Haines

Date: July 9-12
Mileage: 20.2, 18.0, 80.7 and 6.1
July mileage: 241.4

Well, I'm back from another 36-hour trip to Haines. In hindsight, this one wasn't a wonderful idea, given the expense, Geoff's crushing fatigue, and a less-than-stellar weather forecast. It's the kind of thing that happens on a Thursday morning when two people are lazing around a messy house with diminishing motivation and a "what should we do today?" conversation that lingers over hours. When it's decided that any daylong outdoor activity would be less than fun in the cold rain, it's only a matter of time before you start scrolling the Alaska Marine Highway site and grabbing up a couple of tickets for a ferry that leaves in three hours. Then, once you board the boat, you're kinda stuck with your spur-of-the-moment decision. As the ferry inched northward, Geoff and I set up plastic chairs on the solarium and gazed out at the gray-washed seascape. "It's too bad we can't just bike there," I said. "It would be faster than this." "We could swim there faster than this," Geoff replied.

But the fact was, Geoff wasn't about to swim or bike anywhere. He still feels tired most of the time, sleeps whenever he can and is becoming increasingly frustrated by his physical fatigue. He says the feeling is similar to having huge masses of dead muscle in his legs - an excess of tissue with no power. He did not want to go biking with me. Anywhere. And although I was itching to head up to the pass, I didn't want to be gone all day on a bike ride if he was just going to nap around camp. So I motored out to the border instead, trying to hurry but not pushing too hard against my own vicarious tiredness.

I was still surprised how fast the ride went, even with me failing to take full hammering advantage of the tailwind that became a monstrous headwind on the way back. I was able to knock off the 80 miles in 4:45, including snack and photo breaks, and beat my deadline back to camp even though I rode nearly twice as far as I said I was going to. I know that's not fast by roadie standards, but even the minimal speed advantage of my own rickety, flat-bar road bike surprised me after a couple of months almost exclusively riding 29-inch knobbies. I almost feel like getting a real road bike would make cycling too easy. Where would the fun be? Certainly not in taking the edge off 40 miles of harsh headwind (oh, wait...)

But it was nice for the cycling to only take a five-hour chunk out of the weekend, and sleep and food to consume the other 31. Geoff and I toured the town and found a lot of interesting hidden nooks. We ate at a few typically overpriced, underwhelming Alaska restaurants, including a little Mexican place that seduced us with unique atmosphere but proved to be unspectacular after all. All in all, kind of a lazy, lolling weekend - which I guess is what summer is all about.

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.