July 30, 2007 by Naomi.

Anchorage is a small city by American standards and a very big one by European standards (in terms of geographical space). Enormous 4×4s outnumber cars by a longshot and although I assumed that this was because it must be difficult to drive around in snow in a normal car (parts of Alaska are under snow from November to May), I’m told that the reasons are more to do with vanity than practicality.  It takes a long time to walk anywhere (around the corner means at least 20 minutes) and the buses, which have excellent bikeracks on the front, only come once an hour so we didn’t get to see much of Anchorage on the first couple of days apart from downtown and midtown.

Despite having lived in and visited the States several times I still managed to put my foot in it, and got quite an amusing response. I asked a member of staff if it was okay to drink beer in the hostel, the reply being ‘Is that an alcoholic beverage?’ and the subsequent assurance that alcohol was indeed not permitted on the premises. This situation turned out to be quite ironic, when on waking up at 4am with usual jetlag sleeping problems, I went to the communal area to use the computers and found two people noisily indulging in endless lines of cocaine among a group of Turkish guests (who didn’t appear to be partaking in the festivities). So I’m left thinking, which is worse, smoking cigarettes or shooting guns? Drinking booze or snorting coke? America is full of incongruous surprises!

The next day was taken up with shopping for vital camping necessities, mmmm… or luxuries that became necessities when I discovered their existence, which turned out to be quite mind-bogglingly complicated when faced with vast choices and wonderful inventions like shower body wipes, mosquito head-nets and portable loo in a bag (the latter of which no I did not invest in!). It takes hours to look and decide and we had to be doubly careful with what we chose to take as it all had to squeeze into four panniers on our bikes. We finally came out of the shops with brains quite frazzled and loaded down with far too much crap!

The following day saw our bikes all fixed and as good as new (despite Paul’s fork which still needed to be replaced but had been bashed back into place enough to make his bike rideable). While waiting around for everything to get sorted I had my first encounter with Mr Gun. Questions about where I was from led to a conversation about Bushy Park where he used to work at an airbase (was there ever an airbase in near Bushy Park?), and where I learnt to walk. Similarities ended there, when for some reason he deemed it appropriate to tell me that there were far too many ‘Arabs’ ‘over there’, a comment which I was not willing to reply to for fear of where the conversation would head. Luckily, it turned to bears and his only advice for me (on hearing that we would be cycling through lots of bear country) was to carry a gun, despite the fact that seeing a bear would be quite unlikely as most shy away from human contact…but just in case. I told him I was more likely to shoot myself in the foot then a bear and that a gun would therefore not be suitable for my purposes. Of course he carries one in his backpack and I told him that most of the people in the UK who carried gun tended to be associated with gangs (any corrections welcome but this is what I perceive to be the gun situation to be in UK). He then pondered out loud how we managed to fight WWII with pitchforks. At that point the conversation thankfully came to an end.

We finally got to see more of Anchorage on the last day as we took a bikeride through the centre and around the coastal trail and saw our first moose (see photoblog July 27). What was quite surprising is how they managed to build a bikepath right through the centre of a very modern city that fees like it’s in the middle of nowhere. Again another incongruous surprise! The trail, full of foliage as it is, goes right round the two airport runways so we managed to witness various aeroplanes taking off right above us, very exciting for any big aeroplane fan. Our last night in Anchorage was celebrated with a couple of huge crabs legs (they weighed half a pound each!) and a couple of pints of Alaskan beer in a bar called Humpy’s!

Recommendations for eating in Anchorage:

Bear Tooth Theatre Bar and Grill, Jens’ and Humpy’s

Posted in Two for the Road - On the Road | 1 Comment »

July 30, 2007 by Naomi.

Travelling with bikes is never simple and always full of surprises - either that, or Paul and I have particularly bad luck. This time Paul’s brand new bike was spewed out (by BA) in Frankfurt with the front wheel, its axel, the front fork and the brake seriously damaged.

The flight to Anchorage went very quickly and after stopping at Whitehorse we were very lucky to get an excellent view of the mountains and glaciers of Alaska and Canada, and some of the surrounding roads which we are going to travel on over the next few weeks. (see photoblog for 24 July).

Luckily for us Condor managed to treat the bikes with a lot more respect and appeared to arrive in Anchorage without further damage. The fact that Paul’s bike was not rideable meant we couldn’t cycle to our hotel as originally planned, but we were very lucky to find several taxis fighting for our custom (in Europe you are summarily rejected by taxis if you have a bike). Our lovely Macedonian taxi driver dropped me at the hostel with our countless panniers and Paul at the bikeshop with the bikes. And then we had to struggle to stay awake for another six hours as Alaska is nine hours behind UK time.

Posted in Two for the Road - On the Road | 1 Comment »

July 16, 2007 by paul.

A week today we’ll be flying over the Atlantic towards Alaska with a little bit of trepidation and quite  a lot of excitement. Plans have gone relatively smoothly so far, bikes have been delivered and various bits and pieces of equipment will hopefully be waiting for us in Anchorage.

Posted in Two for the Road - On the Road | 1 Comment »