An overloaded fat bike in California

We acquired a bike rack for transport to the airport and picked up a hard-case bike box from Steve. Beat was standing next to the Fatback with an Allen wrench in hand, anxious to dismantle the bike and make sure we could in fact fit it in the box. I knew I could no longer procrastinate this one last chore — taking the fully loaded bike out for a test ride to make sure everything was comfortable and secure. I was not looking forward to riding this behemoth of a bike on the streets of Los Altos. There were just too many details that made me feel grotesquely conspicuous: the bloated wheels, the bulging handlebar bag, the pogies — pogies for crying out loud! I feared they were all going to laugh at me, all the Californians with their BMWs and bullet bikes and 15-pound Cervelos zipping up the pavement. But it had to be done, and unfortunately I waited for Saturday

Saturday — the day with fierce wind and sideways rain and temperatures in the mid-40s. The wind was forecast to gust up to 60 mph, and the snow line — snow line! — was reportedly down to 3,500 feet in the mountains on the east side of the Bay. I didn't have easy access to anywhere quite that high, but the day did promise to be nothing if not wet, so I figured if I was going to be a geek, I might as well be a geek. I put on my favorite plastic jacket and bulky rain pants, ear warmers, and wool socks, then packed enough gear in my bike for an Arctic expedition. I was pretty sure I was the geekiest geek in Silicon Valley — not a small feat.

I packed up my bike with all of the gear I planned to take in the White Mountains 100 — including my full winter bivy bundle — along with a quart of water and a small amount of food. We dangled the bike from a luggage scale, and it came in just a hair under 50 pounds. "Most people in California pay a lot of money to get their bikes under 15 pounds. We, on the other hand, pay a lot of money to get our bikes over 50 pounds," Beat said.

"Almost," I said. "Fifty pounds is actually not as bad as I thought it was going to be." And I figured since the Fatback fell in the measly sub-50-pound range, I might as well power the thing up to the top of Black Mountain. Because, hey, why not grind a 50-pound bike up a 2,700-foot climb in the cold rain? This was going to be fun! Before I left, Beat took a photo outside the apartment as we laughed about how ridiculously overloaded I was for a 20-mile ride in California in March. He asked me if I was sure I didn't need my mittens (which are slated to be carried in the pogies during the race, but weren't packed in there yet.) We both guffawed.

Pedaling a 50-pound bike up nearly 3,000 vertical feet is indeed hard work. Luckily, the weather was so unrelentingly awful that there wasn't anyone else out to laugh at me. Only one roadie-type passed me, and I mashed into the pedals in a vain effort to keep up with him. I managed to slow the expansion of the gap for about a half mile, but by then I feared that my heart would explode.

Back to the slow grind, for an hour or so. OK, it was likely significantly more than an hour. I climbed above the ridge's treeline, at about 2,300 feet, and rose the last few hundred feet in the full brunt of a brutally strong wind. It likely was gusting to 50 mph or more. The tailwind rushed me up the last steep pitches, but the occasional crosswind gust nearly knocked me off the bike.

At the top I set up my camera on a post and took a quick self-portrait. It actually took four tries because the camera kept blowing over. The one shot I got, blurry because the camera was teetering, shows me grimacing through a shallow smile as I tried to keep my 50-pound sail from blowing me over. I was soaked through and through. I was starting to feel chilled. Time to head down.

The force of the headwind prevented much coasting, even on the relatively steep pitch. I squinted against sharp daggers of rain and pedaled hard. Not more than a half mile from the peak, I heard a horrible grinding noise through the roar of the wind, and the rear wheel stopped cold. I jumped off the bike and pulled it to the ground to inspect the damage. One of the bungee cords on my rear rack had snapped loose and lodged itself in the rear derailleur. It wound around the cassette several times; the hooks were bent, the bungee material badly mangled, and it looked like the derailleur might be bent. Arrrgh!

I knelt there, on the open hillside, exposed to the full brunt of the wind and cold rain, trying to undo the horrible tangle. And of course, my fingers became slower and more useless the colder they got. I wished I had my mittens to warm them up for a minute, but I didn't because they were the one thing I left at home! I was carrying enough gear for a full winter expedition, and I didn't have the one thing I really needed. I pulled my down coat and fleece balaclava out of my frame bag, and put on a dry pair of socks that were stuffed in the rear stuff sack. I started to feel warmer, but I really wished I had those mittens.

By the time I finally freed the bungee from the cassette, I was mostly going on sight because I no longer had any feeling in the wooden stumps that had formerly been my fingers. I checked the shifting; everything seemed to still be in working order. I removed the one working bungee from the rear rack and pulled my spare straps around the stuff sack — good thing I brought those — and started coasting down the long, long, long cold hill.

At least I now know that I won't be using bungee cords in the race. And I will most definitely remember to bring my mittens, and handwarmers, too. Finally, we did manage to fit the entire Fatback in the tiny bike box, except for the tubes and tires. Beat is a packing genius:

All in all, a good day of testing.

Safety nets

It started with a quiet whisper into the thunderous void, which is usually what I feel like I'm doing when I randomly post a comment on Twitter: "To take a sleeping bag or not to take a sleeping bag in the White Mountains 100? That is the question."

I still find it hard to believe that anyone actually reads or responds to the incomprehensible babble feed that is Twitter, so I was surprised when my friend Bill fired back with a counter-question: "Well, what have you done in the past?"

The Susitna 100 forced me to carry a sleeping bag — it was part of the 15-pound gear requirement that included an emergency survival system and 3,000 extra calories of food. Unlike its sister race to the south, the White Mountains 100 has no required gear. I could show up to the frigid starting line in a jersey and shorts with a single water bottle and a couple of Gu packets, and no one is going to stop me from embarking on this remote 100-mile ride around an uninhabited, frozen swath of mountain passes and valleys north of Fairbanks, Alaska. Sure, I'd be strongly discouraged, maybe even asked to sign an extra liability release, but ultimately, these are my toes to lose. I like this about the White Mountains 100. Freedom of choice.

Last year, I didn't carry full survival gear in the race. Instead, I carried a bivy system comprised of a 32-degree summer sleeping bag, nylon bivy sack, closed-cell foam pad and fire-starter supplies, reasoning that this 2.5-pound system would probably keep me alive in an emergency situation, probably ... although I had no real knowledge because there was no testing. Last year's White Mountains 100 was cold, down to 25 below at night, and I did experience a couple hours of discomfort and deepening cold due to sweating out my base layer during the day. But ultimately, I didn't even need my lightweight bivy gear. Why bring it at all?

But Bill's counter-question also raised my defenses: What if I fall into overflow and soak out essential clothing? (as has happened to me before, with serious consequences.) What if I slip on frozen overflow and break my leg? (There were a few sections of side-sloping trails where thick ice cascaded over the slope like a waterfall. A fall in the wrong spot could have been fairly catastrophic.) What if there is a big storm I don't have the strength to push through, or that hinders my ability to navigate? In all of these admittedly unlikely situations, the ability to hunker down indefinitely could mean the difference between life and death. Not carrying my winter bivy gear will mean the difference of a less awkward packing system on the Fatback, and about six or seven pounds.

Bill's and my exchange moved to e-mail, where it promptly devolved into a philosophical discussion, probing at the existential angst of modern life and the very reasons why I might even bother to enter a race like the White Mountains 100, let alone schlep a bunch of mostly unnecessary gear across the otherwise useless, frozen distance.

"If you're teetering that much and it's pretty much a tie, just go with the bag. It's better to lose a place or two than your life," Bill wrote. "OR ... maybe without the bag you will be more in danger, which could translate to being alive and staying alive instead of just living. Did that make sense? Without the safety nets we have to struggle to live. With them ... well ... they are safety nets."

I don't always agree with Bill's methods but, to a certain extent, I do share his outlook — that modern culture and laws, population density and technology have forced us all into a comfortable corner where risk-taking in a natural setting is not only unnecessary but largely viewed as idiotic — and yet not taking risks makes for an existentially unfulfilling life. At the same time, everything in life ultimately is a risk — Bill pointed out that maybe I should consider bringing a parachute for the huge metal flying contraption that will take me to Fairbanks. What's acceptable risk, and what's not, is largely a personal and cultural decision.

"I admit the Susitna 100 scared me a bit," I wrote to Bill. "The points where it was 20 below and blowing 25 mph for a 48-below-zero windchill — those were a big confidence crusher. I was at the bottom edge of my comfort zone, and my means to control the situation were right at that edge as well. And of course the human body can endure a lot more than we believe it can — incredible survivor stories crop up every day, and prove this point. But I don't like that feeling. It's not exactly the feeling of being alive that I spend so much of my time seeking out — it's more like the feeling of being too fragile to function, of being precariously close to losing it all in a way the reminds us our lives don't amount to much. Kind of a grim outlook but that's why I try to avoid those situations as much as I can.

... That's actually also why I make a point of being so well prepared (over-prepared) for my larger outdoor activities. It's why I carry full backpacks in 50K races where there are aid stations every eight miles. I like to feel that I'm in control of my situations, of my destiny — that I don't need to depend on there being water at the next aid station, because what if there's not? Never mind that there always is."

Perhaps Bill makes a good point — that accepting risk only if it includes the security of safety nets nullifies the benefits of the journey along with the risks. Or perhaps — as has been my experience — safety nets are the greatest benefit of modern life. They enable me to explore the depths of my deeper primal urges while affording me not only comfort and longevity, but freedom — the freedom to choose, the freedom to experience my world, and the freedom to keep on living.

Finding a balance

Well, the honeymoon with California is beginning to wind down; I now have to deal with the both daunting and exciting reality of actually making a life here. I was both lucky and cursed this week when, in addition to Adventure Cycling assignments I had to wrap up, a couple editors of small publications that I've worked with in the past came out of the woodwork (one of the advantages of living a semi-public life) and said, "Want to write something for us?" Yeah, sure, why not? It has kept me reasonably busy, and helped set the base for the routine I'd really like to develop while living down here.

At the same time, if I'm not careful, I can too easily become driven by my own distraction. On Monday, I was curled up on the couch with my cat, Cady, happily typing away an article about self-supported mountain bike touring on the Kokopelli Trail in Utah, when, out of the corner of my eye, I began to steal glimpses of my Element. For inspiration, of course. Patches of peanut-butter-colored mud clinging to the bright red frame morphed into subtle but taunting messages: "Why are you wasting daylight hours indoors when you could be out there? Outside? With me?" I took a break and stepped out onto the porch. It was a dismal sort of day, for California at least, obscured in dark gray mist with howling wind and sideways rain ricocheting off the pavement. Not exactly enticing. Right? Right?

OK, maybe just a short ride, just for inspiration. I'll just climb the Monte Bello Road and ride back down, I told myself. It's mostly pavement; maybe it will even clean up this bike a bit, I reasoned. I took to daydreaming and didn't pedal up the road with the all-out effort I'd hoped to achieve, so I reached the top of Black Mountain feeling fresh and renewed. On the exposed ridge, the weather had gone from grim to borderline dangerous, with plummeting temperatures, a fierce headwind and daggers of hard rain pummeling my face with such force it was nearly impossible to keep my eyes open. I of course was only wearing a thin rain coat and tights because I was only out for a "short" ride, not exactly well prepared. It would have been all too easy and practical to turn my back on it, as I had planned to do, and retreat down the mountain. But the intensity of the weather brought with it a strange and overarching desire, to seize this moment because summer is approaching and it might not come again, to take on this fierce new world and see what I could wring out of it. And anyway, I wanted to see what it was like to ride Stevens Creek Canyon downhill.

I love Stevens Creek Canyon in the rain. It's misty, dense, carpeted in bright green moss and absolutely beautiful. I love it so much that when I was approaching the end of the trail, I saw a side trail called Grizzly Flats and thought, "Can't hurt to extend it just a bit." Grizzly Flats was not flat. In fact, the trail climbed steeply and continuously all the way to Skyline Ridge, the next ridge over. Once at the top, I gleefully skimmed the highway scoping out the new-to-me trails to the west. Unfortunately (luckily?) for me, they're all closed to bikes for the winter.

Four hours after I left on my "short" inspiration ride, I arrived at home with a whole new layer of mud, 30 miles, 4,500 feet of climbing, and a fair amount of guilt for burning up the better part of an afternoon riding my bike. Out of the corner of my eye, saw my cat and my laptop both regarding me with disapproval. "There goes another whole day."

Somewhere, at the center of all this distraction, there has to be a balance ...

I will find it.

Here's the map and elevation profile for my Monday ride.