Shot down again

Date: Sept. 16
Mileage: 20.3
September mileage: 380.9

I had the perfect scheme worked out to ride the Golden Circle again this weekend, starting in Skagway with three solid days to reach Haines by Sunday morning. I didn't announce my plans on my blog because I knew my employer was going to pull back, again, and sure enough, I got the bad news today.

I was supposed to receive Saturday off as a belated Labor Day. But my replacement pulled out without much notice. Everyone else gets to celebrate Labor Day, the day to honor working citizens' contribution to society, on Labor Day. I can't celebrate Labor Day until my employers decide I'm not needed. I feel like I am the punchline of a real-life Dilbert cartoon, or maybe that Winnie the Pooh character that has a rain cloud follow him everywhere he goes.

I even had the weather report checked out and a fall-back motel called in Haines Junction and a plan to pack up my Karate Monkey with gear enough for rain and a camp out in temps down to 30. The worst part is, my employers don't even understand what they're taking away from me by withdrawing a promised day off. And it's hard to make them understand because in real life I am a terrible communicator. They probably think I spend my Saturdays the way everyone else in the office does, going to Home Depot and checking out the latest opening of whatever five-week-old movie came to Juneau this week. I wish I could show them that by first saying no to Trans Utah and then to the Golden Circle, they have effectively punched a big hole in my livelihood, and I don't have much left besides my job.

Pugsley's first birthday

Date: Sept. 15
Mileage: 25.7
September mileage: 360.6

My bike Pugsley turned one year old today. Although he was conceived sometime in July of last year, he wasn’t fully built up until Sept. 15, 2007. I asked him how he wanted to celebrate his birthday, and, predictably, he blurted out “Week in Hawaii!” I said my PFD check wasn’t that big, and offered him the next best thing - North Douglas beach party!

Unfortunately, we arrived at the wetlands right around the high tide mark, so there wasn’t much beach left to ride. We skimmed the shoreline and bounced over some boulders. Late-morning fog hung low over the water, but across the channel I could see a small window in the clouds around Mount McGinnis, with an unmistakable new coat of termination dust near the peak. “Look, Pugsley, snow!” I said, but he just grumbled. “This is boring. I’m tired. I hate the beach.”

“Ok, then,” I said. “It’s your birthday. What do you want to do?”

“I wanna go tear up some trails,” he said. “You’re always taking that skinny brat on trail rides. I wanna go sometimes, too.”

“Don’t call your little sister a skinny brat,” I said. “Fine. There’s the Fish Creek trail over there. It’s just a mud bog with lots of big roots and stinky fish guts. Your sister hates that trail. It always turns into a hike-a-bike.”

Pugsley’s spokes lit up. “Fish guts?” he said. “Does that mean there’s bears there, too?”

“Probably lots of big scary bears,” I said.

His rear fender started to wag a little. “I wanna go there!”

“Ok,” I said. We followed the delta shoreline beneath the highway bridge and started climbing along the creek. Pugsley enthusiastically took on his role as trail crusher and we cleared a nice long line of roots and puddles before a log grabbed his pedal and threw me sideways. I swore quietly as I crawled out of the blueberry bushes and started guiding Pugsley back down the trail.

“What are you doing?” Pugsley protested, “I can handle this!”

“Sorry, Pugs,” I said, “it’s just a little too much for me. I never said it was your sister’s fault she and I always ended up hike-a-biking this trail.”

“Man, this sucks,” Pugsley said. “What a crappy birthday.”

“Sorry, Pugs. I know it was hard to be born in these inbetween times,” I said. “But you remember last winter, right?”

Puglsey sniffed. “Yeah.”

“Well,” I said, “winter’s coming back. In just a couple more months, the snow will start to fall, and it will be just you and me again. We’ll go play on new trails and have new adventures and we can even come back here to Fish Creek. If the hikers don’t stamp down a trail for us, we’ll stamp down our own trail. What do you say?”

Droplets of rain dripped off Pugsley's frame but his head tube seemed to brighten. “Cool!” he shouted. “But this year, I’m driving.”

Sniff ... My baby’s all growed up.

Quiet days of fall

Date: Sept. 12 and 13
Mileage: 31.8 and 32.0
September mileage: 334.9

There's a sameness to the air again as the sky sinks down and the clouds settle in for the long season. For many, fall is a season of color and change. In Juneau, our colors are subtle and often washed in gray. Change here is subtle as well; as autumn rain takes over, temperatures drop in undetectable increments until one day, you walk out the door and it's winter. When I lived farther south, fall was always my favorite time of year. I loved the vibrancy and crisp air and promise of new passion. But since I moved to Juneau, my experience with fall has been muted at best - as though the entire season passed in one drawn-out, gray day. If I was given the choice of two months to do away with here in Juneau, I would pick September and October, without regret.

That's why it's vital that I kick myself out the door once in a while, but I admit, my motivation has been flagging. My cycling has continued since I stopped training for Trans Utah, though on a less focused level. Because I recognize that I will lapse into a bad cycle if I don't do something I feel is productive, I have been working hard on my writing project again. Basically, what I am doing is drawing up some of my past experiences into literary essays of sorts. I wasn't always a blogger, so a lot of my experiences are being increasingly diluted in an ocean of memories. I wanted to get them down on paper (well, computer). Dredging my memory bank has been fun, but surprisingly exhausting. I am remembering all kinds of nearly forgotten details that really make the moments come alive for me again. At the same time, I'm not a tape recorder. I find myself taking some creative license with conversations in order to avoid being completely vague. So it's not journalism in its pure form, but there's no intentional fiction, either.

The project was unfocused at first, but has started to develop around the theme of "how did a scared little suburban girl from Salt Lake City end up on the Iditarod Trail." It's really not nearly as hokey as it sounds. Anyway, since it is September 2008, it just made sense to center the essays on the Iditarod race because that is my most recent and dramatic life experience. It's been really interesting to revisit that week through the lens of six months later, now that I have had more time to process different events and decide what it meant to me as a whole. Plus, I have a really great record of it already, so it hasn't been hard to fill in the gaps.

So that's what I've been up to this weekend: boring riding, but interesting writing - even if only to me. Last year, my grandmother published her memoirs and distributed them to her whole family. It's been a fun document to have - not only to learn more about my grandma's life, but to see how she views her own life. Writing about past experiences, good or bad, is a project I would recommend to anyone - it's a great way to learn a lot about yourself, and much cheaper than therapy.