This is a test.
01 December 2021
23 November 2017
Little Cottage in the Woods 2013
Or: The year we couldn't have done without Tommy
December, 2013
Dear Friends and Family,
We have come so far and done so much, it is hard to imagine that it has been only a year since I last sat down to write this letter. The first part of our year was spent fixing up our house to put on the market, while simultaneously trying to make the most of every minute remaining to us in Vermont. In the spring we tapped our beloved Maple tree and made our very own Vermont maple syrup. We called it “Cohen’s Superfancy” and it is delicious, if I do say so myself. We actually got into the game a little late, and didn’t get our taps in until after the first week in March. Even so we had two solid weeks of the sap running: dip dip dipping in the buckets while the snow was drip drip dripping off the branches. By the end of two weeks we were swimming in sap and had boiled well over a gallon of syrup already! We decided to finish boiling down what we had, but pack the buckets up and let the sap start fertilizing the ground. I’m looking forward to tasting Kentucky maple syrup this spring, weather permitting. (Kentucky maple syrup, no way!)
Finally towards the end of April we finished up our house and put it on the market. Within a week we had our first showing and had accepted an offer. Suddenly we were a little concerned that we might close and have to move before the end of Seth’s school year! Luckily the buyer was willing to wait and we closed right after school let out. The week of our move was pretty hectic. Joanna’s cousin Tommy came to help and it’s a good thing, we never would have managed without him. The day before the closing the buyer and his realtor did a walk-through of the house, after which they scheduled another walk-through for right before the closing - they didn’t believe it was possible that we’d have everything out in time! When they arrived we were just loading the last of our worldly possessions into our trailer. We had a wheelbarrow and trash left, and no room to possibly stow them. Turned out our buyer was in need of a new wheelbarrow and our realtor was very generous with her dumpster! Our relief was immense.
We arrived at Seth’s Dad’s house bewildered and homeless, exhausted and more than a little heart-broken. We can never thank Mitchell and Morissa enough for welcoming us with open arms and allowing us to stay with them for several months while we searched for a house of our own. Our house hunting proved futile and finally, mercifully, we got word that the current tenants of the little stone house down on Joanna’s family property were moving out. We moved in Labor Day weekend and have never been happier. With two whole bathrooms, the house itself is an upgrade from our Vermont house. With family scattered about, woods surrounding and a creek running through, the neighborhood is enchanting. (One may actually expect the birds and rabbit to break into song, as though s/he stepped into Snow White’s forest.) We are very happily settling into habit with the land. (Not only have I found a few sugar maples, but we have a plentiful walnut crop that will fall into our lap every fall.)
Since we never seem to pack enough into one year, we decided we should try to squeeze in another big motorcycle race. In November we traveled to Mexico for the Baja 1000, which claims to be one of the toughest off-road races in the world. Once again Tommy joined us and once again, we couldn’t have done it without him. We spent a week and a half “pre-running” the course, which involved dropping Seth and his motorcycle off on the side of the road in the morning and picking them up in the evening - or well after dark, as it sometimes happened. Breakfast and dinner on the same day meant it was a good day. We camped on the beach, drove through sunrises and moonrises. We gawked at the stars and gazed on as the desert sparkled in the sunrise. Unfortunately the trip was plagued with bad luck. We spent most of one night parked on the side of a road, 2 miles from our hotel. The road was closed due to an accident, a tractor trailer turned over. We had 5 flat tires on the truck and trailer, and Seth’s engine blew only 169 miles into the race. We spent the rest of race day trying to extract him from the desert until finally he drove up in the back of a rancher’s pickup, standing next to his motorcycle. We got back to our hotel just as the first motorcycle racers were finishing the race. We’ll have to try this one again someday.
We’re so grateful now to be back in our cottage in the woods, safe and sound after our adventures. Just as I was despairing that I might never see snow again it started snowing and our world was blanketed in goodness and beauty.
Merry Christmas, Happy Belated Hannukah, and Happy New Year!
Love,
Joanna & Seth
And Thunder.
December, 2013
Dear Friends and Family,
We have come so far and done so much, it is hard to imagine that it has been only a year since I last sat down to write this letter. The first part of our year was spent fixing up our house to put on the market, while simultaneously trying to make the most of every minute remaining to us in Vermont. In the spring we tapped our beloved Maple tree and made our very own Vermont maple syrup. We called it “Cohen’s Superfancy” and it is delicious, if I do say so myself. We actually got into the game a little late, and didn’t get our taps in until after the first week in March. Even so we had two solid weeks of the sap running: dip dip dipping in the buckets while the snow was drip drip dripping off the branches. By the end of two weeks we were swimming in sap and had boiled well over a gallon of syrup already! We decided to finish boiling down what we had, but pack the buckets up and let the sap start fertilizing the ground. I’m looking forward to tasting Kentucky maple syrup this spring, weather permitting. (Kentucky maple syrup, no way!)
Finally towards the end of April we finished up our house and put it on the market. Within a week we had our first showing and had accepted an offer. Suddenly we were a little concerned that we might close and have to move before the end of Seth’s school year! Luckily the buyer was willing to wait and we closed right after school let out. The week of our move was pretty hectic. Joanna’s cousin Tommy came to help and it’s a good thing, we never would have managed without him. The day before the closing the buyer and his realtor did a walk-through of the house, after which they scheduled another walk-through for right before the closing - they didn’t believe it was possible that we’d have everything out in time! When they arrived we were just loading the last of our worldly possessions into our trailer. We had a wheelbarrow and trash left, and no room to possibly stow them. Turned out our buyer was in need of a new wheelbarrow and our realtor was very generous with her dumpster! Our relief was immense.
We arrived at Seth’s Dad’s house bewildered and homeless, exhausted and more than a little heart-broken. We can never thank Mitchell and Morissa enough for welcoming us with open arms and allowing us to stay with them for several months while we searched for a house of our own. Our house hunting proved futile and finally, mercifully, we got word that the current tenants of the little stone house down on Joanna’s family property were moving out. We moved in Labor Day weekend and have never been happier. With two whole bathrooms, the house itself is an upgrade from our Vermont house. With family scattered about, woods surrounding and a creek running through, the neighborhood is enchanting. (One may actually expect the birds and rabbit to break into song, as though s/he stepped into Snow White’s forest.) We are very happily settling into habit with the land. (Not only have I found a few sugar maples, but we have a plentiful walnut crop that will fall into our lap every fall.)
Since we never seem to pack enough into one year, we decided we should try to squeeze in another big motorcycle race. In November we traveled to Mexico for the Baja 1000, which claims to be one of the toughest off-road races in the world. Once again Tommy joined us and once again, we couldn’t have done it without him. We spent a week and a half “pre-running” the course, which involved dropping Seth and his motorcycle off on the side of the road in the morning and picking them up in the evening - or well after dark, as it sometimes happened. Breakfast and dinner on the same day meant it was a good day. We camped on the beach, drove through sunrises and moonrises. We gawked at the stars and gazed on as the desert sparkled in the sunrise. Unfortunately the trip was plagued with bad luck. We spent most of one night parked on the side of a road, 2 miles from our hotel. The road was closed due to an accident, a tractor trailer turned over. We had 5 flat tires on the truck and trailer, and Seth’s engine blew only 169 miles into the race. We spent the rest of race day trying to extract him from the desert until finally he drove up in the back of a rancher’s pickup, standing next to his motorcycle. We got back to our hotel just as the first motorcycle racers were finishing the race. We’ll have to try this one again someday.
We’re so grateful now to be back in our cottage in the woods, safe and sound after our adventures. Just as I was despairing that I might never see snow again it started snowing and our world was blanketed in goodness and beauty.
Merry Christmas, Happy Belated Hannukah, and Happy New Year!
Love,
Joanna & Seth
And Thunder.
21 April 2016
The Mexico Interval: Race Day
Race Day was hectic.
Seth and Jimi finished work on the bike while Tommy, Manuel and I put together supply kits for each vehicle. First aid kits that seemed woefully inadequate (what are you going to do with Band-Aids and Neosporin when you run into a cactus, fall into a trap dug by a drunk spectator or the worst of our fears, get run over by a Trophy Truck?) Snacks, drinks, caffeine, TIRES, tools, gas, etc. Jimi took a nap while the rest of us had an early dinner at a nearby vegan restaurant which had become our go-to for a filling meal.
Then, the plan went into action. Around 4pm, Seth and Manuel left to find a good, visible parking spot at the first checkpoint, and for Seth to sleep until around 12:30am when he'd start keeping a watch out for Jimi. Jimi settled in for a nap, while Tommy and I went down to the starting area to check things out. The whole city had turned into a street festival that would last until well after the finish. The starting area was packed. There were pigs roasting on spits, vendors selling every kind of junk you could possibly imagine, and drunk people everywhere. We went back to our hotel and tried to nap.
At 9 pm Tommy, Jimi and I arrived at the Racer's Meeting to get the inside scoop. A line of Coca-Cola girls stood behind a line of shiny looking men from California and a few Mexican government officials. Some Mexican troops came in and performed the Mexican national anthem. The shiny California men thanked the Mexican government officials for all of their spectacular help in pulling off this race, and especially for their help in routing the race over a section of native land which had never been done before (this happened to be the section where Jimi was hung by a tree). Once everyone was thanked properly it seemed like we were about to be dismissed without receiving any inside scoop at all, til a racer stood up and said he just had one thing to add.
Jimi and I both immediately recognized this guy. He was in a Trophy Truck and he'd been racing the Baja for ages. He'd even raced the Dakar several times. Our ears perked up and we finally got the inside scoop. The "indians" had been throwing boulders around up on the mountain pass because they were pissed the race was going through their land. There were flat-tire inducing wooden stakes on the road from San Felipe down to Coco's Corner, vestiges of a hastily packed away construction project.
Jimi and I were livid. Jimi was angry at the "indians" for throwing boulders around on the mountain and I was incensed that the organizers had tried to route the race through the reservation with apparently not a lot of agreement and then bragged about it in front of a line of Coca-Cola girls. I was also angry that they seemed like they didn't really want to talk about the fact that there was any dissent going on and the race course might be more dangerous than usual. Seth and I had calculated that we had about 60 minutes left on our sat phone, but I dialed Manuel's cell phone anyway. Seth had to know that the mountain pass wasn't going to look like he expected it to. It was his first section and he'd be riding it in the pitch black desert night.
No answer, Manuel was out of range.
I dialed Seth's sat phone. No answer. They probably had it stuffed in a door, or in his backpack, turned off. They were not expecting a report from the rider's meeting.
The motorcycles were scheduled to start at 11pm, followed by the ATVs. Then every living soul in Ensenada would utterly demolish their livers with alcohol until 9 the following morning, when the Trophy Trucks would take off, followed by the cars, then the buggies. This plan was supposed to give the riders enough of a head start so that they might not be overtaken by the Trophy Trucks at all, and worst case, at least when they were caught it would be daylight. This was the shiny California plan for reducing the number of riders run over by Trophy Trucks.
Anyway, Tommy and I were supposed to see Jimi through the start, and then start our own adventure back down to the bottom of our world. We managed to get Jimi and the bike into the starting area, which was even more chaotic than it had been earlier in the day. There were barriers around the line of racers, which was starting to form behind the start/finish line. Tommy had to sneak in to hold the bike for Jimi, so Jimi could sit down. (We had to take the kickstand off of the race bike to pass tech.)
Racers were being released every five minutes, and Jimi was toward the back of the line of bikes. We had a long wait ahead of us. We stood around. The line crept forward. I tried to keep just on the other side of the barrier from Tommy, lest I be swept away into the lonely crowd.
After an actual eternity, Jimi was up next. My stomach was butterflies. Each rider was interviewed before they started, to help pass the minute in between each rider and keep things interesting for the drunken masses.
What would Jimi say? He'd told Tommy and me that he had a whole speech prepared. Tommy and I inhaled a collective breath, holding the exhaust in our lungs "frickin' tree hung me" echoing across the wavelengths between our brains.
"Vermon'," Jimi answered when the interviewer asked where he was from. (Sidenote: most of the time after we told people we were from Vermont, they'd look at us blankly. Sometimes we followed up with "near New York" and sometimes we followed up with "Canada?" Most people continued to look at us blankly until they'd guess "California?"
"Nope its just me an' Seth!" I heard Jimi say, after the announcer asked if he had teammates stationed all over the peninsula. I smiled. Jimi had stared into the bright lights and most of his speech flew out of his head. The announcer asked him a few more questions to keep him talking.
Suddenly, the flag was waving and Jimi was off, then around the corner and out of sight! I was exhilarated. It was happening! Tommy and I fought against the tide, freeing two coveted spots right against the barrier. At every step, people filled in behind us like water.
Tommy and Joanna Race a Backwards Baja 1000
We power walked our way back to the hotel, pausing only to run our hands through some well-loved rosemary plants in front of an upscale house. At the hotel we decided we better make one last pit stop before we hit the road. When we were ready to pull out, Tommy opened the gate of the hotel parking lot while I drove through, carefully, in Seth's big truck. Tommy shut the gate and hopped in. I realized we needed to fill up the gas tank before we headed back into the desert where we'd already almost run out of gas a few times. Luckily we found a 24/7 self-service fancy-credit-card-taking gas station fairly quickly.
Finally, around 12:45am, we started our 7 hour drive to the bottom-most pit-stop of the race. This would mark the second time I'd driven us down this harrowing road in the darkness. Thankfully, the only other people on the road tonight were other crews making their way to their "spots." We rolled nervously through an empty checkpoint station, expecting lights to blare, dogs to bark and gunshots to ring out at any moment. All was quiet.
At the last-known gas station we stopped, even though we had only used 1/3 of the tank. As we approached, the entire gas station was entirely dark and my stomach nearly fell out. "It can't be closed! It can't be closed!" Another crew's rig (which we'd been vaguely following down the only road to the bottom of the world) was sitting next to one of the pumps, so we pulled in to see what we could do. The pumps were on, but wouldn't pump. We went to the window and, after struggling with our terrible Spanish abilities handed over a $20 US bill. We got on our way again, and drove into the blackened desert. Somewhere in the blackness, Tommy started driving.
When I awoke, the grey tones of pre-dawn clouded the desert mountains. I started driving, and watched the world turn blue, then pink, and then orange, as the fiery sun slowly illuminated the landscape. We passed the house we'd spent hours parked beside waiting for Seth. I drove in the middle of the empty road to avoid the site of our double-flat-tires. We passed the grove where the semi had overturned and stranded us on the wrong side of our hotel. We passed the hotel that had been our desert oasis. We passed the place we'd dropped Seth off for pre-riding. We kept on. We were in uncharted territory.
We found the place where the race crossed the road because there was a motorcycle racing across the road. We made sure no one else was coming and turned off, onto the sandy race course toward the pit area. The pit stop had been turned into a campsite with pickup trucks and campers lining the race course. There was no where for us to go even though I could tell by the cloud of dust and the wide-eyed folks waving from the side that another motorcycle had caught us and we needed to be off the course. An opening came and I whirled the truck onto the much harder packed sand on the side. There was no easy way out of this spot, but it would be pretty visible to Seth, was near enough to the actual pit and provided us with a pretty good view of people coming. Plus, it had the huge advantage of not being on a live race course. Tommy got out to check out a campfire and hang with the locals. With a thud, my eyes closed. It was 7:30am.
My brain registered a ringing and tried to ignore it, but it was too persistent, too close. Without fully waking, I answered the sat phone and jumped out of the car to make sure it didn't drop the call. "This must be Manuel," I thought, "letting me know that they just left Seth and he'll be here in a few hours. We were expecting him around noon. I tilted forward to make sure the antenna was sticking straight into the air.
"Hello?!" I screeched.
"I'm ok, but the bike's not so happy."
STOP
"What? Where are you?!" I asked.
"Just on the other side of the mountain."
FULL STOP.
We had sent most of the tools and spare parts with Tommy and me: to the bottom of the race, the bottom of the world where they were most likely to be needed. Now Seth needed them, and he was still on the top.
"The bike wasn't running well. I pulled out and tried to figure it out. I pulled the engine and checked the valves but I can't get it to start so I'm going to try to walk to the closest pit and see if they can help me."
The exhaustion in my beloved's voice beamed down from a satellite, and I closed my eyes.
"You pulled your engine apart on the side of a mountain?"
Visions of the first time Seth and I had checked the valves on his KTM, wearing surgical gloves and scarcely daring to breathe lest we move any dust from the air into his engine, floated across the back of my closed eyelids.
"You have the bike hauler on the truck," Seth pointed out. "Start driving here and I'll let you know where to pick me up."
My heart sank with the weight of the disappointment Seth had to push down. He didn't have time for it yet.
"OK," I said, "I love you."
"I'll call you back," he said. Determined. Focused.
Seth's focus reached through the airwaves and shook my by the shoulders. "You have work to do," it said, "you can do this."
I found Tommy unexpectedly sprawled out in the back of the truck with a blanket. (That guy could survive comfortably anywhere!) Seth's position presented us with a conundrum: he was basically on the opposite side of a circle with no way to cut through. We dreaded backtracking the way we had just come. We estimated that going that way would take us about 12 hours to reach Seth. The only alternative, taking the circle the other way to Coco's Corner and up to San Felipe, was sort of closed because part of it was the race course.
Wasn't it? Was it actually closed to thru traffic or was it only closed to race crews following their racer? Tommy and I thought through the exact words the shiny men from California had used a the Racers Meeting only 12 hours before. If someone breaks down in that section they have to let the crew in to extract them, right? What about ambulances? Yea! They just didn't want you following your racer all the way to Coco's Corner. (Right?????)
Tommy walked up to the pit area to confirm our suspicions and confer on our best course of action. I tried to turn the truck around. A very nice lady in the pit area assured Tommy that we could get through at Coco's Corner. We would be driving against race traffic once we passed Coco's Corner, but as long as we were careful it shouldn't be a problem. We still had a few hours til the Trophy Trucks hit that section.
Encouraged, and with renewed purpose, we jumped back into the truck, waited for a motorcycle to pass and headed out. We had to back track about a half-hour until we came to "the road to Coco's Corner." Our smiles quickly faded as we turned off of the fresh pavement of Hwy 1 and onto the dirt, gravel washboard that was passing as a road. We swayed and rocked and thudded our way up the road at around 20 miles per hour. This might take longer than we thought.
The road changed from a flat, straight, raised pile of rocks crossing what probably turns into a swamp during the wet season, to a winding, narrow, rocky mountain pass. In the middle of a blind turn one of the remaining original tires went flat, sending the tire pressure monitoring system into fits of rage. We stopped where we were and Tommy changed the tire (with pretty much no help from me). Since I was so useless I stationed myself at the turn and tried to slow oncoming traffic. A few cars passed and, for the first time in our Mexican experience, someone offered to help. It took a while but we were on our way again, now going extra slow. Finally the road became more sandy with fewer jagged rocks, and we were able to speed up.
We knew when we got to Coco's Corner because Coco greeted us head on, he on his ATV holding his hand up in the universal symbol to Stop, Or Else. We stopped. I rolled my window down and he rolled up.
"English or Spanish?"
"English?"
"Road's closed. You can't get through here."
I looked to the sky in desperation. I couldn't face that road again. We didn't have any more spare tires!
"This is an active race course," he continued, "there's no way you can get through!"
"My husband's on bike 342x, he's stuck and we need to get up to San Felipe to get him out," I pleaded.
"It's way to dangerous."
I looked to Tommy for help. Seth's focus wore off and for the first time, I felt the familiar tightening of my throat as tears welled in my eyes. My brain shut down, overloaded.
"You've got bikes then ATVs and then the big trucks. You've got to have emergency flashers and stay to the right. I mean WAY to the RIGHT!"
Tommy and I frowned, and I looked back at Coco: "Didn't you hear me??"
I looked back at Tommy, still confused. Tommy shrugged and nodded his head towards the road ahead, eyebrows raised.
I took a deep breath and, before Coco could change his mind I drove forward, onto the race course; driving backwards on the Baja 1000.
To give you a realistic idea of what this meant to us, less than 12 hours had passed since the motorcycles had started, spaced by 5 minutes, followed by ATVs. We'd already seen the first motorcycles early that morning and they'd been fairly spaced out. Now, we were seeing the first ATVs catching the mid pack to last motorcycles. It is easy for motorcycles and ATVs to share a road with a truck of our size. We could see them coming from pretty far away, the dust cloud behind them giving them away before we could even hear them. When we saw someone coming I'd pull as far to the right as possible and slow, then stop in order to let our own dust cloud settle. Those guys had enough dust and sand to deal with, without us adding to their troubles! I saw Seth's face on every one of them, and I wanted to make sure we weren't obscuring their view of the course.
This all seemed fine and dandy, and after an hour or two even became the norm. The real worry, the one that kept my heart pumping and my foot on the pedal, my brain focused and my muscles tensed, was that we needed to get to the normal two-way road (where pit crew vehicles were not allowed to continue) BEFORE the first Trophy Truck. I didn't even want it to be close. Coco's last warning thudded in my ears: "and then the big trucks"
As the road unfolded in front of us it became sandier, and softer. I became afraid that if we stopped we'd spin out when we tried to get going again. I also became worried by the gas gauge. We realized we had no idea if there was a gas station before San Felipe. We'd never pre-run this section. The needle continued to decline and our progress seemed to slow. How long had we been on this blasted road?! How much longer could it possibly be to the start of two way traffic?? Was the sun even moving through the sky or was it stuck dead center, baking us all to death?
The wind became gusty, blowing sand from the east. It no longer mattered whether we stopped entirely for racers, sand obscured everyone's vision all the time. The wind pummeled the truck. I couldn't imagine how the motorcycles and ATVs weren't being swept away. I imagined Seth squinting through his goggles as this sand pummeled the rest of his face.
The wind continued to gust.
The sand continued to blow.
The road continued to unfold before us, an endless brown ribbon.
The gas gauge continued to drop.
Our bladders continued to fill.
The sun beat down, heat radiating from the parched earth.
We stared ahead, waiting for something to change. For some sign - any sign - of civilization to let us know we were close.
With a giant gust and a clearing of sand the road widened. We saw trucks and rigs pulled off to the side and a brilliant modern gas station glittering in the sun.
We stopped. It was real, we had made it across the mountain range and no man's land to the point where racers had to continue on their own. The tar-road was actually under construction here, and someone had built a giant dirt ramp for the Trophy Trucks. We realized why all the support rigs were pulled off on the side. They were waiting for the Trophy Trucks; waiting for the show to start!
We filled the gas tank, took advantage of the gas station's modernity to empty our over-filled bladders, got a snack, and managed not to be swept away in the still howling sand laden wind. We were on our way again, smiling again.
Back on the road, we quickly came across our first Trophy Truck. It whizzed by on the other side of the perfect road. "God that was close!" I breathed, we had only just made it. Soon we heard the ringing of the satellite phone. It was Seth! He had found a spectator, a rancher with a truck, to ride him and his bike to a nearby Honda pit. "This pit is close to an access road so you should be able to drive into me pretty easily." I gave the phone to Tommy, who put the coordinates into our GPS. "Got it" he said, "we'll call when we're close." (A year or so later I found this route still in the GPS, titled 'Save our Darling Seth!')
We called Manuel and Jimi to give them an update. They wanted to know where they should go to get him, where was he, what could they do!?!?! It was clear that they'd been going crazy with worry and lack of action. Unfortunately I couldn't give them anything to do except wait til we got there, unless they wanted to try to drive into the Honda pit themselves. They didn't have the bike hauler and their lowered SUV was not capable of off-roading, but they had food, water and a first aid kit if Seth needed anything.
Tommy and I switched again and the Sat Phone jingled.
"Hello?" I scrambled back to alertness. It was Manuel. I tilted forward to hold the antenna upright.
"We heard on race radio that a pedestrian was hit by a Trophy Truck up on the mountain."
No. - No.
Seth knew they were coming. Seth is not an idiot. He said he had pulled his bike halfway up the mountain to get it out of the way of any possible traffic.
"I'll try to call Seth and call you back." I said.
"He's not answering!" Manuel was frantic.
No. - No.
I dialed Seth's phone. "Hello? he said?
"Manuel and Jimi think you're dead!" I laughed, relieved. "Are you OK?"
"This isn't a good time, we're loading my bike. I'm trying to get out to the Honda pit so you guys don't have to drive back here."
"OK sorry bye." - I love you - be safe - don't let one of those DAMN TROPHY TRUCKS hit you!
Unexpectedly the road we were on turned up and into a huge new road right in the middle of a turn. The truck hit the (rough) transition to the new road and may or may not have been slightly airborne for what may or may not have been an entire second. Time stood still again 'til we came down with a thud. "Shit." Tommy said, "I think we have a flat."
He slowed down, looking for a place to pull off. Luckily a restaurant appeared out of nowhere on the left, with an enormous dirt parking lot and a lot of spectators hanging out there. We pulled in, got out and stood looking at our busted tire, each wondering silently how we were going to get out of this one.
Some Anglos came over to see what our trouble was. The wind howled and we shouted that we'd already had to use our spare, we needed to get up to San Felipe to get our racer. They said there was a small town nearby where we might be able to find llanteras. They offered to give us a ride. I told Tommy that if he went to get the tire I would get this one off. (I couldn't see myself successfully negotiating this deal, and Tommy's Spanish abilities were much better than mine.) He agreed, I pulled a wad of cash out of my secret emergency stash and handed it over.
As they pulled out a metal-framed canvas utility shed beside the restaurant collapsed under the weight of the wind and the whole thing blew across the parking lot to the back of the restaurant and finally stopped at the base of a hill. I got the puny Manufacturer supplied jack out and a vision of the truck with the wheel off, standing on this peg leg of a tiny jack rushed through my brain. If this wind could blow a whole structure away I wasn't sure I wanted to take the wheel off just yet.
The howl of the wind and the warmth of the cab as the sun beat down lulled me into sleep. I awoke to the siren of the sat phone, again. "Shit," I thought, "I never called Manuel back!"
Manuel was talking a mile a minute. They had Seth! Seth is not dead! Seth pulled up in the back of a pickup just as they got to the pit and it was a miracle and Seth is not dead I repeat NOT DEAD and they have Seth!
I smiled at his relief even while I felt guilty that I had caused him to wait so long with such fear.
I was relieved to know that Seth was safe. I was also guilty of thinking that Tommy and I were now useless, and we could have been arriving in Ensenada right now having had no flat tires and crashing into our beds. "We'll have to wait here for you, you have the bike hauler and we can't get his bike into the back of my car." Manuel's voice called me back to reality. "Where are you?"
"Oh, uuh, well I'm sitting on the side of the road about two hours South of San Felipe waiting for Tommy to get back, hopefully with a spare tire." I felt so guilty that it was taking us so long to get there. They'd been waiting all day for us! The sun was finally starting to meander its way towards the western edge of the sky. There was nothing they could do but wait. At least they had Seth, I thought. "I'll call you when we get to San Felipe," I told Manuel.
I drifted back to sleep, my brain unable to hold onto the entirety of this disaster.
A knocking at my window woke me again. It was Tommy. "Did you get the wheel off?"
I cringed. "No, I was afraid of the wind."
This now seemed like a ridiculous excuse. With a nap behind me I could no longer imagine the wind blowing the truck away, even if I took the wheel off and didn't put the jack up! "I'll do it now."
I yanked and pulled and kicked and shoved and could not possibly loosen the lug nuts. An audience formed. "Can I do it?" Tommy asked quietly.
What a failure. The only thing I had to do and I didn't - couldn't do it. I watched as Tommy and an old man swapped the new tire with the flat tire, refilled it and put the wheel back on the truck.
What a failure. At the whispered suggestion of some of our Anglo friends I handed over a wad of cash to thank the guy who had helped Tommy find the tire and then change it. Handing out cash and picking up the tab seemed to be the only thing I was good for on this trip.
What a failure.
Since my failure had provided the luxury of an afternoon nap, I drove. We were happy to be on our way again, every second quietly bringing us closer to Seth. Thu Gulf of California appeared on our right, stunningly gorgeous in the afternoon sun. The deep blue of its waters melted away some of the disaster, its beauty brightening our moods. It's beauty so cleared my mind that I had to turn around backwards to get my first and only snapshot of the day, just before the viewpoint disappeared.
"By the time we get back to our hotel," I said to Tommy, "we will have done this whole damn race backwards!" Tommy smiled.
We kept driving. In San Felipe we stopped for gas again. I called Manuel. "How do we get to the Honda pit?" I asked. After the checkpoint, instead of turning toward Ensenada we were to keep going north (toward the site of our very first flat tire, I noted). Soon there would be a tiny dirt track on the left which we were to take a few miles in to the Honda Pit.
"OK," I said, "We can probably make it in about 45 minutes or an hour.
Soon I got another call. "Just meet us at the Day 1 Gast Stop." Seth said, "we're putting the bike in the back of the Yukon." Confused, I agreed. I had been dreading finding the tiny dirt track in the fading light. Of course, I knew exactly where the infamous Day 1 Gas Stop was, and this considerably shortened our journey and decreased the chances that we'd get another flat. I was relieved. I told Tommy, and we both smirked, knowing that everything we had done, our entire backwards Baja 1000, was useless. They didn't need us for anything. I don't think either of us were sorry though. It had been quite a day; the best worst day I'd ever had.
The sun was quickly sinking now. We waved our race map and flew through the checkpoint. The Day 1 gas stop was almost unrecognizable. The road was lined with cars, the utility road Tommy and I had stared at for hours waiting for headlights was lined with trucks, bonfires, people. This was, after all, where the race course crossed this road. The buggies were just coming through. I thought of how much lay ahead of them, and, in my exhaustion could have wept, knowing what they would face. The wind, the utter darkness, the orange glow and then the glare of tomorrow's sunrise. The heavy, heavy eyelids.
The bonfires glared and the fiery reflection of metal made everything surreal. Tommy and I had pulled over at the end of a line of cars on the side of the road, hoping we were easily visible, and waited. Tommy got out and walked around. I got out and peed behind a bush.I got back in and tried to sleep, Tommy got back in and tried to sleep. The wind continued to howl.
Headlights flashed in our mirrors. A buggy engine roared. With a frown, I woke up and with relief, registered a white Yukon parking behind us. I jumped out and ran to Seth. I saw him with my own eyes, and my heart stopped as he winced in the light of the open door. Why was he wincing? My mind was racing, scanning his body for injury.
"Do you have any Sprite?" he asked.
There was the clue I needed: his head hurt. If it wasn't already a migraine it soon would be. We stole Seth from Manuel and Jimi and settled him into the back of the truck. Jimi told us the news: "One of the KTM riders died. They're not sayin' but they think it was a booby trap."
Every muscle in my body tightened. The Baja 1000 is notorious for the dangerous booby traps set by some spectators. Next to being hit by a Trophy Truck it is maybe the biggest worry. I seethed internally for a long time at this news.
We were so close. All we had to do was drive about 2 hours up this road to Ensenada. But I'd driven this winding mountain road before, and now eternity stretched between each landmark. As we drove a deep peace settled over me. Seth was tucked into the back seat fighting off a migraine. Seth's presence in the car took away our uselessness. It was our job to get him back as comfortably as possible. I was driving very carefully, trying to avoid bumps and swerves that would cause him pain. Tommy and I talked quietly about our day, which had already started to look glamorous in hindsight.
We passed through the little town where Tommy and I had eaten on the first day (dollars?). We passed a section where the race met back up with the road for the final sprint to the finish. We saw trucks with huge quick fill gas cans, and bonfires turning everything to black, orange and flickering. We passed through the last checkpoint and twisted and turned down into the city. The city was pulsing as the first motorcycles were crossing the finish line.
Quietly, defeated, and in mourning for the loss of Kurt Caselli, who it turns out hit a small animal and not a booby trap - and who could have just as easily been Seth or any one else in the race - Tommy jumped out to open the gate to the hotel parking lot. I pulled in, carefully in Seth's big truck and Tommy shut the gate behind us. We slowly trudged up the stairs to our rooms and collapsed with exhaustion onto the couches. Manuel and Jimi arrived with some food and Tommy pulled chips and salsa from our beloved food supply. I sliced a lime and gave everyone a beer.
"Joanna, could you get me a co..." Jimi started, "ah what the hell this is a special occasion, I'll have a beer!"
We'd made it. We hadn't really finished, but we'd all made it back to each other. It was over and that was cause for celebration.
17 March 2016
The Mexico Interval: Prerunning Day 4 through Race Day!
It's been a while since I've posted the last segment of this story. I apologize for that. We're almost done! If you need a refresher:
Last Day of Pre-Running
We had one day of pre-running left, and even though Seth was anxious to get on the trail he was gracious enough to allow us a nice, sit down breakfast after an entire day of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We emerged from Suite 101 and found the hotel restaurant to be quite luxurious. The hotel was the Hotel Catalina, and it was an oasis in the bland unlucky dryness of the desert. There was a pool in the courtyard, which I greatly looked forward to swimming in after we dropped Seth off. Even imagining my entire body engulfed in cool water felt like a luxury. The restaurant was refreshingly dim with lots of dark woods. The coffee smelled amazing.
There was coffee.
We had all finally started learning lessons and ordered HUGE breakfasts, just in case they needed to tide us over to tomorrow's breakfast. I demanded that Seth allow me to sit and drink a whole extra cup of coffee. It gave us time to discuss the plan for the day.
We'd continue driving south to the closest place where the course crossed the road. Seth would ride north on the course until he got to yesterday's drop off point. We'd drive back to the hotel (where we could finally swim and eat lunch), and at some point head out to pick him up. Day 4 was definitely the most convenient for the pit-crew!
We headed south on a road that had obviously been very recently paved. So recently that it didn't even have any lines painted yet! It was nice to see results from all of this construction. We found the course crossing easily, and started our side-of-the-road motorcycle maintenance routine. Seth was off! We were off! On the way back to the hotel, we noticed that the lines on the road had been painted, which seemed strange since we hadn't noticed any cars (or semis) passing.
Back at the hotel Jimi and Tommy took a dip in the pool, while I read on the side and resisted the urge to take a nap. We had had a slight snafu with the credit card at breakfast and I used the satellite phone to call home and ask someone to call and double check that it was approved for use in Mexico. I felt like a hot shot in a movie, lounging by a pool in a tropical paradise with my sat phone on the side table waiting for an important call.
After a small while we decided to head to the pick up point and find Seth. We had no idea how long it would take him to get there, and obviously hadn't learned ALL of our lessons yet, because we were optimistic that he'd get through it quickly. We settled into the familiar waiting game. The day grew hotter and dustier, although this checkpoint had a lot more action. Racers were coming through all the time, finishing, starting, or gassing up on the way through. Tommy took Jimi's bike out again and even though I worried about him being out with the race traffic, I was a little jealous that he had the guts to get out there with them. The loss of our two days at Mike's Sky Ranch meant that I wouldn't get to ride a motorcycle at all on this trip.
Eventually Seth arrived, and we headed back to the hotel for a lovely sunset, dinner, beers and billiards. Finally, a good day. At dinner the credit card was brought back to us again with much shaking of heads and waving of hands. I tried a little harder to understand what the problem was, and finally caught on to the difference in the swiping motion of the gestures from what I expected, and noticed that this new fangled credit card with a chip and all sorts of fancy things didn't have raised numbers on it, and therefore couldn't be used by the old fashioned credit card readers that swipe and use carbon paper to catch a copy of your credit card. I found this hilarious, and gave over my normal credit card in a fit of laughter.
The next day, we drove back to Ensenada and found our hotel, the Malena Suites. This hotel had been recommended by Manuel, Car-Part's lone Mexican employee, and he would arrive in a few days to help us with the race.
Ensenada
Ensenada was a relief. Seth and Jimmy took themselves out of town to pre-ride some nearby sections of the race, and Tommy and I were free. Free to sleep, eat, drink, explore, stay in, go out... we relished and savored every moment not spent simply waiting, driving, and getting cokes. We stared at our fully stocked pantry (our suite had a kitchenette!) not believing the amount of food at our disposal. Sometimes we walked into the kitchenette and opened the cabinet doors, just to make sure we hadn't imagined them being stocked with food. I bought a hat at a tourist shop. We declined to buy antibiotics at a farmacia. We put limes in our watery Mexican beers and drank them all afternoon.
We did some laundry, debated restaurants - the novelty of choice! We navigated the maze of pre-race nonsense, registration, tech, qualifying.
Manuel met up with us and we were relieved to finally have an interpreter. By the time race night rolled around Tommy and I had spent enough time by ourselves to be slightly relieved of our desert stresses.
Seth, on the other hand, who had spent all of his time in the desert alone, and who had spent all of his time in Ensenada with Jimi tracking down electrical gremlin's in the race bike, was more than ready to get back to it.
The Plan
Finally race day came, and we all sat down with ice cream and beer for a team meeting. (By which I mean that Tommy and I had ice cream and beer while everyone else had chips and salsa.)
The plan was for Jimi to start the race, and ride through the wash out of town with everyone else, then switch with Seth about 70 miles out. His ankle was still sore and that was their switching point would be the beginning of the section they rode on Day 1 of pre-riding, where "a frickin' tree hung him." He would not be riding over that mountain again. Then, Manuel and Jimi were going to drive to a checkpoint right before the race track started following the road, and switch again. (Incidentally, this would be the same location where Tommy and I sat waiting for hours and hours on Day 1 of pre-riding, where a shiny Californian waved a sandwich in my direction and called "What's a Dazzling Urbanite like you doing in a place like this?" ) Seth and Manuel would literally follow Jimi down the road for a few hours, and hopefully Seth would be sleeping. Before things got rough and sandy they would switch again and Seth would ride the rest of the race, to Coco's Corner then crossing a mountain range to the western side of the peninsula (where Tommy and I would be waiting), and up through the desert back to Ensenada.
The problem was that even though it was a loop race, once you got to where Seth and Jimi would switch for the last time, support cars couldn't follow (race rule of unknown origin). This meant that while Seth, Manuel and Jimi were making their way down the eastern side of the loop, Tommy and I would be driving down the western side of the loop (back into the desert with cactus Christmas trees and giant boulder battle fields). We would meet Seth at the bottom-most point of the race loop at dawn, change his tires and air filter while he ate and relaxed (ha!), and send him on his way. We'd race each other to the next agreed upon pit area (we had mapped pits that were close enough to the road for us to get to in the truck), and wave wildly at all the motorcycles that passed to make sure Seth spotted us.
Fool-proof, I know. This plan had some major flaws, but it was the best we could do with our comparatively meager resources.
The rest of the story unfolds from different perspectives. I'll share them with you in the order I became aware of them.
Last Day of Pre-Running
We had one day of pre-running left, and even though Seth was anxious to get on the trail he was gracious enough to allow us a nice, sit down breakfast after an entire day of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We emerged from Suite 101 and found the hotel restaurant to be quite luxurious. The hotel was the Hotel Catalina, and it was an oasis in the bland unlucky dryness of the desert. There was a pool in the courtyard, which I greatly looked forward to swimming in after we dropped Seth off. Even imagining my entire body engulfed in cool water felt like a luxury. The restaurant was refreshingly dim with lots of dark woods. The coffee smelled amazing.
There was coffee.
We had all finally started learning lessons and ordered HUGE breakfasts, just in case they needed to tide us over to tomorrow's breakfast. I demanded that Seth allow me to sit and drink a whole extra cup of coffee. It gave us time to discuss the plan for the day.
We'd continue driving south to the closest place where the course crossed the road. Seth would ride north on the course until he got to yesterday's drop off point. We'd drive back to the hotel (where we could finally swim and eat lunch), and at some point head out to pick him up. Day 4 was definitely the most convenient for the pit-crew!
We headed south on a road that had obviously been very recently paved. So recently that it didn't even have any lines painted yet! It was nice to see results from all of this construction. We found the course crossing easily, and started our side-of-the-road motorcycle maintenance routine. Seth was off! We were off! On the way back to the hotel, we noticed that the lines on the road had been painted, which seemed strange since we hadn't noticed any cars (or semis) passing.
Back at the hotel Jimi and Tommy took a dip in the pool, while I read on the side and resisted the urge to take a nap. We had had a slight snafu with the credit card at breakfast and I used the satellite phone to call home and ask someone to call and double check that it was approved for use in Mexico. I felt like a hot shot in a movie, lounging by a pool in a tropical paradise with my sat phone on the side table waiting for an important call.
After a small while we decided to head to the pick up point and find Seth. We had no idea how long it would take him to get there, and obviously hadn't learned ALL of our lessons yet, because we were optimistic that he'd get through it quickly. We settled into the familiar waiting game. The day grew hotter and dustier, although this checkpoint had a lot more action. Racers were coming through all the time, finishing, starting, or gassing up on the way through. Tommy took Jimi's bike out again and even though I worried about him being out with the race traffic, I was a little jealous that he had the guts to get out there with them. The loss of our two days at Mike's Sky Ranch meant that I wouldn't get to ride a motorcycle at all on this trip.
Eventually Seth arrived, and we headed back to the hotel for a lovely sunset, dinner, beers and billiards. Finally, a good day. At dinner the credit card was brought back to us again with much shaking of heads and waving of hands. I tried a little harder to understand what the problem was, and finally caught on to the difference in the swiping motion of the gestures from what I expected, and noticed that this new fangled credit card with a chip and all sorts of fancy things didn't have raised numbers on it, and therefore couldn't be used by the old fashioned credit card readers that swipe and use carbon paper to catch a copy of your credit card. I found this hilarious, and gave over my normal credit card in a fit of laughter.
The next day, we drove back to Ensenada and found our hotel, the Malena Suites. This hotel had been recommended by Manuel, Car-Part's lone Mexican employee, and he would arrive in a few days to help us with the race.
Ensenada
Ensenada was a relief. Seth and Jimmy took themselves out of town to pre-ride some nearby sections of the race, and Tommy and I were free. Free to sleep, eat, drink, explore, stay in, go out... we relished and savored every moment not spent simply waiting, driving, and getting cokes. We stared at our fully stocked pantry (our suite had a kitchenette!) not believing the amount of food at our disposal. Sometimes we walked into the kitchenette and opened the cabinet doors, just to make sure we hadn't imagined them being stocked with food. I bought a hat at a tourist shop. We declined to buy antibiotics at a farmacia. We put limes in our watery Mexican beers and drank them all afternoon.
We did some laundry, debated restaurants - the novelty of choice! We navigated the maze of pre-race nonsense, registration, tech, qualifying.
Manuel met up with us and we were relieved to finally have an interpreter. By the time race night rolled around Tommy and I had spent enough time by ourselves to be slightly relieved of our desert stresses.
Seth, on the other hand, who had spent all of his time in the desert alone, and who had spent all of his time in Ensenada with Jimi tracking down electrical gremlin's in the race bike, was more than ready to get back to it.
The Plan
Finally race day came, and we all sat down with ice cream and beer for a team meeting. (By which I mean that Tommy and I had ice cream and beer while everyone else had chips and salsa.)
The plan was for Jimi to start the race, and ride through the wash out of town with everyone else, then switch with Seth about 70 miles out. His ankle was still sore and that was their switching point would be the beginning of the section they rode on Day 1 of pre-riding, where "a frickin' tree hung him." He would not be riding over that mountain again. Then, Manuel and Jimi were going to drive to a checkpoint right before the race track started following the road, and switch again. (Incidentally, this would be the same location where Tommy and I sat waiting for hours and hours on Day 1 of pre-riding, where a shiny Californian waved a sandwich in my direction and called "What's a Dazzling Urbanite like you doing in a place like this?" ) Seth and Manuel would literally follow Jimi down the road for a few hours, and hopefully Seth would be sleeping. Before things got rough and sandy they would switch again and Seth would ride the rest of the race, to Coco's Corner then crossing a mountain range to the western side of the peninsula (where Tommy and I would be waiting), and up through the desert back to Ensenada.
The problem was that even though it was a loop race, once you got to where Seth and Jimi would switch for the last time, support cars couldn't follow (race rule of unknown origin). This meant that while Seth, Manuel and Jimi were making their way down the eastern side of the loop, Tommy and I would be driving down the western side of the loop (back into the desert with cactus Christmas trees and giant boulder battle fields). We would meet Seth at the bottom-most point of the race loop at dawn, change his tires and air filter while he ate and relaxed (ha!), and send him on his way. We'd race each other to the next agreed upon pit area (we had mapped pits that were close enough to the road for us to get to in the truck), and wave wildly at all the motorcycles that passed to make sure Seth spotted us.
Fool-proof, I know. This plan had some major flaws, but it was the best we could do with our comparatively meager resources.
The rest of the story unfolds from different perspectives. I'll share them with you in the order I became aware of them.
04 March 2015
Cabin Fever! or, My Vermonty Valentine
When we left for Vermont everything was brown, and had been brown.
The trees were brown, and bare. The mud was brown, the grass was brown, the sky and air seemed to have taken on a brown hue. Even the pine trees were turning brown!
We set off after work on a Friday on a last-minute, desperate attempt to escape the dreary brown sameness that winter in Kentucky had come to be.
I drove. Seth drove. I drove.
I watched familiar, snow covered mountains take shape in the morning light. Seth slept as we passed our own personal well-loved landmarks - our Road to Vermont. "World's Best Breakfast!" - we've never passed while it was breakfast-time, but the parking lot was stuffed so I kept on. We wound around and thru and into, until finally, with exhilaration I pulled into a parking spot in Montpelier.
We took stock of our breakfast options and decided on the Coffee Corner, Montpelier's favorite diner. While we waited for our food I noticed that they had the coffee mugs stacked under a heat lamp - the kind you'd normally keep a prime rib under - and I loved them more. I felt my head and my heart shifting back into alignment.
After breakfast it was the moment we'd been waiting an entire winter for: we got to go skiing! We'd decided cross-country/back-country skiing was the least mentally exhausting variety, and therefore well suited to the the sort of day that's never really begun, because the prior day never really ended. We jumped back into the car and turned the heat on full blast in an attempt to heat every nook and cranny, and made our way to Irish Hill at Berlin Pond, our former go-to hiking, skiing and dirt biking destination. Irish Hill is what Vermonters classify as an "Ancient Road" which stays on maps and is open for public enjoyment, but which is not actually a road that one might be interested in driving their car on. It is flanked by a hand-built New Englandy stone wall, and you'll find the ruined foundations of an old farmhouse and barn. You'll also find trails heading off in every direction, and a crystal clear spring running through it. The woods are old, the history thick. Seth loves it, I love it.
We left the car on while we changed into our ski clothes (heat still blasting). There was one other car in the small parking lot and I fervently hoped that no one would come back to it while we were changing!
"Should I wear this vest under my coat, or just a base layer?" I asked Seth. Normally I would never consider wearing more than a base layer and a soft, light jacket for cross-country skiing, and here I was with a down jacket and thinking of adding another layer!
"Normally I wouldn't wear this coat cross-country skiing, but its all I brought and the Kentucky winter has weakened my defense," he responded, echoing my thoughts exactly.
We made our decisions and hopped out, just as two dogs came bounding down the trail followed by their human.
"Hey, how's it goin'?" Seth called.
"HEY GUYS!!!!!!!!!" we heard called back.
Our brains jerked to attention, and there was Cliff, one of Seth's long time co-workers in Vermont. We caught up for a bit and then Cliff said "You guys sure picked a cold weekend for a visit!"
"We were to hot in Kentucky!" I joked, "but now we're not used to the cold and we have to bundle up..."
I was obviously trying to excuse my choice to don an obviously down jacket for anything other than lift riding and downhill skiing.
"Well four degrees is cold even in Vermont, but the good thing is your face will be numb in a few minutes and then you won't even notice," Cliff responded.
I smiled, and my smile stretched across the skin on my face like it only can when it is actually cold outside.
We headed off, into the woods, across the creek and up the hill. We paused. "Last time we went this way we ended up skiing down a rocky creek bed." I mentioned.
"Yep!" Seth smiled. He turned and kept on.
"Is it really only four degree?!" I called...
I've not often had a problem keeping my teeth warm while I ski. It was presented as a major challenge when I realized I would have to stop smiling in order to let my teeth warm up. While I was pondering the pros and cons of cold teeth and a smile Seth fell backwards while he tried to make it up a particularly steep section of the hill, and sank just slightly into the powdery snow so that it looked like he had found the most luxuriously splendid feather bed. His smile was so massive that it made my teeth cold just to look at him, and I pressed my lips into a thin smile to keep from laughing.
I felt my soul bubbling within me as though we'd been separated for months.
After we found ourselves in the woods we headed back to Montpelier for a quick lunch and a visit to Three-Penny Taproom, the best bar in the world (arguably). I had an "Edward," one of Montpelier's favorite beers by the Vermont brewery Hill Farmstead, the best brewery in the world (literally). We sank into our bar stools and exhaled.
We stopped by Hunger Mountain Co-op, Montpelier's local food co-op, to stock up on a few essentials: Broke Stock Farm Maple Syrup, Lincoln Peak Marquette Wine, Maine Brewing Company's Mean Old Tom, and some Vermont Coffee Company Dark Roast. We grabbed two Stewart's Sourdough Rolls for the road, and headed up to Burlington, and to Hannah and Craig's house where we were most graciously being put up for the busy Valentine's Day President's Day weekend.
To be honest, I'm surprised we didn't fall into bed with exhaustion, but we stayed up long enough for a great visit. While Seth and Hannah left to pick up dinner, Craig and I checked the weather for the next day. The high was 0 degrees, and a windchill advisory was in effect for gusts of 35 mph, (which would feel like -45 degrees, the warning warned.) Exposed skin would succumb to Frost Bite in 15 minutes.
"Hmmm," I thought, "there is nothing that's going to stop me from skiing tomorrow." [Ahem - sidenote here - if anyone was ever even remotely curious why Seth and I are perfect for each other, you should have your answer here.] Seth and I consulted for a while in the morning. We had planned on skiing the Teardrop Trail, a back-country trail that goes up into the Nebraska Notch in the Mt. Mansfield/Stowe area. The trail was built in the 30s and is one of Seth's favorites. It is well designed to be protected and hold snow, a perfect ski through the Green Mountains. I've never skied it before and was really excited to go, but Seth said that while he thought it was well protected from the wind, the speed we'd pick up just skiing down it would create enough windchill to be dangerous. We decided to stick to a cross-country style adventure and keep our noses intact.
I put all of my warmest clothes on and we jumped back in the car. We had decided to head to Stowe, and ski on some trails we used to mountain bike on. We'd seen ski markers on the trail when we'd been there before, and we thought it would be fun to see it in the winter.
This time we really bundled up. We put our goggles on over our hats to keep our eyes from freezing, and added face masks to protect our beautiful faces (and my naked teeth). Every inch of skin was covered, except for a narrow slit between my goggles and face mask.
After two minutes of skiing I could hardly breath. I could feel the airways in my nose constricting as I breathed in frozen air, and my fleece face mask was too thick to get enough oxygen through. (Bad design, obviously.) I yanked it down to my chin, and immediately the condensation on my face froze, slightly. I smiled. It was difficult, but I couldn't help it.
The forests in Vermont are glorious. They are deep and dark and silent, with giant pine trees and very little underbrush. The sun slants in and everything sparkles. My first instinct is to get lost in them so I never have to leave. We glided around through the still, frigid woods. There was no wind here, and soon we found that we were WAY overdressed and had started sweating. (HA!) We stopped for a photo op at an old lift chair bolted to a tree. Normally this is a fine viewpoint, but today we could only see white in the distance.
We needed to keep going, though. Since we'd started sweating we needed to keep working to stay warm. We made our way around the trail system all too quickly, and soon we turned around to head back to the car. I guess it was just as well, because I'd begun to feel ice crystals forming in my eye lashes. On the way back though, something amazing happened. We ran into other people. There was a faint glimmer of remembrance in my soul. The memory of not being quite so out of the ordinary for loving, and embracing the cold and the beautiful, sparkling snow.
After we got back to the car I declared that we obviously deserved hot chocolate, so we stopped at a gas station and helped ourselves. Luckily, Stowe is fancy-pants and it turned out we deserved hot chocolate and fresh apple fritter donuts.
We left Stowe and drove up, around and about to Fairfax, where we'd invited ourselves to dinner at Robin and Thom's. The drive was beautiful, as always. The dinner was delicious - as always. It was so wonderful to see our Vermont family again.
The next morning it was time to tuck our souls into a snowdrift and head home. As we neared the Vermont/New York border I determined I'd better stop for coffee before we left the Green-Mountain-Coffee-At-Every-Gas-Station State, and stopped at a little country market. While I was filling my recyclable Green Mountain Coffee to-go cup, I heard the bells on the door jingle.
"Morn'n' Hal"
"Morn'n' Vern, how's Mel?"
My trip was complete.
The trees were brown, and bare. The mud was brown, the grass was brown, the sky and air seemed to have taken on a brown hue. Even the pine trees were turning brown!
We set off after work on a Friday on a last-minute, desperate attempt to escape the dreary brown sameness that winter in Kentucky had come to be.
I drove. Seth drove. I drove.
I watched familiar, snow covered mountains take shape in the morning light. Seth slept as we passed our own personal well-loved landmarks - our Road to Vermont. "World's Best Breakfast!" - we've never passed while it was breakfast-time, but the parking lot was stuffed so I kept on. We wound around and thru and into, until finally, with exhilaration I pulled into a parking spot in Montpelier.
 |
| Happy Velentine's Day, Montpelier! |
We took stock of our breakfast options and decided on the Coffee Corner, Montpelier's favorite diner. While we waited for our food I noticed that they had the coffee mugs stacked under a heat lamp - the kind you'd normally keep a prime rib under - and I loved them more. I felt my head and my heart shifting back into alignment.
After breakfast it was the moment we'd been waiting an entire winter for: we got to go skiing! We'd decided cross-country/back-country skiing was the least mentally exhausting variety, and therefore well suited to the the sort of day that's never really begun, because the prior day never really ended. We jumped back into the car and turned the heat on full blast in an attempt to heat every nook and cranny, and made our way to Irish Hill at Berlin Pond, our former go-to hiking, skiing and dirt biking destination. Irish Hill is what Vermonters classify as an "Ancient Road" which stays on maps and is open for public enjoyment, but which is not actually a road that one might be interested in driving their car on. It is flanked by a hand-built New Englandy stone wall, and you'll find the ruined foundations of an old farmhouse and barn. You'll also find trails heading off in every direction, and a crystal clear spring running through it. The woods are old, the history thick. Seth loves it, I love it.
We left the car on while we changed into our ski clothes (heat still blasting). There was one other car in the small parking lot and I fervently hoped that no one would come back to it while we were changing!
"Should I wear this vest under my coat, or just a base layer?" I asked Seth. Normally I would never consider wearing more than a base layer and a soft, light jacket for cross-country skiing, and here I was with a down jacket and thinking of adding another layer!
"Normally I wouldn't wear this coat cross-country skiing, but its all I brought and the Kentucky winter has weakened my defense," he responded, echoing my thoughts exactly.
We made our decisions and hopped out, just as two dogs came bounding down the trail followed by their human.
"Hey, how's it goin'?" Seth called.
"HEY GUYS!!!!!!!!!" we heard called back.
Our brains jerked to attention, and there was Cliff, one of Seth's long time co-workers in Vermont. We caught up for a bit and then Cliff said "You guys sure picked a cold weekend for a visit!"
"We were to hot in Kentucky!" I joked, "but now we're not used to the cold and we have to bundle up..."
I was obviously trying to excuse my choice to don an obviously down jacket for anything other than lift riding and downhill skiing.
"Well four degrees is cold even in Vermont, but the good thing is your face will be numb in a few minutes and then you won't even notice," Cliff responded.
I smiled, and my smile stretched across the skin on my face like it only can when it is actually cold outside.
We headed off, into the woods, across the creek and up the hill. We paused. "Last time we went this way we ended up skiing down a rocky creek bed." I mentioned.
"Yep!" Seth smiled. He turned and kept on.
"Is it really only four degree?!" I called...
I've not often had a problem keeping my teeth warm while I ski. It was presented as a major challenge when I realized I would have to stop smiling in order to let my teeth warm up. While I was pondering the pros and cons of cold teeth and a smile Seth fell backwards while he tried to make it up a particularly steep section of the hill, and sank just slightly into the powdery snow so that it looked like he had found the most luxuriously splendid feather bed. His smile was so massive that it made my teeth cold just to look at him, and I pressed my lips into a thin smile to keep from laughing.
I felt my soul bubbling within me as though we'd been separated for months.
After we found ourselves in the woods we headed back to Montpelier for a quick lunch and a visit to Three-Penny Taproom, the best bar in the world (arguably). I had an "Edward," one of Montpelier's favorite beers by the Vermont brewery Hill Farmstead, the best brewery in the world (literally). We sank into our bar stools and exhaled.
We stopped by Hunger Mountain Co-op, Montpelier's local food co-op, to stock up on a few essentials: Broke Stock Farm Maple Syrup, Lincoln Peak Marquette Wine, Maine Brewing Company's Mean Old Tom, and some Vermont Coffee Company Dark Roast. We grabbed two Stewart's Sourdough Rolls for the road, and headed up to Burlington, and to Hannah and Craig's house where we were most graciously being put up for the busy Valentine's Day President's Day weekend.
To be honest, I'm surprised we didn't fall into bed with exhaustion, but we stayed up long enough for a great visit. While Seth and Hannah left to pick up dinner, Craig and I checked the weather for the next day. The high was 0 degrees, and a windchill advisory was in effect for gusts of 35 mph, (which would feel like -45 degrees, the warning warned.) Exposed skin would succumb to Frost Bite in 15 minutes.
"Hmmm," I thought, "there is nothing that's going to stop me from skiing tomorrow." [Ahem - sidenote here - if anyone was ever even remotely curious why Seth and I are perfect for each other, you should have your answer here.] Seth and I consulted for a while in the morning. We had planned on skiing the Teardrop Trail, a back-country trail that goes up into the Nebraska Notch in the Mt. Mansfield/Stowe area. The trail was built in the 30s and is one of Seth's favorites. It is well designed to be protected and hold snow, a perfect ski through the Green Mountains. I've never skied it before and was really excited to go, but Seth said that while he thought it was well protected from the wind, the speed we'd pick up just skiing down it would create enough windchill to be dangerous. We decided to stick to a cross-country style adventure and keep our noses intact.
I put all of my warmest clothes on and we jumped back in the car. We had decided to head to Stowe, and ski on some trails we used to mountain bike on. We'd seen ski markers on the trail when we'd been there before, and we thought it would be fun to see it in the winter.
This time we really bundled up. We put our goggles on over our hats to keep our eyes from freezing, and added face masks to protect our beautiful faces (and my naked teeth). Every inch of skin was covered, except for a narrow slit between my goggles and face mask.
After two minutes of skiing I could hardly breath. I could feel the airways in my nose constricting as I breathed in frozen air, and my fleece face mask was too thick to get enough oxygen through. (Bad design, obviously.) I yanked it down to my chin, and immediately the condensation on my face froze, slightly. I smiled. It was difficult, but I couldn't help it.
The forests in Vermont are glorious. They are deep and dark and silent, with giant pine trees and very little underbrush. The sun slants in and everything sparkles. My first instinct is to get lost in them so I never have to leave. We glided around through the still, frigid woods. There was no wind here, and soon we found that we were WAY overdressed and had started sweating. (HA!) We stopped for a photo op at an old lift chair bolted to a tree. Normally this is a fine viewpoint, but today we could only see white in the distance.
We needed to keep going, though. Since we'd started sweating we needed to keep working to stay warm. We made our way around the trail system all too quickly, and soon we turned around to head back to the car. I guess it was just as well, because I'd begun to feel ice crystals forming in my eye lashes. On the way back though, something amazing happened. We ran into other people. There was a faint glimmer of remembrance in my soul. The memory of not being quite so out of the ordinary for loving, and embracing the cold and the beautiful, sparkling snow.
After we got back to the car I declared that we obviously deserved hot chocolate, so we stopped at a gas station and helped ourselves. Luckily, Stowe is fancy-pants and it turned out we deserved hot chocolate and fresh apple fritter donuts.
We left Stowe and drove up, around and about to Fairfax, where we'd invited ourselves to dinner at Robin and Thom's. The drive was beautiful, as always. The dinner was delicious - as always. It was so wonderful to see our Vermont family again.
The next morning it was time to tuck our souls into a snowdrift and head home. As we neared the Vermont/New York border I determined I'd better stop for coffee before we left the Green-Mountain-Coffee-At-Every-Gas-Station State, and stopped at a little country market. While I was filling my recyclable Green Mountain Coffee to-go cup, I heard the bells on the door jingle.
"Morn'n' Hal"
"Morn'n' Vern, how's Mel?"
My trip was complete.
22 January 2015
Book Review :: The Age of Miracles
The Age of Miracles, by Karen Thompson Walker
While reading this book I became depressed and lonely. I identified so poignantly with the main character that her sadness became my sadness; her tiny triumphs made my heart soar. Her frustration became my anger. By the time I finished the book I felt like a complete outcast from society. Of course, that's not really new feeling for me.
This is one of the best books I've read in a long time.
Julia is 11 when the world finds out that the spinning of the earth is slowing. The Age of Miracles gives us the quiet story of living through the apocalypse, a novelty among the onslaught of distopian, post-apocalyptic thrillers on the shelves these days. There are no zombies, no vampires, none of our nightmarish, horror packed imaginings. There is only nature, and the slow adaptation of civilization; of a family: off one little girl. In some respects I'd almost prefer monsters and gore. What this book gives us, the horrors of slow compromise, is so realistic that I found it far more frightening.
The effects of the earth's slowing slowly cause Julia's contemporary California society to change - slowly at first, but then more noticeably. They face problems and deal with them one at a time, each time losing a piece of life as we know it, (bees, then birds, grapes, the warm feeling of sun on your face) until life has turned upside down and no one really knows how they got there. Each time a seemingly small decision is made some portion of people disagree with the compromise and become outcasts from society. They are labelled, persecuted and hated. Again, the reality is startling.
The lessons of this book can be applied everywhere. The environmental atrocities committed every second of every day are the results of slow compromise and adaptation: small decisions made throughout not only the industrial revolution, but all of civilization. The modern US government would horrify the "founding fathers," and looking back through American history it would be an easy task indeed to find small decisions and points of divergence that led us here.
So far I've made this book seems pretty bleak, and as I said, while I was reading it I myself felt quite the outcast. When you understand that you disagree with a fundamental decision made hundreds or thousands of years ago, the tiny shifts and pushes we can see in modern society seem hopeless. But just think. If one small shift a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago could cause a tidal wave today, the decisions we're making take on the utmost importance.
If we make our decisions out of love and kindness, generosity and good will, and if we do it consistently, the ripples we make will turn into waves and before you know it, the world will be better.
Do not allow love and kindness to be overruled by mob-mentality. Do the right thing because it's what you want to do without fear of the opinions of others. Do not stand by quietly when you know the masses are wrong. Science may be in charge of saving our existence, but humanity is in charge of saving our souls.
Without our souls, this book leads me to argue, our existence isn't worth much.
While reading this book I became depressed and lonely. I identified so poignantly with the main character that her sadness became my sadness; her tiny triumphs made my heart soar. Her frustration became my anger. By the time I finished the book I felt like a complete outcast from society. Of course, that's not really new feeling for me.
This is one of the best books I've read in a long time.
Julia is 11 when the world finds out that the spinning of the earth is slowing. The Age of Miracles gives us the quiet story of living through the apocalypse, a novelty among the onslaught of distopian, post-apocalyptic thrillers on the shelves these days. There are no zombies, no vampires, none of our nightmarish, horror packed imaginings. There is only nature, and the slow adaptation of civilization; of a family: off one little girl. In some respects I'd almost prefer monsters and gore. What this book gives us, the horrors of slow compromise, is so realistic that I found it far more frightening.
The effects of the earth's slowing slowly cause Julia's contemporary California society to change - slowly at first, but then more noticeably. They face problems and deal with them one at a time, each time losing a piece of life as we know it, (bees, then birds, grapes, the warm feeling of sun on your face) until life has turned upside down and no one really knows how they got there. Each time a seemingly small decision is made some portion of people disagree with the compromise and become outcasts from society. They are labelled, persecuted and hated. Again, the reality is startling.
The lessons of this book can be applied everywhere. The environmental atrocities committed every second of every day are the results of slow compromise and adaptation: small decisions made throughout not only the industrial revolution, but all of civilization. The modern US government would horrify the "founding fathers," and looking back through American history it would be an easy task indeed to find small decisions and points of divergence that led us here.
So far I've made this book seems pretty bleak, and as I said, while I was reading it I myself felt quite the outcast. When you understand that you disagree with a fundamental decision made hundreds or thousands of years ago, the tiny shifts and pushes we can see in modern society seem hopeless. But just think. If one small shift a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago could cause a tidal wave today, the decisions we're making take on the utmost importance.
If we make our decisions out of love and kindness, generosity and good will, and if we do it consistently, the ripples we make will turn into waves and before you know it, the world will be better.
Do not allow love and kindness to be overruled by mob-mentality. Do the right thing because it's what you want to do without fear of the opinions of others. Do not stand by quietly when you know the masses are wrong. Science may be in charge of saving our existence, but humanity is in charge of saving our souls.
Without our souls, this book leads me to argue, our existence isn't worth much.
31 December 2014
Little Cottage in the Woods :: December 2014
Dear Friends and Family,
This year we went on the biggest, grandest adventure of all time: The Alcan 5000. I hope you’ll forgive me for not including most of the year in this letter (except to tell you that Kentucky Maple Syrup is delicious like caramel) and focusing entirely on this trip. The tradeoff is a good one…I’m not even sure where to begin!
After last year’s debacle in Mexico we declared 2014 the Year of Winning. The Alcan 5000 is a road rally that starts in Seattle, winds its way around for a big long while, finally dropping into Anchorage 5000ish miles later for the finish. We figured we couldn’t really lose and set about getting ourselves to Seattle.
We drove from Kentucky to Seattle with a quick stop (and a much needed rest day) in Montana. We outfitted the 4Runner with a race radio and some flashy Alcan 5000 stickers, met the people we’d be spending the next 10 days with, and fell into bed completely exhausted. It’s hard to accurately portray the whirlwind of that weekend when I just compacted a cross-country multi-time-zoned driving spree plus a day in the sun working on the car into two sentences – now three. Such is the pace we need to set.
The next morning we were pumping with adrenaline, so anxious to start the race. Talk about anti-climactic. If you do any Googling of TSD road rallies you’ll learn that under normal conditions the driving is not the exciting part. We were waved across the start line (car 6!) and immediately into a 45 mile transit down the highway to the start of the first ‘stage.’ I will say, we needed the time to work out the kinks, since neither of us had done this type of race before! As the Navigator, I was to live and die by the Roadbook. I brought it with me everywhere to study. Until somewhere in the Yukon when Seth and I decided that the car would be more peaceful if he took over as Navigator and I as Driver – something about mental math vs. a lead foot.
Anyway, I digress! We crossed into Beautiful British Columbia (free popcorn with gas fillup right before the border!) and gawked at the scenery for hours, each mountain, gorge, and crashing river more beautiful than the last. I napped, guiltily, after telling Seth that in 175 miles he’d bear right or something. It felt like a miracle when we finally pulled into our hotel that evening. (The miraculousness of this feat only intensified each day!) On Day 2, we made it through a lot of dirt and gravel roads, a group encounter with some free range cows, a panicked race to the second stage, forest roads, our first black bear sighting, rising mountains and a glacier, to arrive happily in Stewart, B.C. It seemed like the most remote, most beautiful place in the world. We shared a delicious dinner with some of the motorcyclists, and marveled that the present found us surrounded by such beauty.
Of course, the next morning off we went. More black bears, giant rabbits, some dogs wandering the roads and a LOT of winding about found us at a gas station and a junction. We filled up and took the junction down to Telegraph Creek, the actual most remote and most beautiful place on the earth. We looked at the beauty around us in despair because we didn’t have time to bask in it. It is a place that demands a slowing. Seth almost succumbed to it but I still had the Roadbook and knew we had to drive to the Yukon that day. It was already 2pm, and I hurried us back to the car with a longing glance at the glacial river running behind us.
We made it back to the junction, and what followed was breathtaking. We had pulled away from civilization, the road under our wheels our last sign of anything human. We looked at mountains in either direction without wires or houses: pure, unbroken wilderness. It took all of our combined, concentrated effort not to pull over and walk into it. The lakes interspersed along the road were the most vivid I’ve ever seen. A black fox darted in front of the car. Time slowed as we watched its sleek black body sprint in front of us, its puffy tail sticking straight out behind it with a perfectly white dollop at the end. We gaped as it ran into the brush on the other side.
That night we stayed at a place called the Air Force Lodge in the Yukon Territory. As we entered a very large Norwegian man boomed “Take off your shoes please, and I can help you to your room!” We did as we were told and he showed us to our room. He showed us to the communal bathrooms and shower rooms, and as we were heading back into our rooms another member of our race family walked in asking how to get to the bathroom. “Take off your shoes please! It really is the only way!” The password for our wifi was “YesILoveCanada!” I was so excited to have wifi and clung to it in a spurt of frenzied communication before I realized that even though it was still perfectly light outside it was well past 10:30 (pacific time?) which meant it was really rather late back home and I was setting off text alarms in the middle of the night. Sorry.
We are still so far from Anchorage.
The next day was just as glorious if not more so. After the morning stage we crossed the Continental Divide. According to the Roadbook there was a gas station at the Continental Divide, so we didn’t figure we needed to fill up before we left. We followed our friendly Triumph (Car 5) up to the Divide and passed two definitely closed gas stations. Finally the Triumph pulled over at a wayside. They had been counting on that fill up as well, and both our tanks were perilously close to Empty. We had a 5 gallon spare tank with us, so we gave them 2 gallons, gave ourselves 2 gallons, and left a bit in reserve. We continued, slowly – nervously for another hundred miles until we finally coasted down a hill, across a bridge and into the “town” of Teslin. We high fived at the pump and they filled our surplus tank for us.
Our final destination for the evening was Whitehorse, YT but we took a detour down into Skagway, AK. I’m running out of superlatives, but the road to Skagway was the next one up. Golden rocky mountains jutted from the landscape, glacial blue lakes settled into the valleys with giant boulders surrounding them and usually, a rainbow in the background somewhere just for good measure. Our souls ached to be part of it and we finally pulled off and climbed down to the lake to dip our toes in its milky waters. A train whistle echoed through the valley jarring us back to reality.
We finished the drive to Skagway, though the US Border agent told us we were way behind the rest of the race. We didn’t care. We stopped for the obligatory ALASKA sign (pants still dripping) and wound down the pass into Skagway. All we needed there was gas and a picture of ourselves at the Ferry Terminal to prove we’d made it.
We snapped our shot, (saw a seal in the bay) and headed back UP the pass, where the US Border agent said we were still way behind. As we made our way back up the road we caught sight of our Triumph friends pulled over again. We stopped to see if they needed anything and it turned out they had overheated up the pass and blown a head gasket. We made a few attempts but their engine wouldn’t start, so we got out the tow strap and hooked them up. I have never sat so tensely, and never been so in tune to the road in front of me as I was over the next 3 hours as I radioed what I hoped was a concise picture of the road ahead of us back to the Triumph. “Double rainbow on the right” I threw in eventually. The Roadbook said we had 100 miles, 5 traffic lights, a traffic circle until finally, the left hand turn into the hotel. Seth made this bit of driving look easy.
ALASKA. We made it for real two days later, and our pants aren’t even wet in our second sign photo!
In Alaska we went to Fairbanks, the Chena Hot Springs and Ice Museum,
down through Denali National Park (the only rainy day of the trip, and we came across one of our motorcyclists with a flat! Seth of course got him sorted and sent him on his way while I sat in the car attempting to radio for help)
and on to Valdez. We spotted the pipeline, a slap in the face amidst such natural glory, and then made our way to Anchorage with one last lunch time rally stop at the Long Rifle Lodge. (Great Views and Good Food! notes the Roadbook.) This time we shared a meal with our Triumph friends who had adventurously put the top down on their convertible that morning for better views. They had a bit of thawing to do so we lingered in a sunny window gazing out at more mountains and another (melting) glacier.
When I got on the highway in Anchorage I panicked at the number of cars around me (3?). We were relieved that we’d made it, exhausted but happy from the trip, sad that we had to leave early the next morning, and a bit nervous about the drive home.
At the awards ceremony that night we found out that (since this is the Year of Winning) we hit the jackpot. Not only did we come first-in-our-class and 13th overall, but our fellow racers nominated us for the “Good Samaritan Award” for all the help and friendly smiles we handed out along the way.
Then we drove home. 24 hours back to Teslin, 24 more hours to Lake Louise, 24 more hours to Denver (thank God for family in Denver!), 24 more hours to Kentucky.
But I can’t stop there! When Seth was driving us through the Yukon Territory in the middle of the night on the way home I woke up and saw the Northern Lights dancing above us. They glistened and shimmered, I couldn’t take my eyes off of them.
On a very last note, we just found out that to cap off the Year of Winning Seth came in first place in his class for the NASA Rally Moto Cup this year. Isn’t he the best?!
Love,
Joanna, Seth
And Thunder.
This year we went on the biggest, grandest adventure of all time: The Alcan 5000. I hope you’ll forgive me for not including most of the year in this letter (except to tell you that Kentucky Maple Syrup is delicious like caramel) and focusing entirely on this trip. The tradeoff is a good one…I’m not even sure where to begin!
After last year’s debacle in Mexico we declared 2014 the Year of Winning. The Alcan 5000 is a road rally that starts in Seattle, winds its way around for a big long while, finally dropping into Anchorage 5000ish miles later for the finish. We figured we couldn’t really lose and set about getting ourselves to Seattle.
We drove from Kentucky to Seattle with a quick stop (and a much needed rest day) in Montana. We outfitted the 4Runner with a race radio and some flashy Alcan 5000 stickers, met the people we’d be spending the next 10 days with, and fell into bed completely exhausted. It’s hard to accurately portray the whirlwind of that weekend when I just compacted a cross-country multi-time-zoned driving spree plus a day in the sun working on the car into two sentences – now three. Such is the pace we need to set.
PS- I fell in love with the loneliness of Montana
We made it back to the junction, and what followed was breathtaking. We had pulled away from civilization, the road under our wheels our last sign of anything human. We looked at mountains in either direction without wires or houses: pure, unbroken wilderness. It took all of our combined, concentrated effort not to pull over and walk into it. The lakes interspersed along the road were the most vivid I’ve ever seen. A black fox darted in front of the car. Time slowed as we watched its sleek black body sprint in front of us, its puffy tail sticking straight out behind it with a perfectly white dollop at the end. We gaped as it ran into the brush on the other side.
 |
| Seth started a bewildering habit of doing a handstand at every new sign. |
That night we stayed at a place called the Air Force Lodge in the Yukon Territory. As we entered a very large Norwegian man boomed “Take off your shoes please, and I can help you to your room!” We did as we were told and he showed us to our room. He showed us to the communal bathrooms and shower rooms, and as we were heading back into our rooms another member of our race family walked in asking how to get to the bathroom. “Take off your shoes please! It really is the only way!” The password for our wifi was “YesILoveCanada!” I was so excited to have wifi and clung to it in a spurt of frenzied communication before I realized that even though it was still perfectly light outside it was well past 10:30 (pacific time?) which meant it was really rather late back home and I was setting off text alarms in the middle of the night. Sorry.
We are still so far from Anchorage.
The next day was just as glorious if not more so. After the morning stage we crossed the Continental Divide. According to the Roadbook there was a gas station at the Continental Divide, so we didn’t figure we needed to fill up before we left. We followed our friendly Triumph (Car 5) up to the Divide and passed two definitely closed gas stations. Finally the Triumph pulled over at a wayside. They had been counting on that fill up as well, and both our tanks were perilously close to Empty. We had a 5 gallon spare tank with us, so we gave them 2 gallons, gave ourselves 2 gallons, and left a bit in reserve. We continued, slowly – nervously for another hundred miles until we finally coasted down a hill, across a bridge and into the “town” of Teslin. We high fived at the pump and they filled our surplus tank for us.
Our final destination for the evening was Whitehorse, YT but we took a detour down into Skagway, AK. I’m running out of superlatives, but the road to Skagway was the next one up. Golden rocky mountains jutted from the landscape, glacial blue lakes settled into the valleys with giant boulders surrounding them and usually, a rainbow in the background somewhere just for good measure. Our souls ached to be part of it and we finally pulled off and climbed down to the lake to dip our toes in its milky waters. A train whistle echoed through the valley jarring us back to reality.
We finished the drive to Skagway, though the US Border agent told us we were way behind the rest of the race. We didn’t care. We stopped for the obligatory ALASKA sign (pants still dripping) and wound down the pass into Skagway. All we needed there was gas and a picture of ourselves at the Ferry Terminal to prove we’d made it.
We snapped our shot, (saw a seal in the bay) and headed back UP the pass, where the US Border agent said we were still way behind. As we made our way back up the road we caught sight of our Triumph friends pulled over again. We stopped to see if they needed anything and it turned out they had overheated up the pass and blown a head gasket. We made a few attempts but their engine wouldn’t start, so we got out the tow strap and hooked them up. I have never sat so tensely, and never been so in tune to the road in front of me as I was over the next 3 hours as I radioed what I hoped was a concise picture of the road ahead of us back to the Triumph. “Double rainbow on the right” I threw in eventually. The Roadbook said we had 100 miles, 5 traffic lights, a traffic circle until finally, the left hand turn into the hotel. Seth made this bit of driving look easy.
ALASKA. We made it for real two days later, and our pants aren’t even wet in our second sign photo!
 |
| Seth decided to climb the sign, rather than do a handstand. |
In Alaska we went to Fairbanks, the Chena Hot Springs and Ice Museum,
down through Denali National Park (the only rainy day of the trip, and we came across one of our motorcyclists with a flat! Seth of course got him sorted and sent him on his way while I sat in the car attempting to radio for help)
and on to Valdez. We spotted the pipeline, a slap in the face amidst such natural glory, and then made our way to Anchorage with one last lunch time rally stop at the Long Rifle Lodge. (Great Views and Good Food! notes the Roadbook.) This time we shared a meal with our Triumph friends who had adventurously put the top down on their convertible that morning for better views. They had a bit of thawing to do so we lingered in a sunny window gazing out at more mountains and another (melting) glacier.
When I got on the highway in Anchorage I panicked at the number of cars around me (3?). We were relieved that we’d made it, exhausted but happy from the trip, sad that we had to leave early the next morning, and a bit nervous about the drive home.
At the awards ceremony that night we found out that (since this is the Year of Winning) we hit the jackpot. Not only did we come first-in-our-class and 13th overall, but our fellow racers nominated us for the “Good Samaritan Award” for all the help and friendly smiles we handed out along the way.
Then we drove home. 24 hours back to Teslin, 24 more hours to Lake Louise, 24 more hours to Denver (thank God for family in Denver!), 24 more hours to Kentucky.
But I can’t stop there! When Seth was driving us through the Yukon Territory in the middle of the night on the way home I woke up and saw the Northern Lights dancing above us. They glistened and shimmered, I couldn’t take my eyes off of them.
On a very last note, we just found out that to cap off the Year of Winning Seth came in first place in his class for the NASA Rally Moto Cup this year. Isn’t he the best?!
Love,
Joanna, Seth
And Thunder.
 |
| Thunder and Joanna. Home again Home again. (photo by Kelly!) |
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