Awful weather

Here in Juneau, we have to set the "awful" bar on our weather gauge a bit higher than most places. Raining? Windy? Snowing? Cold? Some combination thereof? That's just weather. Torrential downpours? Hurricane-force blasts? Blizzards? That's just interesting weather. The top level on the terrible weather scale is reserved for deep-set grayness that smothers multiple days and even weeks, grayness so thick it seeps down the mountains and into the moods of everyone you meet, and rain that falls continuously for 48, 72, 96 hours. I am not talking about wimpy storms that drizzle for a bit and then retreat behind overcast skies. No, I am talking about water and slush and snain pounding the ground without pause for three days straight.

You know the scale has tipped when people start talking about the weather. People in Juneau don't talk about wet weather for the same reason people in Fairbanks don't say "sure is cold out" and people in Las Vegas don't say "how 'bout that sun today." You don't bother to mention the things that happen most of the time. But when a week goes by without even a break in the clouds, wet weather begins to nervously trickle into conversation. You also know awful has come when you start to see umbrellas around town and it isn't even tourist season. Locals in Juneau don't use umbrellas. It's a symbol of Southeast Alaskan pride, a mark of non-sissiness and grizzled acclimation. Umbrellas are a sure sign of distress, our last act of desperation before we fall to our knees and pray for forgiveness before the apocalypse annihilates us.

Today I went snowshoeing up the Mount Jumbo trail. I wasn't even all the excited about getting out of bed. But even though I am dialing back my bike time, I still recognize the importance of going outside on a regular basis - lest I start to grow mold. At about 1,000 feet the sleet turned to snow, and by 1,800 feet I had entered a canyon in the crush of a full-on, white-out, 50-mph-wind-gusting blizzard. I glanced nervously in the direction of the steep surrounding slopes I couldn't even see and reminded myself that blizzards weren't so bad, but avalanches were really scary. I turned around. As I stumbled away from the storm, I began to rethink my resolve to take it easy this month. "I probably don't even need a break from the bike," I thought. "I probably just need a break from Juneau." Unfortunately, the former is much easier to implement.

Tomorrow's (and Tuesday's, and Wednesday's) forecast calls for a high of 40 and rain. I don't care. I'm going to buy an umbrella.

Fiddlin

I just returned from checking out my friend Kim's set at Folk Fest. Kim is a Type-A lawyer who lives in Anchorage. She's carved out this idyllic Alaska lifestyle for herself, though, residing on the outskirts of the city in a sod-roof cabin that has two big spruce trees growing out of the roof. Her nearest neighbors are sled dogs. She ice climbs. And she's an avid old-time fiddler.

As I watched her saw frantically at her violin tonight, I was flooded with the memories of the last time I saw her, on Feb. 23, the night before the Iditarod Invitational. The top picture is from that night. I realized that I never told my story of the night before the race. It was a bewildering tornado of a Saturday that couldn't have been a more perfect setup for the sensory overload of the next six days. The night of the 1,000 dumplings.

We stayed in Kim's cabin, all 500 square feet of it, during the nights leading up to the race. On Saturday night, she had planned a huge Vietnamese New Year party, and had coaxed (conned?) three of her friends into making 1,000 pork dumplings for the celebration. "It has to be 1,000!" she barked. "Bad luck for a whole year otherwise!" They crammed into her tiny kitchen and set to work first thing in the morning. Geoff packed his sled. I wrenched my bike. Kim pounded cocktails before 10 a.m. One friend drove to every grocery store in a 10-mile radius and cleaned all of south Anchorage out of leeks. Geoff and I went to our pre-race meeting. When we returned around 5 p.m., starchy steam clung to the windows. Dirty bowls and plastic grocery bags were strewn everywhere. Delirious laughter peeled out from the slave-driven team. They were up to about 500 dumplings.

"Don't you dare try to tell me why I'm driven to plan these huge parties," Kim told her psychologist friend. I looked up from my bike packing. "It's probably the same reason why Geoff and I doing this race tomorrow," I said. The psychologist friend nodded without a hint of irony.

I think there were about 700 or 800 dumplings by the time people started showing up. I was already eating them right off the platters, forcing the only available means of precious calories down my throat as the stink of leeks and sesame oil gurgled in my gut. By the time I remembered I needed to change my bike tubes, the tiny cabin was shoulder-to-shoulder with people: 60, 70, 80 people devouring dumplings, guzzling flower-garnished cocktails, playing fiddles, asking me why I was in Anchorage (and peppering me with the ensuing thousand questions.) My pre-race anxiety coursed through my blood like magma. The chaos rattled me to the core. I slipped outside to a dark corner near the sled dog cages. The temperature was about 10 degrees. The rims burned my skin and my headlamp flickered. As I ran my stiff fingers through the motions, I tried to tell myself this was good practice for the trail. But all I really wanted to do was scream, and smash my bike, and sprint all the way home to Utah.

The worst part was I couldn't leave. We had made plans to spend the night at the house of another friend in Palmer, but first we had to pick him up at the airport at 10:30 p.m. So I had to burn away the evening as the crowd became louder, and drunker, and larger, pumping old-time music into the cold air through a haze of dumpling steam and cigarette smoke. I wedged back into the crush of people to warm my frozen hands. Kim's psychologist friend was still steaming dumplings in the kitchen, 12 full hours after she started chopping cabbage. I asked her if she had reached 1,000. She shook her head and laughed faintly. Her eyes were hollow, with flecks of tears on the outer edges. Her cheeks were sunken and she pressed her lips as she smiled. I recognized that look, those eyes - the face of a broken-down endurance racer. "It's OK to cry," I said, sincerely. I could feel my own eyes misting up. "It's OK to cry."

Kim was deeply immersed in her music when we whisked away to Palmer and the cold dawn of the first day of the Iditarod Invitational. I never had a chance then to thank her for letting us stay at her house, or for unintentionally helping me put my own life in perspective when I needed it most.

Folk Fest

Date: April 10 and 11
Mileage: 19.1 and 38.5
April mileage: 286.6
Temperature: 44 and 38

It's a bit late to be blogging, but I feel like I need to unwind a little after a crazy "weekend" of Folk Fest. The Alaska Folk Festival happens once a year and the whole town shows up. Even a lot of people who don't live in this town show up. It's pretty much the only time of year that Juneau is visited by other Alaskans who have nothing to do with the Legislature or cruise ships. It's also the only time of year I "go out" every night for several nights in a row. Tonight was old-time Creole followed by Salsa and Fusion Celtic. I don't think I've danced like that since I was 17. Seriously. I was about to pass out and my friends still wanted to hit up the Rendezvous and The Alaskan afterward. Sometimes the endurance of people amazes me.

It's been a bad weekend for bike riding. The Folk Festing for all hours of the night doesn't help, but it goes beyond that. Geoff and I huddled beneath of canopy of rain-drenched trees this afternoon as I tried to talk him out of completing a planned 80-mile ride. Finally, I just announced, "Either way, I'm turning around. I feel like I'm on the burn-out track and I don't want to push it too far." That's the first time it hit me. I haven't given my off-season much time to actually be that. If anything, I was pushing even harder before the weather took a seasonal turn for the worse. I think I need to dial it back a bit. It will be hard, because there's not much else to do right now besides road cycling. But I think if I take the rest of April and spend more time hiking (i.e. snow/mud slogging), going to the gym (i.e. reading adventure nonfiction on an elliptical machine), and "fun" biking (i.e., beach and snow biking where and when the opportunities arise), then I'll be a happier person come summer. Once May begins, I hope to restart a fast-track endurance training program ahead of the 24 Hours of Light. I rode this race last year on a barely-healed knee injury and almost no training, and had a lot of fun. This year, I look forward to going hard. That is, if I don't burn out first.