What is this bright light?

Weather.com had the audacity to call for "abundant sunshine" on Wednesday. 61 degrees. That's call-in-sick weather. At the very least, I have no choice but to take my bicycle out in the morning.

I haven't ridden much this month, but I haven't fallen off the bandwagon yet. I have become a reluctant member of the cheapest gym in town, also known as "Juneau's #1 Gym." It's a musty old place above a deli and across the street from the high school, where I can exercise to the aroma of sweat and salami while teenagers rifle through my car.

It also is a scapegoat that allows me to groggily nurse a cup of tea all morning before putting in a frantic hour of running/lifting/magazine reading before work. My biceps are looking a little less, well, imaginary - but it's just not the same. After all of the progress I made this year, it is, alas, a place of defeat. So this is my September resolution - to rediscover the joys of bad weather bicycling, and to work toward becoming a - sigh - morning person.

Maybe it's this unfamiliar yellow orb in the weather forecast that fills me with such resolve. But, if the those predictions prove true, I'll have no excuse for not posting numbers tomorrow.

Sept. 11

I didn't have much time to write a post. Interestingly, I've already told my Sept. 11 story. It's posted here if anyone cares to read about a bright-eyed young reporter trapped at a chemical weapons incineration plant.

Anniversaries, especially uniformly numbered anniversaries, always bring out an awareness of the time that passes. People usually spend anniversaries adhering to some tradition, focused on reflection, or lost in memory. I tend to fall in the third group. I can still feel the numb shock, taste metallic stillness in the sinking air, and see the televised images that I, and every other American, watched in horror as our bright, mundane mornings were violently jarred from their routine. It was a Tuesday. That fact felt important to me.

Every year since, I usually spend some time on Sept. 11 reading the words that people wrote around that date. As we march through this endless War on Terror, I'm always drawn to a quote that my friend sent me in an e-mail two days after the attacks. I read it because it speaks to me exactly what we're up against:

"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I'm an Alaskan now

I spent the workday filling the newspaper with 9/11 fifth anniversary stories. In the wake of the terrorist attacks, Sept. 11 has become a dubious date - but in 2005, it also happened to be the date I "moved" to Alaska. I thought about where I was this day last year, driving across the state line with a vaguely-promised job offer and little else on the horizon. One year went by. I rounded the jaw-dropping vista of Baycrest Hill, settled in Homer, moved to a cabin that received 250 inches of snow over the winter, embarked on my first below-zero bike ride, started entering endurance wilderness races, tried winter camping in April, pedaled by the light of the midnight sun, and gorged on the endless visual banquet until mountain-framed sunrises and wildlife sightings became routine. Then I packed up my life in Homer, relocated to Juneau, and started all over again. That's what happened in the one year it took for me to become an official, state-recognized "Alaskan."

Now I can get a fishing license. Qualify for the annual PFD check. Maybe run for city office if I ever move back to Homer (who wouldn't elect a "Homer Mayor Homer?") But, most of all, I've adapted my outlook and lifestyle to acclimate into this land of extremes ... I think to the point now where even the grizzled old fishermen wouldn't be able to tell me apart from the next pasty-faced Alaskan slogging down the street in a summer squall. And still, I've maintained an immigrant-like sense of Outsider pride. I'd still cook up a batch of Mormon funeral potatoes for the company potluck. And I don't own anything with the brand name "Carhart," "Xtratuf" or "Subaru."

It's strange that it's been a whole year - and yet, I can hardly imagine my life free of boreal wilderness and bald eagles perched atop streetlights. If year two brings even a fraction of the drastic changes I experienced since Sept. 11, 2005, I'm excited for the possibilities.