2015 Year of the Move

Our year revolved around completing our house and shop project in Talkeetna, selling the house in Anchorage, and moving to Talkeetna. The sale and move happened in June, and the projects ... well, is a house ever really complete? Here are some highlights of the year ~

Technically we unpacked the last box in the house in October when Paul completed a shelving unit for the stereo and all the various music medium we own.  There are still boxes of books in the storage room that need a place to be.

By the end of September, all the siding and trim was on the house and grass seed was sprouting all around.  This photo was taken from the railroad tracks, looking over the swamp to our place on the ridge (house on left, shop/barn on right).

Biking and snorkeling on the Big Island of Hawaii in February has become almost an annual break for us from the Alaska winter.  For Alaskans, visiting Hawaii is like New Yorkers going to Florida to escape snow and cold.  With one flight, we can step into a warm, lush, humid tropical setting.

In mid-May I joined friends to bike the road into Denali National Park.  For a short period in the spring and fall,the road is closed to vehicles, providing a good mountain bike ride on gravel roads up and over passes.  Spring had not arrived yet - the rivers were still mostly ice covered and you can see the the plants had not leafed out yet.

In June, just 2 weeks after we moved, I visited Alaska's Emerald Isle - Kodiak - with  friends.  We drove to the ends of the few roads to wander on remote beaches and saw the famous Kodiak brown bear and the less-famous bison. 

This was a warm, dry summer -- great for checking out many of the local lakes for cooling off in the evening.

One half of my parents visited in August.  The warm weather continued and we installed the umbrella on the picnic table to shade dinners from the hot evening sun.

In August the Alaska Dirt Divas made the annual backcountry trip to a cabin near Eklutna Lake in Chugach State Park.  Biking on a regular basis with these friends is one of the things I'll miss about living in Anchorage.

We did a little camping.  Over the 4th of July weekend we rafted the Susitna River with friends.

Over Labor Day weekend we camped in Seward with friends.  While the guys fished, the women hiked with dogs.

In October I visited the other half of my parents in upstate NY.  The fall colors were gorgeous. More about that in my last post.

14 sep 14 biking fall colors

I took a break from painting to bike through golden fall.

* check out the slide show in the right column showing the progress on our little Talkeetna barn.

4 june 14 bike to work

I assumed that this sign was for me - and that my bike was an 'authorized vehicle' - at a meeting on my way to the office on Anchorage's Bike to Work Day.

12 may 14 bike to work

lovely spring day to bike to work as part of my organization's annual Green Commuter Challenge (my office won 1st place for our city/office size class)

23 sep 13 summer highlights

The first snows of the season stuck to the ground today, so I'm inspired to edit some of the summer's photos and post up the highlights.



In June we visited family in Colorado for two weeks, and I biked the back roads of Boulder County with my dad.  The September floods wiped out most of the bridges, and he says we couldn't do any of those rides to Hygiene, Berthoud, or Mead now, or even pedal the bike paths of Longmont now.

Our neighborhood is a popular moose nursery.  This moose cow and her days-old twins spent an afternoon nibbling on the flowers at the back steps.

In June and July we enjoyed perfect summer weather.  One evening we hiked in the Glen Alps area of Chugach State Park near our house.

My bike club pedaled 12+ miles past the end of Eklutna Lake in Chugach State Park for a long weekend.  The weather was fantastic.  Here's my bike on the return loaded with empty water containers strapped to the top of my sleeping bag and pad which are bungied to the rack which holds two panniers with my clothes in 1 and group and my food gear (coffee pots etc) in the other.  Bear spray in the bottle cage, snacks and small camera in the handlebar bag, and water and extra clothes in the daypack on my back (not in picture).

Our sailing weekends were too few but highlighted by sunny days and fair breezes.  I plan to post an album about our time in Prince William Sound this year.

Django was a great boat dog!  He looked this cheerful and excited whenever I brought out his life jacket for taking the dinghy to shore (except that one rainy weekend when none of us really wanted to be outside much)

13 apr 20 signs of alaska spring

Two weeks ago we were 20 degrees below normal, then 10 degrees below last week, and finally yesterday we topped 40. Spring is coming!

Spring snowfall - 12" on April 9th

Icicles on the berm along the driveway

seedlings in the living room window

snow biking wearing just a sweatshirt

2013 flying by

imitating street art with the Buttons on a very cold Denver day

 The Iditarod is almost over and I'm just now uploading my first blog entry of the year.  2013 has felt fast and furious times.  Good thing that fun has been part of that.  We went to Colorado in early January to visit family.  At the end of January we flew to Hawaii for a two-week vacation with the usual mix of biking, snorkeling, and hiking.

Paul mountain biking a dirt section of the King's Trail in Puna

Paul snorkeling in the Wai'opae tidepools in Puna

Birding in the remote Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge on the flank of Mauna Kea

And on Valentine's Day, we adopted another member into the pack.

Django! ball hound

18 may 12 bike to work day



The Nature Conservancy Bike Commuters

I hadn't been bicycling since late February.  Sometime that month I went over the handlebars on my friend's snowbike, which likely brought on the tendinitis and bursitis in my shoulders that has taken months to heal.  A few weeks ago the physical therapist and sports doc said that I could start riding the trainer and build up to riding outside.  I found the trainer to be more difficult than I had expected and not much fun either.  Bike to Work Day became my goal -- even though it was scheduled for a Friday when I don't normally work. 

Eventually I built up the time on the trainer and reached the next step - half an hour riding outside.  I enjoyed a sunny ride on the Campbell Creek trail several evenings before Bike to Work Day.  Riding all the way to work would be a slightly bigger leap in time than the doc prescribed but I thought the break at the half hour mark might help.  That would be the Bacon Station - a favorite stop for Paul and me at last year's BtWD.  Alas, we got there too late to partake of bacon or cinnamon rolls or free beer coupons but they were still handing out a few chocolate chip cookies and the lack of food was made up by the dozens of cyclists still hanging out on a sunny spring morning.

A few notes about Bike to Work Day in Anchorage:
~ Paul and I had to revise our route through a neighborhood because a moose was feeding next to a bike trail that cut between two houses.  Not that unusual an event in a typical bike commute here.
~ The temperature was only 36 when we left the house.  When we reached the main street outside our neighborhood, three riders were coming down the hill.  One in shorts and another in a T-shirt.  Brrr.  There was ice in the wooded wetlands near the university.
~ Only four of us were at the office on Friday and we all biked.  Emily had taken her little boy to the bacon station in an early morning ride, and Marcus stopped there with his daughter on the way to daycare.  Jessica bike-jored in.  Her sled dog Circe pulled her on a wild ride that doesn't sound like something for the faint-of-heart.  My commute was the longest - 11 miles - and  I sported the 'company colors.'

22 jan 2012 pushing for fun

Paul and I have been riding packed snowy trails with our mountain bikes the past 2 or 3 winters. This winter I have a long-term loan of a fat tire bike. I wanted Paul to experience a 'snow bike' so I bought him a rental of one for Christmas. Yesterday we cashed in the gift certificate and loaded the Salsa Mukluks into the truck.

A week or so ago someone had mentioned that the new singletrack trails at Kincaid were in great riding condition. We hadn't had any snow all week so I thought it would be fun to take a new bike on a new trail. At the bike shop they said that parts of the trail were 'soft' and 'challenging' but they thought the parts that we would ride had seen regular use.

I won't go into the blow-by-blow of our ride. Let's just say that I was reminded of a phrase I heard when I first started mountain biking. If you aren't walking, you aren't mountain biking. Yesterday that became If you aren't pushing a fat bike, you aren't snow biking. The softest area was the farthest from the parking lot so as we completed the loop and headed back to the trailhead, the riding got better and better.

In the end, we rode a beautiful network of trails on a beautiful winter day. My snow biking skills improved and we got a great workout. Paul may not be ready to buy a snowbike but I'm ready to take the mukluk out again and see if I can make some of those hills that I couldn't before.

1 jan 12 more snowy singletrack meditation

2012 begins snowy and cold in Anchorage this year. I resisted the urge to break one resolution on the first day and didn't let the cold stop me from joining a few Divas for a New Year's Day ride. I was glad I started the year with a two hour bike ride on snowy singletrack. I'm pleasantly tired this evening and feel less intimidated by the cold, which is good because winter isn't even half over. And with views like this, who wouldn't rather be outside than inside watching football?

dec 11 wintry images

This morning is supposed to be about catching up on photos -- printing those of my little nephews that my step-mom has sent; printing photos of other family members and friends from the past year; downloading photos from the last 2 weeks from 2 cameras; editing photos from the Divas trip to Eklutna in September; and editing everything since then. But I've run out of photo paper about halfway through and the number of photos to be edited is a little daunting.

It's the season for not only cleaning up the physical and digital space but also to sweep through the mental space to see what needs to stay, what needs to go, what needs to change. And I can't decide if my resolution for the new year should be to take a photo a day, keep up on the blog better (think I've tried that one before), lay the blog down, or just not get too hung up on any of it.

I'm going to contemplate all of that while tromping about this snowy world on snowshoes later today. In the meantime, I'll post a few photos from this month and feel a little satisfaction in getting a few photos printed, a few edited, and a few posted.

A spectacular sunset just after a snowfall between wind storms a couple of weeks ago

Snow biking on my birthday last week. Thanks to my friend Rose for loaning me her mukluk while her shoulder heals. A Happy Birthday indeed!

An early afternoon ski with Paul on Christmas Day in Talkeetna

3 dec 11 singletrack mindfulness

Around lunch time on Saturday a friend called with some bad news that affected his family. Someone we knew had made an impulsive decision that was meant to be helpful to a member of his family without thinking about legal ramifications and long-term consequences.

Paul and I had planned to go for a bike ride, and we hit the singletrack about the time I was struggling with my attempts to not judge a couple of the people involved in the situation. There's nothing like pedaling down a snowy trench to keep me focused on the present moment. If I want to stay upright on the trail, my mind has to be tuning into my body and the feel of the bike. If my brain is whirring on problems far from the trail, I'm going to be dabbing or drifting into the soft snow. Riding singletrack, especially in the winter, is an excellent practice in mindfulness.

Going with the flow on a mukluk holiday. Thanks, Rose!

27 aug 11 hunting season

Fall in Alaska brings many into the woods in hunt of the elusive bolete. Last weekend we came away empty-handed from an evening walk in the park nearby. So the next day we bicycled to the far side of the park to an area that gets less visitation. We managed to fill Paul's bike rack bag with orange and birch boletes.

Paul is convinced that the increased popularity of harvesting mushrooms in the last few years makes it more difficult to find boletes in the parks and that the best hunting may be in neighborhoods. He may be right. We found 4 beautiful king boletes in our neighbor's yard and the two birch trees outside our kitchen window have provided four nice birch boletes so far.

12 aug 2011 biking smile

If only the cars got the same sign at their stop sign

A state advisory council that I used to be on had a 20 year reunion lunch at Kincaid Park on Friday. I was only working half a day so I decided to bike across town to the reunion. I could only weave a small portion of the Campbell Creek Creek greenbelt into the route so I hoped to link neighborhoods together and avoid the major arteries as much as possible.

Unfortunately, the Seward Highway forces bikers on to major roads to cross it here on the south side. As I pedaled along Dimond Boulevard, I remembered Thich Nhat Hanh's advice for walking meditation - smile slightly. I thought I'd try to be 'mindful' on my bike (could save my life) and I'd try to hold a smile (could reduce my stress on the busier streets). A couple of minutes into my biking meditation, a truck decided that he could wait for all the cars to pass before turning left but not for me. I didn't exactly grin at him, but my response was a little more low key than usual. I was similarly cut off another two or three times in the 25-mile round-trip, and each time I tried to channel TNH for a calm response.

During the garden tour, we happened upon a little greenbelt dedicated to Kathleen Joy Lowry and I was happy to incorporate that into the route. The gravel path follows a grassy drainage ditch between two neighborhoods and passes a small lily-covered pond with a covered observation deck. I pedaled through several neighborhoods that I'd never been in before.

a break at the deck in the Lowry greenbelt

The highlights of the trip were the usual for Anchorage town rides. A sunny summer day that seemed like heaven after a few days of August rains. A moose that just had to cross under Minnesota and would not be deterred. Smiling people walking and biking along the greenbelt paths. Nice, considerate, alert drivers who waited for me at cross walks. Despite the impatient drivers, I couldn't have picked a better way to spend half the day.

I felt marginally safer behind a clump of cow parsnip and a sign

31 jul 2011 bloomin' anchorage

Our tradition of biking the Anchorage Garden Tour on the last Sunday of July wasn't deterred this year by a little rain. Pam and Roger joined us for a third tour, and Rose was properly baptized by Mother Nature on her inaugural tour. The quality of the gardens was especially high this year, and the biking was as rewarding as ever. Five of the gardens were somewhat clustered near us on the south side of town. One outlier in Spenard had us hustling north to catch the last -- and best? -- before the close at 5:00. Instinct and Rose's prior residence in Spenard helped us to navigate several neighborhoods so we could avoid the larger roads most of the way. We ended the tour with a picnic in Spenard on a dry patch of grass under a spruce tree.

8 jul 11 under the highway

If you live in Anchorage and follow how the voters react to Parks and Trails bonds, or follow the current Assembly and Mayor's support (i.e. lack of) for parks, you can be amazed that we have the trail and park system that we do. The recreational opportunities within the city are great.

Yesterday Jo-Ann, Bev, and I encountered one of the gaps in the system - the intersection of the Seward Highway and the Campbell Creek Greenbelt Trail. The trail runs for several miles on either side of the highway. At the highway, it's a rocky footpath under four road bridges. When they built the trail, even though it wouldn't go under the highway, the planners thoughtfully put a foot bridge over the creek so that those who would be ducking under the bridges could get to the other side of the creek where the trail resumes.

We stopped on that foot bridge in both directions for a break. As we watched for salmon in the stream, multiple bikers passed us. People are not only using the trail for recreation, like we were, but they're commuting to work and school. The Campbell Creek trail ends at the east side at two universities and two hospitals. Yesterday we saw moose feeding along the stream and sockeye migrating.

I suggested that someone should set up a motion-activated camera under the bridges, similar to what Fish and Game does to see how many bears use streamside paths in the city. The Department of Transportation could see how many people depend upon this route to commute. How many more would use it if they didn't have to climb under four highway bridges?

6 jul 11 beautiful infrastructure

Not even a powerline up the middle of it can mar the beauty of this valley on a sunny summer evening ....

Alaska Dirt Divas rode Powerline Trail last evening.

12 jun 11 gala in the garden

Paul made his artistic debut at the Alaska Botanical Garden's annual Gala and Art Show. His cedar-and-red torii gates were quite striking on the sunny Thursday evening that the Gala was held. The one he named Tranquility sold that evening, and Paul donated all of the proceeds to the garden. (The other one - Balance - is now in our garden.)

The art was up through the weekend for the Garden Faire. We biked to the garden on Sunday to see if the other torii gate had sold and to check out the vendors. All of the plants, crafts, and art were very tempting, but I only bought two strawberry plants and a few thoughtful Alder Patch cards, which was about all I could fit into my pack.

29 may 11 wild quaker

I was probably the only Quaker in the world who crossed a salmon stream and encountered moose and wild rabbits on my way to Meeting for Worship on Sunday morning.