Bike ride - Day 9

Riding into the midnight sun (almost).

The first 41 miles from birch lake to Delta Junction were mostly easy, uneventful, and without a lot to stop for. I rolled into town pretty early and stopped to get a burger but ended up with lasagna instead when I saw that was the days special. Although Delta was my planned stopping point I decided to ride another 27 miles to Donnelly Creek while the weather was good and left town about 6:30. It took a lot longer than I expected because of a very strong head wind and a tense encounter with a moose. I ended up getting the tent up about 11 pm... The evening ride was far more scenic though. 

The pipeline crossing the Tanana River. This is first suspension bridge I remember seeing as a kid and I've always thought it looked awesome. 

The confluence of the Tanana and Delta rivers. It always looked to me like the Tanana was flowing into the Delta rather than the other way around. The former is larger, but it takes on the caracteristics of the later down stream from here...

Riding into Delta. 

This looks flat and easy, but the wind had me down to 7 miles an hour for most of it. 

I stop to read more signs riding than I do driving. It turns out that as we'll as providing a handy visual of the headwind these read flags mean the military is doing live fire training exercises. So much for wild camping on the side of the road...

This took me an hour to cross. It was a nice night aside from the wind though. 

I like this view of the pipeline. It really is a marvel of engineering. 

Not shown: ten minute stand off with a curious moose before a semi finally cam along and scared him off. I saw seven moose for the day including two mothers with calves a nice looking bull and two younger ones that were a little too curious about the bike for comfort. 

Camp at last!

Bike ride - Day 8

58 miles goes pretty quick when it's mostly flat or gently sloping up the river valley. I'm camped at Birch Lake tonight after a couple days of rest in Fairbanks. It wasn't a particularly scenic ride, but the lake side dining was quite nice for dinner. 

Oatmeal for dinner tonight so I can soak the rice overnight and try it for breakfast. 

Oatmeal dinner recipe:

1 cup water

1 cup oatmeal 

1/3 cup raisins

1 pinch of salt

2-3 T spoons butter

4 oz cheddar cheese. 

Throw everything but the cheese into the pot and cook until the water is mostly gone. Add cheese and stir until it melts. Remove from heat and serve. Add garlic and pepper to taste. It tastes good as long as you're not expecting American oatmeal. At least as good as a lot of the instant meals I've had over the years. 

I tried a little fishing in the lake but didn't catch anything so I've decided on an early night instead. 

Bike ride - Day 7

I spent Friday riding through the gold stream hills from Nenana into Fairbanks. They really aren't kidding about the hills, but it was a beautiful day and my legs had a week of practice behind them. I also moved the clips on my shoes forward a notch and that seemed to help my knees on the long climbs. 

The gold stream hills are more pleasant green forest than impressive panoramic views like the mountains of the Alaskan range. 

Far off across the tanana valley are the snow capped peaks of the Alaskan Range. It was a little crazy to look back and realize I was riding through those mountains only two days before... I seemed to lose my sense of time on the bike. The individual miles often feel like they take a long time, but the hours and the days go quickly. I don't wear a watch and the sun is little help this time of year. I've found myself sitting down for supper at 11 pm a couple of times. I guess that's about an hour before sunset here in Fairbanks, so maybe that's not so late... Still it's a bit of an odd feeling to have no idea what time it is after all the years I've spent striving to be ontime to everything. I lost track of the days on the trip around the world, but I didn't really lose track of time like this.

376 miles including the side trips.

I decided to spend the weekend in Fairbanks before heading to Valdez. After crawling up the hills pedaling at a lower cadence than I like. I decided to take my bike by the new REI and see if it could be fitted with lower gearing. I was lucky enough the catch Simon on slow day, so besides getting a 26 tooth chainring for the front and help tuning the derailers I also absorbed as much of his forty years of experience as I could in an hour. He seemed happy to have someone interested in the details of what he was doing and the bike shifts as good as when it was new. 

Now my legs are rested and I've caught up on the blog so tomorrow I will head for Valdez. It's another 360 miles with lots of mountains and two passes to cross. I'm going to leave a few pounds of stuff that hasn't seen any use here with Corrie. I feel like I am getting a better idea of the things I would bring on a long ride. I think this will be valuable experiance if decide to do a serious bike trip someday.