A Ride Down The Road

 Gave the car a spin this afternoon.  It's good to get out of town a bit.  

Looking across Turnagain Arm from the Seward Highway.  Can you see the tracks where rocks have slid down over the snow?

Same mountain, a little closer view.

McHugh Creek

Looking across Turnagain Arm from McHugh Creek

A muskrat at Potter Marsh

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.

My Bike Season Has Begun

This is no April Fool's post.  While the bike trails through the greenbelts still have a decent amount of snow and ice, the sidewalks/bike trails along the major roads in Anchorage are pretty much clear. 

Here I am on Providence headed toward Elmore (formerly known as Bragaw).  No snow, but lots of post-snow debris.  And riding along the streets still means watching out for cars hitting puddles and splashing anyone on the sidewalk at that point.  

Here's were the Elmore bike trail dips down to let folks use the tunnel to get over the the UAA dorms.  Still clear, but the retreating snow leaves a much narrower path.  

And here I'm up from the dip looking back at the snow my tires couldn't get a grip on.  But it was all clear except for this stretch.

I've now completed the first 5.6 km of my Anchorage summer biking expedition.  

In previous summers I've imagined routes in other places as I plied the Anchorage bike trails.  I've gone from Santiago, Chile south to  Conception; Chiangmai to Bangkok;  and from Istanbul to Cappadocia.  Last  summer I didn't pick a foreign route.  But this year I've decided I'm going from Kyiv to Mariupol.  

That's 868.9 km according to Bikemap.com.  That's not quite as far as I hope to go.  Last summer I did about 1200 kms total.  Sorry the map isn't quite clear enough to read the details, but you get the point.

I'm hoping this will give me a better sense of the geography of Ukraine.  I was thinking I could go another 300 or 400 kilometers past Mariupol.  But maybe I should start in Mariupol and after Kyiv I can head west toward Poland or south toward Moldova.  .  

My Body Knows I've Been Shoveling Snow and Peace Corps Recruiter

So, this is what it looked like Tuesday after the clouds cleared after Anchorage's first snow of the year.  A bit late, but it's here.  I'd gotten the driveway and the deck cleared of snow.

Then it started snowing again Wednesday and by Thursday there was over a foot of new snow in the driveway.  Wet, heavy snow.  In this picture I've got some of the driveway shoveled.  

I was going to leave the rest for the next day, but I remembered I'd said I'd go to a Returned Peace Corps Dinner to meet with Alan Yuen, a South African national who works in the Peace Corps office in Pretoria.  The Peace Corps has contracted him and about 15 other foreign nationals to come to the US to recruit Peace Corps volunteers.  The idea, as I understand it, is to let people from countries that have volunteers give their perspective on how their countries benefit.  

So I kept on shoveling.  Got to talk to a couple of neighbors doing the same.  

And the sun even pinked the sky as I was shoveling.  

While I got the driveway cleared, the roads were something else again.  Lake Otis was awful.  Parts of Northern Lights were ok, but parts were a mess.  From Mike Garvey's Twitter account

Garages gonna be repairing a lot of broken axles pic.twitter.com/SS3mZsCVe2

— Mike Garvey (@mpg167) November 11, 2023

 But we made it safely, if bumpily, to the gathering.  

Here's Alan listening to a couple of the RPCVs talking about their experiences and asking how they can help Alan out.  

Then this morning I looked outside and the snow was coming down just as heavily as it did yesterday.  

But it didn't last as long, but it dressed the trees in back in a dreamy white.  

Here's what the deck looked like this morning.  But first I took care of the few more inches that had accumulated overnight on the driveway.

I did part of the deck in the afternoon.  The weather app says there will be some partial sun tomorrow, so I'll finish it then.  

My daughter and a good friend constantly remind me that shoveling snow is one of the best ways to get a heart attack.  Normally I don't pay them much attention.  But we had lots of wet, heavy snow, so I scooped the first six inches or so first and then the other 10 to 12 inches below.  And I took lots of breaks.  And I'm doing fine, though my body is pleasantly tired, no real aches or pains.  

A Satruday Hike In Alaskan Fall. Then Sunday Winter Came

I drive my van even less during the winter than the summer.  Partly because I avoid driving as much as a I can.  But also because we spend more time during winter with grandkids to the south.  We have it parked out of the street so it doesn't block the snowplows while we're gone.  And since we've been gone a while, I felt I should take advantage of the lack of snow, to go for a ride to charge up the battery.  Which is why we got to McHugh Creek.  

The sun made itself known through the clouds.

The total lack of snow or ice in the beginning of November feels weird, but no one was complaining.

Blends of yellows and oranges, with the green of the spruces.  The clouds hanging low, well below the ridge.  A little up the trail, we could see the faint outline of what I suppose is McHugh Peak through the clouds.  

Rocks have various kinds of lichen.   

.                           

And there's still green plant life showing.

"

The cottonwoods are skeletons now, the trunks are ridged, which I've always assumed is a sign they've been around a while.  The cottonwoods in our yard have much smoother trunks.  

We passed Potter Marsh on the way out and saw folks skating.  On the way back we stopped, but the skaters were gone.  These two guys were venturing out in their tennies.  

And then today we woke up to winter.  Nature pays no attention to humans turning their clocks back.  

Out For A Hike

 

I try not to drive too much and an Alaskan hazard has kept me from using my car as we await a new windshield.  The car spent much of the winter in the neighbor's driveway, which is much wider than ours.  But sometime during its stay, an icicle crashed down from above and made a very impressive web of cracks right in front of the driver.  The very center is even leaning in.  I've put clear packing tape all across this creation as we wait for a new windshield to make its way north.  I'm still concerned a good bump would send it all crashing in.  They told us it would be four weeks and I called today because it's overdue.  

So my wife's car got us on our first outing for the season.  McHugh Creek tends to have less snow than Anchorage and is a good first hike.  But it was not as snow free as we had expected.  It was also windy until you get into the woods and a gust grabbed my had and it disappeared.  J is usually pretty good at finding things, but didn't see it at all in amongst the trees.  Another couple came by and they were at the right angle to spot it and retrieve it.  

The view of Turnagain Arm never disappoints.  

The entrance to the parking lot was blocked with equipment and there was a new entrance.  At first I though they were rearranging the entrance, but there was road construction ahead, so I'm guessing they're just storing the equipment in there.  

 The upper parking lot (to the Potter trail) had a lot more snow than I remember from past early hikes.  

And the trail had a lot more snow than we expected.  We ran into a group of Air Force guys out exploring around Anchorage.  They weren't that excited about the snow either.  

Potter Marsh was still mostly frozen.  

From the boardwalk it was still snowy and we only saw a few birds - a goose, a duck, an eagle - all in the air.  

Our very snowy winter and colder than normal April still can't hold off spring too long.  There are tulips and daffodils poking through the soil at home.  

AIFF2022: The Film Makers Went To Chena While It Snows Big In Anchorage - Thursday Schedule

There are fewer films being shown overall this year.  I asked whether this was in part due to the pandemic - there aren't as many films getting made.  John Gamache, the festival co-director wasn't sure how much the pandemic affecting things, but the quality wasn't as high.  But they'd also mentioned the other night that a number of big name festivals hadn't survived the pandemic.  But Anchorage keeps chugging along.  They also decided in this first year getting everyone back together in person it would be better to keep the audience together so the films got more eyeballs and the audience could reconnect for some and just meet new folks for others.  And that's been happening.  Though there are some overlapping films coming up starting Thursday.  Some at the Anchorage Museum and some at the E Street theater.  

So they also scheduled Tuesday and Wednesday film free and instead are taking the film makers to Chena Hot Springs. (The schedule for Thursday is below.)  They hadn't counted on the heavy snow we've gotten.  Aside from hot tubbing in Chena, they're going to have plenty of time to get to know each other on the looooong bus ride, which has gotten longer with all the snow.  It will be one of those adventures that will become more and more fun the longer it is in the past.  It was also mentioned that the Anchorage International Film Festival was name among the best for new film makers.  I've heard that from film makers over the years - how welcoming Anchorage folks are and how they get a chance to meet lots of other film makers.  And how it is a much lower pressure festival - more cooperative than competitive.  So this adventure fits in.  

Meanwhile I got my workout shoveling the driveway.  There's a bit over a foot of snow.  Not that much for some places, but a good amount for Anchorage.  Enough to cancel school today.  Here was my first pathway down to the mailbox.  

Then I decided to make a maze since I was only able to get one shovel full at a time because it was so deep.  (Usually I can push the snow down the hill or across the driveway before tossing it.)  Not particularly efficient, but more fun.  Then the second round it was much easier to get the driveway clear.  

This is a big file so you can click it to enlarge it and read it easier.