A post about longer days with a longer title than the post itself, I think. Hang on, let me check... Yep.

Here's Beth biking home yesterday. Notice that its still light outside - sweet!!!

XC skiing stuff

Well, this is the time of the year for skiing, and Beth and I are in a cross-country ski class that meets Mondays and Wednesdays to fix our technique and get some exercise. Considering that my current technique can be best described as "wild flailing that somehow propels me in a generally forward direction," the class should be really beneficial. Having such miserable technique does make me awesome at the "getting exercise" part of the class, though. The other night one of our instructors pointed out that I was combining the inefficiency of the blah-blah-blah technique almost seamlessly with the lack of power of the blah-blah-blah technique. Having now uncombined and then recombined my styles, I'm now a bit better off, but I still have a long way to go.


Speaking of a long way to go, I signed myself up for the Tour of Anchorage, a 50K cross-country ski race that loops around a large portion of the city. The race is in early March, the weekend after our classes end, so I hope I'm ready by then. I know I can drop down a notch and do the 40K race instead (which not only is shorter, but avoids by far the largest hill on the course), but now that i'm signed up for the longer race that will seem like a failure (even though if I had just signed up for the 40K in the first place it would seem like a great accomplishment - guess I screwed that one up). Anyway, its definitely lighting a bit of a fire under my butt to get out there and train, which is kind of nice. It's been a long time since I've had a training goal like this to commit to (holy cow! was my half-ironman really almost a full decade ago?).





If you want to know anything about the race, you can check it out here. If you don't want to know anything, then don't click here.

Also, I'm pleased to report that Beth had a bit of a breakthrough on the "hills are our friends" front. I still wouldn't say she's thrilled about them, but she reports the discovery that by hurtling herself down one hill at breakneck speed, she will have extra momentum as she begins going up the next hill. Maybe it's not quite the same as loving hills, but it seems like a step in the right direction.

Back to Alaska

I got back to Alaska yesterday afternoon after an extended weekend in Detroit. First order of business: fix a washing machine that has stopped draining. Solution: pull a whole bunch of crap out of the drain pump filter. Final tally: 45 cents (one quarter, two dimes), one golf tee, tweezers, a necklace, old candy wrappers and a whole bunch of general muck, most of which was dog hair.

Did you make it past that gross first picture? If so, here are some awesome pictures from the flight back to Alaska. The water on the left side of the photo is College Fjord in Prince William Sound, with Harvard Glacier at the head of the fjord and numerous other collegiately-named glaciers all around. Unfortunately it's hard to make out in this picture, but Mount Marcus Baker (the highest point in the Chugach Mountains at over 13,000 feet) is almost directly above the toe of Harvard Glacier.

Hmmm.... Looks like it didn't quite show up in this picture, but Mt. Denali is on the horizon,

almost 200 miles away. The mountains in the foreground are just outside of Anchorage, 20 miles as the crow flies.

The Knik River Valley is in the center of this picture. During my second or third week of work I got to ride an ATV out to the point where the valley turns back to the left and disappears behind mountains in order to burn down an illegal cabin. Seriously. That was the best day of work ever.

I think that the glacier in the top-center of these mountains is where my friend Louis is doing the fieldwork for his masters. I love the fact that this scene basically shows the backside of the mountains that I can see from my house and it couldn't be any more wild.