Alaska bike journey rolls along

Alaska bike journey rolls along

MANLEY HOT SPRINGS - It's so quiet in these spruce hills and tamarack swamps that 27 hours and 50 miles passed between when Forest Wagner and I said goodbye to one human being at Old Minto and hello to the next near Baker.

Space is in ample supply here on these pressed-in snow trails between towns and villages of Interior Alaska.

Forest and I are out riding these ephemeral ribbons of blue-white, moving westward with a goal of reaching Nome.

Last Saturday, when it warmed to minus 12 degrees Fahrenheit, I lurched my loaded fat bike out of my home in Fairbanks. Saying goodbye to my wife and dogs, I rumbled eastward on a boot-packed trail that after a mile led to a plowed bike path. I then rolled through the familiar University of Alaska Fairbanks campus and onward 8 miles to Forest's cabin.

He handed me a mug of coffee and an egg sandwich. Then we started pedaling our fat bikes down Chena Pump Road until we reached the Tanana River.

We found a trail groomed for a multisport winter race, turned right, and headed downstream on our home river, there half a mile wide. It was a day when the weather finally nodded toward spring. Fair-a-dise showed up with bluebird skies as the day warmed to 8 degrees Fahrenheit.

After a month of pillowy snows and crazy cold temperatures and retelling people our new takeoff days to semisuppressed eye rolls, we were finally unstuck from the glue of town.

If an object wasn't hanging off our bikes, we didn't need it. No more fiddling with the load or obsessing on the seven-day weather forecast. Just big ol' tires humming on dry snow.

Now, five days and 145 miles later, Forest and I are digesting French toast and bacon our friend Steve O'Brien cooked for us as we wait on the dryer in the Manley washeteria. When we get a few dollar bills, we will take showers.

It's a good life here on the trail, just-add-water living at its finest. Eat everything in front of you, apply some sunblock and keep mashing on the pedals.

O'Brien is one of the many people helping us move westward. In one of the most clutch moments, my wife Kristen and our friend Jen Wenrick appeared wearing headlamps on the packed snow ramp off the Tanana River in Nenana. They handed us burgers and fries from the Monderosa.

After a surprise tough day due to soft trail that had us working real hard, those burgers and Cokes were like oxygen.

There have been many other acts of kindness from Jenna and David Jonas, Steve Ketzler, Forest's dad Joe Wagner and others. Tonic for the body and soul.

We will meet more excellent people, including some old friends, as we ratchet toward Nome.

When my satellite tracker is on, you can see our arrow creeping across the landscape here: https://share.garmin.com/NedRozell.

Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute.