Biking In Anchorage In Full Swing

 First off, I should say that for the fat tire and studded tire bikers, Anchorage is a year round biking town.  For folks like me, biking doesn't really start until most of the snow is off the bike paths.  The paths along the main roads have been clear since April 1 at least.  Here's Dowling on one of my early April rides.  

But as of the past weekend, the trails I've tried - and from reports of others - the bike trails along the greenbelts are now snow and ice free.  This was the trail from Goose Lake along Northern Lights and then over the the Alaska Native Medical Center last Friday.  The shiny stuff on the trail is melt water from the snow on the edge of the trail.  

Goose Lake, last Friday was still covered with ice as have been other small lakes I've been by.  

I still can't imagine the folks that designed these bike paths on the roads that bulge into the street at the corners.  The biker has to move left into traffic.  What were they thinking?  OK, you can have space marked off from the cars, but only most of the way.  Then we push you into the roadway.  I'm guessing this wasn't a biker.  Or even worse, an engineer who hates being forced to add bike lines, so he (a she wouldn't have done this) does the trail part way and then gets revenge at the corners.  (Any engineers reading this - I'm just being playful, like the person who designed this.)

On Bainbridge Island, where they have a similar design, they have curb cuts so bikes go on the sidewalk instead of the street.  

But this is a fairly recent improvement for the bike lanes on Bainbridge Island.  

Saturday I explored the Campbell Creek trail going south.  It was mostly clear, but there were still a few stretches with ice/snow.  So coming back I decided to explore along Old Seward Highway.  I didn't realize how grimy some of the streets between Old and New Seward are.  This was 66th I believe.  There was a fire in the old barrel in the middle.  

And not all the paths along main streets are great. This is one of the worst.  36th Avenue west of the Old Seward Highway on the south side of the street.  The big gravel lot north of New Sagaya feeds rocks and gravel onto the sidewalk.  There are big holes in the sidewalk.  This is just east of the little mall that has ACS and the Pita Pit.  The sidewalk has disappeared under rock and broken asphalt.  

And here's a picture in Spenard.  I can't quite believe this was the first moose I've seen since we got back into Anchorage early March.  It paid no attention to me.  I was biking back from the Providence branch in the old REI space.  No one had bothered to tell me that my doctor had recently moved from their to Building S over on the main Providence campus.  But, I got to see the moose.

Taking Advantage of My Air Drop Working Again

 My phone asked me to log in with my Apple ID today.  On a whim, I tried Air Drop after and it worked.  So, in what I hope is a long window, I'll put up some pictures.  

Grow North is the farm in Mountain View where the Refugee Assistance and Immigration Service of Anchorage Catholic Social services grows food for the summer and operates a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) with once a week pick ups and sells fresh vegetables and some baked goods as well during the week.  You can't get much fresher food in Anchorage unless it's from your own garden.  

The garlic and the picture of the farm are from last week.  

This week's box includes:

• Classic cauliflower,
• Crunchy kohlrabi
• Unique malabar spinach,
• Tasty bok choi,
• And some lovely sage for the herb of the week!

From the email that CSA subscribers get:

"Malabar spinach seems like it would retain similarities to that of regular spinach. The plant uses the name spinach in it, yet the ironic part of that the two could not be more different. Malabar spinach grows on a vine, granting it the nickname of vine spinach, whereas regular spinach grows from the ground (like many leafy greens)."  

This Goose Lake as I rode by  The ducks hang out here because its's  spot where people feed them.

On a completely different bike ride, out past Taku Lake, they've had the big blue sign up much of the summer, but the little one just popped up.  If you can't read the small sign (which I'm guessing you can't) it says, "We are upgrading the skatepark!"  It also says the construction budget is $1.2 million. I know we've had inflation over the years, but really?  $1.2 million for curved concrete?  Curious how much profit the contractor, also listed as "Street Maintenance and Grindline Skate Parks LLC" is making.  I realize they may be doing more than just the skateboard park, but it would be nice if there was a watchdog group which gathered all the data on summer construction projects and evaluated how the money was spent.  

In other construction news, the ACS fiber optic team was out on Crescent in Geneva Woods today.  We're on the Lake Otis side, but all this area is getting wired.  That bright orange wire is popping up all around the neighborhoods.  

And it's mushroom season.  Here are some making appearances in my yard.

Don't have time now to research these.  The orange one is an amanita - hallucinogenic and al over Anchorage now.  It can also make you really sick.  Not planning on eating any, though I'm waiting for the King Boletes and the Shaggy Manes.  

But I have started eating the olive bread I made last night.  It came out well.  The one in the back is a dill experiment.  (We got lots of fresh dill from Grow North Farm last week.)

Meanwhile J got off the phone this evening with her long time friend (does 45 years count as long time?) who lives on the Haleakala foothills in Maui.  Her house is far from Lahaina, but there is also a fire up in that neighborhood as well and she's been evacuated and is staying with friends.  If I recall right, Maui has its share of eucalyptus trees, and their oil burns easily.  May the fire be quickly extinguished and your house survive.  

Update On My Summer Bike Ride Across Turkey Using Anchorage Bike Trails, Wanders Off Into Otter Attacks And Feeding Ducks

This summer's goal has been to bike from Istanbul to Cappadocia.  By my initial calculation, that was 750 kilometers (466 miles).  So that was my target until I found a site (Ride with gps) where people track their bike rides.  I found someone who had made my trip. Ending up in Avanos.  But he was taking a longer route - it looks like he tried to avoid the main highways that would have more traffic.  His route was a total of 889 kilometers (552 miles.)

So yesterday I got up to 751.8 kms.  Using the Ride with gps site, you can find exactly where that is. You can toggle between km and miles.  You can see the distance (and other factors) by putting the cursor along the route.  I can see I'm riding along a lake, but on the biking map there wasn't a specific place to look up.  Had to go to Google maps to find Aksaray and some pictures.  This seemed the nicest.  

Photo from Google Maps

Of course, I'm doing this along the bike trails of Anchorage - anywhere from about 6km to 20km on any given day.  To make it to Avanos, I've got about 140 kms left to go.  Cappadacio is a region of Turkey where there are lots of caves.  Here's a link to a site with a short video that gives you a sense of the other-worldly landscape of the area and some of the towns there.  

But I only have pictures of the Anchorage bike trails, but they're pretty amazing too.  So here are some from the last several days of biking mostly along Campbell Creek trails.  

Campbell Creek near Lake Otis.

Going east from here, the creek winds back and forth, leading to a series of bridges along the trail.

Much further up the creek is this bridge near Campbell Airstrip.  There is a mix of hiking, mountain biking, ski trails, and dog sled trails in this area.  

This part of the creek, and the trail, is west of Lake Otis and goes south to Taku Lake and beyond. 

Yesterday there were lots of people fishing at Taku Lake.  I was taking a picture of three people fishing together (looked like a family) when this guy moved from the group.  If you look closely you can see the fish he just pulled out of the lake.  

Below is Goose Lake on another day in very different light.  Yellow leaves are starting to show.  This is a spot where people feed the ducks.  I stopped to take a picture and all this ducks moved in my direction looking for handouts.  Here's a link to a National Geographic website with a long explanation of why feeding bread to ducks is not good for the ducks.  Just one of many points:

“White bread in particular has no real nutritional value, so while birds may find it tasty, the danger is that they will fill up on it instead of other foods that could be more beneficial to them,” says a spokeswoman for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

There's a lot more on the subject at the link above.

At University Lake near Alaska Pacific University, which has become a popular dog park, I found a warning for another hazard.  

It's only recently that I've become aware of river otters in Anchorage.  In August 2021 there was a report of river otters attack dogs in Anchorage.  That story made it to The Guardian in UK as well as many other news outlets.  The earliest report of aggressive river otters in Anchorage I found was 2019 which called the river otters "a new menace for Anchorage dogs."   Sea otters, in the ocean, have been here for as long as I've been in Alaska.  

Here's a picture of Taku Lake yesterday.  The 2019 otter attack was here.  I've never seen river otters in Anchorage, but I did see a beaver once at Taku.  

Mushrooms And Other Late Summer Delights

 

These artichokes were growing outside the Legislative Information Office.  There was a big round flower bed full of flowers and edible plants.

You don't see that many artichokes growing in Alaska, but, obviously, they can.

I thought this giant cabbage plant had a great design.   And then I played with it some more with Curves.  That's a technique that messes with the colors and the light and dark in different programs like Photoshop and, in this case, Apple's Photo.

I played the same kind of tricks on this curled leaf decorative cabbage.  You get to see patterns that you didn't see in real life. 

When I take the Goose Lake route for my bike ride I always enjoy this spot.  On the way out this morning I noticed ripples emanating from the shore and stopped to look for ducks or grebes.  Then ducks headed out.  And then toward me.  I held real still and a couple walked onto the shore right next to me.  I took this picture on the way back. The ripples were gone, but ducks started heading in my direction again.  I realized I wasn't the duck whisperer I thought.  Obviously, this is a spot where people feed the ducks and any human standing here attracts the ducks.  

This big brown mushroom has made an appearance in the yard in the last few days.  I think the originally is more interesting than the one I played with in curves.

And these bright red amanitas are performing in the front yard today.  Didn't think that curves would do anything worthwhile.

We hiked along Power Line Pass on an always threatening to rain day.  The rain didn't come until we were in the car and almost home.

Raspberries from below.  Been picking them every other day for a week now.

And two of the downstairs tomatoes got red the other day.  They were tasty.  The ones in the outside greenhouse are still green as are the ones on the deck which are still a bit more than pea sized.    

The moon was full the other night.  I still think it's neat that people all around the earth can see it - many at the same time you can even though their thousands of miles away from you.  

[Added Aug 29, 2021 in résponse to Mike's comment:  No bears, but the next day these two moose were on the side of the trail in that stretch where I'm extra bear careful.  This was on a downhill part, and they were far enough off the trail so I could stop easily (rather than stopping on the uphill part) (But I guess that depends on which direction you're going.)  They were maybe 40 or 50 feet from the trail.  You can see how easy it is for huge brown animals to blend into the scenery.  I guess after many years I'm just better than I was at seeing brown blobs as something to pay attention to.  If you can't see them they are just left of center.  Their heads are down in the grass eating.  I'm putting this picture here since I can't put pics in the comments. That doesn't mean it's not possible to put pictures in the comments, but I've never figured it out. . . Of course, that made me google the question, and yes you can upload images into comments. But it has to have a url and this one isn't posted to the web.  I could do that, according to the article, but for now I'm just going to leave it here.]

"What's the point of living . . ."

 Here are a some pictures from recent bike rides.  

This is a tunnel under a road I go on my main bike ride.  As I ride into the dark it takes a second for 
for my eyes to adjust and I have to be careful because sometimes there's someone sleeping in there.  The first graffiti, if it's hard to read, says, "What's the point of living if there isn't any fun?"  The second one says "I don't want to die without any scars."   (You can click on the image to enlarge it.)

Goose Lake, from this point, changes every day.  

Across the parking lot from Goose Lake is a ball field.  This morning as I came by people were carrying their folding chairs for what looked like church services.  They seemed to be sitting distanced, but I didn't really want to get closer to find out details or check on how many had masks.  

After I got home I made the frittata and as I sliced the mushroom, I loved the pattern.  

There's so much to write about, but I don't seem to have the time to say something that hasn't already been said.  This sort of post is probably better for people's mental health anyway.  

Ice On Lake, But Not On Trail

After the monthly Citizens Climate Lobby meeting this morning, I biked to Goose Lake and then down the path parallel to Northern Lights and back around past APU and then west along University Lake and on home.  The trail has practically no snow at all.  Here and there some along the edge of the trail.  A few spots still have easily avoided remnants of winter.


Monday I had checked the Campbell Creek trail east of Lake Otis and it was still covered with snow and ice.  I should check it out tomorrow.    As you can see in the picture, Goose Lake still is covered with ice.

But not the bike trail.

And the biker enjoyed his ride.

Why Don't Ducks' Feet Freeze? And Other Spring Thoughts

The bike trails are now pretty much snow and ice free.  There's sun.  No time to blog, time to be out.

Goose Lake still has ice.

This grebe is riding the waves at a windy Potter Marsh Friday afternoon.

A gull on the final approach to its nest.

Potter Marsh from the boardwalk.

Waiting for the new green to push up through to the sun.

This morning I had ride by Goose Lake again and there were two mallards sleeping on the ice.  If you're wondering, like I was, why their feet don't freeze, Ask a Naturalist explains why:

"It’s all about heat exchange, and the smaller the temperature difference between two objects, the more slowly heat will be exchanged. Ducks, as well as many other birds, have a counter-current heat exchange system between the arteries and veins in their legs. Warm arterial blood flowing to the feet passes close to cold venous blood returning from the feet. The arterial blood warms up the venous blood, dropping in temperature as it does so. This means that the blood that flows through the feet is relatively cool. This keeps the feet supplied with just enough blood to provide tissues with food and oxygen, and just warm enough to avoid frostbite. But by limiting the temperature difference between the feet and the ice, heat loss is greatly reduced. Scientists who measured it calculated that Mallards lost only about 5% of their body heat through their feet at 0o C (32o F)."