Goodbye to a good car

I called Cars for Breast Cancer at set up a pick-up time, tomorrow at 10, then began preparing for my 10-mile run. I planned to run straight from my apartment, but as I walked past my dust-covered car, I thought better of it. Geo, which has sat idle for nearly a month, at least deserved the dignity of one last ride. For everything Geo's given me, I owe it that much.

As Geo and I sputtered up the narrow switchbacks toward Skyline Drive, I reminisced about the good times. I remember the day we met, which was October 20, 2000. That date ended my long search for my ideal vehicle. As a poor new college grad, I was determined to avoid the clunker route, but I was also loathe to go into debt. I found the newest car I could afford with the cash I had on hand — a 1996 Geo Prism with 29,000 miles. The reason the car was so cheap was because its perks amounted to little more than an engine and wheels. It had a manual transmission, no power steering or really power anything, no air conditioning, and a jittery tape deck for a stereo. And it was a Geo. The budget cars had a reputation for being clunkers, even when nearly new. I remember once listening to "Car Talk" on NPR with my ex-boyfriend, Geoff. It was even before we were dating; actually, it was right around the day he and I first met. The radio show hosts were talking about engine failures and I mentioned that I had to get rid of my last car, a 1989 Toyota Tercel, because the engine burned out.

"That happened to my friend," Geoff said. "His car engine died at only 40,000 miles. It was a total piece of crap."

"What kind of car was it?" I asked.

"A Geo Prism," Geoff said with thick disgust.

"Oh," I replied quietly.

"So what kind of car do you have now?" he queried.

"Um, a Geo Prism. It only has 31,000 miles on it now."

There was a long silence. "Well at least you can get 9,000 more miles out of it," Geoff said.

Five months later, Geoff and I hit the road for a three-month, cross-country road trip that would push Geo's odometer to nearly that number. We left the car parked at a campground in central New Jersey while we spent three nights in Camden, selling hemp jewelry at series of Dave Matthews concerts to fund our travels. When we returned, our campsite was lined in police tape and a tangle of sycamore branches rested in the exact spot where Geo was previously parked. As it turned out, Geo was under those branches. A freak windstorm blasted the campground and dropped a 30-foot tree on top of my car. By the time the state park service removed all of the branches, a fair chunk of the roof was caved in, but surprisingly no glass had shattered. We drove the car across seven more states and three Canadian provinces in its semi-smashed state. Months later, I finally took Geo into a body shop to be fixed. But the frame was permanently bent in a way that let large quantities of cold air and rain stream into the interior, and the radio antennae never worked again.

That car came along on many of my earliest adventures — weekend camping trips to the high mountains and remote deserts of Utah, often venturing far off the beaten path. We once drove Geo down Hole-in-the-Rock Road, a 62-mile dirt track that leads from Escalante, Utah, to pretty much nowhere. We bounced on washboards for 30 miles, and then the road condition really deteriorated. When large boulders started to appear in front of us, I implored Geoff to turn Geo around. "This car wasn't built for this kind of road," I insisted.

"Oh, it's fine. Four-wheel-drive is completely overrated," Geoff said, right about the same time a piercing "crunch" vibrated from the undercarriage. "Uh," he paused. "But clearance is kinda good."

In 2005, Geo, Geoff and I moved to Homer, Alaska, yet another odometer-choking trip of 3,200 miles. We resided in a cabin on a bluff that was 1,200 feet higher than the sea-level town. That winter, our cabin and quarter-mile-long driveway was frequently buried in what turned out to be more than 300 inches of seasonal snowfall. Shoveling that much snow was all but impossible, and my bad habit of sleeping in often forced my hand when it came to car commuting versus "riding" (pushing) my bike to work. Few roads along Diamond Ridge were ever plowed on a timely basis, so I became quite good at riding the clutch and gunning the gas strategically to maneuver out of the tightest, deepest spots. Coincidentally, that was also about the time Geo's clutch started to slip. Nearly five more years would pass before I bothered to replace it, and even then only because putting a new clutch in Geo was still the cheapest way to shuttle all of my belongings from Anchorage to Montana.

I continued to defy Alaska vehicle conventions by taking on all kinds of tasks in all kinds of weather in my two-wheel-drive gutless wonder of a sedan. I used Geo to haul furniture, bikes and tires through driving snow on marginal roads. In 2006, we moved 700 road miles away to Juneau, Alaska, known locally as the place where cars go to die. Despite 90 inches of annual precipitation that turned other cars to rust buckets, slicked the roads throughout the winter and summer and, thanks to the car's bent frame, soaked the interior until I found mold growing in the trunk — Geo just kept motoring along.

The road trips and moves, of course, continued. In 2009, Geo went as far south as San Francisco, east to Salt Lake City, back and forth across Utah and back to Juneau while I prepared for the Tour Divide. In 2010 we moved to Anchorage and traveled all over central Alaska before loading the new clutch and hitting the road south to Montana. The clutch was the only major part I ever had to replace in that car, besides tires, brakes, and a rear window broken twice by thieves.

I know it's just a car, but I admit it's a little disconcerting to think about life without Geo. I've owned this car for 11 years. It's traveled through 29 states and six Canadian provinces. It's been registered in four states, and insured in five. It's been to Alaska and back twice, as far north as Fairbanks, as far south as the Mexican border, as far east as an easternmost tip of Maine. It's been clawed and fur-coated by my manic cat and smeared with the grease of a dozen different bicycles. During its tenure, I've had eight jobs and 11 different homes, not to mention several extended periods of travel where Geo was my home.  It's almost overwhelming to think back on what my life has been since October 2000, and realize that since then, the one thing that endured through all of it has been a car.

And now I'm going to give it away. It is time. The odometer reading of 192,000 miles puts it about 152,000 miles past its life expectancy. The interior, ravaged by years of bicycle hauling and wetness, is starting to fall apart at the seams. The engine struggles with most workloads now, the previously awesome gas mileage has dropped quite a bit and the tires are so bald that even heavy rain is frightening. It's time, but that doesn't make it any less hard. I'm going to miss the old car. Goodbye, Geo.

Climbing the unknown mountain

When I feel a need to reflect and reset, I like to go for long walks in the mountains. There are times when I'm seeking the mind-opening freedom of sweeping vistas, when even bicycles add an unwanted layer of complication, and I want to engage my body in the effort that never fails to ignite strong feelings of peace and well-being, the one thing I almost believe I could do forever — climb. Of course, every mountain has its top.

I admit I've been feeling a bit of unrest since the Tahoe Rim Trail 100. No matter how much I truly believe the journey is everything and the destination is only a very small part; and no matter how non-competitive I claim to be with others, I am actually very competitive with myself. I don't like to be defeated by myself. And my DNF in the TRT100 was most definitely a defeat. It caused me to question my abilities in everything involving trail running, in my capabilities to even engage in my big goals coming up at the end of the year and farther-reaching goals in the future.

This uncertainty extends to my current "career" goals, the writing projects I launched and the ones I'm working on. For whatever reason, the manic activities and sometimes unimaginative ease of summer always seem to sap my creative energy. I've never found summer to be my most creatively productive season, but it's been tough to feel somewhat stymied in not only my passions (such as trail running), but also in what is currently my sole occupation. Some days, I feel so frustrated with my writing efforts that I find myself enviously eyeing the "Help Wanted" signs at Peet's Coffee. "Maybe I should learn how to be a barista," I think with a tinge of ambition, until I remember that I'm a terrible candidate for the customer service industry (not to mention that I'm so impatient that I wouldn't even let Beat teach me how to make a cappuccino on our home machine, preferring instead just to buy them at Peet's Coffee.)

It's not that I'm ungrateful for my opportunities and freedom to pursue creative goals. It's just the opposite — I'm scared that I'm squandering this opportunity. I set specific specific goals, benchmarks for myself. Like the minutes passing in the TRT100, these have mainly served to reveal that I'm falling short. I admit I fear the looming DNF.

My dad and I were driving home from Zion on Friday evening when Beat called me with fantastic news. He had finished Le Defi de l'Oisans — The Challenge of the Oisans — a 180-kilometer mountain run in the French Alps. For 59 hours he battled steep and exposed trails across the loose shale and mud-slicked slopes, often in heavy rain. Mile for mile, Beat said it was the toughest race he had ever encountered — much more rugged and steep than the Hardrock 100 and even the Tor des Geants, and more daunting and dangerous than the Susitna 100 and White Mountains 100. His biggest challenge wasn't fatigue or foot pain or effort. It was fear — fear of falling — and several times it was all he could do not to retreat from the slippery shale that offered no margin for error. Needless to say I had been worried about him, and I was very relieved and proud that he finished. But Beat — who has already completed five 100-plus-mile races this year amid injuries, lots of bike riding and surprisingly little non-race running — has a unique way of making things like this seem like no big deal. And I know now, really understand, that traveling 100 miles on foot in one solid effort is significantly harder than it looks.

My dad and I didn't return from Southern Utah until midnight, having hiked for eight hours and driven for five, including nearly an hour sitting in a Utah County traffic jam. On Saturday morning I was feeling tired from the week's efforts but knew I'd only have one more opportunity to go into the mountains. I only had four or five hours to spare so I decided to put in a hard hike/downhill run on a mountain that promised to be fun — the steep and shapely Pfeifferhorn, still surrounded in snow at the end of July. I packed an ice ax, hiking poles and crampons, and set out from the trailhead at about 1 p.m. I really wanted to be back to my parents' house by five, so I just put my head down and charged. My leg muscles ached after stumbling across rocks and rushing water all day on Thursday, and my breaths were raspy after a week of hard efforts at high elevations. My lungs hurt but I just marched higher and harder, clawing up a snowfield and gaining the first ridge in what seemed like no time.

But as I looked down at the icy water in the basin below, I felt a rush of disappointment.

"Oh, that's not Lower Red Pine Lake."

Somehow, in my red-line rush, I had marched up the wrong drainage. I wasn't even fully sure where I was — either White Pine fork or Maybird Gulch, but it had been too many years since I did any regular hiking in the Wasatch Mountains to even have a good guess. I looked to my left at a towering pile of granite boulders that seemed climbable. If I was in Maybird Gulch, it might even take me to the Pfeifferhorn's summit ridge. It seemed worth a try. As I picked my way up the rocks and thorny tundra, the truth slowly revealed itself. The perfect pyramid of the Pfeifferhorn rose to the west, at least a half day's worth of craggy class-four ridge scrambling away. To the east, I recognized the American Fork Twin Peaks; to the south, the granite spires of Timpanogos; and to the north, the humbling wall of the Broads Fork Twin Peaks. I stood on a rust-colored peak in the center of it all, the unknown mountain.

I dropped down the narrow ridge and started scrambling toward the higher-looking summit when another hiker popped his head over the rocks. When we met, I sheepishly asked him where the heck we were. He opened his backpack and fished out a map. "Let's see; this is Red Baldy," he said. He looked down the ridge. "Gotta be. This is Red Baldy, that's White Baldy and that clear over there is the Pfeifferhorn. That's where we're going."

"You're going to the Pfeifferhorn from here?" I said incredulously. "Where did you start?"

"Early this morning at the Snowbird Tram," he replied.

"Snowbird, huh. How far was that?"

"We figure this is about halfway," he said. "But on the way here we hit a couple sections that were definitely Class Five. Ahead looks like there may be more of the same. So we're debating right now."

"Eek," I said sympathetically. "Well, that's way too much for me. I guess I'll have to be happy with Red Baldy today."

And as I followed the hiker and his partner across the summit ridge, I realized that the quiet vistas of the unknown mountain really were enough. Goals don't always work out as planned, but they usually work out beautifully all the same.

I drove all day Sunday through Nevada heat and California traffic with just an hour to spare to meet Beat at the airport. He shuffled through the gate with a jet-lagged blankness spread across his face, but wrapped his arms around me in a powerful embrace. "Happy Anniversary," he said. It was July 31, exactly one year since the day we met.

Sometimes I need to go to the mountains to reflect on where I've been. But even more than that, I need to come back to California, to Beat, my home, to realize where I'm going. The possibilities are still endless.

Frustration and awe: The Zion Narrows

In my early 20s, I was a connoisseur of Zion National Park. I spent many weekends making the trip from Salt Lake City down to Southwestern Utah to hike in Kolob Canyon, or the Angel's Landing Trail, or the Subway. I once joined a large group of friends on a 55-mile backpacking trip from the northern edge of Kolob Canyon to the East Rim. Afterward, I looked at a map of the park and determined that I had traveled every single established (nontechnical) trail within the boundary of the national park — with the exception of the Narrows. A decade passed and I still had yet to knock that one off the list.

Of course, the Narrows are the most iconic part of Zion National Park, where the amber ribbon of the Virgin River flows through a thin slot between sheer sandstone cliffs. A somewhat difficult-to-acquire permit, not to mention a shuttle, is required to hike from top to bottom, which is the main reason I had never attempted it. When my dad scored one of these permits for Friday, July 29, I jumped at the chance to join him, and crafted an entire hiking binge road trip around the prospect. I was very excited. Just a few days before our scheduled hike, a massive monsoon storm flooded the canyon with runoff. Flows were more than four times what is normal, and well above the maximum allowable flow before the park service closes the canyon. We watched nervously as it dropped, slowly, over the next couple of days, but was still flowing more than twice as high as normal by the time we departed on Friday morning.

Still, I did not consider higher water to be that much of a problem. So we'd have to swim some? Big deal. I admit I was feeling a bit overconfident as we took an early-morning shuttle to the top of the canyon and started strolling down the ranch double-track that leads to the Narrows. The canyon route was 16 miles long, with an overall elevation loss of about 1,400 feet. And we had all day to do it. Easy peasy.

Let me preface this by saying that I have Utah slot canyon hiking experience — several dry wash canyons in the San Rafael Swell including Little Wild Horse, Bell and Quandary, the aforementioned Subway in Zion, Buckskin Gulch and Paria River canyon, the tough and swimming-heavy Upper and Lower Black Box Canyons on the San Rafael River, and one that skirts the edge of technical canyoneering, the Black Hole through White Canyon above Lake Powell. I'm not a complete canyon novice. But it has been a decade, and in my memory these routes are all filled with smooth sandy washes or small cobbles frequently interrupted by deep pools clogged with driftwood, and semi-terrifying scrambles down sandstone walls. The Narrows has none of these features, with the exception of occasional deep pools. What The Narrows does have is swift-flowing water and rocks. Endless rocks. As Beat would say, @#$&%*! rocks.

I actually think I am becoming clumsier in my old age, but I also think the river flowing at 90 cubic feet per second (as opposed to the usual 40 cfs) made the going more technical that usual. We dropped into the canyon and started picking our way across the slippery, cantaloupe-sized boulders as we crossed the river and doubled back, again and again. Whenever we crossed a channel that was flowing higher than knee-deep, it took all my muscle strength just to brace against my wooden walking stick to keep from tipping over into the rushing water. Once, when may dad was a fair distance downstream and I was trying to pick up the pace, I actually did topple over and was flushed several feet down the river, scraping across rocks as I tried to grab my pole. As far as exercise goes, the hike was, admittedly, a little bit frustrating.

But, at the same time, the canyon was incredibly gorgeous. Whenever I took a moment to look up, I was struck with instantaneous awe, a deep-set appreciation for the skyscraper-like walls towering over this narrow alley of smooth boulders and cottonwood trees. Every time I go to the mountains, I'm filled with a sense of smallness. But here, lost in this narrow crack of the Earth cutting through the vast desert, I was nothing more than a speck. There really aren't words to describe the peaceful feeling brought about by these realizations, these moments when I acknowledge that geography has rendered my existence to almost nothing. And yet I move freely through the vast world with an immuteable sense of purpose, all the same.

We came to this waterfall, about 25 feet high, and peered over the edge. "How do we get around it?" I asked nervously. "Oh, it's not real deep," my dad replied nonchalantly. "You just jump into the middle and hope for the best." He said this with his characteristically dry humor that still fools me every time. "Eeep," I squeaked weakly, before he pointed to a narrow crack hidden by a large boulder that allowed us to climb around the waterfall. My dad is so funny.

Early in the hike, I stopped often to snap pictures and soak in the wonder-inspiring views. But when we stopped at a backpacker camp for lunch and looked at a map, we realized we had only traveled about eight miles in four hours, and the walking only stood to become slower as the canyon tightened the water became deeper and swifter. I felt we had been going fairly hard, but here we were, two fit people who thought we'd be out of the canyon well before the afternoon monsoonal storms, now looking at a potential race against darkness if anything went wrong at all. I think we were both a little shocked by this realization.

From there, we just put our heads down and charged. We took no more breaks. The waterproof camera came out of my pocket much less frequently. Our food, stashed away in ziplock bags, was inaccessible while we were on the move, so we stopped eating. I even stopped drinking, and ended up finishing with nearly two quarts of water, meaning I only consumed about a quart and a half during eight hours of hiking in the desert. It was a full-on march. My exertion level was minimal, but I was honestly going as fast as I could manage and still keep my feet on the ground while negotiating the rocks and swift water. All of the balance issues that plague me in my running came to the forefront, and I teetered and tripped as I struggled to match my dad's pace. Spraining an ankle or wrenching a knee would be a small disaster in that narrow, inaccessible canyon, so I purposely stayed on the careful side of my abilities. But I really think if I had an opportunity to hike the Narrows once a week for an entire summer, the workout would substantially improve my balance, footing and confidence, and I would become a much better trail runner.

About 12 miles into the canyon, we encountered three miles of true narrows, where high ground became nearly nonexistent and deep pools stretched from wall-to-wall. Earlier in the hike we went to great efforts to avoid swimming, scrambling up and over huge boulders and even climbing hundreds of feet above the canyon on steep, sandy slopes, just to avoid having to drop into roiling pour-overs. The swimming proved to be quite strenuous — I'm normally a strong swimmer but it's surprisingly difficult to stay afloat wearing heavy shoes, a pack, and toting a big wooden pole. Still, the time off my feet was a welcome relief, and toward the end we swam every channel we could.

Spending the day in the water also made for a completely comfortable July hike in the desert. Just a few hundred feet above the water, the ambient temperature was a scorching 104 degrees. I could feel the hot sun beating down every time we climbed away from the river. But in the river, with a water temperature of about 60 degrees, I was perfectly comfortable. Toward the end I even felt a bit chilled. Late July seems like a great time to hike the Narrows, although the monsoon season does provide a layer of anxiety. Dark clouds started to build over the canyon in the late afternoon, and at 3 p.m., it started to rain. We tried to pick up the pace and looked around nervously for flash-flood indicators. At that point, we just wanted out of there.

We remained in front of the rest of our morning shuttle group, and enjoyed a full day of solitude. So it was more than a little bit of a culture shock when, about two miles from the end of the canyon, we started to encounter hordes of people who had hiked up from the bottom. It's perfectly understandable why this is such a popular part of Zion National Park, but it was unnerving to suddenly have to weave around huge youth groups and families who were strung across the canyon, splashing around and screaming like they were at a neighborhood water park. By the last mile, we were fighting just to squeeze through crowds of literally hundreds of people. It's just not an ideal way to end an experience like the Zion Narrows. I would do this hike again in a heartbeat, but I think I would be more inclined to consider a trip during the off-season, such as February or March, wearing a dry suit and seeking the solitude and reverence that this canyon experience truly deserves.

Still, it was a fantastic day in one of the most beautiful spaces I have ever occupied. Thanks, dad.