Alaskan Pack Fodder

I was recently banned from The Paceline forums  for two weks.The moderators were 100% justified in their actions, and I would have done the same thing when I moderated forums when confronted with such behavior. When I clicked on the link for the forums, it read: You have been banned for the following reason: derailing thread - lance thread. Date the ban will be lifted: 12-12-2020, 06:00 AM Yep, I was banned for a couple posts on a thread about Lance Armstrong, which started with a link to a clickbait CyclingNews article where Johan  Bruyneel says Lance would have been the best of his generation 'with or without doping'. Magazines have been trotting out these sorts of stories for years during the off-season because they generate traffic from both sides of the divide. A couple things: Lance has never done anything to me personally or to anyone I know. I do believe cycling (and the world in general) is better off without Lance Armstrong. Sorry, he's a doper (like most of his ...

The last couple days I've been cruising various websites, looking longingly at things I haven't been attracted to in decades. For some reason, maybe hormonal, I've been drawn into this pattern that can have no positive outcome. I started looking at guitars. I think it started with an article I ran across about Epiphone coming out with a limited-edition '59 Les Paul model. Now, I was always more of a Fender guy because of the neck shape and sound, but I always could appreciate a classic Les Paul. The Telecaster I purchased when I was 13 with over a year's savings (and which I still own) is very similar to a Les Paul. Bound body, sunburst finish, rosewood neck... It was my most prized possession for a very long time until one day I decided to stop playing. It was no longer fun.  Sure, I tried to buy my enthusiasm back with various purchases.  High school was over and college had shown me that I wasn't made for that world.  So, like most guys who used to be in a ba...

I decided to back off. Really, I was starting to feel cooked and knew I was overdue for a week or three in cruise mode. Back off a little and see what I can sustain. With no real goals in the future thanks to work and the pandemic, it's all just guesswork at the moment. Then I noticed I was only a little bit away from a nice, satisfyingly round number. It's a number I'd hit more than a few times before, although usually I try not to hit it in November because it makes no sense for me to hit it so far from... well... anything . Hitting it this early in the winter just means I'm looking at a crash if I'm not careful. That would set me back to square one. Still, it's so close. The logical side of me says it's just a number of no particular significance. The obsessive compulsive side of me says it signifies achievement and completion. I have an idea which side is going to win this argument, and I don't really want to deal with the aftermath. It's so clos...

  A couple days before I was scheduled to leave for my current hitch, my left ear started ringing. Then the headaches started. Then it felt like someone was driving an icepick through my eardrum. Naturally I was a bit concerned with this development so close to a trip which involved me flying in a small plane for a few hours. I went to the ER and they said I didn't have an infection of any kind, but it was simply a blocked  eustachian tube. It would likely go away on its own and they sent me off with some Afrin. Well, three weeks later and it hasn't gone away completely. It's better, and sometimes I have no symptoms, but they always come back. Mainly extra pressure, ringing, or hearing issues. If I'm on top of it and take my handful of medicine, flush my sinuses before bed with an improvised neti pot, and sleep on my right side so the fluid can drain, I seem to have fewer issues. Problem is, I can't take Afrin every day, and my allergy medicine has a tendency to bac...

When you're a new cyclist, progress comes quickly and relatively easy. It may not feel that way, but the initial gains are significant. Unless stopped by injury, illness, boredom, or life itself, the sky's the limit during the early days. Eventually the curve starts to flatten out a bit, so you buy some speed in the form of a new bike or start riding with somebody just a tad faster than you are. Another bump up the performance ladder. Soon the body adapts to this as well, and you're faced with more stagnation, so you find a fast group ride or start racing or buy some really awesome wheels. Anything to go faster and farther and better.  At a certain point you might start actually training instead of just riding around. The upward trend continues, now with charts and metrics to back up the sensations. Problem is, sooner or later you're going to hit another ceiling. Maybe it's genetics, but if you're anything like me it's just mostly poor life choices. I know e...

The last couple days I've felt "off" on the bike. No snap in sprints, no sustained power, no real drive to push it... A rest day didn't help. A couple easier days didn't help. I am properly cooked, which was what I've been working towards the last couple months. That sort of progress just isn't sustainable. At a certain point, you hit the ceiling. The only real question is how hard you're going to bounce off the ceiling. Are you going to spiral out of control and crash, or are you going to recover and push the ceiling up a bit more? Right now I'm in a somewhat good place to control the rebound. The only obstacle is my own tendency to start hammering away once I feel a little good. With a little planning, I might be able to milk my current level of fitness for a few months before the next crash. Then another bounce or two and I'm rolling into pavement season with something resembling form, only much weaker. To be honest, I just want to be motiva...

This weekend it seemed like half the country was celebrating the dawn of a new golden age and half the country believed the world was coming to an end. They're all wrong. ____________________________________________________________________________ Thus began the long, wordy post I just deleted. The internet doesn't need any more commentary on the election, and my opinion really won't sway the discourse one way or another. My fingers are worn to nubs unfollowing people on Facebook. People on both sides of the political chasm. Some of them cyclists. Some of them family. I just can't deal with the cacophony anymore. I think a lot of people are that way. I think most people are decent when you get right down to it, and agree far more than they disagree when meeting face to face in a civil setting. Unfortunately, civil settings are in short supply these days. People would rather draw lines and dig in their heels than listen to another side of a given issue. It's sad. I s...

For a guy prone to dark moods, I like good lighting. At home in my trainer dungeon, I have the overhead florescent lights, a couple LED shop lights, and a small SAD light (which never did much for me emotionally). They're all on when I'm on the trainer, partially because the bikes and bike components hanging from the ceiling reduce the impact of any single light, but also because I really like bright rooms. At the radar sites, some genius decided to paint the walls in the rooms with a flat color that absorbs 90% of all light. In winter along the Chukchi Sea it can get pretty dark, so this is not a great feature during the seasons when the mind tends to veer towards the homicidal. One of the first things I do when I move into a room is start adding lamps. The more, the brighter, the better. I'll pull off lamp shades to make them put out more light. I'll replace the bulbs with the highest wattage I can get away with. Anything to brighten my little world. It helps. It'...

  I've done this enough times that you'd think I'd have it all figured out by now. You'd be wrong. I began setting up my bike the night I arrived, in preparation for the next day's workout. Furniture was moved around and all of the components were positioned so that I could roll right out of bed and be sweating in no time. Except I wasn't. I woke up and dutifully donned my kit, then fired up the computer. I logged onto Zwift and immediately was confronted with a 30 minute update, which eventually grew to 45 minutes as the internet connection slowed. I usually update my computer as much as possible while at home to avoid this, but this time around I plain forgot. No matter, I'll just pull out my Garmin to track the workout and watch an old Eddy Merckx movie. As I spun my crank backwards to wake up the power meter, the drivetrain sounded funny. I quickly checked the alignment of the drivetrain, only to discover I had routed the chain through the rear derailleu...