Egad what a day! It is 8:45 and we have JUST set up camp and then hitched back to mile 46 and the Wild Man Laundry and Showers in Cooper Landing. So great that it stays light all night long.
Jess and Nadine and I hitched back here to shower and do laundry. David said he'd use Cooper Creek on which we are camped. Brrr! We three hitchers were picked up by Wm. "Boss" Hogg, a retired Alaska State Trooper and a character. Said he loves OKC—was there before the bombing for some training and the people were "the friendliest he'd ever met."
But I'm getting ahead of myself. The day began at a chilly 39 degrees and almost immediately soared to 86. Awakened early by the raucous magpies, we got out of camp at 9:45 after discovering that my BOB was flat and changing him. Through the tire there was a small splinter of wire that we had to tug out with tweezers. On the road for only about two miles, we pulled off and biked a short distance to Alder Lake off the Portage Glacier Rd. We took a photo of the snowy mountains mirrored in the perfectly calm lake.
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| A page from my journal account of our ride |
Nadine Smith is at the laundry with us. She and David Jurke, both from New Zealand, have been cycle touring since April. He started in Calgary and she met him in June in Vancouver. She's on a Cannondale touring bike and he's on a Giant hybrid. They were arriving at Denali just as we were leaving, and we met them again just as we started the long climb up through the Chugach Mountains.
After rounding the end of the Arm, we had an initial long climb and then miles and miles of mostly downhill, part of it on a trail. The road for the entire day passed through the towering Chugach Mountains, some snowy, but most green with sheep and goats dots above.
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| The ornately carved door at Summit Lake Lodge |
Then we had another long climb and I began to flag with the heat and exertion. By the third climb, which was steep but short, I had to walk. Jess was waiting for me at the top. I was dehydrated (not a drop of fluid other than sweat would leave my body and I could barely lift my arms) and we had no water between us. We waited at a turnout for an RV to pull in, but none did. Eventually David and Nadine caught up to us again. David gave me one of his bottles of water, claiming that he didn't drink very much on the road.
Farther down the road we stopped at the Summit Lake Lodge and ate a meal while I tried to recover some strength.It didn't work. For some reason, maybe the heat, maybe the lack of substantial food early on, I had zilch muscles and could barely pedal an anthill. The last miles were torture.
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| Susan managing a smile at Quartz Creek |
We stopped again at Quartz Creek to look over the side at the spawning salmon. They were as exhausted as I and barely made any headway against the current. Already red and with the outthrust jaw of age, they filled the stream, some of them flopping over the shallows. Their spawning journey is one of nature's many oddities, isn't it?
Our last stop was at this laundromat/ showers/liquor store/convenience store.After we'd showered and done Nadine's laundry, we were crossing the parking lot preparatory to putting out our thumbs, when someone in a van full of aging guys asked me how the big pretzel I was eating was. I replied that it sure wasn't the Philly soft pretzel that I'd imagined.
"You from Philly? We're from Joisey. You wanna ride? Which direction are ya going?" etc.
So we crammed ourselves into this van with six New Jerseyites. They had been halibut fishing out of Seward and each told me the weights of their fish. The driver had caught the largest one at 150 pounds.
They also educated me as to the finer points of halibut fishing: "Don't set da hook. Nah. They do it for ya. It'll feel like this (little munching fingers on my arm).
Geez you've biked all this way? How far didya come today? 60 miles! I can't believe it. Them I believe (nodding toward the younger Nadine and Jessica) but you? You look to be our age. Between us guys we couldn't bicycle to da end of da driveway."
And so on. I was so enjoying their wonder and praise that I couldn't bring myself to tell them that this had been the most exhausting day in my bicycling experience—60 miles that felt like 160.
[I later learned that I was not metabolizing B12 and had anemia, the main symptoms of which are weakness and tiredness. By the time I learned what the problem was, I'd suffered irreversible nerve damage to my lower legs and feet. I give myself a B12 shot once a month now.]
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