Nick And Tyler Bike South

We saw a lot more people heading south by bicycle on this trip than we can remember on past trips to and from Alaska.  I talked to a solo biker at the bakery at Haines Junction Monday.  A key question that seems to come up for bikers is whether to take the Cassiar Highway.  The big negative for the guy in Haines was bears.

Tyler

Tuesday morning when I talked Nick (from Michigan) and Tyler (from Minnesota) at the Deadman Lake campground, I thought I ought to get a photo for a post on biking from Alaska.  They too were weighing whether to go Cassiar and they were also interested in how many bears we'd seen. (Three - two black and a grizzly.)

Nick

Tyler and Nick started out from Anchorage about a week ago and were within easy reach of the Canadian border at their 50 mile a day average.  They're headed for California, but sounded like they'd really like to continue down to Panama. 





We talked to the campground hosts a bit later and they'd heard about some travelers who came across a grizzly eating roadkill shortly after passing a cyclist so the turned around and escorted the biker with the car between the bear and the bike, past the spot.

I mentioned that we'd seen lots of people biking south, but not many north.  Tyler and Nick said that was their experience too.  They've got a couple of months ahead of them and I hope they had better weather heading east from there than we had heading west. 

I said I'd put these pictures on my blog and they told me they had a blog too.  You can get to it here.

Low Clouds and Rain Most of Last Day

We've been pretty lucky with the weather.  We've had rain most days, but just part of the day giving us plenty of time to walk around, takes some short hikes, and enjoy the beautiful scenery. 

This morning started out ok.  The rain that we encountered last night as we entered Alaska and the Deadman Lake campground didn't stop until this morning when we got up and checked out the birds on the lake and talked to some other folks at the campground, but soon it was raining and the clouds blocked out all the spectacular views. 

We'd finished our 24 CD's of The Illuminaries and the other CD's we had just weren't as gripping as the novel about the New Zealand gold rush in 1865 and 66.  It was so good, even after driving several hours, sometimes we stayed in the car to hear the end of the CD. 

Then a yellow light went lit up on my dashboard.  It said 'check.'  We had over 300 miles to go to Anchorage.

The manual said this was the 'malfunction indicator lamp" which goes on when you turn on the ignition and then goes out.  If it doesn't go out 

"or if it should come on while you are driving, this indicates that there is a malfunction in the engine system.  .  . continue driving with reduced power and have the cause corrected promptly by a [sic] authorised Volkswagen dealer or qualified workshop." 

Is 300 miles promptly?  That's probably the nearest qualified workshop unless we divert to Fairbanks which is almost as far.  I called the VW service center in Anchorage.   It could be something like not putting the gas cap on properly.  (I got gas just before it began.)  She asked if the engine was doing anything funny.  No. She said to just keep on driving.   Which we did, but it added a bit of anxiety all the way home.  Especially as I was braking on a long downhill and could smell a burning odor.  Probably the brakes, but that doesn't normally happen. 



After a while we got hungry and we were running out of food.  The US border guard had confiscated two Canadian bought tomatoes.  US ones would have been ok. 

So I got out the loaf of bread we bought yesterday at the Haines Junction bakery, some peanut butter, and cherry preserves.

Indian River Rest Area Alaska July 1, 2013

The rest stop wasn't great, and I have to send the dumpster picture to the governor and let him know that whoever the state has contracted to collect the garbage at this rest stop (at the Indian River) and the next one isn't doing their job. 

This isn't bear damage - the dumpster was just overflowing. 

As we were nearing Anchorage, the clouds lifted and there were even patches of blue and no rain.  It was nice to be out of touch for almost a week and to be spending our evenings and mornings camped in the woods.  We just had to drive, watch the views, stop to stretch our legs along lakes, rivers, and mountain trails, and to meet other travelers along the way.  I've got a lot of pictures that I'll try to add some shortly. 

Q: Who Was The Greatest Wrestler Of All Time?

A:  Milo of Croton (according to  listverse)

"Most historians agree that Milo remains to this day the greatest wrestler and fighter (from any combat sport) the world has ever known. Milo of Croton became an Olympic champion several times during his nearly thirty-year career. His size and physique were intimidating, and his strength and technique perfect—and many people accordingly believed that he was  the son of Zeus."

Perseus tells us more:

"According to our ancient sources, Milo enjoyed showing off his unrivaled strength. For instance, he would clasp a pomegranate in his hand and have others try to take it away from him. Even though he was holding it so tightly that no one could remove it, he never damaged the fruit. Sometimes, he would stand on a greased iron disk and challenge others to push him off of it. Another of his favorite exhibitions was tying a cord around his forehead, holding his breath, and breaking the cord with his bulging forehead veins. Other times, the wrestler would stand with his right arm at his side, his elbow against him, and hold out his hand with thumb pointed upwards and fingers spread. No one could successfully bend even his little finger. "

A Princeton webpage tells us he is supposed to have been close to Pythagoras:

"Milo was said to be an associate of Pythagoras. One story tells of the wrestler saving the philosopher's life when a roof was about to collapse upon him, and another that Milo may have married the philosopher's daughter Myia."

Driving Up The Violated Cassiar

Just a quickie from Dease Lake.


We stopped at Kinaskan Lake along the Cassiar Highway yesterday.  The weather was comfortably warm with more blue than clouds.







The sun went down about 10pm.  Here are some pictures of the lake from our campsite.

Late Afternoon

About Sunset

This Morning

It started raining before we got up this morning and this last picture is from the same spot as the previous two.

We first went up the Cassiar in 2000.  It was spectacularly beautiful.  Much of the road was dirt and our car got very muddy.  

Last fall when we drove down, we were startled by huge powerlines going up in the southern part of the road.

This time sickened is more appropriate than startled.  For 400 kilometers they've bulldozed huge areas along the road to put up powerlines.  I need to do more research - I did talk to two locals - but it really looks like this is about mining needs, not local needs.  Very few people live along this highway.  And the ugly, disgusting way they've trashed the landscape is appalling.  I hope to find out more about what this is all about.  This was once an incredibly beautiful landscape.  

 

This is one picture of the destruction along the once pristine Cassiar Highway.  It's like this for almost 200 miles.

Canada's New Anti-Spam Law and Supreme Court First Nations Land Claims Decision

Driving back to Alaska means seeing the world through Canadian eyes for several days.  A couple of big stories include a Supreme Court decision in favor of First Nations land rights that seems to have major consequences.  From the CBC:

The Supreme Court decision on Thursday granting the land claim of a B.C. First Nation is not only a game-changer for many aboriginal communities across the country, but also for the government and the resource industries.

• First Nations 'ecstatic' over historic Supreme Court ruling
• Visit CBC Aboriginal

The unanimous ruling granted the Tsilhqot’in First Nation title to a 1,700-square-kilometre area of traditional land outside its reserve, marking the end of a decades-long battle.
But it also clarified major issues such as how to prove aboriginal title and when consent is required from aboriginal groups, which will affect negotiations on major projects such as the Northern Gateway pipeline.

And Tuesday, which also happens to be Canada Day, a Canadian anti-spam law takes effect.  From the government's anti-spam legislation website:

When the new law is in force, it will generally prohibit the:

• sending of commercial electronic messages without the recipient's consent (permission), including messages to email addresses and social networking accounts, and text messages sent to a cell phone;
• alteration of transmission data in an electronic message which results in the message being delivered to a different destination without express consent;
• installation of computer programs without the express consent of the owner of the computer system or its agent, such as an authorized employee;
• use of false or misleading representations online in the promotion of products or services;
• collection of personal information through accessing a computer system in violation of federal law (e.g. the Criminal Code of Canada); and
• collection of electronic addresses by the use of computer programs or the use of such addresses, without permission (address harvesting).

Michael Geist at the Toronto Star looks at three issues people have with the new law, and points out that some of their issues suggest they may not be in compliance with a previous anti-spam law.

We're in the Skeena Bakery in New Hazelton.  We watched loons and swallows and redwing blackbirds at Tyhee Lake this morning early.  [Pictures up now here.] On up the Cassiar Highway when we leave here.

We Should Be Somewhere Between the Canadian Border and Prince George

We leave Seattle shortly.  Our little camper is packed and we're driving it home.  Don't know when we'll get our next internet connection so I'm scheduling this for later today.  It's US -0 and Germany - 0 as I write this. 

Looking forward to a relaxing drive home.  We've got The Luminaries on CD - 30 hours worth - to listen to.  Eleanor Catton's novel won the Man Booker Prize in 2013 which bodes well. 

Great Alaskan Walt Parker Departs

Walt Parker June 2011

I met Walt Parker when I first arrived in Anchorage in 1977 because he was active in the local American Society for Public Administration (ASPA).  He has been supportive of whatever I was working on since then and a constant inspiration of how to be a great human being.  


I just learned this evening that he died this afternoon.  I just need to say a few things here off the top of my head about him and what an amazing man he was and life he led.

He served in China and the Burma Road as a pilot in World War II.  He told me once that he got contact lenses so he wouldn't be kept out of the air force.  I didn't even know they existed back then.  They certainly must have been uncomfortable before all the fancy wetting solutions became available.

He came to Alaska from San Francisco as I recall, after WW II, and worked out in very rural Alaska with the FAA.  He was a bush pilot, lived in a log cabin, and mushed dogs.

He acted in the Anchorage Community Theater in the 50s and was on the Anchorage borough assembly.  He was head of the Exxon-Valdez Oil Spill Commission and has been on the Arctic Commission regularly flying to places like Siberia and Greenland and Iceland.  He helped the Australians develop distance education.  There was something else he did in Mongolia. 

You could mention any place in the world and not only had he been there, he'd done important projects there and could tell you about the politics and economy and history.  I consider myself extremely lucky to have had him in my life and as a mentor and guide as well as a friend.  He was my google before there was a google.

I'd bump into him out skiing with his dogs on the Campbell Airstrip trail in his late 70s and probably early 80s. 

Walt believed in honest government, justice, fairness, decency, and education.  He was smart and wise and always ready to stand up for the public and for reason.

I've had a fair amount of experience with people in their 80's and 90's in the last ten years and life can be good as long as you're reasonably mobile and still have your faculties.  Walt had all his faculties, but he was getting noticeably frailer in the last year, though he did drive himself over to our house not too long ago.  I'd like to think he checked out while he was still himself and before he became a burden on others.  But there's a big hole in my heart today. 

These are just a few quick random thoughts.  You can see a better organized bio of Walt here.

I decided I needed to double check on this and called another friend who knew Walt well and he told me Walt died at home with all his family around.  

More Playground Gender Thoughts

I'm wandering off into unfamiliar territory here, but humor me.  I'm just exploring thoughts that arose from some playground time this past weekend.  

Saturday I was at a playground in an upscale area of San Francisco with my granddaughter.  She was wearing pants and a t-shirt.  Invariably, other parents, told their kids things like, "Be careful of the little boy."

I started looking around.  My granddaughter is barely 17 months old and already her clothes mark her as a boy or a girl.  Her hair is still mostly fuzzy.  Her face doesn't give her away.  But everyone assumed she was a boy.  Just because she had on pants and a T shirt - nothing frilly, no flowers, a little baseball cap with a frog. 

The next day we were at the same playground, but she was wearing clothes that identified her as a girl - the pants were more like tights and didn't go below the calf.  Her shirt had a pattern and was more like a smock than a t-shirt.  Yet one four year old girl who started talking to her in a big sisterly oh-how-cute way, suddenly pulled back and said, "She's wearing boys' shoes."  Boys' shoes?  I looked around.  The girls had more colorful shoes, with patterns and designs on them.  My granddaughter had sturdy walking shoes. 

I started looking around more carefully.  I'm not sure there's boys' clothes as much as there are girls' clothes.  By that I mean, the clothes the boys wore would be perfectly ok on a girl, but the girls' clothes wouldn't be perfectly ok on a boy.  So, if you aren't wearing 'girl' clothes, you are by default wearing boys' clothes.  It seems boys' clothes are more practical and girls' clothes are more colorful and showy. 


My daughter consciously dresses her daughter in non-gender specific clothes because she's read studies that say girls and boys are treated differently by strangers as soon as they have any identifiable gender marker - say pink or blue clothing.  People, she says, tend to comment on what girls look like  and on what boys are doing. 

Finding those studies is proving hard on google.  The blogger at A Haircut and a Shave
after having similar reactions to her daughter, pondered whether people could tell the difference between girl and boy infants by their faces.  She found studies of adult faces (adults can tell most of the time) and older kids' faces (adults can tell 75% of the time, though little kids were less successful.)  But she couldn't find such a study of infant faces. 

She also found a study

which asked mothers to estimate their 11-month-old son's or daughter's crawling skills and predict how their child would perform in a new crawling task up and down some sloped surfaces.

Interestingly, the mothers of baby girls significantly under-estimated their daughter's skills and future performance, while the mothers of baby boys significantly over-estimated their son's skills and future performance on the crawling task.  When the researchers actually measured the baby's skills and performance on a crawling task, there was absolutely no difference between the boys and girls.  The mothers were wrong; and not just wrong, but systematically wrong on the basis of their baby's gender.

She also supports my comments about clothing:

Meantime, I can say that I think the super-gendered baby clothes that dominate stores are just silly.  It can be so difficult to find clothes that aren't blue or pink, especially for very young babies.  

 Clearly, the big difference between girls and boys has to do with different parts in their pants.  But do those anatomical parts really define everything else in their lives?  Based just on this clothing review, it seems to me that our society (and probably most others)

• makes a big deal about the differences between boys and girls 
• expects different things from them
• treats boys more as doers and girls more as objects of display

The environmental impacts surely play as big a role and the genetic impacts.  

Teaching Little Girls To Beat Women

I was pushing Z on the swing at the park when the people hosting a birthday party there hung up a piñata in the image of a woman from the swing set. 


There was a line of four year old girls and one boy.  They were each given the purple stick and told to hit the piñata, but it soon became "hit the woman."

Hit her head.

Hit her arms.

Hit her legs.

Harder.

The girls seemed a bit timid at first.  They didn't hit very hard and looked around as if they were uncertain about what they were doing.

The little boy had no qualms and really creamed her.

But the piñata was well made and the candy was well protected so they went through the line three or four times.

I kept thinking, aren''t any of the adults questioning the appropriateness of asking little girls to beat up an image of a woman?  There are plenty of piñatas that are shaped as stars or other geometric figures.  I've always liked the idea of piñatas, but this party left me with a very different feeling about them.

I'm not sure if this has any impact on these girls or not, but it has an impact on me.  I'd also mention that the piñata was finally broken open and along with toys and candy, lots and lots of colorful confetti fell out and the confetti blew all over the place.

Z watched the whole event while she was swinging.  I don't know what she was thinking, but she had a very serious look on her face.  

This is San Francisco.  I thought people here were supposed to be more aware.

Blogging Bennies - San Francisco Interior Greenbelt

Ben of San Francisco commented on a post the other day from San Francisco to tell me there was a greenbelt just behind the hospital where my grandson was born.  And after we helped him get ready to come home, we had a little time before heading to the airport to pick up my granddaughter and her parents.

So we went to the Interior Greenbelt.  We drove up Stanyan to 17th as Ben suggested and couldn't see anything but houses.  But I knew he wouldn't have made it up, so I parked and when we walked down, we found these stairs.




We walked up and into the greenbelt.

It's this wonderful wilderness in the middle of the city - basically eucalyptus trees, but others as well.

We heard lots of different kinds of birds, saw them flitting around.  There were two hummingbirds for sure.

There were some big tree stumps.  This is about 1/4 of this stump.

 

Here's a glimpse out into the city at the end of our short walk.

And at the end I looked around for more signage and found this on the street below the steps.  It's got a map, so if you're in San Francisco - particularly if you're near UCSF Parnassus - you can easily go visit.  We only had time for a tiny part of the trail system.  What a great break.  But now my little Z is with us and we spent a lot of time playing in the park today. 

Thanks Ben!