That's Banff

Ah, Banff. What would my life have become without it? Leslie, Keith and I still joke about what might have been if I had never started the Tour Divide in June 2009. I came close, so close, to backing out. I remember standing with my bike box at the Salt Lake airport thinking, "Should I do this? Do I really want to do this? I remember holding my phone in my hands and nearly calling my parents to return and take me home. But then I didn't. I got on that plane, and set the rest of my life in motion. I arrived in Banff and met Keith and Leslie, the catalyst for so many adventures since. I finished the Tour Divide, prompting a perspective shift without which I probably wouldn't have left Juneau, which means I never would have moved to Missoula, which means I wouldn't have met Danni (who Keith introduced me to), so then I would have never met Beat. Speaking of Beat, I miss him. The only sad thing about Banff is that he couldn't be here this time around.

Today, Keith and I rode from Lake Louise to Bow Summit on the Icefields Parkway ... about 50 miles round trip. Keith let me ride one of his beautiful Rocky Mountain carbon road bikes. If I were a gear-inclined person I might even remember the make and model, but unfortunately I do not. I do know it rides smooth and is so feather-light that I could fit two and a half of these sweet babies inside my Pugsley. I still maintain that, for the most part, bikes are bikes and what matters most is that they take you where you want to go in the way you want to go there ... but I am starting to understand why roadies love their sport.

Here are some pictures from the Icefields Parkway. It was a gorgeous ride. I secretly wanted to pedal the whole 230 km to Jasper, but I didn't want to impose that kind of a dare on my friend Keith, who between work and prepping for this North Dakota trip had enough to worry about.

Wide-open views and skiable snow at 6,000 feet. Had I known what the mountain snowpack was like right now, I might have pressed for a snowshoe outing to a high peak over road biking. But the riding was plenty fun.

This place is OK, I guess.

Even at 50+ miles, the ride was quite relaxed and almost effortless. We had a strong tailwind on the climb, which did translate to a harsh headwind upon descent - but we also had 2,000 feet of elevation to lose. The wind was strong and the downhill grades were gentle, but they were no match for light bikes and legs fueled by warm air, empowering scenery and a summit Twix Bar. I felt great. Keith will probably be annoyed at me for saying so, but I kinda felt like we had motorbiked 50 miles rather than pedaled.

We still wrapped it up in 3:14 even with multiple photo stops and our 20-minute Twix Bar break. As promised, Keith delivered lots of beautiful white snow. I'm a happy Californian.

After the road ride, I still had lots of energy so I decided to tackle Sulphur Mountain. I've climbed Sulphur at least once every time I've visited Banff, which for the record has been seven visits since June 2009. I've climbed this mountain beneath a splash of stars on a zero-degree evening in January. I've climbed in on hot summer afternoons in June and July. I've climbed it with runners on freshly packed snow in November. Today, I got to see it in its spring glory. Conditions were less than ideal. Leslie referred to the trail as a "ribbon of doom," which was an adequate description. The slushy, rotten snowpack started right at the gate and continued amid a minefield morass of postholes. An oh-so-narrow ribbon of foot-packed snow wound through the bumpy slush garden, and even a tiny deviation off the trail would land me in an ankle-twisting posthole or thigh-deep snow.

I was determined to "run" this trail as fast as I physically (and safely) could. It's 3.25 miles and 2,500 feet of climbing. My all-time fastest uphill hike was 57 minutes, last August, when I was in TransRockies race shape and the trail was completely dry. Today I strapped on my microspikes and plunged my poles into the slush minefield, and I had to run - when I could. Sweat streamed down my face and soaked my cycling jersey and tights despite a 45-degree chill. Sometimes I floundered and punched hip-deep holes, or wallowed by choice to get around a handful of slower hikers. The trail hardened and conditions improved just as the grade really got steep, but still I fought and ran. It was not a fast run. I became upset when the speed on my GPS dropped below 20-minute miles. But I assure you I was working as hard as I physically could and still have enough left in the tank for the descent. My heart rate remained solidly above 170 the entire climb.

And the final result? Despite a quarter-mile dead sprint (on sun-exposed soft snow) I couldn't get in under an hour. 1:03. I was happy with my time. I sat down on a picnic table, watched golden sunlight fade behind the snow-capped Rocky Mountains, and enjoyed my last evening in Banff. Tomorrow we leave for the prairie. But I couldn't have planned a more perfect prelude.

Kananaskis Country

Even though it's my second (Canadian) home, my own custom version of paradise, I was reluctant to come all the way to Banff first. Of course, I've wanted to ride the Maah Dah Hey Trail ever since I heard of it. When my Canadian friends organized a group tour in mid-May, I signed on before I had even thought through a single logistic. I first considered driving, but then I moved away from Montana. I looked into flying, but Alaska Airlines doesn't land anywhere near western North Dakota (although it might be fair to say that there really are no airports or even towns in western North Dakota.)

My friend Keith told me I should just come to Banff first, and drive down with them. "Fine," I thought to myself. "I will fly from San Jose to Calgary, with a three-hour layover in Seattle and another hour-long wait in customs, then drive an hour and a half from Banff to pack up the car and embark on a 14-hour horizon-line pavement odyssey across the prairie just to cross back over the border so I can ride a borrowed mountain bike in the middle of nowhere.

"Come a couple days early," Keith urged. "It's the off-season now but we'll find something fun to do. We'll go road riding! You like road riding now, right?"

I do like road riding and I do love Banff, but do I love it enough for what essentially adds up to 24 hours of travel, each way? "Fine," I said, "but only if you can promise me some snow. I miss it already."

"Not a problem," Keith said. "It's full-on spinter right now. I think today is January 125th."

So I flew to Canada, and inadvertently brought California with me. Late last week Keith reported six inches of fresh powder. By Tuesday morning, I awoke to 70 degrees, windless warm air, and not a cloud in the sky. Keith and I rode downtown for coffee and the streets were alive with people wearing shorts, sitting on outdoor benches, smiling in the sun. Friends gushed about "the first day of spring." I tried to hide my disappointment that I wasn't even going to be able to break out my arm warmers. "What can I say?" I replied. "Canada always puts on its best face when I come here. You're welcome."

Keith and I left town well after noon to embark on a road tour of Kananaskis Valley. Temperatures were warm, winds were light and traffic was nonexistent. The scenery was of course unconscionably incredible. Pure bikey heaven.

The Kananaskis Lakes. I believe this is the upper lake, still frozen in mid-May. As beautiful and summery as it was outside, evidence of the cold, hard winter was everywhere. The elk and deer were particularly scrawny. Mountain slopes billowed with powder and several feet of slush and ice lined the roads. Buds and leaves were still a distant dream.

And then there was this discovery - a point where the road crosses the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route at the Elk Pass trailhead. There was at least two feet of packed snow across the entire trail, at the bottom of the pass (the pass itself is about 1,200 feet higher.) And Elk Pass is just the first of dozens of higher passes across Canada, Montana, Wyoming and Colorado on the GDMBR. The Tour Divide starts in a month. And of course a lot can happen in a month, but something tells me this year's race is going to be particularly interesting to watch.

We wrapped up an awesome 55-mile ride with a lynx sighting.

Then home for a town tour on the tandem with Leslie, followed by sushi. Worth the trip? Without a doubt. And I still have one more day in Banff.

The writing process

In the winter of 2009-2010, I sat down to relive my vivid and often emotional journey surrounding my bike tour from Banff to Mexico during the 2009 Tour Divide. I usually came home from work around 11:30 p.m., fed my cat, made myself a peanut butter sandwich, and sprawled out on my bedroom floor in front of my tiny netbook computer. I often stayed up typing until 3:30 or 4 in the morning, and then I'd get up the next morning at 9 or 10, briefly peek outside into the white and gray morning, close my blinds to shut out the already minimal light trickling in from Alaska's winter sky, and type until I had to go to work at 2. If the morning was slightly more inviting I would go for a bike ride, and on my day(s) off I would occasionally venture outside my weird hermit lifestyle to visit friends. They'd ask me what I'd been doing and I'd shrug. "I've been .... sick." And to be honest, I felt sort of sick. My outdoor adventures and physical exercise had fallen by the wayside. I was one-track steamrolling through that book. Working on it brought a wash of intense memories and it was often the best part of my day. I took this strange and uncharacteristic behavior as a sign that I needed to make a major change in my life.

That's the short story about how my Tour Divide book came to be written. The major change I decided to make was to quit my job in Juneau and move to Anchorage to further pursue this project and perhaps start up another writing project. With the fun part all done, though, I was loathe to deal with the tedious work of analyzing and editing my text. I read a dozen books on the traditional publishing market and set to rework my simple adventure memoir into an elaborate book proposal package, which I modified, personalized and sent to six carefully researched agents. Four got back to me. Two weren't interested. Two requested my manuscript. One said he was intrigued but was unable to take on new clients for at least another six to eight months, and left it up to me to get back to him. Another gave me particularly positive feedback. She seemed very genuinely interested in representing me and asked me to send her my "platform" for further consideration.

Platform? I had a simple story; I didn't have a tell-all celebrity expose or amazing new diet or analysis on the war in Afghanistan, or anything one would normally associate with a focused marketing platform. I had already grown weary of the whole tedious process and applied for a new job in Montana that I was almost certain I was going to land. It had suddenly become a bad time to be mired in a big book promotion blitz. So, grasping at a meager hope that the word had suddenly come to mean something different than what I had studied, I asked her to be more specific. The response was both expected and discouraging. "How will you promote your book? How are you going to reach out to your audience? What networks are you a part of? What speaking engagements can you line up? Do you have resources for a potential book tour? Etc." I had dabbled in self-promotion two years earlier with "Ghost Trails," and was already starting to wonder what traditional publishers even offered beyond editing, printing and a stamp of approval. Since modern digital publishing and networking make editing and printing easy commodities to obtain, I was beginning to resent what seemed like an awful lot of work for a simple stamp of approval. With her assertion that I'd be responsible for essentially all book promotions, even the potential funding of them, the agent confirmed that all of my time and efforts could only achieve that one thing - a stamp of approval from an established publishing company. And not even a guaranteed one. "Screw that," I thought. "I'd rather have a job." I put the Tour Divide book back on the shelf. I never even wrote the agent back. Dropped one ball and burned one bridge. I did not consider it a loss.

The book industry ... ugh. I was glad to leave that dream behind. I did not want to be a professional author for the same reasons I would never want to be a professional cyclist (even if I had the talent to do so.) Writing and riding are things I do because they're fun, they're fulfilling, they're challenging, and because they soothe my mind, nudge me out of my comfort zone, and ultimately reward me with a solid sense of well-being. Trying to leverage activities that bring personal joy and fulfillment for profit brings up too many unsavory (if necessary) duties. When I left Anchorage for my new job in Montana, I decided that even if things hadn't turned out they way they did, I would rather work a blue-collar drudgery job and write and ride for fun than write for a living. In December, I had my book edited and gave more serious consideration to publishing, but I really had too much going on to deal with it.

But then life continued to happen, and despite my efforts to renew my convictions, the dream continued to smolder. When I came to California, I decided it would be fun to try to write again, even if just for a while. I could always get that random job later. So I sat down again. I tried to close the blinds against the warm California sun that threatened to lure me outside. I took a few article assignments, received a few small paychecks, generated a few intriguing project ideas. But I couldn't focus on anything. I certainly couldn't write. That Tour Divide book was still looming on the shelf, like a discarded gift box begging to be reopened. I wondered if maybe, just maybe, I had no choice but to move that project forward.

(to be continued. I'm actually at the Seattle airport awaiting a flight to Calgary that's just about to board. I'm headed back to Banff for a week of mountains, snow-lined scenic highways, and mountain biking on the Maah Dah Hey Trail in North Dakota. As with most things I do, this blog post is running longer than intended. But I'll write more on this soon. All photos in this post are from runs with Beat and friends on Mission Peak and Black Mountain this past weekend.)