My clipless platform

Date: June 3
Mileage: 35.7
May mileage: 87.2
Temperature: 48

The other day, someone asked me why I use platform pedals on my bikes. It’s a good question. Platform pedal use does seem to run against the grain of most acceptable bicycle accessory standards. It’s a blatant rejection of nearly universally adopted technology, and, unlike fixed-gear bikes and leather saddles, you don’t even get cool points for your retro grouchiness. In fact, I think there are even fixie hipsters who sneer at platform use. Platforms are for children, and BMX bikers ... and me.

I do feel like I’ve given clipless pedals a fair chance. I’ve had a pair of LOOK pedals on my road bike, off and on, for more than a year now. All of that pedaling has given me lots of time to think up reasons why I like platforms better. So here is my “Top 10 Reasons for Reverting Back to Platform Pedals” list:

1. I hate being stuck with one pair of shoes. There are so many subcategories to this - shoes get wet and take two days to dry; shoes make toes go numb on any ride longer than three hours; shoes don’t match clean socks. Then there are all the times I want to wear winter boots and times I want to wear knee-high overboots and times I want to wear running shoes. Platforms allow this kind of freedom.

2. Cold feet. I can only fit one thin pair of socks in my cycling shoes. This makes them essentially useless any time the temperature is lower than 45 and it’s raining. And yes, I do own neoprene booties.

3. I hate being stuck in a pair of shoes I can’t walk in. Put on a pair of shoes made to attach to your bike and suddenly you’re stranded on the thing. If you need to walk anywhere, for any reason, you either have to click-clack awkwardly forward or strip down to your sock feet.

4. For the aforementioned reason, clipless pedals complicate commuting. I’d need to carry an extra pair of shoes nearly everywhere I went.

5. Also for that aforementioned reason, clipless pedals really punish simple mistakes. Forgot your pump or Allen wrench? If you get a flat, a five-mile walk to the nearest gas station is fair punishment. But five miles in cleats? That’s just cruel.

6. I actually destroyed my first pair of cleats in less than a year because I walked on them too much. I ground them down to little nubbins and they wouldn’t attach to the pedals anymore. I like to walk.

7. I’m still a lousy enough technical rider that the ability to bail off the bike quickly has saved my skin more than once.

8. I’ve never noticed any real power benefit to clipless pedals. Maybe I’m just doing it wrong, but I’m dubious of the notion that they actually make any difference at all.

9. I’ve don’t have a problem with my feet slipping off my spiky platform pedals. I do have this problem with my clipless pedals, thanks to the aforementioned destroying of my cleats and the fact that my new ones still randomly slip forward when it’s really wet out (yes, I do have them set as tight as they will go.)

10. My knee problems increase exponentially if I push a steady rotation for too long. I move my feet all over the pedals - sometimes with the tips of my toes barely touching the edge, sometimes pressing down on my heels. This seems to alleviate a lot of the repetitive motion pressure. I can imagine all kinds of sports medicine specialists would tell me this is wrong, wrong, wrong, but it has allowed me to stave off nagging pain and ride with happy knees for an entire year.

So there you have it, my pedal platform: Free your feet, and free your mind.

Scouting

Date: June 1 and 2
Mileage: 39.4 and 12.1
May mileage: 51.5
Temperature: 62 and 57

My parents are coming to visit me next week. This will be their first visit to Southeast Alaska. I thought about pushing the typical tourist excursions ... helicopter tour of the ice field, wildlife cruise to Glacier Bay, etc. But then I thought it would be more fun if I could show my parents Juneau the way I see it. My dad loves hiking, so I have been hitting some of the nearby trails to gauge the progress of the snowmelt and decide how enjoyable they'd be in a week and a half. Today I tried the Mount Jumbo trail. All was clear up to 1,300 feet, but beyond there it was still pretty deep with hollow, slushy snowpack. I made it to about 2,000 feet before I decided I was way off the trail and hopelessly lost, and followed my faint footprints home.

I'd really like to show my dad the best of Juneau. After all, he was the one who introduced me to this place we call the Great Outdoors. If he hadn't hooked me on hiking when I was still a surly teenager, who knows what my hobbies would be today? Knowing what I was like then, I'm guessing they would involve hanging out in coffee shops, going to see oddball art house comedies and blogging about indie music.

I'm pretty sure I met my diverging path in the summer of '96. I recall that time as a rather rough summer for me. I had this horrible job as a “bagger” at the local Albertsons where they wouldn’t even let me wear red shoes. I had a boyfriend I couldn’t stand, although in the typical fashion of a disenchanted teenage girl, it took me most of the hot, stagnant summer to figure that out. I was facing a senior year in high school that I really just wanted to get over with already. And through it all, my dad was trying to introduce me to the mountains.

It’s fun to think back on my feelings about mountains as a teenager. Mountains were there, sure, but they didn’t quite compare to busting a path to the stage at the Warped Tour or the true exhilaration of cruising down State Street in the passenger seat of my friend’s Karman Ghia. But hiking was a great way to burn up a Saturday morning until something better came along, so I started to accompany my dad on Wasatch Range excursions. We took a few short trips together. And then, one day in August, he asked me if I wanted to hike Mount Timpanogos.

Timpanogos was beyond my comprehension. It was 18 miles round trip. I didn’t know the elevation or climbing or technicality. All that mattered was that it was 18 miles, which sounded like a long way to drive in a Karman Ghia, let alone a distance to walk. But in the same way I used to pretend I liked whole wheat hot cereal and Star Wars, I wanted my dad to think I was strong and tough and I said I would go.

I was so nervous when we packed up the car before dawn and made the long drive to the trailhead. I had "race day" sickness - a hole in my stomach that gurgled and churned and didn't stop when we set into the trail, steep from the get-go and chilled in morning stillness. Dad plied me with granola bars I had no appetite for so I stuffed them in my pocket, and up we marched, up as the morning dissipated into a blazing blue sky, up beyond the treeline, up into a granite-walled valley, up the granite walls, up to a point where we crested a narrow ridge and stood overlooking the city of Provo, so far below us that it appeared as geometric shapes sparkling in the sun. I was blown away. Sweating and lightheaded and blistered and sick to my stomach, but blown away. We picked our way to the peak, where Dad fixed me a cream cheese bagel asked me how I felt.

And I remember I felt pretty good.

I remember the date, too, because that night I scrawled a characteristically dramatic entry in my journal, with a cartoon self portrait - shaded darkly in pen, dressed in subtly ironic thrift-store clothing and drawn much thinner than I actually was - standing on a rock outcropping with arms raised straight out. "Today I climbed a mountain," were the only words. Aug. 2, 1996.

Sometimes when I think back to that hike, I believe that was the bottom of what became a future of climbing. And sometimes I think everything I've done since that day will never quite top it, no matter how far I go.

Either way, Dad, all this is your fault.

The end of May

Date: May 30 and 31
Mileage: 8.4 and 41.2
May mileage: 1,188.4
Temperature: 61

"You've certainly done a lot of biking this month," my mom said to me on the phone today. "Is it because Geoff's gone?"

"I think I've ridden about 990 in May," Geoff told me as he was driving from Moab to Salt Lake to start his long bike trip north. "I'm training for the longest mountain bike race in the world, and you're still riding more than me."

So now I have a just-shy-of-1,200-miles month. The majority of the miles were spent on a mountain bike on pavement, usually either touring, commuting or traveling to and from trails. If I break down the factors that led to all the miles, they're really more complex than just a good, old-fashioned bike binge. For starters, I took up bike commuting in earnest this month. That's only cut very minimally - if at all - into my regular riding, and adds an average of 60 miles per week - 240 miles over the month. I started out May sincerely dedicated to endurance training, which has devolved into a looser commitment to weekly mini bike vacations. Either way, both endeavours stack up mileage. One demands hours in the saddle and the other awards hours in the saddle.

My ride on Thursday definitely landed on my "top five best Juneau rides ever" list. I didn't write about it afterward because I had "Oh, the Places You'll Go" stuck in my head for most of the day. Like any poem or song in which you don't know all of the words, I started to invent my own. And after nine hours of pedaling I had a whole new version looping through my head, so I had to go home and type it out. But, in the interim, I had an amazing bike ride. The weather of course was perfect (how long can this last? It's been 10 days at least. I feel like I've landed in the Southeast Alaska twilight zone.) I rode Herbert Glacier Trail for the first time this year (finally clear!) and went on to Eagle River, riding much farther than I have before (Eagle River is a nasty trail and more often than not a hike-a-bike, but if you put up with the walking, there are some fun stretches.) I did take a rough fall over one of the epic root piles along the Eagle River, but I'm such a timid technical rider that I consider mountain bike falls - as long as I come out relatively unscathed - to be a good thing. I had planned on returning home after the Eagle River ride, but spontaneously decided to go north instead. I went to the end of Glacier Highway, where a large gate blocks the entrance to a gravel road that I assume is the pioneer construction of the proposed (and currently in limbo) Juneau Access Road. I've never been brave enough to venture out that way, because I fear large restrictive gates and their warning signs. But on Thursday I threw caution to the wind and ducked under the gate. The gravel was really rough (like "I wish I had full suspension" rough) and blocked in two places by landslides large enough to prevent any vehicle from going through - even ATVs. I was disappointed to discover the road only extends about five more miles before it literally drops right off into Berner's Bay. But after skirting around a big bad gate and two landslides, it was exciting to stand on the edge of the water and know I was truly "out there."

Then I felt fresh and energetic the whole way home. My GPS was registering triple-digit miles and the wind was blasting in my face. It didn't even seem real to feel as good as I did, but I felt great. I arrived at home after 9 p.m. - having had waited until noon to leave the house. Then I busted out a quick and rather eclectic dinner with the meager, meager food I had left in the fridge, and raved about my bike ride to my roommate until he got tired and went to bed. After that, I didn't sleep for most of the night. I was pumping all kinds of endorphins and adrenaline and it was nearly impossible to come down. I'll never understand people who say "I'll sleep well tonight" after a good, long ride. The exact opposite happens to me. The better (and longer) the ride, the worse I sleep. But it's worth it.

Of course I was a zombie on Friday after waking up at the crack of 7 a.m. to go fishing (didn't catch anything). Friday had just a short ride to commute to a friend's BBQ. Today was half-hearted hill intervals up to the ski resort and the commute to work. This is the way May ends. Lots of bike riding. The way it all came about is still a little vague. Like I said, I've kind of given up on the presumption that I'm "training," more than I'm just "having fun because I really do enjoy biking and it is especially rewarding when the weather is nice like it has been most of this month." And I don't feel like I've spent more time than usual on a bike - but there is a project I started in earnest toward the end of April that's been stalled out for four weeks. I haven't been back to the library in at least that long. I still have Netflix movies that Geoff rented before he left that I should really just send back and cancel the subscription because it's stupid to pay $9.99 a month to keep red envelopes on a desk. The TV remains unplugged since we pulled the cord when the energy crisis began in mid-April. And I do have a problem with continually running out of fresh food. (People think gas is expensive. Bike fuel is expensive.) So maybe there have been small lifestyle shifts toward higher mileage. But I like to think I'm just getting faster.