Chapter Two

Picking Up the Pieces

 

“Jill, can I see you in my office?”

“Sure, Charles,” I said to the voice on the speakerphone. “I’ll be right in.”

I grabbed my crutches and leaned against my desk as I stood up. My right foot was wrapped in white gauze. Over that, I wore an oversized, brightly colored sock that my mom had mailed from Utah in an effort to lift my spirits. The gift was strangely effective, as though loud pink stripes really could erase the oozing decay surrounding my toes.

It was March 11, nine days after Geoff and I boarded a small ski plane outside Yentna Station and lifted off the white ice toward our decidedly grayer lives in Juneau. I had always thought it would be a blast to ride a bush plane over Alaska wilderness, but the flight out of Yentna was partially humiliating and partially agonizing. After I decided to scratch from the Iditarod Trail Invitational, Geoff admitted he wasn’t likely to recover his stamina since he could hardly breathe through all the gunk in his lungs, and dropped out as well. We split the expensive air taxi flight with a Spanish woman who was concerned that the frigid wind had possibly damaged her eyes. We were three quitters who, most reasonable people would agree, had good reasons to leave; still, a thick shame wafted through the small cab of the plane. Geoff and the Spanish woman sat in the back seat in silence while I leaned against the passenger-side door, half wishing for a hinge to pop open and forever release me from my uncertain future. The snaking Yentna River sparkled in suspended animation below us, and the clear air revealed row upon row of mountains in a far distance. It was beautiful, but I could do was stare at my bandaged right foot and wonder what the hell I had done. Normal people don’t have to be evacuated from the Alaska bush with frostbite on their feet. Normal people don’t risk everything for an amateur bicycle race.

That afternoon, I spent more than six hours inside an emergency room in Palmer. A whole team of Alaskan doctors, who I assumed treated cold injuries as often as California doctors see sunburn, hemmed and hawed about what to do about my frostbitten toes. Surgery on the spot was discussed, followed by recommendations for a specialist in Anchorage. Finally, the Palmer doctors just drained my blisters, wrapped my foot in gauze, handed me a pair of crutches and told me to change my dressings twice a day and consult a doctor in Juneau.

“There’s still a chance you’ll lose the tip of your big toe,” one Palmer doctor told me before I left, “but we can take a wait-and-see approach.”

Back in Juneau, I sought the second opinion of a podiatrist. Although she had recently relocated from California, and previously only dealt with seared flesh in the form of actual burns, the doctor told me I was going to be fine.

“I used to work at the burn unit in Santa Monica,” she said. “I’ve seen flesh black to the bone. You’re not going to lose anything, at least not if you’re careful. What you have is just going to take a while to heal.”

“How long?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “You definitely have some pretty deep damage. Possibly eight weeks or ten, hard to say. Your body will decide that.”

I leaned back on the paper-wrapped bed, adding the time in my head. “Will I be able to ride a bicycle before then?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think you should start putting weight on your foot any time soon. If you want to exercise, you could try weight machines, upper body stuff.”

“But what about my legs?” I asked. “I want my legs to stay in shape.”

She laughed. “Be patient! These are your toes we’re talking about. You only get ten of them.”

She turned to grab more gauze out of a cabinet on the other side of the room.

“Yeah, but do you need all ten of them?” I said under my breath. I couldn’t wait ten weeks to start riding my bike again. That would put my frostbite recovery well into the middle of May, less than a month before I planned to launch what promised to be the largest single undertaking of my entire life: a 2,740-mile mountain bike race down the spine of the Rocky Mountains called the Tour Divide. The race loosely followed the Continental Divide from Banff, Alberta, to the southern border of New Mexico, along a series of logging paths, gravel roads and trails that ceaselessly ascended and descended North America’s largest mountain range.

I had become fixated on this race a year before, when Geoff attempted it but had to drop out in Kremmling, Colorado, with what he called “total body failure.” Geoff was already an accomplished ultra-runner, regularly winning one-hundred-mile foot races in record times. But he still insisted that mountain biking the Great Divide was the hardest physical challenge he had ever attempted. For reasons that seemed just as inexplicable to me as my draw to cold-weather adventures like the Iditarod Trail Invitational, Geoff’s assertions of the Great Divide’s difficulty made me want it even more. It seemed like the ultimate mountain biking adventure, the kind of thing that rewarded mule-like labor and stubbornness, which were my only two athletic talents.

I understood I would have to commit 100 percent of my energy to the goal, with complete devotion. In January, I announced my intentions to quit my job as an editor at a daily newspaper, the Juneau Empire, in April and travel to the Lower 48 to train extensively in regions with heat and high elevation. Even before we left for the Iditarod race, Geoff and I started sorting out our things and preparing to move away from Juneau. I had already given up so much for the simple dream of riding the Divide; I couldn’t stomach the thought of giving up everything for a few blackened toes. But I wasn’t about to share this inclination with my doctor.

When my boss Charles called me into his office, he also knew the status of my health and my ability to ride a bicycle all day long for three weeks straight was still very much in question. It was mid-March, the Divide race was a mere three months away, and I was on crutches. As long as I clutched them, I couldn’t offer a believable defense of my ambitions: To embark on the longest mountain bike race in the world in less than ninety days.

“Please, sit down,” Charles said as he directed me toward the chairs in front of his desk. Charles was the new managing editor of the Juneau Empire. He took the job just a few weeks after the former editor stepped down, citing unmanageable stress and the questionable health of the business, which, like many other daily newspapers across the United States, was undergoing large budget cutbacks and layoffs. In the Juneau Empire’s small newsroom of twelve reporters and editors, I had seen three of my own co-workers escorted out the door, never to be replaced, and their absence made all of our lives and workloads much more difficult.

The teetering work environment generated an underlying motive for my Divide dream — an excuse to extricate myself from my increasingly stressful job. I already had one foot out the door when Charles took over the editor position just a few weeks before my Iditraod race. It was early February and I was set to leave Juneau for good. Charles begged me to stay for two more months, to help smooth over what was already becoming a rough transition for him.

I had been reluctant. I was tired of budget cuts, tired of layoffs, and tired of the downward slide in the quality of my own work. And, if I was honest with myself, I was becoming tired of Juneau. The Southeast Alaska city is disconnected from the North American road system and has one of the wettest climates in the United States. Juneau is an isolated town of 30,000 wedged between the rugged Coast Range and the sea. It’s a good place to be adventurous, but too isolated and remote to facilitate the life of an adventurer. I had always wanted to dabble in the life of a career adventurer, even if only for a few months. And while I did enjoy newspaper work, I was pretty sure most adventurers did not spend sixty hours a week sitting at a desk beneath buzzing florescent lights, designing newspaper pages on a computer screen.

But Charles had a way of getting what he wanted. He was a thirty-year-old Iraq War veteran from Kentucky, a large man with military-short hair, an intimidating scowl and a disarming smile. He had worked his way to the top of the ranks at such a young age with a cocktail of old-fashioned persistence, charisma and workaholism. With a few simple words of flattery and a sprinkling of grand promises, he had managed to coerce me into staying on for two extra months after the Iditarod. He hinted that further negotiations might net me a new job title complete with a fifty-percent pay raise. I sensed another one of those negotiations heading my way.

I propped my crutches against his office chair and plopped down with my cheerful pink-striped sock extended in the aisle. Charles gestured toward my foot and got right to the point. “So how does this affect your plans to leave in April?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean, you’re not going to be able to do the bike race anymore, right? Not like that.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “June is still three months away. I’m not ready to give up on it yet.”

“Right,” Charles chuckled slightly. “But you’re on crutches.”

I smiled at Charles. I admired his bluntness. No one else had the nerve to tell me that the Great Divide was a stupid dream, and I was a stupid person to throw away a job for it when the economy was tanking, the entire newspaper industry was struggling, and my foot was still leaking yellow puss. Charles turned around and pulled an overstuffed binder out from under a stack of papers. He handed it to me.

“Look inside,” Charles said. “Those are all resumes, people who have applied for your job. I have more than fifty of them.” He grabbed another binder and handed it to me. “These are resumes for the reporter job. The entry-level reporter job. I have even more of those. There are a lot of journalists out there looking for work. The newspaper business isn’t getting any better.” He leaned back in his chair, looking supremely satisfied. “I can almost guarantee you that once you leave here, you are not going have an easy time finding another job.”

I smiled. “But I don’t want another job. At least not for a while.”

A look of confusion flashed across his face. He had worked hard all his life, and had always been rewarded for hard work. The harder he worked, the more he was rewarded, until it was difficult for him to understand why anybody would turn down an opportunity to slave away for sixty hours a week in front of a flickering computer screen.

“But you don’t really think you’re going to ride a bicycle like that?” he said. “How long did you say your race was? A thousand miles?”

“More than twenty-five hundred,” I said. “And I’m certainly going to try. I’ve already pretty much planned it out. Geoff and I have a cabin in Utah reserved and everything. I’m going to train for the Great Divide, and he’s going to train for Western States and a few other ultramarathons. Anyway, all of the time I’ve spent training for the Iditarod while working long hours here has been horrible on my relationship. Geoff’s more excited about this sabbatical than I am. If I back out now, I’m pretty sure he’ll leave me forever.”

“But I’m offering you a promotion,” Charles said. “A raise. A big raise. Surely Geoff can get behind that.”

“Geoff cares about money even less than I do,” I said. “And you’ve already seen how big of a motivator money is for me. I live in a two-bedroom condo with two roommates and drive a 1996 Geo Prism.”

“But you have a nice bike,” Charles offered.

“I think you’d be surprised how basic my bike is when you compare it to other people who take cycling as seriously as I do.”

“Well, you don’t make a bad salary now. What do you spend your money on?” he asked.

“I save my money and buy myself time,” I said, “which is all I’m asking for now. I’m leaving in April. I’ve made up my mind. Frostbite doesn’t change things.”

Charles leaned back in his chair with a concerned look on his face. I smiled serenely. It felt good to be wanted, and at the same time have my resolve tested so I could prove to myself that riding the Great Divide really was the path I wanted to choose. Charles smiled back, because he liked this game. He recognized me as a rare hard sell, and if he could knead my desires to shape his way of thinking, then he’d win this battle of wits. Charles was used to winning.

“I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this,” he said, “but what would you say if I said you could take the time off to do your race?”

“What?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, go race the Great Divide. Take a long vacation. Take a month or two if you need it. Unpaid, of course. We’ll call it a furlough. Then, when you’re done, come back here and take the new job. It’s a big promotion. You’ll finally have enough money to buy a nice bike. I mean, really, what do I need to say to get you to stay? When does the race start?”

“On the twelfth of June,” I said, drawing out the last syllable suspiciously.

“Good,” Charles said. “How long do you think it will take?”

“Three weeks at least,” I said. “Maybe a month.”

“Okay,” he said. “Then the first of July. Can you be back by then? My family is coming up here for the Fourth of July. If you can be back by July first, you can take a furlough and keep your job.”

I ran my teeth over my bottom lip. The Great Divide was going to be the hardest thing I had ever attempted. The last thing I needed was a timeline, especially a timeline that held me to a finishing time that was significantly faster than the current women’s record. At the same time, I was being offered the best of both worlds — the Great Divide and job security. I might even be able to maintain my company health insurance plan while I was gone. But what were my chances of finishing in twenty days? On the other hand, what were my chances of even finishing? Unless I could figure out a way to train with a foot that was still too injured to even push pedals, what were my chances of even starting? I might be able to promise that I could be back by the first of July. And even if I couldn’t keep that promise, what was Charles going to do — call me in New Mexico and demand I come back? I could always say no. I’d be no worse off than if I had quit in the first place. Still, what would Geoff say? He’d been pressuring me to move away from Juneau since we moved there from Homer two and a half years previously. Geoff might say no. I’d still be no worse off than I was.

“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I’d still need to leave on April twentieth. We have all these plans we made. And I need to train. I can’t train here. I have to go somewhere where I can ride my bicycle in the desert heat and high mountain elevation.”

“Hmm,” Charles said. “That’s only about two months of leave. That’s not so bad. It won’t be easy but I’m used to doing four jobs at once. I can handle one more for two months.” When the Great Divide Race was really all over, I thought, it’d be closer to three months. I didn’t state that fact out loud.

“And there’s travel time,” I said. “If I actually make it all the way to New Mexico, it’s a long way back to here.”

“Take a plane,” Charles said. “They’re fast. You can rest when you’re here.”

“It’s tempting,” I said. “Really tempting.”

“And if the race doesn’t work out,” he said as he gestured at my sock-covered foot, “you can always come back early.”

“Tell you what,” I said. “Let me talk to Geoff about it.”

Charles grinned victoriously. “Tell Geoff it’s an offer he can’t refuse. It’s the best offer I’ve ever given. I can’t give you any more.”

“I realize that,” I said. “It’s very generous. I’ll let you know in a few days.”

I stood up, grabbed my crutches, and limped out of Charles’ office. The whole building seemed to hover ominously over me as I slowly made my way back to my own office. I felt as though I had cracked open a door I believed led to freedom, only to discover an identical room on the other side. In rows beside me, my coworkers sat their cubicles, clicking away at keyboards. They seemed oblivious to the bright winter sunlight that was pouring in the room. I was pretty sure this wasn’t what I wanted, and yet, who was I to give up the few things everyone wanted — money, security and respect? Charles played a dangerous game, one whose rules made everything that mattered to me seem trivial, and vice versa. It was a dangerous game because I suspected he was right.

I walked outside and started my car. I had only an hour for a dinner break before I had to be back at work. Should I tell Geoff now, or wait? I pressed my sock foot tenderly on the gas pedal and lifted the clutch. The sky was dark blue, and beams of orange sunlight stretched out beyond the mountains of Douglas Island, my home. A shimmering channel of seawater encircled the island like a gown. Juneau wasn’t such a bad place to be stuck, if you had to be stuck somewhere.

I realized that I was already feeling homesick for Juneau. I had ventured outside so little in the past week — only enough to drive to and from work and my doctor’s office. It was such a different lifestyle than the one I had practiced before the race, when I’d ride my bike for hours in the worst subzero winds and blowing snow. Now spring was on its way and I spent all my time reclined, staring at computer screens or sleeping. My mind, so accustomed to its daily dose of endorphins, couldn’t adjust to the sedentary life, and depression was starting to creep around the edges of my demeanor. Geoff started to notice it shortly after we returned from the Iditarod, and asked me what I thought about leaving in March instead of April.

Now not only was I nixing any chance of an early departure, I was considering keeping a job that had demanded increasingly longer hours since Charles took over. All the time I spent locked to my desk certainly wasn’t going to diminish just because I was planning to leave for three months. And while I was gone for three months, all the demands of that job were going to fall directly on Charles. It was a strange win-win situation, because it was also lose-lose. I could keep my job and lose my idealism, or I could lose my job and keep my dreams. Still, it seemed like now, no matter what I chose, I could hold on to the dream of the Great Divide. And if I could believe in the Great Divide, I reasoned, maybe I could believe in anything.