Racing the Sunrise

Today I rode my bike to work for the first time in many months. It's taken a couple weeks of talking about it and a few more of thinking about it for this to come to fruition. As with the best laid plans, I got to bed late and slept in an extra half hour. Thank you Tatonka for deciding to chew up your food bin last night, which was discovered when Smokey went downstairs to feed you dinner and let you inside for the night. Because we felt sorry for you having not been outside enough in the past day or two.

After a slow start, I rapidly got in the groove. It may have been a while, but this idea of bike commuting is not foreign to my life. Smokey promised to bring me breakfast and lunch after exercising the dogs and getting just a little more sleep. He was not happy when I asked him to please get out of bed and locate his bike light for me. I refuse to dig through his tub of stuff to find anything. Murphy's law was tested and found to be operational. The light was easy enough to find....including the dead batteries. After he duct taped (in coordinating blue tape) the light to my bike he found the mounting bracket.

Despite having purchased quality tools when I started bike commuting last year, I could not find my pump, tools, tubes, or patch kit this morning. I am fairly fanatical about my gear being organized and putting things away, but somehow there was no sign of these items. Now I recognize I'm no Jill of Up in Alaska (http://arcticglass.blogspot.com) but I do manage to get out and put some miles on my bike. For instance, I have studded tires on my bike, but not on my truck. Nevermind the fact that Smokey switches my studs out for me in the spring and fall.

Seeing as how late it was getting I started to wonder if I would even need the light. We carefully scouted the route on the way home last night and discovered a few sections where I would need a light to see with (as opposed to the light I have, designed more for people to see me). And then the race was on. Sunrise today was at about 9:30.

The most uncertain part of the ride was at the beginning, in getting to the trail so I didn't have to ride along the busy road with no shoulders. This was fairly easy and after one stop to switch gloves and zip up my windstop top, I was cruising. The hills even seemed a little less steep. And that's when I discovered the art of peddling on the downhill. Because if you don't it's not the gleeful cruising expereinced in summer, it's just you sitting still in the cold with the wind blasting you and it's cold.

Later on I discovered the art of praying while flying. Because at times it was more like flying than biking; there was no stopping. This is really only a problem when you discover you are way too close to a curb with the dip for wheels full of chunky snow from the snowplow. That's where the praying comes in.

I arrived safely and plan on repeating this epic journey to get home tonight and hopefully every week. And I'll deffinately be going through all the possible hidden spots to find my missing gear. I suspect Smokey's truck because it has history of harboring all things that go missing.

Wolverine Winter Summit

The weekend before last Smokey decided to host a shindig. He has previously hosted such an event, mostly for his WFR clan, but decided to add an element, to kick it up a notch, if you will. This involved a dinner party morphing into a full day of hiking followed by a potluck style dinner. He even polled folks and selected a Sunday so everyone could make it.

While at first I was very excited about this socializing, it may have waned a little after hauling myself and my well supplied pack up a steep ridge. I may have said something along the lines of 'who's idea was this anyway?'

That's about when we saw this pile of metal. My guess was the remains of a weather station. Luckily, the one friend (that's right, I said one) who joined us for the hike knew it was the remnants of a very light aircraft that wrecked in bad weather many years ago.

My two-tailed dog summited with me in the glorious sunny day. Actually, I think they summited about seven times. Very little wind at the actual top, but plenty on the way up. We didn't hang out for too long as sitting still was cold. Even the dogs thought so and they expressed this by trying to crawl onto my lap. At the same time. Smokey was laughing too hard to get a picture of that.

But he did get plenty of other pics of the great view. Someday I'll know all those peaks by sight. I usually only remember the names after I've been up them.

Too bad everyone else missed this. Also too bad we only had an hour after this six hour hike to get the house cleaned for our guests. I told people that if they really liked us they wouldn't open any closed doors. Thank goodness for closed doors.

25 Minutes

Last night I had dog training after work. I finished at 7:17pm. I went home, changed clothes, waxed my skis, loaded them into the truck, and drove to the ski area. It was 7:42 when I got there. And the skiing was awesome. Except that one of Smokey's poles broke and I missed a turn so we ended up going an extra mile or so. Overall, a great reason to love Anchorage. I don't think I could even get from a dog training area to my house in 25 minutes in Portland, let alone to a ski area. Also, I'm proud of how long and hard Tatonka worked just to find an article. I'm looking forward to him progressing in this discipline and making it more obvious for me when he smells something. The learning curve is steep for both of us right now. But it's still fun.

Golden Heights Winter Hike

Smokey and I went for a nice hike the weekend before last on Sunday afternoon. No, this is not Mt. Redoubt, it's Illiamna blowing some steam. Smokey and I had a slight panic when we saw it until he and our friend, LauLau, figured out it was the wrong volcano.

This is LauLau's new puppy, Primer, who came along on the hike with us and Tatonka and Percy. He let his big brother, Goose, come along as well.

And this sweet puppy is getting a surprise on payday. But I don't mean surprise in a good way, except for the humans. She's getting a shock collar. I've had enough of her little reindeer games and I think her bad habits are wearing off on the good dog.

Beer Climb

Smokey and I headed out to the valley last Saturday to break in his new-to-him climbing gear. We forgot to actually take our camera out of the pack and take pictures, but my friend who went with us took a few. We watched the sun rise and shine on the ridge in the distance from the top of the ice falls.

We stayed plenty warm when not on the ice with my plethora of Apocalypse gear and hot tea.

Oh, and we climbed the waterfall. It was wet and wonderful. I still have a long way to go on my technique, but my confidence in my gear is rising and I'm remembering a bit from my first climbing ten years ago in the farther north land of cold, Fairbanks.

See Mom, no falling off the ice. I even practiced installing ice screws so I can have the confidence to lead soon. No Mom, I will not explain that because you wouldn't like it. Just pretend I said 'eat chocolate cake'.

A happy Smokey is about to belay me. I'm so glad we got him out on the ice before he started climbing the walls. Now I just have him asking if we can ice climb every day. Guess I better buy a rope and more ice screws. And a membership to the rock gym for weeknights.

Calvin and Garrison

Smokey and I have been church shopping. I know, that sounds funny. But you try living in Alaska, being a scientist, and believing in God. Not a good combination for finding a group that is not extremely offensive. This endeavor has included such fun as a beautiful young lady asking Smokey to coffee when I sent him on his own, and me leaving in the middle of a service when I went on my own (what? they were talking about abortion and politics).

A couple weeks ago we found a new one, near the house we are sitting. Welcoming people at door - check. Singing not horrible - check. Pastor endurable - uh, he's putting a Calvin and Hobbes carton on an overhead projector at the start of his sermon and he looks like Garrison Keillor. Huh, I guess this is a check. A roaring successs actually.

And then the bubble bursts. The other pastor gave the sermon for a couple weeks after the new year. Wow. I don't even know where to start. How about with a quote "...if they don't like it here then they can go back to the third world rat hole country they came from!" Nice demo of Christian love and charity, buddy. He likes to take every opportunity to let us know he is a professor too. I suspect it's at the Wayland Baptist College across town. I don't think my blood pressure can handle telling you what he said about climate change. I was good and didn't embarass Smokey or anything. Mostly because he begged me to keep my mouth shut during the question and answer session that usually occurs after the sermon (I know, right!). That was the first week it didn't happen. Good thing too, or I think I would have started with a request for a citation of the data showing the earth is cooling. He would get along well with my boss.

Garrsion Calvin pastor's wife's name is Happy. And she is and remembers us (not a tiny church like the island) and now she knows I'm a scientist and I'm doing my thesis research partially on climate change. We'll see if she's still Happy to see me this weekend. What? She asked, I swear!

Twelth Day of Christmoose

Rapt attention to being informed that it is the last day of Christmoose.

What was that?

Me too?

Nom, nom, nom, nom......

Ahhhhh, Christmoose takes good.

Nothing like ending something with style. Bye Christmas, see you next year.

Near Point Hike

After starting the year with a hike, Smokey and I were motivated to keep playing outside. We went for a quick ski on Saturday after cleaning the house all day. To reward ourselves for all our responsible behavior we went out Sunday afternoon to Near Point.

I love this time of year here. If you look one direction it looks almost mid day out. Looking behind me you would see it looks much darker. We got a later-than-we-should-have start and so decided to save the joy of summiting for another day. What can I say, I'm a worry wart and don't like hiking in the dark without lights.

See, the dogs appear to be posing hours later. They are loving this new game of hiking for a few hours every day. Wait until they realize I still go to work and school every day and this is just another long weekend thing.

I like having an LCD screen on the camera that flips completely around. It doesn't keep us from looking silly in self portaits, but at least we can aim better.

Once in a Blue Moon

Smokey and I spent a quiet night at Heaven ringing in the new year. We had some food and drinks with friends at Firetap earlier in the night, after Tatonka hunted one of them down in a snow cave. Then we went home to take pictures of the big moon; it's so bright it was waking me up in the morning.

Once in a blue moon we get something right. We started off the new year with a hike with friends and dogs. I would love to play outside every day, and hope that is possible this year. Best wishes to all of you for a year that holds all you desire.