Less than 2 months

11-29-14

Arrowhead 2015 is less than two months away - the things I would like to do before the start seem to be stacking up.  I'm not super anxious about that since I've finished the race before with the same gear I have now (though I doubt that I'll ever eliminate all anxiety).  But I think there's room for improvement.  

And, of course, I need to ride, ride, ride.  To that end I went for a bit of a ride today.

though the Corridor isn't groomed, the thaw and refreeze have made it hard and fast.  

Fewer snowmobiles have been on the Spur - it was pretty soft.  I took me a few tries but eventually I got my tire pressure low enough so - when I was in my granny gear - I could ride it.  But it was too much of an effort and I soaked my layers

Eventually I made to forest roads that had seen a fair amount of truck traffic this hunting season and were packed smoother than they are in the summer.

Back to civilization at the end of the ride

12-7-14

Last night I went out for a ride well after dark, with hopes that the nearly-full moon would light the way.  There ended up being a thin layer of clouds so moonlight wasn't as intense as it would have been but it was still pretty light and I ended up riding most of the time without having to turn my headlamp on.

The snowmobile trails haven't yet been groomed and are pretty maybe 5 feet wide and have been packed down fairly firmly.  It reminded me of when I used to ride near Fairbanks on similar conditions.  I must say I much prefer the narrower trails to groomed trails - it twists around in the woods.

Earlier this week I received a new alcohol stove that I wanted to test out.  It works on the same principles as do the stoves that dog mushers use in bitter weather.  I have high hopes but haven't had any true cold to really test it.  I'll let you know how it goes.  If I could ditch the Whisperlite I'd be happy to do so - I'd save over a pound and end up with a stove that has no moving parts to fail.  The stove weighs about 2 oz (if you include the pot stand).  We'll see how it goes - I'm not going to take it if it doesn't work in true cold.

Arrowhead 135: Melting

Wednesday I took off on a little bike ride - just a couple of hours long - on the Corridor that passes near our house.  I just wanted to get out and put in some time on the bike - and I wanted to test out melting snow.  See in all three of my previous Arrowhead experiences (two finishes in '09 and '11 and one more attempt in '13 that saw me drop at Melgeorge's) I've had water issues.  In theory all of them could have been avoided by simply melting snow but in '09 (-25) and '11 (-35) trying to handle a stove would have been problematic.  In '13 the trails were all but unridable because of a snowstorm and I ran out of water just because it was taking much longer to get from Gateway to Melgeorge's.  It was warm that year and I certainly could have stopped to melt snow.  But for reasons that mainly have to do with dumbassedness, I didn't.

So this year, I am going to do it right or suffer the consequences of thirst (not to mention shame and humiliation).  To that end, I'm going to practice melting snow.  It's very complicated.

Somebody thought it'd be a good idea to drive their truck down the snowmobile trail.  It didn't last all that long but it about gave me fits.  I can't imagine that snowmobilers like it much, either.  

A single snowmobile had passed when the snow was soft last weekend - and they had since frozen.  The firmest part of the trail was the center tread.

After a bit of trouble getting the stove lit (I think the alcohol may have gotten some condensation in it) it worked pretty well to melt some snow.

The stove (which is also the pot support) melted into the snow a bit.

I got enough snow to melt to about fill the pot.

The stove was a little alcohol contraption that I made with a pop can.  And it weighs .3 oz and fits inside the pot so it doesn't take up any more space.

The stove fits in the pot (as does the small fuel bottle I was using) so things pack up pretty small and easily fits in my frame bag. 

Thanksgiving day I went for a quick, easy spin to stretch the legs and get some fresh air.  I only rode like 30 minutes.

Arrowhead 135: Slush

Winter started early in northern WI - It snowed pretty heavy in early November and we had shin-deep snow (and then several more lesser snows) and - until this weekend - temps stayed cold and things didn't melt.  

Then this weekend saw temp in the upper 30's on Sat. and into the mid 40's on Sunday.  It made for sloppy biking conditions so, of course, I decided it was a good time for a bike ride.  Maybe just two or three hours max.

Sat. was opening day of the gun-deer hunting season in WI.  The snowmobile trails in the Chequamegon National Forest (CNF) haven't yet been groomed but there had been a couple of snowmobiles out there and the walking was easier on the trail than off.  A hunter had scooped out the snow and made a chair out of an embankment just on the side of the trail.

Hard to see in this picture but this is the "chair" where the hunter sat.  

Even though the trail was soft and I had to push this section, I still had a nice walk in the woods

After a bit of pushing I came to a gravel road which had been plowed.  But the warm temps had melted the packed snow left over after it was plowed and it made for a slushy ride.

Yes, mom, I'll readjust my stem

On the slushy gravel road I checked my watch - I had been riding for two hours already but had a route in mind that I wanted to finish that meant I had to keep riding away from home to complete.  Prudence would have dictated that I simply turn around then.  Yeah right - see quote below.

I turned off the gravel/slush road onto a paved/slush road.  As if there wasn't enough wetness being thrown up by my tires, it started to rain.  Not hard - but still not exactly ideal.  The damp air was fogging up my glasses and I couldn't see.  Slush was getting thrown up into my eyes from underneath my sunglasses, and slush was getting onto the front of the sunglasses and making it hard to see out.  To solve all these problems I pushed my sunglasses down my nose as far as I could.  I could easily see over them and any slush flying up from below hit the glasses and not my eyes.  Plus I looked cool.

"But any solid adventure has, at it's core, a casual disregard for good sense."  

- Joe Kurmaskie  Momentum is your Friend

I turned off of the paved road and onto the Corridor (a snowmobile highway that's groomed and (usually - but not today) fairly hard packed.  I turned onto it and immediately started to sink in the the handling got too squirrely.  So I dropped the pressure in my tires down almost as low as I dared.  That helped immensely and I was able to make steady (if slow) progress.

Lowering tire pressure is almost magical in how much it helps and most of time riding was a fairly straightforward thing.  But sometimes there would be unseen glitch in the snow and staying upright would suddenly and unexpectedly get interesting.

Shortly after I turned onto the Corridor I stopped to eat the rest of my food - a chunk of summer sausage and a piece of bread.  But the rest of the ride took me a long time and as I got close to home it was clear that I had mis-guessed the number of calories I needed.  I didn't quite bonk but it was getting pretty sketchy - and when I got home I gorged on some grapes that were handy, (this reminded me of the time that, after finishing the Chequamegon Fat Tire Forty [named when a regular mountain bike's tires were considered fat], I was half crazed with hunger and they were giving away doughnut balls.  I turned over my sweaty, nasty helmet and filled the thing up with the free doughnut balls and ate the whole blessed thing) ate few peanuts and had a glass of milk and started to feel human again.

I had been out riding for pushing 5 hours - and as is almost always the case when I go out riding I loved it.

Bikepacking the CNF

And so it begins: training for Arrowhead 2015

Back at the end of August I sent my registration in to participate in this winter's Arrowhead 135.  As I've done in the past I'll be doing it on a bike.  (You can choose your mode of transport: bike, ski, run)

Why do this to myself?  Mainly because for some twisted reason I want to.  It's kinda like fun, only different.  "Because it's there" seems full of bravado and cliche.  "Why not?" is ridiculous because there are about a zillion reasons why not.

I've thought about it quite a bit - and the more I think about it the more confused I get.  And the more insane I think I am.  But lately the theory that holds the most water (they're all a bit crackpot) is this: I'm a firm believer that everyone (including me) is capable of so much more than they think they are.  There are things that I know I am physically capable of that I have no desire to.  And then there are the things that I'm not so sure that I'm even capable of but have no desire to do.  (Like the Tour Divide - from Banff, Canada to Antelope Wells on the Mexican border.  The winners do it in a couple of weeks.  I can't imagine.  When I was in college I spent a spring break in Austin, Texas riding my bike every day (maybe 80 miles a day).  At the end of the week I was ready to be done - I was tired physically and, more importantly, mentally.  Actually I can imagine what this would be like and perhaps that's why I don't wanna do it.  In the Tour Divide, imagine riding 130+ miles a day, getting a cheap motel room (or just sleeping in a tent), getting up early and doing it again the next day.  For weeks.  I like riding my bike...but there are limits.  Don't get me wrong, I have a great respect for those that do it.  But it's not for me.  Anyway I know what Arrowhead entails (I've started 3 times and finished twice 2009, 2011 [part 1, part 2], 2013 - where I didn't finish because of a snowstorm) and for some fool reason have desire to do it.  

I've been wanting to give bikepacking a whirl now for a while - but for some reason have just not done more than a few short overnighters.  So this year I've decided to bike pack my way into shape.  This is very handy because the Cheqaumegon National Forest is a few miles out the door.

 So to that end, I took off to Horseshoe Lake and set up my hammock (the most comfy camping setup I've ever had).  

The view from my hammock (through the bug net)

The view over Horseshoe Lake as the sun went down.

     I had experimented with drying food this summer and so and had stuff I had dried for breakfast.  Rice, carrots, ground turkey, and onions rehydrated over my alcohol stove.  

On the ride back home

A little while later I went for a ride and stopped at an artesian well on some DNR land nearby.

After stopping at the artesian well I stopped by the Rainbow Lake Wilderness Area to do some hiking.  I left my bike at the entrance and hiked in.

On a ride with John (my father-in-law) we rode on the ATV trails in the Cheqaumegon National Forest - more specifically the Iron River Trail.

Yesterday was great weather.  So I rode up into the CNF and set up the hammock and took a break and cooked myself a meal and read a book and hung out for a while.

The colors are starting to turn in the CNF

I love Fireweed.  So does my wife.  So I collected some seed to bring home and plant.

Not all the trees that are turning are maples...but most are - here are a couple.

Old School.  Larry up front and Endomorph in back.  

Birkie

On Saturday March 9 at 8:02 am I took off down the 45 K long course of the Fat Bike Birkie.  The race kicked my ass to say the least.  After I finished and got home I spent the rest of the day in bed - except for when I took a shower...and then when I was tired of standing but loved the warm water and laid down in the tub and it became a bath.

[why 8:02 when the official start was at 8:00?  About 30 seconds before the gun went off I realized that I hadn't attached my number to the front of my bike as I was supposed to.  I rode back to the car, threw it on, headed back to the start line, and started late.]

I'm thinkin' that the guy in the Mapei jersey was wearing it ironically

It was beautiful in a soggy, dreary way

At least I wasn't the only one struggling with the constant hills

OK, let me back up a bit so all this makes sense.

I have barely ridden since Arrowhead.  I'm guessing that I've been on a handful of ~5 mile rides all at an easy pace.  So I was out of shape - but thought that I'd have enough residual fitness to see me through the race with a decent showing and without falling to pieces.  So I started the race at a fairly decent pace - the trails were in almost ideal shape and I think that I was averaging roughly 10 mph.  Not too good, but not too bad.  It seems like no matter how much I train, whenever a race comes around that's how I do anyway.  By mile 8 or 10 it became clear that I was going to be having problems if I didn't back off.  So I did and by the halfway point my average speed was 8.5 mph.  And then the bottom really dropped out.  My legs were cramping up, and had no oomph to them at all.  I felt empty.  It was lightly raining throughout the race - and barring an unplanned stop (to fix a flat, or a broken chain, etc) it's fine to be wet because you're putting off enough body heat to make up for what's being sapped by the wetness.  I had so little energy that I couldn't work hard enough to build up enough body heat to be really comfortably warm.  I mean, I was fine but usually in those conditions I'd be easily working up a sweat - and as much of the dampness in my clothing would come from perspiration as rainfall.

It took me over 4 hours to finish a silly 45k race (just over 28 miles).  It took the winner under 2 hours.

It all got me to thinking: that even though the atmosphere of the race was fun, and, as far as I could tell, it was all well-organized (in fact I can't really think of how they could improve it much) maybe racing is just not my thing anymore.  It used to be.  Back in high school and college bike racing was kinda my thing.  I trained - and trained for speed.  I was OK but I guess I feel like I never really got the results I thought I "deserved" for training so long and hard.  Then I had some health issues that kept me off a bike for almost 3 years (though I did get myself a recumbent trike and rode that). 

When I finally relearned to ride a bike again I guess I didn't really have the drive it takes to suffer enough (in training or during a race) to be truly fast anymore.  Oh, I rode lots and was decently fast.  But when push came to shove others would just ride away from me.  And I let them.  I used to drive me nuts to be the slow one - now I just didn't care (I still don't like being the absolute last one in a group ride so it's not as if I don't care at all).  I was just happy to be riding again.  I suppose I'd make some effort to keep up - but when it called for sustained or intense suffering I would quietly fall off their pace and, more or less happily, ride my own pace.

More and more bike racing seems, to me, like racing a canoe.  When you're riding a bike (or in a canoe) it seems to me that you should be looking around and enjoying the beautiful landscape you're in - not trying to blast through it as fast as you can. 

Of course this assumes that you're riding through a beautiful landscape - we have lots of that in northern Wisconsin.

Scouting

A few days back I loaded my snowshoes onto my fatbike and took off down the trail.  Early catch and release trout season will be here in a couple of weeks (it's already here in other parts of the state), I wanna get out, and snow is still covering the ground about a foot and a half deep.  Not so much that I couldn't walk without snowshoes but it was easier with them on...and I just like using them anyway.

 The place that I was scouting was really less than 2 miles away and so after a short ride I was locking my bike up (which was undoubtedly unnecessary because even though I was on public land it was at the end of a dead end road and there were no fresh tracks around) and strapping on my snowshoes. 

 

  

"Smug" is definitely not the word for it.  Maybe something more like "satisfied" - yeah, that's it - I feel satisfied when I use my bike to get around (especially when I'm doing something like hauling a load of stuff along, like stuff to donate to the thrift store, or chicken feed, or snowshoes...when most people would use a car.  Not only use a car but think it's insane to do it any other way).  Don't get me wrong: I do use a car most days - and it's not that I feel bad about that...there are somethings you just plain can't do on a bike - or at least it'd be extremely inconvenient to try some things - it's just that doing something that's easy to do on a bike (such as haul snowshoes) when most people would use a fossil fuel powered machine to do the same thing makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

So anyway, I had parked my bike and strapped on the snowshoes and took off hiking.  Maybe 20 minutes later I was standing next to the creek I was heading out to look at.  

 Last year on the opening day of trout season I rode my bike down to the a spot where the road crosses the creek.  There's a small parking lot there so it's fairly obvious and well-known.  When I pulled up on my bike there were nine vehicles there.  I can't remember which four letter word I used but I'm sure that I used one when I saw the other cars.  I didn't even string up.  This creek was only open down from the bridge so I left my rod, got on my waders and hiked up.

Last winter was freakishly warm for northern Wisconsin and we had had little snow, days were warm so what little snow we had had long since melted and run off previously and now the water was running clear.  It was nice to get out even though I didn't have the rod with me.

Actually it was kinda nice to have any pressure to catch fish totally off my back.  And although I love feeling a fish tugging at the end of my line I really was just happy to get out.

After I got a chance to look over the stretch of stream I had set out to scout I was happy I'd come.  I pretty much knew what I'd find - I fish often a little ways upstream and have fished downstream too - but even though it was no surprise it was nice to see the deep holes, clear water and lots of woody stuff for fish to hide in (although I'm sure I'll lose some flies to the wood and bitch at them when I'm actually out fishing...but for now it's nice to see).  I helped out volunteering last summer for an electroshocking survey in a stretch of this stream up from here and there was a good population of trout up there - including some big fish that were over 25".  So I know that they're in there.  I kinda suck and don't catch 'em though.  But I'm working on it.

I had been going for bike rides and stopping to gaze at the little feeder creeks that I hope to catch a few fish out of this summer.  They're small but they're close-to-home, spring-fed and hopefully will give up a few small brook trout this summer. 

I haven't caught a brook trout in years.  Actually it was when I was first learning and I caught them pretty much by accident.  Well, maybe I shouldn't say "accident" because I was trying to catch them - it's just that I knew next to nothing about what flies to use and how to fish them and how to cast and etc.  That I caught anything at all can be more attributed to beginners luck (although there were plenty of times I got skunked...actually come to think of it there still are) than much of any competency.

One of the small creeks that I hope will hold brook trout.