Bicycle Alaska 2008: Introduction

BICYCLE ALASKA, 2008

by

John Berry


INTRODUCTION:

There are always many reasons why one attempts a strenuous journey or any other activity that taxes one's physical or mental abilities. In the extreme it can be to prove that the thing is possible: more often it is merely to prove that you yourself can do it. It can be to create space away from people and mundane worries to meet a spiritual need. It can be because you really enjoy the activity, or because one needs to live "on the edge". It may be that you have always wanted to go to a place, or that there are people you want to visit there, and travel by air seems to spoil the point of a journey, which is largely in the going. The project in question may also be part of a larger, longer term, project. In the case of a long bicycle tour, it may also be that you want to save money, though I think that touring by bicycle is not really cheaper than doing the same journey by car. What you save in gasoline you spend on huge meals and for accommodation.

All these reasons apply to my tour of Alaska and the Yukon this summer: my brother Ted lives in Alaska, as does my best friend in the Geology program at the University of Pennsylvania, Milt Wiltse. Ever since I passed through the State on my way to Ice Island T-3 in 1963 I have wanted to see more of Alaska, and ever since I read the poems of Robert Service and "The call of the Wild" by Jack London I have wanted to see what the Yukon really looked like. Also, this is the second leg of my bicycle journey across the entire accessible continent of North America.

Therefore I prefer to think of this summer's adventure not as a long bicycle tour, but as a tour of Alaska and the Yukon by the best means available, including aeroplanes and the Alaska Marine Highway (ferries), as well as standard gauge and narrow-gauge railway lines, followed by a bicycle journey home. Incidentally, during the latter I crossed the only two Canadian provinces that I had not previously traveled in, as well as briefly visiting the only American state that I had not yet seen – North Dakota. An overview of my route is shown on the map below

There are seven installments in this account. At the moment (15 Sept, 2008), Sections 3 and 7 have no content. Section 3 will detail my visits to Barrow and Bethel by air, as well as the train trip from Fairbanks to Anchorage, and Section 7 covers the trip southwards from Winnipeg to Austin.

I have tried to write for both my friends at home and for my fellow cyclists. For the accounts of some of the latter see:

http://members.tripod.com/gohike/bikeak.html: describes a trip made by Dave Brock in 1987.
http://crl.ucsd.edu/~buff/alaska/: photos by as guy called Bob from a supported 1998 trip.
http://alaskabikeblog.blogspot.com/: blog by Tim, a year-round Anchorage biker. Lots of links.
http://www.cyclingaroundtheworld.nl/alaska/ie_alaska.htm this is an information site with links to many others.

For this reason I do not describe just the road and the events of the road, but also give details about the things that interested me: the geology, industry, history, the people that I met, and as much about the vegetation as I am competent to write. Most of the research for this I have done on the web.

This is a first draft, and one section is still more-or-less exactly as I sent it by e-mail. The other sections have been expanded on and cleaned up. I am sure that some passages will be tedious to many people, and that I will sound by turns pompous and wimpy, depending on whether I am spouting science or complaining about the weather. However, I hope that my readers will get a feel for what it is like to cross a continent by bicycle, and perhaps also a feel for the variety of landscapes and people along the way.

Figure 1: My bicycle journeys across North America. 2008 trip in red.




Compared with my trip north from Texas to Labrador four years ago through the eastern part of the continent, this trip involved more mountainous terrain and was shorter (5,000 miles vs 6,300 miles) and more hurried (105 days vs 154 days). On that trip my average daily ride was 63 miles; on this trip it was 74 miles, representing an additional hour of actual pedaling each day. On the last trip I rode every inch of the way, even though I embroidered the main thread with some loops in hired cars when the weather was unpleasant. During this trip I accepted or cadged several lifts for a variety of reasons: my health (I am now 67 years old and suffer from Atrial Fibrillation), mechanical problems with the bicycle, or dangerous road conditions. All of these were enhanced by the fact that I had a fairly tight deadline, so that waiting out an episode of "A. Fib." or waiting for bicycle parts did not seem like smart options. However, on this trip I made no loops by car but did use trains for three very pleasant stages in Alaska. Both journeys involved extensive voyages by ferry, because along the intricate coastlines at both glaciated extremities of the continent there are many communities and places of interest on peninsulas and islands that can only be reached by sea. These ferry trips were some of the best parts of each trip, in terms of the scenery, the wildlife seen, and the fun and interesting people I met.

The statistics of this summer's trip are summarized in the table below:
.......................................................Miles .....Kilometers

Total Distance Ridden ...............5018 .......8030
Days on Bicycle ...............................68
Average Daily Mileage ...................74 ...........118
Longest Day's Ride (July 25th) ..113 ...........181

Total Nights ..........................Number .........% of total
.....Under Canvas ......................38................. 36%
.....Hotels/Motels .....................36................. 34%
.....In Hostels............................. 16................. 15%
.....With friends and relatives. 15 .................14%

Tires and Parts Replaced: Number

Number of Punctures: ................3
No. of tires replaced:.................. 3
Other parts replaced: Rear Wheel
.........................................Front derailleur

Bicycle Alaska 2008: Instalment 5

BICYCLE ALASKA, 2008

by

John Berry



Instalment 5: Dawson Creek, BC to Saskatoon, SK.

Hello All: As several people pointed out, the last message, from Battleford, SK, was empty. This was because I goofed and had no time to correct the goof. Here is the continuation of my trip from Dawson Creek to Saskatoon. I will bring you up to date on theSaskatoon-Winnipeg leg later. John
______________________________________________

This instalment of my blog has been cursed - I am in Winnipeg now at my friend Stan Korowski's house, and we just had a power outage that destroyed an hour's work. The section below with short lines is the part that I failed to finish in Battleford ten days ago. The final part of the message brings the story up to date from the time I left BC.

Well, I am totally incompetent today, and can only blame exhaustion. The last episode was sent from Dawson Creek, BC, on completion of the Alaska Highway. This instalment gets me to Battleford, Saskatchewan, a very historic town in the heart of the Canadian Prairie. Relative to my adventures in Alaska, the Yukon, and B.C., this has been an uneventful section, marked more by strenuous exertion against headwinds and encounters with giant trucks than by tough hills, bears and bugs. Leaving Dawson Creek I got caught in yet another heavy shower on very muddy roads at Pouce Coupe (the Cut-down Flea??), resulting in a garishly filthy appearance for the rest of the day. However, I did try to take a photograph of the beautiful, rolling Peace River country and its patchwork of bright yellow Canola and green hay and wheat, with a really dramatic sky above it. Just south of here was a little Memorial Park and campground for the Sudeten Pioneers, but it contained no explanation of the who's and why's of their migration. After this park the last 10 miles of road in BC were truly dangerous: the riding shoulder was useless as it was covered with gravel, so one had to ride on the narrow, 2-lane road itself. This was populated by a constant stream of heavy oilfield equipment on 30-wheeler trucks, and large RV's. At the Alberta border I met two young men taking a break on their way up from Pittsburgh, PA, to Anchorage. They had been battling headwinds across most of the continent.

On leaving them I noticed that the number of "floaters" blurring my vision seemed larger than usual, and some seemed suspiciously organized, reminding me of the pattern that appeared when my retinas tore. On reaching the little Alberta town of Hythe, drenched in yet another rainstorm, I enquired about seeing a doctor. It turned out that there was a "Surgery" of sorts (i.e. the doctor was in from 8.00-10.00 pm) down the road in Beaverlodge. However, unlike the good old days, I would have to pay an Emergency Room fee of $369 to see him, and then his fee: all would have to be in cash or credit card, and no insurance could be filed. I therefore evaluated the new floaters and decided that the risk that they were related to a retinal tear was small enough that a doctor's visit could wait until I got to the next big town, Grande Prairie (population 39,000 and growing rapidly). So I spent the night in the nice campground at Beaverlodge, and in the morning rode the 30 miles in to Grande Prairie, where I spent too long in their excellent museum before going to the eye doctor's. This was unlike anything I had ever seen before - huge, with about 8 doctors and a very large opticians' area.

The doctor agreed with me that there was no new retinal tear, but did tell me that new floaters could result from vibration or shaking of the head. So it was significant that I noticed them after riding the roughest ten miles of highway on the whole trip – 10 miles marked by having to repeatedly cross and re-cross the rumble strip. I walked out of the doctor's office into bright sunshine with my eyes dilated and the usual plastic excuse for emergency sunglasses. After having a meal at A&W, as in the root beer, but there is a very extensive chain of restaurants with this name in Canada, I set off eastwards on a quiet highway. However, a thunderstorm appeared to my right and gradually closed in on me, until I was forced by it, and the lack of accomodations for many more miles, to stop at Bezanson, where I ate dinner at the local diner and rigged a camp-site in the local baseball dugout.

The next morning I tried to adjust my very badly out-of-whack front derailleur. All of a sudden there was a loud report, and the thing went slack – an internal spring had broken. I decided to hitch a lift into Valleyview, the next town, where people said there was a bike shop, Robb's Sports. A trucker, Willie, offered to take me in. He was hauling two trailers of molten sulfur in a typical western Canada 30-wheeler. We strapped the bike to one side of his truck, and off we went. Willie was very talkative, and was a Mennonite from the community at High Level, off to the north. He had been married at 18 to a 17-year-old girl, and they had 4 kids. He had a 7th grade education, and the family spoke Plattdeutsch at home, as did the rest of the community. I had seen such a family in the doctor's office the previous day, only that family had had 8 children. Willie was 27, his father 49, and his grandfather 70. Willie regarded the modern Mennonites as being too concerned with material possessions, but admitted that he was as much enmeshed in the material world as anyone. In Valleyview he dropped me off, but Robb had no suitable parts, so we just removed the broken gear shift and I set off again.Fortunately, there were very few steep hills between Valleyview and Edmonton, so I did fine without it. However, this road, Alberta 43, the continuation of the Alaska Highway, was very busy with 30-wheeler trucks. I estimated that about three-quarters of these were related to the oil industry - rigs, tanks, tankers, etc. There were also a fairly large number of heavily loaded logging trucks near Whitecourt. The noise and sudden gusts of wind were offset by the high quality of the Alberta roads and their riding shoulders.

The night of July 17th I spent at a campground in Meyerthorpe, planning to have breakfast the next day in San Gado, a small town 10 miles away. San Gado turned out to be off the highway and I could see no restaurant from the road, so I kept going. There was a little town marked every 10 miles on the map, and I was getting close to Edmonton, so I felt sure I would soon have a good breakfast. However, the next town, Cherhill, had no restaurant, and neither did the next, and by the time I found a restaurant attached to the Esso station at Gunn, I had gone 40 miles and was beginning to weaken. While I was eating in Gunn a storm that I had been trying to outrun broke upon us, and I was stuck there for two and a half hours. During that time I watched one of the few near-violent confrontations that I have seen in Canada. A lady who owned a restaurant in downtown Gunn, which, as is typical in western Canada, is a kilometer off the main road, came to stridently complain that the owners of the restaurant I was in had destroyed her advertising sign. This the Korean owner of "my" restaurant equally loudly denied, and pointed out that her sign had been on his property, anyway, and she had no right to advertise a competing business on his property. Our cook got involved and there were threats and counterthreats.

When the storm cleared I took a diversion around Lac Ste. Anne and through the resort community of Alberta Beach, where the lakeshore was lined with very swish summer "cottages".I came out on the main TransCanada Highway, and by evening was in Edmonton. It turned out that even the Motel 6 cost $145 per night, so I called Ingrid and asked her to go on line and find the cheapest hotel in the central area and book it for me through Travelocity. This she did, but due to the incompetence of a newly-hired desk clerk and the delay in Travelocity bookings showing up in the hotel's system, not only was the first room I was assigned un-cleaned from the previous occupant, but we have been charged twice! Everywhere in Alberta and western Saskatchewan waitresses and store clerks would answer my questions about prices or menu items with "I don't know, I have only been on the job two (or one or three) days." I eventually discovered that the natural resources boom has created such a job shortage that employers are offering even unskilled workers bonuses to sign up. This has resulted in employees hopping from job to job, collecting sign-up bonuses but never working at any one place for more than a few days. Hotel prices are vastly inflated because oil rig crews get a $180/day cost-of-living allowance, and the hoteliers have figured out that it costs them about $40 to eat. The other $140 is available to spend on a room. The smart roughnecks are camping out in tents or secondhand trailers in municipal campgrounds for $5-$10 per night. Roughnecks earn $350 for an 8 hour shift, with typically several hours of 1 1/2 or double time overtime, so they are taking home up to $100,000 per year. Alberta alone has 300,000 jobs going begging for lack of people to do them.

I was going to spend Saturday, July 19th, as a rest day in Edmonton to tour the city, but in the event I just found my way across the High Level Bridge, a spectacular crossing of the Athabasca River, which is incised several hundred feet in a gorge, to Red Bicycle, who replaced my front derailleur. I then left the city via Broadway and 82nd Avenue, a very "hip" shopping street, rather than pay for another expensive night in a hotel. At the little town of Tofield a rainstorm caught me, so I went into the library to check on my e-mail. While there I made enquiries about Lutheran Churches in the area and was told by a young lady who had been married in it that there was a very nice one in the town of Viking. When the storm was over the wind had become a headwind (which lasted the next three days, until I reached Battleford, in Saskatchewan: this was a tough 200 miles). After a long slog I stopped at the hotel in the town of Holden for dinner, and found that the cook there was a young and rather pretty lady from Newmarket, in Suffolk, England, a few miles from where I grew up.

I then went to the municipal campground, where there only two RV's. I called Ingrid, but the reception was bad and I had to walk around the site to try to find a "sweet spot", and was near one of the RV's while telling her that I intended to go to the Lutheran Church in the very Scandinavian-sounding town of Viking the next day. When I finished the couple from the RV asked why I was going to a Lutheran Church, and I explained Ingrid's background. The man then asked me where I was from, and mentioned that he had spent his very early life in the Isle of Man. He had only been back once, and was from the south of the island, and therefore did not know the area around Ramsey, where I had spent my summer holidays, or the Dhooar School, which I attended for a year back in 1947.

He also told me that he was a glass technologist, and I mentioned that I had had some glass-blowing equipment that belonged to my father. He then asked my father's name, and when I told him his eyes lit up and he started to tell me chapter and verse about what my father had done when he worked at Pilkington's (owners of Pittsburgh Plate Glass) from 1936-1942, there. I knew that my dad had perfected the float glass process that enables the modern style of glass-curtain walled office building, but this man, John Arniel, told me that he was also responsible for some of the earlier steps in the development of this process as well, in addition to the development of laminated glass and toughened glass. He told me that he had taught glass technology and that my Dad's achievements were all part of the historical introduction to the first year course, and that Pilkington's had put out a huge history of glass that detailed them. When I then mentioned that he had left Pilkington's to work on the Jet engine project in Rugby, he not only told me that Dad was responsible for the design of the Spitfire windshield, but that he had worked on ceramic turbine blades for the jet at Lodge Plugs, which I did not know. He then told me that Dad had been heavily involved with the development of new alloys for Naval propeller shafts when he was at Manganese Bronze in Ipswich. I knew that Dad had a Royal Navy underwater test facility off Felixstowe where alloy rods were placed under huge stress to see when and how they would fail, but had not known that it was specifically directed at material for prop shafts. All in all, this conversation left me very shaken: to have a chance-met complete stranger tell me reams of stuff about my own father that I did not know, and to have it mesh so nicely with what I did know, was spooky enough: but to realize that Dad was a much more important scientist (or technologist) than even his own Obituarist, Ray Patterson, knew, was even more spooky. Ray knew only about Dad's work at Manganese Bronze: Dad must have left his work at Lodge Plugs and Pilkington's so completely behind that it had never even occurred to Ray to look it up. Church at Viking was very nice, and I was treated to lunch afterwards by Don and Valerie Erickson.

That night I stopped at Irma for dinner, and went in the bar for a beer. One fellow was wearing a "Canada, eh?" T-Shirt, and I mentioned that I would like to buy one like it for a souvenir. He ripped it off his back and insisted on giving it to me. Another person insisted on paying for my meal, and Morley Muldoon invited me to stay the night at his place. Unfortunately, the headwind meant that I could not reach Morley's place before nightfall, so I spent the night in the municipal campground at Fabyan.The next night, Monday, I spent in the hotel at the little town of Marsden after a very hot day (33 deg C). There I was able to dry out the fly to my tent, which was soaked by dew at Fabyan, and to avail myself of the very reasonably-priced laundry service offered by the hotel - the Laundromat in the larger town of Wainwright, near Fabyan, had been closed because their parking lot was being repaved. While eating lunch at Wainwright I met the cast members of the Canadiana Musical Theatre Company, from Vancouver. They had been putting on a musical in Wainwright, a railroad town, about the history of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

I ate dinner at the Chinese restaurant in Marsden, but could not stomach the Ginger Beef, which was dried out and tough, and tasted as if it had been left out for two or three days. The owner got very upset at me for sending it back, but did not charge me. Dale Wayne, at the hotel, told me that all the local farmers went to this same restaurant for coffee in the morning. One of them had the key and opened it up, and coffee was on the honor system. So in the morning I joined them in spite of the ginger beef. I stopped for breakfast at Neilburg, the next town, by which time their restaurant was officially open and serving food. Otherwise it looked the same as, and had the same kinds of customers as, the one in Marsden.

From there it was a long haul against the wind to Cut Knife, scene of a defeat of the Mounties by Poundmaker's Indian forces. The previous night Kevin Murphy had told me there was a very nice store just before Cut Knife, Wilbert's. This was rare in Canada: a store along the road and not in any settlement. I stopped there, and the proprietress, JoAnne, was indeed a very gracious host for lunch. It turned out that Kevin had been past twice already during the morning to let her know that I was coming and to find out whether I had been there! From Cut Knife it was a long hot slog across somewhat more hilly country to Battleford. I expected the last part of the ride to be more with the wind, because the road turned south. But the tricky wind also turned south, and the last part of the ride into Battleford was, if anything, more tiring. I checked into the Motel there and went to the library where I had such a terrible time trying to do my blog. On Tuesday morning I went to the local museum: Battleford had been one of the most important early settlements in Saskatchewan, and capital of the NW Territories for a time. The Mounties had a major early post at Fort Battleford. So the museum was interesting. I then went to the Fort, where a very bad storm caught me and the rest of my group of tourists. The bicycle was parked on the "wrong" side of the Park HQ so the driving rain soaked it thoroughly, and I was soaked as well, but lunch back in town helped that. At 2 p.m. I set out for Saskatoon, with a strong favorable NW wind, and covered the 87 miles in 5 hours. At Saskatoon hotels were also horrendously expensive (Motel 6 = $105), so I rode back a kilometer and stayed at a commercial campground. Even this cost $24.50, for which I got a patch of grass between two RV sites, and not even a picnic table. A partially-serviced RV site was $26.00, so I wondered aloud what I was actually paying for, which was a mistake.

At Saskatoon I stopped by a bicycle shop to get the new derailleur re-adjusted, had a very nice cup of coffee at a sidewalk coffee shop while I read the tourist information, and visited the Anglican cathedral and the Ukrainian Museum. On leaving the Museum I was stopped by a person who wanted to know all about my trip. This turned out to be Kim Fehr, a member of the Saskatoon Police Force, who had done a transcontinental bike trip in his youth and was thinking of doing another one in the next year or so with his wife. I ate lunch at Alexander's, on the University campus, where I had a meal with more nutritional value than the usual fare of hamburger and fries, and continued on my way. In trying to get out of the city while avoiding main roads I got into a suburb where the streets were not rectilinear, and had to stop a passing cyclist to ask directions. This person, Doug Gilmore, volunteered to lead me to the Yellowhead Highway. He left me and I started off towards Clavet. I was nearly there when a little white car came past and stopped. It was Doug Gilmore and his wife Janelle, who wanted to make sure that I knew about Saskatoon berries and had brought me a present of a pound or so of them. They showed me a piece of a bush so that I would be able to identify and pick them in the wild, for they are now in season. I had seen signs offering "U-pick berries" or "U-Pick Saskatoons", but had assumed that these would be raspberries, etc., as Doug and Janelle had rightly surmised that I would if I were not specifically clued in. The blueberry-like berries are, in fact, delicious.There is more to tell between Saskatoon and Winnipeg, but I will end here because this is already long and time is a-flying, and I have described some of the most wonderful experiences that have happened so far on the trip.

Bicycle Alaska 2008: Instalment 4

BICYCLE ALASKA, 2008

by

John Berry


Instalment 4: Fairbanks, AK, to Dawson Creek, BC

Dear Friends and Family: This will be very brief. The last messages were sent out while I was staying with my brother Ted and his wife Pam in Bethel, Alaska. We had a wonderful time together for a week, and then I flew back to Anchorage and rode down the Kenai Peninsula to the very end, at Homer. I spent one night freezing on top of a pass, at an abandoned state campground 1 mile short of the real one. Then had two flat tyres the next day. I had to hitch- hike one 20-mile section of the road as there was very heavy holiday traffic and no shoulders on a two-lane winding road. At Soldotna I heard Hobo Joe, the reigning monarch ofAlaskan Country music, perform, and at Ninilchik I attended Saturday evening service at a beautiful Russian Orthodox Church. The Priest and most of the confgregatiuon were Native Americans. From Homer I took the ferry to Kodiak and back, seeing many Humpback Whales and Sea Otters on the way. This is a very pretty trip, and Kodiak Island would be worth a longer visit. I returned to Portage, near Anchorage, on a little bus, and then got a lift through the rail/road tunnel to Whittier. This is a very unique town: 90% of the population live in one big block of flats, and the other 10% live in another smaller block. There are many more businesses than residences. From Whittier the ferry goes to Valdez, making an excursion through a field of icebergs to look at the toe of the Columbia Glacier on the way. This was beautiful, in spite of cold and dull weather. At Whittier I met a young Dutch couple on bikes, and we stayed in the same campground at Valdez. They left early in the morning but I toured the Museums and tried to get the forks of my bike tightened. I then cycled over the pass out of Valdez (2720 feet high) and again met the Dutch couple at a campground, along with two young Americans going to Valdez. The Dutch couple and I stayed together until after Glennallen, where they went straight on to Denali and I turned right for Tok. At Mentasta Lake Lodge I woke up to pouring rain and discovered that there was a bus into Tok, so I took it, knowing that I was going to have to hitch-hike tothe Canadian border. At Tok a gold-mining couple named Brooks offered me a lift to Chicken, the road to which is very steep and winding and partially unpaved. After a night in Chicken a Swiss couple offered me a lift to the border. From the border I cycled the Top Of The World Highway to Dawson City. This was the high-point and the low-point of the trip so far. On the one hand I was high, about 4500 feet above sea level, and enjoying beautiful views in all directions across the treeless tundra. On the other hand the road, shown as blacktop on all maps, had mostly been torn up, and was in fact gravel of varying depths. Then, about half-way through the 65 mile ride, it was clear I was going to be caught in rain. Make that lightning and thunder and VERY heavy rain. Nowhere to shelter, nowhere to lean the bike (no trees), nowhere to stop, and lightning all around. I cycled on through mud and fog and rain and dark, noticing at one point a new forest fire (by this time I was out of the tundra) off on my right. By the time I got to Dawson I was one big mud-lump and so was the bike. My last pair of shorts had torn and was flapping forlornly down my leg, my hands were yet again frozen and I was hypothermic. Adding to my troubles at the end I had to stand and wait for half an hour for the ferry to cross the Yukon River to take me into town. Before I could get a shower I had to hose the bicycle and all my panniers, as well as myself, off with a garden hose. I took the bike to Circle Cycle next day and found that my forks, a worry since the beginning of the trip, were easily fixed, but that the grit from the previous day, added to normal wear and tear, had scalloped out the rim of my rear wheel: Tim recommended having one built in Whitehorse while I wason my way there. Also, we found that my speedometer/odometer was not working, because the sensor head had filled with water. After a day and a half in Dawson I set off for Whitehorse. The first night I spent at Beaver Creek, where I met a very interesting group of geologists. The next night was at Pelly Crossing, a very dirty campground patrolled by an Arctic Fox. There I met Hiro, a Japanese cyclist also headed toward Whitehorse, a German cyclist headed up the Dempster Highway to Inuvik, and an Australian/Swiss couple headed in the opposite direction. In the middle of the night either the fox or a porcupine ate the leather handle of my rear pannier, and I didn't get this fixed until Fort St. John. The next day I had bad A. Fib., but still managed to get close to Carmacks. However, I was offered a lift by a couple from Ontario who were at a lay-by talking to Hiro when I rode up in bad shape. They dropped me at Carmacks but also offered to take me into Whitehorse next morning if I needed it. Next morning I woke with very prominent heart beats, still feeling"woosy", and also realized that if they gave me a lift I would be in Whitehorse in time to pick up the rear wheel and medications that Ingrid had sent to me at General Delivery before Canada Day, so that is what I did. Spent Canada Day as a rest day in Whitehorse at the "Jekyll on Hyde" hostel, which was full of people who had just completed the "Yukon Challenge" canoe race from Whitehorse to Dawson. An interesting, very international, group. Left for Watson Lake on the 2nd July, and had an uneventful though strenuous trip, meeting with a young lady who was headed down the Cassiar Highway, and also with another crew of geologists. Much rain on this leg, and attended the Anglican Church in Watson Lake soaking wet. Further uneventful riding down to Liard Hot Springs, which are a wonderful oasis of sybaritic pleasure in the wilderness, and which have wonderful scenery around them. After Liard Hot Springs the road crosses the Northern Rockies, and there are six very steep and long hills. I did the first and second of these, arriving at Muncho Lake just as some very violent weather hit. By this point I was feeling beat and beginning to realize that I would have trouble getting back to Austin in time unless I speeded things up. The next morning, when Jim MacGregor, an Alaska Highway employee, offered me a lift in his pickup to Steamboat Summit, about 80 miles away, I accepted. We passed through some sections of highway that would have been very difficult for me, and I was able to relax and enjoy the magnificent scenery! From Steamboat I cruised into Ft. Nelson, where I had another drug shipment (this one my heart medicine) awaiting me, and then cruised right out for Fort St.John. This section was again strenuous riding, since Fort Nelson is the lowest point on the highway, and Trutch Summit, some 70 miles south, the second highest. However, I managed all the big hills, and spent one more night in the bush. At Wonowon, with Fort St. John almost in sight, I found that my chain was damaged. Since this was at noon on Saturday, I decided to ask for a lift the last 30 miles into Fort. John so that I could get it fixed before the weekend. Ferris Fast cycles did an excellent job, and I bought a new chain there just in case: an irony since I had sent home my spare chain from Fort Nelson because the chain on the bike had been new in Whitehorse and I had assumed that I would not need to change it again - a spare chain is a heavy object to lug around! The last major obstacle on the Alaska Highway is Taylor Grade, a few miles south of Fort St. John. The Peace River here flows through fairly flat country but is deeply incised below it. The grade reaches 10% in places, and I knew that even pushing the bike up it would be a huge effort. An old German chap at the Visitor Center in Taylor offered me a lift, and I took it. From the top it was a relatively easy day into Dawson Creek, mile zero of the Alaska Highway. This morning is a wet morning, apparently long needed, in Dawson Creek. It sounds as if most of this trip was hitch-hiking, but I actually have ridden all but about 150 miles of the Alaska Highway (3 lifts) and all but about 70 miles of the Klondyke Highway (1 lift). The other lifts were to avoid unpaved sections of the highway from Tok to Chicken and the Canadian Border. At my age I have no shame in accepting help! I am also aware that I am behind schedule, and will probably have to take a bus (or other form of transport) for about 300 miles in order to be back in Austin before the end of August, unless everything goes perfectly and all winds are favorable. Hope that all of you are having a good summer.
John

Bicycle Alaska 2008: Instalment 3

BICYCLE ALASKA, 2008

by

John Berry

Instalment 3: Fairbanks, Barrow, Anchorage and Bethel, AK


May 28th (Wednesday): Fairbanks, AK.

Milton A.Wiltse and I were geology students together at Penn, and both rowed lightweight crew in our freshman year. I dropped out of rowing after one year because I wasn't that terrific at it, and also because I had become involved in so many other things at Penn that something had to give. I visited Milt at his family's summer home in the Thousand Islands region, N.Y., in the summer of 1961, and remember his parents as a very gentle and cultured couple. After graduation we lost touch because we went to different graduate schools and then he went to Alaska and I went to Zambia.

Milton and Flora Wiltse and their two huge and friendly dogs live in a very pleasant A-frame type log house in a heavily wooded subdivision north of the University of Alaska. Flora has taught at an elementary school just across the road for years, and Milton has been on the Geology faculty at the University, as well as State Geologist for a number of years. Both are now retired, but still very physically active: Milton was very successful in the University of Pennsylvania crew as an undergraduate, and continued to row for years after he went to Alaska. He still works out every day using weights and doing Nordic walking along the trails above the house. The whole family, including their son, were very keen and competitive cross-country skiers. They were wonderful hosts while I was in Fairbanks: Milt took a lot of time out of his still busy days (he has an office at the University and is heavily involved with using GIS systems to create exploration data bases).

Milt kindly took me around the Institute of Geophysics at the University, and showed me the Museum of the North on campus. This is a modern and very impressive building, with excellent exhibits of 19th and 20th century paintings of Alaska, as well as of Native Alaskan art. The Gallery of Alaska contains areas devoted to the people, wildlife and history of the five major biomes in Alaska. We had lunch at an excellent Thai restaurant with some of Milton's colleagues, and Milt also drove me to the visitor center to investigate trips to Prudhoe Bay, Point Barrow and Anchorage. It was quickly apparent that the only way to see the first two places was by air – any overland trip would take too long and be beyond my budget. It was also clear that any attempt to stay in Denali National Park or to take a tour there would be very expensive.

While we were down town we walked around to see if I could recognize any of the places I had seen while passing through on my way to Ice Island T-3 in 1963, for instance the Northern Lights Hotel. This hotel, in the 400 block of 1st Avenue, had been only 8 years old in 1963, but is now run down and surrounded by parking lots. A couple of blocks away is Courthouse Square, a typical Federal Building of the 1930s in Art Deco style, which I remember as the main Post Office. Round the corner from it is the Co-op Plaza, once a theater but now a two-story indoor Mall. We had a snack in a restaurant there which is run by two generations of a family from Mexico. Back in 1963 the building next door to it was a café which I remember as having a "fuggy" atmosphere and being full of Swedes. In spite of the destruction due to urban renewal projects, which have left downtown as largely a series of parking lots, it was a much more pleasant place than I remember it: sunshine and a slight breeze as against low clouds and a howling, dust-laden wind..

May 29th (Thursday): Fairbanks, AK.

This was largely a shopping day – I got a tune-up done on the bike, and also bought a book, "The Roadside Geology of Alaska", which I sorely needed. Milt bought the book "1491", whose thesis we had been discussing, and presented it to me. I did not have a chance to read it before arriving at home in Texas: in it the author, Charles Mann, argues quite convincingly that the indigenous population of the Americas was a great deal larger than we have been lead by historians to believe, and that it had attained quite a high level of civilization in several different areas, including some, such as the Beni grasslands of the upper Amazon Basin, in which the traces of this high culture have been overwhelmed by nature and ignored by historians. Europeans were able to "take over" both continents relatively easily because their diseases had preceded their attempts at settlement, and in most areas had wiped out a significant (50-90%) of the native population before Europeans actually began settling.

May 30th (Friday): Deadhorse (Prudhoe Bay) and Barrow

I began this summer's trip with some small hope that I would be able to ride the Dalton Highway from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay in spite of the fact that my bicycle is built for riding on tarred roads and is not a good vehicle for gravel roads, especially if the gravel is coarse. By the time I reached Fairbanks it was clear that any such attempt would be foolhardy: I was having too much heart trouble; it was still so early in the year that night-time temperatures would be marginal for my equipment, and I had already damaged my hands severely, probably through frostbite. Furthermore, it would be at least a 7-day trip, and there was not time to do it and still be sure of getting back home to Austin before Ingrid left for Sweden.

I had also started out with a yen to see Barrow again, 45 years after spending a week there on the way out to Ice Island T-3, and this had intensified somewhat because of the update I had received from Andy Williams at the Arctic Research Institute in Kluane on some of the Arctic hands whom I had known. Very conveniently, it turned out that I could visit both places in one day on a single Alaskan Airlines flight from Fairbanks. The air trip also had the potential advantage that I would be able to see the geology clearly displayed beneath me. Alas – in the event this was not to be!

The Boeing 737 lifted off from Fairbanks early in the morning and almost immediately passed over the Fort Knox and True North open-pit gold mines owned by Kinross Gold. The main pit, Fort Knox, is 16 miles NE of downtown Fairbanks, and True North is 11 miles NW of Fort Knox by haul road (http://www.northern.org/artman/publish/knoxp.shtml). The ore is very low grade (0.024 ounces/ton), and occurs in quartz veins, shears, fractures and pegmatites within a granitic intrusion.

There was good visibility over the White Mountains and the broad, braided course of the Yukon River, but the Brooks Range (Philip Smith Mountains in this area) were almost completely cloud-covered, as was the entire North Slope. However, as we approached Deadhorse we got below the cloud ceiling and I could see that the oil field installations covered a much larger area than I had anticipated. The ground was still completely covered with snow, and there was sufficient fast ice along the coast that I could not be certain of the shoreline under the poor lighting conditions.
Fig. 1: The Prudhoe bay Hotel seen from the entrance to the Deadhorse Airport Terminal Building. The dark piles are of dirty melting snow.

Most of the passengers got out at Deadhorse: they were mostly workers for oilfield contracting companies arriving for their duty tours. I got out too, but unfortunately the plane only stayed at Deadhorse for 30 minutes, and so there was no time to leave the airport: I did, however, manage to take a couple of photographs of the Deadhorse Hotel across the way (Fig. 1). My overall impression was of a giant construction camp, with chain link fences everywhere and even the hotel consisting of a pile of factory-built modules. The weather was raw and dull, the temperature just above freezing – shirt-sleeve weather for me, but nearly everyone else was in a parka of some sort.

We could see no trace of the ground or the sea between Deadhorse and Barrow – conditions fairly typical for the Arctic in summer. On landing at Barrow I was mistaken for a scientist visiting the BASC – the old Arctic Research Lab – and on sorting that out I was still offered a lift there in the Consortium's van, and this I happily accepted.

There was very little that I immediately recognized about Barrow: the airport was new (it was built in the late 1960s – my recollection is that the only airstrip was the metal-mesh surfaced one at the Research Lab), and the large insulated pipes alongside the road, carrying water, wastewater and natural gas were new. I had forgotten that at the lab there was a veritable spaghetti bowl of pipes that ran along the ground and then high over all the roads. Pipes everywhere. The huge Radome of the DEW Line station was gone, replaced by a very small one Almost all the buildings at the lab were new, but after being given careful directions I was able to find the old main building (Fig.2) and what I thought was the dormitory building I had stayed in.
Fig. 2: The old main research building at the Naval Arctic Research Lab.(now BASC), Barrow.

The biggest change at the lab, however, was that the Navy had left Point Barrow, and the old Naval Arctic Research Lab was now BASC – Barrow Arctic Science Consortium, which is run by the North Slope Borough (i.e. the regional government), the Ukpeagvik Iñupiat Corporation (owned by the Native people of Barrow), and Ilisagvik College (the local post-secondary college). It shares a large building with the latter.

I was introduced to the Executive Director of BASC, Glenn Sheehan, who immediately gave me a copy of the huge book "Fifty More Years below Zero", a history of the first fifty years of the Arctic Research Laboratory. The book weighs about 5 lbs, and is full of very interesting information, but after scanning it quickly in Fairbanks the very first thing I had to do was mail it back to Austin – impossible to carry it with me on the bicycle! The book's title echoes that of Charles Brower's "Fifty Years below Zero" (Univ.Alaska Press, 1994), describing the author's life in Barrow from the time he arrived as a whaler in 1883.

Everybody in Barrow said that I had to meet Kenny Toovak, since he was the only person still around from the time that I was there. Kenny goes to the lab every day, but I missed him there, and I also missed him at his other regular hang out at the EMS Station. However, I found there a group of older men, speaking in Inupiat and in their distinctively accented English, and playing cards. I asked about the Barrow people who had been on the Ice Station with me, especially Leffingwell. But they were all dead, Leffingwell not so long ago in a tragic accident with his snowmobile. Many of the men had worked at the ARL or on other Ice Stations, and we shared some reminiscences.
Fig.3: Inupiat dancing at the Heritage Center in Barrow.

I went over to the excellent Inupiat Heritage Center, and watched a performance of Inupiat dancing for a group of tourists, who were mainly from Taiwan. The receptionist at the Heritage Center insisted on tracking Kenny down, and before I had seen much of the museum exhibits he arrived. I remembered him vaguely as the foreman of the mechanical Shop at the NARL. I had been sent over to borrow a tool from him, and found him a rather fearsome character: he made no bones about what would happen to me if the tool was not promptly returned!

Fig. 4: Kenny Toovak in front of his house in Barrow.

We talked about the good old days: in the course of the conversation I learned that in 1963 Kenny had been making about $10.00/hour – eight times what I was making ($1.25/hour)!

Kenny offered to show me around Barrow, including the Browerville section across the Esalkuat lagoon from Barrow proper. I soon found that the Barrow I remember had disappeared. In my memory a street pattern was barely discernible, and that the houses were surrounded by what appeared to be midden heaps(Fig. 5)

Fig. 5: The site of the ancient village of Ukpiagvik. The topography is irregular because of the remains of semi-subterranean houses and of midden heaps. My memories of Barrow in 1963 are that the houses were placed on a similar topography. There is no trace of an irregular topography in the presently built-up area.

There are traces of this higgledy-piggledy layout left downtown (see, for example, the aerial photo at

http://irpsrvgis05.utep.edu/baid_ims/viewer.htm), but otherwise one would never believe that

Fig.6: The center of Barrow, showing some houses not aligned with the grid plan. Also shows how the ground has been levelled.

it had existed – the land is flat, the houses are aligned along streets, and most of them are well-built and quite large. I have checked on the web, and there are passing references in documents of the late 1960s to "the recently settled village". On one website a USGS 7.5 minute quadrangle map shows the houses in Barrow apparently randomly distributed (at this scale), whereas those in Browerville are on the same streets that are there today.

Fig. 7: The Presbyterian Church in Barrow.

Further evidence that things may have changed radically in the late 1960s are that the population of the town during the 1890s, when the school, the Presbyterian church (Fig. 7), and the post office were built was less than 150. In fact, according to Milan (1970 - "A Demographic Study of an Eskimo Village on the North Slope of Alaska"), there were only 400 people along the north coast of Alaska between Point Barrow and Point Hope, including both settlements at Barrow.

Apparently, times were very hard during the early years of the twentieth century because commercial whalers had killed all the bowhead whales on which the people depended. The population was further depleted by as much as 100 people in 1911 by a curious, heroic, and little-known episode. There was from about 1893 a Japanese man, Kyosuke Yasuda (http://alaskamininghalloffame.org/inductees/yasuda.php), known as Frank, living in Barrow. He was married to Nevelo, the daughter of Amoaka from Nuvuk, an ancient village on Point Barrow, and was highly respected as a hunter and trader in the community. In 1902 Yasuda formed a partnershipm with Thomas Carter, a prospectore from Montana, to go gold prospecting in and south of the Brooks Range. They made a rich strike in the Chandalar River basin, the motherlode being discovered by Nevelo. A port on the Yukon River was needed to supply the Chandalar mines, and Yasuda selected and established the town of Beaver in 1910. Careful negotiation was needed, because the site was in the territory of the Gwi'chin Athabascans, and they were adamant in defending their game supply. Beaver grew rapidly, and Yasuda and Nevelo returned to Barrow and brought several families out to Beaver. Because the people were so run down from hunger, and especially from the lack of their normal diet (they had been fed sporadically on western tinned food by the government) this overland trip through the mountains took two years. Some of the old people died along the way, but the numbers were made up by new births. Beaver became a truly multi-ethnic settlement, with whites, Inupiat, and two different Indian groups, a lone Japanese. Frank Yasuda was a very generous man, and extremely loyal to his partners and to his clients. His loyalty was rewarded in turn by theirs, and he was held in high regard by all in the Far North, but this could not save him from being interned in 1942 in the lower '48. After the war was over he returned to Beaver, and died there in 1958 at the age of 90. I wish I had known him.

Fig. 8: The new cemetery at Barrow.

Fig. 9: A successful whale-hunting team's umiat and flag on the sea ice at Barrow.

Barrow now has a population of about 4,000 people: it was 4600 in 2000, but only about 1500 when I was there in 1963. The periods of rapid growth were the 1940s (10% yearly, but from a base of only 360 people), 1960s (5% yearly) and 1980s (5%).

In the 1963 Barrow of my memories there were no Government buildings other than the Post Office, and I remember no large stores or banks, even though the web informs me that the Wells Fargo branch, now housed in a beautiful three storey building, was opened in April 1962. Today in Browerville there is a huge grocery, and in Barrow close to the bank is a very impressive Police Station (Fig. 10)and a big City Hall (Fig. 11). Kenny took me to the oldest building in town, the Cape Smythe Whaling station built by Charles Brower in 1885, known as the Browerville Store in 1963, and now as Brower's Restaurant (Fig.12), but we couldn't find the little tea-room where I stopped in 1963. Kenny thought it had

Fig. 10: The rear of the Police Station in Barrow

been pulled down long ago. We drove around downtown, and along the beach to the east, where there are the partially excavated remains of 16 dwelling sites of the Birnirk cultural phase (500-900 AD)(Fig. 5). We also visited the natural gas plant, the local quarry (not much geology was visible) and the new cemetery (Fig. 6)where, unfortunately, the inscriptions on the grave markers all faced away from the road, and the snow was too deep to hike through in sneakers.

Fig. 11: The new City Hall in Barrow
Fig. 12: The old Cape Smythe Whaling Station, now Brower's Restaurant.

Kenny dropped me off in time to eat dinner at Pepe's North of the Border Restaurant, from where I walked back to the airport, arriving back in Fairbanks close to midnight.

May 31st (Saturday): Fairbanks to Anchorage by Train

Once again Milt graciously took me to downtown Fairbanks, and waited while I bought my train ticket and got my bike and baggage checked in. While we were at the station we met Bill Walters, who I had last seen in Sitka. He has still not found the ideal fishing stream in Alaska.

Part of the railroad depot is devoted to a very large and beautifully-built model train layout run by the Tanana ____________________.

We boarded the rear part of the train in brilliant sunshine. The front part was off-limits to us, as it consisted of a series of hermetically sealed coaches belonging to the Holland-America Line and full of cruise ship passengers. Our part of the train was not at all full, so there was enough room for almost everyone to sit in the observation cars, of which there were three, and we had a restaurant car as well. The view from the first observation car along the roofs of the leading carriages gave one the feeling of being in a Hollywood western – it was tempting to imagine oneself walking the length of the train across those roofs! There were two very pleasant young people acting as guides, and the passengers were an interesting and lively lot. Between the scenery, the weather, the guides and the passengers this turned out to be one of the best trips I have ever taken – it was sad when it ended at Anchorage.

The railway line first travels along the southern edge of the University of Alaska campus, and there is some active permafrost in this area of alluvial sediments, making for a slow and somewhat uneven ride. The weather was beautiful, and soon we could see the Alaska Range on our left. The line runs NW up Happy Creek and then follows Goldstream Creek as it gradually bears around to the west and then the southwest, until it finally crosses the Tanana River at Nenana, 44 miles WSW of Fairbanks, on a 700-foot long steel bridge. President Warren Harding drove the golden spike marking completion of the Alaska Railroad here in 1923.

Nenana is a small place, with only about 400 inhabitants, but it has two great claims to fame.

Every year it sponsors the Nenana Ice Classic lottery to pick the date and time, to the closest minute, that spring ice break-up will occur on the Tanana River. This lottery, which is extremely popular all over Alaska, and is now emulated on a smaller scale by several other towns, such as Bethel, began in 1917 when a group of surveyors working for the Alaska Railroad whiled away the wait for the river to open for navigation by forming a betting pool. Over the years since the lottery has paid out nearly $10 million in prize money.
Nenana was also the starting point for the 1925 serum run to Nome. The people of Nome, many of whom were Native Alaskans and had no immunity, were threatened by a diphtheria epidemic that winter. The only available serum was at Seward, on the south coast, and there were no serviceable aerooplanes in which to fly it to Nome. So it was decided to ship it 300 miles by rail to Nenana, and then by dog team from there to Nome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iditarod_Trail_Sled_Dog_Race#Ceremonial_start).

The 20-lb cylinder of serum was passed just before midnight on January 27 to the first of twenty mushers and more than 100 dogs who relayed the package 674 miles (1,085 km) from Nenana to Nome. The dogs ran in relays, with no dog running over 100 miles (160 km).
The Norwegian Gunnar Kaasen and his lead dog Balto arrived on Front Street in Nome on February 2 at 5:30 a.m., five and a half days later. They became such celebrities that a statue of Balto was erected in Central Park in New York City in 1925, where it is a popular tourist attractions. However, most mushers consider Leonhard Seppala and his lead dog Togo to be the true heroes of the run. Together they covered the most hazardous stretch of the route, and carried the serum farther than any other team. The first dogsled races in the modern Iditarod series, founded by Dorothy G. Page, were called the Iditarod Trail Seppala Memorial Race in honor of Leonhard Seppala. The race now starts in Anchorage and covers about 1100 miles.
Nenana is the center of rail-to-river barge transportation for the Interior. Crowley Marine is a major private employer in Nenana, supplying villages along the Tanana and Yukon Rivers with cargo and fuel each summer by barge.

After leaving Nenana the line climbs the gentle slope of the Nenana River cone, reaching the mountain front after 25 miles. From here the scenery becomes spectacular as the railway climbs along the eastern side of the Nenana Gorge for a few miles and then crossing to the west. At the town of Healy the large open cast Usibelli coal mine lies in a canyon on the opposite side of the valley, but only the facilities for loading the coal onto trains are visible from the railway. This mine was the site of the Healy Clean Coal Project in the late 1990s, and lies only 11.5 miles north of the Denali Park Headquarters.. An experimental clean coal power plant was built at a cost of $300million, mostly shared between the Federal and Alaskan governments, but since operating briefly as part of the demonstration program it has been shut down by litigation. There is also a conventional coal-fired power station at Healy.

South of Healy the railway line enters the Nenana Gorge, where we passed several groups of rafters, and for the next ten miles runs just inside the Denali National Park Boundary. The George Parks Highway on the other side of the river is outside the park. Half way along this stretch is the crowded visitor area of the National Park: from the train we could see three or four large hotels squeezed between the road and the river, as well as huge parking lots for the day-trippers and the caravan crowd. The train stopped here and Bill Walters and several others of our congenial group dismounted. Milton Wiltse had advised me that this was an expensive place to stay, whether tenting or not, and was known as "million-dollar alley" by the locals: I had also checked into bus tours, and found out that they did not coordinate with the train schedules, and were indeed expensive. Milton's advice was not to bother to stay here, since Mt. McKinley is only visible one out of every three times, so to be sure of seeing it requires several days. It had been visible the day before, and clouds were building up today, so I stayed on the train, without huge regrets. The area might be worth a dedicated hiking holiday in the future.

South of Denali Village the railway traverses the west end of the strath occupied by the Yanert River, which rises in the Yanert glacier to the east. Base level for this strath is about 2000 feet msl, and the wide glacial valley that the railway follows southward never gets much above this level. My guess is that the Nenana River has captured the drainage of the Yanert in post-glacial times. Thirteen miles south of McKinley Village and 5 miles N of Cantwell the road and railway cross a major south-dipping thrust fault. At Cantwell both road and rail line enter another huge strath, showing the striated topography due to recent deglaiciation. The drainage divide between the Tenana and the southward-flowing Chulitna river is very inconspicuous and is about 10 miles SW of Cantwell. After following the Chulitna valley for another 30 miles the railroad veers off southward through the Indian River valley into that of the Susitna, which it follows all the way down to the town of Willow. This village of 1,700 people was selected as the new capital of Alaska by ballot in 1976, but another ballot proposition allotting the $2.8billion necessary to effect the move from Juneau was defeated in 1982, so the move never happened. Apparently Gov. Sarah Palin is strongly in favor of the move, and makes a point of spending the absolute minimum of time in Juneau. Gov. Palin's home in Wasilla is 22 miles from Willow.

We had not seen much wildlife in the high country, but from Talkeetna onwards the train regularly slowed down for bear and moose sightings. The engineers knew where to look, and when they saw an animal would radio our guides with instructions as to where we should look.
From here into Anchorage the country was heavily wooded, and towns were a regular sight. After leaving Wasilla we crossed the head of the Knik Arm of Cook Inlet and then ran along the NW foot of the spectacular Chugach mountains for the last leg of the journey. Once we got into the low country on the south side of the Alaska range the weather had become cloudy, and when we reached Anchorage it was cool and somewhatr raw.

I collected my bicycle, loaded it up, bid goodbye to the congenial companions of the journey, and rode off to find the Anchorage International Hostel, where I stayed for the next four nights.


June 1st (Sunday): Anchorage

I attended the morning service at the Central Lutheran Church, a very active congregation close to downtown.

I then wandered around downtown, but not much was open, an dfinally bought a combined ticket to the Native Heritage Center and the Anchorage Museum. Took a little bus out to the heritage center, which offered dance and song performances and also had a series of outdoor exhibits consisting of replicas of native housing, each one with one or more guides from its ethnic group. One of thbe guides for the Yupik house was one-half Yupik, one quarter Finnish, and one quarter northern Irish. She told mme that her paternal grandfather had come out from Finland with the first reindeer herd that was brought to Alaska by Sheldon Jackson. There had been some logistical problem with this herd, and the animals had all died, but her grandfather stayed on and worked with the second, successful herd.

June 2nd (Monday): Anchorage

Rode out to the bike shop and then back by the trail

June 3rd (Tuesday): Anchorage

Did last of my shopping, but couldn't get my heart pills. Rode the bike out to the bike shop and got a lift back to the hostel.

June 4th (Wednesday): Anchorage to Bethel, AK

Left from Bethel, collecting pills on the way.

June 11th (Wednesday): Bethel – Anchorage

By bike from Texas to Alaska, or vice versa

On Sunday, May 3rd, I will swim in the Capitol 2K race on Lady Bird Lake. The race starts at Red Bud Island, just below the Tom Miller Dam in West Austin, and ends at the Rowing Dock. My wife will be on board the local fake paddle steamer watching me - last year the boat nearly ran me down, since I finished almost last (in exactly one hour), and was almost the oldest participant.

We will then go to an ANZAC Day Barbecue, hosted near the Pemberton Castle by our new Austin New Zealand Australia Circle. Anzac Day commemorates Australian and New Zealand troops who fought at Gallipoli in World War I, and since two of my Scouser great uncles, Paul and Leonard Gaskell, ran away at the age of 16 and joined the 6th Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, which arrived at "that ill-fated battlefield" (in Paul's words - he wrote a small book about his experiences) on the 4th July, 1915, the occasion is very appropriate. Both uncles were wounded, repatriated, and discharged. They then started dating and going out to dances, and one of them was handed a white feather later in the war by a woman who was unaware that he had already done his duty by his country. Anyone who has read the book "The Four Feathers", by A.E.W.Mason, or any of the numerous films based upon it, will know what this meant. During World War I there was a movement, The Order of the White Feather, to coerce men into joining up by persuading women to present them with a white feather if they were not wearing a uniform. Both men died relatively young (before age 50) as a result of their wounds.

The next morning, Monday the 4th, I plan to leave for Homer, Alaska, by bicycle. This will be the second-half of my trip from the northeasternmost accessible point on the North American continent to the most southern point of the continental USA, and then up to the northernmost and northwesternmost points accesible by road. This trip is also an excuse to visit my brother Ted, who lives in Bethel, AK.

As I write everything is almost ready, except for my body: I have barely been on the bike in the last three months. So I'll have to start off slowly!

NOTE: many months later (Dec). Things did not turn out quite this way. I ended up being hospitalized for a heart catheterization just before the Cap 2K swim. A routine check at the cardiologist revealed a lengthened Q-T interval which, if I have the medical science and terminology right, suggested that I was due for a major heart attack. However, the catheterization revealed no blockages, and my doctor concluded that I had merely strained my heart in a recent 10K race. He therefore reluctantly gave his "approval" for me to go to Alaska.
Due to the late date of my departure and the schedules of some people I wanted to visit in Alaska, I reversed my route, and flew to Seattle on May 7th. The story is told in the following instalments.