Latitude 61...Land of the Midnight Sun

My Personal Tour de France

I planned this bike tour of Provence last September, so it seemed to take "forever" to wait for this September to have the time arrive.  Ususally, I try to plan my bike tours for the fall so I have all summer to ride my bike to be prepared for "real" riding, instead of the tour following hours spent indoors in winter spin classes.  No matter how fit I am for the first outdoor ride, climbing real hills feel like a shock to the legs.  Becoming fit for biking this summer was complicated by knee bursitis that began plaguing me in late June, requiring me to completely lay off the bike until September 1!  I crossed my fingers and traveled anyway... hoping I didn't have to ride around in the sag van each day.

I did some "weather homework" for the area and decided that it would be a good idea to knit a light weight sweater to have something warmer to wear in case of cool evenings.  Began knitting it July 4 while watching the Tour de France, which seemed particularly fortuitous.  The pattern is Sprossling, by Anne Hanson, and if you want more details, those are posted on Ravelry here.

Ironically, this sweater would have been perfect for their "normal" weather, but the weather was so unseasonably hot for Fall that I only wore it once.

I had a wonderful time biking 12-40 miles most days, and walking 2-9 miles the other days.  The French can be rightfully proud of their cuisine... I have never had so many consistently delicious meals!

My trip began with 2 days to explore Aix on foot, 4 days to explore the St. Remy area biking to Arles, Les Baux, and the surrounding farmslands and countryside of Les Alpilles.  Then on to 2 days near Avignon with a ride to Pont du Gard one day and Avignon itself the next.  My biggest regret was not being able to see everything!

Fast forward, literally, to Paris by train, a very fast trip for 3 days and nights to explore the city.  For me, it was really a trip of a lifetime.

If you are interested in seeing more about where and how I traveled, you can see the details at Vermont Bicycle Tours.  If you're considering a more active travel vacation, I would highly recommend this tour group.

 

Here are a few photos of Aix.

 

 

 

 

It's so true... time does fly when you're having fun!

I can't believe we have been back in Alaska for a month after our vacation and it took me that long to unpack, get well, and then get organized.  I have used up the "average" adult count of colds per year...  three colds this year.  Unfortunately, I had three colds and/or cases of flu in three months, one of those months being our vacation.

We still had a great time in the Santa Rosa area touring the wine country by bike.  I don't have as many pictures as I would like though.I discovered that once I get pedaling on my bike, I hate to stop; even for a great photo op.  The weather was gorgeous... SUN, SUN, and more SUN!  Best of all when we heard that locally it was bucketing down rain in record amounts.  We saw lots of picturesque vineyards and wineries, tasted lots of wine, bicycled a lot even on Highway 1 viewing the ocean, avoided getting too sunburn, and ate too much... in a nutshell... the perfect vacation.

    

This picture proves that we did have a "rest" day!   Needless to say, I got very little knitting finished, but managed to work on my "travel" pair of socks on the plane home.   Two whole weeks without any knitting... I think that's a record for me.

                                                                                 

 

Only my internet was dead...

I knew it had been a long time since my last post, but I didn't realize it had been over a month!

We have been having internet connectivity problems just like we had last summer.  This summer we decided to take action and dump the one provider and go with the other provider after 3 weeks of 30 second-5 minute outages about every 10 minutes when it was "working" or no connectivity at all for hours and hours.  After many calls with them saying, "but everything is working fine on this end", we just dropped them.  Of course, that necessitated changing phone numbers and email addresses... why couldn't the electronic age just be simple! 

I never realized just how many web-sites I used until I had to navigate all their account changing processes.  I probably still missed a few, but I am now back online and not only able to read... but leave comments on people's blogs!  (After I lost so many comments I was trying to post... I just quit trying!)

I have been doing lots of knitting and lots of bike riding.  My biggest July accomplishment was to take part in the Fireweed 400 ride; although I only rode the "short" distance... 50 miles.  It seemed long enough to me, though!  We have been having gorgeous sunny weather, mostly.  And although we just finished 2 weeks of rain, here is a photo of the lovely weather we had this week-end.  Everyone who lives in Alaska, will probably recognize this location, but for those of you in other states... this is a picture of one of the "sunken forests" which was caused by the great Alaska earthquake of 1964.  The land dropped vertically by 3.6 meters causing this forest near sea level to be inundated by salt water.  Luckily for me, I lived in California when it happened... I don't think that would have been something I would want to experience.

End of summer; oops, I mean Fall

    After so many gloomy days this summer the last 4 days of brilliant sunshine have looked like summer, but only from indoors. The air has been quite crisp and we had a light frost here the last three mornings. The leaves that have been in the process of turning, have suddenly been stripped off the trees by the north wind and are in drifts all over the lawn.

We went for a bike ride Saturday because it looked so beautiful although it was very cool and quite blustery. It was fun anyway and we got some great fall color pictures. Not surprisingly, there is new snow on the top of that peak.

    We rode the 26 miles back and forth from Indian to Girdwood and got so many great pictures that I couldn't include all of them here. We called this stretch of path "Leaf Alley" because the leaves completely covered the pavement.

Here is a picture of a small cirque glacier overlooking Girdwood.

The sunshine has actually made me "late" getting this post finished, because instead of computer time indoors while it has been rainy, I have been outdoors finishing up pre-winter chores... ripping up frosted plants, raking leaves, and mowing the lawn for the last time until spring.

I did finish a few WIPS... thankfully as they were not my favorite items to knit.

A  new hat for me... a blend of New Zealand possum fur and Merino that doesn't itch. Cotton hats don't itch but are worthless as Alaskan winter wear, and most wool, my first love for knitting, makes my head itch!

Hmmm... I never can get quite the placement of images that I strive for with the new Typepad... I am such a klutz!

The birthday scarf for my brother knit from Merino cashmere blend so it shouldn't be itchy either.

  I have more pictures of my new FI love: Stillwater and a new baby hat for my grand daughter, but I'll post those another day so this post isn't too cluttered. I'm so visual, that I would rather post lots of pictures, but then I don't have much to say.                                                                                                                         

Tour de France Time

I have been watching the Tour de France constantly so not getting as much color knitting done as usual... just working on socks since I don't have to look at those while I knit. I'm almost finished with my husband's socks and here is a picture of how the yarn looks. He chose the colors and actually found something he likes, so that will be nice.

(Gratuitous Alaska scenery shot!)

We have been riding our bikes constantly because watching the Tour is such good motivation. I haven't taken many pictures though because our summer weather this year has been heavily overcast, dark, and gloomy.

We have had 2 sunny days... truly dismal! I did get some good pictures on those two days.

We have taken two trips to ride our bikes. The first one was to Talkeetna again, as we had so much fun there in May and it's not very far. I had planned to take the Loopy Ewe postcard to try to get a good picture of Mt. McKinley to enter in their contest for distant locations. When we visited Talkeetna in May, McKinley, as usual, wasn't visible. It's almost always wrapped in a blanket of clouds, especially in the summer. This time we lucked out! It was a completely clear day and we could not only see Mt. McKinley, but the whole range was visible; Mt. Hunter, Mt. McKinley, and Mt. Foraker!  Jackpot!

The lighting could have been better, but I'm not complaining.
Unfortunately, I forgot my Loopy Ewe postcard! I can't believe how forgetful I've become. Last May, I forgot my knitting... and now I forgot the postcard! Well, I took the picture anyway... at least I have the Loopy sock bag. Please ignore the bad hair day... bike helmets are not kind to hair!

Besides, even if we go to Talkeetna again this summer, odds are that McKinley will be hidden again.

So, I am posting some gratuitous Alaska scenery pictures for those out-of-state readers who have asked me many times what Alaska looks like.

Here's one of our best "May in Talkeetna" pictures where we had lots of clouds and no view of McKinley.

Spring and Summer have been so cool this year that May still looks like winter with lots of ice still on the river and no leaves on the trees or bushes.

Here is our second sunny day of July... we went for a bike ride and got a nice "sunny lighting" picture. This picture is taken about 10-15 miles from our house and shows the local mountains, The Chugach range. All the trees in the foreground are dead because the ground sunk after the great 1964 earthquake, flooding this meadow and turning it into a wetlands.

I had intended to post these pictures in a more timely fashion coinciding with the month in which I took them, but we have had a lot of internet connectivity problems and I was really tied up in June with Marathon training.

A Very Short Trip!

We started our vacation yesterday, drove to Talkeetna, and when we arrived... I discovered that I had forgotten to put my knitting into the truck! Well, I was very depressed because even though our vacation is mainly to ride our bikes somewhere warm, what good is a vacation with NO knitting!

So, we spent a delightful sunny night in a very cute little cabin and then had a wonderful bike ride today with a view of this!

Even though it wasn't very warm yet, one advantage of our late spring is, there weren't many mosquitoes about yet... the plague of Alaskan summers!

We rode about 20 miles and while riding, my DH suggested that since we had only driven about 125 miles, we should just go home and get my knitting and start again tomorrow. I wasn't even going to ask! I figured that forgetting my knitting just topped off the unlucky, disorganized kind of week I have had.

So, here we are home again tonight, then off again tomorrow so I won't have any more interesting vacation pictures for about a week.

Also, I posted my last blog entry in such a hurry that I forgot to include the picture of the Mary Tudor yarn, for those of you knitters actually interested in the somewhat "raw materials".
So here is the yarn I bought from She Ewe Knits for a very authentically colored Mary Tudor, which is the way I always wanted to knit it. Thanks again, Anne!

And I thought is was spring?

Yesterday, we had an unusually late spring storm that dumped over a foot of snow on us, and still counting.
It's still snowing now, although it's starting to finally taper off... I hope!
Almost all the snow in our yarn had melted and the "small glacier" on our deck was finally gone, and now this!
Back to winter in a single day. I thought the snow picture looked so unique for this time of  year, but scrolling back through my photos, I realize that it looks like every other snow picture I took from October until now. When will winter ever end?

Well, I didn't even leave the house yesterday as the roads were terrible, so I finished one of the sleeves of Luskentyre.  I really did get a lot of knitting done.

I'm going to work on Fulmar and Abalone for a week to take a break from the second sleeve. Mentally I'm ready for different patterns.

Now this picture is proof to my friends who think all I ever do is knit, that I like to do other things too.
This photo was taken last week-end before the big storm...
We just bought new studded tires for our bikes and this was the easiest part of the trail that we rode all day. I discovered that I am not the competent mt. biker that I thought I was, at least not on snow, and I fell once. I need lots more practice!
Of course, there is never a shortage of snow in Alaska, so I will probably get a lot of practice.
(I'm not riding today though... it's still snowing and riding through loose, deep snow is too much work, so I'm going to be a wimp and knit all day!)