Alaskan Pack Fodder

Four or five or maybe a dozen decades ago, so the story goes, one of my great (to some magnitude) grandfathers on my father’s side gathered his many sons around him and said, “it’s a big country. You don’t have to live right next to each other”. Sage words, especially if you want to avoid family squabbles. Go out, make your own way in the world, and then you won’t be fighting over small pieces of property and perceived slights. I may have overdone it a tad, but I took his advice to heart like no one else in my family.    This summer the wife and kids and I were all going to fly back to the family farm in Virginia for a month or so. We do it every couple years, so my kids can be exposed to a different world where swimming in a lake doesn’t require a thermal drysuit. My wife can eat vegetables that include actual taste and drive between states without crossing an international border. Yeah, and I can ride my bike on the Blue Ridge Parkway until my legs fall off. Everybody w...

When I show up to a radar site, it's always a big production setting up the room. Rearranging furniture to accommodate the trainer, finding extra lamps (I like bright rooms- especially during the dark months) and fans, unpacking the luggage, building the bike... It usually takes a good part of a day to get things set up and running like I want them to. I've learned how to set up the various rooms to suit my needs without much hassle.    On the back side, tearing down is equally a big deal. All of that stuff I spread out to every nook and cranny of a ~150 square foot room has to be gathered up, sorted, and packed away. It's amazing how much of it there is, especially after a couple months out there. Instead of throwing it in any old case I can find, I try to put things more or less in their place so my packing for the next trip won't take as long. My bags usually stay packed when I get home, except to replenish consumables or replace the odd item.     On...

The vast majority of features on Zwift don't interest me at all. I've tried workouts. I've tried group rides. I've tried challenges. I've tried races. None of them were remotely fun in the way "real life" events are. The interactions are just completely different. The "tells" another rider shows don't translate to their avatar. It doesn't mean these events aren't valid, but they're not even remotely similar to the real thing.    So mainly I just ride around.    The game I play a lot is finding a rider ahead of me a given distance riding at a certain pace, and then pedal my brains into mush trying to bridge. Once there, I make myself hang on their wheel for a certain amount of time. After all, what good is expending all that energy when you immediately get dropped. Sometimes the other rider takes offense at me sitting on their wheel and jumps to reopen the gap. I jump too, because counterattacks are part of the game as well. Do...

By the time you read this, I will hopefully be on my way home.    Best-case scenario, I'll be home for three weeks before I head out again. Since early December, I've been home a total of ten days. Two weeks sounds glorious. Of course, the current pandemic could change all of that. Things are a little too fluid at the moment, and the universe could conspire to screw that all up.    For the moment, I'm done with making plans. Things will either happen or they won't.    I was already less than enthused about the Arctic Bike Club's road racing schedule, but now that most of it probably won't happen, my motivation to reach any sort of fitness is pretty much gone. If they have any races and I'm around, I may show up. Or not.    I think this summer will be mostly about just riding around, seeing stuff. If I happen to get a little fit that way, so much the better. It isn't the overarching goal, though. It's all about just riding for riding's sak...

I’m amazed.    Two weeks after I munched my Kickr Core’s flywheel bearings, it still “works”. Sure, it’s not at all silent, and creates grinding noises audible several rooms down the hall, but it still spins. I’m hoping I don’t groove the flywheel’s shaft too bad, but at the moment I’m stuck between riding a groaning trainer and going full “red rum” on everyone. I’m choosing sanity. Weather and what I can safely assume is a general lack of interest has kept the mail plane away. I’m hoping that when it does show, I’ll have the parts required to make my trainer less offensive, thus allowing me to resume early-morning workouts. A solid workout really helps to start the day off right, and usually I feel sort of aimless when I don’t do one. All I can do now is wait for a window of opportunity to open and for the mail plane to finally show up.    I can’r really say that I’d be more than happy to jump on the first plane that lands here, but I feel lucky that I’...

My bike faces the large window in my room. The sill on the fixed side of the window holds my TV so I don't have to watch Zwift on my relatively small computer screen. The sill on the opening side holds a fan to hopefully bring cooling air towards me as I ride.    You'd think that since I'm on the northwest tip of Alaska, I wouldn't have a problem keeping cool this time of year. In fact, it all depends on which way the wind blows. When the wind is coming from certain directions, all I need is to open the window a crack to stay cool. When the winds are coming from other directions, all of the heat from the building is pushed towards my room, so the fan has little impact. My room heats up. I bake.    It's really an issue when I'm sleeping. I like a colder room at night. I can go to sleep all cozy at 55-60F, only to wake up in the middle of the night sweating at 80F because the wind shifted.  I can go to sleep with the bare minimum on, only to wake up shivering....

I started the week off strong enough.    I put together back-to-back days of solid workouts. The numbers looked on-track and I was feeling good. The next day I didn't feel so hot, so I backed off and cut it short, hoping to bounce back for the remainder of the week.    The day after that I didn't even get on the bike. I could barely walk up the stairs. It wasn't the plague, but it was just as insidious. I just burned myself out.    I hadn't gotten the best sleep, and the grinding noise my Wahoo Kickr makes these days isn't super motivating, but it was really just a case of me overdoing it for short-term gain instead of staying the course and playing the long game.     It's not about training. That ship sailed long ago, between the less-than-inspiring calendar the Arctic Bike Club Road Division planned and the coronavirus that made all plans pretty much moot, I had no real interest in working towards anything specific.    I...

So, thanks to the Alaska Governor's mandates (which I think are prudent), I've been extended a couple weeks here while the guy who replaces me is in quarantine. I'm in a safe place with little to no chance of coronavirus infection, earning good money, with plenty to eat, and relatively comfortable surroundings (provided I don't have to work outside).    And still, I'd rather be elsewhere. I'd rather be home, with my family and dogs, sleeping in my own bed, taking care of projects that have been neglected for far too long, riding my bike on the thawing roads I keep seeing posted on Facebook... It isn't as lucrative financially, but I'll take the hit.    Instead, I pass my free time riding a trainer that is constantly and loudly threatening to blow up when I least expect it. I rack up meaningless numbers, training for meaningless goals. I try to find the end of the Internet, watching quality content like the Tour de Quarantine . Not exactly Flanders or...

I bought my LeMond Revolution in the fall of 2010. Actually, I preordered it before it hit the market. I abused it for almost 10 years, and even bought a second one when I started traveling for work. The Revolution never failed me once. Sure, it was noisy as hell, but it was smooth and durable. The noise issue led me to replace it last fall with a Wahoo Kickr Core. It's not lighter than the Revolution, and isn't smoother. It was quieter, though. My coworkers didn't comment anymore about the jet engine sounds they intermittently heard when they passed my room. All was relatively peaceful. Until it wasn't. The other day I was cruising along on Zwift, not putting out any impressive numbers, and crunching noises started to come from my trainer. Not a good sign. I ended up taking apart the trainer to find the cause, and discovered the outer flywheel bearing had disintegrated. These are sealed bearings pressed into the frame, so I'm sorta out of luck. I coud press out...