I eat snow for breakfast

Date: Dec. 28 and 29
Mileage: 36.3 and 31.1
December mileage: 790.1
Temperature upon departure: 19 and 15

For the past few days, biking conditions have been tough. Really tough. Like fishtailing-in-sandy-sugar-snow- punching-through-postholes- being-blown-by-wind- into-deep-snow-drifts tough. And that's just in the road shoulders! All the trail riding I've tried has been an abysmal, bike-pushing failure. Every other person in the entire city is up at the ski resort, lining up to battle for first runs through two feet of fresh power. And while I don't necessarily want to be doing that (ski crowds: ugh), I am still a little unclear about why I am trying to ride (and often walk) a bicycle in the worst of conditions.

Yesterday, I was wading through a still-unplowed bike path when I came to a mountain of chunky snow that had been deposited by a highway snowplow driver. The pile was at least six feet high. It was over my head. On one side of the path is a chain link fence; on the other, a deep trench. The bike path is the only way through. I picked up my 35-pound bike and hoisted it over my shoulders, holding the seatpost in one hand and the handlebars in the other, and stepped into pile. It was littered with ice chunks and sand. The first step engulfed my knees; the next, my waist. I threw the bike to the side as I kicked and struggled to extract myself. Then I crawled and flailed my way across more precious inches of progress, stopping briefly to catch my breath and drag my overturned bike those same few inches forward. After about five minutes I was finally somewhat free, having moved all of six feet down the path, with only another half mile of 2 mph bike pushing to go. Once I was past that obstacle, all I had to look forward to was more unplowed road shoulders, more fighting of drifted sugar snow and sand, more crawling over loose piles of snow to avoid swerving into traffic; and after that, the impossibly deep trails that were my actual destination.

Then today, I did it all again, minus the submerged bike path.

And as I churned along the North Douglas Highway amid a swirling ground blizzard and breathtakingly cold cross-winds, I realized that beneath my face mask, I was smiling. I was enjoying the high drama of it all, relatively safe in my cocoon of clothing layers and riding as far away from the light flow of traffic as I could manage. I was working hard, and I was having a tough time just moving forward, but I was happy.

And, of course, I asked myself, "What's wrong with me?"

I think the answer lies in the reality that all cyclists, from the fast to strong to the "crazy" among us, need a challenge. For some, the challenge is losing weight. For others, increasing speed or distance. And then there are those who simply want to clean that impossible move or crush other cyclists in certain races. We all have different motivations, but we're all connected by one thing: the reward. If we meet our challenges, our brains reward us with happy thoughts and a fair dose of endorphins.

So what's my challenge? My challenge is tough. That's it. The tough stuff. Rides that are tough to me. Rides that are tough to most. I'm an atypical cyclist in many, many ways. I don't care about speed. I've tried. Really, I have. But in the end, I could never develop an interest in watching a clock and calculating fractions of fractions of numbers to chase that ever-elusive edge over arbitrary standards. And I don't care about distance. I like to ride far, but what I like to do most is ride long, in terms of time, and do the best I can with the hours I have.

So if I don't care about fast and I don't care about far, what does that leave me with? Really, after that, there's only tough. I'm left with tough. And riding a bike in the winter in Juneau, Alaska, is tough. And the tougher it gets, and the better I get at it, and, yes, even the faster and farther I can go in tough conditions, the happier I am.

That's my excuse. I'm not crazy.

12 months in photos

I went through my blog archives tonight to pick out my favorite photos of the year, and it was hard to decide. I don't really think of myself as a "photographer." Photographers generally take photos for the purpose of taking photos, as works of art and expression. I'm more of a "photo documentarian." I take photos for the purpose of illustrating a particular time or place or event (most often a bike ride.) As such, it's nearly impossible for me to separate the actual aesthetic quality of photos from my emotions about the events and places surrounding them. But I tried. One for each month - 12 months in photos.

The top photo is my favorite of the year, taken on Sept. 25 along the Klondike Highway, south of Carcross, Yukon, during a late fall bike tour of the Golden Circle. Maybe it's because we spend so much of the year washed in the blues and grays of winter, but all of that color still leaves me in awe.

"Long ride," Jan. 10: I guess it's pretty clear that I like this photo since I used it on the top of my blog and on the cover of my book. It's a nice example of camera serendipity - all I did was set the 10-second self-timer on the camera, wedge it in the snow on top of the Mendenhall Lake ice, and ride away from it. But it managed to capture this perfect moment between the mist and the glare of the winter sun as Thunder Mountain loomed in the background.

"Long race," Feb. 25: February was a pretty weak month for photos. I was preoccupied with other things. This photo was taken along the Skwentna River on day two of the Iditarod Trail Invitational. I just like how crisp and clean the trail and the horizon looks - the day before everything in that race went dark and blurry. :-)

"First day of spring," March 20: This is a photo of Auke Lake taken during a century ride on the Spring Equinox. I love how the perfect reflection of the Mendenhall Towers shines in a small break in the ice.

"Spring snow," April 17: This photo was taken the day after an avalanche took down the city's connection to the Snettisham hydroelectric power plant. Eight inches of snow fell on the city, and more than a foot of new powder settled up high. I took advantage of the day to go snowboarding along the Douglas Island Ridge. The powder was as smooth as butter and as light as a cloud - so perfect.

"Commuting home," May 18: Yeah, it's another random-timed self portrait. It's true that my camera sometimes takes better pictures than I do. This was taken back when I diligently commuted everywhere on my bike, and I was heading home from work at about 10 p.m. when I stopped at the Salmon Creek delta to watch the sun set. I like the reflection of soft light in the water scattered among the seaweed.

"Broken chain," June 28: I broke my chain during my 10th or 11th lap in the 24 Hours of Light and had to hoof it about three miles back to the race start. I snapped a quick 11:30 p.m. sunset photo above a small tributary of the Yukon River. I like both the intense pink light (I honestly did nothing to color correct this photo, although the pink sky may be a camera glitch), as well as the oddities of a bike chain wrapped around a seatpost and a rear fender in the dry climes of Whitehorse.

"Wildflowers," July 17: I took this photo during a midsummer hike in the Granite Creek Basin. The lighting is a little flat, but I think that's why I like the bright yellow flowers amid the melting snowpack that much more.

"Eagle Beach," Aug. 29: I took this photo the day John McCain announced Gov. Sarah Palin was his running mate. I was called into work on a day off, and ended up riding much later into the afternoon than I had planned. Because of that, I caught the most amazing rainbow on Eagle Beach. But I decided this photo, taken with my back to the rainbow, turned out better for its stark lighting and ominous storm clouds.

"Autumn Rain," Sept. 13: September, strangely, was actually the hardest month for me to chose a favorite photo. I had the bike tour and also a handful of amazing hikes that produced good images. But I chose this one for its subtle ways it captures the season: the color and the rain. It was taken along the new gravel road at Eaglecrest Ski Area.

"Grand Canyon," Oct. 14: I took this photo of my dad hiking down the South Kaibab Trail just after sunrise. High winds the previous day kicked up a lot of dust, which created a soft glow along the canyon walls.

"First tracks," Nov. 25: Taken near where the April snowboarding photo was taken, above the Dan Moller Ski Bowl. I like the shadows and the perfect sparkly snow, just waiting to by stamped out by snowshoes.

"2 p.m.," Dec. 12: I was going to post that Christmas Eve picture of the blowing snow at sunset, but decided to post the blowing surf near Eagle Beach instead.

It's been a good year for photos. Here's hoping 2009 is even better!

Snow days

Date: Dec. 26 and 27
Mileage: 30.1 and 34.2
December mileage: 722.7
Temperature upon departure: 27

Well, I'm back home now after starting the drive north, running into a wall of whiteout conditions, and thinking better of crawling my front-wheel-drive-with-summer-tires sedan out to the Eagle Glacier trailhead for a 5.5-mile night hike and campout in the snow. I was going to meet my friends, who are staying at the Eagle Glacier cabin. My plan was to resist the lure of the toasty cabin, and instead test my trench-digging and sleeping-in-a-suffocating-bivy-sack skills by camping outside. I realize now that even though I couldn't make it out to the cabin, I could in theory still go camping. But I've been avoiding that crucial aspect of my training. Eight hours of winter bivying is in many ways more exhausting than eight hours of biking, so I've been waiting (stalling) for the perfect opportunity to come along. It's too warm tonight (25 degrees.) Maybe I'll wait for another cold snap ... next week ... maybe ...

It's been a snowy couple of days. We received about 18 inches of snow yesterday and today. While I enjoy the addition of new white stuff, it seems to bring out the worst in Juneau biking as long as it's falling. Yesterday, with all the trails snowed in, I set out to do some serious resistance training on the North Douglas Highway. I stuck to the far right of the shoulder, plowing through 8 to 10 inches of warm (i.e. heavy) powder, breaking a serious sweat even though I rarely broke 8 mph, and was often churning closer to 5 mph. It took me four and a half hours to ride 30 miles, in conditions as difficult and slow as soft sand, while icy flakes continued to blast my face in the headwind. Even though the road lanes were swept fairly clean by traffic, I avoided them almost entirely except for a few swings to veer around snow berms. The sheer physical effort I expended to stay on the shoulder is the main reason why I was supremely offended and annoyed when a guy in a truck stopped, in the lane, and rolled his window to yell at me. "You're a traffic hazard!" he said. "What's wrong with you?" All I said was "Whatever, dude," and kept on riding. But what I wanted to say is "I'm a traffic hazard? I'm a traffic hazard? I'm working my butt off to keep my bike a full two feet off the road. You're the one stopped in the traffic lane! Jerk off." But I'm too timid. I wondered if that guy would have even given me a second thought if I was jogging or walking a dog, or if he was just bombarding me with typical bicycle prejudice. I stewed about it for quite a while. Little encounters like that are enough to ruin entire rides, but luckily, I was soon north of the ski resort traffic, engulfed in beautiful white silence and lost in my maximum-heart-rate cloud.

I headed out to the Valley this morning to see if any of the trails had been packed down, and encountered another resistance workout just getting there. Anytime there's heavy snowfall, the city can take days (and, if the snow continues, sometimes weeks) to plow the bike paths. The problem with this lies in the fact that bicycles are illegal on Egan Drive, Juneau's freeway-like artery that is the only road through these narrow sections of town. This law is heavily enforced, making the bike paths mandatory. There's a mile of unplowed path near my office building and another mile near the airport, and the only way through is to push your bike through knee-deep powder. This adds a full 45 minutes of slow walking onto a ride that usually takes less than an hour. It's great if you're training for a race like the Ultrasport, but infinitely frustrating if you're trying to bike commute from one side of town to the other. The city and its overfull bus system are forever conducting surveys to see how they can convince more people to bike commute, and I want to don my Captain Obvious suit and show up at those public comment meetings singing "PLOW THE BIKE PATHS!" (and make it legal for cyclists to citizen-arrest idiots who stop in the traffic lane to lecture them.)

Yes, I like the snow, but I will be relieved when it settles down.