July 19, 2007

I explained to Kris that if our marriage were the military, I’d be eligible for retirement. She said she wasn’t so sure with the Iraq situation. So I asked if I was simply stuck in a quagmire. A friend suggested that another potential exit was on the basis of the don’t ask, don’t tell policy. I guess I am stuck.

Yep, yesterday was our 20^th anniversary. We celebrated with dinner at a restaurant on the top floor of the Captain Cook hotel downtown. I sat down and immediately complained that I could see my office out the window. It was a nice dinner with a great view.

It is a little difficult to think of the last 20 years. I was so young and ambitious. It seems like a different lifetime. Then we lived our yuppie lifestyle, climbing the socioeconomic ladder, spending money as if all of society was on the verge of realizing the ridiculousness of paper and electronic representations of wealth. Then we stopped and asked the age old question, “what the heck are we doing?” Fast forward a few years to us sitting 20 stories above downtown Anchorage, counting the mountain peaks in view that we have stood upon, viewing most of the small city that has become home. We counted seven.

I guess we are lucky to have gone through these things together. Any of the changes could have been enough to highlight differences in values, personality, or ambitions. Somehow we have always managed to be on the same page. Perhaps it is just luck. Perhaps simply the distractions in life have not derailed communications. Perhaps we are just unusually compatible. Perhaps we both just have low expectations. If someone were to ask for advice, I don’t know what I would tell them. Of course, no one is asking. In reality, it was just another Wednesday.

We climbed most of the way up Peak Two last Thursday with our friend, Sally, and her dog. It was a lovely evening. We made it up high enough to reach a false summit well above treeline. Sally’s dog chased a ptarmigan and its babies. It reminded me of the ptarmigan that attacked Kris over the previous weekend. The momma was faking injury to get us to chase her, but we were on bikes and her babies were in the trail. We scattered the babies a bit and the momma seemed to think Kris had stolen one as she rode by. On this day, though, the momma flew off after suckering the dog in with her act, leading the dog away from her offspring. The dog did notice one of the babies, but the young one was already capable of flight so we got to see the little one fly. We finished the evening with pizza and beer at the Moose’s Tooth.

When we got to Saturday, our pace appeared to finally catch up to us. Our plan for the weekend was to head north to do some biking and hiking. We didn’t even leave home until after 2. We stopped to hike to Thunderbird Falls along the way. We had hiked this trail back in 1999 and Kris wanted to see it again. It was rainy like the last time. It is a deep gorge, but the trail runs along a residential neighborhood which takes a little away from the feel of it. It also seems to be a popular trail, probably because it is relatively easy.

We then headed to Keppler-Bradley State Park where we had a tent site reserved. We had a casual evening setting up the tent, making dinner, and fishing a little on the lakes. The fish appeared rather small and I only landed one.

On Sunday, we did manage to get in a bike ride. We drove up into the Talkeetna Mountains and took the Gold Mint Trail, a trail that runs along the Little Susitna River. It goes all the way to the glacier at its headwaters, but it is not really bikeable that far. The first couple miles were nice. It was a wide, well maintained trail. The elevation was pretty high, but being in the river valley provided for slightly more than alpine vegetation. The next few miles led us into horribly overgrown trails. In some stretches, both hands were slapping through the growth on either side of the trail. The lower growth was mostly cow parsnip. It was unavoidable. We were wearing shorts and our legs were frequently brushing aside the large leaves. If we had a sensitivity to this stuff, we would probably have known it that day. Of course I will treat it similarly to poison ivy. I don’t believe I have any susceptibility to its ill effects, but I try not to go rolling in it. Well, I guess I have never had exposure to poison ivy at the level we were exposing ourselves to the cow parsnip.

The vegetation created an additional hazard. The trail was narrow and it was impossible to tell what was just off the trail. I lost my line once and hit about a six inch unexpected drop off just off the trail. Twice I hit my pedal on rocks that were hiding alongside the trail. This can be a disastrous event, but both times the end result was merely a painfully jarring bounce.

We eventually emerged from the overgrowth into a narrowing valley with old boulder fields. This meant that we frequently hopped on our bikes and pedaled twice, only to arrive at the next too large boulder and have to hop off. It was particularly a slow go uphill on the way in. We finally tired of this activity and stopped for lunch almost six miles from the trailhead. A couple of backpackers confirmed that there was no need to push any further with the bikes.

The ride out was fun. Some of the large boulders were rideable in the downhill direction. The overgrowth was still nasty, but it didn’t require as much pedaling. The final stretch was very fast.

It was a relatively short ride, but it was exhausting. Monday morning was one of those miserable wakeups.

We took an after work bike ride on Tuesday with the Arctic Bike Club. We rode with them only once last year, but many of them seemed to remember us. We rode at Kincaid Park which has highly developed trails for multiple purposes. The dirt trails are very smooth with lots of up and down. The technical challenge is very low, but it was still fun in its own way.

Work has been a bit hectic. My boss turned in her resignation. I am being assigned to act in the position until they go through the formal hiring process. I suspect I will pursue the position and I suspect I will get the position permanently. So I may be headed back into management. Maybe it is a sickness.