One year past

At half past 5 on Monday, July 6, 2009, I rode through the sun-baked desert toward a shimmering clump of trees called Antelope Wells, which would make today (Tuesday, although late, still technically July 6) the one-year anniversary of the day I finished the Tour Divide. In this year's race, since the only woman out there is still making her way toward the Mexican border, that means (I think) I held onto the TD women's record for one more year. Hooray! It actually still strikes me as humorous that I have my name attached to something like that - you know, the women's record holder of "the world's toughest mountain bike race" (don't mock me! This phrase just occurred to me and I think I'll use it as the lead in my book proposals.)

But still, regardless of my feelings about my own experience out there, as my dad pointed out, it's still something to be proud of. While this year's Tour Divide progressed, a lot of people asked me if I would ever ride the course again. The answer is "probably, in several years from now, if by some strange stroke of fate I'm in a good position to return when I'm 35 or 40 years old." The better question is whether I'd return to the race, or to an effort to reclaim the record. I of course recognize that my 2009 time is full of holes. I lost full days to mechanicals and injury in Wyoming and northern Colorado. I lost full days to mental anguish and mud in southern Colorado and New Mexico. And, of course, I opted for comfort over distance whenever the opportunity arose. But as I said to John Nobile when we stopped early one evening in Elkhorn Hot Springs, Montana: "This is three freakin weeks of my life. I'm going to enjoy myself." I still feel that way. Maybe more so now than last year. So while shaving days off my time would be easy in theory, it would be much more difficult in practice.

Speaking of this year's race, I was telling my mom about the strange parallels between Kent Peterson's race-ending mechanicals, and my own in the Great Divide Basin. Like Kent, my freehub began sticking as I crossed the bone-dry, remote sinkhole between Atlantic City and Rawlins. Kent and I first experienced our problems in almost the exact same spot, about 25 miles east of Atlantic City. This is just a few miles beyond a historical marker dedicated to Willie's Handcart Company, a group of Mormon pioneers who crossed the Basin in 1856. The company suffered major setbacks while crossing the plains, and dozens of pioneers died when winter caught up to them in Wyoming. Historynet.com had this to say about the Willie Handcart Company:

"The farther west the companies marched the more problems they had with axles and wheel hubs. In the humid Midwest, the climate better preserved the green wood, but as the air became drier, the unseasoned material dried too quickly and cracked."

As I told this story to my mom, she informed me that I actually have direct ancestors who traveled to Utah with the Willie Handcart Company. When my freehub began to fail, I was lucky enough to be able to coax it into Rawlins. Kent wasn't so lucky, and had to push his bike dozens of miles to Jeffery City. Now, I'm not superstitious ... and I by no means intend to imply that the spirits of my pioneer ancestors are out there exacting wheel revenge on unsuspecting cyclists ... but, if I do happen to write one of those "true life" ghost stories someday, you'll know why.

I just returned to Montana from my short weekend trip to Utah. My dad and I were able to get out for another hike on Monday morning - this time one that is arguably the best route in all of the middle Wasatch Range - the Pfeifferhorn via Red Pine Lakes. It's been at least a decade since I climbed up here. The view is as stunning as ever.

Pfeifferhorn is quite the majestic peak, guarded by crumbling knife ridges that are full of fun scrambling.

Looking out toward the Salt Lake Valley and the Twin Peaks, which my dad and I tried to climb on Saturday. If you squint, you can actually see the snow-filled couloir we decided not to ascend. Looks pretty much vertical from this perspective.

The big mountain in the distant center is Lone Peak, which is still listed on some of my early Web sites as my favorite place in all of the world.

My dad and I on top of Pfeifferhorn, at about noon Monday. The elevation is 11,326 feet - the highest I've been since the Divide. And, yes, I could feel the altitude.

Then, about nine hours later, I was here - 20 miles north of Dillon, Montana, making my way back to Missoula. I needed to pee something fierce but I raced past Dillon because I could see pink sunlight starting to emerge below the rain clouds, and I wanted to round the western mountains in time to see sunset. I was not disappointed. A six-hour, high altitude hike followed by an eight-hour drive certainly did make for a long day Monday, but it was all worth it.

Closer to home

I think it was Wednesday afternoon when I first found out about the holiday weekend. "Holiday? What is this thing you call a holiday?" Newspapers don't have holidays. We worked midnights, weekends, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and we especially worked on July 4, a day when their tends to be a lot of news opportunities between parades and fireworks and inebriated revelers. But nonprofit organizations are not like newspapers - they seem to think that people should celebrate America's independence by not coming into work. Which is just crazy talk, really, but this announcement brought up a new urgency to figure out what to do with my three-day weekend.

A quick search of Google maps revealed that Salt Lake City is a mere 500 miles from Missoula. Since my new location suddenly puts me "close" to home, I decided a trip to see the fam was in order. A July trip meant I could do some hiking with my dad, gorge on my mom's cooking and visit my sister and nephew - who has nearly doubled his size since I saw him last, and at 4 months weighs nearly 20 pounds. It also would give me an opportunity to visit my grandpa, who has dealt with a string of struggles recently, and, not to put it too delicately, probably won't be alive the next time I see him. These opportunities in life never come twice.

When people ask me where I got my adventure spirit, I always reply, "My Dad." It's not that my sisters and I grew up doing crazy outdoor adventures. In fact, I still find myself joining in the commiseration when they bring up that time he dragged us on an "insane death march hike" that was actually a mere six miles through a burnt-out forest in Yellowstone. But my dad has always been athletic and has always loved the outdoors. When I was 15, he began inviting me on his longer hikes in the Wasatch Mountains. My first big one was Mount Timpanogos. We walked 18 miles, through aspen groves, flower-carpeted meadows and high-alpine moonscapes to a wind-pummeled weather tower in the sky. If I had to pinpoint a day I fell in love with the outdoors, that was probably it.

I still love to get out with my dad whenever the opportunity arises. At age 57, he's as strong as he ever was. He and his friend, Tom, were already planning to spend Saturday hiking to the Twin Peaks when I called to let him know I was driving down for the weekend. He actually brought an ice ax for the occasion. Although he's an avid hiker, he usually just does the sensible thing and waits for the snow to melt before he heads high. Still, the window of no snow is a small one in the high country, and he's looking to expand it.

My dad has always been my mentor and teacher in the outdoors, so it was an interesting experience to stand on the other side of the divide - the one where I'm a bit more comfortable and experienced than him at something. In this case, trekking on steep snow terrain. Not that I'm all that experienced. I just bought my first ax last October. But the experience is there. Tom and I explained the self-arrest and glissading techniques. I tried to stay out in front, but around 10,000 feet, I started to struggle. My lungs just couldn't keep up with my legs, so every 50 steps or so, I found myself gasping for oxygen that just wasn't there, and I had to stop moving until I could breathe normally again. It was as though the mountain was sucking fitness right out of my body. I surrendered to slowing down, concentrating on my breathing, and absorbing the stark beauty of my high-altitude surroundings.

Around 11,000 feet, we came to the crux move of the route. As we expected, the 60-degree couloir was filled in entirely with snow. The snow was crusty and hard. Dad and Tom talked it over and decided they weren't comfortable continuing up terrain that steep. I felt more insistent. I offered to forge ahead and cut individual steps in the snow with my ax. They pointed out that climbing a couple hundred feet that way would take a fair chunk out of an afternoon that was already growing short. I finally agreed that it wasn't realistic with our equipment and experience, but it's funny how disappointed I felt about it. After all, I came to Salt Lake to hike with my dad, not climb the Twin Peaks. I have to remind myself about that - it's about the journey, not the goal.

We had a fantastic hike just the same, beautiful and challenging, and the elevation - both climbing and altitude - left me feeling sufficiently downtrodden by the time we geared up to see the local fireworks show (in Utah, most communities celebrate Independence Day on July 3 when July 4 falls on the Sunday. Yeah, it's funny. But it's my home.) I went to see my grandpa today. He was in good spirits, but it's still difficult to witness firsthand what the end of life often means - that it's slow and painful and strips away a person's vibrancy and even personality before it finally takes their body. I feel even more grateful that I can live my life now, doing the things I love, with the people I love. Thanks, Dad.

Jill Outside

A slow realization about just how limited my time really is, compounded by frustratingly unhelpful research on Web site development tips and tricks, has led me to concede that I wasn't going to be able to complete a new Web site before "Up in Alaska" got really stale. So I settled on a blogger template makeover with the name I wanted to give my new site - "Jill Outside."

In thinking about giving "Up in Alaska" a new name, I decided I definitely didn't want to tie my blog to a region. That mercifully cut out the obvious but rather lame "Down in Montana" (which doesn't make much sense, anyway, since most Americans still think of Montana as "up.") But in the end, I did tie my blog to a region - a rather large and ambiguous region - "Outside."

In Alaska, the term "Outside" is used for anything and everything that is not from Alaska. Therefore, if you don't live in Alaska, you live "Outside." I like the implication of a displaced Alaskan, exploring the wider world.

And, of course, there's the less esoteric meaning, and the overall theme and scope of my blog - being outside, as in the Great Outdoors, playing, thinking, working, suffering, hoping, dreaming - living.

So there you have it - this blog's new name. For now, it will stay at this arcticglass blogspot url. I still have a lot of work to do on the sidebar, but once I am done, it will be even more vast and hopefully just a tad more user-friendly. I could go through and delete links, but I like to have them all at my own fingertips. I believe that's the point of keeping a Web log.

So besides redesigning my Web site, and of course working five days a week now, I have been mountain biking. Yeah, that's pretty much all I do now - mountain biking with new groups and learning new trails and making pasta and going out for pizza and burritos with other mountain bikers. Right now, I am riding a mountain-bike stoke as wide as the Montana sky, which has been incredible for my state of mind during what would typically be a jarring transition to a new place. It is also probably the reason why my legs feel like shredded wheat right now; but that is probably good training for Trans Rockies. The following are pictures from my Wednesday and Thursday rides.

One of the most awesome things about working for a company like Adventure Cycling is that literally everyone I work with is passionate about cycling. It's really quite incredible; I go to work in the morning and there are three cars in the parking lot and a couple dozen bicycles propped around the courtyard. I admit I can be lazy about the process of bike commuting sometimes, but my work environment makes it almost intolerable to drive to work. As it is, I haven't even touched my car in an entire week. But beyond being just transportation cyclists, my co-workers also genuinely like to ride bikes - some quite a lot. On Wednesday, my co-worker John offered to take me on a "tour" of one of his favorite routes.

It turned out to be the tour of bears. While riding up the singletrack of the first pass (oh yes, we climbed two passes), we saw a rather large black bear pop its head out of the brush. It lowered itself and stood back up a couple more times, then crossed the trail and circled all the way around us before sauntering out of sight.

We crested the pass and descended down a long, flowing strip of singletrack before climbing back up a gravel road toward a ski resort, where we saw a smallish bear cub down a steep embankment. We stopped and held our breaths, and watched him dig around in the woods for several minutes, but we never saw mom. You probably can't see the cub in this picture; I'd crop it if I had a photo editor, which I don't right now, but the cub is that black thing in the center.

We crested our second pass right at sunset, to a view of the valley bathed in warm light. I'm 10 for 10 now on spectacular sunsets during evening mountain bike rides. It's enough to give a person a downright unhealthy addiction.

And addicting it is! I only got about four hours of sleep last night, then felt like soggy shredded wheat all day long, but still decided to rally for the Thursday night group ride another friend had told me about. This one was the co-ed crowd full of local racers, so I expected a fast-paced ride, but luckily a lot of the guys were fresh off a 24-hour race last weekend, so the ride was relatively lax.

That didn't stop us from riding 25 miles and climbing more than 3,000 feet in the process. It also didn't save us from the brutal hike-a-bike to connect one logging road to another a couple hundred feet higher.

Missoula mountain bike culture really is impressive. My group had nearly a dozen people show up for the ride. Then just as we were coming down the pass, we encountered another large group going up to another nearby high point. Suddenly, there were nearly two dozen mountain bikers gathered on a fairly remote logging road somewhere high above Missoula, on a Thursday night no less. When I lived in Juneau, I don't think I ever encountered two dozen different mountain bikers over the course of a year. Suddenly being surrounded by so many of my own kind has been nothing short of a culture shock.

Another pretty sunset, another impressive view.

I wonder if this ever gets boring? Somehow, I doubt it.

These perfect evenings

There have been 10 of them since I rolled across the U.S./Canada border into the state of Montana. I haven't missed one yet.

Monday night "intervals" up Mount Sentinal. I wait for the temperature to drop below 90, and rush full-throttle into spectacular golden light.

Reach the peak just as the last sliver of sun slips below the horizon. Cool breeze and warm sky.

Tuesday after-work ride with the Dirt Girls. We squeeze a couple hours between thunderstorms on a little mountain amusingly called Mount Jumbo.

The fast Arizona visitor wants me to take her picture with the "Big Sky," so I have her take mine.

Life is pretty OK right now.

Stuart Peak

I am trying to adjust to my new reality - working 9 to 5, off on weekends, riding a bike commute route, dealing with heat ... I'm realizing that most of my wardrobe is irrelevant here in the summer. Amid piles of rain gear, wool, poly pro and polar fleece, I found only one pair of bike shorts and four short-sleeve jerseys. Montana is dry, with lots of air particles that seem to trigger my allergies, and it's hot. Did I mention it's hot? It's not hot compared to, say, New Orleans, but it's an adjustment after a few years of living in a place where residents celebrate if the temperature rises above 70. I have yet to go on a bike ride where I don't run out of water. But I'll figure it out in time.

But one advantage of moving to a new place is an exhilarating sense of discovery everywhere I turn. Even bike commuting through town is still an adventure to me. Everything is so fresh and new that even small tastes are fulfilling; all the same, my appetite for adventure is more insatiable than ever. I see this green valley surrounded by mountain ranges, and beyond that, bigger mountain ranges, criss-crossed with an endless network of fire roads and trails, and I feel like I could go anywhere, and everywhere, and I want to. Of course time is a constraint, and so is knowledge of the region, and I had limited amounts of both on Sunday afternoon. I was waiting for my friend, Jen, to arrive from Utah en route to Sand Point, Idaho, so I could see her before she continued west. When I received a text from her telling me she was running late, and wouldn't show up until after 10, I realized I had a whole late afternoon and evening to discover something new.

I pulled out the Rattlesnake trail map that I just acquired on Saturday and decided to try an adjacent long trail, Stuart Peak. I didn't know how high Stuart Peak was. I didn't know how long the trail was. I rode seven miles of scorching pavement to reach a smooth strip of singletrack wending through a shady canyon, and knew I was in the right spot. The first three miles were grin-inducing fun, even on the climb, but then the real grunt started. Steep, horse-tromped, loose dirt cut a bee-line toward the sky. I tried with all my energy to ride uphill until I was seeing stars, then took short breaks, which became walking breaks. My lungs burned and my legs throbbed. I thought maybe I burned all my matches, flared out too soon, but the lure of the unknown beckoned, and I couldn't stop following it.

About five more miles of intermittent red-line riding and gasping walk breaks brought me to a wilderness boundary, where I gladly deposited my slave-driver of a bicycle behind some trees. I'm the rare mountain biker who agrees that bikes should be banned from wilderness areas. For me, the view is mostly personal. I just like the idea that there are still places in the country that can only be accessed on foot. It gives them a more mystic quality, like stepping into a place that time forgot. And it forces the relentlessly hurried among us to savor the world at a slower pace.

Bikes allowed or not, it wouldn't have mattered on the Stuart Peak trail, where I quickly hit deep, punchy snow. By this time, I was pretty close to running out of water, so I just filled my Camelback bladder with slush, which was incredibly refreshing.

The final ascent to the peak was a full-on snow climbing, where the north-facing crust was fairly icy and hard despite the scorching weather in Missoula, now far below. I checked my GPS and saw the elevation was approaching 8,000 feet, which meant I had climbed nearly 5,000 feet since leaving town. The number gave me a sense of satisfaction. If nothing else, it validated how much I had suffered up the climb.

And then, just before 8 p.m., I reached Stuart Peak. Gotta do the self-portrait on top of the peak, even though shorts aren't the most flattering look for me. I'd like to say that living Outside might allow me to get something of a tan, but that would be a lie. I'll probably go through several bottles of SPF 70 before I finally just surrender to wearing pants in 90-degree heat.

The topography of this region is significantly different than coastal Alaska, but striking nonetheless.

I bounded down the snowfield and collected my bicycle, giddy about the 4,000 feet I still had to lose. The descent was amazing. There aren't words that actually describe that level of exhilaration and freedom, the smooth, snaking free-fall through a blur of trees. I unravelled more than three hours of sweat-drenched climbing in 20 perfect minutes.

I think I'm going to like Missoula.

Western States

It was my first day off in Missoula. The sun was hot and high, the sky was mostly clear, I had a brand new shiny race bike finally put together and waiting to embark on its first big adventure ... and I could not tear myself away from the computer. I was watching tweets, blogs, checkpoint updates ... pretty much every snippet of information I could get about the Western States 100, specifically about Juneau runner Geoff Roes.

For those who weren't reading my blog a year ago, I'll expand on the connection. Geoff's my ex, but we've stayed friends in the aftermath of the relationship. I still follow his running career with great excitement, because I take full credit for the fact that he became a ultrarunner in the first place. We were both relatively inactive, considerably more bland individuals when we first moved to Alaska in late 2005. I wanted to take up a winter hobby, and inexplicably latched onto an endurance snow bike race called the Susitna 100. As I started training, Geoff got a little of what my friends call FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), and decided he would enter the Little Su 50K on foot. He ran with the Syracuse university cross-country team for one year sometime in the mid-90s, but hadn't run competitively since. (And I had never competed in a race of any kind, not since grade school at least, but for some reason thought 100 miles on snow sounded fun.) We both managed to limp through the February 2006 races; Geoff won the 50K in a little less than four hours, but not without considerable suffering. He also discovered that he loved running long distances, and was pretty good at it, too. The rest is history. He won all seven of the 100-mile races he's competed in (including the Susitna 100 in '07), and in 2009 was named Ultrarunner of the Year.

Western States 100 was by far his most competitive race ever. It's unofficially regarded as the ultrarunning world championship, so fast guys come out of the woodwork to race it. Geoff had worked hard to prepare, but admitted to me when I talked to him on Thursday that he was feeling a little lousy. ("I think I'm coming down with something.") So I was thrilled Saturday morning as I watched him hold onto the lead with two other runners. Around mile 48, he drifted a few minutes back, and at mile 53, a few minutes more. Still, he was solidly in third place. I couldn't tear myself away, but it was already 3:30, and I really wanted to take the Element out for a long ride.

This is the Rocky Mountain Element 90 that I am going to be riding in TransRockies. It's a full-suspension, 26-inch-wheel, super-light race rig. It is an insanely nice bike. It's also not mine. I'm just borrowing it. But my TransRockies partner was so kind as to let me haul it home from Banff, so I could get a feel for it in the weeks leading up to the race. And, as is my custom, I wanted to get more than just a feel for it. I wanted to take it out on an hours-long backcountry Montana adventure. So I tore myself away from the Western States race results just has Geoff was starting to drift back into a more distant third place, and pedaled in the 87-degree heat toward Rattlesnake Canyon.

I spent a brief period of time riding the trails off the main Rattlesnake trailhead, but it was a beautiful day and the area was fairly crowded. I rolled back down the road and tried the Woods Gulch trailhead, which a friend had recommended, and started up the Sheep Mountain singletrack. As is Montana's custom, it just went up and up and up, and pretty soon I was pedaling along a narrow, tree-lined ridge far above the valley below.

About 45 minutes up the trail, I sucked the last drop of water out of my bladder. I couldn't believe it, because I had started the day with three liters of liquid, and not even two hours had passed when I ran out. I pulled out the bladder and discovered that the hose had slipped off the stem, and much of my water had dribbled out. I hadn't even noticed because I was sweating so profusely, I didn't feel the water soaking my back. I was bummed, because I had already climbed out of the canyon, and I didn't think I stood a very good chance of finding a water source. It was a hot day and I knew I wouldn't make it far without hydration, but I decided to pedal uphill for another 10 minutes, just in case. I came across a tiny trickle of clear water gurgling down the trail, and about 100 yards higher, discovered the spring that generated it. The spring was no larger than a cereal bowl, gurgling up from a mossy, muddy hole. I began the laborious process of dipping my bladder in the tiny basin and scooping up a few teaspoons of water at a time. A lot of gunk flowed in with the water, but I didn't really care. I managed to collect nearly 70 ounces, dropped in several iodine tablets, and spent the rest of the afternoon drinking large clumps of dirt and the occasional stick.

I worked my way up to a nondescript "peak" at 7,100 feet and faced a choice: I could descend 3,000 feet of singletrack I had just climbed, or I could see what lay ahead on the other side of the mountain. A faint jeep trail rippled down the ridge, and I convinced myself it connected to the switchbacking roads I could see far down in the valley. I had my GPS with me just in case I got lost, so I settled on rocky jeep trail adventure over a fun, smooth descent into terrain I had already seen.

At about 5,900 feet elevation, the jeep trail petered out, but by then I could see a power line several hundred feet below. I stepped off my bike and skittered down the steep, loose dirt. The race bike performed beautifully - it was so much easier to hoist over endless deadfall logs than my heavy Karate Monkey. The Element and I arrived at a grass-carpeted road that descended into an entirely new drainage. Where did it go? I wanted to find out!

The road skirted around a mountain my GPS told me is named Woody Mountain. Just as I was coming around a corner, I saw a big brown butt that I initially assumed belonged to a cow. But then the animal whirled around, and I realized I was no more than 100 feet from an enormous cinnamon-colored black bear, standing right on the road. The black bear blinked at me and I yelped a little, and then squeaked, "Hey bear." This is the part where I admit I wasn't carrying bear spray, because I'm in Montana, not Alaska, and there aren't any bears in Montana. Oh, wait ... yes there are. But regardless, I had left my bear spray at home, and was feeling especially vulnerable. Luckily, the bear wanted just as little to do with me, and took off down the steep slope. As its big brown butt disappeared in the woods, I started yelling louder. "That's right bear, run away, you big fat bear!" And, having established myself as the dominant species on the road, I cranked up my favorite descending music, Jimmy Eat World - so I could sing extra loud for all the bears - and launched into the screaming descent singing at the top of my lungs.

I emerged in an open valley and started pedaling toward I-90. My proximity to Missoula wasn't immediately clear, but GPS told me I needed to turn north to go home. I followed a gravel road and came to the wrong side of a locked fence. I was trapped! It took some strenuous maneuvering to get both the Element and myself through the narrow opening, but I managed to gain my freedom. I found the frontage road and a sign that said "Missoula 7 miles," and bounced the gorgeous full-suspension bike home, supremely satisfied with my successful excursion into the unknown. And the bike ... the bike is pretty awesome, too.

When I returned to my apartment, I had ridden 38 miles with 5,179 feet of climbing. It was 9:20 p.m. I pushed the Element inside, walked to my computer and hit the refresh button on the Western States site. Geoff was right at the top. He had won the race a mere 13 minutes earlier, with a course-record time of 15 hours, 7 minutes and 4 seconds. Wait, what? Just six hours earlier, he was fading fairly quickly. I scrolled through five hours worth of tweets and discovered that he had indeed ramped it up and pulled into the lead, in an exciting last half that I had completely missed during my afternoon bike adventure. I actually felt guilty.

It's tough being a sports fan, sometimes. But I'm really happy for him. This is a big deal.

The leaving of the light

Geraldine pedaled beside me as we motored up the final pitch of a 3,000-foot ascent, a dusty dirt track snaking like a tentacle up the mountain - your typical Montana monster.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

I took a few quick gulps, stockpiling the oxygen. "High," I said. "Feels high."

"What, the altitude?" she asked.

"Maybe," I said. "Maybe elevation. Maybe it's the ride. Maybe I'm just tired. This has been the world's longest week. I can't believe it was a week ago I was living at sea level, a long, long way north of here."

"How do you like Missoula so far?" she asked.

"It's awesome," I said. "My co-workers are friendly, job's just getting going, and the mountain biking has been fantastic. I mean, this only my second ride, but they've both been pretty incredible."

Geraldine grinned and moved ahead up the fire road. I blinked toward the low sunlight, already golden at 8 p.m. The altitude-stunted trees thinned out, leaving wide-ranging views of the rolling mountains. And the smell! I breathed in a fermented stew of pine and mulch, marinated in spring melt and dried in the daylight ... the pungent aroma, the strongly familiar fire road, the trees and dust ... Divide flashbacks. I shook my head, trying to turn my focus away from a creeping sadness.

My new co-worker, John, invited me on his annual 50-mile summer solstice celebration ride. I politely turned him down. It was my third day on the job, and I wasn't about to ask my boss if I could cut out an hour and a half early. John persisted. I said, "Maybe. No promises." John wrote my boss an e-mail, cc'd to me, extolling the virtues both my boss and the publications department would enjoy if he would just let his new hire out for the solstice ride. My boss laughed out loud, looked from his computer, and said, "You should just do it." So I had to.

We left downtown at about 4:25, a group of 14 motoring toward the mountains. John told me the names of things, of buildings and streets and geographical features. I remembered the names briefly, but they soon faded to the gasp and flow, the climb. The group laughed and joked. "Have you done this ride before?" many asked me as we shifted positions in the pack.

"No," I said. "I'm new to town."

"How new?"

"I got here on Sunday night."

"Wow, really?" The real questions followed - where did you come from, what do you do, have you been here before. Inevitably, the conversations turned to the Tour Divide. What was it like, what did you eat, where did you sleep. Then, from some, "Did you hear about that guy in the race that was hit by a truck today?"

All of my valuable oxygen would seep out in a sad sigh. "Yeah, I did."

What are the odds, really? On narrow backwoods fire roads in Colorado, miles can pass without seeing another vehicle; hours can pass without another sign of human life. There are just a few dozen Divide racers spread out over several hundred miles. What are the odds? After the long double-track climb, the group veered onto faint hint of singletrack in the woods. I watched sunlight flicker through pole-thin limber pines and wove through my own unsettling thoughts. Flashbacks. It was just a year ago, on June 30, in Southern Colorado. It was the day that changed everything for me. Terrorizing lightning storms chased me off the exposed summit of Indiana Pass, followed by drenching rain that cut a chill so deep it nearly severed my spirit. I already felt half-broken when I caught the ambulances. Then I learned the person being transported was my friend, Pete - another Divide racer, who had been hit head-on by a truck while descending the steep pass. I stepped inside the ambulance and briefly spoke to him. I saw him strapped to equipment, immobilized and almost completely covered, except for his eyes - his drug-dulled eyes. I thought his injuries were severe. I convinced myself of terrible scenarios. I pedaled through the woods in a sea of grief and depression. I felt like there was nowhere to come up for air. I lost hope that day, for a little while. I obsessed about "The Things That Are Important." I wrote in my journal:

"Pete and I had both been out there on the Great Divide, riding the same muddy roads, climbing the same sweeping passes, watching the same spectacular sunsets. Both of us had been bound by this one thing, this totally unique thing, this effort to ride across the spine of the continent as fast as we possibly could. And to what end? To what end?"

Dave Blumenthal collided with a truck coming down a remote Colorado pass on Wednesday. I could picture the rocky, rutted road well because I had experienced a crash there during a rainstorm last year. Initial reports said Dave had sustained head injuries, that they were critical, and he had been rushed to a hospital in Denver. It was difficult not to imagine the worst, but impossible not to hope for the best. After all, Pete miraculously escaped from his head-on collision relatively unscathed. The day after his crash, I found out that he only had a broken collarbone and many cuts and bruises. Pete was riding a 100-mile singletrack race within six weeks.

Maybe Dave would make a similar miraculous recovery. I hoped for that with all my heart. I have never met Dave Blumenthal, but the Divide has a way of connecting people. I read his blog and forum posts leading up to the race. I listened to his call-ins. I identified with him, and his desires, and his reasons for wanting to do "this totally unique thing." But what are the odds that two horrific head-on truck collisions could have a happy ending? I tried not to think about the odds. I did think about Dave. The solstice group lined up single-file and swept down a narrow trail that John essentially built. We plummeted through moss-lined forest and apocalyptic clear-cuts as the golden sun cast long shadows behind us. Down, down, down, with cool wind whipping past our ears. "The summer solstice is such a strange thing to celebrate," I thought. "We're simply acknowledging the inevitable descent into winter darkness."

After an hour of ripping, nearly solid downhill, we returned from our six-hour epic in incredible moods. We went out for drinks and food and laughed away the deepening night until midnight came, and we were tired, and we pedaled home. Optimism ran high and I convinced myself of the best - Missoula is going to be awesome, the hot summer with its "long" nights is going to be tolerable, and Dave's going to be OK.

On Thursday afternoon, I found out Dave Bluementhal died of his injuries. He is survived by his wife, Lexi, and his 4-year-old daughter, Linnaea. He was 37 years old.

Light flickers and fades, and in its absence we remember The Things That Are Important.

Dave, I never met you, but I won't forget you. I feel a deep, empathetic sadness and my heart goes out to those who love you.

New chapter

Yes, I realize my blog needs a new name.

What I'd really like is a whole new blog. I'm a little tired of this circa-2002 Blogspot template with a sidebar I haven't updated in two years that still says I live in Juneau. Plus, this blog is now at 96 percent storage capacity, so realistically it only has a few more weeks in which it will even allow new content. But building a new blog from scratch, hopefully one that also holds the archives of my old blog, takes time and knowledge that I don't exactly have right now. In the meantime, I don't want to stop journaling just because I can't make a smooth transition. I will probably continue to publish posts under this header for a while longer.

It's been a good run for "Up in Alaska." I started this blog on Nov. 3, 2005, for the same reason most people start blogs - to keep my faraway friends and family updated on my new life in Alaska. Since then, it's hosted 1,182 posts, who knows how many photos, 992 "followers" and more than 2 million visitors. And it completely changed my life. While the blog didn't spark my interest in cycling and desire to enter the 2006 Susitna 100, it certainly helped me focus my efforts and sustain my motivation, which led to new passion, which led to many future cycling adventures. It reignited my love of writing and generated new interest in photography. And I'm pretty sure this blog has more clout in the eyes of my new employers than my bachelor's degree in journalism. Plus, I have this great record of the past five years of my life.

As to the new blog and new chapter, there is much yet to be determined. I feel like I'm entering a quieter period of my life, and I'm perfectly at peace with that. I've had a lot of time to reflect on what I left behind in Alaska, and I've realized that there was strikingly little that I couldn't take with me. Montana alone holds more beauty and possibility than I could possibly consume with my meager lifetime, and I'm certain that many new and intriguing adventures await for as long as I decide to stay. As for Missoula, it appears the geography was custom-built for mountain biking, and the craggy peaks of the kind of mountains I lust for are not far away. My new job is exciting; I still can't believe that actually landed in a career centered on bicycle travel.

I am sad about the end of "Up in Alaska" and all it implies. But if you had told me on Nov. 3, 2005, what my blog would hold in the next five years, I would have scarcely believed most of it. I can only hope the next five years hold just as much surprise.