Pre-season explorations

Date: Sept. 11
Mileage: 37.8
September mileage: 271.1

It's starting to be that time of year when snow and cold creep into my consciousness. Long before the ice forms and the snow actually flies, I find myself thinking often about winter ... about the transformation of the landscape, the blank slate surfaces and all of the possibilities for new adventures. I want to try harder this winter to access more terrain (and yes, a lot of that will have to be on foot.) But I'm also starting to think about new options for my bike.

So I set out today on a recon trip around the Eaglecrest road. I actually found a few sections of new-to-me singletrack. With endless gloppy mud and big, slippery roots, I have to say these trails don't do much for me in their summer state. But if I were to get ambitious this winter with a pair of snowshoes, the clearings they twist through could provide a fun spur where I could stamp down a snowbike trail.

The singletrack explorations were slow-going, and I became cold enough that I finally just had to get off the bike and jog. For most of the afternoon, it rained really hard. (Camera flash used for emphasis.)

But this was pretty ... (Devil's club: Beautiful to look at, deadly to brush up against.)

I continued up the gravel road, stopping often to survey the sidehills. I think this new road is likely to be mostly rideable uphill during the winter, as long as it's groomed at all (Although I fear the ski resort may just let the snowpack cover it. I'm hoping they decide to groom it as a fun, easy "green" run.) If it is groomed, it will open up a ton of new terrain for Pugsley (Only when the ski area is closed, of course. I don't want to annoy and/or be killed by skiers and snowboarders.) I'm excited!

The construction guys who are building the road tried to shoo me out of the area because they're still blasting. They were really nice about it - too nice, actually - and agreed I could hike around some more as long as I was off the mountain by 3:30. I really pushed my timetable by taking a meandering route up the bowl and starting the climb toward the ridge. By the time I looked at my watch, I realized I only had about 20 minutes to get down what took me 40 minutes to climb up. The terrain was so slippery with mud, runoff and wet groundcover that I could hardly stay on my feet walking down. Finally, I just sat on my butt, pushed off a rock, and slid. You know how mountaineers sometimes glissade down snowfields? Yeah, imagine doing that during the summer. I hit a small rock and it didn't even slow me down. Now I have a bruise in the area where I sit on my bike saddle - but I did make it back to the road by 3:30. There was a construction guy parked at my bike, waiting for me. I felt horrible - and apologized profusely for wasting his time. I was never anywhere near the blast zone. You'd think they were about to blow up the whole mountain ... but I can understand why they have to be careful. (And they should probably just close the whole area off. I won't go back up there again while they're working.)

It was a good day exploring. But, yeah ... I'm about ready for winter.

Three years

... that’s how long I’ve lived in Alaska.

Geoff and I moved up here the way many people do, driving up the Al-Can with little more than a job offer and a small car packed to the roof with worldly possessions. Geoff had already technically “moved” to Alaska three months before. He flew back down to the States to coax me away from my comfortable life in Idaho Falls. I did not want to make the move north, and convinced myself over the summer that it wasn’t going to happen. But then a rather casual job interview I had conducted over e-mail, mainly, yielded a real offer. “How do you feel about Homer?” I asked Geoff. The last time we had been through Homer was July 4, 2003, when we were crammed with about 50,000 other tourists on the Homer Spit. Geoff was not thrilled about Homer, but he saw it as a reasonable compromise.

We first crossed the border on Sept. 9, 2005. We spent my first night as an Alaska resident camped at a state park. I can’t remember the name of the park, but I do remember it was the same place we camped as tourists right before we left the state (not including an ill-fated jaunt to the Southeast, which is another story all together) in 2003. It was the first time Geoff and I had stopped driving before dark in four days. I lingered on the dock and watched the sun set behind craggy silhouettes of black spruce. The was a deja vu sort of comfort to the scene, and something in it made me feel like I had come full circle, like I had made the right decision - even though, outwardly, I was less than convinced.

We spent our second night in Alaska with old friends who had moved to Palmer a year earlier. They also happened to be hosting a group of fellow Outside expats who were on their way out of the state after finishing up seasonal jobs in Denali National Park. That was an ongoing theme during our trip - lines of RVs were streaming south. We seemed to be the only ones heading north.

We drove down the Kenai Peninsula on Sept. 11. It was this beautiful sunny morning and autumn leaves lit up the landscape with yellows and golds. The mountains climbed straight out of the Turnagain Arm; their peaks were already brushed white with snow. It was one of those jaw-dropping drives that anyone would feel privileged to experience as a tourist, and I couldn't get over the thought - I live here.

That quiet sort of awe continued until we crested the last hill of the Sterling Highway. I think anyone who has ever moved to Homer must have the experience of rounding that bay view corner for the first time forever burned in their memories. We were suddenly hit with a panoramic vista of Kachemak Bay, hugged by the jagged, snow-capped peaks of the Kenai Mountains, and the Homer Spit stretched out like a ribbon across the bright blue water. I was in the passenger's seat, eyes wide open, bottom lip hanging out, voicing what I could scarcely believe - I live here?

The rain moved in that evening and we spent our first night in Homer wet and homeless. I started my job at the Homer Tribune the next morning, and that afternoon we looked at apartments. Everything we saw was cramped and expensive and kitschy until, almost as an afterthought, we checked out this place on Diamond Ridge. The "one bedroom loft" turned out to be a 2,000-square-foot cabin on two acres of land. The landlord was out of town, so we had to peer through the windows. The spacious interior was all wood. The view through tiered glass carried for miles. We called up the landlord and, sight unseen on both ends, asked her when we could move in. In true Alaska fashion, she said, "You can move in tonight if you want."

Her friend couldn't bring us a key until the next day, so we knocked on a neighbor's door and asked him if we could borrow a ladder. He took one look at these two people he had never met, who were driving a car with Idaho plates, and in true Alaska fashion, grabbed a ladder from his yard and helped us break in through the kitchen window. He proceeded to spend most of the evening with us, helping unload my car and talking our ears off about oyster farming and the ten feet of snow we could expect in the winter, and before he left, offered Geoff a job. (The job didn't pan out; the ten feet of snow did.) I remember staring out the window that night at the pink light of yet another incredible sunset, just as a cow moose and her adolescent calf sauntered through our back yard. I couldn't get over the satisfaction - I live here.

Sometimes I think I gave up on Homer too quickly, and sometimes I know I did. But there is one thing I know for sure - I wouldn't trade my experiences from these past three years for anything.

Those Lost boys are back

"Perfect beach near Cape Yakataga;" Photo by Eric Parsons.

Date: Sept. 9
Mileage: 20.1
September mileage: 233.3

So Dylan and Eric of the Lost Coast Bike Expedition have successfully completed their coastal ride to Cordova and are back in Anchorage. They must be two of the baddest, saltiest guys with two of the baddest, saltiest Pugsleys in all the land. They have some epic stories that simultaneously fill me with jealousy for what they experienced and relief that I wasn’t there - a mark of any good adventure, in my opinion. This morning, Eric told me about their crossing of the Hubbard (aka “Terror”) Gap in packrafts. The narrow gap was raging with tidal currents and clogged with glacial ice. Just they were trying to paddle around all of those obstacles, a massive chunk of ice calved off the Hubbard Glacier and crashed into the bay, sending a breaking tsunami their way. Eric said the wave bounced off nearby cliffs and ricocheted back to them, and all they could do was grip their paddles and hope it didn’t flip their boats. Harrowing stuff. Good stuff. And great photos are already up on their trip blog.

So of course I had to ask Eric the question that I’m sure he hears from everyone - was taking the bike worth it? He said he had to give it some thought, but in the end, decided it was. “We did a lot of pushing and carrying our bikes,” he said. “But there were also a lot of really good beaches and we could cover ground a lot faster than if we were walking. We’d look back after a really fun couple hours and think, wow, that would have taken us all day.”

And on his blog, he wrote, “A simple joy comes from mountain biking in places they have never been before. The untangibles that come with traveling through and experiencing these raw, wild, awe-inspiring landscapes is what motivates us and will keep us coming back again and again.”

I have to say, this recent string of good news - Geoff’s win in the Wasatch 100 and Dylan and Eric’s success on the Lost Coast - have really boosted me through this new rut I’ve been tossed into. After I found out I can’t secure extra time off work in October, I took three entire days off the bike - cleaning my house, plodding through a number of chores I’ve been neglecting, and generally feeling sad about being shut out of Trans Utah. I set out today and felt super strong - no huge surprise there, after three pretty mellow days. Despite being stranded in a “no train” zone, I still felt compelled to push hard. I ascended the Perseverance Trail in a gray cloud and descended cold and soaked in sweat and mist and mud and the satisfaction of a good hard effort. But as soon as I rolled back to my apartment and hopped in the shower, the emptiness started to return.

Of course there will be future events and future goals. There always will be. I think what I am mostly feeling sad about is this new realization that even though I have no children, no debt, no health problems, and no definite obligations, I have shaped this life that is not my own. There’s this sense that being chained to a desk is as good as a prison sentence, and yet, I feel a strong reluctance to give up the shackles.