Across the Bay

Date: May 19 and 21
Mileage: 26.9 and 65.3
May Mileage: 287.4
Temperature upon departure: 39 and 48

Good weekend - went on my first bicycle ride where the temperature passed 50 degrees, and took my first trip across the Bay. Granted, in order to get across the Bay I had to join 12 teenagers on an eighth grade geology class field trip - but it was still a good weekend.

A teacher at Homer Middle School (who seems to have taken a shine to me after I wrote a series of newspaper articles about education programs at his school) invited me to join a trip to Grenwingk Glacier. How could I say no? It was basically a guided tour of the violent geology still ripping across Kachemak Bay State Park - the gravel-strewn moraines and retreating glaciers. The trip also included a float-by of what has to be the most beautiful coastal community in America: Halibut Cove. And it wasn't exactly a sedentary sit-and-wonder kind of a trip. The teacher even dragged everyone an extra two miles just to play on the hand-pulled tram that crosses the glacial creek.

All told, we probably hiked seven or eight miles. I was really impressed with the kids' stamina. I was braced for the worse, hiking with twelve 13- and 14-year-olds. But for most of the trip, we old folks had to practically jog to keep up with the kids. One kid even shared his dried mangos with me after I made the very juvenile mistake of forgetting to bring a lunch.

But the most interesting part of the trip was the actual field-trip aspect. You know. Education and stuff. It's amazing, really, how dramatically the area's ecology changes across just four miles of open water. The Homer side of the Bay is relatively new, with stair-step hillsides, spruce forests and mud bogs. On the south side of the Bay, the steep Kenai Mountains jut straight up from sea level. The face of the landscape changes in equally dramatic succession - beach grass climbs into old-growth cottonwood groves which change to ponderosa and spruce forests and finally to alpine tundra. Above that is the Harding Ice Field, which spits out several glaciers that are currently in dramatic retreat. The point where I stood to take this photo was buried beneath hundreds of feet of ice as recently as 50 years ago. Believe what you will about global warming, but Alaska is melting.

I couldn't complain too much about global warming today, however, with the sun out and temperatures rising comfortably into the mid-50s. Today was the first day all year that I rode with just one layer of clothing. Maybe someday I'll even be able to ride with actual skin exposed, maybe even pull out my bike shorts from the dusty cardboard box they've been stuffed in since I moved here. I can dream.

Sunset ... sunrise

Date: May 18
Mileage: 25.3
May Mileage: 195.2
Temperature upon departure: 42

I snapped a quick picture coming home from my ride today and I thought it looked familiar. So I dug through my archives and came upon this shot, which I took while standing on what must have been the exact same spot on Jan. 14. The cool thing about it ... at least, I thought ... is that today's picture was taken at 10:55 p.m. January's shot was taken at about 10:30 a.m.

Of course the mud and shadows of May don't quite match the beauty of January frost and a late-morning sunrise. But there's something about the synchronicity of the two photos that gives me comfort. I'm still trying to adjust to these chaotic swings of daylight. I felt fine beneath 19 hours of darkness, but now twilight lingers well past midnight, my biorythms haven't adjusted yet, I try to wind down for the night, I try to sleep, but my mind and body just want to play.

Ever see that movie, "Insomnia?" I kinda wish I hadn't.

Best flight ever

Date: May 17
Mileage: 31.1
May mileage: 169.9
Temperature upon departure: 43

Good ride today - mostly sunny, light wind, late enough to beat most of the traffic (which can be kinda bad, actually, because there are so few through-roads here, and so many more drivers in rented RVs than most towns this size.) The ride was so good that it was completely uneventful.

I'm still taking flack for my whiny airport post on Monday, so I thought I'd counter it with my "Best Flight Ever" story.

It was about this time last year that a friend of mine invited me on a morning joy-flight with some friends of hers from Pocatello. They picked us up in Idaho Falls in their four-seater Cessna, and we took off over the volcano outcrops and potato fields of northeastern Idaho. Our destination was Dell, Montana. Dell isn't really much of a destination town. If you blinked at the right moment while driving up I-15, you'd likely miss it entirely. But according to the Pokey residents, the town offered good breakfast and some semblance of an airstrip, so to Dell we went.

We killed a few hours over greasy plates of comfort food (I think I just had toast. Nothing robs me of my appetite more than flying, except maybe a 24-hour mountain bike race.) Upon leaving the diner, we were unpleasantly surprised by horizontal sheets of unseasonable snow - and thick clouds - whipping across the valley. The storm was moving quickly to the south, and there seemed to be blue sky behind it. The pilot decided we could ride this little patch of good weather home.

I'm not usually afraid of flying, but I distinctly remember taking one look at that blowing snow and telling my friend that I was going to thumb it home. "It'll be fine," she said. "Herb (or whatever his name was) is licensed to fly instruments down" (whatever that means.)

We took off into the backside of the storm, climbing through light fog until we reached the narrow eye. Clouds were swirling all around us, and Herb announced that he was going to climb to 8,000 feet to get well above any, well, mountains that could blindside us without warning. As we circled upward, more clouds encroached. Herb announced that he was going to fly above the storm, but all I could see were mountains of rolling white water vapor stretching beyond my field of vision.

Upward we circled, the engine growling, the plane lurching in cloudy turbulence, me clutching my earphones with every expectation that the next words out of Herb's mouth were going to be "Mayday! Mayday!" I began to notice deep shivers rolling through my body, but not until my teeth started chattering did I realize that I wasn't just nervous - I was cold. The sharp air tore at my throat. I glanced over at Herb's swirling altimeter ... 13,700 feet ... 13,750 feet .... 13,800 feet.

"How high does this thing go?" I yelled into my mouthpiece, gasping in the thin air and the realization that I was uncomfortably close to being as high in actual atmosphere as I had ever been ... without the benefit of slow acclimatization through hiking.

"About 16,000 feet," Herb yelled.

His wife, sitting shotgun directly in front of me, turned around and ominously shook her head. Her face said everything about Herb's machismo and the nonchalant way he was leading us to high-altitude oblivion.

As we reached the pinnacle of our climb, my mind when very dark. No deep, life-affirming thoughts revealed themselves. I didn't even have enough sense to properly pray. All I did was ramble the "Lord's Prayer" over and over in my head - and I don't even come from that kind of Christian background. But that's all I had.

I've lost track of most of those long, foggy, dark minutes. I don't even remember how or when we got out of the storm, but somehow we did. In fact, the only thing I remember after the Lord's Prayer is climbing through our last cloud on approach to the Idaho Falls runway, and how unbelievably happy I was that I could see that strip of pavement. So happy, in fact, that I still access it as one of my great moments of joy when life looks especially bleak.

I still maintain that the flights in which you think you're going to die are better than the flights in which you wish you would.