Queen on her throne

Dear future me,

It’s funny when you get to a new environment, you’ll feel lost for a while. But within just a few days, you suddenly feel at ease, like you’re coming home when you get back to your hostel and see familiar faces. It might help that everybody just loves my new bike, it’s a real attention drawer. No matter where I am, it only takes seconds before somebody (usually men) to come over and awe at my bike. So I just love my KLR! Or it might help that I’m a woman on my own and people try to help me in any way they can. I just have to give them a smile and the fire brigades arrive.

Or is it just the hospitality I meet up here? There are so many kind people, like Barbara and Mark who helped me get around from the first day I arrived. Mark has shown me the whole area on our evening trips and Barb took the time to get me familiar to all the (big) shopping centers. So I’m not  only the proud owner of a gorgeous looking and riding bike, but also of camping gear, tools and too many other stuff I need while I’m on the road. Thank god for these Pelican cases I ordered (which took me about 6 hours to set them up, thankfully with a little….or just a lot of help from Andy), because they are fit to handle all my luggage. My bike must feel as a donkey as it is carrying all my stuff in a trillion cases and bags. Gladly it makes me feel as a Queen on her throne, as I’m just leaning backwards as a ride my bike smoothly over the roads in Alaska. At least for the first 1000 miles so far.

Anyway, I’m getting the drift of how to survive in Alaska. Although some old and ancient Nennie foolishness keeps appearing now and then. Last week I took my bike for a test ride down to the Kenai Peninsula. That was the first time I could check my raingear as it was pouring down while I crossed Turnagain arm (or did I just see Turnaround on the signs??). But soon the weather cleared and it started to get hot. Homer was my first stop and Charlie, a friend of Barb, was waiting for me as he was my host for the next two days. He showed me how beautiful this little town on the side of Cook Inlet is, with water everywhere and snowy Mountains on the horizon. Homer Spit is a tourist attraction, but I managed to stay clear from all the tourist shop. Okay, so I couldn’t resist a nice beer in the Salty Dog, so what!. As Charlie is just on his own there in Homer, he was happy with my companionship and so was I with his. I had a whole bedroom for myself, including a Jacuzzi! Wow, I don’t even have that back home.

Next stop: Seward. As Homer is in the left south corner of the Peninsula and Seward on the right south corner, you could assume that it would only take me a few hours to get to Seward. But that is just not the Alaskan style. No, I had to drive all the way back north, to the east and then south again.

As I’m a curious Dutch girl, it took me all day because I had to stop everywhere for photo’s and video’s, including driving up and down the roads to test my GoPro (helmet camera). So far I’m still trying to find the right angle as I’m shooting too much grey stuff (the road) and too less beautiful whites, blues and greens (the scenery). But I got down to Seward eventually. Just right on time to book a boat tour.

Well, there’s where the Nennie foolishness comes around. As I was seeing many whales, dolphins, see lions and glaciers, they could sue me for being a paparazzi. But they got their revenge…..just about the time a whale came over to show off by auditioning to a circus movie, my camera lost his juice. So as everybody was cheering Oooo’s and Aaaa’s, I was hammering my battery as a lunatic. This is probably not a correct English sentence, but it’s giving a vivid account of what happened. So I missed the acrobatic whale, I missed the killer whales, the sea otters and so on. Thank god for the hospitality of Americans who offered me to email some photos. Next day, I went to the Exit glacier on foot. I charged my battery, so this time nothing could stop me  for shooting prizewinning pictures. Except for the fact that a charged battery won’t help you if it is NOT in your camera.

Well……at the end, I returned to Anchorage safely where I’m now waiting for a service on my bike. Tomorrow I’ll leave for Dawson (D2D motor gathering) and it will be an excellent opportunity for me to find out if my tent is up for his job. And I’ll definitely find out how much blood I can lose before I have to go to the hospital as all the mosquito’s are happily looking forward for their diner (me).