biking on the chena and tanana rivers

we made it out both days this weekend for long rides on the frozen river highway that is perfect for biking!
just look at the wide smooth track. a group of us headed out way down the tanana river today. ben and i are thinking of riding on the river to Nenana this coming weekend, it is about 60 miles. dan skied it saturday and said it was still pretty safe, though he skied some incredible record time down there. i think we will take it a bit slower....

friday night girl's night at Wolf Run desert and coffee house.
they have the best deserts in town. (i just cleaned my camera lens to get of the spot in all the pics)

Castner Glacier

a glorious day in the delta mountains, hiking into castner glacier. there was a ton of great tele skiing, but we all had classic skis. that did not stop us however, we all tried tele turns down a steep short face next to the ice cave. this was very entertaining as we all face planted.

skiing into the ice cave. this ice cave is so cool, well worth the ski in. we played around there for awhile before heading up the moraine.

up close to the ice.

trevor and i going in.

trevor way back in the ice cave.

one of many jumping shots(see ted's blog) from inside the ice cave looking out.

dan and sky getting a little to close to the glacier. getting on the glacier was not so easy in this spot.

we continued on up the ridge, here is ted leading the way back towards the ice cave. you can see the glacier in the background.

dan trying a jump turn on classic skis. we all took our turn face planting down this route.

knit fest! these girls at brown's are serious knitters, i am lucky to knit with them.

i headed over to ed and trevor's to see their pictures from Africa and skiing. ed just skied the last 200 miles of the iditarod trail and he brought back lance mackey booties for pella! these are from when Lance was in the lead near the end of the race. i wonder if i put them on pella if she will run faster?
on our way out to a birthday party we ran into this guy. i asked him why he was carrying a door and he said it was for his van. the things you can find at the transfer station.
the birthday party was a blast with all of usual, bonfires...
woodchopping for the sauna
dancing..

and good friends.

pella's first skijor race

dan and sky at the finish. the skijor race was at birch hill today, it is nice to ski with your dog on the world class trails because dogs are not usually allowed here. first was the 9k 1 dog race.

ted and julie finishing neck and neck.getting ready for the relay fun race.

pella pre race, she was pretty scared of all the sled dogs. we did the 3K relay race .here we are finishing the race. pella was pooped and didn't pull that much, which means i am pooped from skiing. it was fun to race and even though we had the slowest leg, my teammates were fast so we still did pretty well.
we then headed to my place for lattes and to watch the GCI North American mushing dog race that goes thru my neighborhood. now those dogs are fast!

we went to visit my brother dave today at his work. he works on these huge aerial cranes, he is coming to get us for a ride.
this about 70ft up. the view was pretty cool, they take them up much higher to see the Western Open over the neighboring Cog Hill golf course.Dave let me handle the controls once we were closer to the ground.

the rest of the family and friends came over today for a little open house get together so i could see everyone during my visit. katie showing me the art of licking frosting off of your mouth.my parents good friends the strubels stopped by. John Strubel is a very successful professional photographer. he gave ben this medium format Mamiya camera! ben is really excited and i thought i would blog a picture of it since he is in Deadhorse. he enjoying the 30 below weather they are having, pretty normal that far north of the arctic circle. here is your camera ben!

Back to Chicago

my ultra hipster cousin steve and mike in Seattle. i had an 8 hour layover on my way to Chicago to see family. from 1am to 7 am we stopped at dick's in the above pic for a burger, went bowling(24 hour bowling) at 5am and stopped by diva espresso. all these stops are near mike and sarah's house in phinney ridge, where all the hipsters live. when these two are not entertaining their cousin dea, they are big air boarders, though mike says he has turned down his jumping a notch. it was great short visit.
now here are two of my three bros. these are the city boys, jeff and tim. they do clean up pretty well though don't they? it is good to be back home in Chicago visiting family for a few days, it will be a short visit also, dialysis was hard to schedule so it took awhile to get here.

ahhh March in Fairbanks

this march weather is nice and warm. it was really windy at Angel Rocks today, the weather said wind chills to 30 below, that wind chill stuff is crap. it was way warmer than actual 30 below temps and we made a day of it.
ed had a dinner and martini night sat. nice and mellow compared to our last martini night, but good company and lots of laughs.
we went on a two hour ski from creamer's. since i can not keep up with these girls, i took caz to skijor the route. pella also had a hard time keeping up, after a big weekend she is limping tonight.