In defense of music

Date: March 19
Mileage: 28.0
March mileage: 222.5
Temperature: 35

Geoff and I both set out for separate rides today (different departure times, different goals), but we both returned home at the same time. He seemed to be in a grumpy mood, said something about awful weather, but I couldn't figure out what his problem was. I hosed the slush off my Pugsley and the grit off my clothing, poured the standing water out of my shoes, regaled Geoff with the tale of the white-out blizzard I encountered at Eaglecrest (“You couldn’t tell the sky from the road”), sloshed into the shower and doubled over in pain as the hot water hit my frozen feet like hydrofloric acid. Then it kind of occured to me ... that sure was a crappy ride.

But for some reason, I was in a good mood. It was hard to discern why. Here I am, no training goal in mind, resting period, putting in all this junk mileage, and still happily heading out into the crappiest crap Juneau has to offer. Couldn’t I just sit back with a cup of tea and “Desert Solitaire?” Why am I still riding my bike? What is my problem?

There can only be one explanation, I think ... I really like to listen to my iPod.

For most of this month, my mind has been flooded with the kind of subdued introspection and memory-heavy thought patterns that music so beautifully accompanies. There will always be debate about how safe it is to wear headphones on a bicycle, and I don’t disagree. But when I am wending around an otherwise-deserted trail or churning along a wide road shoulder, I relish in the way music allows me to feel like I’m moving not only through space, but through time as well.

I lean on the white noise of my iPod shuffle for other reasons during most of my "epic" rides and races, but I always walk away with one song, one special song, that for me is forever linked to the pain and passion of the trail. Months, years later, I will hear these songs and instantly travel back through the mental landscape of those moments. I don’t actually choose these songs. They sort of just happen in the seredipitous way only a random-shuffle mp3 player can dictate. But I cherish them.

2006 Susitna 100: Before this race, I had never owned an iPod and never trained with music. But a number of people recommended that I not go into a potentially 24-hour-long race with nothing to sooth my mental agony. So I took a little FM radio. I didn’t switch it on until about 20 hours into the race. The only station it picked up was some horrible Top 40 drone out of Anchorage. Slightly better than static. I listened to it indifferently until the soft snow on the trail caught my wheel for the 100th time and tossed me into a drift. As I laid in the snow staring up at the sharp steaks of raindrops illuminated by my headlamp, “D.A.R.E.” by the Gorillaz came on. It was the first time I had ever heard that song. It was so surreal, so appropriate for that moment. I’ll never forget it.

Soggy Bottom 100: By then, I owned an iPod. I had it plugged into my car stereo as I drove from Homer to Hope. As I passed through Ninilchik, I came upon the scene of an accident where a little boy on a bike had been hit by a car. There were several people on scene but no emergency vehicles. The boy’s limp limbs were sprawled out on the pavement. His bike lay in a twisted heap in the shoulder. The people around him appeared to be talking to him, so I kept on going. But I was wracked with all of this guilt and grief. Regina Spektor’s “Consequence of Sounds” was playing. I went on to ride the whole race without music until I started to bonk at the top of Resurrection Pass in the last 25 miles. “Consequence of Sounds” was the first song to play. I kneeled down on the trail for a short time and let my grief seep through.

2007 Susitna 100: I cheated and switched on my iPod (low volume) right at the beginning of the race. Sufjan Stevens’ “Chicago” was the first thing out of the gate. It was a strange, mellow offset to the frenzy as I swerved through strings of skiers on the narrow dog track while other cyclists nudged by me. "Chicago" stuck with me as the one song I remember listening to during the race.

Golden Circle: I loaded up two separate mP3 players going into this 48-hour tour. By then, I was deeply iPod dependent. I burned the first one out during the first 10-hour block and spent the next day listening to nothing, suffering and sweating and swearing as I plowed into 120 miles of headwind on the AlCan Highway. I went to bed that night convinced that I was not cut out for multiday endurance cycling, because common sense told me that once you start to feel bad, it can only get worse. I suffered through the first 30 miles the next day, but then slowly, inexplicably, started to come around. By the late morning I had traveled 100 miles, nearly all of it over steep climbs and descents as I ascended the Coastal Mountains, and I felt great. Better than great. I had nearly reached my goal of cycling 370 miles in 48 hours, and inexplicably felt like I could turn around and do it all over again. And just as I crested White Pass Summit and rolled by the sign saying “Welcome to the United States,” I was listening to Sufjan Stevens’ “Sister.”

2008 Iditarod Trail Invitational: I bought a AAA battery-powered mP3 player that I was only able to load 88 songs on, got sick of them on the Yentna River, and really didn’t listen to music all that much over the course of the next four days. But on the last day of the race I pulled out my iPod Shuffle as a treat. I didn’t think the embedded battery would last longer than two hours in that kind of cold. But the iPod kept plugging along, just like me. And when I was really zoned into the wind-drifted slog, I became fixated on The Wrens’ “Happy.” Not even sure exactly why. “Happy” is breakup song ... a good song for such a moment ... but I was obsessed. I just kept listening to it over and over again, pulling my hands out of my mittens and exposing my poor bare fingers to the minus 50 windchills just to hit the “back” button. Toward the end of my loop I had learned all the words and started to sing along, obnoxiously, to no one but the trail itself ... “Are you happy now? Got what you want? I wanted you. But I’M OVER THAT NOW.”

It was great fun.

March already

Date: March 18
Mileage: 19.3
March mileage: 194.5
Temperature: 37

I stopped for a break at the edge of Sheep Creek, uncomfortably aware of the passing of time.

Strange that it's not only already March; it's nearly April. I have been thinking a lot lately about Bill and Kathi on the Iditarod trail, fighting their way the last hundred miles or so to Nome. I connected with them only briefly during my own Iditarod tour, but I feel like I have a lot of emotional currency invested in their success. Fresh off what I viewed as an epic adventure, Bill, Kathi and I shared the couches around a warm fire in McGrath. We guzzled hot cups of evening coffee and told our trail stories as we fondled Bill's sweet "hand-me-down" Snoots bike. I was just so glad to be done with the race, and Bill and Kathi were so excited to get going again. I've never seen so much enthusiasm. I love the adventure, but it became apparent to me that they live the adventure. And I just can't fathom that our warm Saturday evening together was 18 days ago - 18 days ago - and they're still out there - still out there - locked in their epic battle.

"Crossing the sea ice in a storm with blowing and drifting snow and with no visibility has been the toughest section of trail for me. Last night I couldn't tell what was up or down or left or right where the horizon was or where the ground right in front of my feet was."

Kathi posted this from Koyuk after a 28-hour struggle to cross 30 miles of open sea ice - open sea ice - in a wind-driven blizzard. In all of the history of this race, no woman has ever cycled the Iditarod Trail all the way to Nome. If (and when!) Kathi gets there, she'll be the first. I have a hard time understanding just how difficult this endeavour really is, let alone describing it. Since I returned from McGrath, I have had friends ask me, "What's next ... Nome?" No, no, no, no. It just doesn't work that way. You don't just return from a first-time jaunt across the easy third of the trail and say, "OK. Now I go to Nome!" No. It takes a truly hardy soul to complete such an expedition. It's like comparing a climb on Mount Rainier to an ascent of Mount Everest. Both are hard. Both are dangerous. Both can even see the same harsh conditions. But one is accessible to most everyone who truly wants it. The other is nearly impossible to all but the few. Is a trip to Nome potentially even more difficult than a trip up Mount Everest? It's hard to say. Jose Diego Estebanez, a walker who is fighting through intense pain to bring up the rear of the race, has supposedly done both. I hope to ask him someday.

That said, there are still adventures within my reach. As April creeps closer, so does the date when Geoff plans to leave Juneau for his grand summer of adventure down south, the flagstone of which is the Great Divide Race in June. I'm insanely jealous of his summer plans, and lately have spent too much time wondering what exactly is holding me back from taking flight myself. My job, of course, is a crucial part of the equation. Without employment in one of the few appealing positions in town, I'm likely to be coaxed into moving to some place where it's hot six months of the year and crowded year-round: Some place that's not Alaska. That would be tragic. So I hold onto my anchor.

But sometimes, especially when I am reclined on the shore of Sheep Creek watching a storm of seagulls swirl over my head, I dream up schemes to hold onto my anchor and still take flight. Last summer, one of our photographers spent the entire summer in Norway. The newspaper hired out an intern who meshed well with everyone, took beautiful photographs and happily worked for slave wages. And the company still hired our main photographer back at the end of the season. Everybody won.

And then I got to thinking ... I have a public space on the World Wide Web. There's always the off chance I could capture the attention of an aspiring journalist college student who may be looking for a grand adventure in Juneau, Alaska. Maybe I could open their eyes to the exciting world of page design and copy editing. And then I could talk my employers into hiring an intern for a few weeks this summer ... six or eight ... while I jet off for my unpaid leave of absence.

Of course I don't have any authority to approve such a transaction. It probably involves plenty of red tape with both my company and the sponsoring university. But I could at least open up my powers of persuasion. Are you familiar with QuarkXPress, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator? Do you own an Associated Press Stylebook and browse it occasionally? Does your worst nightmare involve seeing the misspelled word "grammer" in print? Does your dream job involve working nights and weekends? E-mail me at jillhomer66@hotmail.com and we can scheme together! I could even sublet my room while I'm away. You don't mind caring for four cats, do you?

Hey ... it's worth a shot.

Sunday morning, coming down

Date: March 16
Mileage: 29.3
March mileage: 175.2
Temperature: 33

The sleet storm was reaching balaclava-piercing velocity as I turned off Douglas Highway into the dark shelter of the Rainforest Trail. A stick-thin strip of gravel snaked through the imposing crowd of Douglas fir trees, cutting an unforgiving line that was half covered in slippery snow. My entire worldview narrowed to the switchback that was immediately in front of me, and then the next, and then the next, as I wend my way downhill to the sea.

Sometimes I am grateful for difficult trails, maneuvers so near the limit of my ability that they clamp down on every corner of my mind. All I see is here and now. All I do is everything I can to not crash. The descending thoughts that tracked me to this point - the letdown beyond the big event, the settling emotions, the questions of what am I doing? Where am I going? Why am I still here? - everything stalls just outside the tunnel. I function as a machine with little room for rationalization, humming a song I just discovered but hardly know ...

"We're living in a strange time, working for a strange goal, we're turning flesh and body into soul."

My bike shot out of the woods and fishtailed wildly across a pile of broken shells before gaining purchase on the sand. The wheels rolled easier and I settled back into the sinking sensation that had latched onto my mood. I wondered what I would be thinking about if I had never finished the race to McGrath. What would I be thinking about if I had never started it? For so long I had this goal, this driving goal, that cast a thick curtain over everything else. Now I no longer have the goal. The curtain's up and there doesn't seem to be much behind it. Just the sand beneath my bike, the sleet above my head, and this story, this memory that fades a little more, disappears a little more, every day. And I miss it. Already.

It's inevitable that every big high requires a return to equilibrium. A post-race downer. It's normal. But sometimes I am grateful for harsh headwind and deep slush and driving sleet to pound on me all the way home, so I can put my head down and spin my legs to the precipice of pain and think only of wind and slush and burning legs. As I approached Douglas, the accumulating slush had become so deep that I had a hard time keeping my rear wheel rolling in a straight line. My goggles had become so full of water that I felt like I was looking through Coke-bottle glasses; the distorted road appeared to be a least 15 feet below me, and shrinking. I had the iPod blaring because I was wet and chilled and so beyond enjoying this ride, so over it, when I passed the scene of an accident. Red and blue lights swirled. A tow truck was hauling an SUV out of a ditch across the street. Cops milled about and I thought I saw one give me a dirty look. It was difficult to tell through my wet goggle fun-house vision. "This can't be safe," I thought. But the moody side of me wasn't about to change that.

When I arrived at home, Geoff was sitting at the table. I thought about telling him I was sad. But he spoke first. "I nearly died today," he said.

"What? What do you mean?" I asked.

And Geoff recounted his own morning. How he was returning from a long run, a mile from the house and more than ready to just be home, when he glanced over his shoulder. It was a random move, he said, just a mindless gesture, but what it yielded him was a direct view of the sideways SUV careening down the icy street at 40 mph. It had crossed the center line and was quietly skidding directly into his path. Out of instinct or pure serendipity, he hopped sideways over the snow berm and sprinted into the woods. "I ran toward the big trees," he said. "I didn't stop until I heard the crash." In those few seconds, the vehicle swooped across his footprints, jumped the ditch, plowed over the small trees and slammed into a big one. Geoff was standing 10 feet away. (Geoff recounts the experience here.)

In the end, Geoff and the driver both walked away. He had already processed his experience enough to be able to laugh about it by the time I came home ("We were both listening to the same NPR program.") But I was a little shaken. My head flooded with new questions, better questions ... What if that hadn't been simply a close call? What if Geoff hadn't glanced over his shoulder at exactly that moment? What if it had happened?

I am grateful because I still have everything to look forward to. And sometimes, I'm lucky enough to realize it.