I can weave like no man...

...because men don't weave in Guatemala.

what's love got to do with it?

Love is differnt here. In a guidebook I read that if you want to tell somebody that you love them then you had better have a ring in hand and be ready to start a large family. I'm having a somewhat difficult time with this. I tell my friends that I love them, and I mean it. I find that I'm constantly thinking things like "no, I really enjoy camping, but I don't want to give people the wrong idea about why I like sleeping outdoors". It is hard to edit out our American idioms when trying to speak en Español. One morning at breakfast Ben tried to tell our host father that the food was delicious. Instead he looked Micho square in the eyes and said: "I love you, Beans". Everyone involved was deeply embarrassed, both because of what amounts to a taboo against discussing love here, and because Ben thought Micho's name was Beans. Despite the seriousness of the term, or maybe because of it, the song "I want to know what love is" plays nearly constantly here in the shops and cafes. It's a confusing concept, love.

short, sweet, distinct

Today is my sixteenth afternoon in Xela and the final day of my second week of language school. I've fallen back into the very familiar habit of spending a lot of time studying in a single coffee shop, but it's different here. I'm using more notecards now than I ever did in Anchorage.


In the bathroom of the aforementioned Xela coffe shop is a sign that reads as follows:

Please when it
uses the
sanatarium it
to tosses water.

This is a nice looking sign that somebody took time to create, laminate, and hang over the urinal.


I'm not sure if building codes exist in Guatemala, but if they do they say nothing about standardized lightswitch placement. Every room is different. I have used bathrooms with light fixtures but no switch that I could find and have had to feel my way about. That's no fun in any bathroom.

Xela what?

Holy cow, today is the 7th day that I've been in Guatemala. I've become pretty familiar with Xela, Zona 1 anyway, but it is still very much foreign to me. Perhaps if I spoke the language I wouldn't feel like such an outsider, but I doubt it. After all, I am in Guatemala.

We spent last Wednesday night in the entirely unremarkable tourist town named Panajachel, know to the locals as "Gringotenango". We hadn't intended to stop there, but our driver, after assuring us that she knew where she was going, missed our turn and didn't want to turn around so late in the day. That was probably wise of her; I've read that it's not terribly safe to travel at night in the mountains here. In Panajachel it seemed that there were at least as many Europeans and Americans as there were Guatemalans.

After a few hours in the car we were finally in Qetzaltenango. During the entire trip down Ben and I had been trying to figure out how we could split from Joan without offending her or leaving her stranded, so it came as a welcome surprise when Joan asked where she could drop us off. It seems that Joan was as tired of us as we were of her. Perfect. After an awkward goodbye, during which we both tried, and failed, to sound like we'd had a good time and hoped to run into each other during our travels, we split from Joan. If you'd like more info, some dirt or gossip about the whole Joan affair, you'll have to email me or wait until we meet in the future.

Once freed we walked around Xela for a few hours and then checked into a hostel. This was my first hostel experience. There we met other travelers from around the globe, took cold showers, and went to a disco. This was also my first disco experience. I thought that the night couldn't get any weirder when I saw Ben on stage dancing with 5 or 6 other people. I was wrong, and it ended with me hearing a swarthy local fellow say to one of the girls from our hostel "I am the coffee and you are the milk and after we dance we should drink each other". That's one hell of a language barrier.

We're no longer at the hostel. We spent the weekend visiting a St Alphonso, a cooperative coffee plantation started by women who had been displaced to Mexico during Guatemala's unbelievably brutal civil war. The land where their village had been was given away because all of the inhabitants were killed or had fled, so when they returned these women were relocated to a different part of Guatemala where nobody speaks their indigenous language. It's a terrible situation but they seem to be doing alright. That is, alright compared to the rampant poverty that is common in rural Guatemala.

Now we're with a host family, are attending the Kie Balam language school, and I've gotten sick from eating street food. To be clear, I'm not trying to disparage street food, because I've eaten lots of it since I've been in the C.A. and have only had this one instance of trouble. Eat street food, just don't eat street corn that was cooked on a grill and allowed to cool for an hour in a pile of similar ears of corn. Learn from my mistake.

Quetzaltenango = Xelahu = Xela. It's a long story that involves Spaniards, battles, birds, and linguistic laziness.

some details about being threatened with a pistol

A few posts in the past I mentioned that we had been threatened, and I described this encounter as having been fun. I'd like to give a few more details now.

Ben and I were in Lafayette for four days and three nights. We didn't stay so long intentionally, but because southwest Louisiana is lousy for hitchhikers. On our third day in town we resigned ourselves to spending the money on bus tickets to Shreveport. After one of several unsuccessful attempts to buy a ticket at the Baton Rouge - Shreveport price instead of the more expensive Lafayette - Shreveport price ($30 more for 75 fewer miles on the same bus!) we wandered outside and to the corner where we griped about Greyhound and how they've not done well for me.

While we spoke a man poked his head between the spaces on the large picket fence surrounding the nearest house. He asked if we were doing alright, and we replied that we were. He then said something else that I didn't understand, but caused Ben to approach the fence. He and Ben quietly mumbled at each other for a few minutes during which I couldn't understand what was being said. Ben then stepped back and had that frustrated, "I've just had a stupid argument" look that became so familiar to those us of that lived or spent much time in the Arkansas House.

I looked from Ben to the other mumbler who then began making faces at me. For about one second each he held different variations on the classic top-lip-puffed-with-air funny face. I was laughing a little, but was confused because Ben's not one to get frustrated by funny faces. "What, you can't hear what I'm asking?" the man asked me. I stammered for a minute and wondered whether there existed some sort of ASL-like face language that had somehow avoided my attention. After another minute of confusion, during which I tried to explain that I didn't know what he was asking and he kept asking whether I understood, the man had had enough.

Once again he pushed his face between two fence posts and made another variation of the same funny face. When he let the air out of his lip he said "you'll probably understand if I ask you with my pistol, right". It wasn't a question. I told him that I didn't understand what he was asking me and that I wanted no trouble. He then stormed into the house, presumably to get his pistol. I don't know whether he returned, or if he even had a pistol to use as an instructional aid, because we left. Ben still wore that familiar, frustrated look.

It was then, as we walked down the block away from the Greyhound terminal and its crazy neighbor, that I understood what he was saying. Through those funny faces he was trying to communicate something like "look, man, I'm f-ing nutty and dangerous and it's in your best interest not to speak loudly around me". If Ben and I had been commiserating about our shared Greyhound frustration in quieter voices we would likely never have had any trouble.

Ben later told me that the man had asked us not to stand on the sidewalk, and that when he approached the fence it was to engage the man in a mumbled dialog about the rights of ordinary citizens to control their own stretches of sidewalk versus the rights of others to use however they liked those same narrow stretches of public property.

We saw the same man later that night when we were buying our Baton Rouge - Shreveport tickets from a more informed Greyhound worker who was more interested in the somewhat outdated business practice of looking out for consumers. This time our face-making antagonist was standing outside the station smoking pot with a nice, younger kid that we had met the night before and who Ben had used his cellular phone to record rapping. We got out of there before he recognized us and stole away to a public park for some urban camping.

That's what it is like to be in Lafayette.

Shreveport-Bossier-Panajachel

After arriving in Shreveport we were picked up by the first of the four Mikes that we met in the last month. We had left our bikes and most of our gear at his house and once again stayed with him for our visit to northwest Louisiana. After getting our gear ready for bike travel again, fixing flats, and skateboarding at the local indoor park we were ready to get back on our bikes and start riding. But then, we met Joan.

Joan is a realtor from Savannah, Georgia. She posted an ad on craigslist looking for people interested in riding with her to Guatemala. One phonecall later we were once again on a bus, this time on our way to Houston to meet Joan and ride with her to Guatemala. That was one week ago. We're in Guatemala now, and have seen a lot of Mexico. I'll post about it later with more details. Now though, for the first time in a month, we're up to date. Now you have to email me and tell me how you're doing.

uh-oh, another list

4 distinct instances of fun between NOLA and Shreveport:

1) taking part in a frightening "bum tower"
2) guerilla urban camping, including nights behind dumpsters and being shocked awake by the garbage truck
3) being threatened with a pistol for debating Greyhound policies on the wrong stretch of sidewalk
4) being accused of changing my clothes at the same gas station for two consecutive years (this was cleared up quickly)

this happened in the past

Almost 4 years ago I went to Arizona and saw the desert for the first time. I was surprised at how beautiful it was and after my short visit I looked forward to returning to the southwest with more time to explore the dusty, cactus covered hills. I had that opportunity when we arrived back in the States. We decided to take the slower, more beautiful path through the Big Bend State and National Parks in southern Texas rather than heading immediately north to the interstate. The desert once again surprised me with its beauty.

Less than an hour of our Big Bend drive had passed before we decided to park the car on the side of the rode and hike to the top of one of the mesas nearest the road. It was a perilous, beautiful jaunt that lasted until just after sunset. On our way up Mike and I did a some bouldering, and on the way down I fell into a catcus patch and lost my glasses. Mike found my glasses while I began pulling the several dozen cactus needles out of my hand and forearm. I had to use my bandito-hankie as a bandage. It was pretty tough. Ben posted some pictures of the hike in his gallery.

The rest of the trip to NOLA was just as exciting. Ben got pulled over and we were again stopped and searched by Customs and Border Patrol agents. The lawmen in south Texas must have many past successes finding narcotics by telling people that it´s easier just to fess up. We heard that line a few times. The bright spot of our second search was that the lawman made his dog jump in the car window. Once my friend, Dobie, jumped into the window of an SUV and into my lap in the passenger seat. Dobie is a dog too.

After many hours of driving, during which we covered many, many miles and listened to U2´s War many, many times, we arrived in New Orleans. Ben is involved in some sort of pyramid-scheme type timeshare and was able to hook us up with 5 nights in a luxury hotel. I think that this is the first time Ben has been able to use this service though he´s been paying for it for years. The hotel was on Ste. Charles, a little less than a mile upriver from the French Quarter. We were the only guests there under the age of 50, and probably the only guests uncomfortable with the decadence. Within the week we would be back in an environment we were more comfortable - sleeping behind dumpsters. We'll get to that later.

If you´re like me in any non-trivial ways and you ever find yourself in New Orleans there are two places that I recommend you visit: the Iron Rail Library and Bookstore, and Plan B Bike Coop (Iron Rail is a coop as well). Saturday, 3 November, our first full day in town, Ben and I walked over to Iron Rail and read for a while. They've a good sized space and an impressive selection. It was, maybe, the best alternative library I've seen. Plan B is in the same building as Iron Rail, so while Ben read I walked over and talked to the volunteer there about the coop, told him about our shop, and was told that there was a cleaning day and meeting on Monday and that I was encouraged to come. Later, at Iron Rail, Ben and I met some local kids who offered us places to stay, gave us dumpster dived fruit, and told us about upcoming goings-on. We then walked back to the hotel, had a goodbye dinner with Mike. After exchanging contact info and hugs Mike left for Kentucky.

Monday afternoon we returned to Plan B to help clean the shop and to share bike coop ideas and strategies. Their shop is enormous compared to ours! They have most of an enormous warehouse to use, divided into a large shop space and a larger storage space, and have use of the fenced yard for additional storage. Broken Spokes, we've got some new ideas to share when we return to Anchorage. Talk to Ben, he'll be there relatively soon. After the cleaning we stayed for their monthly meeting where we learned more and were well fed. Everybody there was excellent and I'd like to go back sometime and volunteer. Does anybody want to live in New Orleans for a few months?

On our way out of the meeting we ended up in a conversation with one of the locals who, after learning about our travels and telling us of his, invited us to a friend's barbeque. We followed him to his friend's house, which turned out to be home to something like 15 New Orleans kids back in town after spending the summer traveling. Apparently this was not simply a barbeque, but was a somebody's-out-of-jail party. At one point there were three distinct groups of people playing music, one in the yard, two in the house. It was an excellent realease party.

colorado to mexico

From Boudler we had planned on driving to New Orleans where we hoped to arrive in time for Halloween revelry. On Tuesday night though, at 10:30 pm we still hadn´t left Boulder. I was leaving a bookstore (I´ve been searching for a copy of this book for months!) Ben and Mike told me that we were no longer planning on leaving for New Orleans. Instead, we would drive to Chihuahua, Mexico. An hour later we were full of enthusiasm and packed once again into Mike´s small car.

Driving through the plains at night the stars were more beautful than I´d ever seen them. The sky was planetarium clear and I wanted then to study astronomy. Unfortunately I want to study everything. I don´t know what will happen.

We crossed the border into Ojinaga, a town described to us as an authentic Mexican border town. Initially we drove straight through, but 30km down the road we stopped at a checkpoint and were told that without passports we were allowed no further into Mexico. A little dismayed we turned around and headed back in Ojinaga. We found a decent hotelroom for 170 pesos (just under $17), and then went out for dinner and to see the town. We went to two bars, in both of which I felt uncomfortable for reasons other than the language barrier. The first bar felt like a locals only place, and we were ridiculously overcharged.

The second bar provides the better story. We were crossing one of the main roads in central Ojinaga when a man approached us and began speaking to us quickly in hushed Spanish. I didn´t know what he was saying, but from his body language I could tell that it was something like ¨Stay back! Notice how I twitch as if on some serious drug and so consider me to be something of a shady character¨. Mike told us that he was trying to sell us drugs. Once we´d made clear that we weren´t interested he pointed to a bar across the street, "the Bikini Bar", and motioned that we should go there. Surprisingly, Mike seemed to think it was not a bad idea. Ben reminded me that you can´t steer the 2-4-P-W and we went inside.

Immediately we stuck out like the trio of sore thumbs that we were. I saw a pool table in the back that wasn´t being used and went investigate. I found no balls or cues. When I returned Mike and Ben were sitting in a small booth with three women. I sat in the booth behind them and took out my notebook to write. Before I could put pen to paper a man sat down across from me. He continuously smiled and raised his eyebrows. Even in my native tongue and culture I have difficulty with sublte communication, and there, in the Bikini Bar, I couldn´t figure out what he was trying to say. I was watching, puzzled,when he began to sing to me. He recognized my shock and began to sing more softly, as if it was the volume of his serenade that was making me uncomfortable. I alternated between laughing and shrugging my shoulders and looking at my notebook as I wrote. Mike came to my rescue by pulling a chair over to the end of their booth and motioning for me to sit with them.

The new booth was a little less awkward. A few times Mike and Ben ended up dancing with these girls, but I successfully avoided anything of the sort. Periodically a suspicious looking man would peek his head in the door and one of the girls would go over speak quietly with him while they both looked at us. This may have been nothing, but it made me a little uncomfortable. At 12:30 when the bar closed the girls asked us to go to a private club with them. It cost 250 pesos, and we´d have to ride there in the back of a pickup truck. While two of the girls tried to convince us to travel with them, the third was talking to some much older men to whom the pickup truck belonged. I opted out immediately, and after a moment Ben did too. Mike wavered, but ultimately decided just to come back to the hotel. So ended my first night in Mexico.

We spent quite a bit of time the following day trying to explain to US customs that we were traveling but didn´t have an itinerary, and that we´d gone to Mexico on a whim, and that we´d hope to get to Chihuahua, and that we weren´t carrying drugs. After a couple of hours they seemed to believe us.

Boulder

All of this updating is a bit tiring, so I´ll just give a top 5 list for Boulder. Here goes:

1. Mountains
2. Street harpist
3. Many conversations about state populations
4. Gogol Bordello live
5. Learning states in order of population

...after a long pause...

OK, it's been a while, so let's get up to speed. When last we spoke I was either standing beside you, or I was standing some way away from you and we spoke through our telephones. When last I updated this blog I was in New York City. There I was staying with my old friend, Eric. There was music, trivia, banter, walking, new friends, dogs on people, clothes on dogs, coffee, and chess. It was a good eight days.

We left NYC with a high-school history teacher who taught in Manhattan and lived outside of Binghamton. It was a Friday afternoon and so we were stuck in traffic with all of the other commuters trying to get back to (or alternatively, escape from) their real lives for the weekend. a few minutes into our long ride she told me that she knew I was a vegetarian. "You have that smell" she said, "you smell like my son". I'd never realized that there was a particularly vegetarian smell, and I'm certainly not able to identify it. When we got to Binghamton she offered her floor for us to sleep on that night if we wanted to wait until the morning before trying to hitchhike north to Syracuse. It was nice of her to offer, but we already had a ride. An old friend of mine had kindly agreed to drive the hundred miles to come and get us. Our ride was waiting when we arrived in Binghamton, so after coffee it was on to Oswego.

We spent exactly one week in the greater CNY area. As always, it was good to see family and old friends. In that time I was able to visit most of my favorite places and people. It was late October then, and the trees in the Adirondacks were just past their prime but still very colorful and beautiful with the scent of fall rich in the air. I remember being a younger man and having to wear a snowsuit before Halloween, but this year it remained warm enough through the end of the month for us to take a last late night swim in the Great Lake. In addition to swimming and hiking I had the opportunity to do some skateboarding at a great concrete park, to visit my favorite restaurant, to make a bit of extra money painting, and to go on a date (what!?). Priming ceilings has made my some of my hair prematurely white.

At the end of our stay in CNY we hadn't been on our bikes in more than two weeks and were looking forward to getting back in the saddle. Our bikes were still in Shreveport, and so we began looking for a ride south. We talked about hitchhiking, and joked about walking to whole way, and were happy to find Mike, another post-college 25 year old wanderer. Mike was leaving Brooklyn and heading to New Orleans, and was happy to drive way out of his way to Syracuse to pick us up. Syracuse, it turned out, was not really as great a deviation from the route as it might sound. Mike planned to go from Brooklyn to New Orleans, but his route would take him almost everywhere, from Pennsylvania to Kentucky to Colorado. It sounded crazy, but I had no place better to be.

Fortunately Ben and I got along really well with Mike. He was much wilder than either of us, with more of an interest in partying and such things, but was funny and smart, and knew a lot about bugs. Honestly, I miss him already. In State College we visited a friend that Mike had made while traveling in Greenland the previous summer. Taylor, Mike's friend, showed us around the city and then to a party where we lost track of her. Most of the time at the party I spent waiting in line to use the bathroom, but suddenly "Invisible Touch" began playing and I gave up my spot in line so I could shout out the words. Before I made it to the bottom of the stairs the track had been skipped. I found Mike and Ben and shortly afterwards we left. State College, PA, you're too wild for me.

The next day we got a late start. At 3pm, after waffles, coffee, and learning that our place to stay in Kentucky seemed not to be working out we hit the road for Chicago. Ben was excited to see Kayla again, as was I, and Mike was looking forward to seeing the city. We arrived late and so didn´t have time to do much. The highlight of the night was when I saw two people wearing Waldo costumes. It was the Saturday before Halloween, and they'd been at a Waldo-themed party. I wondered if it had been at all weird to be at a party where everybody was dressed identically, where there were only Waldos, if it felt at all like being at work at the kind of job where everybody wears identical shirts and hats. They told me that it was disorienting to see so many set of stripes moving around but that otherwise I was making too much of it. That's how I like to remember Chicago.

I spent the following morning drinking really good coffee in a cafe that I'd become familiar with on our last trip through town. We spent the afternoon playing at the park on the shores of Lake Michigan and left town in the early evening. We gave Kayla a ride to Decatur, where we dropped her off at a cheap motel. I´m not certain what her plan was, but it was fun to hang out with her during the ride. After that slight detour we drove straight through to Boulder, arriving around 2 pm.

setting the record straight

Countless times after I'd moved to Alaska, and in earlier years whenever I traveled, people have asked me where I am from. When I replied "New York" people have always assumed that I mean the city. They often following by telling me either that they love New York City or that they've never been to New York City but that they suspect they'd love it. Historically I have not loved New York City. In all of my visits the primary impressions that the city had made on me were: this place smells like garbage; people in NYC are a bunch of grumps; NYC feels like a huge shopping mall, which is bad. Other than the navigational ease provided by the City's grid structure I'd never been too impressed with NYC. Often when confronted with a conversation about New York I would say in a derisive tone "New York is alright, but I much prefer Boston, or Toronto, or even Montreal. They smell better, and the people aren't as arrogant". Probably I was also a little resentful of all of the attention that the City gets while Upstate seems not to exist for most people. I can recall times when I've explained that I wasn't from the City, that I was from Upstate, and to the questioner this meant I was from Poughkeepsie.

Now though, after just over a week in the City, I'm willing to ignore those complaints and to apologize for my earlier scorn. New York City is beautiful, both as a collection of huge buildings and as a huge collection of people. I'm leaving the City tomorrow for a brief visit to Upstate, but I'm looking forward to coming back.

The New York Public Library is incredible. It's big and old and beautiful. Just being inside it made me feel proud to be participating in such a valuable, important social institution, even if my participation these days is solely on the borrowing end.

it's not the heat, it's the spiders

Since Friday we've been in Benton, Louisianna. It's hot here, and humid. Whoever you are, it definitely is hot enough for you. I'll go to sleep hot and a few hours later wake completely soaked with sweat and stuck to the floor of the tent. Also, there are bugs. Our natural pests in Alaska are mosquitos, bears, and an occasional upset moose. Here there are also mosquitos, but they're not the only chitinous nuisance. There are terrifying spiders with big, black, almond shaped bodies covered with neon markings and with legs several inches long. One of these monsters had spun its web over the front-passenger wheelwell on the bus we've been camping at and sleeping in. On Sunday I watched as it wrapped a big, hapless beetle in web and then sat there beside it's cocoon-ed meal. From here, with the relative safety of electric lights and doors that latch shut, I imagine that it was waiting for the web covered beetle to become usable food, but then, as I crouched a few feet away and watched the now unmoving spider, I felt like it I was being stared down. The spider, I imagined, had sized me up and recognized that I was too big for him to really make us of, it would have taken her days to cover me in enough web to fully immobilize me, but she knew also that she had the upper hand. I was definitely more afraid of her, though she was roughly 1/2240th my weight, than she was of me. As of today she's gone. At first I was happy to be able to enter the bus without having to pass by her many watchful eyes, but I quickly realized that I was safer knowing where she was, and that now she could be anywhere. It's been a long day of slowly, timidly handling any object large enough to hide a spider.

Spiders aren't all though, there are also ants. They're not like those friendly ants of the north who want only to help you clean up those crumbs that seem always to litter the floor in whichever room you've last eaten. These ants are much smaller, and much less benign. They'll fearlessly crawl over you, which is annoying and itchy in and of itself - it feels like they're wearing tiny, ant-sized golf shoes, and when allowed to crawl long enough they begin to bite. Their bites sting me like a fresh mosquito bite but leave no marks on my skin. Ben, however, has red marks all over his legs that look like sombody has been pinching little bits of flesh off of his legs using razor sharp tweezers. These, he says, are from the ants. I think he's contracted something. He looks leperous.

We also saw moths the size of hummingbirds.

Hold on, here's some background on the aforementioned bus: it belongs to Ben and is full of old junk from when he and four other Anchoragians spent 6 months in 2002 driving it around the continent. For the last 5 years it's been parked in a field behind a house on land owned by the family of one of the other 4 traveling Alaskans.

We've been camping at the bus while Ben sorts through the piles of old magazines, instruments, underpants, and 16-lb cans of beans. Well, I've been camping, Ben's been sleeping inside the bus and getting torn apart by insects. Mike, Nola, and Gabriel, the folks that live in the house behind which the bus has been hidden, have been wonderful to us. They've been helpful and generous to us, sharing meals with us and taking us into Shreveport multiple times to run our big-city errands. I'm typing this at their computer, while my laundry drys in their dryer. They've really gone out of there way to treat us like family. Dang. I've been lucky.

on the road again, again

We're in Little Rock, Ar. It's good. There's an excellent concrete skatepark that's open until midnight and those local kids I've met there have been super friendly and inclusive, which is, in my experience, somewhat unusual in the skateboarding world. We've also met some locals that have started a bike co-op and who are advocates of unused food redistribution, which means that they dumpster dive, and who very generously shared with us a few loaves of bread and some slightly bruised but still delicious produce. Later tonight we're joining their crew for an group bike ride. Excellent people are everywhere. If I didn't already miss taking classes I'd say that I never want to have a home base again.

That said, we're planning on leaving tomorrow and heading towards Shreveport.

images

I've added a link titled "pictures", on the left side of the page under the heading "things or people of interest", that leads to a gallery of pictures from the trip. All the photos were shot by Ben and Kayla on their fancy digital photo-machines. If you've thought to yourself, or said to me, something like "boy, he's (you're) inarticulate. I have no idea what his (you're) trip has been like", these images should give a decent approximation of what the trip has been like for Ben and Kayla. My trip has been similar to theirs, but I tend not to stare at either of them as often as they stare at each other and so my set of photo-subjects would be different.

I really should have thought to post this link before tonight.

ch-ch-ch-changes.....

"Hey, look, you're different."

A friend of mine once said that to his wife after she'd changed clothes mid-conversation, and I today, while thinking of the next leg of the bike trip, my thoughts echoed that sentiment. Rather than riding northwest from Portland and then south down the coast we've decided to skip the coast and ride straight south. From here the coast seems too far. We're in Chicago now.

Last week, while browsing Amtrak fares from Seattle to Olympia I found tickets from Portland to Chicago for almost nothing. Ben and I were excited to make this impulsive change but were a little disappointed to give up the west coast leg of the trip. After hemming and hawing for a few minutes we decided to ask Kayla, without telling her that it was entirely her decision, how she would like to visit Chicago. She was excited to go and so, after a few days in Portland seeing old friends and eating doughnuts, we boarded a train heading east.

Kayla's cousin, Sarah, has been putting us up in Chicago. She has an apartment with two extra bedrooms and has been a super accommodating host and has provided excellent directions around the city. Chicago seems like a really great city. I'd spent some time here before, almost 14 hours, but then I'd spent the entire time walking and appreciating the sights of a real city (sorry Anchorage!) and enjoying it, but not enough to delay my departure. This time, riding my bike around the city, I'm feeling those stomach butterflies and jaw-ache inducing smiles that hint at love. That's right, I said it, I love Chicago. I've never been in a city that so successfully integrates bicycles into traffic as a realistic transportation option. Did you hear that, Portlanders? Chicago is more bike-friendly than Portland and Chicago is more bike-friendly than Seattle and Chicago is a beautiful city on a beautiful lake (but not as beautiful as Lake Ontario). Love is fleeting though, and we'll ride out in day or two.

Wait! "We'll ride out...." means something different now. It used to mean something like "Ben, Kayla, and I....", but now it means "Ben and I....". Kayla is staying in Chicago. I certainly can't blame her. If I weren't so cynical and distrusting of love I would stay here as well. [a joke!] On the upside, now we have a floor to sleep on in Chicago. Kayla, I'll miss you, and I'll be slightly envious of you for a while, buy once my Chicago love-buzz wears off I'll wonder how you could give up life on the road for life in a house.

It's getting to be cold at night and so I've been bundling up. Since we're staying indoors at Sarah/Kayla's apartment this bundling has been mostly for practice and often I'll wake up fully bundled and drenched in sweat. When we're outside though, through the chilly midwestern autumn, I'll be ready.

seattle, but then.....

I've mentioned before that Seattle is fun, and in my experience it continues to be so. Ben and I spent Wednesday walking around town looking for certain bike pieces and trip supplies that I'm still trying to replace: 1 bottle cage, 1 front-rack, 1 handlebar bag, 2 waterproof front-panniers, 1 sleeping pad, and 1 pair long underpants. We found nothing useful at reasonable prices, but that evening we found a comedy club with 5 comics lined up for a $5.00 cover. It wasn't exactly a bargain, but it was worth what we paid. There were some genuinely funny lines, but even these were weakened by their references bowl cuts, clown cars, and homophobia - cheap fodder for easy laughs. Using Craigslist we found a ride to Olympia on Thursday afternoon, and before the sun was setting we had unexpectedly bumped into a friend from Seward, AK, and were eating dinner with Katie and Eamon.

We spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning with Katie and Eamon, together when possible, and separately while one or the other was at work. Friday was spent mostly wandering and drinking coffee, and eventually culminated with thick, delicious milkshakes that, even combining our efforts, proved too much milkshake to be finished. I'd never been beaten by a milkshake before, it has never even been close, but I don't regret losing. It was humbling to leave the half-full metal mixing cup there on the table, and I believe that humility is a good thing. Saturday we had the opportunity to join the Olympia Gleaners Coalition for a trip to a local organic farm. The Gleaners are a volunteer run organization that visits farms after growers have picked what they'll take to the market to sell, and picks whatever usable produce is left. Volunteers are welcome to take what they like, and the rest is given to the local foodbank. In exchange for this opportunity, the volunteers generally help with farm work or provide manual labor for a few hours. We helped spread mulched tree-bark over a small field of blueberry bushes in exchange for the opportunity to pick vegetables, fruits, and edible flowers. Knowing that we were leaving the next morning Ben and I didn't take much produce, but what we did take, mostly cherry tomatoes and some flowers that tasted like mustard, were delicious.

Katie and Eamon, by the way, seem to be an excellent match. If you see them before I do send them my thanks, and a hug. You may not know if I've seen them first, so just go ahead with the hug and thanks.

It's Sunday night now and we're in Portland staying with Ben's sister Krista and her husband Jeremy. They've been good to us so far. Jeremy was kind enough to share his graphic novels with me and for a while I was happily engrossed in the goings on in Gotham and Metropolis.

Have you ever had an impossible time trying to find a particular book? I'm going through that now. If I find what I'm looking for I'll let you know.

on the road again, kind of...

After much waiting, resting, healing, swimming, splashing, hugging, and flying, I am back in the west and am ready to start riding again. CNY was wonderful, as it seems always to be when I no longer live there. While back east I was able to visit Spencer in Boston, swim in the Atlantic a handful of times, swim in Lake Ontario a handful of a handful of times, ride my skateboard at my favorite old spots, find a few new favorite spots, and see all the friends and family that still live in the area. Everybody: it was great seeing you, I miss you already.

My plane flew into Seattle during a raging thunderstorm turned into a light drizzle the instant that I left the airport. I've spent the last two days wandering around Seattle looking at used bikes and talking to strangers. It's been fun so far. Last night I made new friends that share an appreciation for Ms. Pacman, which 3 days before I had declared to be my favorite video game, and with whom I spent the late night and early morning hours talking about typefaces, wigs, and the classic synthesized robot and alien voices found on cheap electronic toys. Who remembers the Buzz Lightyear megaphone? Can I see a show of hands? Of course I can't.

Greyhound still hasn't found my bike, the scoundrels, and they don't seem much closer to paying me its declared value. I've purchase what I expect will be a suitable replacement. It's a Centurion Pro Tour 15, a lugged, steel frame mass produced in Japan in the early 80's. The tubing is a proprietary Tange tubing comparable to Columbus or Reynolds. I think the frame will function just fine, and it looks pretty steezin' if you ask me. If ever I get a picture of it I'll be sure to post it. The components are all shimano 105 and so, if you believe conventional wisdom, are pretty nice. Unfortunately we're still waiting on conclusive results concerning whether or not conventional wisdom can be trusted as a source of knowledge. Preliminary findings suggest otherwise.

Bye.

up-to-dating

I'll begin with some good news: last night I went for my first somewhat long bike ride, around 15 miles, and not only did it not bother my tendons one bit, but I was, despite almost four weeks of not riding, still damn fast. I don't want to make too much of this, and I know that it was a relatively short ride, but I think this means that this time of rest and mending has been somewhat successful. I'm going to ride more today and see how I feel. Also, I'm riding my old fixed gear bike now, which is wonderful and more physically demanding on my tendons. I have an - if I can make it here, where "here" should be read as "on my fixie", then I can make it anywhere - type of feeling. That is, as long as I properly stretch each day.

Oh yeah, Greyhound lost my bike. I'm looking around for something to ride but am not having much luck here in the CNY. If you've got any leads on a size and trip appropriate bike send them my way. Next week I'll be visiting Spencer in Boston where, I hope, he'll be able to share his secret, Boston specific, used-bike knowledge with me.

I miss you guys, all of you. Even you.

Five things in CNY that I've missed (alphabetically):

- family
- Lake Ontario
- old friends
- Saranac Root Beer
- spots that I grew up skating which, at the time, weren't very good, and have gotten worse. Still, I love them

Errata: While home I sampled Ithaca Brewing Company Root Beer. From a bottle it is at least as good as Saranac, but I've not found it from a tap. Saranac from a tap is the current best possible root beer experience, though not the absolute best root beer experience. That honor still belongs to the Empire Brewing Company's root beer on tap and brewed on site until their Syracuse location closed in 2002 or 2003. The Empire Brewing Company has since reopened but they no longer brew root beer.

quickly, quickly

Apologies! It's the 6th of August and I haven't written about events more recent than 22 July. Now we'll try and get caught up, briefly:

Monday - Thursday, 23 - 26 July: It took me two days to hitch a ride out of Haines Junction, and that ride got me only to mile 75 of 157. Tuesday night I stayed in the green shack halfway between Haines and her Junction. Ben and Kayla had also been planning on staying there and so we were reunited. Wednesday I tried for two hours to get a ride and had no success. Wanting not to miss my the ferry the next day I decided to ride to Haines. On the side of the road I saw my new favorite road sign. On top was a diamond shaped sign with an iconic image of a tractor trailer on a triangle, and beneath it on a rectangular sign was the following text: STOP AHEAD/CHECK BRAKES/STEEP DOWNHILL/NEXT 18KM. The ride into Haines was fun and beautiful and a little scary. Barb, the woman that gave me a ride to mile 75, told me that the land between Haines and the Junction has the highest bear population density of anywhere in the world. I saw only gophers. Once in Haines I quickly found Ben and Kayla. We camped in a free campground(!) and drank tee and ate carrots. Thursday we rode to the ferry terminal, boarded without hassle, and set sail. That night we stopped in Juneau for two hours and our new friend, Corey, gave us a quick tour.

Friday, 27 July: Ferrying all day. I don't want to seem fickle, but I think I've fallen in love with the sea. We stopped in Sitka and it was a cute town at 5am.

Saturday - Sunday, 28 - 29 July: Minutes after arriving in Prince Rupert we had met some strangers on the street who offered to let us stay at their house. They cooked us dinner (rice, sauteed asparagus and peppers, a big greek salad, and salmon with wasabi and soy sauce), gave us fresh, soft towels and let us use their bathroom and laundry, and cooked us breakfast (crepes with yogurt and fresh berries). Sunday afternoon Ben and Kayla pedaled on towards Prince George and eventually the States. With great difficulty I opted to give myself more time to rest. That night, with bicycle boxed and sent ahead of me, I boarded a bus headed south.

Monday, 30 July: Very bus-y day. At 10pm, 25 hours after boarding the bus in Prince Rupert, I was in Vancouver. There was still one bus leaving for Seattle that night, but I had sent my bike ahead using Greyhound Courier Express, and shipping service offered by the bus line, and if they were to ship across the border it needed to be done from Vancouver, and their office didn't open until 7am. I don't sleep well on buses or planes, and at 10pm Monday I hadn't slept since 6.30am Sunday morning. I decided to walk around and hope to find a hostel. A hotel room, I knew without checking, would have been too expensive, though I did meet a really drunk man on a park bench who offered to share a room with me. It was nice of him to offer, but I was happy to wander Vancouver in the middle of the night and marvel at the number of bicyclists and skateboarders I saw. That, more than anything else, impressed me. Eventually I found a hostel, but simultaneously found a 24-hour coffee shop. Rather than pay the $20 to stay in the hostel I opted to spend around $8 on three cups of coffee and a snack.

Tuesday, 31 July: I was back at the bus station at 5.30am. At 8.30, after a long and frustrating series of conversations with different Greyhound employees, each seeming to work under a different set of company guidelines, my bike and I were once again on a bus. Because of a long stop at the US border we didn't arrive in Seattle until 1.30pm. There I shipped my bike to Olympia, to my good friend and fellow Cyclonaut, Katie. In Seattle I wandered, drank coffee, and bought some zines for my upcoming flight. With what little gear I was still carrying I bussed to the airport, and that night boarded a flight for Syracuse. After making a connecting flight in San Francisco, after being awake and wandering for just over 65 hours, I got a little bit of sleep.

Wednesday, 1 August: Around 9am, with flights and connections done, I was on the ground in Syracuse. JTX picked me up at the airport and drove me to my mom's house. We hugged, caught up, and made plans.

So here I am now, back in central NY, the 315. I'll not update much while I'm here.

Friday, 20 July: More time in Haines. There was coffee; there was improv theatre workshoping; there was walking in the rain and loving it; and, at midnight, there was Harry Potter.

Saturday, 21 July: From midnight until around 5am was time set aside for the Deathly Hallows, and then I got a bit of sleep before the improv workshop at 10. We improvised until 1:30-ish, after which I read some more of Potter. The improv performance was that evening, at 5:30, and we didn't stop having fun/making fools of ourselves until 9:30. Ben and I went to a bar in Haines, the Pioneer, for a concert and to meet the friend of a friend that could, maybe, give us a ride back to Haines Junction the next day. Immediately after milkshakes we met Julie and had our ride out of town and back to our bikes. She was fun, and we quickly dropped the "friend of a..." portion of the title and were actual friends. This was all taken care of so quickly that I only stayed at the show for one song, and then it was off to bed. It was a good song though. If I were a dancing man I would have been dancing then.

I think there might be a Pioneer bar in every town in Alaska.

During the afternoon we had a meeting about the trip. My tendinitis, though it was getting better, was still bad enough that I didn't think it wise to ride for a little while. Ben has a wedding to attend in Washington on the 19th of August, so though I needed more time, we also couldn't afford to simply take another week off entirely. We struck a compromise that allowed us to cover a significant distance as a group and allowed me to get a bit more rest - we took the ferry from Haines to Prince Rupert, BC. This saved us almost 1000km of riding and, since we weren't going to sail until Thursday, gave me another week to rest and, hopefully, heal. The downside, aside from not being able to ride, was that we ended up cutting out the Cassiar Highway portion of the trip. That would have been the last really remote, and most bear-dense, section of road. Maybe I can ride that portion next summer. I'd still like to see it.

Sunday, 22 July: Up at 6:00am and finished with the Deathly Hallows by 8. If you've not yet read it - don't. Unless you've read all the rest. In that case you should read it, and you'll probably enjoy it. I did. It ends predictably well, but it doesn't get to the end at all like I thought it would. I wish the epilouge weren't so sweet, and that it had more about the functioning of a post-Voldemort magical world. I'm kind of a sucker for those details.

We caught our ride out of town around 1pm and rode 40 miles to the Canadian Border. There we were denied entry into Canada. We were told that we were carrying insufficient funds. The Canadian border patrol officer who spoke with us told us that there was a law stating that we needed to carry $200 in cash for each day we planned on spending in Canada. The process of being denied entry took almost an hour, during which our friend, Julie, waited in her car while we were treated like children by the Canadian officers. If we were driving a nice car, the officer told us, he wouldn't insist we carried the money, but bicycles suggest poverty and the Canadian government shouldn't have to risk supporting foreigners. We spoke to a customs agent on the phone who told us that $50/day would be sufficient as long as we also presented an accurate, current bank statement. Assuming that it would take us 30 days to ride through Canada, we were expected to carry somewhere between $1500 and $6000 dollars in cash. That's insane.

Julie, who had to be back to her home in Whitehorse that night so she could work at 7am the next day, agreed to drive us back to Haines so we could go to an ATM. After getting $200 cash each and printing out bank statements we filled Julie's tank and were back on the road. At the border we were questioned by a different officer, one who had been in the room during the rejection process, but who had kept quiet and screened other travelers who had come to the border after us. He asked to see our money, and we showed him our $200 each. He shouted at us about not having enough for our planned two days in Canada and we corrected him and told him that the woman on the phone had told us $50 was fine. He then asked to see our bank statements. Ben and I produced ours, but Kayla's had gotten lost in the rush. He then began shouting again, this time directly at Kayla, and pounding his fist on the counter while berating her for failing to follow directions. Ben, Julie, and I looked on in shock. After a moment the officer noticed that Kayla was crying and we were looking at him in disbelief and he, I think, realized what a f-ing jerk he was being. He even looked a little embarrassed. He told us we could go through, but that when we entered Prince Rupert we had better have thousands of dollars or we'd have to buy tickets back to Juneau from there. It wasn't clear to me why we would have to go to Juneau rather than any of the half dozen closer ferry stops, but I thought it best not to raise the question then.

The conversation for the rest of the ride into Haines Junction was centered around our border incident, with each of us sharing our past experiences with overly aggressive keepers of the peace. In the Junction we bought Julie dinner and ice cream and exchanged contact info. She then left fot Whitehorse and we went back to Sally and Trevor's house for an early-to-bed night.

catching up, again.

Once again I've let my blog fall behind, and so I'm motivated to make some changes. It's difficult to give a detailed account of each day of the trip. It's time consuming, and I don't want to spend too much time using computers. I am, after all, adventuring after having spent two and a half years using computers in an office. In order to reduce my typing time I am going to make posts much shorter and less detailed. I'll be happy to give more details about locations or encounters if you ask me, and please do feel free to ask, but I'm not going to include as much detail in the blog from here on out. That said, on to the updates:

Saturday, 14 July: Late start out of White River, sometime around 11:30am. After riding for just less than an hour I stopped for a cinnamon bun and coffee at a "gift/rock shop" and spent 40 minutes talking to the old folks that owned, ran, and lived at the store. Hoping for a short day I planned on staying at a campground that my map showed to be 30km away. I arrived and found that it had been shut down. After having lunch and studying my map I resigned to ride to the next place on my map, the Kluane Village Campground, 35km away. The sky was cloudless and I was quickly going through my water. I finished my last drop just after the roadsign announcing "Kluane Village Campground - 2km". 2km later I learned that Kluane Village was not in fact a village, it was a large gas station with a field for camping. This place too had been shut down. I tried to refill my water but there was no power and so no water could be pumped. By the side of the road I waved my empty water bottles until a passing motorist stopped who had water to spare. The man that stopped, an Alaskan, refilled all my bottles, a combined 5 liters. My map showed there to be no other campgrounds until Burwash Landing, 50km away. I didn't arrive until almost 10pm. This was, up to this point, my longest day and hardest day of riding. At Burwash Landing Resort, which has free tenting, I met Martine and F(something), two cyclists from Belgium and Germany, respectively, who Ben and Kayla had met in Tok.

Sunday, 15 July: (Free tenting) + (more than 80 miles covered on Saturday) = Day off. There's not too much to tell. Burwash Landing is really small, has a free-store(!), and is surrounded by beautiful countryside. The "resort" was on the shore of Kluane Lake, which was big and warm. I didn't really swim since I didn't have a suit and the "resort" restaurant was right on the lake, but I spent a lot of time wading with my pants rolled past my knees. Ben and Kayla rolled in around 8.30pm.

Monday, 16 July: First we rode to, through, and past Destruction Bay. That's an excellent name. We had planned on camping at Cottonwood RV park, but when we arrived we found that it cost $26 to pitch a tent, a price that we all agreed was outrageous, and so we rode on. It began to rain immediately after we left. The next campground was called "Kluane Base Camp". We arrived to find that it wasn't a campground, but a collection of cabins. The owner told us that we could pitch our tents for $40! After a short conference we decided to ride the remaining 60km to Haines Junction. It rained the entire way. Approximately 12km before we rode into Haines Junction we had a really fun, really fast downhill. Here we set our current speed record for the trip: 75.8 kmph, or 47.1 mph. Riding this fast, in the rain, unable to see because of the water on my glasses, I thought "I should get a helmet". In Haines Junction we stayed in a home owned by my friends, Sally and Trevor. It was wonderful to have someplace warm and dry to sleep, and to be able to cook on a real stove, and to be able to shower and do laundry. After more than 80 miles of riding, most of which was in the rain, I don't think I could overstate how much we appreciated their willingness to share their home.

Tuesday, 17 July: Relaxing day off in Haines Junction. There's a great bakery you should visit if you're ever in town. I watched Jurassic Park.

Wednsday, 18 July: We hitchhiked to Haines, AK, to see southeast AK and to give my tendons some more time to heal. Doug, driving a tractor trailer, gave us a ride the entire way. I had never been in a tractor trailer before and was surprised to find how much space there is in the cab. We listened to Fleetwood Mac, Rumors, three times during the ride. I didn't mention it then, but I enjoyed it.

Thursday, 19 July: Haines is beautiful. If you've been to southeast you know what I mean, If you haven't, we'll talk about it sometime. It wasn't nearly as tourist-y as I expected it would be, despite the fact that it's a stopping point for cruise ships. Though I have fallen in love with Alaska while I've lived here, I thought that there wasn't much chance I would move back here after this trip. Now that I've been in Haines for a while though, I might. I think I would really like to live in Haines.

continuing

Friday: So, the free food. Review: I had decided to camp at the White River Crossing RV park because they had complementary hot showers and, after the 80km that I'd ridden from US customs, most of which was loose gravel and dirt, I was really looking forward to a good scrubbing.

On my way to the shower I was approached by a man who looked to be about my age. He said that he had seen me ride in and wondered if I was hungry. He had some food leftover and was happy to share. Since I hadn't planned on riding that day and didn't have any extra time between packing up my camp and catching my ride to the border I hadn't eaten much of a breakfast that morning. In Beaver Creek I had eaten a bit, but I hadn't planned on riding as far as I did and so hadn't eaten nearly as much as I ought to have. Though I was caked in dirt, I was hungrier than I was dirty. I told him as much, and thought I'd follow him to a tent or RV.

He led me to a big, sturdy looking tent. Inside there was a large kitchen. Two refrigerators, two stove/ovens, a few tables for food preparation, and many shelves of food in boxes and bags. Instead of the generous camper I'd taken him to be, I learned that he was the cook for a large group of geologist doing exploratory work for a mining firm. He was not just a generous camper, but a generous camper cooking for 30, with a South African firm picking up the food tab. He told me that I could take whatever I liked, not just from the dinner leftovers, but anything in the tent was available. The geologists were leaving the next day, and any leftover food would have to be shipped elsewhere and stored, and if it was perishable it would just spoil anyway. I ate well, and had my first fresh produce since Glennallen. He then packed a bag of food for me to take and eat later on my travels: granola bars, tortillas, apples, tomatoes, yogurt, veggie brats, cans of soup and beans, and bags of trail mix. The bag probably wighted 15 pounds. After a few hours of sharing food and stories I thanked him again, cleaned myself up, and went to sleep feeling awe and appreciation about how lucky I seem to be.

....and then I started riding again.

The Haines Public Library is beautiful. I'm not at all informed about its history, but it looks like it's been built within the last 5 years. Most new buildings are, I think, ugly. This is an exception. I've not done much exploring of the shelves yet, but it looks great. I'll let you know what I find. Now though, I want to talk more about the trip.

Friday: Having made plans to meet Ben and Kayla in Haines Junction on Thursday the 19th, which is tomorrow, I was considering hitchhiking back to Anchorage to rest for a week and then hitching out to the scheduled meet up. My bike, I decided, would have to stay in Tok. It isn't easy to get a ride when you've also got a bike fully laden with panniers. After asking for help those few people in Tok with whom I'd become at all familiar I had no luck finding a place to store my bike and gear. What I did find, if I wanted it, was ride to the border. The Postal Service has a contract with a local man in Tok for the delivery of mail to every mailbox between Tok and the border along the Alaska Highway. This man agreed to let me ride with him to the border. Stopping at each mailbox made it seem like a long 93 miles, but he was good company. He was born and raised in Alaska, and was in his early 60's now, and had great stories of old Alaska. He told me of hunting year round for food, something that he still does, and about how Alaska has, unfortunately, calmed down a lot in the last 20 years. From his description it sounded to me like when he was my age an Alaskan man couldn't go a week without having to fight somebody. When I told him that I had enjoyed working in a library he said that he believed me, that I had the look of a "city boy", and that I'd not have been able to make it in old Alaska. He was probably right.

At the border we said goodbye and wished each other luck. An older Canadian couple helped me by holding my bike while I loaded bags and strapped bundles and bottles to racks. They asked about my trip, and when I told them our plans they said "that sounds miserable"! They were traveling in an RV.

I decided the ride the 27km between US and Canadian customs, and then to camp in Beaver Creek. The no-man's-land between borders was a weird stretch of road. It seemed to me that cars drove more slowly through it. Maybe the drivers wondered which nation's police would ticket them if they sped. Would it be neither, or possibly both? I had similar thoughts. If I were hit by a car or crashed hard during a fast descent where would the rescue workers come from?

Riding wasn't too painful, and I decided to keep on and not stop to see much of Beaver Creek. The Yukon, for those of you who haven't driven through it, is beautiful. The road winds around and over rolling hills, with nothing but trees, lakes, creeks and mountains to see on either side. That is, when you can see. From the US border I rode 80km, and at least 50km was on super dry, loose gravel. It was rough and offered little traction and so was slow riding, and each time a car passed it kicked a cloud of dirt into the air and shot rocks at me from beneath its tires. Though I thought that I was riding into a headwind, a common cyclist complaint that usually means "I'm tired and want to blame my fatigue on something other than myself", I was forced to accept that there was simply no noticeable wind. Each time a car passed it would send a cloud of dirt into the air that seemed to float directly above the road and take forever to settle to the road. By "forever" I guess that I mean "until I had ridden through it". When I finally stopped I was caked in dust, dirtier than I've ever been and more tired than you've ever been. I don't know how tired you have been, but I was really, really tired. And dirty.

....but then something wonderful happened that I'll write about later. It involves free food(!!!) and then some extra free food(!!!).

currently...

...it's Wednesday and we're trying to hitchhike to Haines from Haines Junction. We're well and looking forward to a few more days of rest before we start pedaling again.

the yukon

Now, 2 weeks & 3 days after we began, we're in the Haines Junction, Yukon. My friend from the library, Sally, owns a home in Haines Junction where we've been able to sleep, shower, and do laundry. After living outside for 17 days with almost no extra clothing we were all in need of a good scrub and our wardrobes certainly needed the laundering. After all the rain that we've had (almost every day!) we were all really looking forward to sleeping someplace dry and warm. Sally and Trevor, thanks again! Anyway, here's what's been happening:

Wednesday: Kelly drove back to Anchorage, I hitched to Tok. After thumbing on the highway for almost two hours I was picked up by some older southern folks driving a pickup and towing a camper. We fit my bike in the truck bed and there was room for me in the cab. As soon as we were on the rode the matriarch announced it was time for lunch and soon we had parked at a rest stop and we sat around a table in their camper eating eating sandwiches. Over lunch I learned that two of them, Georgia and Rodney, were from Oklahoma but wintered in Texas, and Clifford, Rodney's brother, still lived in Oklahoma. They were all retired and spent their time traveling and visiting their many children and grandchildren that had spread across the continent. I was, Rodney told me, the first hitchhiker he'd picked up since 1975. I'm kind of a lucky guy.

Once in Tok I found Kayla almost immediately. She was pitching a tent in the big, gravel lot behind the grocery store, gas station, and diner that line the southern side of the Alaska Highway as it runs east out of Tok. This was the only place they had found to camp for free in town, and so was the best choice financially. It was also conveniently near everything. In Tok though, everyplace is near everything. After reuniting to hugs and happiness Ben and Kayla decided that they would like to ride out the next day. We decided that we would meet up in one week in Haines Junction.

Thursday: Ben and Kayla left town early, I stayed in Tok for a litte rest and reading. The hotel across the road had a computer in the lobby for guests to use and a few times I sneaked in to make blog posts and reply to emails. That evening I met an interesting couple who told me of their plans for an unsupported summit of Denali. Their hope was to avoid the expense of flying in to the west buttress route, and  instead to take the tour bus out of the Denali visitor center to Wonder Lake, and from there to hike/climb their entire way to the summit. They estimated a travel time of 20 days round trip. Though much shorter, that's a much more adventurous trip than this bike trip. I wish them luck.

more soon.....

catching up

It's been over a week since I've last posted and there will be a lot to talk about, but I'll try and keep it brief. Last night I reunited with Ben and Kayla and we're all alive and dirty and loving everything. The details, in a somewhat abridged form, follow. Feel free to skim.



Sunday: Kelly offered to come to Glennallen and spend my rest days with me. I accepted, though I didn't understand why somebody would want to spend their days off laying on the ground with their feet iced and elevated if they weren't in fact injured. Another cyclist, Betsy, shared the campsite with me. She arrived at 9.30 and was asleep by 10.30. Kelly arrived after midnight.

Monday: Kelly drove me to Valdez, someplace I had long hoped to visit. There I had my first bear encounter and saw beautiful waterfalls and mountains. I've offically promised to go back to Valdez next summer to swim in a pool that we found beneath a waterfall. So, Alaskans, I'll see you this time next year. If I had been in Valdez without janky ankles I would have loved to do some hiking and exploring. Ah well, there's always next year.

Tuesday: We spent the day exploring waterfalls that weren't too remote or difficult to access. That night we drove to and stayed in Gakona.

to be continued.....

Friday, Saturday, Sunday

Glennallen, Glennallen, Glennallen.

Friday: We decided to rest. My tendons were still sore, Ben's knee was aching, Kayla was patient with us. At some point during the day we each spent time at the library reading and computering. Earlier in the day, while getting coffee, Ben and I had a 3 hour long conversation about almost everything with a man from Toronto. We didn't learn his name, he specifically said that he was not going to give it to us because the world is just too small these days and we could put anything we wanted on the internet. He was just being cautious.

Saturday: A lot of reading got done, and some amature cobblery, but no forward progress was made on the trip. We were still staying at the same campsite we'd been at since Thursday and there we met another traveling cyclist. She was a woman from Anchorage riding to Haines. We shared a campsite and crossword puzzle with her, and we decided to ride together for the next leg of the trip. Well, we decided that Ben and Kayla would ride with her for the next leg. I'm taking a few more days off in Glennallen to rest my body before I get back on the road. My plan is to hitchhike to Tok on Tuesday to meet up with them.

Sunday: Now. Glennallen. Everyone else has ridden on to Tok. I think I'll go read and drink some coffee.

Thursday: Glennallen

Once we were on the road, after we'd eaten breakfast and dragged our bikes through mud and out of the forest, it was almost noon. We rode 15 miles, met up, and rode the final 16 miles into Glennallen pretty quickly. Through it all my achilles tendons were still sore. We stopped at a hardware store in town to by a washer and nut to fix my pedal (a $.26 fix!) and rode through the town to see where we could find to camp, eat, and restock our larders. Kayla rode to the library and explored a fire damaged building while Ben and I celebrated our travels with coffee and peanut butter milkshakes.

We met up later at the library where, putting to use the medical searching skills I've acquired over the last 2 years with HSIS, I searched common achilles tendon or ankle injuries. I suspect, though I'm no doctor, that I've got acute achilles tendinopathy. What I mean is that I've the common symptoms for it: tendon swelling; pain; impaired performance; and I am guilty of many of the common causes: increased exercise amount, duration, and gradient; less time for recovery between intervals; failure to sufficiently stretch before exercise. From what I've read this take days, weeks, or months to properly heal, and that stressing the injury before it is healed can make an acute case a chronic condition. Knowing this, I told Ben and Kayla that I wouldn't be ready to ride to out towards Tok on Friday. They were supportive and agreed that I shouldn't ride and that we'd all take a day off in Glennallen.

After milkshakes, library, and groceries, we camped at an RV park that had a few dedicated tent sites, warm showers, nice bathrooms, and free internet. That night we made a delicious vegetable stew with a tomato soup base. There are some definite advantages to being in a town with a grocery store. You can't really carry delicate or perishable food on your bike for days at a time, and unfortunately most vegetables are perishable and delicate.

aside

Funny things found stuck in my hair since this homeless adventure began:
- pine needles
- sticks
- a grub
- peanut butter

Wednesday

Hey, you know me. I wear glasses. My vision is terrible and even with glasses I have trouble reading roadsigns from any real distance. Wearing glasses, as much as I might actually like it, is inconvenient while riding a bike in the rain. During any sort of real rainshower I've only got about 30 seconds before my entire corrected field of view is covered in water. I sometimes want to ride without my glasses, and without the constant glasses-accompanying fear that the rain will make my frames slippery enough to fall off while I'm riding. I think about this most on the long, fast downhills when a fall would be the most injurious. Realistically, most of my falls occur while moving very slowly or standing still, so I don't think I really need to fear the bike in motion. That brings us to Wednesday.

We got started around 10am, and about a mile down the road, after a nice, long downhill and a short climb, I stopped to tighten the cleat on my right pedal. But the cleat was incomplete! Tuesday I had to loosen the cleat as much as possible in order to release the broken shoe. Now, a small but unique puzzle-piece shaped bolt was missing and my right shoe couldn't firmly attach to the pedal. Kayla and I rode back to the church, keeping our eyes on the ground the whole way up what had been a fun downhill. We had no luck finding the piece on the road, in the parking lot, or inside the church where our bikes had been. I spoke with Marlin about my problem and he offered me his computer to use if it would help. After having no luck finding a cheaper solution I went ahead and ordered new pedals to have sent to Tok. They should be there Monday. So should we. 30 minutes after our oringinal departure, still unable to use my right cleat, Kayla and I were on the road again.

Almost the entire distance between miles 105 and 107 is one long, winding downhill, which is, of course, fun. Approximately 200 feet before the bottom of this hill there had very recently been a landslide that still stretched aross most of the road. Luckily there were no cars coming from the other direction and I was able to blast through the small clear section. At the bottom of the hill I found Ben. He had not noticed the landslide until he was upon it, and he rolled through a rough, rocky section which caused the sidewall of his tire to punture. I stayed with Ben as he struggled to get his tire and tube fixed. In the end he was successful, but it was a hard fought, pyrrhic victory. Ben went through three tubes before he could ride again, leaving him with only one spare fit for use. Eighty minutes later we were rolling again, though this time slowly and uphill.

It was still lightly raining and we were literally pedaling through a cloud, but when we could see any of our surroundings they were beautiful. There was once point where it looked like clay was dripping down the mountain and the wilderness green and rocky orange were flowing together unmixed, like oil and water. I wonder if I would have noticed the same things if I had seen the entire countryside, or if seeing discrete portions was necessary for me to notice any of the same details. This is a specific case of the more general "seeing the trees vs seeing the forest" issue. If there is one thing I learned from mathematics it is to always seek further generalization.

Coming out of the mountains was refreshing. We left behind the rain and had a significant tailwind the rest of the day. We traveled faster now, and the 17 miles before the Eureka Roashouse went by quickly and effortlessly. We were still cold and wet from the half of the day spent in the rain, and so we stopped to warm up. When we left an hour later we were dry (there was a fireplace!) and full of 25 cent coffee and delicious, fresh pie. We left with the wind at our backs and rode for a few more hours, covering a total of 60 miles that day. That night we dragged our gear laden bikes off the road and into the woods, pitching our tents at the first place we found large enough to fit them.

Uh-oh! Before we stopped I had begun to notice pain in each of my achilles tendons, though the pain was stronger in my left leg than in my right.....

We're off!

That's right, we've not just gotten our feet in the water, we've held hands and jumped in over our heads. Ben, Kayla, and I left Anchorage Sunday evening and have been riding since. There has been rain every day and plenty of bike problems, but there has also been loads of fun had and beautiful things seen and people met. Following this caveat I'll give you the rundown of what has been going on: We don't have regular internet access for updates, so I'll probably end up writing a lot at once. You're not obligated to read it all at once, or ever.

Sunday: After readying our bikes, eating a wonderful breakfast with wonderful friends, and saying some important goodbyes, we finally rolled out of Anchorage around 5pm. None of us had done much riding with all of our panniers packed, so we were all riding slowly and nervously. We rode only as far as Palmer. There we stayed at Ben's father's place and spent our first night of homeless adventuring sleeping safely in a room that had at one time been a science laboratory, complete with empty though still labeled specimen cabinets.

Monday: We woke early, and after coffee, fresh bread, and crossword puzzles at Vagabond Blues, and picking up a surprisingly large list of things we'd either forgotten to pack or hadn't thought to bring, we finally hit the road. This time slightly earlier at 2:30pm. It had been raining since before we woke, and continued to rain throught the day. We spent most of the day riding up, and very occasionally down, the hills and mountains just outside of Palmer.

The first bike problems occured when a screw was lost from Kayla's cleat making her unable to remove her shoe from the pedal and later Ben's chain broke during a big climb. Fortunately we had enough extra parts with us that neither of these problems was much of a delay. The large, delay causing problem on Monday was something that we should have expected and been ready for: the mountains. By the time we stopped to pitch our tents we had only covered 40 miles. We camped about 70 feet off of the highway that night, beneath powerlines.

Tuesday: We woke, once again, to rain. After a quick breakfast we started riding. We had very little water left, so we agreed to stop at the first friendly looking place we could find to fill our bottles. 14 miles later, after some really fun, fast downhill sections through contruction zones, we found a general store. They didn't have much, and told us we couldn't fill our water bottles, but they had warm coffee and we were content. Later Ben and I distracted the proprietor with conversation while Kayla filled our bottles in the bathroom sink. Deciding to meet after another 6 miles, at mile 100, we rode off.

Just before mile 100 is Glacierview Bible Church. I found Ben waiting in the parking lot there enjoying the first real sunshine we'd seen on the adventure. Over the last few miles I had noticed that my cleat was loose and now I meant to investigate. Upon examination I found that the problem wasn't my cleat, but that my shoe had broken. I had other footwear, and could ride the pedals like traditional platform pedals, but that would be much slower and less efficient. Ben mentioned that his father was leaving to drive back to Nevada later that day and might be able to bring out parts if we needed them. We reached him on the phone and he agreed to go to the Wasilla bike shop and get me new SPD compatible shoes. Excellent. In a few hours Tony (Ben's dad) would arrive and we'd be on the road again.... After I patched a tire that had gone flat since we'd arrived.

After the phoning Ben's dad for a rescue we had an afternoon to spend in this church parking lot. We spoke about the ride so far and about our expectations for and concerns about the road ahead. After pulling the cleat, which might still be useful, from the bottom of my shoes, I went to investigate the church and see if I could find a garbage can for my now dead bike shoes. Inside the church I found the Pastor, who pleasantly said that he would dispose of my shoes and offered us water to refill our bottles. I thanked him for his help and went to nap in the sun. He and Kayla then spoke for a while and he gave us permission to wait inside if it began to rain and to spend the night inside if Ben's dad arrived late.

It began to rain again, and by the time Tony arrived we had decided to spend the night where we were. Our tents were still wet from the previous night's rain, and in the spacious basement we were able to set them up and dry them out. We were incredibly lucky not only to have a warm place to sleep and a roof over our heads, but also to have a ready supply of hot water for tea! I don't think we can express our appreciation enough. Marlin, if you're reading this, thanks again.