The Rise Up Ride: Day 74-85, New York Planning, Training, Getting Ready for the Kenai
Date: 5-16 July 2021
Start Location: Juneau, AK
End Location: Bronx, NY
Distance by Air: 4629 km
Truckin', I'm a goin' home
Whoa whoa baby, back where I belong
Back home, sit down and patch my bones
And get back truckin' on
Hey now get back truckin' home
Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me;
Other times I can barely see
Lately, it occurs to me
What a long, strange trip it's been
“Truckin” by Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir and Robert Hunter (1970)
On Monday the Fifth of July, the end of a long weekend this year in the US, I rose early in Juneau to shuttle to the airport. All masked up for the day, I slid easily on and off airplanes in Seattle and Detroit, before arriving late to a chaotic taxi line at La Guardia. Pam buzzed me into our building and I was home, rather unexpectedly and very suddenly, I was back home.
I’ve been here for eleven days, anxiously waiting to return. There have been no Alaska Marine Highway ferries leaving Juneau across the Gulf of Alaska since I left. The M/V Kennicott appears to have sailed south to Bellingham and back to Juneau on 13 July but has been taken off the sailing schedule until 21 July (drydock again?) when it should leave for Ketchikan and onwards to Bellingham, returning to Juneau on the 27th. With luck, I’ll be on the Kennicott when it leaves Juneau that morning!
Hoping that the ferry leaves on the 27th, I’ve booked my travel from New York, through California, and back up to Juneau. If all goes as planned, I’ll restart my trip beyond Juneau on the repaired MV Kennicott to Kodiak Island, where I will spend one night before taking another ferry to Homer, at the tip of the Kenai Penninsula. From there I’ll ride through the Chugach Mountains and down to Seward. The Alaska Railroad trains are more heavily booked this year than I had imagined, but I’ve managed to get a seat back to Anchorage on the Coastal Classic leaving 4 August. The next day I’ll take the Denali Star onwards north to Denali National Park, where I’ll camp at Riley Creek while organizing a trip into the backcountry.
The delay may open up some options in August when I begin to ride east from Cantwell on the Denali Highway, a route that I rode the other direction in 2017. The Canadians may announce new COVID-19 measures in their monthly August loosening of restrictions. If so, the border may open to vaccinated non-essential travelers, at which point I could ride from Glenallen up to Tok and down the Alcan Highway through Haines Junction to Atlin and then to Skagway. Or, I could continue south on the Richardson Highway from Glenallen to Valdez to begin my ferry trip back through Juneau, down the Inside Passage to Bellingham.
I’m home for six more days, training indoors to keep up the hard-earned fitness gains and trying to put on a few kilos lost over the last months. My weight has dropped only about three kilos since I left, but my body fat is down under 10% as I’ve put on some muscle during the ride. I’d like a bit more padding on my ribs before restarting the trip, which means another week enjoying some rich foods and extra desserts at home. Damn hard work eating that extra ice cream and cooking up pork belly sandwiches, but someone has to do it.
