The docks of the boondocks

Ktsch!



My foot sunk, and there was snow in my shoe -- again.

I should know that even on May 28 this can happen.



I was halfway up Worthington Glacier on the north side of the Chugach Mountains, and about five minutes earlier, James and I realized that getting up was the easy part. We skidded, crawled and carefully stepped down the slope that provided three footholds: ice, loose rocks or both.

Hey, we weren't going to come this far if we didn't mean to have a little fun, right?

Two days earlier, James and I loaded up his Subaru -- the Jetta's gone, sniffle -- and made wake.



The destination: Valdez, with some detours.

You see, James has this goal to drive all of Alaska's major roadways. There's not that many, so it's pretty feasible. Instead of taking the "quick" way down, a paltry 362 miles down the Richardson Highway, we were going west first to take the entire Denali Highway and then head back on the Rich, thus killing two highways with one trip.

The Denali Highway doesn't need to exist, but I'm glad it does. There's a quicker way to cut from east to the west through Glennallen and there aren't any towns along the Denali Highway, so there's no commercial or governmental reason for it.

Once a trail that connected mines and their surrounding communities to the rest of the world, the road seems to have no other purpose than to get hunters, fishers and sightseers to the Alaska Range.

The choice to take the long way to Valdez was apparently the right one. It was the first time I'd ever been through the Tri-Valley area on a clear day.



More luck arrived in Cantwell as we found a Fairbanks-based racer who was brining his car home. I was taking a picture of his ride when I hear from behind me "Want to get one with you in it?"



Yes, yes I do.



Then it was off to the mostly gravel Denali Highway, 136 miles of slow going that you wouldn't want to blow through anyway.








We found a cool lodge along the way that just opened. The young man that was taking care of the place invited us in for coffee and we took in the view.




There was a more commercial establishment along the McClaren River. We didn't stop in, but we said hi to the bear outside.



Then came McClaren Summit, the second highest highway pass in Alaska. (We'd already been through the highest, Atigun Pass, on our way to Deadhorse.) It was about 4,000 feet up.





The road was surrounded by glacial features like kettle lakes and expansive riverbeds with just a trickle of a stream flowing through it. The most apparent glacial impressions on the ground were eskers, mounds of dirt and silt left behind when glaciers melt.



The road even swerved atop an esker for a stretch.



Then it was down the Rich to Valdez through Thompson Pass, which is famous for being so hard to keep clear during snowy months. It wasn't as tough a ride as I had expected, even at night.

Welcome to Valdez, where the sky isn't the limit because it doesn't exist.





Valdez -- in all its foggy, rainy splendor -- is a charming little port city that has, in true Alaska fashion, boomed and busted several times over. This is apparent to any visitor because the history of the town can be boiled down to three main events.

1) The creation of a road to Fairbanks. It took a long time to find a suitable route out of the embrace of the Chugach Range. Lots of folks died before Valdez could become a useful port city.

2) The earthquake of 1964. Basically, the town got wiped out and moved to a safer spot on the Port Valdez shores.

3)The Exxon-Valdez oil spill. The pipeline brought a boom to the city, then the tanker spill brought a cleanup effort that shot the city's population to about 10,000.

The sleepy fishing community is now about 5,000 people strong, has no stoplights and, even without crosswalks, I never had to yield to traffic when crossing the street. The only time Valdez gets packed is when the cruise ships drop off a batch of tourists for a few hours.

These things were discussed at length by our guide on a glacier cruise. I was half listening, half checking out all the animals like humpback whales ...



sea lions ...



puffin ...



and bald eagles.



There were some interesting ice floes and otters that I can't show you because my camera battery died. I was saving my last shot for the Columbia Glacier. Unfortunately, this is as close as we could get to it:



After hardly eating on the seven-hour cruise, James and I dove into a deep-dish pizza that carried an entire slaughterhouse of meat. We could only muster two slices apiece, and anyone who knows how I eat can attest that's an alarmingly low number of slices.

We washed the pizza down with some beers at the Landshark -- OK, so we pre-washed the pizza down with a few beers, too -- and crashed at the hotel.

On our way back, we got to see Keystone Canyon in the daylight.



There were some cool waterfalls with generic names like "Bridal Veil Falls" and "Horsetail Falls" because, well, guess what they looked like?



Then came Worthington Glacier. There's a gravel path that starts alongside the viewing area and takes you to the ice on a narrow hump of rocks and silt. When that ended, we kept going.




There was crevice that we couldn't see the bottom of. James dropped a pebble in, and we didn't hear it hit anything.



And well, you know how that ended. The hike kind of drained us, and we cruised through an unexpectedly scenic Richardson to Delta Junction. Though we did stop to check out probably the most fertile-looking valley I'd ever laid eyes upon.




All in all, a win.

I'm just glad to be home, where the speed limits are in multiples of five.

The yearly rediscovery of that weird, bright dot in the sky

As it so happens, 9 a.m. is a morning hour. An eat-your-oatmeal-and-read-the-news kind of hour. I forget this every year.

From mid-November through February, 9 a.m. seems more like 5 a.m. to me -- the time when no one arises natually. An hour to battle your alarm clock.

My late-night job doesn't help matters. Because I go to bed at 2:30 every morning, I really shouldn't be getting up so early. But up I am, with or without blackout curtains.

It's just more evidence to support that I am a creature of the sun's habits. I grew up walking barefoot to the beach. It's in my nature to be powered by warmth and light and such.

So March is always a fun month in Fairbanks. We're getting more than 13 hours of light now, and there's much to do.

The World Ice Art Championships came back. Here's the winner:

And the favorite in my heart:

James got the ingenious idea to make a King Kong sculpture look even bigger by taking a shot from the ground about 10 feet away. He had to lay in the snow to get this:

People were staring. We didn't care.

The ice park has tons of interactive sculptures, mazes and slides. They're aimed to amuse kids. That didn't stop us.

I waited in line with 5- to 11-year-old kids to go down a slide. One boy's mother accompanied him in line, shoved him off and turned around to exit the adult way. We caught eyes.

"I'm 9," I said with a smile. She quickly exited the slide, possibly to call the authorities.

I had a pretty fun wipeout at the bottom. It must have looked cool. People were concerned.

Can I get a "hell yeah" if you're as lost as I am

There were finally enough hours in the day to take a leisurely hike on the Granite Tors trail about 40 miles outside of town. I'm a heck of a lot better at driving on icy roads now, so getting out there wasn't a problem, unlike last time.

The local grizzlies haven't yet awaken from hibernation, I'm told, but since I was walking alone I wasn't going to chance surprising one. So I sang ... and sang ... and hummed ... and rambled to myself about life ... about death ... about the state of music ... about how much I was rambling.

I exasperated my entire mental Butch Walker catalogue before the going even got rough. Weezer went even quicker. Then Grand Buffet and Astronautilus. Later, pirate songs and Irish drinking tunes gave me a boost.

I was out there for seven hours, just long enough to get to a point where I couldn't find the trail anymore. Finding my way back wasn't a problem; my snowshoes left craters that would give a T-Rex flashbacks.

The first mile is a flat stroll that winds alongside the Chena River's north fork. 

Then it goes up a small hill that leads to a flat traverse to another, steeper uphill slope. This curiously painful cycle coninued four or five times.

This is where I thought I was as high as I could go:



And this is as high as I actually went, two hours later -- I was nearly atop the foothill:

In the quarter-mile between hills. I stopped for lunch -- munching on the cheap trail mix you can find in any airport's Hudson News. I love that stuff.

During the lunch break, I somehow found a cell phone signal. I called my mom, who was probably freaked out that I was hiking alone.

It was wonderfully silent. Several times, a king-bed-sized chunk of hard-packed snow would move under me and make a loud groaning sound. I nearly jumped out of my skin every time this happened. But mostly, I heard nothing -- other than my own voice, that is.

When I neared the top, I learned several ways to maneuver uphill in my snowshoes. Naturally pigeon-toed, I discovered the value of pointing your feet outward while climbing a hill. Also, lowering my center of gravity and clawing at the slope seemed to help at some junctures. I fell a few times, only once so awkwardly that I had to remove my snowshoes to get back up.

When I got back, I was bushed ...



... but happy.

The Wind Blows

Yes, that's a double entendre.

There's a trade-off that gives the frigid outpost of Fairbanks, Alaska, its ability to nestle a reasonably populated American enclave with modern sensibilities.

We take -40 degrees; everyone else takes precipitation and wind. Simple enough.

But you, silly Lower 48ers, you had to have that horrendous cold snap. I'm looking at you, New York, so now we have to endure some actual weather.

For the past few days, we've had about a foot of snow and a whipping breeze to add a little chap to the -10 degree temps. This is a "Hah! So What?" scenario in every other northern city. Not here. There are 50,000 Alaskans freaked out by snowfall right now. It makes no sense.

But enough of the weather. I'd've been outside if it were still the bad side of zero.

Got back on the snowshoeing trails.

My favorite aspect of March up here is the mass of snow atop everything that hasn't moved in five months. Here's a chair on the UAF West Campus trails.

You Conquest (Yukon Quest)

I also love this time of year because the Yukon Quest is back. It finished in Fairbanks this year, which was pretty cool to witness, even though it took some patience.

The end of a 1,000-mile sled dog race is difficult to time. Making matters worse is Eagle Summit -- the steepest and most dangerous traverse on the trail that is shortly followed by another climb, Rosebud Summit -- which is a little more than a day's trip from Fairbanks. The difference between a smooth run over Eagle Summit and one with a few problems can be as long as half a day.

So while it's cooler to catch the end of the race, the start is a bit more fun because, such as 2008's start in Fairbanks, the whole town comes -- on a Saturday with a set beginning time.

Case in point: James and I showed up at the Chena River finish line at 9:30 a.m. -- the frontrunner's earliest estimated finish. He was on a record pace, so we didn't want to miss it if he rewrote the books.

Then we waited, trotting up and down the Chena, keeping out eyes directed east.


Nothing.

I contemplated grabbing a cup of coffee about 10 times, each time resigning myself to the fact that the minute I left, the leader would come roaring 'round the bend.

Around 10:45, Sebastian Schnuelle arrived, early enough for the record.


He was followed by Hugh Neff about 10 minutes later:

Before I finish this part of the story, here's a pup:


Awwww. Next!

Epic Failure at Birch Lake

A buddy of mine who works in the press room, Mark, rented a public-use cabin on the frozen banks of Birch Lake.

It was booked well in advance. We had the cards. We had the beer. We had the guile. We had one heck of a view.


No one showed up, except us and Sam, a photographer, who stayed until 7:30. He had a friend arriving at the airport at 9.

So we took a cruise out on the lake and checked out the ice fishing huts.


And then we drank -- heavily -- and enjoyed the view -- groggily.


We awoke to a refreshing -20 degrees. My car started, somehow.

Make 'Em Say Uhh, Ne-na-na-na

I missed last year's Tripod Days in the tiny town of Nenana, but I wasn't going to skip out on something with my moniker twice. So Joe, Betsy and I cruised down in the Kia.


I don't know why I'm doing the Power Fist there. Just am. Maybe because it's a little bit less aggressive than the Projecting Strength pose. Maybe because I don't have to explain it 20 times a day. Maybe because my earlier Commando pose with Joe was epic enough and I didn't want to tip the balance of a nice day.


Anyhow, Tripod Days is a weekend festival surrounding the raising of a tripod on the Tanana River for the Nenana Ice Classic. The tripod holds a tripwire that's pulled when the ice on the river breaks. People across Alaska place wagers on the minute the wire is tripped (in standard time, not daylight saving, which confuses several people per year).

We walked into the festival. It was just a one-room deal with a bunch of beads and trinkets being sold around a dance floor. There were kids everywhere. Every-where.

It wasn't our scene, so we moseyed across the icy street to the Jester's Corner, where we planned to knock down a few cold ones until the potato race -- just to see what the hell a potato race is.

While tipping back a brew, the locals took kindly to us. One had a batch of moose chili that he couldn't submit for the contest. He was a few minutes too late. We were right on time for free helpings. Mmmm, delicious failure.

The people of Nenana are awesome. I wish it were near Fairbanks, but I guess the fact that it's an hour drive away from the city is what makes the folk so open to visitors. They invited us back. They asked us for weed. They asked if we played guitar (Joe does; I used to a long, long time ago), I said "kind of"and they offered to jam with us, right there at the bar. I didn't -- how do you jam when you know three chords and haven't played them since college?

We headed back to the festival two beers later. What a potato race turned out to be is the most frustrating game on the face of the frozen Earth.

Teams of two must make it back and forth across the dance floor with a potato wedged between their knees. One person crosses the floor and gives the potato to his or her partner, who goes the other way. Exchanging the potato is the ridiculously difficult part. You can't use your hands. Only one group succeeded exchanging and then dropped the potato on the return trip. Joe, Betsy and I giggled on the sidelines, knowing we couldn't do it ourselves.

There was a 40-mile sled dog race each day, which we didn't know was happening until we saw an unexpected dog team coming upriver.

But that was all hubbub leading up to the moment we scooted, slid and stomped across the river to watch the townspeople raise the tripod.

Here's what happens when one great Tripod meets another:

We clashed, but I allowed him to stand.

That's all my adventures as of late.

Grandma: Here's looking at you, kid.

Shifts in Luck & Breaking the Rule: Here's What Happened in Las Vegas.

You can call it Karma. I do.

The ups and downs of my second winter in Fairbanks are many, and that trend will probably continue.

I go to Las Vegas and leave $80 ahead, but my camera gets stolen a night before I leave.

I miss a week of -40 degree temperatures while in sunny Sin City, but I am sidelined two weeks (including a wonderful three-day stretch of 40 above temps) by bronchitis.

I delve in weekends of drunken revelry followed by limitless and delightful brunches, but it is incurred by a dear friend's departure -- Christi left for Cambodia.

I shoot a 45 at a virtual St. Andrews in the local golf simulator, but ... OK, I'm still waiting for that one to bite me back.

It didn't all start with my Vegas trip, but that's where I'm going to begin for lack of better inspiration.

After a surprise stop in Sonoma Valley, Calif., I landed in Vegas and cabbed it to the timeshare Russ and I would share for the next eight days. I arrived a day ahead of Russ and took the opportunity to do some last-minute grooming. Long story shortened: I cut my own hair these days. I screwed up this time. I had to trim my dome to why-not-just-shave-it-bald? levels and had to do the same with my beard (I'm NOT shaving it until the ice on the Chena River breaks).

I hit the Strip and got several complimentary beers, 15 extra bucks and a small cold from Excalibur, Luxor and Mandalay Bay. I discovered there was no open-container law and grabbed some call girl cards from the Hispanic fellows near Paris. Some waitress gives me attitude while serving me an $8 domestic beer, and I gave her a retort that would make a sailor giggle. All in all, success.

Russ arrives. We talk sports, constantly. Gators this. Redskins that. Bucs here. Capitals there. I wouldn't have it any other way. We watched out NFL teams crap out in their season finales and spent an easy night on the Strip before Russ' traveling finally caught up with his stamina.

The highlights are as follows: Hoover Dam; Blue Man Group; an amazing club called Pure where I swear Russ began melting after the third Captain & Coke; my small cold grows into a debilitating illness and my nightly choice becomes "booze or Day-Quil?"; I choose booze every night except New Year's Eve; on the final night of 2008, we watch extreme stunts and a nuclear explosion that turned out to be fireworks; Stratosphere scares the living hell outta me; and my camera got jacked while I was talking to an aggressively unengaging young lady named Miss Vietnam in a strip club. Can't complain, especially because I came out ahead on my gambling.

I doled out the most cash on sports betting. I was there for the New Year's Day bowl games, so I slapped a wager on each game and a few over-unders. My straight-up picks were poor, but I won all the over-unders. I was about 15 bucks behind because the sports books payout is about 90 percent of the original bet -- i.e. $37.62 for a $20 bet -- and I bought a $2 horseracing wager so that my drinks would be free. I never checked to see if my horse won.

My conservative odds playing was good for at least a $20 nightly profit from the slot machines, which made up for a crappy night at O'Shea's blackjack tables. The big bet that put me over the top was an $80 wager on the soon-to-be BCS champions.

Orange! ...

Wish I lived closer to Russ, the sun and towns where they talk for months about that one time it snowed.

This wish is brought to you by the number -49, which was the temperature when I arrived in Fairbanks. The jetway froze, and we weren't allowed to walk outside from the plane to the terminal. They fixed it, which let me and my fellow passengers the luxury of waiting in the lobby as they open the baggage compartment. It had frozen shut -- not uncommon, but quite annoying.

It had been below -35 for seven days by the time I had arrived in Fairbanks, and it would be seven more before the snap was over. Somehow, the Kia started the morning after I returned. It has never sounded so horrible. The ice fog and poor air quality from a town full of drivers leaving their vehicles running at the grocery store turned my cold into bronchitis. I stopped coughing about two days ago.

More later.



:-)

One-way ticket, yeah

I woke up Thursday morning and spied a neighbor who was checking out my Kia.



He didn't make an offer, but I think he left a pile of what he thought my car was worth somewhere near the driveway.

In summer, the photo ops don't come right to your front door, but that's OK. Getting there is more than half the fun.

Take, for example, the time James and I went to Circle (or as I like to call it "Yukon River 3: This Time It's Personal.")

Circle's a place where shooting at anyone disturbing your sleep is technically illegal but generally overlooked.



The town itself, well, it sucked. There was a kindly couple who ran the local grocery store/gas station/phonebooth. I used a washeteria for the first time (the only spot in town with running water; it's like the prison bathrooms in Riki-Oh: "You can take a (expletive); you can wash your clothes; just do it all in 15 minutes.")

Other than that, the most interesting aspect of Circle was a huge wooden lodge on the banks if the Yukon. It was supposed to be a resort that would pump money into this desolate town of 90 or so redsidents. Instead, its funding was tied to some sort of political scandal, and the lodge, without any wiring or plumbing, was left to rot and sits for sale with a beutiful view of the river.

Just like the Deadhorse trip, the final 40 percent of the drive was seemingly endless. It was like the worlds longest bushwhacked driveway: 100 miles of soft dirt, sharp turns and barely anything to look at.

Before that, though, there was plenty to see and do.








We hit up some spots we recognized along the Yukon Quest such as Eagle Summit, Twelvemile Summit and the steakouse in Central, which has the best steaks in 100 miles -- but that's like being the hottest chick in Deadhorse.

We saw an old gold dredge.



And forged a stream ...



So we could get to a sign that anyone in Alaska should read.



Ah yes, the Adventure Zone. We entered it again in September when James won the right to drive on the Denali Highway. There's a lottery that about 2,000 people win per year to be allowed to do this. James won. We hopped in the Jetta again.

Christi came along.



An amazing feature of Denali is the glacier-made valleys. From afar, they look like enormous rivers, though they're just a long row of anti-scorched earth, ravaged smooth by ice.




We saw Mount McKinley through a light fog. Our cameras didn't.



Oh well, looks like we'll just have to come back.





By the way, the Jetta, our toughest travel companion, took a bit of a bruising when James was driving to Skagway recently. The beloved red one was taken to Whitehorse, where it remains critical condition. I will be pouring a sip of my next beer out to honor my homie VW. I ask you to do the same.

What I does is who I be: Narrative

The faded carpet in the Frontier Flying gate at the Fairbanks International Airport was -- at some point in the last 30 years -- bright orange. The News-Miner office used to have carpet just like it, installed in the '70s, I'm told.

I had plenty of time to contemplate things like that as I waited through delay after delay from 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. There were wind shears over Anchorage that were supposed to die down--any--minute--now, so I patiently soaked in the kitchy surroundings (ooh, a model recreation of a steamboat!), and every 30 minutes I was informed that it would be yet another 30 minutes ... and another ... until my flight would depart.

After a lunch of pocky sticks and whatever was not unappealing in the snack machine, I grew weary and managed to catch a few winks until a fellow passenger, a Nanooks fan on his way down to see the UAF hockey team, roused me and informed me that we were boarding in five minutes.

Quickquickquick. Check your stuff. Voice recorder. Pens. Pencils (It's October; ink freezes every now and then). Paper. Super-versatile clipboard. Both cell phones, work and 941, are they off?

I was parched and still groggy from my nap when I climbed aboard the 20-seater that would hopefully make it all the way to Anchorage.

As the plane descended over the shores of Anchorage, I didn't have that fond yearning feeling I usually get when I see a coast these days. Nope, my sinuses were acting up and I didn't get the sleep I had been hoping for on the flight. I was daydreaming of a Rockstar and some DayQuil like an eighth-grader dreams of saving the day and getting the girl.

As we taxied to the terminal at Ted Stevens International Airport, I chatted with five-time Iditarod winner Rick Swenson about high school football (that was a fun sentence to write).

I checked my cell phone: 3:58 p.m. The first of three games I'm here to cover kicks off in two minutes. So much for caffiene and medicine.

Out of breath from sprinting with my luggage, I hailed a cab. The driver was a Middle Eastern man with a cartoonish accent.

Driver: "Where we go?"
Me: "Anchorage Football Stadium."
Driver: "Ahhhhh, stadium?"
Me: "Yeah, um, Where they play high school football. Anchorage Football Stadium, that's the name of it."
Driver: "OK, OK. We go."

We passed a "Welcome to Alaska" sign as his cell phone rung. He picked it up. Whoever was on the other line was getting his life story. His old home in Arizona. The reasons he moved up here. Why yes, he'd love to move to Kansas. He can cook. Boy did he love to talk about his cooking ("I cook-a for you. I cook for you.").

Holy crap, he was talking to a woman who'd found him on the Internet! Very interesting indeed, but it was 4:17, and I was getting antsy.

He must have noticed me squirming and staring at him in the rear-view mirror. He stopped wooing the woman, who wouldn't give him her phone number, and dialed another number.

"Dispatch? Yes, where is the football stadium? Ah, Anchorage Stadium? Ah..."

The Arizona-born Persian chef had no idea where we were going the whole time!

He was fumbling to describe the place, so I asked for the phone. OK, I said, "Gimme the damn phone," but you get the point.

I gave Top Chef taximan $15 for my $25 ride and didn't ask for a receipt. I arrived halfway through the first quarter -- thankfully not as late as I was expecting -- with ample time before halftime to meet with the media relations person, grab a program with all the team rosters, stow my luggage in the press box and find the Anchorage Daily News writer (Kevin Klott, awesome dude) to let him know that I'll need his stats.

With my brain going a million mph faster than my hands, I took some play-by-play notes from the press box before heading down to the visitors sidelines. On the field, it struck me: The scene was unbelievable.

Directly behind the press box was a row of mountains the likes of which I hadn't seen since driving the Alaskan Highway. Only this time, there was a football game in front of it. If the game was Florida-FSU, it would have been official: The plane had crashed and I am in heaven.

Otherwise, the game was, well, like every other game I'd seen this season. In Alaska football, a pass is considered a trick play. The season's too short for a quarterback and his receivers to smooth out any timing issues. Thus, these kids are the perfect players to receive a scholarship to Brown in 1904.

The winners preened; the losers bawled like someone just hit their puppy with a Honda Civic. And so forth.

When Game 1 was over (the Interior guys lost), I hustled to the Sullivan Arena across the street, where there was a collge hockey tournament that allowed me in for free to use the building's WiFi. There were five wireless servers available. Only one worked -- very slowly at that.

I had a window of about 50 minutes between games, not enough time to write a full story with quotes and such. I might have been able to squeeze a total story in, actually, but the connection was so slow that e-mailing the story was a 20-minute ordeal. So I knocked out a few paragraphs for the Web site and scooted back to the sidelines for Game 2. The visitors were once again the Interior team, which was helpful since I like to stand on the guest sidelines to be close to the marking sticks.

The game kicked off around dusk, which with the aformentioned scenery was another truly majestic moment. Game 2 featured the Interior team I was banking on for another trip to Anchorage for the championship game next week. They lost a heartbreaker.

Too bad, so sad. I'd been talking to kids fresh off season-ending losses for weeks, so I was becoming immune to the teary-eyed musings of swollen-muscled young men. I put my game face on, the understandingly soft, contemplative look I usually reserve for people who tell me how afraid they are of Obama, and headed into the blubbering mass of humanity that once was a football team.

Only -- it got to me this time. These kids were upset in ways I hadn't seen outside of funerals and breakups, falling to their knees and such. That outpouring combined with the salty reek of postgame jerseys made it hard to keep from welling up a bit. Some of it was comically gratuitous, too, so refraining from chuckling also proved to be a chore.

So there I was, cutting through a circle of depressed 18-year-olds, fighting the forces of my own sentimentality.

Quotes, written in my huge illegible scrawl, were soon ready on my notepad, and I jogged to Sullivan Arena. It was 10:45 p.m. when I opened my laptop. At 11:05, I hit "send" for the finished Game 1 story.

Oh, crud. My bag was in the press box.

I made a wedge with my forearms and hustled through the crowd, now departing from the hockey tournament. I sprinted across the parking lot that separated the venues, dodging SUVs that had "Go Wildcats!" and "#34! GATA!" written on the windows. A few times, I came close to becoming a window dressing myself.

Press box -- locked. The guy with the keys -- gone. My second story -- not yet started. My deadline -- 25 minutes.

I sprinted back, nearly avoiding death by SUV a several more times. I filed my story five minutes past deadline, which was about 10 minutes earlier than I had feared I would.

Danny Martin, a fellow N-M sports writer who was covering the hockey tournament, and I split a cab to the hotel.

No restaurants were open nearby, so I dialed up Pizza Hut. Large, pinappley goodness was on its way. It cost $22, which probably seems horrendous to anyone reading this in the Lower 48. Honestly, the girl on the phone could have said $100. I'd have paid it. I hadn't eaten for 13 hours, and my wind sprints in the parking lot didn't help matters.

Waiting for lunch/dinner to come. I watched "Survivorman" feast on bugs in Africa. I cranked up the volume to drown out the couple in the adjacent room, who were drunk and hurling swear words at each other. I had just finished folding my clothes so they'd be presentable the next day (my clothes, toothbrush, deoderant were all safely hidden in a press box about two miles away), so I answered the pizza man's knock in boxers and a T-shirt.

I didn't even look at the TV while I ate. My eyes were fixated on the wall, in its gloriously one-coat-painted state, and though of nothing. Just truly blanked out.

Was I ready to do it again tomorrow? I'm never ready, but I do it anyway.

The Fake Sound of Progress

This blog shouldn't have lasted two weeks.

The premise was simple, a daily account of a boy and his Kia through the terrible expanse of concrete and gravel between Bradenton, Fla., and Fairbanks, Alaska.

That was supposed to be the end.

But the story of a 10-day trip became the monthly adventures of that same boy in his Box, bravely (and sometimes savagely) fighting the perils of sub-zero cold and confined spaces.

Then summer came, and adventure followed ... and the blog fell behind because writing it required staying inside for more than 15 minutes. Only sleeping would bring me out of the sun for that long, and I didn't even do much of that.

So, lagging on the blog, I found a reasonable place to end it: the trip to the Arctic. What better way to end "the Diagonal" than with a story that finally completes the journey, going from the Atlantic to the Arcitc. The symmetry was there, and the story felt done.

It was supposed to end there.

And yet here I am.



It turns out I had the gusto for a Diagonal resurrection all along. Here's something I wrote last July and never posted. I'd forgotten about it until now:

I pull onto the short stretch of Johansen Expressway between Peger Road and University, merge into this town's laughable excuse for "traffic" and crank up the CD player to counter the whoosh of wind through the open window. The sun makes my skin feel warm and alive, and the natural light spashes off the pavement, making everything look whitewashed for a moment.

There are moments like this when I forget I've left Florida.

Right on University Avenue. Bump-ka-chunk over the train tracks and another right into a parking lot -- where even though the snow is gone and the lines for parking spots can be seen, people still pay no attention to them.

After a quick nod to the cashiers at Gulliver's Bookstore, I take the stairs three at a time to the Second Story Cafe, where I overpay for a bagel sandwich and make up for it with a few free cups of coffee.

This is where I do a lot of the writing for the Diagonal, away from the TV and other temptations. It's got free WiFi and, most importantly, an ouside deck that opens in the summer.

It was here that I strung together the account of my first night in Fairbanks -- after a failed attempt at a fantasy football draft -- and the place seems to be the only area where the standard rules of time apply.

Like the deck I'm sitting on now, the rest of Fairbanks seems to have opened up for the summer. Restaurants' tables spill out to the sidewalks and rooftops. Cyclists coast by on every street. Kids play in open lots and empty parking lots.

Hell, I'm even happy to see the swarming packs of tourists crossing downtown streets en masse with no regard for traffic. I'm used to dodging that; it beats the hell out of black ice.

So it doesn't seem like I've been here for a year, because I've only lived in this town for two months. I don't know what happened to that other barren, frozen outpost in the Tanana Valley desert, but it's not anywhere near here.

New home. New job. But the lag in posts stays the same.

Yup, I'm a sportswriter now. A sportswriter who lives in a 2 1/2-story house. In my last post I was still a lonely copy editor in a one-room efficiency so small that I once tripped at the door, fell through the living room and landed in the kitchen. How did I pull off such a meteoric rise? In one month, no less?

To be honest. I barely did a dang thing. I took the job when it opened at at desk not 5 feet to my left (sadly due to the loss of Adam to the Ashtabula Star-Beacon), and my new roommate/landlord, Lisa, offered me a better price than what I was paying at The Box without even knowing my lease was expiring.

And what a place it is:



I gotta tell you: Do nothing in life; it works wonders.

So please pardon my lack of posting, but I'm truly not sorry for it this time around. Why would I be inside typing on my laptop when I could be outside in the sunlight? At any time?

Honestly, there was 21 hours of daylight in June (it's now down to about 19), and even when the sun is down, there's still enough light to do just about anything. I've been getting out of work at 1 a.m., driving to Lathrop High School and running laps at the track without any artificial lights. I've killed time through the sundown hours watching a movie and driven to the overlook south of Fox and watched the sun come up at 3 a.m.

And I can enjoy all this glorious vitamin D in my backyard. That's right, I got one of those, too. Check it out:



It's been put to good use. Those hammocks are my standard lounging spot for reading, and, as proven on the Fourth of July, the place is AOK for BBQ.



That's mes amis (from top) Christi, Betsy and Joe enjoying my awesome place and crying on the inside because they'll go return to their one-story pads later.

Well, see you in a month? Hopefully sooner. Though that's up to me, I suppose.

That last line's a hoot ain't it?

Stay tuned. In the past three months, I've made a return trip to the Yukon River, delved into the heart of Denali National Park and paced the sidelines of a football field with glorious mountains providing the backdrop to a hellish Anchorage-a-thon.

I've got the fuel. I've got the nerve. I've almost got the wit to pull this off one more time.