Alaskan Pack Fodder

I spent Christmas in the middle of nowhere. About  350 miles southwest of Fairbanks, smack dab in the middle of a whole lot of nothing. It was -24F outside, and I was recovering from a bout of food poisoning (or something like that). I was separated from my family for a second consecutive Christmas. It's pretty much the darkest time of the year.    It would be easy to get depressed in such a situation, so it's fortunate that I'm emotionally stunted. Basically my range consists solely of anger and apathy, and given that I chose to be here (got to pay for bike parts somehow), my go-to (anger) just doesn't seem appropriate in this case. I chose this. I make a choice every time I drag myself out of bed early in the morning to get on the trainer. My justifications for the decision may be weak, but it's my choice .     A couple of my friends were riding in Laos with Rebecca Rusch, and I was reminded that choice is too often a luxury. In this case, unexploded ordinance

When I really started getting in to the world of the roadie, I was on forums a lot. Before that, it was skiing forums. Before that, off-roading forums. It was a way of connecting with others infatuated with whatever fringe activity I was involved in at the time. I learned a lot, and some turned out to be useful. Most wasn't, but that was part of the environment.    I still check in with a couple of them occasionally. One mostly for the classifieds, because the regulars there share my tastes in bikes and good deals frequently pop up. The conversations rarely arouse much interest, centering mostly around which Rolex best matches their Audi or some such nonsense. I rarely jump in.    The other has been withering on the vine for years now, propped up by ads that are sold with the promise of high traffic, which is 90% bots. A few of us are around from the glory days, but now there are too many sub-forums with ancient posts that nobody reads. Even the doping forum, once a bastion of

I wrote this a month ago and never posted it. I have no idea why. _________________________________________________________________ I'm clawing the skin off my legs.    About this time every year, my skin starts drying out. I start slathering on weapons-grade lotions to keep the itching to a minimum, but there's always a couple weeks that certain patches of skin get the best of me. I end up scratching until I bleed, which tends to ruin the aesthetic appeal of my smooth roadie legs. I've had road rash that looked better.    The dry air off the Chukchi Sea is really doing a number on me.  Taking two or more showers a day under the hyper-treated water at the radar sites doesn't help much. Since I usually split my workouts into morning and night sessions, I take a shower after each- the alternative would be festering in my sweat salt all night, which would probably be about equally as bad for my skin.    It will pass. My skin always adapts after a while, and the c