«Noncycle»

Let's go nowhere fast on 9 wheels! I'm calling it a noncycle because non is the prefix for 9.

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«Moon Place»

I was out riding my bike again and I ended up on the Moon... Place.

Click image to view full.

Yup, I rode my bicycle to the Moon.

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«Achievement Unlocked! (Photo Heavy)»

Achievement Unlocked! Ride a bicycle at least 50 miles in 1 day. Click an image to view full.

I am such a nerd. When I saw this street sign I just had to take a picture of it.

It took longer than I expected. I rode about 52 miles¹ on Friday on my bicycle. I was gone for 6 hours and 40 minutes, but that includes the time I spent at my destination and a meal.

Speaking of my destination, it was Lake Lowell.

The lake has some algae bloom issues.

Even with the slime issues, it seems to be a popular recreation area. I saw personal boats and jet skis out on the water.

The lake is man made for irrigation purposes and as a bird sanctuary. Here's one of the intakes for the irrigation channel.

The dam is named Deer-Flat Upper Dam.

I had just rode 26 miles on my bicycle to get here, and I bounded up these stairs like they weren't even there. I got tired on the return trip, though.

My bike, locked up for when I was off exploring the dam and taking photos of Lake Lowell.

Returning home I stopped on this hill to take a photo of Boise. This is the exact opposite side of Boise of the photos I took at Table Rock. In the full sized image you can see all the cell towers that are up on Table Rock.

^1: 52.1 miles if I trace the route I took on Google Maps

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«Dead End Survival»

Death is inevitable, even if you go down the correct path...

Click image to view full.

I found this sign on one of my bicycle exploration adventures around Boise Idaho.

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«Soviet Weight Gain»

I rode 21.7 miles on a bicycle yesterday and I gained a pound. Because in Soviet¹ Alaska, exercise causes you to GAIN weight.

I've had this happen before. I just think it's funny. I definitely don't exercise to lose weight. I just figure I'm keeping myself well hydrated and I'm building muscle mass.

This was my first "major" ride of the year. Yes, 21.7 miles is major when there's only 31 miles of road end-to-end on the island.

^1: Yes, I know Alaska isn't a communist state. This was just a spin on the "Soviet Russian reversal" theme I've had going this week.

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«Saxman Totem Poles (Photo Heavy)»

Bunc made a comment on yesterday's post:

Your post got me starting to read up a little about Ketchikan - I see the largest collections of standing totem poles are in the area - is that right? That would make some fascinating photos.

- Bunc

Because it was 40 degrees outside (not freezing), not stormy, and not yet dark; I rode my bicycle out to Saxman and took a few photos of the totem poles, just for Bunc. All these photos were taken yesterday (December 2nd, 2009). So here they are, click an image to view full.

From here you can see most of the totem poles.

The sign reads:

SAXMAN
Legend Tlingit Indian village, established 1894, is named for school teacher Samuel Saxman. One of three men lost Dec. of 1886 while scouting for a new location for people of Tongass and Cape Fox villages. Totems here, comprising world's largest collection, including poles moved from Pennock, Tongass, and village islands and from old Cape Fox village at Kirk Point. Many are poles restored under federal works project directed by the U.S. forest service beginning in 1939.

Alaska Depertment of Highways

Totem poles around the sign.

I bet you didn't know Abraham Lincoln was at the top of a Tlingit totem pole.

I don't know the proper names of any of these, I'm calling this one a China man.

This one I know is an eagle on the top and a beaver on the bottom.

This one was my favorite. Shouldn't have put his hand in there...

A tribal Tlingit meeting hall.

That's all so pretty... Because it's meant for tourists. However, look down any side road in Saxman and you'll see what it's really like. I don't mean to be racist, but it takes only a simple observation to notice a lack of home maintenance and clutter control on the part of your average Alaskan Native.

EDIT: Fixed spelling of the word "racist". Thanks Vid.

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«No Such Thing As Can't»

These are a few pictures I took previously of Schoenbar Road hill back on April 21, 2008. The first picture I've posted before. At the bottom of this hill you see the words "NO SUCH THING AS CAN'T" inset into the concrete. Click an image to view full.

Those words have a whole new meaning to me now... I've climbed that hill on a bicycle.

Here's 2 pictures of the hill I didn't show before. The gates are so they can close the road during the winter.


You see this sign at the top of the hill. Caution steep hill walk bicycle. Well, I didn't need to walk the bicycle on my way up the hill. There was no sign at the bottom of the hill saying that...

I tell you what... This town is tough to ride a bicycle in. My leg muscles were all puffed up when I got home after climbing this hill.

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«Fucked Over By This Town Again»

So I had bought a new bicycle at Costco while on my vacation. (Click an image to view full.)

This picture was taken outside of Junction City, Oregon on May 17th, 2009.

I get it home to Ketchikan and it's not too long I get a flat front tire. It's nothing I ran over. It turns out the little rubber rim liner was off center, so when the tube was inflated it caused 2 little half-circle cuts in it. (Picture below)

Ok, so I straiten that out, and I go buy new tube at the Tongass dock store; there is no bike shop in town. Turns out the new tube has some sort of funky Presta valve that I can't air up anywhere. And no, I can't buy a foot pump or an adapter in this town that will fit a presta valve, either.

So, the next day (today) I bring back the tube. They didn't have a tube of the correct size (700c) with the common Schrader valve, so I went to the local Walmart (the only other place that sells bike parts). They had one style of tube that was the 700c size and had the Schrader valve. So I buy that. However, because my bike rims are "deep dish", the valve stem of this new tube is not long enough.

So I'm fucked over by the limited options in this town again. I'm so pissed right now...

And no, I'm not going to patch the old tube. Every patch¹ I've tried on a bike tube has failed, and so I don't trust them.

^1: "Every patch" in this case refers to the only patch I've tried. The fact still remains that I don't trust bicycle tube patches, and I refuse to use them.

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«Gravina Island (Photo Heavy)»

On Monday I left Revillagigedo Island (the island Ketchikan, Alaska is on) for a few hours. I went over to Gravina Island with my bicycle, where our airport is. Yes, this is the island the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" was suppose to be built to. I'll talk about that in a later post, this post is photos I took while over there. Click an image to view full.

On the ferry, heading over to the airport. By boat is the only way to get over there, costs $5.00 per passenger (round trip), $6.00 per vehicle (one way). Lucky for me, my bike went for free.

Here's where the tunnel is/will be that passes under the airport runway. It's all part of the construction of the "Road to Nowhere" (again, I'll talk about it later). For now, they have a pilot car that escorts traffic across the runway. I had to put my bicycle in the back of the pilot car and ride in the passenger seat to get across (both ways).

This is right on the other side of the runway, the road makes a "T". They wouldn't let me go very far when I turned left here.

That little bridge is all the further I was allowed to go. There's heavy construction ahead. They told me the dump truck drivers drive like maniacs, and it was unsafe for me to ride any further.

So I turned around and went on the road to the right of the "T" intersection. You can see they have a lot of supplies lined up along the road.

I stopped to take a picture of this pond with Ketchikan in the background.

I went up a random side road. I didn't go very far. They dig across old logging roads they no longer use to allow water to drain from one side to the other so it doesn't wash out the road, in case they want to use it again. It also makes it tough for vehicles of any kind to continue on the road. This is the road that I found the bear crap on, by-the-way.

Here's what the road looks like that I've been riding on. Notice all the relatively flat land over here?

My bicycle, with quite the backdrop.

I went up another random logging road, this one took me up a mountain a little ways. It eventually got too rough to comfortably continue. Besides, it was cutting away from the water and going towards the interior of Gravina Island. This is looking back across to Ketchikan. It was a little dusty that day, as you can tell from the picture.

Approaching the tunnel again, opposite side the other picture was. You can see how Ketchikan is built on the side of the mountains.

Here, I'm on the ferry heading back to Revillagigedo Island (Ketchikan). I tried to catch the beautiful green left in the wake of the other ferry, but the camera didn't pick up on the color too well. That cruise ship is the Diamond Princess.

EDIT: Here's that later post where I talk about the bridge.

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«Weather Warnings and Advisories Around Alaska»

Rain, wind... It's what the weather has been around here yesterday and today. Last night had some gusts that shook the house a bit. We had a wind advisory for yesterday.

So, can you guess what I did yesterday in the rain and wind? I suited up in rain gear and rode my bike about 30 miles. I rode to the end of the road South of town, out to the Beaver Falls Power House. That's about 15 miles one-way from my mom's place. It took me about 3 hours round-trip. I have now officially rode my bike from one end of the road to the other on this island. Just not all at once. There were a couple of times a gust of wind hit me and nearly stopped me dead in my tracks.

Out of curiosity, I checked to see what other warnings and advisories were around the state. Turns out there were quite a few. Most of the state is rainy and windy all along the coastline; from here all the way up and around to the Arctic Ocean. There were many small craft (boat) advisories, although it looks like we were the only area with a land wind advisory. There were a few flood advisories around and to the East of Fairbanks. Oh, and an ashfall advisory in the area of Dutch Harbor and Unalaska (Unalaska, Alaska has got to be one of the more unusual city names).

The ashfall advisory is because the Okmok volcano has been erupting since July 12th. When it first erupted it sent a plume of ash 50,000 feet into the air. By July 17th the sulfur dioxide gas from the initial eruption made it to Montana. It's continuing to erupt, sending ash up to 30,000 feet and there has been frequent seismic activity in the area. You never hear of all the volcanoes and earthquakes (at least 46 earthquakes yesterday, largest being 5.04) in Alaska because they usually don't occur near a populated area.

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«YouTube Bike Thief»

So just how easy is it to steal a bicycle, even if it is locked?

bike thief


That's right. They stole their own bike, some methods were quite bold. The police, however, drive right past the thief and head for the camera man instead. The only concerned citizen helped, rather than reported it.

Granted, unless someone was specifically out to steal a bike they wouldn't be carrying those tools. And a lock is still better than nothing at all.

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«Premature Zombie Apocalypse?»

Response to Why?? on Escape Hatch. It is recommended you go read that first.

Ok, you're back and have read that post on Escape Hatch? If you didn't, that's your problem now...

I really need to pay more attention to the random little things and commit them to memory. It would make for more interesting blog posts. But here's a few "why's" I can remember...

Yesterday I received some Magic: the Gathering cards that I bought on eBay. The envelope they came in was about half covered with a bunch of random 4 cent stamps. It looked like it came from a foreign country (but really it came from Nashville, Tennessee). Why did the seller have so many 4 cent stamps laying around?

I bought 2 hot apple pies at McDonalds yesterday. There was a sticker on the back side of the receipt tape indicating I had won an "instant prize". I got a pretty good deal really: I spent $1.59 (after tax) and got the two hot apple pies I was buying, a couple of coupons for a free cheeseburger and free sundae (my "instant prize"), and an entry into a $50 drawing. Why, or more importantly how did they put that sticker on the receipt tape? Have you ever tried unrolling something like that and then tried to roll it back up perfectly?

Why does it seem like street lights always go out when you approach them? The night before last I rode my bike up to the cemetery. It's pretty dark around there at night, but there's one street light near the war veterans memorial. Any time I came near it, it would go out. After I passed it, it would come back on. I've had street lights go out when I passed them many, many times before; this is just the most recent example. Why do they do that?

Why do people find graveyards spooky at night? Do they really believe the living dead are going to rise out of the ground and begin the zombie apocalypse ahead of schedule? I mean seriously, everyone around you is long dead and six feet under. There's nothing to be afraid of except perhaps tripping on a tombstone.

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«The Problem with Bicyclists and Red Lights»

In all 50 states in the US, bicycles are legal road traffic. In the same respect, bicyclists by law have to follow the rules of the road. It's illegal in most states to ride a bicycle on a sidewalk, including Alaska (in a business district, anyway). This is a law that is not very well enforced or known about, as I see plenty of bicyclists on the sidewalks. Really, I don't know how they do it with all the trees and power poles in the way; there's places that you can't even walk on the sidewalk around here. Well I for one ride on the roads.

Anyway the point being, bicyclists should ride on the roads and are bound by the same laws cars are. The problem with that is the traffic lights do not detect bicycles. It's a bit unfair; we have to follow the rules of the road, but at the same time the road doesn't acknowledge us. There's a coil of wire embedded in the pavement that acts like a metal detector. A bicycle doesn't have enough metal to be detected, so the traffic light never changes for us. I can see this being a bigger issue in the future when car bodies are made of a nonmetallic composite, and engines are made of ceramic (and there will be cars like that someday).

Many times I've had to sit at a red light and wait for a car to come up behind me before the damn light will change. That can take a while at night. Sometimes I end up taking a right and turn around somewhere down the road. The pedestrian push-button is usually not within reach, but that works in the few intersections that it is. Sometimes I wish a bunch of bicyclists would sit over the sensors at a red light and just let the cars back up behind them. Maybe that would get the point across...

I grew up 14 miles North of town, so I didn't have any traffic lights or busy intersections to deal with. I'm getting a little more use to city riding, but I still have trouble with left turns. I'll sit there on the right shoulder waiting for a break in traffic in both lanes. I usually end up having to pass my turn and continue on to an intersection with a street light, turn onto a side road, turn around and go back to the light, and go back the way I came on the main road so I'm in the correct lane to make a right turn to my original destination. It's a real pain and sometimes can take me nearly a mile out of my way. I think I need to start getting more aggressive and pull into the center of the lane when I'm about to do a left turn, stopping traffic if necessary. I'm legal road traffic, after all. That's what hand signals are for.

Do any of you ride a bicycle in town or city traffic? If so, how do you deal with it?

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«Night Rider»

So that patch I put on my bicycle tube didn't hold. Cheap ass patch, I didn't have much faith in it anyway. It wasn't much more than a sticker. So I ended up getting a new tube. So my bike is once again in working order... For how long, I don't know. So last night I finally got to ride my bike at night in town with my new lights.

The headlight (if you can call it that) isn't much more than a cheap flashlight mounted to my handlebars. It doesn't illuminate crap in front of me; but it doesn't have to be a flood light, it only has to make me visible to oncoming traffic. In the rear I have a strobing/flashing red LED taillight. I'm a little more pleased with this one than I was with the headlight. I bet the batteries will last longer in that as well.

There were a few pedestrians that made comments about my lights. One said they didn't even know you could get lights for a bicycle. Obviously they didn't know about the law that states you have to have lights on a bicycle at night. Although as I've noticed, not many bicycle laws seem to be enforced.

In fact, while I was out I saw another cyclist (a) with no lights and (b) riding on the sidewalk in a business district. A police car had just passed.

I was out for a good 2 hours. I rode back and forth from one end of town to the other, up and down the cruise ship docks, and circled the Plaza several times. It's nice to ride in town when the traffic is light. This time of night, most of the traffic is police cars or taxi cabs. The fog kept getting heavier and heavier as the night went on. I finally came back home about 1 AM. It was a nice, pleasant ride.

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«Thumbtack and Firefox 3, Completely Unrelated»

Once again, no jury duty. The trial has been canceled. Now I've got to call Monday to see if there's a trial on Tuesday.

Today I did some hill climbing with my bicycle. Keep in mind it's only a 5 speed, not one of those fancy 24 speed mountain bikes. Believe me, this town has its share of hills. Much of it is built on the side of a mountain.

When I got home I noticed I had run over a thumbtack. So now my front tire is flat. I'm none too happy about that. I had just bought lights for it so I could do some night riding. (Now I have an image of that car from Knight Rider in my head.) Now I'll have to wait until I fix the tire. My tires are old and cracked anyway, so I might just replace them.

I downloaded Firefox 3, and helped their attempt at setting a world record. I haven't installed it yet, however. What's the previous record for most downloads in one day? Turns out there isn't one. No-one's bothered to formally claim the record. Their target was 5 million, and (at the time I'm writing this) the day isn't quite over yet and they already have 5,144,640. So they've made their goal.

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«Miles of Bicycle Riding»

I spend most of yesterday riding my bicycle. I rode the road South of town to the end of the pavement and back; about 9 miles one way. Then I went back and forth through town and around the mall parking lot after traffic died down. The day before I took the bike 12 miles, then back and forth through town. Needless to say, my legs are a little tired. I've also did a bit of riding last week.

The funny thing is, I gain weight from exercise. I know that sounds counterintuitive. I have no excess fat to speak of, so I don't loose weight. And I gain because I'm building muscle mass. I haven't gained a lot; only 3-6 lbs in the past week or two. Still, I'm usually a rock-steady 160 lbs.

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