I knew it wouldn't take long ...

For Geoff to want to get out of town.

But we're going to Haines this weekend, where I will try to convince Geoff to ride a bike and he will try to convince me to take naps.

At least I finally got my road bike in semi-working condition. It feels like a rocket ship compared to my Karate Monkey, although it's really as rickety as ever.

For those who have been watching the Great Divide Race updates, I will try to keep on top of those, but unless I can get ahold of Pete, they may be a bit sporadic in the next 48 hours.

But before I go, I just wanted to leave my fan-girl homage to one burly mountain biker from the UK, from one rickety road biker in the AK:

Go Jenn, go!

Rain's back

Date: July 8
Mileage: 37.1
July mileage: 116.4

When I told Geoff it didn't rain in June, he didn't believe me. So we looked it up: A mere 2.07 inches spread across 30 days. In Juneau, that's the same as not raining. "It would be just like Juneau to start up again the moment you came back to town," I said after waking up to another thick layer of liquid sunshine over the Channel. And it would be just like Geoff to miss the best part of summer and return to the waning daylight and strengthening precipitation ... prime conditions to temper new desires to get out of town.

I have been trying to drop hints that I want him to go hiking with me, but he is still in deep recovery from the Great Divide Race, eating multiple breakfasts and taking naps inbetween. Through it all, he's trying to train for the Crow Pass race. But I think he's just now beginning to realize what's left inside the shell of himself - amazing what eight days can destroy - but I know that any couch time this week can only do him good. So I set out on my own in the pouring rain, sticking to the bike because the mountains were socked in. It took me a while to work through the old gearing-up process. My PVC jacket was nowhere to be found. Same with my neoprene gloves - remnants of reality buried in the gear pile, somewhere, beneath my oh-so-rarely-usable short-sleeve jerseys. I pulled on my tattered rain pants and grabbed an extra pair of wool socks stuffed in a zippy. I felt no anticipation or dread about the conditions. Rain's just a given in Juneau, even when it's been gone for a month. It's like riding a bike. You don't forget.

The stream of water pouring off my front wheel had me squinting immediately. A friend in Whitehorse removed my front fender himself after mercilessly teasing me about it. "But I'm from Juneau," I protested. "We all have fenders and it's not even considered dorky." Then I neglected to put it back on when I came back to town. I regretted that move today, but not really. Plenty of water dumps from the sky; who cares what comes from the ground?

With eyes half open and mouth clamped shut, I began to hit my stride. Sharp raindrops rode the gusting east wind and I could smell the tidewater, rich with salt and sweet with rotting seaweed. Those are the kind of smells that dissapate with dryness until you almost forget they're there - like the earthy mulch, the bark and lupine, bursting out of the ground in a swirl of fragrance. Rain seeped through my helmet and dripped down my face. It tasted sweet and earthy, too. Tufts of fog rose from the treetops like steam as darker clouds crept down the mountains. There was something about the weather that was not just tolerable, but maybe even ... enjoyable? And I kind of missed the way rain felt, cold and refreshing against sweat and skin.

You know you've become a true Juneauite when you begin to miss the rain.

Remind me of that when September sinks in.

Possibilities

Date: July 6 and 7
Mileage: 22.0 and 8.7
July mileage: 79.3

I had nearly reached Gold Ridge when my watch hit 60:00:00, about three miles and 2,700 feet elevation since 0:00:00. Not bad for a walk. Could I take it to a run? I've never really been interested in running anywhere before, but for some reason I'm interested in running this Mount Roberts trail. I'm interested in running these mountains in general - to take it faster and farther than I've ever been able to before.

Faster and farther. With Geoff back in town and a few long-suffering racers still on the route, the Great Divide Race has been a heavy topic of discussion in recent days. When I am alone on my bike - and more often than that this month, on my feet - my thoughts often return to the question of whether or not I could ride the GDR. I feel motivated by the glimmer of excitement sparked by distant dreaming. But I end up kicking the scree or mashing my pedals when I arrive at the sheer absurdity of it all. All my past experience tells me I could not finish the GDR. All my past experience tells me it's impossible.

I was somewhere in the hills of Southern Ohio in fall 2003 when I just couldn't make the pedals turn anymore. My mind said go but my knees said no, and without another protest we were off the bike and walking, up the road, the finish line in upstate New York still unthinkably far away. Rather than becoming stronger every day, I was slowly breaking down, and I crossed those last three states on increasingly larger doses of pure willpower. And those weren't big miles back then. We were touring ... averaging 50 miles a day ... on pavement. The miles I've ridden since 2003 are exponential compared to the miles I put in before my cross-country tour. But still, the difficulties of that experience linger. They remind me that I am, at my core, just an ordinary person with ordinary abilities.

"It was really easy, until it wasn't," Geoff told me. "It was beautiful and enjoyable riding and great people, until my body gave up. And when my body gave up, my mind quickly followed."

I remember those hills in Ohio. More than all the mountains in the Rockies, they shattered me. Of all the things I learned from bicycle touring, I know emotionally there are wildly fluctuating days of good and bad. Mentally, the hardships get easier. But physically, the line seems to only trend downward.

And then there's faster and farther. I've watched Geoff scamper up Mount Roberts like a care-free mountain goat, fading into the clouds as I gasped and clawed my way up points far behind. He can coast up these trails effortlessly at a near-sprint; I get winded on a walk; and the GDR broke him. Where would that leave me? The ordinary person?

Faster and farther. If someone had pulled me aside on that road in Ohio in October 2003 and showed me a map of Alaska and the trails I would travel in the next five years, the rides I would not only attempt but finish, I would have never believed them. I was already on the bicycle ride of a lifetime, a lifetime, and it was harder than I ever imagined, and was more rewarding than I even anticipated, but Alaska would be another league entirely. Alaska would be impossible.

Still, it's fun to dream, even about things that may never, and maybe could never, happen. Because if there's anything I've learned from Alaska, I know where I take my ordinary abilities is entirely up to me. I get to set the limits. Faster and farther.