Alaskan Pack Fodder

They ask the same question at just about every job interview or promotion board:   What is your greatest weakness?   My usual approach is to name some general flaw and then list the various strategies I've used over the years to mitigate the issue and turn the weakness into a strength. It's usually just corporate jargon that means nothing, but it allows me to seamlessly transition into how I dynamically enhance tiger team throughputs to synergistically bolster cross-organizational core competencies, while maximizing key metric impacts and leveraging end-game deliverables applied in the vertical domain.   My career advancement has stagnated for some reason.   My go-to flaw is always multi-tasking. My theoretical solution always involves advanced time management techniques, cutting tasks down to manageable chunks and then prioritizing each phase of the process to meet current mission requirements. The reality is that I wait until the last minute, ing...

A Chinook Wind rolled through Anchorage the other night, melting most of the snow on the ground and leaving behind dirty ice and darkness. During our dark winters, all of the snow reflects the light natural and man-made sources, making it brighter. Wipe that away and you're left with a dark, depressing scene. Driving becomes interesting, because the lines on the street that aren't covered have been scraped away by snow plows. Lanes are often guesstimates.   Fat bikers and skiers stare out their windows drinking coffee and thinking dark thoughts. All of us that actually enjoy the winter are slipping into a deep funk. We thought we lived in Alaska.   After the last couple winters, I'm not surprised. We usually get a couple Chinooks that blow through in December and January, but the snow pack is usually thick enough to survive. This year I expect this won't be the last warming trend, and it probably won't be the worst.   I'm hoping we'll ...

Saturday night I rebuilt the time trial bike for the second time this winter. This time it was to install different TT bars that allow me to have a lower position while on the bullhorns while retaining my current position on the aerobars. They also look way cooler. Kind of a Star Wars X-Wing vibe. Had nothing to do with the movie. I just got tired of kicking this particular pair around the garage and finally installed them. It certainly makes the TT bike look lower and more purposeful, even if my default position hasn't changed.   Sunday I woke up at 6:00AM and got ready for another session at the Dome. The bike was loaded up on the car and I was early for a change ( and it wasn't even daylight savings time ). I noticed there weren't any cars in the parking lot.   Crap. Somebody changed the clocks again without telling me.   Then one car pulled up. Then another. Then a couple with bike racks. Now we were getting somewhere. Still, nobody appeared to open the doo...

The other day I got on the trainer and booted up Zwift. I wasn't paying attention and ended up in the middle of one of the Zwift Training Races (ZTR). These are regular events divided into A, B, C, and D groups by average watts per kilogram.   The theory is that if you can stay within those ranges, you should be able to hang with the group. Sure, there will be surges and lulls, but the average should fit into those ranges.   The reality is that averaging 2 w/kg above the advertised ranges gets you dropped at the start line. Thanks to sandbaggers, virtual dopers, and what I can only assume are genetic outliers, even the slower races have more than a few USAC Cat 1 racers gasping for air and struggling to finish.   However, despite missing the start by a little bit, not having the nomenclature on my profile as directed, and riding a TT bike in a group ride (I was that guy), I jumped into the ZTR-D pack for the first lap. I figured the odds of me taking...

Recognizing that not everyone shares my own particular brand of faith, I present my own non-denominational holiday message: Try not to be an asshole today. I'll try to do the same, but I make no promises. Turn off the digital world. Go outside and do something active and analog. Reflect on how awesome and miraculous everything is around you. Go to the middle of the woods and just listen. Flash someone a random smile. Eat something good. Eat something bad. Hold a door open for someone. Take a nap. Thank someone for something. Interact. Disconnect. But most of all- Try not to be an asshole today.

After Sunday's session at the Dome, I rushed home to shower and get the daughter ready for Mighty Mites. Usually this involves frantically running around finding stuff she left strewn around the house the previous week. My stuff? With the exception of my ski boots (which get very, very stiff when cold-soaked for a week), I leave it all in the car. Makes rolling out the door and off to the hill just that much more efficient. I don't have to think too much.   When we got down to Alyeska, I realized my helmet, goggles and ski gloves weren't in the car. My children, who were tasked with cleaning it after leaving trash strewn across the interiors of multiple vehicles, had removed them to an undisclosed location. I did find a pair of mismatched ski gloves under a seat, which were missed during the thorough cleaning- likely because they were obscured by a McDonalds bag and several school permission slips.   With 15 minutes to spare before I was to meet my group, I was limite...

My SRM power meter arrived in the mail the other day. I sent it in after realizing the batteries were probably due for replacement, and I really wanted to get a solid baseline. After all, if you're going to use the gold-standard of bicycle power meters, you might want to make sure it's not made out of tin. A couple turns of the wrench had it back on the time trial bike, and a quick zero offset showed it had not changed dramatically during the calibration. This was good news, since battery life was issue it was sent in for, not stability. After a couple weeks at the Dome on the road bike riding a combination of TT and sprint efforts with questionable success (not that I didn't enjoy it while I was there), it was time to get back on the TT bike. The plan is to get some hours on the frame to make myself more comfortable in that position, so maybe I won't lose so much time in stage races during time trials. Just keep me in the mix.   After a week of abusing myse...