Lima Peak

The squelch of soft mud beneath my shoes was suddenly eclipsed by a loud "humph."

I stopped in my tracks and strained to see through misty curtains of rain. "Humph," the grunt increased in volume as a moose emerged from the brush less than 10 yards in front of me. My breathing stopped and my eyes froze open as the moose lowered its ears and took a couple of steps toward me. Instinctively I took several quick steps backward and stopped near a tree. I couldn't take my eyes off the moose long enough to observe the tree, but I contemplated the possibility of climbing it.

"Humph," the moose grunted again, and out of the woods stepped its nearly full-grown calf. I thought the moose must be a female, but she confused me because she had one antler, only one, twisted and deformed on the right side of her brow. On the left was a crazy eye, cloudy and bright at the same time, and it struck me that I was actually close enough to see the eye of an angry moose.

"Humph." She took another step toward me. "I'm sorry moose," I said in a strange, calm voice that didn't sound like my own. "I don't want any trouble, really I don't."

The moose seemed to glower at me, one normal eye and one crazy eye fixated on my pale face. I couldn't remember if eye and voice contact was a good thing or not with moose. I took one more step back and quickly glanced at the tree. Its branches were high and surrounded in thick needles. I would need adrenaline to climb this particular tree, probably lots of it. I looked back at the one-antlered, crazy-eyed cow moose and waited for her to force my hand. She huffed one more time, turned, and galloped back into the brush. Heart racing, I reached in my pocket and pulled out my camera. I took one shot when she was already far away, still retreating, still looking back at me. There was nothing left to say, if there even was anything said to begin with. But in the lingering electricity of our short interaction, I felt a real communication had taken place. The moose said, "This is my property," and I said, "I agree with you, but may I ask your permission to trespass, just this once?"

I am weary of I-15. Five times since July, I've made the drive between Missoula and Salt Lake City, and three of those times were a rushed effort into emotionally charged, difficult weekends. I had to drive down this weekend to bury another grandfather, my mother's father. There was much about the prospect I was not yet ready to face, and the drive was first on the list. Several people who have become my good friends in Missoula were throwing a goodbye party for Dave on Thursday night. I had planned to attend, but at the last minute decided I needed to drive instead. When I told my friend Bill - who I have confided a lot in recently - that I would have to miss the party, he said, "It seems like you have been dealing with a lot of stuff lately, and so far it appears that you're doing it on your own. Just let me know if you ever need anything."

I felt gratitude for Bill and the way he reached out, and it was difficult to explain that spending a little time on my own was an important part of my grieving process. There was just something I needed to do. I couldn't quite explain it, even to myself. But I had to visit the mountains. The mountains of I-15. The mountains that rose like a fortress above the sagebrush desert of southern Montana, broad pillars of rock so distinct and forceful that they demanded attention from even the most road-weary drivers. I had passed them four times in the last three months and vowed to climb them every time. On my fifth drive, I was going to try.

I veered off the Interstate just north of Lima and camped on the bank of Little Sheep Creek. I awoke, later than I planned, to heavy rain and a thick gray veil over the mountains. My fleece pullover soaked quickly and lead-like layers of mud stuck to my feet as I slogged up a faint two-track mining road. The two-track dipped into a creek and faded to nearly nothing, so I followed the creek drainage, pushing through the cold mist and drenched tree branches. It was there I met the moose, and when she retreated down the drainage I decided continuing forward was the best course of action. The raindrops became thick, then turned to slush, and then snow. White flakes clung to my saturated fleece and polyester pants, but still I continued forward because I was not cold and not yet out of time.

I climbed out of the drainage to a bench already white with fresh powder. My heart was still thumping, my head still quiet after the encounter with the moose, and I felt no emotion as I looked at Lima Peak, now looming in startlingly close proximity. I climbed up a grassy ramp and crawled onto the face, which was less like a solid mountain and more like crumbling rockfall of basketball-size boulders. My gloves became soaked as I scrambled up the slope like an awkward quadruped, trying to balance my body over the loose, slippery stones.

As I climbed, the fog sank in until visibility was just about gone. I crawled until the boulders started to slope downward, and, remembering that this peak was shaped like a triangle when I had seen it from the saddle, decided I was at the top. I sat down and pulled off my soaked glove to eat a Honey Stinger Bar, and then I remembered that I had planned to write a note to my grandpa. I had done so on Lone Peak a week before my father's father died, on September 4, and it was a comforting ritual. When my Grandpa Johnson died on October 4, I couldn't help but think about what I would write to him in a note at the top of a mountain. It found it was difficult to form meaningful words. The death of my other grandfather had been a surprise, and I missed him terribly. But the death of my mother's father was more difficult to reconcile. I loved my Grandpa Johnson, but during the last decade of his life, much of his existence was marked with pain and anger, and he had a fair share of struggles. I think most of my family viewed his death as a merciful release for him. It was time.

But he was my grandfather, and my mother's father. His blood pumped through his veins and his memory filled my life, from the Easter eggs he hid for us as children to the shelter he provided me when I was training for the Tour Divide. The night I spent at his house in Saint George in May 2009 stands as one of my favorite memories of him, because by then he was so weak and frail that just getting dressed and eating breakfast was a huge struggle, but so stubborn that he still lived alone and took care of himself. It was the first time I had spent more than a hour with him in six or seven years, so it was eye-opening to see just how difficult simple day-to-day living had become. During the day, I took off on my mountain bike, riding a loop that turned out to be a lot harder and longer than I had planned. I called him from the top of a ridge and said, "Grandpa, I'm sorry, but I'm going to be home late." When I finally came back to his house, he was still awake, more than an hour past his bedtime, waiting up for me. I felt worse than horrible about this and tried to apologize, but he just interrupted me and said, in his usual gruff grumpy voice, "It's OK. I always stay up late. I don't mind." But I saw a hint of sparkle in his eyes, and understood that he really did care.

On the fog-shrouded summit of Lima Peak, elevation 10,700, I pulled out the pen and paper that I had carried for the task and wrote the note that I had planned to write. Because it was so difficult to put sincere emotions into words, I wrote a variation of a lyric by Iron and Wine, from "Upward Over the Mountain:"

"So may the sunrise bring hope where it once was forgotten;
(Grandpas) are like birds, flying always over the mountain."
For my Grandpa Johnson, Love Jill. I will see you tonight. October 8, 2010.

I stuffed the paper between two rocks, covered them in snow, and stood up. A specter of the round silver sun began to show through the fog. I thought from its placement in the sky, I could discern the direction west, so I turned to face it. The ridgeline of the Lima Peaks is also the Continental Divide, the border of Montana and Idaho. I have a special affinity for the apex of the Divide, because it feels like a great beginning to me, the place where flakes of snow join droplets of water, which join trickles, which join streams, then creeks, then rivers, then great rivers, until everything flows into the bewildering expanse of the ocean. I thought of my friend in California, far away on that ocean, and felt a sudden urge to send him a text from the snow-flecked spine of the Divide. I turned on my phone. It said the time was 11:19 a.m., and my heart nearly stopped.

11:19? How did three and a half hours pass since I left? How? It was baffling, but when I thought about it, I had to admit it made sense. I had climbed 4,000 feet, and the last 1,000 were severely slow and technical, but I didn't notice the passing of time, didn't realize it. My grandpa's viewing began at 6 p.m. I had hoped to arrive in Ogden at 5:30, and it was still a four-hour drive from Lima, at least, and that was before my planned shower stop. My car was at least 30 minutes out from Lima, and my body was 4,000 vertical feet and five or six miles from my car. The math didn't leave much time for my body, and I was hit with a rush of remorse that felt worse than the time I came home late from my bike ride. I would rather be stomped by a moose than miss my grandpa's viewing. My mother would be so disappointed. So that wasn't an option. I was guilty of overshooting my turnaround time by more than an hour, but I sensed that with enough adrenaline and a little bit of luck, the descent could be done in an hour or so.

Bright streaks of sunlight broke through the clouds until the fog had cleared up entirely. Suddenly I could see the whole colorful spread of the valley before me - the sagebrush desert, the golden foothills, the snow-dusted peaks, the tiny oasis of Lima, the thin vein of I-15. I started down the rocks but frequently lost my balance on the slippery, uneven surface. I rolled my ankle twice and decided that breaking it was a real possibility, and a broken ankle would really put me in a bind. I dropped to my butt and started skittering down the mountain on my hands, butt and feet, sliding down the tumble of the sharp stones like a deranged crab.

My hands and butt were bruised and tingling by the time I reached the saddle, but there was no time to slow down. I tightened my backpack straps and started running. I ran as fast as I thought I could run and not lose my footing on the rocks and grass clumps that covered the trailless mountainside. The sky opened wider with bright patches of blue, and my legs carried me down the slope like tiny wings, light and free. In smiled at the rush of freedom and the ways I am falling in love with running - learning that a good run feels every bit as fun and freeing as riding a bike down perfect singletrack, except for running isn't limited the way bikes are, bound to wheels and trails. Feet can go anywhere they want, any time they want, even when they are attached to relatively skilless runners.

I sprinted past the point where I saw the moose and slowed, but heard nothing. I picked up the pace again and arrived back at the car with the bottom of my right foot absolutely throbbing, but my phone said it was 12:42. Yes! I ripped down my tent, climbed in my car and gunned the gas all the way down the narrow gravel road. I arrived in Lima just after 1, in time to call my dad and tell him I was still going to make it to the viewing on time.


I merged onto I-15, my head still spinning with the dynamics of the morning - the moose, the rain, the snow, the fog and emerging sunlight, the slippery rocks and the running. The pavement rushed beside me and the majestic Lima Peaks faded into my rear-view mirror, and above it all was the memory of my grandpa, flying upward over the mountain.

As if cycling wasn't hard enough

I was finally able to go for my first "run" since the Bear 100 — about an hour, mellow page, on smooth dirt singletrack. The plan was to test my right foot for impact pain, but I was too busy focused on complaints from other body parts to really make an honest assessment. Tired quads. Aching shoulders. Shredded abs and hip flexors. All common maladies of a brand new singlespeeder.

I can't say I completely understand the appeal yet, but I will say I have a whole new respect for singlespeed mountain biking. It demands nothing less than full attack mode on uphills and hip-flexor-tearing RPMs upon descent. More experienced singlespeeders tell me one-gear Zen requires patience more than power, but whenever I set my feet to my rapidly spinning platform pedals, all I can see is red. It doesn't help that the Karate Monkey is the only bike I've ridden this week, and some of those rides were really ambitious — climbing 5,000 vertical feet on Lolo mountain, for example. No wonder my abs hurt.

I decided to take a break from it all with a mellow road ride after work on my commuter, which is a fixed-gear bike. That bike's single gear is quite a bit taller than my mountain bike, but I've only ever ridden it on the meandering bike path into downtown, and a few roads here and there, and once on a gravel rail trail, so I never had any real comprehension of how my fixie could be more work to operate than any other bike I own. I spun easy toward Hellgate Canyon and started cranking harder as the grade turned slightly higher than flat. Missoula's endless availability of quality off-pavement riding has spoiled me to the point that I find riding with traffic to be completely intolerable, so I took the first opportunity I saw to turn off the main road — Marshall Canyon.

The road grade shot skyward and I stood in the saddle, pressing hard on my sore quads and straining my aching abs for the torque I needed to continue moving forward. It was hard singlespeed work again, but it felt really good, moving up a steady grade on a smooth surface. I worked harder. Sweat poured down my neck and drenched my jeans. When it came time to turn back, I took a break to catch my ragged breath and look with satisfaction far down the canyon and all the elevation I had gained. And then I started downhill.

At first, the road grade favored my desired speed, but the descent quickly took a turn for the steeper. The pedals churned faster and I touched the front brake ever so lightly, loathe to resist any free distance that gravity was perfectly willing to provide. The bike simply responded by charging faster, yanking my knees up and down with revelry as I strained my oh-so-sore quads against the pedals' care-free spin. I squeezed on the brake harder and braced my leg muscles more rigidly, but momentum was winning. My hip flexors responded angrily ... "We thought you were done with this nonsense." "It's not my fault," I muttered feebly. I fought an urge to take my feet off the pedals — fixie coasting — but resisted because I had no idea what lie around the next canyon bend and how fast I'd have to brake to avoid hitting it. So I just gripped the front brake, ducked in, and let the pedals rip my legs to little shreds all the way down to the relative peace of Hellgate Canyon.

I have GOT to get at least one of my geared bikes repaired.

On the bright side, I really think my foot is well on the mend. I am looking forward to running again, which will probably feel easy in comparison.

Three pictures

Dave is moving north

Busy purging all but the

Barest essentials

Riding Deer Creek Sneak

As rich evening light gives chase

So early these days

Commuting to work

Droplets of mist cling to jeans

Wish for more miles

Chasing the rain

"Wow, where is everyone?" I muse as Bill and I ride into the Rattlesnake trailhead. On Saturday afternoon this same parking lot overflowed with dozens of vehicles. Now it's Monday evening, the weather is cool and damp, and the lot is completely empty.

"People in Missoula don't come out in the rain," Bill says. "They use it as time to catch their breath and regroup."

Catch a breath and regroup. Something I could use now more than ever. The death of my grandfathers. The emotionally draining trips to Utah. The constant traveling. Adapting to Missoula. New apartment. New job. Biking. Training. Running. Friends. Relationship. Breathe, breathe, breathe.

Bill splashes through cold mud puddles and I race beside him. I only have one speed and tonight it is not a slow one. Pumping, breathing, crackling leaves, breathing, grinding rocks, breathing, while the mist-shrouded mountainsides close in around us. Golden aspens, green hemlock and larch trees crowd the narrow corridor. The mostly unseen river gurgles nearby. Bill and I talk about life and love, patterns and chaos. My lungs burn amid gulps of moist, cool air. The sky imperceptibly fades to darker shades of gray.

"Sometimes I really miss riding in the rain," I say. "Not that I want to do it every day anymore, but sometimes it just feels right, and real." We stop at the Sheep Mountain trailhead and stare longingly at the scar that cuts deep into the wilderness. When I look back down the canyon, all I see is curtains of fog draped along the treetops. The vista resembles Southeast Alaska, and makes me feel deeply homesick in a way I sometimes still feel. "I can't believe I've never been up the corridor before," I continue, more quietly. "I plan to come back often."

Bill suggests going farther, so we continue forward. The grade steepens and my legs struggle. Darkness sets in. Bats and grouse flutter through our headlamp beams. Elk bugle eerie songs into the night. When I look back, I can no longer see any reflection of city lights from Missoula. The sky is black. We rode far. I am tired. I am really tired.

Breathe, breathe, breathe. We look out over the darkened valley and search for the shadows of elk and bears. My breathing slows and quiet sets in. Night cloaks the canyon in mystery, a release from homesickness and a spark of new energy. The sweet autumn air is rich with possibility, and I breathe it all in.

Last weekend of summer

Fall is generally a season of dynamic change, and right now I feel like I am perched on a precipice, bracing myself for a big leap. The same could have been said about my summer 2010, and spring as well. For all of its unrest, 2010 is shaping up to be one of the more dynamic years of my life. In fact, when I think back to February and March, and the mornings I ran alone across the wind-scoured crust of Thunder Mountain in Juneau, I can hardly reconcile that the person in that memory was me, let alone me mere months ago. In many ways, I am still the same person. But in others, I am irreconcilably different, in a way that I almost miss her — Jill from Juneau — and the small, if breathtakingly beautiful, world in which she lived.

I am setting anchors in Missoula. They're just small things — like buying a couch — but they feel significant to me. I am trying to do the best I can at my job, even though it is not coming as naturally as I hoped (my week in Vegas is a glaring example of this, and my need to develop better people skills to go along with my love of bicycle travel, writing, editing and design.) My friend Dave is moving to Kalispell. We haven't known each other (in person) all that long, but he's been a good friend and I'm really going to miss him, even if Kalispell is only two hours away. And my last living grandfather — my mother's father — died this morning. His death was not as much of a shock as my father's father, because he has been quite sick for a long time (most of my adult life, but he remained surprisingly robust despite heart disease and kidney failure.) Still, I have lost two grandfathers in the past month, and it's difficult to comprehend that they're really gone from my life.

Then there's Beat, the Swiss-German ultrarunner who lives in Los Altos, California. I like this guy — it seems relevant for me to admit that, and Beat would probably be OK with me broadcasting it in my personal public forum. In fact, I think the only thing we're not OK with right now is the fact that we live 1,100 miles apart. "Minor complication," he calls it, but he did manage to fly out to Missoula this weekend with seemingly few complications. Then Missoula doled out what was perhaps the most beautiful weekend of the summer — in October — with warm sun, clear bluebird skies and temperatures in the 80s. I wanted to take Beat on a weekend tour of the "Best of Missoula," which (in my limited experience) includes coffee and live music at an outdoor cafe on Higgins Avenue, a slice at The Bridge, Big Dipper ice cream (mmm, pumpkin. I love fall.) And, of course, a mountain bike ride in the Rattlesnake.

Problem is, Beat doesn't mountain bike ... yet. So what did I do to try to convince him to take it up? Well, I'm still having trouble cobbling together a working bicycle among the five I own. I managed to fix my snow bike's flat tire, but it still has a worn-out front brake rotor, a seized seatpost and a host of other smaller problems (Pugsley is a year overdue for its winter overhaul, meaning it's been viciously neglected since early 2009.) The other choice was a singlespeed. So I offered to let Beat ride my geared bike — the 37-pound Pugsley with a saddle several inches too low for him, no suspension, and not much front brake. And, if that wasn't enough, I also failed to tighten down the rear skewer all the way when I put the rear wheel back on. It loosened and the wheel shifted and rubbed against the chainstay, to the point where the wheel was barely turning. We didn't notice it for nearly five miles (Beat: "I was wondering why it seemed so hard.") After several assurances that I was in fact not intentionally trying to kill him, we met Dave and rode the Wallman Loop, which includes a healthy climb. As I churned up the steep switchbacks in the sweltering October heat, I occasionally moaned phrases such as "This is the worst pain ever" and Beat — who as a runner regards intensity-caused cycling pain as quaint —just laughed at me. Singlespeeds make 5 mph climbing so much more strenuous than it needs to be ... which is interestingly what makes it so intriguing.

My friends Danni and Brad were also visiting from Kalispell over the weekend. I tried to convince Danni that since Dave is moving to Kalispell, she should move to Missoula and that would be a fair trade. I don't think she accepted my reasoning, but she did agree to join our ride as a runner with Brad's dog, Zella. We waited short periods of time for her at the trail junctions, but for the most part I am becoming ever more cognizant of the fact that mountain bikers (at least this mountain biker) are not all that much speedier than runners.

On Sunday, I made Beat ride Pugsley again, this time on a snaking gravel road that starts in the community of Lolo and steadily climbs 3,000 feet in eight miles on a washboarded, rocky, dusty, sun-exposed grunt of a road. He was not too stoked on that ride, but took it in good humor, even as his back ached while I spun beside him and made comments such as: "I love gravel road climbs. They're so relaxing, like Zen biking." The plan was to ditch the bikes at the start of the singletrack, but I am still having pain issues with my right foot, so I decided to haul my mountain bike as far as I could (wilderness boundary) to minimize foot usage. I could only ride short sections of the singletrack before I hit "Worst Pain Ever" mode, but we still pushed the bike to 8,000 feet elevation. (He actually pushed it most of the time, because I'm too slow.)

We ditched the bike just below Carlton Ridge. As we crested over the saddle and started down, I looked out over the blazing gold streaks across the mountainsides and immediately became crestfallen. "I can't believe all of these trees have died. All of this was green in August." Only later did I realize that these conifers weren't dead. They're larch trees, which turn golden and drop their needles in the fall.

We took the direct route to Lolo Peak, a strenuous scramble up a steep boulder field. It was hard work, but not quite to a "singlespeed worst-pain-ever" level.

The peak and ridge walking were fantastic — warm and high with very little wind. I couldn't believe we could sit out in the open above 9,000 feet in Montana in October wearing only shorts and a T-shirt. Forecasts for later in the week call for rain and low temperatures in the 30s and the potential of snow. Beat found the peak registry and handed it to me. I looked out over the golden landscape and wrote: "Today is the last day of summer. 10-3-10."

The longer I live in Montana, the less it reminds me of Juneau. But every once in a while, I cross a marshy valley and feel an abstract connection to places that once filled my life with clarity.

The steep downclimb was punctuated with one last 500-foot ascent, but at 4 p.m. I was back at 8,000 feet with a bicycle and nothing left to do but lose 5,000 feet of pure elevation. I dropped into the rugged singletrack as Beat followed right on my wheel. I bounced over rocks, shoulder-checked larch trees and cornered tight turns just to keep him from catching me. Eventually the trail smoothed out and I picked up exhilarating speed, weaving through the trees and whooping gleefully as the bike bucked down a continuous ripple of roots. Four miles and 15 minutes later, I stopped at a junction to wait for what I assumed would be at least 20 minutes, but not three minutes later, Beat sprinted past doing at least 12 mph. Jaw dropped, feeling satisfyingly inadequate with wheels and gravity, I accelerated toward him and drafted off his legs.

We rode together from the trailhead with nowhere to go but blissfully downhill. Down, down, down, into the wending road, into the dried grass rustling on the hillside, into the yellow aspens and alders, dropping into encroaching fall and winter with a strong sense that the superlative summer is finally over. And that's a wonderful thing — because the shifting seasons can only bring more dynamic change.

"Gears disability"

"Sorry for your gears disability," Bill said as he pulled up on his bike in front of my office. "Would it be better if I only rode in one gear?"

I looked down at my newly singlespeed-converted Karate Monkey. "Well, it couldn't hurt," I said. "At least then there's a chance I'll keep up with you on the road."

Bill observed my cadence as we pedaled down the street, then shifted his gears to match mine - 32x20. "This is pretty low," he observed.

"Tell me about it," I said. "It's downright tedious on flat pavement." We spun and spun and spun, until we hit hills that suddenly seemed to throw the pedals backward. I stood and strained and grunted and sometimes I made it, but sometimes I didn't. The ride hadn't even started yet.

At the trailhead, I made a point to remark to the other Thursday Night riders that I was singlespeeding today - not because I've suddenly become one of those boorish one-gear sandbaggers (though I may have come off that way), but because I didn't have a clue what I was doing and needed to warn potential wheel-suckers in advance.

We started up the trail. I struggled to find my cadence amid a paceline of geared riders. Bill stayed up front, chugging away at the 32x20, although Bill is a much stronger rider than I am. I churned, then faltered, then churned again. The grade steepened. I stood up and wrestled with my handlebars like they were fighting back. I mashed the pedals until my abs burned. My abs! "This is a really good core workout," I said to the woman in front of me. She shifted into granny gear and suddenly I couldn't keep my own bike from tipping over. I set my foot down, and just like that I was walking. Other riders spun past and regarded me with quiet pity. It was a really easy hill.

I coasted the entire descent, except for when I forgot to coast and laid into my pedals until the egg-beater motion spun my legs out of control and spit my feet forward. After experiencing steep climbs and leg-throwing descents, I vowed to put clipless pedals on my singlespeed. I dislike clipless pedals and haven't used them for a year, but you basically can't get away with platforms when you only have one gear.

On the way home, Bill, Norman and I passed a speedometer. Bill and I frantically spun our tiny gear, legs pounding like overheated pistons, until we coaxed the radar to 25 mph. "Yeah, 25 mph!" I called out. I slowed my legs. That's when I realized that every muscle in my legs hurt, every single one, throbbing with an alien sensation that must arise when one's RPM rises above 200.

"What do you think of one gear?" I asked Bill as we ambled toward home.

"I like it," he said.

I smiled. "Me too."

Back to reality

This has been a strange process - trying to recover from last week. And I'm not talking about the 50-mile trek across Northern Utah, although there is some backlash there as well. But, no, Vegas and the way I felt there, and subsequently reacted while I was there, is still troubling me. By Thursday I was pressed against a hard edge of my personality. I was anxious, stressed, disconnected and really not myself. Now that I'm past it, and trying to pick up a few of the pieces, I'm still confused about why I reacted so badly. I think there is a lot to be said about sleeplessness and the mental turmoil that alone causes. But my experience there was somewhat enlightening - in showing me that I may not have as much control over my mental landscape as I'd like to believe.

Still, I am back, and I am fine, and hopefully not that much worse for the wear. A few of my co-workers think I went off the deep end with that 50-mile run, and that is perhaps a somewhat fair assessment. I came home Sunday and crashed hard. I was sick and non-functional on Monday. But after about 22 hours of sleep in 36 hours time, I felt almost completely normal. My friend Bill and I went out for a Tuesday night ride that we both intended to be "mellow." We ended up climbing 3,500 feet to a high ridge above town called University Beacon. We reached the top right at sunset. An steady 40 mph wind howled through the radio towers as we stood against the gale and talked for half an hour. It was one of those incredibly cathartic discussions where two people who don't know each other all that well realize they actually have a lot in common.

Then, suddenly it was dark. We rode a gravel road up, but Bill wanted to take the singletrack down. I switched on my meager headlight, having no idea what I was getting into, and launched in behind him. With a amber and orange sea of city lights spread out below us, I watched Bill's thin silhouette disappear over a horizon line like a roller coaster plunging into an abyss. Seconds later, my own wheel dipped into the headwall and plummeted toward city lights that were still thousands of feet below. I grabbed my brakes but it was too late. I was slipping, skidding down the steep gravel, wide-eyed and half-panicked as my locked-out wheels carried me toward certain doom. All I could see was the blurred sparkle of city lights. I felt like I was crash-landing a plane into Missoula. I braced for impact. The grade lessened and the wheels caught traction. I skidded to a stop. Bill was a few yards ahead, walking his bike. "Yeah, this trail kinda sucks at night," he said.

But it was a fun ride, and turned out to be fairly ambitious - nearly three hours of ride time, and for the most part I felt great despite everything last week. Today my friend Dave and I got together for a mellow hike. I wanted to test my progress on my right foot, which is still sore from running, but not to a level that I think I have plantar faciitis. Still, there is something weird with my arch. I can't quite pinpoint it. Bruise? Sore muscles or tendons? After about two miles it started to feel sore again, and then it began to tighten up. Luckily we kept the walk short. But it was a good reality check, because I was all set to start running again this weekend.

Instead, we came back early, where Dave set to fixing my Karate Monkey. I've wanted a singlespeed mountain bike for a while now, not even quite realizing that I had one all along - it just had too much crap stuck on it. Dave mentioned that singlespeed conversion is as easy as tearing all that crap off and adding a couple of rings. So we set to the project - or, I should say he set to the project. I stood there and tried to learn, I really tried. But teaching me bicycle mechanics is like trying to train a cat how to sit and stay. In theory, they should be smart enough, but in the end all they do is stare off into space and remain perpetually useless.

But Dave did good work, and now KiM is set up the way Surly intended - well, except for the Reba fork. But I'm excited to try out singlespeeding. I already got cold and bored while spinning the simplified bike slowly home, and I imagine I'll be redlined and walking on most of the climbing during my trail ride tomorrow, so I'm well on my way!

The life of Geo

Today I took what feels like my last step away from my status as an Alaskan. I registered my car in the great state of Montana and acquired new license plates. The process was so painless it was almost surreal. I walked into a completely empty DMV, where six smiling employees all waved me over at the same time. I handed the smiliest guy my title and a check for $68, and five minutes later I had new plates, good for the next year.

The car also hits another milestone this month, in that I've owned it for 10 years. In October 2000 I paid the car's first owner $5,100 in cash for a 1996 Geo Prism. It had 29,000 miles, manual transmission, a tape deck stereo, no air conditioning, no power steering and a sweet tomato-red exterior that screamed "take me home!" Since then, Geo has set wheel in 29 states and six Canadian provinces. It's been smashed by a sycamore tree in New Jersey and broken into six times. It's climbed rugged jeep roads in southern Utah and plowed through feet of snow on a high bluff above Homer, Alaska. It's made four full trips between the states and Alaska, three on the Al-Can and one on the Cassier Highway. It's been as far north as Fairbanks and as far south as the Guadalupe Mountains in Texas, as far west as Anchor Point, Alaska, and as far east as Bar Harbor, Maine. And in that entire time, I never had to put anything into it besides insurance, tires and brakes. In order to make the trip down to Montana, I had an Anchorage mechanic install a new clutch. I received a lot of crap from my friends for doing this. Geo has 186,000 miles on it now, an interior ravaged by years of hauling bicycles, a motor that gets grumpy in the cold, a blue book value of about $400, and a flaking, faded paint job that makes it look like one sick tomato. But it still gets 35 miles to the gallon, runs, and, well ... I can't help myself. I love this car. We've been through so much together.

Somewhere out there is a photo of Geo surrounded by police tape in a New Jersey campground, with a sycamore tree resting on top of a smashed roof. I eventually got that problem fixed, along with the body damage I caused when I side-swiped a parked car in March 2001, not to mention smashed windows from the break-ins. I don't know whatever became of the sycamore photo, but there at least a few images that remain of our good times together.

Geo and I after a backpacking trip in Sweat Canyon, Utah, sometime in early 2004. This was the go-to vehicle for an uncountable number of weekend trips to the desert. Geo has trawled a lot of rocky, sandy, rugged back-roads in its time. I even still have that hat.

Moving from Tooele, Utah, to Idaho Falls in October 2004, with the help of my (recently departed) grandpa, mom and dad. The bikes on top of the car are my Ibex Corrida and long-ago-sold Trek 6500 mountain bike. Also note the can of Pepsi on the hood.

Geo fresh upon arrival in Homer, Alaska, after I moved there from Idaho Falls in September 2005. All of my belongings where either wedged in the car or that canvas car-top carrier. The bicycles are my ever-present Ibex Corrida touring bike on the left, and my long-ago-sold Gary Fisher Sugar on the right.

We lived at 1,200 feet on a bluff above Homer, which is the coastal Alaska equivalent of living in a mountain town. Our house received upwards of 300 inches of snow that first winter, and Geo took it like a champ, plowing through the worst storms and gravel road ascents with nothing more than front-wheel drive and questionable studded tires.

There it is! Go, Geo, go!

In August 2006, I packed all of my worldly belongings into the car again and moved to Juneau. As an Alaskan, I received a lot of crap for not owning either a Subaru or a truck, but Geo and I made it work. It was especially good at hauling yard sale finds and hideous couches.

Geo spent three years not seeing much use in the city of Juneau, which is why its mileage is still comparatively low for all of the traveling it's done. In April 2009, I loaded it up again, this time with camping and biking gear for my summer on the Great Divide. This is the car outside Vancouver, British Columbia, during a road trip I'd rather have washed from my memory. My and my ex's Karate Monkeys are mounted to the roof rack. This is the last time they'd see each other.

In April 2010, it was time to pack up again and move out of Juneau (holy cow, was that just six months ago?) I mounted my summer car tires, Roadie and the Karate Monkey on the roof - a Beverly Hillbillies-esque junk show that also seemed to receive smiles from the friends in Juneau who were continuously pressing me to get rid of that car already (you know who you are, Brian.) This is Geo at the top of White Pass on the Klondike Highway: 3,200 feet of elevation gain in a mere 10 miles, on a narrow, icy road. I was so happy that it actually made it.

Then, in June 2010, it was time to make what was hopefully be Geo's last trip down the Al-Can, moving from Anchorage to Montana. This is Geo in front of the Columbia Icefield in Jasper National Park. I had four bikes along for the ride on this trip, with Pugsley and the Rocky Mountain Element stuffed in the back seat. Since I moved back to the "states," there have been a lot of trips to Utah and northern Montana. I'd like to say we're going to settle down someday, but who knows what the future holds?

My relationships, my bicycles, and my homes come and go, and through it all Geo remains. I think there's something to be said about unyielding loyalty, even in a car.

Living intensely

I fixed my thousand-yard stare on a radio tower, perched on a featureless mound of rock many miles across the sun-baked desert. The interstate rolled away at a rate of 80 mph, and still the gleaming tower lingered in a far distance that seemed to never grow closer.

"This is exactly what Badwater is like," said Evan, who this past summer paced the winner of the Badwater 135, a 135-mile ultramarathon through Death Valley. "You're just out in this flat, open desert. Tons of hours go by, and nothing changes."

"It looks beautiful right now," I said. I glanced in the side-view mirror to see if any traces of Las Vegas remained on the horizon ... the scorched pavement, the seizure-inducing lights, the belligerent crowds and the cigarette smog. Vegas had gotten under my skin in a way I couldn't even mitigate, let alone reverse. I was in Las Vegas for a trade show, putting in long hours of exhaustive socialization, soaking in the glistening edge of an industry's excess, fighting through crowds in the fake empire of the Las Vegas strip, over-eating unhealthy food, not exercising because there was literally no time or space to do so, and not sleeping. I can trend toward mild insomnia, but the past week was beyond anything I had endured before. Many days had passed and I was unable to get more than an hour of sleep at a time, sometimes only an hour in an entire night.

I was slowly losing my mind, quite genuinely going crazy, when I came across a random Facebook status update by my friend, Evan, who was "trying to mentally prepare myself for my nonstop drive to Salt Lake in two days." Evan is an ultrarunner who used to live in Alaska, but now lives outside Los Angeles. I was crewing for Geoff in the 2009 Hurt 100 in Honolulu when Evan stumbled in to the checkpoint at mile 78. His face was a zombie color of gray and he slurred most of his words. "I have never done anything so stupid in all of my life, never," he told me then. "But I can't $%#@ stop now!" Evan came out to visit before the start of the 2009 Iditarod Invitational, and I hadn't seen him since. That was before I got frostbite. That was before a lot of things. I knew Evan had to drive through Vegas to get to Salt Lake. I wrote to ask if I could join him.

"Why are you going to Salt Lake again?" Evan asked.

"I'm headed up to the Bear 100," I said. "It started this morning."

"That's cool," Evan said. "Are you going to pace someone?"

"I'm going to crew for someone," I said. "Maybe pace a few miles. I'm not much of a runner."

"Neither am I," Evan said, and I snorted. Evan runs often, and fast. He had just completed a 100-miler in California under cold, wet conditions that no sane person would endure.

"It was the worst night of my life," he said, possibly forgetting about the 2009 Hurt 100. "I wish I never finished the thing. There is nothing healthy about running 100 miles, nothing."

I took his words to heart. Recently, ultrarunning - or long-distance travel by foot - has captured my imagination in a way it never has before. I can't even really explain why here, why now, given all of my exposure to the sport in the past five years. But it has trickled into my thoughts in the way random ideas sometimes do, and I've learned the less I do to fight those random thoughts, the more interesting my life becomes.

That unchecked curiosity is what compelled me to participate as a race volunteer in the Swan Crest 100 in July, and that's how I met this guy, Beat (pronounced Bay-ought.) Beat is a Swiss-German software developer who works for Google and lives in the Bay area, as in California. In his free time he invents things, like a satellite-enabled remote control for his espresso maker so he can fire up the machine from a half-hour away. He also runs. A lot. He's completed seven 100-milers this year alone, eight if you count his last race twice. That one was more than 200 miles.

Similar to Evan, Beat and I started conversing via Facebook after a race. He was registered for another 100-miler one week after the Swan Crest 100 - the Headlands 100 - and mid-week posted graphic pictures of all of his blisters from Swan Crest. I wrote him an e-mail to berate him for "being crazy." As the conversation evolved, I asked him to describe why he felt compelled to endure all of the abuse and distress, week after week. "I just want to experience the intensity of life," he wrote back.

Beat's last race was the Tour des Geants, a 330-kilometer, nonstop, largely self-supported race across the Italian Alps. The race features mostly technical terrain and an unreal 80,000 feet of climbing. For Beat, it was six days on the bleeding edge of intense living, and during that time he slept less than I did in Vegas. He finished the race a week before the start of the Bear 100. One week. We joked about meeting up at the Bear 100 on my way back from Vegas. I didn't think he was serious. I didn't believe he would show up. And anyway, I had a lot going on. But as Beat recovered from the TDG and my week deteriorated, Beat vowed that he was going to at least show up for the race. And then I saw the too-serendipitous-to-ignore status update from Evan.

Evan dropped me off at the interstate exit. His son had a dentist appointment and they were already running late. He was guiltily apologetic, and I assured him it didn't matter. "You got me out of Vegas. That was everything I needed." I shouldered the meager luggage I had brought home and began walking the two miles toward my parents' house. My parents have been on vacation in Germany for the past two weeks. My plan was to borrow (steal) their truck and drive two and a half hours to Logan Canyon, Utah, where I hoped to intersect Beat at a race checkpoint. Just in case I actually ended up running, I scoured my parents' house for supplies. I borrowed (stole) a knit cap, a neck warmer, a thin long-sleeved base layer, cotton gloves and rhinestone-bedazzled sunglasses. Then I drove to REI and bought sunscreen, a headlamp and assorted energy bars.

As I trickled through thick Friday evening traffic, my thoughts dissolved in a haze of sleep deprivation, a week's worth of sensory overload and the whole surreal silliness of what I was doing. In Logan I checked Beat's SPOT track and saw he was still moving, and located the next checkpoint he would hit. I just happened to score free wi-fi in front of a tiny bakery, wherein I found 50-cent fresh bagels, 93-cent giant cookies and brownies, and a $4.99 meal of homemade sourdough and turkey sandwich, chips, cookie and Diet Pepsi. For less than 10 dollars I had an entire ultra event's worth of homemade food, and the score seemed an auspicious start to the evening.

Just after sunset, I rolled into a place called Tony Grove, a beautiful mountain lake ringed with gray cliffs and golden aspen trees. I parked, circled the parking lot once, and just happened to arrive at the checkpoint just as Beat was checking in. I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. He looked at me and said, "Well, are you running?" At first, I just gaped at him. The Tony Grove checkpoint was located at mile 51. Which meant there were 50 miles left in the race. If I paced him at all, my plan was to sleep first and start later, perhaps even between two checkpoints that would allow for easy shuttling. I scoured my brain for a smidgen of wisdom, but none of the neurons were firing anymore. "Um, well ..." I stuttered. He just looked at me with these piercing cola-colored eyes. "Ok, give me a minute to change my clothes," I said.

Twilight had set in deep by the time we started up the trail. I turned on my headlamp and focused on the black shadows of the rocks and roots that littered the route. I stumbled and righted myself. It was already difficult and dark and I was just starting. Of course, Beat had already done 50 miles on almost no recovery from a six-day run. He still had deep blisters and shredded muscles from the previous race.

"How are you feeling?" I asked him.

"Oh, you know," he said with a resigned sigh. "How about you?"

We had only jogged a mile. I couldn't admit that I was already feeling far out of my element and nauseated on top of that. The giant brownie and sandwich I had eaten less than an hour earlier churned in my stomach. "It's Vegas," I said. "I feel like I spent a week soaking in toxins, and now they're trying to leave my body."

The night sky opened up with a splash of stars and a nearly full moon. The weather was close to perfect, cool and dry with absolutely no breeze. If we stopped and held our breath, I swore we could hear water trickling down a creek a mile away. We alternated running and walking, because Beat was feeling downtrodden. We didn't say a whole lot in those first few miles. As my stomach began to settle, I perked up and started telling my favorite ultra-cycling horror stories. Finally Beat asked me to stop mentioning anything involving food or cold, which all of my cycling horror stories do. I laughed and asked him to tell me about the Tour des Geants. He painted a vivid portrait of extreme beauty, suffering and wandering so far outside himself that he wasn't even sure he was still alive. It was a week ago. I had to keep reminding myself of that.

We came to the next checkpoint after eight miles. "It sure takes a long time to go eight miles when you don't have wheels," I said, a sentiment I would go on to repeat multiple times during the night, likely much to Beat's annoyance. But the truth is, the Bear 100 is a burly course with babyhead-studded singletrack and tons of steep climbs and descents. There's a good chance I wouldn't fare better with a bike. I had to keep reminding myself of that.

The night trickled along the way night does, in a flickering reel of shapes and shadows. My sleeplessness rounded a corner and my thoughts became just a little less blurred. Beat and I came to a high alpine meadow and turned off our headlamps. The moon burned so bright that our bodies cast sharp shadows on the trail. "Oh," he said, "I brought something for you." He dug through his pack and pulled out a golf-ball-sized rock, with veins of shale and quartz. "I picked it up on the second pass in the Tour des Geants, and I carried it the whole way."

"The whole way? All six days?" I said with a hint of incredulity.

"And now 60 miles in the Bear 100," he said. "I'll carry it the rest of the way if you want."

"No," I said. "I can carry it." I held out my hand and accepted the rock with a rush of warm-fuzzy feeling. I used to be the kind of kid who frequently picked up rocks, carried them for hours in clenched hands and deposited them in a special drawer in my room. Beat's simple gift evoked a powerful sense of nostalgia and exciting newness, all at the same time.

The night trickled along the way night does, drifting between near-unconsciousness and ultra-alertness. I kept seeing black cows that I mistook for bears and yelping loudly. But I couldn't believe how great I felt for, you know, not being a runner. Twenty miles passed, and then 25. We climbed high into the night sky and descended back into the sparse and scattered lights of the canyon. Beat admitted he didn't care about his time or even whether he finished. We spent long breaks lounging at the checkpoints, eating Dutch oven rolls, chicken soup, strawberries and melons. We followed glow sticks but still got lost and laughed away two and a half "extra bonus miles."

The temperature continued to plummet. First we could see our breath, and then frost on the ground. Soon the frost was thick and my cotton gloves and thin sleeves did little to ward off temperatures that dropped as low as 23 degrees. Running, even slowly, generates good heat, but we took the downhills gingerly to preserve Beat's shredded quads, and I couldn't halt a few periods of uncontrolled shivering. We passed people and exchanged simple words. The trail often seemed crowded, but sometimes remote. Right before sunrise, we began our last long ascent into the alpine. Beat fought the cold by moving faster than I could sustain, and frequently swore in Swiss German to vent the pain in his feet and legs. But it was humorous, and we were both laughing, giggling really, like little kids at a sleepover party. He teased me for my bedazzled sunglasses and stylish hat, and said I looked like I was going shopping at the mall, not participating in a 50-mile run. I teased him for "doing it wrong" on all of the great mountain biking terrain we were trudging over, because yammering about bicycles probably never gets old to runners.

It all started to fall apart for me at mile 40, just after sunrise. Physically I felt strong, but my soft and weak cyclist's feet became wracked with pain. Blisters and a deep soreness in my right arch made every step annoying, and then difficult, and then mildly excruciating. I could tip-toe uphill without too many problems, but there was nowhere to hide on the descents, and pretty soon all we had left was downhill. I looked out over the glistening Bear Lake, 3,000 vertical feet below us, and felt like crying. Beat tried to be upbeat and joked about "being so hardcore that I broke my pacer." "You really need to go on without me," I said. "You can run this, but I'm probably going to take all day."

"No, I can stick it out with you," he said. "I've been there before. It's not a fun place to be alone."

It hurt to set my right foot down on any surface, even gingerly, so I tried shuffling, until I stubbed my toes in a veritable rockfall of baseball-sized stones. I continued my attempts to convince Beat to leave me behind. "You'll finish two hours sooner," I said. He continued to refuse, and I didn't say much else, settling into that gray corner at the edge of my pain cave. Meanwhile, Bear Lake glistened in the sunlight, ringed with the brilliant golds of fall, and it never grew any closer, just like that radio tower in the desert, one day and a lifetime before.

When we finally reached a trailhead, we still had another 500 vertical feet downhill to the finish. Beat took the race course and I took the road, hoping it would be faster. But the pavement struck the bottom of my right foot like hot nails, so I hopped on my left leg until I couldn't see straight, then walked until I couldn't stomach the soreness, then hopped again. It was ridiculous, and I had tears in my eyes because I was so frustrated, walking down a road, while the lake just glistened and taunted me. But I was laughing, too, because it was inevitable. You don't go out and travel 50 miles on foot without training for it. You just don't. I could have easily predicted my injuries right down to the swollen toes. I deserved them. But as the lake glistened with an new, almost otherworldly beauty, I was thinking it was worth it.

I hobbled into the finish with ~51 miles on my battered feet. The Bear 100 has 22,000 feet of climbing, so it's probably fair to say that 50 miles of it has close to half that. I was out on the trail for about 15 and a half hours, with the last 10 miles taking more than five hours on their own. Beat finished his race in 29 hours and 29 minutes. He earned a grizzly bear belt buckle for a sub-30 finish, but I still feel guilty for slowing him down as much as I did. But he did know what he was getting for a pacer before he coaxed me out there. Beat congratulated me on finishing my first "ultra." I hadn't thought about it in that way before, being that it was just half of the Bear 100, but it was my first ultramarathon.

It was still before noon and the shuttle bus wasn't set to leave the finish line until 7 p.m. There was nothing for us to do but wait, so we settled into a shady spot on the grass, where the lake glistened and gold and green leaves rustled in the wind and wisps of clouds streamed through the bright blue sky. The pain in my feet faded into the background, my mind settled into a pleasant fog, and the only thing I understood was that I was in Fish Haven, Idaho, and I could scarcely comprehend how I got there, but I lived every mile of it, intensely.

Snow bikes in the desert

I am in Vegas for Interbike. Being surrounded by bicycles isn't a bad way to spend a week, but if I were to list my "10 places I'd be least likely to visit under my own free will," Vegas would be near the top. It's a terrible place. I'm sorry, it just is. Huge crowds ... smoke everywhere ... traffic ... no winter ... flashing lights ... casino mazes ... long lines ... strangers yelling at me ... too intimidated by yelling crowds to go out for simple evening runs after dinner ... unbearable heat ... everything costs a fortune ... no winter ...

I try to make the best of it by reminding myself that I'm here for Interbike, which is kind of cool. Today we attended the Dirt Demos, out at Boulder City. The high temperature was 102, with a constant 20 mph wind that steadily cranked up past 30 mph as the afternoon wore on. Shade is just a bad joke here in the sun-baked valley. I sucked down my two liters of water within about an hour and went on to down two big lemonades and all the free liquid I could get my hands on - three 20-ounce water bottles, a 24-ounce sports drink of some sort (name forgotten but it tasted like a vitamin pill), and several shot glasses of some kind of recovery drink (also gross.)

BUT ... I got to ride awesome bicycles.

The Salsa El Mariachi: A hardtail 29'er full of rock-gobbling goodness. This bike was super comfortable and a great climber, and had this strange ability to float up rock headwalls ... not even sure how, because I certainly wasn't helping it along. But it was a fun bike to ride on the rocks, even if you're not a particularly huge fan of riding in the rocks (I'm not. Another strike against Vegas in my book. I'm a native Utahn who still prefers forested trails of the roots and mud variety.)

Grag Matayas of Speedway Cycles came all the way down from Anchorage with brand new Fatbacks. It was fun to catch up and ogle the new offerings in the snow biking niche.

My co-worker, Josh, and I took high-end BH cross and women's-specific road bikes on a fast spin down the bike path. The wind tossed us around and I ran out of water, which even on a shortish ride made me feel a little woozy. It was a fun spin, though. I think if I were ever forced to live in Vegas, I would become much more of a road rider, because pavement offerings here are superb, and the trail riding is, well, full of rocks.

But if you're going to ride rocks, I really think fat bikes are the way to go. Forget huge travel - skinny mountain bike tires still force you to pick a line. With fat bikes, you just point your monster truck in the general direction of where you want to end up, and hold on tight, because you're in for a wild ride. Then, when it's time to ride uphill, you can plow through the loosest gravel and weeds, just for fun. Josh and I did a long demo of the Salsa Mukluk today - the latest addition to the rapidly expanding snow bike genre. I love my Pugsley, but I have to admit that Salsa made several big improvements with the Mukluk. For starters, I can actually maneuver this bike without feeling like I'm trying to steer a tractor. It has a lower bottom bracket which allows for more comfortable pedal stance, and feels more like a "normal" mountain bike that just happens to have huge wheels. The jury is of course still out on how it performs in the snow, but I have to admit ... I have a little crush. Hopefully Pugsley doesn't find out.

Meanwhile, Interbike continues to be a spectacle. I can't wait to see what the actual show is like.