May 23, 2010

We are at home.  We are sitting in the trailer in Bird Creek campground about 25 miles south of Anchorage, but we are at home.  We need to pack for an overnight trip to the condo tomorrow; at least that is how I am starting to look at it.  We are still a long way from having all our possessions in the trailer, but we have made significant steps.

We spent two nights in Palmer.  We took a long mountain bike ride on Tuesday.  We rode from the trailer, crossed the highway, and explored the trails around the lakes and through the woods.  The landscape is amusing with bizarre little ridges left by ancient glaciers.  The trail went up and down frequently.  It was never an unbearable climb, although we walked our bikes up more than a few steep sections.  We explored the mountain bike trails of Moraine-Crevasse and were not too impressed.  These are your basic wide smooth trails that provided only an aerobic challenge, never a technical challenge.  The connector trail to Keppler Bradley was more interesting with a few technical roots and rocks and a couple of exciting, steep, narrow downhills.  We also rode an interesting bike trail in Mooseberry Mesa.  We were exhausted after our thirteen miles, but still ended up walking a couple miles around the neighborhood at 10:00 that night. 

We stopped back in Anchorage on Wednesday after an efficient departure from the campground.  We spent the night in the condo and did a little more cleaning and organizing.  Then we packed up for the trailer again on Thursday.  This was somehow stressful for us.  We even forgot a few important items like our dinner.  We remembered that before we left town so we drove the rig to the condo.  It barely turns within the space of our cul-de-sac.  Luckily we arrived at the campground early on Thursday, beating the weekenders to this popular campground.  We knew there were only a few spaces that comfortably fit our trailer.  The site we wanted wasn’t available, so we just backed into the one next to it, unsure if we were going to fit.  We were pleased so we stayed.

In spite of being charged continuously for two days in Palmer and being charged on several driving legs, my battery drained down quickly again.  I decided to go back into town on Friday morning to fix the problem.  The problem is so simple, but no practical solution exists.  My little generator can generate more power in half an hour than we use in an entire day.  If only there was a storage device that could accept electrical energy at that rate, life would be easy. 

I stopped at a boating store, hoping to find some magic trolling motor solution that provided for rapid recharges and long slow discharges.  I wasn’t impressed, but I was getting scared of the cost of some of the equipment. 

I went to an alternative energy store.  We do have the advantage of the experience of a large number of people living off the grid.  Unfortunately, weight and size don’t matter in a cabin, but they do make a difference in a trailer.  I also began wondering what these people are doing that requires so much electricity.  And of course the prices of this equipment jumped by an order of magnitude.

 I was getting frustrated, but the primary store that I was planning to visit was just a little further up the street.  This battery store claimed to be battery experts.  I decided to tell them my application and thoughts and get their input.  My research had me leaning toward an AGM battery because some data was indicating that these could be charged at a faster rate.  This store had a couple brands of AGM batteries, but when I told them what I wanted, they told me to go to a different store.  I left, a little confused, and even more frustrated.  I went where they suggested, but this guy didn’t even sell AGM batteries.  More frighteningly, he tried to convince me that I could put energy into a standard battery as fast as I wanted; all I needed was a bigger charger.  Since most of the charge cycle is limited by voltage, any charger that can maintain that voltage is charging at the same rate.  Pushing the voltage only creates a dangerous situation. 

By this time I had to get back to the campground to go skiing so I had to limp through another night on my dead battery.  I stopped quickly at the condo and picked up the cutting board and knife that we had also left behind.  While walking around the campground that evening, we discovered that our generator does not make enough noise to even be heard from the next campsite.  Now that is a quiet generator.

My battery saga continued on Saturday morning with another trip back to town to see if I could design my own system from available parts.  I had given up on getting much input from the so-called experts.  I stopped at a couple of auto parts stores and one of them had a deep cycle AGM battery and a high power charger.  I almost pulled the trigger on $430 worth of equipment, but decided to go back to the battery store.  They carried the same battery and a similar charger and it would have been about $125 less expensive, but they didn’t have any stock of the battery.  I looked at the cheap little normal deep cycle battery and decided if I killed it by trying to charge too rapidly, I wasn’t out much money.  I picked out a charger that would work if I decide to give the expensive AGM battery a try in the future.  This new charger operates at a higher voltage limit than the one built into the trailer so it should be faster.  I gave them $175 and headed for home (the rolling one).  The jury is still out on the battery.  It looks like a workable system, but I doubt that I am getting a complete charge each cycle because that last few percent goes so slowly.  It seems stupid to be running the generator for hours while the only draw is one amp at twelve volts.

Camping so close to town seems silly, but we needed to be out of the condo because our realtor was having an open house this weekend.  We thought it would be nice to be close to the ski area and right on the bike path.  We took a casual bike ride on Thursday evening, riding to Indian and back, and exploring down the other way a couple of miles. 

We skied on Friday, a beautiful sunny day.  I had my jacket sleeves rolled up most of the day.  I declared the death of moguls on Friday as snowboarders and teenage boys on fat skis fail to make short rhythmic turns that produce fun moguls.  We had fun, but it wasn’t the spring skiing experience that I was craving.

I got a call from my friend, Chris, on Friday evening.  He wanted to know if there were any campsites available where we were.  Kris and I took a quick walk around and found that there were still a few small sites that we thought would work for his truck camper.  Since he only lives about 10 miles from the campground, it wasn’t much of a risk to come out.  He and his wife, Lynn, and their two dogs, showed up at our campsite within an hour carrying a bottle of wine.  We had a simply pleasant evening with them.  They were able to get a better campsite on Saturday morning after some overnighters departed so they stayed the weekend with us.

Saturday was a planned bike ride.  We had emailed everyone we knew rode bicycles and everyone we thought might ride bicycles and told them to join us for the Bird-to-Gird trail.  While only two people showed up on Saturday, it was great fun.  And our camping friends joined the ride on their rollerblades, impressing us with their ability to keep up and their fearless approach to the downhills.

The ride was spectacular.  It was another lovely day and the trail still impresses me.  In spite of its close proximity to the highway for most of the 11 miles that we rode, it still provides a sense of isolation.  It is fun to ride an endless ribbon of asphalt through the woods, up and down, and along the spectacular scenery of Turnagain Arm.  We also found significant amusement at the part of the trail that is still blocked by snow, ice, and debris from an avalanche.  We were able to drag our bikes over and continue, but our rollerblading friends turned back at that point.  We arrived at the Girdwood end of the trail and decided that 11 miles was far enough for a turnaround point.  We could have ridden a few more miles into the town, but we were all thinking that was enough of a ride. 

We stopped and chatted as we were turning around.  Suddenly a loud pop, like a firecracker, made us all jump.  Sally indicated that the problem was hers.  Her rear tire was suddenly flat.  I pulled her rear wheel and began inspecting it.  The sidewall was split.  I told her that I didn’t think it would be useable, but we could try.  I put a new tube in and began inflating it, but with only a slight pressure, the tube was begin to bulge out the split.  I volunteered to try to make quick time of the return trip and return with a vehicle.  Since Louise was on a mountain bike, I suspected I would be the fastest rider. 

This gave me a rare experience on the 11 mile return trip.  Motivation to push yourself is often hard to find.  I have had it a few times in life.  I have competed in a couple of races and I have even found some motivation in timing solo rides.  It is different when you are truly motivated.  You don’t shift down just because your legs hurt.  You don’t coast.  You simply focus on pedaling at a constant rapid cadence and let the gearing deal with the ups and downs.  It was an exhilarating ride.  I passed one rider who seemed to take some motivation from me.  He chased me for the better part of six miles, actually catching up to me on the last hill before pulling off to wait for his wife.  He complimented my cadence.  I was exhausted when I got back, but I was feeling great.

After our ride, the six of us enjoyed the evening with tons of food and some beer.  We even built a camp fire to stay warm as we cooled off after our ride.  It was an interesting mix of our friends and I couldn’t imagine a livelier conversation.  It was nearly a perfect day.

Today was another beautiful ski day.  My declaration of the death of moguls might have been premature.  We did find some nice bumps starting to form in some places.  There probably wasn’t enough traffic on Friday to really form bumps.  After sleeping in late and then hanging out at our friends’ campsite for awhile, we only had a short day of skiing, but we are pretty well spent from our weekend of activity.  We still went for a nice evening walk when we got back.