May 18, 2007

We are really making the transition from winter to summer. Most of the snow piles have now melted at the lower elevations. Things are starting to green up. We have started riding our bikes to work. We rode 2 days last week and 3 this week. I forgot how nice it is to ride in the morning. It really wakes me up well.

We aren’t done skiing yet. We skied both days on the weekend. The conditions were not great. The mountain has continued to receive snow on top. It is wet sticky snow so it hasn’t been easy to ski in. It took a couple laps on Saturday to find the nicest run, a soft bump run. We made lap after lap until our legs were ready to give out. A friend of mine from work had joined us so we stopped for an early dinner in Girdwood before returning to Anchorage. Sunday was even worse conditions. Two inches of new snow fell on top of the mountain overnight and it was just weird snow. The wet sticky snow was sitting on top of frozen chunky snow. We settled on the same run we were enjoying on Saturday. It wasn’t quite as good, but it was still fun until a sharp pain appeared on the back of my left knee. The pain only occurred on right turns that involved twisting the ski to shorten the turn. I backed off on my turns. I replaced a few rights with 3 lefts, but I can only make such a spinning move in the moguls in the right situations and rarely on steep terrain. I even tried making right turns with my right ski only, a very difficult move. I finally decided I shouldn’t push it any further and we quit early.

Even though it is bike to work week, I decided to give the knee a couple days off and didn’t ride to work until Wednesday, the official bike to work day. The trails were definitely busier and some people were taking counts and handing out free coupons to bicyclists. We have free subs at Subway to collect sometime.

We ordered a tent and a camping stove. We are beginning to get setup for car camping. We have a few more smaller items to get, but this should give us a more flexible base camp for our weekend adventures. We settled on a tent that has a reasonable reputation for being well made. We looked at some more extreme tents, but as a tent increases its ability to withstand harsh conditions, it sacrifices ventilation. Since we plan to mostly camp in nice weather, it didn’t make sense to get a stuffy tent. Some of our summer evenings can be a little warm.

We walked to Taku Lake on Tuesday night. The grebes have returned and they were making their funny sounds. People were out with their dogs. A few people were fishing in Campbell Creek. It looks like summer.

We have now been in Alaska for two years. It was a meaningless milestone, but it puts a perspective on the passage of time that is a little disturbing.