250 Trek 6500 is by now falling apart, but I'm still convinced I'm not a mountain biker. Still, Geoff has strong powers of purchasing persuasion and finds a great eBay deal for me on a women's specific Gary Fisher Sugar. "You'll ride so much better with full suspension," he tells me. I grudgingly shell out $800 for the bike, which I find completely ridiculous. The nearly new bike spends most of the summer sitting in my Idaho Falls apartment. It doesn't start to see any serious mileage until I move up to Homer, Alaska, and inexplicably latch on to the idea of snow biking. And yes, I do find poetic justice in the fact I spent my whole life in the mountain-biking mecca of Utah and never caught on until I moved to Alaska, where, were it not for snow biking and the Kenai Peninsula, mountain biking would essentially not exist.

2006: It becomes more obvious to me that Gary Fisher did not intend the Sugar to be used as a snow bike, and I set out to build a faux fat bike with a used Raleigh mountain bike frame, a pair of SnowCat rims, 2.7" Timberwolf tires with the tread shaved off and a bunch of random eBay parts. I call it "Snaux Bike" and ride it aggressively all season, culminating in the Susitna 100 that shredded my right knee. I sour a bit to the bike after that - not that my injury was the bike's fault, but all that time off did enlighten me to the fact that bike was not enough for everything I wanted to do.

2007: I finally accept my destiny and set out to build a fat bike, which began with an impulse purchase of built wheels and tires in July. I spend almost as much for said wheels ($430) as I did for my first two bicycles combined. I no longer consider this ridiculous. I go on to mull several frame options before purchasing a Surly Pugsley frame and fork and moving on from there, mostly with old Snaux Bike scraps and a few online bargain parts to complete a fairly low-end but perfectly functional (and, in my opinion now, completely bomber) Pugsley.

2008: The best part of this timeline is it further justifies my need to get a new bike this year as well ... but only one. As much as I'd love a new road bike, I feel like a more immediate need is to retire my poor Sugar and pick up a new bomb-proof steel 29er, possibly a Karate Monkey just like Geoff's. Time will tell.

Beach ride

Date: March 12
Mileage: 10
March mileage: 48.5
Temperature: 36

I know I said I would stay off the bike until my post-race fatigue blew over, but when have I been good at avoiding bikes? I finally unpacked Pugsley from his FedEx box this morning. (Oh yes, I did swallow my customer service convictions and take the cheaper and more accessible FedEx Ground option out of Anchorage. Not only did they scan the box upon arrival, they tracked it to the point of redundancy and delivered it to my door three business days later. I wonder if FedEx has flagged my name for extra-careful treatment these days ... or if it's possible, just possible, that the company made actual mistakes when they shipped my bike out of Juneau. Not that FedEx will ever admit that, so I guess I'll never know.)

The tide was ultra-low when I set out, a condition that rarely lines up with my workout window, so I had to take advantage of all that open sand. Instead of my usual ride on slush-covered trails, I veered onto Sandy Beach and began the slow grind south on the only surface that puts up more resistance than snow: low tide quicksand. I had to laugh as my rear wheel slurped and gurgled while I wheezed and sweat for a measly 4.5 mph. There were a hundred easier ways to ride a bicycle in Juneau on a day like today and I gravitated to the hardest one. Post-race lead legs and all. I truly am a lost cause.

But the more normal I feel, the more strange it seems that I have nothing to train for. My plan all along was to complete this super-hard race in February and then head into something of an off-season. But then came Daylight Savings Time, and every day felt a little more like spring. The equinox is on the horizon, and after that, the sprint into summer, sweet summer, when cyclists flood the streets and schedule a slew of fun rides and races. So many races. All of which seem so easy now with the Ultrasport behind me. The 24 Hours of Light? Ha! What's 24 hours? The Fireweed 400? Who cares if I'm slow on the road? I'm pretty much slow everywhere. The Soggy Bottom? Just try and stop me this year. The Great Divide? Don't be an idiot.

And yet I remain without a goal, still trying but somehow unwilling or unable to take it easy. Always in back of mind is a buzzing, as-yet-undeveloped excitement for the future.

With a little souvenir from McGrath to remind me the past is not too far behind ...

Take me back to the start

Date: March 9
Mileage: 23
March mileage: 38.5
Temperature: 34

Every time Geoff and I go for a ride together, he can only listen to the creaks and groans emanating from my bike for a few minutes before he demands I pull over to assess the damage. Today it was a rickety bottom bracket and a rear hub that has become so loose the wheel sways from side to side as it rolls forward. Geoff is always disgusted with the perpetual state of disrepair in my old bikes, especially my mountain bike. And I take full responsibility for their sorry conditions. I put a lot of miles on them on awful trails and awful roads in awful weather. And the only question I ask when gauging my bikes’ fitness is, “Do I think (whatever part is creaking or clanking) will snap in half on me today?” If the answer is no, then it’s time to go.

That said, people like me shouldn’t own old bicycles, just like people who never check the oil and ignore the “check engine” light shouldn’t own old cars (Yes, I also own an old car.) Geoff has spent our first few days in Juneau pimping out his Karate Monkey, and has planted the seeds of 29er dreams in my head. I used to think a 29er was too much bike for me, but Pugsley and his huge tires essentially make him a 29er, and a sometimes-70-pound fat load to boot. My reasoning now is if I can handle Pugsley, I can handle anything.

Right now, though, I’m still just trying to handle cycling. I realize I haven’t given myself that much recovery time since the Iditarod Invitational. But how could I pass up a blue-sky day after a night just cold enough to freeze up the gunk, with Geoff actually ready and willing to join me for a mellow ride out Douglas Highway? We took the pace easy but I still felt heavy and tired with noticeable sharp knee pain toward the end. I may have to take another week or so off the bike. But if the sun comes out again, all bets are off.

Recovery continues elsewhere, including my efforts to re-establish a healthy relationship with food. From the second I recovered my appetite - during the “morning after” in McGrath - I’ve been eating everything in sight. I think I’ve gained two or three pounds back since the race - not that those pounds were all that missed in the first place. It actually would have been kinda cool to keep them off. But I’m so afraid of the spectre of the bonk now that I’ll find myself sprinting to the vending machine at the slightest tinge of hunger pangs. That would have been a great move during the race, but I have to remind myself that pounding M’n Ms at 4 p.m. is not healthy in the real world.

Beyond my semi-broken bikes and semi-broken body, every day I come to a new realization of just how valuable of an experience this race really was for me. One life lesson that comes to mind happened after Bill Merchant caught up to me at Bison Camp and I admitted to him that I had somehow tossed my headlamp during the day. I bit my lip and waited for the lecture about my stupid, boneheaded carelessness. Instead, Bill confided that he took a number of of own spills that morning, and one of those falls had snapped his GPS off its handlebar mount. “It’s lying out there a snow angel somewhere,” he said.

“Oh man, that sucks,” I said, thinking that Bill must have been devastated to lose a $300 gadget, and so early in his race to Nome. He just shrugged. “I didn’t really need it,” he said. “I’m just glad it wasn’t my mittens!” I remember looking at my own $20 pair of mittens and thinking about how carefully I had been guarding them, how much I valued them. Out on the trail, the value of your paltry possessions takes on a whole different meaning. Clothing becomes as valuable as the body parts it protects. Electronic gadgets are heavy luxuries. A hack repair job that keeps a bicycle running is as good as gold. Cash is worthless. And kindness can change the world.

Good lessons. And here I am, a week later, back in the real world, coveting a new bicycle.

Life is a mystery.