It’s that time of year again. I can’t ride my bike around the lake anymore without the worry of a passing RV clipping my shoulder. The trails are pulverized into a dusty soup from the pack station’s industrial-style business model. Traffic on our tiny main drag slows to a crawl. Shrieks and howls emit from [...]
Read MoreThis weekend we made a trip out to the glacier to get some summer ice climbing in. Every year the glacier moves, as glaciers do, and most times it moves so that the seracs form new and interesting climbing formations. This time we found that the glacier had moved in a displeasing way from a [...]
Read More gear, industry, societyYou know I never hold back when I don’t like the gear I’m trying out, particularly if the gear is just openly stupid. I’ll be gentle on a well-intentioned product, but lazy, sexist, and foolish gear designers and openly consumerist companies beware. Sometimes I look around at all the hype surrounding a given product and [...]
Read More evironment, gear, industry, worldThe best thing about all the miles of new super special, very expensive, and highly engineered mountain bike trails in Anchorage is that no one goes to the old, root-filled, muddy, buggy, slow and painful ones anymore. At least in the summer, my favorite old haunts are ghost towns. In the winter, they’re full of [...]
Read MoreToday I became aware of a situation that erupted on Mt. Everest between Sherpas and a couple of Western climbers, including Ueli Steck who is pretty famous for his speed ascents. From what I can gather, Sherpas are already generally pissed off at Western climbers and guides and a failure by Steck and his companions [...]
Read MoreFacebook. Sometimes I think it exists only for people to post how fast they run, how many friends they have, and how many misspelled, ungrammatical sappy posters they can put up. But, as with any free service, you don’t have to be on it. I have stayed on it because there are people whose pictures [...]
Read MoreDuring our time in Alaska, my husband and I had the fortune of living in a relatively nice place for relatively good rent (this combination seems to be almost non-existent in AK unless you’re friends with who you’re renting from, which is the case for us). Although I have my share of complaints about our pretty new, [...]
Read More travelThis is enough of a cautionary tale that I wish I was the kind of person to take pictures of anything and everything at the drop of a hat. I’d have some scary mangled motorcycle pictures for you. It’s safe to say that spring has arrived in Alaska. Temperatures are mostly sorta for the most [...]
Read More moto, travelI closed the sale on my Multistrada today. I rode it all last summer and really liked it; it’s a Ducati through and through. A superpowered dual sport with that real Ducati feel. Most days I cruised through roundabouts a few more times than necessary just to feel the way it felt. But it wasn’t [...]
Read More Ducati, motoSince I’ve entered the strange hiker bubble I like to call Long Distance Trail Slogging, I’ve become aware of a pretty great phenomenon: cottage industries devoted to manufacturing lightweight packs, sleeping bags, and tents. Intense discussions rage on and on at hiking forums dedicated to thru-trails (the Appalachian, the Continental Divide, the Pacific Crest and [...]
Read More hiking, industry, ultralight